Basements are, on the whole, easy to make. But they're also easy to get into a bit of a pickle with, hence this editorial. I saw the advanced tutorial on the official site but couldn't get it to work as described there so I wrote my own for thesimszone.co.uk. Which is nice. :)

This describes both internal AND external access to a basement in Sims2. For simply practising with this, I suggest placing an empty lot and then building on it. It doesn't cost this way and you can always shelve it later, though the costs will appear when you try to move a family in. Do take note that if you move a family in, all building costs come out of the budget.

CONTENTS:

1. Greetings & Foundations.
2. Basements, walls, terrain levelling and lowering.
3. Stairs, exterior levelling, stuff.
4. External doors, passageways, the end.

Fig 1: A basement starts with a foundation - size is irrelevant

After placing a lot or moving a family in, you get a big green tiled area to build your new dream house on. As in Sims 1 you can still build straight onto the ground if you want but you won't be able to have a basement. For those you need to lay some foundations in the normal way, as shown above.

Fig 2: Chopping the middle part of the foundation out

You now need to chop the middle bit of the foundations out; this will grant access to the basement from inside the house. To do this, go to make a basement in the normal way but hold down the CTRL key before dragging. The indicator turns into a bulldozer. Chop out the full area of the foundation leaving a one square border as shown below in Figure 3.

Fig 3: What your foundation hole should look like