All the members of the MTS. Please suggest your various techniques and ideas about "How would you build a perfect Residential Lot in TS2."
Every one is most welcome to post their ideas here.
With Regards
GodSpeed

In what way do you mean? The idea process, research, building, modifying, packaging, testing, uploading, taking screenshots, managing custom content? I could go on for a while about most of them but if you narrow down what you would like to know it would be easier for myself and other creators to share their techniques and ideas with you.

Packaging, uploading, screenshots are well notified in the SITE itself, so well the process of building with images and yes managing CC's, ideas would be much better.

I did not got what actually you are tryting to make us understand?

Okay let me explain in pictures.
For example if you are trying to inform other users how to build a home, and give instructions in some specific field you may post like following. And therefore I have been inspired by TheDeadSim to use this method.

I don't have any pictures as its very late, and I'm waiting for my sleeping pill to take hold, but I've always been fond of hallways, at least two tiles of course. I don't like the living room connected to everrrrrythinggg, especially a bathroom. The bathrooms for me I try to hide a way a little because I think to myself how I'd feel in a bathroom with the living room right next door or the kitchen where heavy traffic occurs. Also the red x's tend to annoy me when a sim passes by the bathroom. I also like them in the back because I'm a no-no window in bathroom kind of girl. Windows in bathrooms freak me out to no end.

The three most important things when building a house for me are flow, spaces and balance.

So flow is how the house flows through. That one verandah did not flow. I don’t like areas to only have one tile of space, I like to see plenty of room through the walking areas and also flow to the room sequence. Bad flow for me would be a large couch two tiles in front of the front door. Can a sim walk in and around it and use the house-yes; does it look nice and flowing?-to me no. I'm not 100% happy with my chair placement in the lounge room of the B & B I just uploaded but I had to pull the chairs back because sim fire places were designed by pyros. Hopefully the rugs are far enough away to not catch fire >cough< as I kind of forgot to put a sprinkler above it as I normally do.
Room sequence flow, is if rooms make sense were they are. Sometimes certain houses might have a different take on room placement but still flow. For example I have one modern house uploaded that has the kitchen upstairs, which I wouldn’t normally do but because it has a breakfast bar and a eating/party area outside the door on the deck it works. Non flowing would have been walking upstairs with plates of food. If a built in cupboard is used does it look like it belongs there or more like it was stuck on the wall as an afterthought.

Spaces are more about the room shape and size. I don't care for oversized rooms unless it's for a purpose and looks right when filled with whatever furniture and decorations it was designed for. If there are awkward points or purposeless space I would try and change those points, even if it means having a wasted triangle or one tile square blanked off with a wall. You only see it from above. If the space waisted is too much then it probably needs to be made into two rooms or maybe something decorative could take up the space. A built in planter? A bath up on a platform? A wardrobe and a computer/craft nook?

Balance is to do with how the windows and doors look on both the inside and the outside and if they seem to go together. Does it also balance with the fireplace? Do the lights and paintings look right there? If the painting looks too large or small for the space it's unbalanced and I'll change it. How about the colours? Now some people are much more into creams, browns and neutral tones then I am and also like to keep a whole house to the same colours. I tend to only keep to one colour scheme if it's an open area and I tend to go onto whatever colours I feel like if a room is behind a door. The only thing I am carful with is if the colours in a room balance and not clash. The bedroom clashing with the kitchen doesn’t bother me at all, but a lounge room clashing with a kitchen does. Same with patterns, I like patterns but if I have used one on the wall then the floor and chairs will be plain. If the room is small I'll use lighter colours. I'm a colour hog though, I like colour and too much of the same I find boring. Viva la colour. To each her or his own. Maybe decorating isn't building, but I never feel like I have finished building until I have all the decorating done.

I can give you a few tips off the top of my head about building a house.
- Terrain paints are important to remember. (pebble path, dirt beneath trees, different shade of grass)
- Effective floor plan (is it easy to navigate with the camera? Will the sims have to walk long distances just to pee?)
- Halls no smaller than 2 squares wide (an exception are tiny compact homes and the hall is very short)
- Foundation or no foundation (Will you want to add a garage to the property or will people have to add it themselves? Garages can be difficult to add on a foundation)
- What's necessary for a sim to live (Consider motives, wants, aspiration etc. I usually include exercise equipment but sometimes don't because a sim can always travel to another lot to work on their body skill points)
- Phones, lights, smoke alarms & burglar alarms are a must (a phone on each floor usually in a common open space, not cramped where sims may block access to a door)
- Use a consistent set of windows doors etc. (This means the type, colour, style etc.)
- A use of two different wall coverings makes a big difference and keeps a house interesting.
- Make sure it looks complete (double check everything before uploading it (test it out properly with sims and check each room will function nicely).

I think that's it for now. If I think of more I will add it in later.

You know I totaly forgot to add a phone in my last upload and I'm not sure if I added that smoke alarm or not. Those things are really easy to forget. *waits for someone to come kill me when their B&B burns down*

Also when placing lights do it at night and make sure the outside is lit as well.

Just a note on the earlier post about bathrooms from Rowena, I couldn't agree more. One of my favorite places to put a downstairs (half) bath in a two story home is behind the stairs, I always use double modular stairs, and build a small room (2x2 or 2x3) behind where I'm going to place them, and put a bathroom there. Everyone else has already said everything I would have.

I have the same problem Jo. Sometimes I accidentally forget and patiently wait for a comment from an angry member lol
Most of the time I remember the smoke and phones.

One thing I care about when building is the fact that this is a game, not an imitation of life - routing; flow, as Jo called it, of the spaces, etc. A Sim needs to do things, needs to get places during gameplay - and this is virtually the only issue I have when building.

That said, I really don't understand why a bathroom in the game shouldn't be where it's most needed - where Sims can enter it from a living space, for example. In my old hood, Everville, where all res lots were 1x1 or 1x2, literally all houses had this set-up. But regardless of the lot size, this bathroom is there to run into minutes before work/school and take a bath/shower or use toilet or whatever. It is also there for the situation when they come from work/school/OFB com lot they own and without having them climb up the stairs to do what they need to do. Actually, if you have larger lots, it becomes even more essential - else they will have to stride across half the house to get to a toilet.

Or maybe I just don't like Sims peeing on themselves all that much?

I usually stick them near bedrooms, and unless I have total hands off my sims never have accidents, and even then its pretty rare, and as for a quick wash I have the sponge bath anytime hack so they hobo it if need be.Plus with the bathrooms in the back I don't have to worry about how weird part of the house looks because one side doesn't have windows and makes it uneven. The back isn't that big of a deal, they rarely ever go out back.

I always have bathrooms by the bedrooms too, but if I put a half bath downstairs in a two story it's 9 times out of 10 behind the stairs, which means it's usually near the kitchen.

I must say though, I will very rarely place a toilet or bathroom that is directly accessible into a living, kitchen or dining area. I will very rarely place it at the front of the house (either on the sides or at the back). The bathroom is usually in a hall. No one wants to go for a pee in real life if the toilet were right next to a dining room right? Be a bit awkward. I know this isn't real life but it's nice to be somewhat realistic. But if I do ever build two stories I make sure there is a toilet of some kind on the ground floor for visitors and daily access.

Having much experience with tiny lots stuffed with as many as 8 Sims, with pets, no less, I've had to build many a single-tile wide hallway.
The thing to make them decently routable is to turn the doors' arrows towards the room, not towards the hallway. This way, two Sims can pass each other more easily. And in general, the space otherwise taken by those arrows becomes usable for routing. Sims avoid standing in that space, for instance, so no waiting is possible in it either, and when using the door will attempt to enter it through that space, moving as if avoiding to bump into the door. Cause that's what they are actually doing - arrows show you where the door is when it opens. The other side is free for traversing, in other words.

Simsica I've never built a 1 tile wide hall, but that's great advice! I am awful at building tiny homes. I try and end up getting no where because of my inner voice yelling "NO! They need more space between that couch and that table!" I just can't make myself build tight spaces, lol.

Our RL house has a bathroom next to the dining room. Granted not the door to it, that is around the corner; but the bathroom wall is the dining room wall. In a small house you have less options.

Yes, I understand some real life homes will have that type of situation and I have actually built some sim homes like that however I do my best to avoid placing the door into a living type space (unless sometimes in a corner and out of the way a bit).

It's only after I decided that my Sims can live in tiny homes and apartments, just like real people do, that I started building small. But it made sense all on its own, which I only realized after I started playing small. It has many advantages for certain gameplay styles.

I used a lot of Targa's elevators, though. Now, I prefer the OFB stage+modular stair approach - I find it lovely. It can work very well with Mootilda's Real Basements (using her tools, which I recommend anyone to try out and consequently enjoy using). Now, I can build quite cozy homes on 1x1 or 1x2 lots using realistic transport between the house levels. The new spiral staircases from AL or Marvins's could be used for the same purpose and look lovely too. Marvin's stairs are now fixed to have two-way animations I believe, which they lacked before. (Pets were also an issue, but I think it's fixed too, or could be fixed easily.)

The advantage of tiny homes - if we for a moment forget the silly question of baths - has primarily to do with game experience.
Examples:
1. It's much easier to track those pixels around a small lot. And I love tracking them - they're constantly doing something - I have to see!
2. Also, a small lot loads faster and is much more easily rendered than a large lot.
3. Being small, small lot, by its very nature, effectively eliminates the problems with over-instantiation of object instances (a possible issue for TS2 engine).
4. Gameplay-wise, it forces you to have many com lots, and actually use them. Build small com lots, and loading isn't an issue anymore, even on pretty slow machines. Which allows you to play your game to the full potential of the EPs you own. Anyway, the Sims do fun stuff when let to roam a com lot.
5. Again, being small, it allows for more Sims on lot - performance-wise. This enabled me to have a pretty smooth mega-party of around 50 Sims on a 3x1 lot, a park (not many objects or structures).

Since I already played a lot of com lot gameplay (being an OFB addict, inevitably, in time, I turn everything into a shop or owned lot of any imaginable kind there is), and was thus always interested in seeing my game run smoother and load faster between lots, it was time for tiny anyway.

And it looks cute.

In conclusion, thank you, Mootilda This was a TS2 revolution in my eyes: your building tools. Back then, I was making a world for TS3, but built houses for TS2. And then it was only natural to see them played.
It's so much fun to build in TS2 now. And 1x1 lots finally work (and look) realistically, even though they have basements. I'll edit with some pictures of lots I've built using Mootilda's tools. All 1x2, with a yard. And beautiful, real and realistic looking basements.
(Plasticbox is great in making a classic, EAxis basement look and feel realistic, and usable, though. She has no qualms with the baths opening into a living room. Tiny. Just that.)

Here is one tiny house from Everville.


Here is the basement, as played, obviously.

Note how the walls aren't cutaway around the staircase and the tub. It's because they were changed into basement walls using Mootilda's ConvertiWall tool. Neat, cause I like using the modular stairs. With this trick, they get to keep their walls and can resemble the staircases, as long as you play with walls cutaway.

This house has no windows in the basement, though others do (but I'm too lazy to take and edit pictures of more houses :p), and the lights are all off. On this lot, I keep them on in the basement during gameplay.
The doors and windows will fit into and work well with basement walls - you only need to re-enter the lot after placing them.