More Awesome Than You!

I felt like building something from scratch, and I'd had this idea knocking about for a while. Flat #4 is loosely based on my own flat, though some liberties have obviously been taken. (I don't have a dining table, or a pond, and everything is highly under furnished.)

(http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p282/Lady_Faizah/Sims/FlatDriveway.jpg)
The pictures were taken in the residential version.

Flats #1 and #2:
(http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p282/Lady_Faizah/Sims/Flats1and2.jpg)

Flat #3:
(http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p282/Lady_Faizah/Sims/Flat3.jpg)

Flat #4
(http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p282/Lady_Faizah/Sims/Flat4.jpg)

Flats #5 and #6:
(http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p282/Lady_Faizah/Sims/Flats5and6.jpg)

Download the residential version. (http://www.4shared.com/file/75257424/23aabc4e/FaizahFlats-Res.html) (Cost: $426,968)

Download the apartment version. (http://www.4shared.com/file/75257702/fab9c5a0/FaizahFlats-Apt.html) (Rent: $4,239-5,234)

Note: I have all EPs. My SP combo is Holiday, Family Fun, Glamour Life, Kitchen and Bath, and H&M.

Additional Note: Certain awesome-ware items (The Cheat, the alarm clocks, bathroom uses you, general awesome-ware) are present, but not included in the download, and should not appear if you lack these items.

Everything else is by EAxis.

I like these! They remind me of chalets you'd get on a Holiday Camp.

Well, aren't these quaint? They are very nice, if a bit gaudy. The driveway system is... interesting. Although, I guess most people have to drive over one sidewalk to get to the street, anyway.

Ooh, very nice. I'm curious, do the driveways and cars work? If so, how are they connected to the apartments and the sims who live in them?

The driveways are common area. For some reason, most of the cars disappeared on rezoning, but the fixer upper cars remained. I'm not sure what happened there.

I couldn't replicate the real driveway situation (the rear flats have parks that are parallel to the road.) and I wasn't sure how to make each 'owned' by the apartment, though I'm fairly sure the backyards work at least. There wasn't really a place on the front to put a door, besides the one already there.

Note that I recommend locking the back door to 'household only' if you don't want other playables to try and get at the back yards. (If you can lock the doors of other flats, to 'lock for all sims', that might help...)

As for  the 'gaudy' aspect, that's just the Sims. I tried to match the real place as close as I could, but the closest living room carpet was that brown and gold thing. The decoration of flats 1-3 and 5-6 was a bit made-up, I'll admit. (Though I did draw inspiration from #6's huge amount of outdoor plants when decorating that one.) #4 is a bit eclectic, a bit of a mix, because it's based on reality.

You could try surrounding each driveway section with the Pets carpet edging. Treat them as walls, and make doorways to them from the apartments. As long as you imagine the carpet edging as being walls, you could turn any area into an owned area. Invisible fences would also work, if you could get one that was traversable. If not, I guess that would make the car "more personal" - You'd have to have a door out there anyways, so it wouldn't be too much of an issue.

The problem here is that the flats are on a foundation. The backyard fences also have the pets fence buried within them at the foundation level, so that's how they work, but I'd have to completely wall in the cars to have the same effect. I did try doing a proper garage for each, but it won't 'bury' the walls the same way, and I do still need to put some kind of fencing in at the foundation level.

Also, I'm not sure I can wall in around the apartment doors. It would still be common area, because it's on the doormat side of the door.

What I was suggesting was to use the Pets fence to turn the place where the car was parked into a second backyard, essentially. I was under the impression that they would still be usable.

I certainly could do something like that, but I'd have to add either another front door or make the Sims take a path around the house from the backyard. And the cars would be completely fenced in, as putting a garage door or gate in that kind of fencing looks weird. I could use the pets fence, but I would have to use it on the same level as the apartment, ie, at foundation-height. So, unless I build a proper fence at ground height, there'd be this weird floating fence, if that makes sense?

I'll take another crack at it in the next week or so, once the Christmas crazies have died down, and see if I can't find a less awkward way for the driveway bits to be 'in' apartments. Personally I've not used cars much since the introduction of 'Walk to...', and I stopped entirely once I had 'Walk to work'. But, ownable driveways still make sense for the fixer upper car, so, I'll work something out.

Also, if anyone else has any issues, I suppose now is as good a time as any to raise them. If I'm fixing one thing, I can certainly fix others!

I don't know if this is helpful or not, but I did a huge lot and had the carparking below the houses, what kept them as part of the house was the room dividers. If you could think of a way to join the carparks to the flats with room dividers it will work.