The only thing Madsim's lots are good for are neighborhood decoration...they provide the shorter skyscrapers that make your playable lots not look freakishly small in comparison to those godawful towers. I entered one ONCE....bork, bork, bork.

Well....even though it's like shooting fish in a barrel, it IS worth nominating Buntah. Here are just five of her many crimes against taste lots.

First, this strange, strange lot. Words fail.


This wouldn't be so bad if she hadn't drawn glyphs on the top and turned it into a freakshow.


It may not be too bad inside, but the outside's enough to keep me away.


yes, it's a house of windows. Windows EVERYWHERE. She must have discovered the move_objects on tool that day.


This just in: Pool water defies gravity!

Yep..pretty charts and graphs, and some 8x10 glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back describing each one....

I do think, if nothing else, it will make planning better for both residential and community lots. I'm HOPING that the growth time stays the same in each season...but it is Maxis EA, so anything's possible. If no one makes a timer [/hint], we can at least use the Lot Sync Timer to plan the events.

A conversation with Pescado led me to study the time it takes for Seasons plants and trees to spawn. The initial results of my study follow.

Lot: residental, 3x3
Residents: 2 female plant sims
Season: Spring (started day 1)
Mod used: Macrotastics...Garden

Note - all times rounded to nearest hour


Orchard Trees

I planted two of each type, a minimum of 5 tiles apart, with a minimum of 5 tiles separating the trees from garden plots, greenhouses, and the residence. All trees were placed at the time of building; approximate time was 8:15am, Sim Time.

I measured the time from 'planting' as well as time from bloom. All trees were Thriving, with no Tend or Spray indicators, at time of harvest.



The results? A tad puzzling. I expected harvesting within an hour (see garden plants below), but not as much as a five-hour swing. Further study will take these same trees into summer and fall.


Garden Plants

Four separate areas were set up - outside, greenhouse with no sunlamps, greenhouse with sunlamps turned off, and greenhouse with sunlamps turned on. The areas were placed a minimum of 2 tiles from each other. Each area contained 12 garden plots - contiguous. Each area contained two of each type of garden plant. Each plot was fertilized with bag fertlizer, but no sprinklers were used (all watering managed by Macro...garden). The two plant sims worked in tandem to plant each variety within a sim hour.  All plants were Thriving, with no Tend or Spray indicators at time of harvest.



There was NO difference in time based on 'setting'...in fact, the spawning occured in random fashion wthin the hour, with no regard to actual order of planting. However, all 12 plants of each type spawned within the hour.

Further study will look at times based on planting at the start of Summer, Fall, and Winter seasons.


Conclusions: It may be possible to create a timer, not unlike the exam/job/birthday timer, to warn the user of harvest times. A determination still must be made on the orchard trees - whether the 5-hour difference was an anomaly or typical, but it appears that even a two-hour warning may be helpful and accurate enough for game play.

Once the time studies are concluded, I'll look at quality variations - sunlamps, drowning v. boring the plants to tears, greenhouses, and fruit decay.

Tolkien was largely inspired by legends from the Norse, Germanic, and Anglo-Saxon.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal outright.

It's hard to build an underground bunker on stilts. Kinda counter-intuitive.

I agree...I go two levels down and that's it...Clothing gets sorted by age group, Objects get sorted by collection (or in some cases, just designer), and walls and floors get sorted by general type (siding, stone, etc.). I also have been limiting my downloads to stuff i REALLY use rather than stuff I might use someday. Squishified, my downloads are 1.25 gig, with 10K files in there (lots of walls, a full set of face replacements), and while I'm not entirely in the No Stuff In Unless Stuff Goes Out club, I do eliminate stuff I don't use on a regular basis.

Witch, your duplicate problem is just weird. Sure you didn't cast some sort of spell to make sure you always have a backup? 

Your comment reminded me of my first week in Winston-Salem, NC...got transfered there with about 30 engineers in 2002. One of the...er...features of Winston-Salem is a tall building shaped for all the world like well, see for yourself:



On our way to lunch one of those first days, we passed the building, and one of our mechanical engineers made this comment:

"There's only one things wrong with that building. It needs a fountain on the top."

And now it's just an average day in Awesomeland.

I think of this bunker as the lost city of Atlantis, actually....

I am dismayed by the low water table in this hood I was using (a custom one from Patul at MTS2)...I love lots of beachside property, but there isn't much land high enough to build much. Pescado moved back into the hills, btw.

Regarding the desk..it's not really a wrap-around..it's three of the mad scientist tables carefully placed with cheats. (Mad scientist set by Paleoanth, here. It includes the axes on the wall and other items I have in that bunker.) The mission control area was inspired by a conversation Gwendolyne and I had about how Pescado seems to be everywhere at once...how else would he do it, if not for a set up with multiple computers? I plan to add a higher shelf of monitors as well...really go Truman Show with it...that is, when he has enough money.

I was afraid you'd say that...although I was pretty sure that was the answer. Higher ground it is.

Unless you want to hold your breath for the rest of your Sim-life....

Okay, make that a bunker under the sea.

Pescado has been living happily in his bunker in my current hood, but on a whim, I moved Pescado's bunker to lower land.



Now I can move him out, put a new bunker back on higher land, and move him back in. I tried just moving the bunker, but the water stayed. (Pescado didn't seem to mind...just kept nettrekking.)

However: I like where he lives now. Is there anything I can do remove the aquarium atmosphere without dumping the bunker altogether?

KLGFCG, some people don't have their sarcasm filters turned off. (Which is odd...because isn't EVERYTHING Witch says laden with extreme sarcasm? (Hey..new Olympic sport!)

I have found that I don't gain MUCH space from running it on my lot catalog or neighborhood packages, but it doesn't hurt.

I have had nothing bork with this utility.

Oh, THAT is nice.

Use all the same 'qualitifications' for promotions, but also add a random bit to it? So...the boss might be in a good mood and says yes, or he might be a royal prick and say no.

Heh...of course, now I want a Suck up/Brown nose/Kiss ass option on that phone call...

Perhaps, rather than having the promotion foisted upon you, you get to choose whether to accept it? That way, your happy-being-a-DJ slacker sim can stay a DJ.

Except for the missing fence around the property (blonde moment), this bunker I made yesterday is pretty decent...sunken, rough landscaping, with Mission Control area for Pescado's many 'puters (where he runs his empire). It does include some custom content...but worth it for the axes on the wall.

Download here iffn ya want: http://www.mediafire.com/?dudmm2z9gqb

If only we could place it in the middle of nowhere, with no roads leading to it.

DOH!

Okay, so I'm blind.

_____________

Amber, this is a terrific idea...it would be especially helpful to new creators, since there are any number of questions that are hard to find answers to, like the binning codes, etc. I am NOT the person to do it, since I don't know jack about it.

Did anyone actually mention earrings as a category? I can't find it.

well I don't know what happened....but when I clicked on it this morning (just to check), it worked fine.

User error. (shut up, Pescado.)

you broke it!

EDITED all the crap out since it fixed itself.

Holy Simoly's rock spa is a thousand times better. Why screw with something when someone's done ir right...and at least a year earlier?

Huh. I never had the problem until this otherwise much beloved hack. I always got to...um...well, finish the date. 

Explode and reload. Even God needs a reboot now and then (see: flood).

Gives you a chance to torture us in all new ways. 

I've had this happen as well, every time my Sim wants to bring his/her date home. Just so you know...it's not just Vren Lyet.