gave myself a little challenge to make a very small restaurant in the Sims4

one of my pet peeves on the gallery is the restaurants all look like houses (whyyyy) so i've built some super realistic restaurants...

but they are a bit big. Especially for game play

so i went to the smallest lot size, a 20x15, and i gave half of it to parking. And then i made this little restaurant. I had to sacrifice the little back room office almost every restaurant has, but i got the rest of it, including

a bar

a dish pit (if you've ever worked in almost any restaurant you'll recognize the dishpit -- took me forever to figure out how to make the big side-slidey washer and the dish racks you slide in and out)

a walk-in (same people will recognize this one, it's got the beer kegs and CO2 tanks, the back up drinks and the shelves full of tubs and bins)

some outside extras like a bus stop and i even found one of those newspaper dispenser banks in the debug menu

and here it is (and it's hard to tell but yes the curb by the fire hydrant is red)

(a big square garbage is tucked into the corner, but i do understand that it should be a big round one on wheels somewhere near the sink instead)

after running a couple of restaurants with my own sims, i finally got that a smaller restaurant makes for easier gameplay / more money -- so in that way this is probably better than most of the restaurants i've built, which are usually on like, a 30/40 lot and include a LOT of decorative realism.

I'm currently using what i learned from this to rebuild/remodel one F&B business - like a bar or lounge or whatever - from each world and turn it into a functioning restaurant.

As much as possible i'm keeping the shell and decor and just adding a kitchen, dish pit, walk-in unit, back office, and table seating area, making the interior entryway more defined, upgrading the lighting a little, stuff like that. If the floor plan will accommodate it i include a little studio apartment above it so your sim can basically live above the restaurant and just pay rent on some empty home lot somewhere. But yeah, each restaurant remodel build i keep the same basic shell and decor, same vibes, so it still fits seamlessly into the world

So far i've done: The Gnome's Arms from Henford on Bagley Planet Honey Pop! from San Myshuno The Salty Paw from Brindleton Laguna del Abrazo from Ciudad Enamorada, and Orchid A Go Go from Del Sol Valley

gods help me i was messing about in sims4 and i think i just figured out how to make a subway station..

I've been building these little, like, slice-of-city lots, with like a little restaurant or whatever but with, say, a street down the middle of the lot with a street light or stop sign and some parking with a few cars and sidewalks and some other little building or two also and maybe a cross street or something with some mail boxes and bus stops and newspaper dispensers and a fire hydrant with a red curb and junk so it's like you're in a little city neighborhood going to like a 10x10 restaurant on a 30x40 lot :)

and i was just building one such lot when

I had some space to fill; i'd just dropped a couple of debug city buildings for filler and had a square of space to use up and i stuck a fountain in and thought "that's exactly the kind of thing i've seen in some cities, and then the rest of that space there would be the entrance to the subway..."

and do you know... i found train cars that would work as subway cars in the debug menu!?...

i mean, once you have the train cars the rest is just a big basement full of platforms and security gates and stairs that look like they could be escalators and stairs that definitely don't and some gates and pillars and benches and things... and i think i can make the tracks out of some debug boards i use sometimes...

I can totally make a subway station under this city corner i built

oh no, i'm about to lose a couple days of my life to this

no you don't understand, see, i've been building this sort of thing:

right? but if i figure out subways... I'M GONNA HAVE TO PUT A SUBWAY ALL THE WAY UNDERNEATH THIS WHOLE THING:

okay well it's not done but it's showing promise...

here's the subway entrance so far

and then the subway platform itself, maybe halfway done

me playing sims 4 when it came out: I think I’ll make a business lady, what traits will she have? oh, there are careers? neat, I can’t believe I never played any of the sims games before.

me playing sims 4 now: *opens testingcheats comand prompt, unlocks build anywhere mode, enables bbshowhiddenobjects, enables bbmoveobjects, enables bbshowliveeditobjects, cracks knuckles* okay, today we’re gonna use the debug menu and a build function full of modern suburban design pieces to build a pirate fortress that would make Jack Sparrow clutch his effects and swoon – I wonder if I can use spandrels to fake supports for a platform around a sized up palm tree by hiding a column inside the trunk…

i had to dig through SO much debug and fiddle with soooo much stuff to do it but i did build that swoon-worthy pirate ship btw

THANKS!

i got the idea to build it when i saw these two items in the debug menu. They are just shells that sims will ignore and walk through so i had to build in a way that would sit exactly under the parts the sims needed to stand and walk on

then i just had to build out the middle part and fiddle around with the flooring and stairs to get sims to be able to walk up the stairs and stand on the upper deck and stuff – it was before the platforms update, so that was a real pain!

so like this part in the middle is all built using stuff meant for houses - i think the cannon is a sized-up kid’s toy, and the cannon balls are like, sized up marbles or something… the ship’s steering wheel is a wall decoration, but i managed to get it hung off a thing stuck in a podium and made it look like it could function and made it so a sim could stand up there and i found some barrels and things that looked like they belonged..

and then the actual inside of the ship i had to do as a basement like the ship was half buried. I couldn’t get a tapered shape so i just made each floor below a little thinner and a little shorter than the floor above it,

so like when you first go down the ladder it’s living quarters like so

but then the floor below that is leaky storage

but then sulani doesn’t let you build basements! so i had to re-conceptualize it as a ship wreck base

i did a little optical illusion to make it look like you could see into the watery depths of the interior of the ship a little

anyway, thank you so much!

I love doing unusual builds

like, i did an alien/scientist build with a basement lab and an underground rocket silo… and a couple cool vampire homes, one is a secret swanky basement lair and the top is a burned and falling apart shell of a house.. and the other is just straight up a graveyard with an underground lair tucked in behind an old subterranean throne room in ruins…

Tried to build a mall and got about 30% through and it was just too ambitious - i gave up after the main central area with fountain and escalators, the 2 screen movie theater and arcade, the food court, the cafe, the three story clothing department store, mall restaurant, the functioning elevators and half the parking garage… it was just still tooooo much left to do! see?

lately i’ve really been liking to build like, whole neighborhoods on a single lot

here’s an occult neighborhood with a vampire lair with mini-graveyard, witch’s cottage and garden, modern alien home with lab and rocket, and mermaid pool and grotto with underground cave/home… and a park. Gotta have some green space in any good neighborhood

oh dear i’m rambling about my sims builds :P

okay right but you missed a glorious opportunity to build several small empty lots each with one bare wall panel for the one broken toilet and roach infested lawns with 129 empty moldy pizza boxes per lot.

now both the sims psychosocial bunny and the sims general social services are all unemployed but fine whatever go ahead and solve virtual housing, food, and social equity crises rather than causing them I GUESS RUDE UGH.

my dear madam-or-sir-or-what-you-prefer, i would never!

I wouldn't dream of depriving the sims social workers' union a busy day with lots to do! Tho sadly, the social bunny, like the humble burglar, has gone extinct.

But in the above neighborhood pics, this part of the city over here? it's like an abandoned construction site, and features a homeless encampment of easily three to four people and some piles of trash and a 55 gallon drum fire/grill and an abandoned couch and stuff.

A couple generators i stuck into a busted up front half of a car wreck like they had rigged the old engine as a motor to generate power. And a sell-stuff table the way you sometimes see things for sale in a row on the ground or on a folding table around homeless areas. It's kinda hard to see in the above pics, but i'm talking about this part of town

i hid a real room with a bed in the little debug trailer, and another one in the shipping container

and then across the street there's a brick warehouse that's abandoned but someone probably camps out illegally there. Right next to the warehouse is this little area where somebody started kind of a hobo bar in a broken down old bus.

But then that attracted a food truck and then a couple people started busking there and now it's a happening little spot people go for a bite and a drink and some light entertainment, but the poorer folks started it up and it's in their own territory kind of, so it's a place they can be no matter who else is there; it's right by a bus stop, so sometimes some foodies and college kids and people show up. On the back side of the warehouse is a chain link basketball court

and then over on this end of town (really just a block away from the homeless encampment) there's a corner store and a laundromat under a photography studio and a small clothing boutique, and they make a little alleyway, and in the alley and on the back of those businesses there's a bunch of graffiti and stuff. And a tiny bit on the front.

and the apartment building has two apartments that are small, but nice and fully furnished and have two bedrooms each; they are currently set up as office/hobby rooms, but somebody is probably going to have a kid they aren't ready to take care of!

Plus i set the lot to cat hangout and dog hangout, so plenty on the horizon for the social workers of the sims universe.

Probably could replace the rollerskating rink with a pool tho ;)

(i'll just leave these two pics here to check out again on your way down - in addition to the above there's a gym and spa, a studio apartment above a cafe/bookstore, a two bedroom house above a two car garage, and where there's a de-bug building with a weird growth on top in these, in the current version of this build i fit my tiniest functioning restaurant there instead, comfortably seats 25 and includes an actual dish pit and walk-in fridge like you'd find in a real restaurant. Oh and the park! which has a community theater with a karaoke machine and a microphone on it so sims will use the stage)

me playing sims 4 when it came out: I think I’ll make a business lady, what traits will she have? oh, there are careers? neat, I can’t believe I never played any of the sims games before.

me playing sims 4 now: *opens testingcheats comand prompt, unlocks build anywhere mode, enables bbshowhiddenobjects, enables bbmoveobjects, enables bbshowliveeditobjects, cracks knuckles* okay, today we’re gonna use the debug menu and a build function full of modern suburban design pieces to build a pirate fortress that would make Jack Sparrow clutch his effects and swoon – I wonder if I can use spandrels to fake supports for a platform around a sized up palm tree by hiding a column inside the trunk…

i had to dig through SO much debug and fiddle with soooo much stuff to do it but i did build that swoon-worthy pirate ship btw

THANKS!

i got the idea to build it when i saw these two items in the debug menu. They are just shells that sims will ignore and walk through so i had to build in a way that would sit exactly under the parts the sims needed to stand and walk on

then i just had to build out the middle part and fiddle around with the flooring and stairs to get sims to be able to walk up the stairs and stand on the upper deck and stuff -- it was before the platforms update, so that was a real pain!

so like this part in the middle is all built using stuff meant for houses - i think the cannon is a sized-up kid's toy, and the cannon balls are like, sized up marbles or something... the ship's steering wheel is a wall decoration, but i managed to get it hung off a thing stuck in a podium and made it look like it could function and made it so a sim could stand up there and i found some barrels and things that looked like they belonged..

and then the actual inside of the ship i had to do as a basement like the ship was half buried. I couldn't get a tapered shape so i just made each floor below a little thinner and a little shorter than the floor above it,

so like when you first go down the ladder it's living quarters like so

but then the floor below that is leaky storage

but then sulani doesn't let you build basements! so i had to re-conceptualize it as a ship wreck base

i did a little optical illusion to make it look like you could see into the watery depths of the interior of the ship a little

anyway, thank you so much!

I love doing unusual builds

like, i did an alien/scientist build with a basement lab and an underground rocket silo... and a couple cool vampire homes, one is a secret swanky basement lair and the top is a burned and falling apart shell of a house.. and the other is just straight up a graveyard with an underground lair tucked in behind an old subterranean throne room in ruins...

Tried to build a mall and got about 30% through and it was just too ambitious - i gave up after the main central area with fountain and escalators, the 2 screen movie theater and arcade, the food court, the cafe, the three story clothing department store, mall restaurant, the functioning elevators and half the parking garage... it was just still tooooo much left to do! see?

lately i've really been liking to build like, whole neighborhoods on a single lot

here's an occult neighborhood with a vampire lair with mini-graveyard, witch's cottage and garden, modern alien home with lab and rocket, and mermaid pool and grotto with underground cave/home... and a park. Gotta have some green space in any good neighborhood

oh dear i'm rambling about my sims builds :P

gods help me i was messing about in sims4 and i think i just figured out how to make a subway station..

I've been building these little, like, slice-of-city lots, with like a little restaurant or whatever but with, say, a street down the middle of the lot with a street light or stop sign and some parking with a few cars and sidewalks and some other little building or two also and maybe a cross street or something with some mail boxes and bus stops and newspaper dispensers and a fire hydrant with a red curb and junk so it's like you're in a little city neighborhood going to like a 10x10 restaurant on a 30x40 lot :)

and i was just building one such lot when

I had some space to fill; i'd just dropped a couple of debug city buildings for filler and had a square of space to use up and i stuck a fountain in and thought "that's exactly the kind of thing i've seen in some cities, and then the rest of that space there would be the entrance to the subway..."

and do you know... i found train cars that would work as subway cars in the debug menu!?...

i mean, once you have the train cars the rest is just a big basement full of platforms and security gates and stairs that look like they could be escalators and stairs that definitely don't and some gates and pillars and benches and things... and i think i can make the tracks out of some debug boards i use sometimes...

I can totally make a subway station under this city corner i built

oh no, i'm about to lose a couple days of my life to this

no you don't understand, see, i've been building this sort of thing:

right? but if i figure out subways... I'M GONNA HAVE TO PUT A SUBWAY ALL THE WAY UNDERNEATH THIS WHOLE THING:

me playing sims 4 when it came out: I think I’ll make a business lady, what traits will she have? oh, there are careers? neat, I can’t believe I never played any of the sims games before.

me playing sims 4 now: *opens testingcheats comand prompt, unlocks build anywhere mode, enables bbshowhiddenobjects, enables bbmoveobjects, enables bbshowliveeditobjects, cracks knuckles* okay, today we’re gonna use the debug menu and a build function full of modern suburban design pieces to build a pirate fortress that would make Jack Sparrow clutch his effects and swoon – I wonder if I can use spandrels to fake supports for a platform around a sized up palm tree by hiding a column inside the trunk…

i had to dig through SO much debug and fiddle with soooo much stuff to do it but i did build that swoon-worthy pirate ship btw

gods help me i was messing about in sims4 and i think i just figured out how to make a subway station..

I've been building these little, like, slice-of-city lots, with like a little restaurant or whatever but with, say, a street down the middle of the lot with a street light or stop sign and some parking with a few cars and sidewalks and some other little building or two also and maybe a cross street or something with some mail boxes and bus stops and newspaper dispensers and a fire hydrant with a red curb and junk so it's like you're in a little city neighborhood going to like a 10x10 restaurant on a 30x40 lot :)

and i was just building one such lot when

I had some space to fill; i'd just dropped a couple of debug city buildings for filler and had a square of space to use up and i stuck a fountain in and thought "that's exactly the kind of thing i've seen in some cities, and then the rest of that space there would be the entrance to the subway..."

and do you know... i found train cars that would work as subway cars in the debug menu!?...

i mean, once you have the train cars the rest is just a big basement full of platforms and security gates and stairs that look like they could be escalators and stairs that definitely don't and some gates and pillars and benches and things... and i think i can make the tracks out of some debug boards i use sometimes...

I can totally make a subway station under this city corner i built

oh no, i'm about to lose a couple days of my life to this

no you don't understand, see, i've been building this sort of thing:

right? but if i figure out subways... I'M GONNA HAVE TO PUT A SUBWAY ALL THE WAY UNDERNEATH THIS WHOLE THING:

Sims 4 - I built a whole ass little neighborhood

It’s got an apartment building, a house with a proper garage, and a studio apartment above a little bookstore/cafe. You know how random sims will come over and do things like empty the trash or do laundry? Well, there’s a laundromat for them to do that in, and a little corner store with vending machines so visiting sims can actually purchase a snack or a drink. Or even medicine and pet food.

There’s a large gym with a spa and massage room, a clothing boutique, a photography studio, and a park. The park has a community theater, with a karaoke machine and a microphone on stage so it will get used and people might even gather to watch. 

The cafe, and clothing store are designed such that, technically, if you wanted, you could set the lot to retail and run either one as a functioning business. 

The way the lot should work is, you move 4 sims in. You use the lock door function to keep each sim using only their own residence, and to make sure none of the tons of random sims that frequently seem to visit all the time in the Sims 4 trespass onto private property. Instead they will wander around and buy a snack at the corner store and work out in the gym and make themselves a coffee drink at the cafe and go sit at the laptop I left on one of the tables. Hopefully the whole thing helps it feel like a functioning neighborhood. I selected the teen hangout and stray cat lot traits to help round out the neighborhood vibes.

There are two apartments with 2 bedrooms each, the two bedroom house, and the studio apartment. When this lot is placed, the second bedroom of each residence is set up as an office. work. or hobby space. So three of your four sims have room to get married and have children, or grow in other ways, getting career essential items and specializing their work space etc. 

8 sims max per lot means, for example, the sim in the house could marry a random sim and have two children, while at the same time, the sims from the studio and one of the apartments could move in together and a new sim could move into the vacant residence and start dating but not living with the sim in the other apartment. Or you could have 4 sims become single moms. There are all kinds of permutations that let each sim grow their lives. 

right now I tend to see between 50 and 100 downloads of my builds, but I hope more people find this one on the gallery under user Helix369 or #neighborhood and have an enjoyable play experience with it

buncha pics below the cut

Keep reading

this is gonna work so good when the For Rent pack comes out next month. I have a few appartment and neighborhood builds that are going to actually function correctly. for the like, three weeks a year i go ham for sims lol.

currently i have wiped all housholds and bulldozed all lots and i’m creating the whole sims universe, because you when your god complex is at odds with the reality that you control almost nothing it creates crazy sauce which you keep on ice all day everyday then somtimes you gotta take acute control of whatever world you can, create a hudred little lives and dip them in your crazy sauce, ‘cause, y’know, you gotta keep using up that crazy sauce or it back builds

and so the builds back

i started building houses and things again in sims4 .. anybody on here still that? i have questions about what kind of builds you like to use in your games

thank you to people responding in the notes!

i’m curious about what you  look for on the gallery -- for instance, if something uses a bunch of packs, do you avoid it, or place it and do a little remodel for missing items? Do you have a lot of packs, or do you mostly work with base game? What kinds of builds do you go looking for versus what you prefer to build for yourself? 

right now i’m building a home/base to house all five occult types with detailed underground alien lab/rocket silo and vampire lair, anybody interested in that?

other projects include a shopping mall, apartment complex, a mansion i’ve tricked the game into counting as a micro home, and i recently made a luxury home that is designed for easy gameplay, with most activities place on outside walls so you can navigate easy in 3/4 wall view...

previous builds include a sailing ship remodeled into a home, warehouse art lofts, a whole little neighborhood with shops and 3 kinds of housing for 8 sims, graveyard lot with vampire lair...

thoughts?