I rarely ever build to house plans since I hadn't really invested time into finding some good ones (thanks for the link above ). Most of my houses come from my imagination - that's why they look sort of jumbled

As to what's included, depends who's living there. But -

- All houses are built on 2x2 or 3x1 lots, with very few exceptions. Anything bigger is pointless as there always seems to be enough room for a garden and nice house in that space. I am also into townhouses with minimal front gardens, so this is ideal.
- Almost all my houses have La Fenetre (funky accent insert) windows to them. The Maxis ones are OK but I prefer Windkeeper's.
- All "main rooms" consist of a television, a sofa, a coffee table and a decoration/floorlamp either side of the sofa. Then I customize the rest of the room to the family.

I don't really plan for sim-functionality, but more for what looks good and what suits the family. A lot of non-functional crap lies around in bedrooms, bathrooms etc. That is, when I can be bothered to build. Most of my lots are Wolfsim's and edited by me (again with the jumbled look).

*rofl* That car's almost as hot as me. Mwah
Thanks for the link

An intresting plotline if you're playing with a mayor/council and you want to get yourself out of having a mayor (if you want a change).
Say the mayor has been embezzling the taxes she earns on a new car
or improvements to the mansion. So now there is no money left in
the community funds to spend on the local event, for example, a
dance at the community hall. The mayor is subsequently fired and
now the citizens don't have anybody above them. This is when
business tycoons can thrive. They can buy up any unowned lots and
then rent them out to any sims wanting to start a business. No
mayor, and Sagana's business tycoon method implemented!
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Notes: You are going to have some unowned community lots in
order for this to work with some sims that don't have a job for this to
work. Sims renting from the business tycoon have to earn more
than the rent they pay and their expenses. After playing around a
little bit, I have found this is very hard to achieve - especially
since the first few days of business are rare to see a profit anyway.

Not as cool as publicly woohooing with a snowman. That's gossip for yao.

Yes, the mayor(ess) buys all the lots from the "invisible community" then sells them on to the citizens. But she does not use taxes solely to buy the businesses. Infact, when she buys them, they are just empty community lots. My storyline is how a group of travellers rediscovered an island previously inhabited by a Greek queen (don't laugh!!!) - so of course there wouldn't be businesses and only a few houses. Taxes, in "RL" go towards improving the general life of citizens, right? But the way I see it - instead of the mayor flat out giving the money to the poor to "improve their lives", she instead gives them an assest: a business.

I take your point on "tycoon sims" who make their business by renting out lots to people, but my way is slightly different: with the mayor the only tycoon sim, the rest are "peasants beneath him". Instead of renting out the lots, he sells them: the goal here is not for the mayor to make money as (s)he has many other ways of doing that.

Basically, I play the same as you only my only tycoon is my mayor and she nevers goes "out of business" because she has taxes to reimburse her funds and she is level 10 on the politics career track.I cannot imagine anyone other than the mayor buying-to-sell/rent as my community consists of 36 (useful records, eh!) sims - there isn't any room for more than "one at the top".

I agree with your "motherlode" philosophy (does anybody else get annoyed spelling it so idiotically?) - I'd only cash them up at the beginning and let them chose how they want to spend it. But, OCD or not, I have to have a *reason* as to why the have so much money. I can't face two college kids with ten million in the bank - this kills realism instantly. Usually, my excuse is "they accquired their extra simoleans from previous businesses, jobs etc." but this doesn't work if they start out with £50,000 - or however much is needed to become a tycoon.

But what I mean is how EA (was it EA by EP3?) never included what we needed to create a realistic community. I may be going on about realism - but the first thing that annoyed me about the game was the £20k handouts, until I used my imagination to think where they could have come from. My favourite hack is my imagination

Without OfB, none of this would be possible. Well, I figure some brilliance out there would have found a way to imitate some of the functions but it's nicer that Eaxis released it as an EP, so we can blame somebody

Can sims webdesign? I hardly ever "play" the game - more devise stratergies and storylines + decorate/build/create.

Thanks for all your tips on the money hacks/cheats. I am quite reluctant to change my ways, I took me a dozen posts before I felt reassured enough to use the
blank templates, but I'm willing to try Monique's computer: what's the worst that could happen?
*Explosion in distance. It's my game

I'll be back later to kick ass and play card games write some more - hehe. Yep, this is indeed is an intresting conversation!

What about placing the pool/tub indoors?

Check the thread below you: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=8031.0 for glitchy memories. Specifically, for solutions.

*Runs off to find something shiny without adequetly providing an answer

I could wet myself from all the fugylness.

Oops. Too late.

 

I think Romance sims should want to go to college, as that's where a lot of people get "jiggy with it".

*laughs*

But that's just it: the limitations of the game means we have to adapt it to what we want. Like Sara said, the game allows all sorts of ways of playing that aren't even part of the game unless you make them a part of it yourself.
Who'd want a boring economic way of life? For me, I just want it organized and realistic. They can take out loans, have rents (although this looks complicated and I am holding this off for a while) and have businesses that don't require inventory (novel writing in the sims, for example.) If I had more room, I would open up a mall and have different sims rent out shoplets from the mall-owner. Instead, I have a marketplace (Lande Produce) where my Silver, my gardener sim sells his crops, my gardening club rep sells gardening club items and my florist, Dandelion Pierce, sells her flowers. It's how a marketplace works in RL except with simming adaptations.

That's why my sims buy it off the community - because it would be too hard to create a full business from scratch with motherlode and without a loan.

**********
I love Monique's mods! The payee-payer mod is the one I use for taxes and loans. It keeps a bit of tracking once you finish playing a house, but other then that, it works like a charm. Pescado's money orders seem a little pointless to me when you have familyfunds, I only use it when one family has the same surname (that rarely happens in my hood, but I keep his MO anyway)

I think this is the silliest fear of the game! Lots of highly educated people never went to college, but *sigh*, it's Maxis/EA/whatever!
Change it in SimPE? Is that counted as cheating? It is a borked SWAF as Soylent said, so I guess not, but I'm just wondering if it would FUBAR your game anyway 

http://www.pc-sims.com/smb/showthread.php?t=6158
Google is a girl's best friend

   As it so happens, I think I'm an OCD sufferer. I could spend hours perfecting my 'hood without playing a single family. I write up all the records: who owns what, who's going out with who, how much their rent is etc. What can I say - I like order! But I don't like legacy challenges at all - I can't see myself sticking to one lot for 10 generations, and if I ever were to take a break - I don't I'd be revisiting the legacy lot again. Besides: it's such a 2D way of simming, IMO.
   My favourite challenge is the challenge of keeping my economy 'hood alive and well, if that could be considered a "challenge".
I do play with mortgages, but I don't pay them back with interest. I think simming life would be too hard, otherwise. I try not to have just plain out loans though, because being bogged down with debt makes things unenjoyable and unsatisfying, especially when creating businesses. It was hard not to constantly take out loans, but I thought of a way that maybe is a bit more creative than Jade's: where she just flat out bought the businesses.

*********
Anyway, for me, the mayor is the first sim to be moved in. I figured I need a mayor because of the flow of the money. She then buys every empty community lot. Through taxes the residents pay, her job (she is level 10 on the politics career track - that's how new money is interjected into the system) and any other way the community can accquire money, these community lots are soon built up. She then places them for sale at City Hall for "less than average". This way: the taxes are spent on something useful, I never have to use "motherlode", everybody helps create the neighborhood gradually and sims can afford to buy a business almost immediately (as the lot is place for "less than average").
   I don't mind the £20K handouts, sometimes I even boost it up to £25/30,000. It depends on the sim/family. For example, a well established business man who moves in is obviously going to start out richer than a single mother of three. If a house costs £17,000 then that leaves £8,000 to start up the business: but that is nothing (considering a lot costs - err - a lot). So, instead, I have them keep that money and only pay taxes to the mayor. Once the mayor has collected enough, she visits a community lot and creates only the shell of the building. If money allows, then she furnishes it minimally. Say the buyer has spent £750 on taxes - that leaves £7,250 left to spend on buying a business. By now, her funds have grown to £9,000.  The business costs £11,000, but because it is put at "less than average": the buyer can now afford it. For really poor sims who need a boost, and if the mayor's funds allow, there might even be a greater discount then the game allows (15% below average, I believe?) The £750 he spent has gone towards building a better community.
   It's sounds complicated - but is really worth it. How do they do it in RL? You buy community lots from the community, of course, so why not in The Sims 2? Infact, the mayor has funded most of the building: so the simple £750 investment on the buyer's part has turned into an £11,000 business which he bought for £9,000. He could have just bought it from the "invisible" community: but that is exactly what this method is trying to iradicate. And then, that sim might be the only one with a business (and with practically no funds). This way, no sim buys a business until they're all relatively ready to be bought. So the community grows as a whole.

*********
Does that make sense? What do you think?
*********
I play with aging on (kills the realism otherwise) and I still clone my playables onto the fugly NPCs. It takes something along the lines of 20 sim days for an Adult > Elder transition, and I take forever playing a house! I can only play for a few hours on the weekend and I tend to rotate around which lot I am currently playing (unless I'm really into it or playing out a pre-set storyline)

Her tutorial was good for ideas, but now I'm using my owned way of creating a 'hood. For example, townies were pointless in her tutorial, so she skipped making them. But now my neighborhood, Westwater, has three sets of townies 9the homeless, the tourists and the natives). It never occoured to me not to have townies until Jade, then it never reoccoured to me to have them afterwards. I guess it's a breaking-out-of-the-shell thing. I just wanted to make my game more to me, and to fully use the £29.99 worth of college funding I spent on a children's doll house game.
x
Yeah, her site closed up pretty suddenly. Shame, too, because I was an avid reader of her blog. She didn't do herself much justice when she said "only ten people ready my blog" - loads did! I guess it was the "drama" from round here + N99.
x
I always find uses for decorative sheep

Lol, that's quite funny. Maybe he was a skitz? Well, a skitsophrenic toddler is unlikely, but be it on your own head: you downloaded the inteenimator!
(Just kidding, it's a fair hack)
*
Anyway, you could use SimPE's sim surgery to export him/clone him and then re-place (as in, place anew) him to the main hood. It would require some relationship tweaking but I figure it's the safest bet. When my 'hood got corrupted (well, I thought it was corrupted) then that's what I did. Any corruption *shouldn't* be carried over once you've cloned him.

ETA: Brain fart ~ is SimPE updated for Seasons yet? I've heard it's safe to tweak *some* things, but ignore my ignoramus advice if it isn't!

She invested a lot of time in her neighborhood, that's for sure. She even wrote a tute for minions like us to follow. The only thing I didn't understand is why she wrote "this is the only way to create a custom neighborhood" then ranted about why everybody was copying Thyme. Maybe she was only referring to creating a clean template to start on.
I liked to think I was the only person playing with mortgages until I read up a bit about Thyme. I think she used mortgages, but concentrated more on rent and taxes. I hadn't even thought about taxes, although I hated the way sims could never afford anything without a good dose of kaching but then I thought how unfair it was (I'm a very honest simmer, see) so then I made them pay it back over time. Of course, this was when I didn't know what a hack was, so I figure I did quite good for myself there!

Isla Muse used to be a themed 'hood, but I gave up on it because the loading times were hopeless and then opted for a small island where only 20 or so sims could live. From there, I'm developing my own set of islands: The Nephele Islands!

There's "dork" in my username for a reason 

Unfortunatly, Jade's site is no longer around. She was a great simmer with lots of ideas - her "community" way of playing could inspire even the most fidgety simmers to stick to a project. If you're intrested, I could explain her way of simming to you. It was fairly complex but well worth it once your neighborhood had critical mass. Her posts on it here are no long gone.
I prefer to stick to one thing at a time - I can't stand scrapping hoods because I always seem to spend so long on them. I plan to only have two (one to play out a story and one Jade-style) but ATM I have 2 Maxis' + 4 custom ones.

It was a cherry pie and the innocent young man was me! Mwah. [I'm a female, btw]

On topic, have you tried move_objects on with any foods?

No joke.

Since the questions on this thread have been answered, I guess it's OK to go a little off-topic?
Does anybody here play the Jade-style way? With an intergrated economy?

Sometimes, if you have the inSIMenator, then the blue-mask can be an issue. Luckily, they have included a "fix appearance" option. Try that?

Which innocent apple pie do you know of that has tried to kill somebody lately?

One of the dogs was called Sarah, because mEAxis is infatuated with that name. Do you remember Sarah and Don? Or was that Sara? No, it was definatly Sarah.

How many 'hoods do you have? Once I finally clean my game up, I'll only have two.  And it's only becaues I'm holding onto the second one for general purposes (to test houses, keep CAS sims, to play out the storyline etc.)

What about people townies? Or were the strays the new townies? *notveryimpressedwithmEAxis*

I HATE wasted space in my 'hoods - things have to fit together perfectly otherwise I'm not happy. It doesn't necessarily mean the houses are back to back and ontop of each other, but plain empty space (no decoration or anything) looks wasted and terrible. Especially for creating realistic downtowns, where the lots really are glued together.
I LOVE Wolfsim's work. Her lots litter my downtown and mainland because I refuse most other things (like a whiney toddler and a plate of vegetables.). Jade was a big fan of hers too. Her residential lots are just too kick-ass for words.
I also think that Starrling, Plasticbox and Kavkid all of MTS2 deserve a mention. Their lots are urban, come with little/no CC and perfect when planning with limited space!
*
I never thought I'd compare myself to the toddler-and-vegetables analogy.