My biggest neighborhood, Pike Creek, which has three downtowns (the idea being they are all separate cities with Pike Creek being the suburb of one), two colleges, and no business or vacation district, has about 400-500 sims. I guess that now that I have OFB and Pets, overpopulation shouldn't be a problem. It will probably be glitches due to VBTs I did before finding this forum that eventually destroy Pike Creek.

(I am looking around for a way to backup some of the sims I liked better so than I can move them into my clean hood when necessary.)

Do you buy your Fortune sims the piles of stuff they ask for?

Noted. (I did not know that). However, it only takes moveobjects, one left click, and one press of the delete key to eliminate street parking if it is unwanted.

Edit: Will there be another building contest in the near future?

If you fail the shrub test, I suggest graph paper. I've used it a few times when I got careless and made a non-level lot or made one facing the wrong way when I wanted street parking.

I just don't want to screw around with all that temperature crap, it sounds like it's horribly designed from what I've read in The War Room. That, and I am really tight on HDD space and don't want to fork over earthmonies for a new drive. My copy of Sims is bloated enough as it is, with Uni, NL, OFB, Pets, and both stuffpacks.

I like the business thing in OFB because it gives me something else to do when I get tired of powerleveling.

But, if I'm in a good mood I might make a single-floor version of Barthaus 2.0.

I'm planning on rebuilding the house with a few significant design changes tonight. I'd release a tweaked version of this one except that I think that even if I didn't use any post-NL content, it still would require all the expansions I have to load properly. (Is that right?)

So I have one question: Should I bother walling off the stairwell (since will be starting a new lot) or is it fine as-is because it's only accessible from the resident-only area?

EDIT: Also, since I am starting a new lot, should I put in a foundation? I don't like them because they make it harder for me to plan spatially, they result in annoying camera crap, they make the lot more expensive, I hardly ever use basements, and they make every entrance to the house more expensive and less efficient. Actually, never mind, I'm not going to use a foundation.

I've never used cutscenes. I saw it on my friend's computer and they just look really annoying and interrupt the flow of the game, in my opinion.

I like the idea of pre-kicking the trash can. Roaches annoy me though, I keep Free Will on and my sims always want to run outside and get sick from them.

The phones in the bedrooms were a mistake, yeah. I think it was residue from my old Sims 1 mindset where phone calls would actually do something useful (give you money) and I wanted them to be able to wake up and call the police in case of a burglar. Now you don't really need access to a phone unless you are making a call.

I'll see what I can do about the larva/kitchen door. The way I set up the kitchen, they share the least convenient wall.

I can definitely put a bathtub in the upstairs bathroom but it would really need to be right near the larva facility. That might take a little reconfiguration.


Hmm, didn't think about that. I'll move it back a space. What are the most popular ways of breaking up the lawns to prevent holedigging? I was thinking either the cheapest bush, or those edge smoother things since they are really cheap. (But they are non-MATY content.)


With the sprinkler, all fires will be doused almost instantly, so this effect will be minimized. Still, there are five showers in the house and I don't really want to redo the kitchen.


Good point. I think I'll nix the console. I hate how they spread the controllers all over the house. The idiot box will probably stay though, especially since more serious sims tend to head for the chessboard anyway.


I installed Pets and OFB last night so I'm not going outside my test nhood until I'm satisfied all my downloads are working again. Lowbarthaus 1.5 should be up in a couple of days. Thanks for your feedback everyone.

I always bring their STR up to 80 or so on the phone before inviting them over, anyway. It requires less babysitting.

Loncaros, I'm currently working on exactly that kind of list based on what I read on the forum and, to a lesser extent, what I notice myself.

I would have entered this in the lot-building contest, except that it ended in July.

So I present to you:


LOWBART'S ATTEMPT AT AWESOMESPEC

Size: 2x3 (2 wide, 3 deep)
Bathrooms: 5
Parking spaces: 2
Floors: 2 (plus roof)
Square footage: 216 + 124 = 340 tiles

(with room for expansion)

FEATURES
- Only the front 3 rooms are accessible to visitors

- Refrigerator locked in separate room (small enough that sims will leave it instead of blocking)

- Street parking

- Skillinating room includes:
-- Weight machine for low body skill
-- Treadmill for high body skill
-- Espresso machine close to bathroom
-- Two adjacent bathrooms
-- Indoor telescope
-- Computer
-- Two bookshelves to prevent traffic jams

- Easily accessible visitor bathroom

- Drop table right inside idling room (I tested it and they always go straight to it for newspaper, homework, pizza etc)

- Reception area with Fun and Comfort objects for visitors

- Infirmary with separated crib rooms (located near the kitchen - but you can replace The Cheat with a minifridge if desired), changing table, child objects so children can keep toddlers entertained, and The Cheat

- Several emergency exits including one in the kitchen

- Street trash can is right outside kitchen exit

- Sprinkler to douse fires immediately so you don't have to rely on the SCFD

- Bushes in front for sims who can't find a toilet

- No 2x2 grass areas outside of perimeter fence (to prevent holedigging)

- Phones are located on easy-to-see red tables

- Barracks area with 6 single beds (Couples will not waste time waking each other up to cuddle) (I forgot that you need a double bed for babymaking, but two of the rooms are big enough for a double bed and you can always use the car.)

- Two bathrooms in the barracks area for topping off bladder and hygeine before bed

- Mirrors and lockers are located in the hallway so that the smaller rooms are not tied up

- Macrotastics and Lot Debugger

- Plenty of room for expansion without overhangs: Just extend the hallway through the brown bedroom and you can add more rooms behind the stairs.

OTHER NOTES:

- The car in the driveway has just enough space to pull out without slamming into the other car.

- It's not the most beautiful house I've ever made but it shouldn't disrupt the look of the neighborhood.

- I really only designed it with Uni and Nightlife in mind, so the lawns are not wildlife-proof.

- All rooms have Authorized Personnel Only except the upstairs bathroom and upstairs hallway, but the stairs are not closed off by doors on either floor so anyone that can get to the Skillinating Room can get to the upstairs hallway anyway.

- Visitors go to the correct front door (the big one)


CONTENT REQUIREMENTS

From Maxis:
- University
- Nightlife

From MATY:
- The Cheat
- Authorized Personnel Only
- Lot Debugger
- Macrotastics Launcher

The only non-Awesome item is the stereo in Reception. It's a remake of the cheaper Sims 1 stereo, and I can track down where I got it from if anyone wants it.


IMAGES


Classy front view
Ground floor
Top floor


DOWNLOAD LINKS

FURNISHED
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AVGPLQSX

UNFURNISHED
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CS1U5IFH


Oh yeah, I should be getting Pets and OFB at some point this week. So there is a good chance of an update in the future.

I don't know if it would need to be changed much for Seasons and Bonvoyage, but I am not going to put that crap on my computer.

To the Peasantry it is. Thanks twooflower.

I realize it's two months late, but will anyone yell at me if I post my house now? I followed all the AwesomeSpec requirements that apply to Nightlife and earlier, and it has street parking. The unfurnished version is just under $29,000. I don't have a bribe, though.

I don't really care if I'm not included in the contest, since I'm late and I probably wouldn't win anyway (not having a bribe, and not making it wildlife-proof). I'm just looking for some criticism on the design.

Is there any inherent disadvantage to having more nice points, like there is with Active and Neat? All I've noticed is that they don't have the options for negative social interactions available most of the time, and when Nice starts bottoming out they turn into trash-can-kickers and newspaper thieves, which is punishable by death.

Magicmoon, could you give us a link to the custom-default eyes you are using, if you have one?

I am planning on getting Pets and OFB at some point in the next week - is there any preparation I should do to prevent bugs, so that my neighborhoods won't be burninated?

I plan to immediately delete all new houses, families, and prefab neighborhoods these expansions introduce because I hate that crap. This is probably not a bad idea, right?

[Note: I am not going to get Seasons. Probably ever.]

Kyna, yes, that's the one. It caught my attention and I wanted to have its horrific awfulness on my computer.

I couldn't get it to link to the post properly so I just tried to link to the search result.

It'd be easier to just hunt down the last batch of stuff I installed and delete it.

I hope that's it, though, because I have a lot of houses and crap that I spent a lot of time on and aren't packaged.

Thanks

EDIT: Okay, found the problem. Let it be known to all that the duck that eats your poop breaks your game.

When I started up the Sims 2 last night it got as far as about 2/3 or maybe 3/4 through the progress bar on the big fancy loading screen and then, blink of an eye, dropped to the desktop. No freezing, no error message. I thought it was crashing on loading the Neighborhood Manager, but after trying it nineteen different times to test different variables, I realized it had not finished loading yet.

I have whatever the cheapest Athlon 64-bit processor is, I don't remember the model name of it.

Video card, ATI something or other, I don't think that's the problem anyway since Sims has been working for over... a pretty long time now and I haven't been messing with any hardware (I run the game at almost top graphics quality)

The information below is probably more relevant. This is a list of all the stupid-ass things I have done since the last time Sims worked.

ITEM 1: It was maybe 4 in the morning and I was messing around with test objects in a new clean neighborhood I had started. NPC/townie generator, etc. Probably the biggest mistake was trying to add the Therapist and the Grim Reaper to the family (Using the tombstone of life and death). All this was in one lot, I didn't save in the middle or anything, but it was maybe 4 in the morning and so when I exited I am pretty sure that I clicked "Yes" when it asked me to save, even though I had been intending not to.

Will doing that run the risk of making your game visible from space even if you don't save? Generally I have a superstitious belief (coupled to my dangerous curiosity) that if you don't save, anything you screw up will go back to normal. I learned the hard way that this is not always true that one time that I captured Missingno in Pokemon Blue Version and it went south even though I didn't save.

ITEM 2: I had finished loading up Photoshop and Body Shop, preparing for another session of making crappy stuff that I will not share on the internet for the benefit of humanity, when urgent matters called me elsewhere for a few hours. Not wanting to leave my computer running, I put it on standby, forgetting that the reason I hardly ever do that is that it tends to not want to turn back on again afterwards.

And so, when I came back and jiggled the mouse, hit some keys, pressed the power button, etc, the box stayed in standby. I don't know if something might have been caused by Body Shop not closing properly, or maybe I got bad sectors from shutting it off. I don't know. It's running checkdisk right now.

ITEM 3: I installed some new stuff, mainly FFS hacks, but a few other things (read: furniture and clothing) I got from links from this site and maybe some other places. It seems possible that one of them may be the problem but I doubt they would actually break the game like this, and the other scenarios seem more likely.


So: Bad sectors? FUBAR'ed neighborhood from doing stupidass stuff with untouchable NPCs? Broken downloads? Maybe it's something else I haven't thought of but I've told you about everything I changed and stuff.

What are happening?

EDIT: I should probably mention that I'm running Uni + Nightlife.

I need to find the person responsible for the term "woohoo" and kick them in the face.

Nevertheless, this is a brilliant thread.