I'm with you, Cheesey. Unless I have a specific reason for it, I never use motherlode. I occasionally use kaching if the game does something stupid that I don't agree with and my sims end up broke. Like charging for flat roofs but not pointed ones. What's up with that? I love your house! Very nice and so grand. Thanks for sharing!
Oooo Mirelly! That's fabulous! Love the tuck under garage! Really nice use of the landscape!! And nice job, Cheesey! Love the gazebo! (I think just about every house needs one!)
LOL This has been so interesting. I also don't use the money cheats except the occasional kaching to replace broken/stuck items if there isn't enough money in the coffers. I am actually losing interest in my current neighborhood because the fifth generation is starting to move out and the main hood is looking really neat, but I'm able to send those kids out with $150,000 start-up funds (I use Pescado's no automatic 20K hack and transfer money wth his money order hack ... and I still have too much money floating around ) I was looking at one of Ricky Andrews' (a former llama mascot) offspring, who was swanning around in a big 100K home I'd built a while back and there he was, a gas pump attendant (I also use Pescado's harder jobs hack), who goes to work in a Ferrari, and has a pool and spa. After a good sleep, I'm thinking of starting over again and having one family called something like de Banque, or Guvamint so that I can use Pescado's money order to tax my families ... every Friday they have to pay their taxes ... could get kinda nerdy .... I think I'd better think it out again!
Another house. My mouse is acting up so the camera's still a bit slanted, but what the heck. This is the Nova's former cottage in Bluewater Village, that became more of a manor when the grandkids moved in. The business is in the garage (thanks for the idea, Lynet!)
Do you have a problems with poor envirnment scores with those large rooms, SBW? Maybe I am just too picky, but I've tried open-plan before now and could never drag the environment score out of the yellow. Bad e-score affects things like headmasters' visits, party success, or just keeping a visitor happy to to stay long enough to become a friend. I'll post some more of mine later. I carried out my tax threat. Pennfield now has a Mr. G Mint living in Kristalrose's Wilminton mansion. I used the debug cheat to make him know everyone and every Sunday night each family has to "do" their taxes. I am charging them 7% of the value of their property plus 25% income tax (actually I just make them give up 25% of whatever's in the bank on Sunday night) ... I have some complex rules I am still making up to cover situations where they can't afford to pay. Also Sims who live in trailer homes are exempt the property tax and only pay 10% income tax. I've yet to figure out what to do with the upwardly mobile sims in (I guess you'd call 'em 'tract house' ... I have a few different designs of 3/4 bed family homes in 25-35K bracket) ... maybe 3% property tax and 15% income tax Either way it's made playing the fifth generation fun again
Not generally, to answer your question. I am having a problem with Max & Avery's house. No matter what I clean the family's scores have been way in the yellow, even orange, environmentally speaking. Not sure why that is, since it's not even open plan. Maybe something to do with six people living in a small space? When they get more money I'm expanding, or possibly moving them to a larger lot. In the pictured household everyone's fairly happy most of the time, except when the robots run amuck.
Y'all have beautiful houses. Kat, I love your landscaping! SBW, I love your layout and the lake in the front. Cheesy, I love your gazebo! And Mirelly, I love the garage in the basement! Y'all need to make them available for upload here at World Sims. I just finished one over the weekend. I haven't ran it through the clean installer yet or else it would be up for download.
All these beautiful houses. I'm feeling inspired. BTW, although it doesn't really matter for pictures of houses (in fact, the grid is a useful point of reference to judge size) I thought you may not have noticed that if you're in the build mode and click on 'ground cover' (which I believe is a selection under the picture of a shovel) the grid pattern disappears. You can take a picture while still in build mode but without the black squares on the lawn or the white squares sticking out of your building. (you need to keep an eye out for the white circle on the ground, though--move it off to one side, out of the picture) The reason I find this useful is because while in build mode you can change day to night, or vice versa, for pictures. Of course, you can also use the setHour cheat but that messes up the sims' schedule.
Good tip, Lynet and nice house, Kristal. I have polished up the Sim City terrain that I use for my main hoods -- I always use the one called CrystalSprings, although I barely recognise it these days. Since NL I have often wanted more plots with gentle slopes so I can bury garages in them (and vampire crypts ). This weekend I plan on starting new 'hood on the recently modded terrain and just spending the weekend building houses sans custom content. I can then upload a few of the best along with suggestion as to where they fit best on my custom terrain. The big trouble with houses built for contoured plots is that they don't fit well into a landscape that isn't made for them. Indeed my present CrystalSprings hood (Pennfield) was so undulating that I had to plop down some blank 5x6 plots and then bulldoze them again just to flatten out an area to take a row of clapboard houses. I must admit that I quite like house building. I rarely build while the sims wait on the front lawn thses days, I tend to prefer just building because mistakes don't cost money. I've seen advice that says build each room to suit the purpose, joining each room to the next paying attention to circulation .... That's all very well for real life building design (where the occupants have slightly more sense than a drunken cockroach and where a host of other factors -- ranging from plumbing runs to energy conservation thru engineering issues relating to material properties) but in the Sim world designing like that tends to make everything look like a simple dolls house. I start off by deciding what general shape of building I want and most often start off by thinking about the roof (seriously!) Once I know where the gable-ends are gonna be, whether there'll be any setbacks or steps in the roof, dormer windows etc. I can begin to sketch out the outline of the building; I nealy always have all the roof on before I begin subdiving into rooms. Once I start drawing in the walls to divide up the space it usualy becomes obvious that some part is too long or too short or whatever ... then begins the first of several long sessions with the undo button; it being generally easier and quicker to start over than to modify because sim roofs are ornery things and hate changes being made . To my mind the roof more than any other part is what makes a building look "right" or "wrong". Argh! Lookit the time! I'm only out of the game now because Windows decided to reboot after installing some updates ... I really must turn off auto-update. Good job I noticed all the sudden disc activity and game hiccupping and did a save ... the whole lot crashed two minutes later just as Cadence was getting out her coffin to give birth
Hey, I had a sim named Cadence. She got blown up in the great motherboard earthquake, but I really liked her. May have to resurrect that name. I forgot all about it! I know what you mean about the roof, which is why I give my sims the flat roof for free (I reimburse them). I mean, they could have a different roof but it'd look pretty silly on say, a warehouse.
OK this is the abode of another branch of the extended Simmonds family (the name is nothing to do with Sims BTW ... it's just a name I plucked from the air when building a big family in CAS (2 male adults, 2 female adults, 2 teens, and 2 kids ... various races and genotypes ... I played them all for a while as 2 families in a big old house then moved one family out. Of course they were all Simmonds's so I have two families by the name of Simmonds who are not related to each other ... except that they are ... confused? Not half as much as I am? Anyway this house has a checkered history. The design first appeared in Willisborough but that 'hood became a BFBVFS when I did something irreversible to Windows ... man, still smarts. The design surfaced again, modified as it was built from memory, in High Oak, but both the house and the whole 'hood became very wobbly after installing NL. So Sketched out its measurements and built it for the movee-outy Simmonds's. Are ya keeping up? Anyway OFB caused that lot to crash and crash and crash, so I moved the poor fambly out and nuked the house and then built it again. I like this house ... and yeah I am always tinkering around with it ... moving internal walls this way and that way ... but the general layout hasn't changed in a tomato's age (thanks for that Ruthie ... ) Anyway ... I give you the property at 17 North Street. There's a joke in one of the pictures and there's a stonking great 1,000 prize to the first poster who identifies it. (Of course it'll probably look better when some trees have grown ... but they ran out of cash and even having their house bulldozed by the Maxoids hasn't gotten them an exemption from my harsh new tax regime ... they had to sell one of the cars ... and most of the rooms are barely furnished ... I'm sure the crashing problem was their fault anyway ....
It's just the diagonal pool. I started with a square pool and then put some ground back with various combinations of regular and diagonal pool tool and Ctrl
Lol the joke got lost in the World Sims database. The ground flor pic was called grnd.jpg ... cos I'm too lazy to type in the vowels when no one's gonna read 'em. The others were called roof, front and rear but the upstairs pic was called first_floor_cos_I_aint_a_bloody_yank_LMAO.jpg I've been in one of those moods all day ... maybe it's because the roofing contractor finally showed up today and sealed up the hole in my outhouse roof. I was kinda hoping he'd need to go inside the wretched thing cos then I could've got him to escort Harry the spider from the premises. Sadly he was content to sit on the top with his gas burners and roofing felt and try to outloud my music with his own boombox. Looks like it'll be up me and the cat to face off Harry ... that as she's only 10 inches tall and I have another 5 feet on that and Harry is up in the (driest part natch) of the roof I guess it's all down to me. Maybe I'll try to tempt her down the wall with nice freshly defrosted chicken from the freezer ... with a bit of blue food dye and some old lace curtains for wings I could probably make it look like a nice appetising fly of bitesize proportions ... yeah I know you thought I was joking about it being a big spider. I ain't going in there with anything less than a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and a fully-packed silo of Patriot missiles
I usually trap them under the smallest plastic cups I can find, and once they suffocate (can take weeks or hours, depending on the size of the spider), I leave them there for my mom to dispose of.
LMAO Mirelly, on all counts. I can just imagine you with that missile, facing down the enemy, you Amazon you. Are you really 5'10"? Holy cats. Ground floor, first floor, sheesh. I think the British system makes more sense, personally ... but it was awfully confusing for this yank when I lived there, nonetheless. My favorite thing I saw was the punkers drinking tea with their pinkies crooked, like their grans had taught them to. Cuz you know they'd get wonked on the ... what's Emma's word? ... the fob, that's it, if they did it any other way. Don't mess with Granny.
Oh yeah, Granny knows best. Listen this spider ... plastic cups, vacuum cleaners. Haven't you been listening to me? A tin bath wouldn't be too big ... I'm holding out for the marines to give covering fire ... and no I am not fussy, I'll be just as happy with the US variety as I would with the Royal sort. I always feel at my happiest when I am telling my news to a company of ambhibious assault troops ... ooh lookit it that typo ... that's almost ambiphibious ... wah! I wanna get my hands on Spore and breed ambiphians :hissyfit: I'm going to bed now to try to think of a definition of ambiphibery.
