Micro campus

[Gus Smedstad]

I gave it a second shot.  4 buildings on a 3x3 lot, encapsulating a "campus" on a single lot, with a 12 bed dorm, rec center, library, and gym with pool.  Since the dorm has no facilities except beds and desks, to do much of anything (including eat) my students have to move to another building on the same lot.  It's not at all efficient, but it captures a slightly more realistic feel without forcing me to play just one or two students as they visit various community lots.

Even on a 3x3 lot it's pretty demanding.  I'm seeing 5-20 FPS, with 10 FPS being common, but stretches of 5-6 FPS not being that unusual.  In other words, just barely tolerable on my machine.

EDIT: It's now available for download here.  See my message later in the thread for what to expect from the file.

 - Gus

Overview:


Basement, showing underground pool.


First floor.


Second floor.


Third floor.


 - Gus

[twooflower]

I love your lot --  what a wonderful idea!  I just hate loading community lots so much.  My poor sims never get to go anywhere. 

Maybe you could try uploading it to one of those free online storage/sharing type places.  I have a free 1 GB account at box.net, and I've seen that a lot of people use www.4shared.com.

[Sagana]

This is very cool. Neat to see another way to do it and I like the sneaky way you've gained some space by running the swimming pool underenath both buildings

[Emma]

Very nice Gus! I love your ideas and I am totally ripping you off to make a similar lot for my college neighbourhood

[Gwill]

Before OFB I used to build massive dorm lots with a restaurant, nightclub, and a small shop.  In those days, placing a connunity lot object like a cash register on a residential lot would summon the apropriate NPC.

[MsMaria]

Too bad you don't have it for D/L. I would so steal it in a second! Might give me an incentive to play Uni again. Yes, I know, I could build my own, but yours is awesome. Mine would be mediocre at best.

[Gus Smedstad]

I tried box.net, but had no luck actually uploading it.  I got the upload progress bar box, but no actual progress.

It's up at 4shared now here.  Aside from the lot, it includes the closet bar wardrobe object from MTS2, and TunaIsAFish's smart door.  All the bedrooms have the smart door to force dormies into clothes after sleeping, and there's one in the pool locker room to force Sims into / out of swim wear.  Feel free to ignore that one if you don't mind dormies and the like wandering around campus in their swimsuits.

EDIT: Yeah, the brainstorm about running the pool under both buildings in a basement was the one thing I think was rather clever about the lot.  I could have done it on the first floor, of course, but it works a lot better as a basement.  First time I've had a real use for a basement in the game, actually.

Otherwise, I'm not really satisfied with it.  It's a resource hog, as I mentioned, though I found that leaving the door to the Myne Door farm unlocked noticeably improves performance.  Obviously the speed issues are more about Sim AI and pathing than rendering.

It's also very space inefficient, an exercise in form over function.  Kind of Maxian that way.  I may want to rethink the bathrooms a bit, because despite the abundance of showers in different buildings, Dormies and Sims using Free Will only look at the showers on the same floor in the same building.  Since there's just one shower per floor in the dorm building, I've seen them stand around staring at an occupied shower room rather than moving up a floor or using the bank of showers in the gym.

 - Gus

[J. M. Pescado]

If you installed Bathroom Uses You, this problem would be mostly avoided.

[Gus Smedstad]

True.  I've avoided installing BUY so far, since on normal lots bathroom stupidity hasn't been a huge problem.  I was trying for that "real" feeling, where one bathroom for a floor of 6 students is pretty common, though I cheesed it a bit by isolating the shower stalls from the toilets.  The dormies generally find the toilets easily enough, but only the dorm and the gym have showers, and for whatever reason the Sims ignore the communal showers in the gym.

 - Gus