Cause and Effects: A Basic Tomb Building Tutorial

I originally had this up on the TS3 site, but they took it down after featuring it *sad face* Since then I’ve had a lot of inquiries about it and have posted it once on the Simmer’s Society, and now I’m going to post it here! There are no pictures, because as stated, I had those on the TS3 site too, and I just don’t feel the urge to re-take seventy-five pictures, rebuild my examples, and so on so forth. So, here ya go…

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Hello everyone, and welcome to my tutorial on making tombs. To start, I’d like to go over some basic things you’ll need to have/know before attempting to build a tomb:

1-     World Adventures is required for all of these steps

2-     Sufficient skills in building

3-     Understanding of the concept of the basement tool

4-     Understanding of general cause and effect reactions

This is not a tutorial on how to make a basement, so we will be jumping straight into building. If you are not acquainted with building basements, please find a tutorial for that before beginning a tomb. This is not a tutorial that holds your hand, and it is for people with general knowledge of building. This also only covers the basics of tomb building. I’m hoping to come up with a more advanced tutorial later.  I’d also like to mention here that everywhere mentioned SHIFT + LEFT CLICK, you also need to include a CNTRL + SHIFT + LEFT CLICK.

  For my example today, I will be using the Tudor lot in Sunset Valley. I have already made my general basement below and have decided to place the secret passage to the tomb in the garage.

  As you can see, I have two levels to my basement and, in general, it is a very simplistic shape. I will add walls and passages as I go along to create the separate rooms, and I find this technique easiest for planning tombs. Don’t forget to place floor tiling and wall paper. After planning out all the rooms (this is important and you should have your layout planned before furnishing and adding triggers), I can begin by placing my entrance to the tomb. At this point, you will need to open up your cheat box and enter testingcheatsenabled true, then buydebug.

  From build mode, select the desired staircase. Thanks to the new update, these are customizable so it works well with the motif you are going with. In my case, I am building an Egyptian tomb, so I have gone with the Egyptian styled staircase and re-coloured it to match my brick walls and flooring.

  The first real step in building your tomb happens now. Do you want the staircase to be hidden, and have it open with the help of a switch or key? If you answered yes, go to buy mode and select the category with the ? . This should include various items, including numerous switches.

  For my staircase, I’ve selected the floor panel. Now, here comes the important part. To make my staircase invisible, SHIFT + LEFT CLICK on the staircase. Several options should pop up, select the HIDE option. Your staircase should go invisible. Now SHIFT + LEFT CLICK on the floor panel, and select the LINK TRIGGER option and STEP ON.  Go back to your staircase and SHIFT + LEFT CLICK on them. Select the option LINK TO ACTIVATED BEHAVIOUR and then APPEAR. You have now told your stairs to appear when someone steps on the floor panel.

  As you can see, my floors lead into the tomb. Place your objects before linking any object to anything else. IMPORTANT NOTE: ALWAYS PLACE THE TOMB ROOM MARKER OR ELSE YOUR DOORS WILL NOT LOCK.

  Now, I like to place my door first. From build mode you can select the Hidden Door, as I have, or from the buy mode category ? you can select any door you like. SHIFT + LEFT CLICK on the door, and, if you want it to be locked, select LOCK. Now, for my tomb, I want the door to open with the pulling of a torch.

  In the Buy Mode Category ?, select the Lever Torch, SHIFT + LEFT CLICK on it, select ENABLE LEVER. Now we need to link the torch to the door. For my door, I’ve also selected HIDE, so it is invisible and locked. I SHIFT + LEFT CLICK on my torch, LINK TRIGGERS… PULL. Then, SHIFT + LEFT CLICK on the door, LINK TO ACTIVATED BEHAVIOUR…. OPEN. This has linked the action of pulling the torch to opening the door. The door will become visible of its own accord.  There are also many other options you can perform with the SHIFT + LEFT CLICK. These include changing the colour of the torch, which I have done here to indicate something special, you can make the door undiscoverable, which means the player cannot INSPECT, and you can also make the door and lever unusable by NPC players, which is advised so NPC cannot break into your tomb.

  And now, I’d like to add some treasure to my first room. For the sake of this tutorial, I have added everything separately, but for the sake of your sanity, you should add everything BEFORE linking objects. Alright, so I have placed and re-coloured two floor panels and two wall openings. I have “hidden” the wall openings using SHIFT + LEFT CLICK… HIDE and have also specified my treasure component by selecting TREASURE COMPONENT, in the original SHIFT + LEFT CLICK menu. I have made this a small treasure because it is the beginning of the tomb. And now, I link the floor panels to the wall openings so that they become visible when a sim steps onto the panel. I do this by SHIFT +LEFT CLICK, LINK TRIGGERS… STEP ON with the first floor panel and then SHIFT +LEFT CLICK, LINK TO ACTIVATED BEHAVIOURS… APPEAR with the wall opening. It is important to link a trigger and then activate the behaviour. If you want to do multiple things with one trigger, you must go back and click LINK TRIGGER and then select the object you want to have the behaviour EACH TIME!

  So now, your sim would have collected a small sum of money and opened the door. I have fully decorated my first room. I’ve placed two doors on either side, locked them, and hidden them from view with the process covered on the last page. I have placed two wall traps, hidden them using the same process as the doors and set their type as fire by SHIFT +LEFT CLICK… SET TRAP TYPE… FIRE. I’ve set their trap state by SHIFT +LEFT CLICK…. ARMED AND INVISIBLE. I’ve placed my tomb room marker, a hidden switch (the green rug-like thing in front of the main entrance), lever torches, a floor panel and a treasure chest, coin pile and rubble piles.

  I begin my linking by going in the order I want events to happen, I’m going to exclude the SHIFT + LEFT CLICK stage from now on so this can go by a little bit faster. Everything in caps implies that you’ve already selected the item in question with SHIFT +_LEFT CLICK.  I LINK TRIGGERS… HIDDEN SWITCH the green rug and LINK TO ACTIVATED BEHAVIOUR… CHANGE SET COLOUR: RED on the torch I am using as the lever. This means, as the sim enters the room, the torch lever will turn red. I now link the torch and the floor panel by LINK TRIGGER… PULL the torch and LINK TO ACTIVATED BEHAVIOUR… APPEAR on the floor panel. This means when a sim pulls the torch, the floor panel will appear. Now, for dramatic effect, I want the two wall traps to burst into flame as a sim pulls the lever and the floor panel appears. To do this, I go back to my torch LINK TRIGGER… PULL and then LINK TO ACTIVATED BEHAVIOUR… FIRE ONCE on the wall trap. I go back and repeat this process for the other wall trap. So now, as a sim pulls the torch lever, fire will burst from invisible wall traps on either side of them and a floor panel will appear behind them.

Moving on, I now link the floor panel to the doors. I select LINK TO TRIGGER…. STEP ON with the floor panel, then LINK TO ACTIVATED BEHAVIOUR… APPEAR, and then repeat the link to trigger process with the floor panel and select LINK TO ACTIVATED BEHAVIOUR… UNLOCK with the same door. I then repeat this process over again for the other door.

And now, I turn move objects on, place a treasure chest on the floor. TREASURE COMPONENT… and select the treasure you want within. I then hide it beneath the rubble pile in the corner. A sim will have to clear the rubble pile to get to the treasure chest. In the other rubble pile, I hide a chest containing the Key of Burning Sands, which will be used later in the tomb to unlock a door. I will cover keystones and mummies in my next tutorial and as well as pools.

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Please do not redistribute, or claim as your own. I’ve worked hard to compile this information for you, so it would mean a great deal to me that instead of copying and pasting, you linked to this post, or cited my work. Thank you, Sunny

©2010 SunsetValley01