More Awesome Than You!

I decided to play along because I was tweaking my buggy game anyway and had reduced my DLs folder to MATY stuff and EAxian crap anyway.

Full Disclosure (the Cons): I usually build boxy houses and let the game put a fugroof on top because I don't care about hood views. My game is buggy, so buying / building after inserting a family can be problematic. Don't get me started on comm lot issues. I tend to have a standard house that I tweak minimally for variety's sake. Huge kitchens, sometimes openplan floorplans, flat lots to start with bumpies and ponds added after, that sort of thing. Basically, whatever will allow for a lot of Sims to fit in a room and me to be able to screenshot. I tend to build 2-3 story homes with bedrooms on the second floor and either a third floor or basement for asp rewards / superfluous fun stuff like karaoke machines. AwesomeSpec requires bedrooms for sprogs on the main floor, so my original 2x3 lot was scrapped in favour of a too-large-for-my-taste 4x4. Also, I did not skimp on building materials or buy items, so AwesomeHaus is for the wealthy Sims in your hood.

AwesomeSpec2.0 Haus is slightly bigger than my usual houses. I tried to build something that was not a series of boxes. I also wanted some extra high ceilings in some areas. This means AwesomeHaus can be expanded into the empty and inaccessible second floor if desired, but it is intended to be played on one floor. Also? I don't usually have one than one baby simverse-wide, in all hoods, so had not yet used baby controller. There are four on the lot, and you only need one. That was non-awesome.

     - AwesomeHaus has shitty roof. I apparently suck at roofs. This is a case of form trying to armwrestle function and winding up with a sore arm, then running away like a big candypants, whimpering. Poor form is full of lose. But that's just the roof. I never look at the farging roofs in my game.
     - AwesomeHaus is not cheap. Really not. No, seriously. On the plus side, it costs about what a real house in my area costs in US dollars. (Oy!)
     - AwesomeHaus has three superfluous Baby Controllers, because Lorelei don't know nothin' 'bout bithin' SimBabies. My bad.

Now for the Good Parts (the Pros):

* AwesomeHaus conforms to AwesomeSpecs thusly:
     - Perimeter is completely secure from invasion. Mail / news / garbage functionality is all fine.
     - Vomitorium for invited guests, and APO in all rooms. As a bonus, vomitorium resembles AwesomeCat Pescado, as a tribute. If AwesomeCat wore potted palms in his ears, I suppose. Vomitorium leads directly to three areas of Haus: the PrimeLoo, the Skillination Station, and the HomeBiz (or family recreation area, though it is designed specifically to lure in 'hood Sims and separate them from their Simoleons to help underwrite the cost of AwesomeHaus).
     - Burgurgler alarms duly installed, ditto phones and smoke alarm.
     - APO in all rooms. Confirm or deny? Accept or reject? It's in your hands.
     - There may be EAxian Bonus Item content, but all content is Awesome or EAxian.
     - Hot tub is covered. Pool is not. Pool has requisite ladders, of course.
     - There are actually two home businesses; a lemonade stand has been provided for enterprising kidlets.
     - GreenHaus installed and dirtpatched. Fruit trees installed and taunted for being needy. (Who talks to trees for five hours straight? WTF?)
     - Kickable Cheat!
     - Garage with gym item and mid-range sedan included.
     - FOJware closet included for lotboxen and other tools of Awesomeness.
     - Optional closet for Asp rewards, or it can be incorporated into Skillination area.
     - One floor in play means only one "on deck area" to manage.
     - Jeffistani QuadMod SprogPods installed, in case you are masochistic enough to attempt four SimSproggen at once, or are faced with multiple twin events. SprogPods are separated from other Pods and have a counter to put crap on. You can opt to put a SmartMilk dispenser next to each cot, or put decorative items there, or add another light, as desired.
     - AwesomeHaus is not a big honkin' box with sub-boxen. I herd u liek hexxagunz! (And Mudkipz!)
     - Skillination station has two One Desks, a charisma mirror (get out of the loo), easel, peenanner to play Simsongs on, chess area, bookshelves, and room for pet crap, if desired. Two direct routes to One Desks: carpool drop-off, or garage. Also includes nappable / make-out-able cuddle couches, when not being used to read and skillinate. Direct access to Asp Reward closet, which includes some counters to place crap on.
     - DogHaus in garden with gnawlabone and bowl, also bowl in kitchen for pets; Dog can patrol grounds
     - CatStuphph available also: litterbox, maus and feesh on a steek toys, bed, scratch post, tower of knives-out death from above for aggressive Cats
     - Beware of Pets signs posted
     - Windkeeper JMP mod for mailbox. Not enough? Also has CrapDrop table right inside front door in Vomitorium. Good for date fleurz, newspapers you don't immediately compostinate or discard, maybe souvenirs from BV once it is more than L&P.
     - Main business has separate entrance to street front. Ticketron is included. Pool table, bar, poker, MyShuno, video gaming, jukebox, cuddle couches, tacky bar neon. I call it Kermit's Korner, but only when I hit my head too hard.
     - AwesomeCat foyer / vomitorium makes me roffle.
     - Ginormous kitchen area for eight Sims. All standard appliances and Simclock. Direct access to GreenHaus for fridge stockery and juicer stuffing, or use the Fruitbowl Of Awesomeness. Of course, all food-bearing items are under lock and key in a separate pantry area. Room for a buffet. Birdcage for social, though with room for 8+ Sims, you'd have to be sad to need a bird to meet social needs. Two highchairs and LS converted espressinator included. Counters optimized for food prep. Room for birthdays, headmasters, parties.
     - Direct access to SprogPoddery and ToddlerTraining / SprogSkillinationStation area with diaper benches for tandem diaper wrangling. Toddler and child tows included. Pod bays can be upgraded to no-frills Child Pods.
     - Bathrooms with BYU, four in total, room for several more. Toilets are segregated partially from main loo area to reduce shoos. Two loos have dog-enabled bathtubs, two have showers. Bathrooms share common colour theme for easy spotting. PrimeLoo is available to visitors and returning house Sims, and is next to Poddery. Bathrooms either lack windows or have privacy windows to reduce neighbor peeping.
     - Half-assed gardening flanking GreenHaus leaves plenty for aspiring landscape designers to do.
     - Fishination Station, Probination Station available.
     - Wide hallways allow for renovation and later expansion, if desired.
     - Master suite has loo door, all non-baby bedrooms have Sleepclocks, dressers, and mirrors for clotheswrangling.
     - Backyard is left open for gardening, snowmen, snowangels, balloon fighting, weddings, grillination station. Swings included.
     - Two-vamp lair with no windows and impressive double gothic door, includes additional access to windowless garage.
     - Lounges and fountain at entrance of OFB biz for customers or family to enjoy.
     - Total Sim accomodation space: 2-8 adults (if two are vampires), 4 baby-toddlers, 2-6 children, depending on your desires. Default beds: 4 cots, 2 coffins, 2 singles, 1 double.
     - Lights in all rooms. Some outdoor lighting, pool lights.
     - No flaming Xmas trees, zapping reindeer, inferno fireplaces. Room to add, if desired.
     - Minimal art installed, to accomodate personal tastes
     - Views of 'hood are pleasant, if one cares about such things. Camera movement within Haus is easy, though individual spawn pods and 2 bathrooms are deliberately tight. How many pix of peeing Sims and identical-looking babies-in-cots are needed?

My fave places: Hot tub area, Skillination Station and AwesomeCat foyer.

Bribes: MOAR fakecats, offer to Simize some forum members who feel left out due to not being happy with their self-Sims, promise to set aside Dominions II training time even though classes are back in session now (so Pes has new fresh meat to clobberinate at a game), continued destruction of payseiten.

Get it: http://www.4shared.com/file/18291038/732db362/AwesomeSpecsHausv20.html (http://www.4shared.com/file/18291038/732db362/AwesomeSpecsHausv20.html)

Why not attached?

"Your attachment couldn't be saved. This might happen because it took too long to upload or the file is bigger than the server will allow. Please consult your server administrator for more information."

It's not too big. so it's too slow. Ugh, dial-up.

Pix and links to follow.   I'll try to attach Haus to post next time I have Wifi access.

Haus available at http://britpoptarts.4shared.com, or, for Pescados, at Kludgemush incoming.

ETA: Regarding bribery:

* Eek the Cat!, Steiff Tiger and other assorted Fakecats have been located in storage and removed, ready for life as Fakecat memes.
* Though not intended to have any relevance to bribe, have made a Jordi Sim to help counter the gender imbalance in MATYhoods.
* Actively destroying payseiten through cunning, guile, logic and metric craploads of verbiage at PMBD. I kill j00 with wordswordswords.
* Have located DII manuals, have plans to print out same for light bedtime reading. :P

(http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/3678/awesomehauspa4.jpg)

(http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/6629/awesomehaus2wb0.jpg)

(http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/2023/awesomehaus3ps0.jpg)

(http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/1031/awesomehaus4gh7.jpg)

(http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/4581/awesomehaus5la2.jpg)

(http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/7443/awesomehaus6tv8.jpg)

(http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/7277/awesomehaus7qs7.jpg)

U haz maed ORSUM haus
I haz cut throte now
kthxbai

It's a great house Lorelei ;D I love it!

(http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u194/MusicalMaven/LOLcatz/1160839962415.jpg)

Aw, fanx, u guyz.

"Baby's first packaged haus" and stuff. you know, so I was nervous. Glad you like!

Nice house. with motherlode all my sims can live there.  :P

They sure can, especially as AwesomeHaus has a second floor, but it is undeveloped (on purpose) beyond opening the turrets on the right side to the first floor, and adding glass detail to the others. You could turn it into a comm lot mall, a large dorm, or a barracks pretty easily.

Does APO work in every room of this house? Any bugs doing it that way? What's advantages does this give over having only one APO?

Asked Pes in chat what APO controlled, and was told it controlled access to rooms (unlike multiple doors, which can have conflicting instructions from one another), so my understanding is that APO can be configured per room. Unless I misunderstood, which is possible, APOs in each room mean each room can be controlled individually to allow/ban specific Sim character/pet types. So the advantage is that you'd have more than one controllable room?

I always have multiple APO's to control access to the rooms where Sims are the dumbest.  Like being able to keep out visitors to the Master Bedroom, but can make an exception for the Romance Sim's latest.  :D

So, I take it this house hasn't been tested yet.  :P

Attempting testing now, but my game is tetchy.

Nice entry, ('cept for the roof maybe  :P), but.....

Are you serious? 300k For a house that enormous?! For that amount of money you might just get a 3 bedroom semi-detached in Holland. Or were you speaking of 'real houses' in general?

Here in Chi, you'd get a 1-2 bedroom townhouse/condo. Northside in-city, at least. Not the ones across the street from me...they are a half mil a piece. I regularly hex them. They can have dogs and afford not only to buy a place that expensive but pay the property taxes as well. Bastards.

Here in Phoenix (Arizona, USA), $200,000 gets you a 2-bedroom, 1.5 bath 'luxury' condo (attached -- basically a glorified apartment/flat), or perhaps a very small detached house with maybe a metre between it and the other houses, if you're lucky. $300,000 would buy a slightly bigger detached house or a really big (attached or semi-detached) condo/townhouse. The housing market here sucks. [/rant]

In the Bay Area, it costs $600k for an old (1967) 2 bedroom condo. 2 bedroom ranches go for $750k.

In my town, which is one of the 3-4 most highly priced areas in the country, a normal rectangular nothing special 3 bedroom house with one bathroom costs around $250k to $350k. We don't have a capital gains tax and property speculators have pushed the housing market into an insane bubble. I bought my house 11 years ago for $137k and the latest govt valuation is $250k. The market actually runs about $50k higher than govt valuations in desirable areas.

Contrary to your view, I actually like how your roof looks. Mine are always traingles; they're kind of boring.

Here in the D.C. Metro area, $200k inside the beltway MAY buy you a studio condo, or a small one bedroom condo if you're lucky and look hard.  2 bedroom condos in older buildings usually go for $250 - 300k, and new ones over $500k.  Older (not historic, as in less than 100 years old) townhouses go for $350 - 450k and up, and new ones usually start around $800k.  And you'd be really lucky to find a single family house inside the beltway for under $350k.  To get anything under $300k, expect to have at least a 45 minute to an hour or more commute to the city...

I have a home in the same metro area as NVA.  Far, far NE Mesa near Usary park. Prices are actually going up instead of down. In my subdivision avg. house: 4 BR, 2BA, 3 car garage, approx. 2400 Square feet = $450K    If you work in Phoenix count on an hour drive minimum in rush hour. With the completion of the new loop 202, the time should be cut by 15 minutes or so. Prices vary wildly from burb to burb and neighborhood to neighborhood.  Try buying a house in Paradise Valley, where the median home is over a cool million.  :P

In reply Lor's post below..they are not all McMansions. This little honey has 2 beds, 2 baths and SF less than 1400 square feet. Asking price $5 million
http://azcentral.2.homescape.com/SCS/listing_details.jsp?calling_page=listing_result_list&affiliate_name=azcentral&tab_num=1&geo_area_id=47460&sbttext=search+all+listings&search_by_type=new_mls%2Cnew_class%2Cnew_const%2Cresale_mls%2Cresale_class%2Cresale%2Cresale_ecom_owner%2Cnew_ecom_owner%2Cresale_ecom_agent%2Cnew_ecom_agent%2Cresale_ecom_broker%2Cnew_ecom_broker%2Cresale_ecom_bldr%2Cnew_ecom_bldr&display_default_state_id=47379&filter_product_id=22832870

I think the AZ sun has fried their brainz.

Oh lordy, I was speaking of houses in general, not eight+ bedroom McMansions with included businesses. LOL

I think you ought to get bonus points for presentation of your entry.

I'm not sure where you live, but my parents' place in Cleveland Park (you know where the Uptown is? it's near there) was appraised at just under a million when I went to school 5 years ago.  Granted, it's at the end of its row and has a finished basement, but still, not too shabby for a 1920s brownstone.   

On topic now...nice haus!  It's played pretty well so far with a big group, but I'm having some pathfinding issues (what else is new) which may be caused by overuse of APO.  Other than that, great layout for my *FAKE* World reality TV special.  Those crazy young adults!

Huzzah!!

I'd love to see pix. :)

That's why I said 'Metro area' and not DC proper.  In the upscale areas of DC (like Cleveland Park, Georgetown, etc), prices are through the roof.

1.6 for aesthetics. Some really nice interior features, but the outside was a little sparse.

The presentation does deserve bonus points in my book. Very niftily done. :)

Show you how  much I enjoy gardening in real life!  :D

Yeah, it's sparse outside. Partially because it was already a huge house, partially because I did so much decorating inside I wanted to leave something for a downloader to do.

N00b error! Next year, I'll know to pimp out the yard, too. :P

P.S. Thanks for the thumbs up on the description.

P.P.S. Incidentally, anyone having issues with 4shared but access to Kludgemush can snag AwesomeSpecsHaus there.

! THIS LOT HAS NON-LEVEL EDGES !
Placement of this lot in your neighborhood will permanently damage the neighborhood terrain! Do not use this lot!

Bribe: 0.1
Functionality: 1.0
Scenarios: 1.0
Cost Effectiveness: 0.8
Expand 2.0
Physics: 0.1
Aesthetics: 1.6

Technical: 1.05
Total: 0.67

Correct Behaviors
Basic Criteria Covered

Correctable Issues
Anti-Wolf Fencing Misses Spots

Fundamental Flaws
EDGES NOT LEVEL - Lot useless and cannot be placed anywhere other than original neighborhood's spot without damaging terrain!