Unlocked Apartment Shells
For Rent Expansion Pack is finally the pack allowing us to have multi-family lots to create duplexes/apartments with up to 6 families (unless you cheat then you can go above it!) I love City Living so much I decided to unlock some shells that can be used to recreate the premade apartments/penthouses!
This mod just liberates the shells that act as elevator portals. Sort of for aesthetics, unless you intend to make dormitories out of these or something else. But once the For Rent pack drops you will be easily able to convert these to functional apartments (since the new tool makes it take a few clicks!)
If you place a shell and then place an elevator, the shell will function the same way as the premade City Living apartments do. Just make sure you use the foundation height (Chic Street shell is the only one that uses maximum foundation height) for the shell to recognize the build.
If you prefer to do things yourself:
1. Build a 1st floor
2. Use the foundation height tool and drag it upwards for an approximate height of the lower part of the apartment shell you will be using
3. Click on a shell you want to use and line it up on the first floor
4. If the shell is not the correct height, use the foundation height tool again and re-add the shell (this is because the shells do not automatically update their position/rotation themselves for a too-complicated-to-explain reason)
5. Once you’ve lined up the height of the shell with the first floor, extend your square room until you fill-up the entire space
6. When the room lines up completely with the shell, the upper part of the shell should pop up (if not, just use the walls up/down button to refresh it)
7. Place down an elevator in the room, the shells are the entrance portals, and the elevators you place are the “exit” portals pretty much
8. Now to fix the foundation clipping through the shell, use the bb.showhiddenobjects cheat and go to foundations and you will see there’s a City Living and a Base Game foundation that look the same, they’re the foundations used for actual apartments to hide them!
9. You’re ready to make what you want out of your custom-built floor! I think this also allows the player options to make these fake apartments as commercial lots due to the fact these can be set to any lot type!
OR
There is an optional ApartmentPrebuiltLots file you can download where I have made a build for each shell and put them as Tray files (Tray files make builds/households appear in your library)
The tray builds include both Spice Market apartment buildings, an apartment from the Fashion District, 2 Brichester University penthouse dormitories, 2 Foxburry University penthouse dormitories, and Modern and Not-Modern versions of the Pinecrest Apartments from Evergreen Harbor.
KNOWN ISSUES
If you place the gallery builds on bigger lots than intended (or rotated differently), the shells will not shift along with the rooms, so use the TOOL mod by TwistedMexi to move/rotate the shells. I’ll try to look into ways if it’s even possible to fix the issue, cause it could get annoying pretty fast.
NOTES
It’s a little bit confusing how to find the elevator, trash chutes, mailboxes, and festival boards, but you should be able to just search for them by just typing in those keywords and the game might bring up the correct categories that way.
I have not unlocked/included every possible shell because the apartment shells were above the foundation max height limit. Shell buildings need the first floor to be used as their base otherwise you will be seeing through shells during gameplay and that can create some annoying visuals.
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