Items on Roofs

[TheChronicR]

Hi all. Here are the questions: what is the purpose of items on roofs? Are they just decorations or do they perform "special" functions? Have you ever placed items on roofs? Please share your experience. Thank you.

[Seabody]

I do believe they are decorative.
The air vent (Ambitions) seems to serve no purpose.

[TheChronicR]

I do believe they are decorative.
The air vent (Ambitions) seems to serve no purpose.

I think so too. I wonder if people use them..?

[Saltypaws]

I have used them before, but unless you play with your walls up and roof on, lol, then there is no purpose.  I think they are pretty neat, but still trying to figure out why they would waste items like that. 

[Audren]

Well, they ARE cheap, so if you have 50 simeleons or less, you could get a lot of them on your roof. I don't think they have a purpose, though.

[TheChronicR]

I have used them before, but unless you play with your walls up and roof on, lol, then there is no purpose.  I think they are pretty neat, but still trying to figure out why they would waste items like that.  

I see. Yes, really, they are quite nice to be only decorations. lol

I just found out a cheat that allows to place any object on roofs - allowobjectsonroof [on/off]. Quite useful for builders, isn't it?

[folcon]

I guess the only real use is if you are intending to take pictures of the house/lot with the roof up.  Stuff like the roof vent mostly just add a little more realism as far as I can tell, but serve no actual purpose.  Kind of like some of the traits that serve absolutely no purpose other than for an RP value.

[Hosfac]

I've used them from time to time, but not very often.  They're just decorative.

I've placed the solar panels from the Eco-Pack on the roof and adjusted the height of the roof so it looked like the solar panels are mounted there.  It requires the use of the "moveobjects" cheat and creative placement of friezes to make it look right, though.  I honestly wish I had taken pictures of it, because that file is one of many that fell victim to corruption.   

[TheChronicR]

What an interesting idea, Hosfac! Unfortunately, I don't have the Eco-Pack. For some unknown reason, it just doesn't download.

[Jonna]

I put the solar panels on my roof as well, but the sound they make every day at sun-down scares the dickens out of me, so I sold them and got wind mills instead.

[Micler]

When I first got the Eco-Pack, I expected that you would be able to mount them on roofs but then found out they went on the ground. I didn't ever try to put them on roofs with cheats, though. I use the weather vanes on some of my traditional houses.

[pallyndrome]

I put those solar panels on a flat piece of roof in one of my games (Greenwoods in Ordinary Lives of Barnacle Bay), but they don't look right. It'd be nice to be able to do it like you described, hosfac.

[Hosfac]

Well, I went in and redid it so I could take a few screenshots to show how I did it, since the original file I did it on no longer exists.  It's an idea I came up with while playing an Eco-Friendly family on a smaller lot.  I wanted to place solar panels, but I didn't want to waste their already limited yard space with them, since I had also wanted to place windmills.  That's when I remembered a childhood friend's house that had the panels on the roof.  After a bit of messing around with it, here's how I did it.



Once your house is built, first thing you need to do is apply a floor to the "attic" area, so everything has something to sit on.



Once that is done, remove the roof completely (or at least the section that you want to place the solar panels on), and place a single width row of frieze.  If you're looking to save a bit of cash, you can place 1x1 sections of frieze with two squares of gap in between, and fill the gaps with the free floor tiles.



Once your elevation is in place, put the roof back on and lower it as far as you can.  This will make it easier to place the solar panels on the second level.



With the "moveobjects" cheat on, place your solar panels like so.  Notice that the top row of solar panels is barely sitting on the frieze.  You want to do it like this so that the frieze isn't visible through the roof once it's done.



And once the solar panels are in place, you simply raise the roof elevation so that it looks like the panels are attached to it.

You could run into a situation where your roof is bigger due to the size of the house, and you may want to center the solar panel array closer to the middle of the roof.  This is easily done by placing a frieze on top of a frieze:



You don't need the extra row of frieze in the back.  I was just trying to do it quickly.  And as shown here, it's just as easy to replace the roof after the solar panels are placed (this is something I figured out while doing this, and didn't know it was possible originally.  I assumed that the panels would interfere with it, but it doesn't).



But when it's all said and done, this is what you end up with.

[Leto85]

I use them in film. The future scene of CaveSims and the quest for fire has an tower which was constructed out of time machines and air vents, along with floors and walls and a water tank.

They are practical for decoration indeed, but I won't recommend using them outside of movies: they will block often your view.

[TheChronicR]

Thank you for the interesting tutorial, Hosfac. But can't you do it otherwise with the Moveobjects and Allowobjectsonroof cheats?