The only way that I can make "Make NPC Door" come up is if I'm doing an apartment that's inside a building.. kinda like this (for lack of a better picture) when I wanna get it like this How would I get the "Make NPC Door" option with the doors on the outside, and not surrounded by walls?

I've had some good luck and some bad with editing apartments. I do everything the same each time I edit an apartment, but sometimes, for whatever reason, when I go to play the family that lives in the edited apartment, there is no life-bar... no anything. The screen just shows the building, and won't let me actually enter the apartment or play my family. The screen looks as if it is paused, but it won't let me unpause. I don't know why this keeps happening, but it is very frustrating! Any thoughts??

Just a quick question, hopefully. I feel a bit dumb for asking this, maybe I am, but how do you design/build your apartment buildings more than 5 stories, and how large can you design/build your apartment buildings (how many stories is the maximum).

I have made my apartment and put in the wallmail box and chute and assigned the NPC doors but nobody is living there i checked on every door and it says nobody lives here is there something wrong? Also my sim doesnt use the chute she justs goes in the evelator and comes without the rubbish bag

Last edited by shockme : 28th Feb 2011 at 9:24 AM.

Hi! it's my first time to ask. I read the TS3 apartment tutorials. When I tried doing it, I couldn't find the hidden room, public room, and level skip markers in the ? function miscellaneous folder in the buy mode. Can you still make apartments this way when you have expansions? I only have WA.

If I'm not mistaken, you need the late night expansion pack to be able to do this.

I'm trying to make an apartment, like where I lived in Texas. So far it's turned out very nice.. 8 unit building with outdoor pool area and public exercise and laundry room...

I am curious about one thing.. with the 8 units, is there any way to have more than one unit be playable with differing families? Or does it have to be one player, with the rest being NPC?

I can click on each of the apartment doors and get these options:

• Lock

• Clone

• Make NPC Door

• Set as Front Door

• Add the ability to add triggers and activated behaviors

Thanks in advance for any reply.

I have the the NPC problem too, i read the tutorial, have made some apartments, i have used the public / private markers, i have marked the NPC doors correctly, i can play on my sim in the building with no problems but no NPCs have moved into the building... quite annoying...

You can only have one playable family on a lot. With your options given you choose Make NPC Door, this will allow NPC's to move in. After a period of time you will be able click on the door and choose visit (or something like that) and a list of NPC sims comes up. Time wise in my game it has gone from one sim hour to one sim week before NPC's move in, I have no idea what defines this time. It could be the size of your town, I really don't know.

The game limits to 5 levels, but you can build up to 25 with cheats. http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=360606

Thanks for the reply to my question.

Thank you very much! <3

Thanks for the reply!

I'm having the same issue as you. It's like the apartment thing just doesn't work with the townhouse concept.

I'm thinking we might need to enclose the row of buildings within a contained wall and mark the area around it as a public marker.

The door must be completely enclosed, either by a wall or fence on the same level.

You can not designate a door in an open stoop/area as an NPC door.

do you install a mod for a public room marker if you do which one?

As the tutorial states, the room markers are all found in buydebug.

I can't even seem to designate a door enclosed in a fence for NPC only.

Sort of messes up my pretty townhouses.

I'm trying to use one of the Apartment shells, but after getting the lobby set up I move to the next floor up and it won't let me build to the edge of the shell. It leaves 1 row of tiles around the inside of the shell unbuildable. I've tried putting in temporary pillars, flooring to see if it expands that last tile out, walls, everything I can think of to make that outside row available, but to no avail.

I'm basically trying to remake one of the 64x64 Bridgeport buildings and not including the "yard" associated with it so it will only be a 40x30 lot, so if there is an easier way to do this I'd love to know.

Thanks in advance for any help!

paleblueeyes can you please provide a screenshot? A top down view with walls up?

Gurgilxix - I really have no idea about shells, I don't use 'em and I don't like 'em. Plus, this tutorial is about building custom apartments in custom buildings. Maybe someone else knows, but I think you will find a discussion thread about apartment shells in social.

I've also updated the first section of the tutorial. I've found if you create a fake room inside the door you want for NPCs and place public markers inside and outside that you don't need a fence enclosing the door.

Ok, so I was inspired to build an apartment in the Aquarius building after watching a YouTube video. I've read and studied all the tutorials and how-to I can possibly find on the internet.

I successfully built a fully functional apartment in the Aquarius building where 6 of my Sims now reside.

But one thing is missing from my apartment...NPCs.

On the floor above my apartment I built an entire floor dedicated for NPCs to reside. Although not all doors are active as NPCs doors I did activate 5 to become a NPC door. I marked the front door of the enterance of the Aquarius building as the Front door. I placed a Public room marker in the lobby, in the elevator room on every floor with an elevator, and a public room marker on the NPC floor. I placed a hidden room marker inside every NPC apartment room (2x1 room size).

I have a callbox in the ground level. I have trash chutes in the NPC floor and my Sims floor. Both are working.
I have built a wallmailbox in the Main Lobby, also working paying bills and donated money.


I am now able to ring the door bell to every active NPC door, but the problem is... no one lives there.

Now I read that it would take a sometime for a NPC to move in... but it's been an entire week and still no progress on new residents.

My Sims are able to be move around freely and their NPC friends, repairmen, mixologist... so on.

*At one time the Elevator got stuck and all my Sims were unable to go up and down floors (I found this to be a problem for the Aquarius building) So I build an extra 2 elevator for the building, saved it, bulldozed it and replaced it. Now my Sims have 3 elevator doors for high traffic events.

Even after that NO NPCs are MOVING IN.

Is there something I am doing wrong... or that I am missing?

I am at work but if you need screenshots to get a clearer picture I will be happy to provide those and label everything just so I can get this to work.

Thank you in advance!!!

Last edited by TaCob0b : 18th Apr 2011 at 4:14 PM.

So I am making a custom apartment, I follow all the steps, have all the markers in the right place and everything seems okay but I have had a few problems when I tried to play test it. Weirdest of them being that all the NPCs that moved in were these crazy Sims, that looked like sims, but their voice, movements and all of their mannerisms were very much the same as Simbots ... I was just wondering if it had something possible to do with the apartment or some gameplay glitch because I was building in a Pleasant View world...

I followed the instructions but somehow, I keep getting random sims spawning in my backyard. It is completely fenced in, only way in is through the house, it doesn't even have a gate. And the sims that spawn are ones like "tattoo artist", "paparazzi", etc. I can't seem to figure it out. I have hidden room markers everywhere I need it. The interior 'other' door is marked NPC, I have tried marking my front door as such and not marking it as well. Also have tried moving the lot to a different spot in town and tested it with and without the apartment mail box. I cannot possibly figure it out.

Here is a picture of the front:




Here is a picture of the layout:




EDIT: Have also tried deleting all CC and cache, still sims spawning.

Last edited by heaven_sent_8_18 : 23rd Apr 2011 at 6:02 AM.

Hey, i' new to the forum. I read the whole tutorial and the posted messages here but i couldn't actually find one with the same problem that i'm having: i moved my sim to the apartment, set the NPC doors all correct but somehow i get "Ring Bell" on my own apartment door!
I couldn't find any help regarding this issue on the internet and i have no idea why this happens. Help?
Thanks a lot for reading!

Oh, btw, if my sim goes to town somewhere and i click "go home" it enters the apartment, still the ring bell doesn't go away! I can't lock the door and it bothers me a lot.

So do you really "build" your own apartment or you "edit" existing apartments? and in the guide, you said something about the twelfth floor. Isn't there a building limit?

Alizatina - Your issues are not related to the apartment, but seem to be a game problem. If you continue to have issues please post in Help.

Heaven - I noticed your lot has been uploaded so the issue is resolved? This sounds like a bug and not related to apartments and probably should be in Help. I think Twallans overwatch would fix the NPC spawning issue.

Anners04 - Please provide a top down pic with walls up. But in the meantime verify that you have public markers in public areas, and no markers in your sims private areas.

Firefighter - Yes you build custom buildings, this tutorial has nothing to do with using the shells provided by EA. I don't recall saying anything about a twelfth floor in the tutorial. There is a five floor limit with normal building, but there is a tutorial (link above) for going over that with cheats.