How To Override Apartment Hall Walls and Floors
If you, like everyone else I know, hate the apartment hallways and want to give them the face lift they deserve, here's how!
An override is actually super simple. You just need S4S for this. Step one is to choose override under Build, and then click Build.
Now you need to find the wall you want to override. For this example, I'm making an override for the apartment in the Hakim House building. That wallpaper is called "Plaster Makes Perfect." (I figured this out by just going into build mode and searching and painting a nearby wall inside the apartment until I found the right one.) I have it set to Wall, Base Game, and I'm searching the word "plaster" to find it more quickly. Just click one swatch of the wall and S4S will pick all swatches, and then click "Next." Also, all of these instructions are exactly the same for floors, you'll just choose floors instead of walls.
Name your file whatever you want. To be consistent I name all mine to follow the naming convention: username_description. We only want to override one swatch so you'll just click "Remove Swatch" on all of the swatches except for the one you want to override.
Once you're done, go ahead and hit "Save" and then head back to the main menu. Now we need to get the wall we want to replace it with. This time, pick "add swatches" and then click Build. This will only pick one swatch instead of all.
Again, just find the wall you want to use. Only select the actual swatch you want and then click "Next." You'll have to create a file here again, I just have a package called "test" that I save over for these instances where I don't actually need a new .package file, I just need to grab textures.
Now you'll go to the "Texture" tab and click "Export All."
On this save screen, create a folder for these texture files and then click "Select folder" to finish exporting.
Now, go back to the main menu and open up your original file. On the texture tab, you now just need to import all of your texture files. You'll import a Diffuse, Normal, and Specular for each wall height. So 9 files total, these are what you just exported. Just click Diffuse, Normal, or Specular, and then click the wall height, and then click Import. Go to that folder of textures you just created and then choose the correct file. S4S named each one exactly what they are so it's easy to pick the right ones.
Keep doing that until you've replaced all 9 files, change your swatch colors, and then hit save. Congrats, you just made an override of that wall!
Hold up, you still want access to that swatch you just made an override of? There's a quick and easy solution. Go back to your main menu and choose "Add Swatch" and then click "Build." Find the exact swatch you made an override of, select it and click "Next." Give your new package file a good name.
Hit save and call it a day. That's it. Now, every wall in the game that is that brown plaster will be the wall with paneling BUT since I added that plaster swatch back, anywhere else that I wanted to use that brown plaster, I can just go and paint it right back!
For all the apartment wall and floor overrides I've created, go here!
Below is the walls and floors for a lot of the apartments:
I ended up not making an override of this carpet so the swatch could be 10 or 12 but, as dark as it is, I'm pretty sure it's 12, plus I think 10 appears a bit too brown toned to be the right one:
I missed getting a proper pic before placing my overrides but the original brown walls is the 23rd swatch of Basic Darks with White Trim.
The non-patterned carpet:
