More Awesome Than You!

Ok first I want to say that the original terrain is named Harmony it was made by Juliejaz1  at mts2
http://forums.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=251979

She truly did a wonderful job, the beach lots are totally flat  :D



I edited it and now I love it even more! ;D  My version can fit 50 totally flat beach lots (the smallest beach lots, thats the only one I use) ...and 4 more that do have a bit of a slope and aren't even on the beach  (the little pond didn't show up in SC4)

note: on checking some of the beach lots - A few of the 50 flat lots aren't totally flat, some are a little bumpy but you can easily level those sections. Other then that I think 1 or 2 might have a slight slope down to the beach.

(http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n180/mesleepycat/sleepyhaven1.jpg)


(http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n180/mesleepycat/sleepyhaven2.jpg)


(http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n180/mesleepycat/sleepyhaven3.jpg)


see, they are totally flat  8)

(http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n180/mesleepycat/sleepyhaven4flatlot.jpg)



note: BV is only needed if you want to use real beach lots, SC4 terrains don't care what EPs you have or don't have.

Bitchin'! Several people at N99 are discussing a beach lot building contest. Mind if I direct them to your terrain?

This looks really nice Sleepycat, thanks! I'll grab this as I can't get my SC4 to work on my computer :D Stupid Vista.

This really is awesome, sleepycat!

Thank you  :D




sure, go right ahead  ;D 

I should go read that discussion. I don't think I will have time to play around in SC4 for awhile since I want to get my new hood going (so I can work on my new story) but the contest should be interesting to see.   edit - silly me, my brain was reading it as a beach terrain building contest *laughs* still it will be interesting to see the house entries.

Consider the thanks button pushed  ;D I have some sims living in a new hood based on the Twikki Village terrain, and there are just not enough beach front lots.
I must be easily amused, but I love my sims living on the beach, being able to look out at the waves as they relax on their beds, or eat their meals. It's just a shame I suck at house building, they are all in long open plan houses, but that view is worth the sucky living quarters  ;D

 ;D  I love the beach lots too.

It was driving me nuts that I couldn't find a good beach lot terrain that actually fit a lot of beach lots so I bought SC4 so I could try to make my own. It's not easy... I ended up deciding it would be easier to edit one that was already close to what I wanted, with the beach at the level I wanted.

Yeah, this is going to be an awesome terrain for building beach lots for sharing ;D

That's what I thought, too. I love mine, because it's mine, but...the inner lake's coast is pretty sloped. I like that, but it can be hard to share stuff.

Fantastic lot SC. Thanks for sharing it with us. It will be so nice to have flat or nearly flat beach lots.

This is a great terrain. I have never added a custom terrain to my game. This is a must have though.

Thank you.

I've been looking for some small flat costal terrains. Maybe an island terrain on the lines of dinkytink's Efficiency Neighborhoods (http://www.modthesims2.com/member.php?u=353379), that can be used without camera hacks.
Anyone here have the skillz needed?

your all welcome  ;D 

I was busy working on my new hood (with this terrain) all night and I checked out more of the beach lots. So far only about 3 needed a little leveling and they have slightly warped edges afterwards but all the rest (around the bigger water) were totally flat.  The other uneven ones I know about are by the smaller water.



Gwill, have you seen the ones at -->  http://www.simsanne.com/Forum/filebase.php?cat=12&sid=161165890951eeafcb7337a548c0efd8

Thanks, I'll download some from there.  They're not nearly as flat as I'd hoped, but they migth do.

You're right, Sleepycat - making a new beach terrain is a PITA.  Have squished the thanks button; much appreciated. 

Yea, let me add my thanks, too -- I wanted someplace where I could have both residential and community beach lots without it being a vacation hood.  This is definitely worth downloading.  I'll also check out the smaller hoods you pointed out to Gwill.

Freeeow!  Ultrafunz.  Resistance is useless - must start new beachy 'hood using super-lucky-number-one-terrain.  Cheers.

*jolrei spins in ecstatic incoherence*

I just wish there was a way to get existing houses on beach-front lots, instead of having to build all new houses from scratch...

I'm thinking of starting my sims out in little thatched roof hovels.

Heh -- a hood of beach bums -- I like it!  ;D

I think I have some clothing like cutoff jeans and torn t-shirt outfits somewhere in an archive disk.  I can't remember where I got it (not paycrap certainly), and never wanted to use it before.  Must find disk.  So much for sims with a formal wear turn-on.

Ooh, is there a corresponding "ragged hippie dresses" file to go with? I would like some of those.

*laughs* everyone is welcome. I may play around with it some more and make another version that will (hopefully) fit even more beach lots. 




I recently made a ragged, worn out, stained mini dress for a poor trailer trash sim *laughs*  It came out much better then I thought it would, hopefully it looks as good/nasty in-game.

I can't seem to find the disk although I do recall several CD-WR disks going corrupt at one point.  I'm going to have to hunt the intarwebs again, dammit, for this stuff.  If I am mistaken and find it, you are more than welcome to any torn hippie and/or other Sim-Oxfam clothing I can find.  I only seem to have one T-shirt/old shorts combo right now.  Oh well, off hunting.

Jolrei -- you may want to look over at the insim site.  For some reason I seem to remember someone there made a bunch of hippie-style clothes, and maybe some trailer-trash clothes too.

sleepycat -- while you're futzing with beach hoods, one maybe 1/2 the size of this one would be delightful to have. :)

Have to add my thanks for this baaaaaah hehe

jsalemi, I will be uploading another terrain in a few minutes, it's a little smaller but fits more beach lots *laughs*


skandelouslala, your welcome  ;D

Ya.  I've loaded the terrain and started to build my hood.  Not sure why with clean templates and about 12 custom townies I have 75 character files already, but perhaps that's normal.  Anyhow, built my sim a nice little hovel on the beach and did a one-stop comm lot for "amenities".  Thanks for the tip jsalemi.  I'll check on the trailer trash stuff, if it's there.

sleepycat - this is a great terrain, but the size surprised me as well.  Seems to stick out the edges a bit, but is working well nonetheless.  I'm lovin' it.  8)

it's the same size as all TS2 terrains *laughs*  The edges could be because of me putting small mountains/hills along them. I dislike seeing the 'wild blue nothing'  :P

Yea, nice job on that too. I grabbed that one and will probably use that for my beach sub-hood.

I do plan to make some smaller ones soon. I may work on atleast one tomorrow night.

And beachfront houses are starting to show up -- two decent-looking ones appeared on the insim site today.

I know what you mean.  You seem, on the other hand, to have allowed for more lots (more efficient use of space?) than most of the Maxoid terrains (or is that my imagination too?).  My self-sim's beach hut is right at the edge of the available space, which I never thought was possible in the maxoid terrains.  Lots of room for expansion of the hood, anyway.  Tres kewl!

I just installed 16 custom dormies into a uni, as well as stocking about 12 townies in my new hood, so I'm sticking with this terrain for the time being.  My 'hood is a bit boring at present as far as amenities go.  I've designed an all purpose thatch roofed "mall" (grocery and clothing/electronics/magazine shop, with sauna, pool table, sitting/ACR room, swimming pool (redundant on a public beach, I know, but it fulfils the "wanna jump inna pool" want), food stand, and public beach.  It's the only place for my self-sim to go, apart from his beach hut.

Must check out the beach houses on insim - thanks jsalemi.

Well, don't check too fast -- I downloaded them, but they won't place on the beach, even though it looks like they're supposed to.  I'm hoping it was an error by the creator, and not a problem with packaging and importing beach lots.  Though I wouldn't be surprised if EAxis borked that one up, too.

OK then.  Back to the drawing board.  I'm doing a good thing in small beach huts with full bathrooms (my one concession to luxury) and kitchenettes.  My sims will just have to live like castaways for a bit.  It's very affordable though.  My self-sim just digs for treasure to support himself. 

I'll probably experiment next time I play, and make a small beach lot with something on it, package it, and then see if it can be placed on a beach from the lot catalog. Feel free to join in. :)

I have managed to place several beach lots I downloaded from MTS2.  They work fine, with all interactions, including swimming, functional.  They were all created in vacation destinations as "vacation homes", but I have placed them in my main hood.  Perhaps where they were created has an impact?

Maybe -- I'll have to look on MTS2 and grab one of them from there.

ahhh, yes, I can't stand 'wasted space' *laughs*  I think that is part of the reason I have trouble making smaller terrains  ::)   

I'm using my third terrain for my new hood (Sleepyhaven) and it seems huge now that I've been placing houses and community lots and can really see just how big it is. I decided to stick to one section of it and then branch out as the hood grows. With aging off and ACR, I may just need all that space *laughs*   When I make my next terrain, I will probably keep that 'too big' feeling in mind and try to divide the hood up into sections in some way to help diminish that feeling. 

 



with downloaded beach lots, the slope they were built on matters, thats why some won't place.

Not that it's a world beater or anything, but I can make my "starter beach hut" available if anyone wants it (must get some sort of fileshare account going).  It's not much - furnished it would have 0ne main room with dirt floor big enough for double bed, locker type dresser, bookshelf and chair; a kitchenette with concrete floor, bathroom (basic with cheap sink, cheap terlet, and clawfoot bath).  There is a shaded patio/porch out front with small table and cheap chairs.  The hut is done in Maxoid-BV issue grass/leaf panelling, with a neutral thatched roof.  Lights are of the candle variety.

JMP will, doubtless, wish to criticise the fact that the door is only a single arch and so cannot be locked (I thought that added a bit of authenticity).  I think all told it took me 15 minutes to knock up, so it really is not greatly special, but I like it.  Sorry no pics - I'm across town from my game computer at the moment.

Most definitely.  I hate building but your scenario sounds like fun, and I'd like to subject one of my new grads to it.  Be sure to say how much money it costs.  Thanks!

Starter Beach Hut available now - this was constructed and tested on this terrain, and I can attest that it moves around reasonably well in my game (fits in several different spots, which is apparently a bit of a bugger for beach lots).

@jsalemi: you might try this one.  sleepycat's nice flat terrain probably makes this lot one of the more moveable ones around.  Possibly works in a number of sleepycat brand terrains.

Hut is as described in previous post - cost is approx $18,080 in my game (will be cheaper if you go unfurnished).
No CC loaded and should be clean.  Naturally clean installer is safest bet.  All furnishings are Maxis.
BV is required (but that goes without saying - it's a beach hut!).  As mentioned earlier, it is kinda cute, but nothing that special.

Download from: http://www.4shared.com/dir/4236324/f04c9255/sharing.html

@sleepycat: not meant as a hijack of your thread - more as a friendly addition.  I hope you're OK with this.  I can't stop playing this terrain.

no worries  :D  I might download your beach lot myself *laughs* usually I just make my own lots.


your beach hut lot will fit on any of my terrains.

I'm really glad your enjoying this terrain. I find it much more fun to play when I really like the terrain.

Jolrei, I tried your beach hut, which I quite like, but the beach was broken for me. No waves, couldn't swim. Sand activities were still possible. This was the first lot in a brand new 'hood.
Has anyone had a successful transplant?

Hmmmm.  I tried it out on a couple of spots in sleepycat's terrain, and it seemed to load fine.  I was especially careful to package it from a completely CC/downloads-free game, to make sure it was clean, so I can't imagine that's the problem.  If you move the lot down the beach to another spot, does it help?  Sorry I can't give you more help right now - will have to test later this evening or on the weekend.

@sleepycat - generally I build all my own houses now too (and keep copies of my favourites in my lot bin for re-using).  I used to use the maxoid default houses, but after a while I found they were either no good for expanding/renovating, or the bathrooms were 2000 miles from the kitchen, or there were 3 stories to climb from the bedroom to the point where the sims were missing their carpools cos it took all of breakfast for them to walk downstairs, or some other crap like that...anyway, I now only play small maxoid houses as starters while I build my sims their dream homes.  As you say, it's more fun when you really like the terrain.

I'm afraid I deleted the lot from the catalogue (still on the PC somewhere as sims2pack) and ditched the 'hood too as I placed it badly and made the road go under water.
The file is clean, just the lot.package, and the terrain was fine (I used one of SleepyCat's, Sandbar1?) it was only the ocean that broke. I'll give it another go when I go back in game.

Beach lots are a bugger to share and place.  My lot was built on a straight bit of coast (coastline parallel to the road, no curving beach), and you might have to place it on a part of the terrain like that for it to work, is my latest thought.  I have checked it on my hood and it installs OK in several locations.  I have seen one other report indicating some success.

Now I just have to obsessively run off to check out whether sleepycat has made anything new, 'cos playing 6 beach 'hoods at a time is just totally what I have time for.   ;D

I reinstalled the sims2pack and placed the lot in another 'hood with the same result. I entered it in build mode while unoccupied, just in case that helped.  :P  Maybe this is one of those YMMV issues. I was fairly lucky, not encountering several common issues with NL on my laptop. It looks like I've run out of luck on that score.

The next obvious thing to try is packaging a lot myself and seeing if that will transplant successfully. If I actually do this, I'll report back.

It is worth noting that the lot in question was created specifically in this terrain and all successful transplants have been to hoods using this, or another of sleepycat's nicely flat beach terrains.  As noted elsewhere, transplanting beach lots to other hoods where the terrain may not be as flat, is considered in the "not recommended" category.  Unfortunately, it does tend not to work well.

I used the same SleepyCat terrain to make the new 'hood so it's all completely flat too.

I did do my own lot and it was happy enough being packaged, installed and placed in my game. If anyone is able to see if I can transplant out, that would tell us something.

Hut differs slightly from Jolrei's.

The big problem with neighboor with beach.... is the water in the basement of a house  :-[ :-[ :-[


I downloaded the Harmony neighborhood who I found really wonderful...but... my houses always have cave(basement) and when the house is on a neighbor who have beach present... then, the house have water in the cave.  Sims doens't care about this but its really not funny

I wil show you one of my houses to let you know what I'm talking about.

I really don't know if there,s a patch to prevent this problem.

I've seen that too -- houses that place perfectly fine well away from the water suddenly have weird lakes near or around them if they're placed across the road from a beach. One even threw a lake across the road in front of it.  And the 'lake' is visible if you go into the lot in build mode, and sometimes warps the edges of the lot in such a way that nothing will fix it.

 I don't generally like basements, so none of these have one. Hasn't happened on my Twikkii Island, but it did happen on the sleepycat terrain. And I'm pretty sure they're all downloaded lots, not EAxis ones that come with the EPs.

you might like some of the starter houses I've built

heres a link to two of them
http://www.nectere.net/smf/index.php?topic=1037.0

another
http://www.nectere.net/smf/index.php?topic=1035.0

and another
http://www.nectere.net/smf/index.php?topic=1043.0

I have another one there but it isn't a starter house.





*laughs* nope, nothing new. I've been too busy working on and moving sims into Sleepyhaven, playing and working on my story. which if your reading it, I got two chapters up today and will have another up tomorrow.


----

I have no clue about the broken beach lots, other then it being mentioned the last time I looked at the bv bug list wiki site thingy. I have sent beach lots I made to a friend of mine and she hasn't reported any problems with them.

---

I hate basements in sims houses *shrugs* sorry, can't help.

---


low terrain and ponds on pre-built lots don't mix. I've found they will punch holes in the terrain - removing the offending lot and entering a different hood and then returning, seems to fix those holes. 

Ponds 'dug' after the lot is placed are fine, as long as you don't try to move the lot to a different spot afterwards. That includes moving it to the lot bin and back, it will punch a hole, package it instead, if you want to save it.

---


On some beach terrains, when wanting to start a new hood, I've found it's best to go around placing beach lots first, getting the terrain set for them. Then if I screw up, I can start over and try not to make the same mistakes  :P  Once thats done, they can all be bulldozed. boring but worth it.

Ah, I did not know that. I don't move or package lots very often and I have previously only been concerned about how flat a terrain is, not its altitude.

I recently discovered it because I build all my own lots and I re-use some of them when I make new hoods.  I always re-use copies of my existing community lots (saves time and I already like them) and one of those community lots was a fishing park  :P 

I don't have Bon Voyage yet, so i'm no expert - but I saw a note from Emma at Laverwinkle (http://laverwinklesims.com/index.php?topic=707.0) that said "Due to the bugginess of placing beach lots, I will have created lots that must be placed where they were made." I wonder if you guys would find it easier to share your beach huts if you marked on the map the exact location where you'd put them?

Also, I'm crazily amused by this:
I always knew the game was unrealistic (pet jobs, anyone? :D), but I really do think it's funny that your sim can live on treasure! It's like in Animal Crossing, when you collect bugs and fish and sell them for stupidly large amounts of game currency. I paid off several mortgages entirely in stag beetles!

Oh, it's more than possible.  5 sim hours digging for treasure or beachcombing for seashells can net anywhere from $400-5000+, depending on what you get.  If all you get is rocks and bones, you can still come away with about $400 a day, I find, with time left for skilling.  A great useless job for the knowledge sim with a working spouse and kids at home.  I thought of getting him to do paintings or novels, but there is just not the same monetary return.  :)

As for beach lots, I'm having no trouble placing beach lots made on a flat terrain on another flat beach terrain.  Beach lots that are not flat, or are placed on a non-flat terrain can get buggered to bits, it seems.  It would be OK to point directly at a spot on a hood map where I built a beach lot, except that this would assume that a lot of other MATY folks used the same terrain and, while we all simply love sleepycat's work and think she's teh awesomsauce, the great sleepycat hegemony of terrains is not yet in place.  So pointing to where the lot comes from then becomes another way of saying "you can't use this lot".  Sad but true, I think.

@ sleepycat: there may be an issue with placing non-beach lots on the terrains immediately across the street from the beach lots (does that make sense).  Apparently, in some cases the U-shaped general store (maxis lot bin BV comm lot) starts sinking into the terrain and being surrounded by water.  There's a thread on this here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,10147.0.html

Not sure if you were aware of this.  I'm going to try to test, for whatever good that will do.  (Checking to see if it's a consistent thing?)

thats odd, I haven't seen that happen in my hoods.  I'll have to read about it tomorrow, no time tonight *must get to bed soon*  :P 

FYI: I posted some more terrains over at Crazy Town.

Yeah, it's pretty broken in that regard. I should make it possible to find Power Lines and Old Naval Mines. That ought to keep life interesting. Just picture hearing this explosion and finding only a red smear on the beach as a result of a sim discovering an old unexploded naval mine.

Hehe -- oh, please do make that! :)

A bit drastic and dramatic, perhaps, but a great alternative to the satellite if you want to "off" someone.

I love it. But don't forget the ghost. The ghost should be red and re-enact the exploding when scaring sims.

/plug

I just uploaded 10 new terrains (at Crazy Town) a few minutes ago *laughs*  The ten are a mix - medium + small, land & islands  :D

http://www.the-isz.com/theisz/index.php?showforum=75


/end plug


guests can download there.

SC, may I just take a moment to say that you are awesome? I don't have BV yet, but as soon as I get it, I'll be downloading your terrains.

Thank you  :D  *laughs*  The nice thing about terrains is they don't care what expansions you have. You could download whatever ones you like and just avoid placing lots on the beaches until you have BV  ;D 

'Tis true. I've already noticed that, even though I don't have BV, some of the lots that I've placed near the water have sand terrain instead of the lush terrain that the rest of the neighbourhood has. I'm wondering if these will automagically convert to beach lots once I install BV.

What do you have against Vista?  I find it to be great.

No. They almost certainly will not.

I didn't really think so, but a girl can hope, can't she? ;)

I've uploaded 4 more terrains over at Crazy Town. they are smaller ones  ;D

I just can't keep up anymore.  Sorry.  :)

* jolrei sits in a corner in a fetal position and sings quietly to himself *

*laughs*

I'm just trying to give people more terrain choices  :D  they are fun to make *laughs*