What do you have in your neighbourhood?

[twooflower]

Ground Zero Gallery (resident 'artist' sells paintings and sculptures from the Buy catalogue, because custom paintings don't sell for much and can't easily be restocked)

Well, restocking custom paintings is a pain in the neck, to be sure, but they sell for anything you want to sell them for. If I can sell Eau de Brynne for 10K, you can sell a custom painting for anything you want.

I never did understand how you were able to mark pee for sale.

I have enjoyed following this thread, as I am fairly new to the idea of having anything much in the way of community lots.  Now that I have a new computer, a whole new world is opened up to me with a few seconds of loading time per lot instead of 20+ minutes.  I used to get distracted and come back to my game only to find that my sim had been on the community lot for a day or so with all their needs depleted. 

I still mostly have community lots to sell crafted items and personal electronics.  I have always loved notovny's community lots, so I usually have them in my game if they fit in with the theme. 

In my Royal Kingdom (LOTR) neighborhood I have a prison/workhouse on a residential lot run by a Mrs. Crumplebottom clone that was kind of a fun idea.  If a lower-class citizen began picking on a royal or noble sim, I would sentence them to a round in the workhouse.  There they would serve out their sentence making toys, painting, cooking & cleaning.  Aragorn and Arwen run a home venue where they eat meals and spend time with their subjects.  They are short on help now other than hired services, but someday they will get a live-in servant or two from the local Peasantry spares to cook, clean, garden and be a nanny.  Now that I have BV, I have the neighborhood dwarves mine for treasure and sell what they dig up.

In Pleasantview I have one community dancing club/bar/boxing ring where I invite and influence fighting among the various classes of NPCs for my amusement.  For example, Karen Gast is the champion fighter in the Nanny Division, and Korey Jitmakusol is the champion of the Headmaster Division.  Customers gain stars watching the fights.

I have tried Zazazu's idea of a petting zoo in a Legacy when I had a sim that wanted to raise 20 kittens or puppies.  Since all guests want to do is play with pets anyway, I built a barn in the backyard and made them buy tickets to play with cats.  I thought someday I would try it again and download pets from MTS2 that look like kangaroos, zebras, etc.

I love notveryawesome's Life Skills business idea.  That's what I thought I would do for a vocational school.

[Zazazu]

I have a bunch of random freak-pets saved from MTS2 and my own creation for my apocalypse 'hood and found one for sale on the mainland in Queen's Cove. That was odd.

I'm really, really jealous of everyone's community lot names. Mine are bland. Seriously. Snack Shop, Paint me a Picture (originally I was going to have sims pay to paint on the easels and sell back their work, but couldn't get visitors to use the easels), Ridge Collectibles, and Ridge Market. Oh. And there's the cemetary. It's called "Cemetary" and its description is "Put your dead here." Blah.

[J. M. Pescado]

I never did understand how you were able to mark pee for sale.

It's an effect produced by Yellow Pee, which gave pee puddles their own puddle type, distinguishing them from ordinary, non-pee puddles. When OFB was added, Maxis decided to implement puddle non-sellability locally, meaning the change did not propagate to the seperate pee puddles, so pee could be marked for sale. I thought this was so hilarious that I left it.

[twooflower]

I never did understand how you were able to mark pee for sale.

It's an effect produced by Yellow Pee, which gave pee puddles their own puddle type, distinguishing them from ordinary, non-pee puddles. When OFB was added, Maxis decided to implement puddle non-sellability locally, meaning the change did not propagate to the seperate pee puddles, so pee could be marked for sale. I thought this was so hilarious that I left it.

Well now I know why there's a yellow pee hack.  I always thought it was a wee bit gross, but I may just have to try it out now.

[J. M. Pescado]

It's less gross than sims subsequently splashing in it because they can't tell that it is pee. Also, 99% of the pee puddles will actually be produced by dogs and penguins. There should not normally be SIMS peeing on the floor. Except Brynne.

[twooflower]

It's less gross than sims subsequently splashing in it because they can't tell that it is pee. Also, 99% of the pee puddles will actually be produced by dogs and penguins. There should not normally be SIMS peeing on the floor. Except Brynne.

That's definitely another reason to try it.  So does this mean that when the nanny pees on the floor my toddlers won't go and splash in it? 

[cwykes]

I mostly have small single-storey, multi-purpose community lots with 1 NPC that load fast because big laggy lots really irritate me.   I like to send sims on a multi-purpose outing to one lot rather than suffer the loading times from visiting a lot of different community lots.  I also hate large community lots because your sim always ends up hiking the entire length of the lot several times to get to his/her target sim.  So functionality is much higher up my list than artistic merit, though I do try to make them look reasonably attractive. 

The ones I use as standard are designed to look nice together on the hood screen; they all have a river and a willow tree or two.    They date back to base game and I've started adding to the set and updating existing lots.  A lot of activities are outdoors, which doesn't work quite as well since Seasons - another reason for remodelling a bit.

Health Spa with clothes, hottub & chess
farmers market with food, chess, swings, BBQ
a couple of multi-purpose shops with swing, darts, chess, BBQ
A cross between a tiny club and a video games and magazine store - tv, dance, darts, chess, swing. myshuno, music
Swimming pool with BBQ
roller rink with BBQ & chess
ice rink with BBQ & chess
village church

They were mostly made for base game and I put them on TSR so newbies and other people with low-end PCs could find and use them.  The Veronaville Health Spa is about the most popular at 1453 downloads which sucks, but there aren't huge numbers of small community lots out there.  http://www.thesimsresource.com/profiles/view.php?mid=427711  They are of course free.

I mostly keep owned businesses in a separate sub-hood. Again I stick to small lots for functionality and my business ideas aren't terribly original.  Sedona has a lot of starter businesses and Meadow Lawns has a business empire.

[Kyna]

I mainly use Wolfsim68's Stoneyville community lots.  She can be found at TSR.  I've just noticed she has now become a Featured Artist, so her lots are no longer free - I'm disappointed, because when she left MTS2 to go to TSR as a Select Artist (and Insim for a while) she said her lots would always be free at TSR.  Hopefully they can be found in the booty at PMBD.

Her community lots are all small 2x2 or 2x3 lots, and are all done in the same style, so look good from the neighbourhood view when placed next to each other.  Some of her lots (such as the police station and courthouse) I use more for decoration to make the neighbourhood look like a town, rather than for actual use.  I use some of her lots as businesses for my sims to run - they come fully stocked & decorated, all my sim has to do is hire staff and add in a few hacks, and the business is ready to go.  I use other lots of hers as community lots for my sims to go socialising.  Then there's the ones I add to my custom universities, such as the library and the gym, and I edited one of the dorm lots to turn it into a secret society.

[cwykes]

You can see why wolfsim68 is now a featured artist - they're nice looking lots.  A couple are still free, so I've DL'd those.
I do think consistency of style on community lots makes a difference to a neighbourhood - it's in the little things sometimes: same lamposts, wall covering, roof style/colour.  River and willows is actually a graphic hungry style; it works on small lots, but it wouldn't be a good, unlaggy style on larger lots.