Origins and Building

[orikes]

Origins is this week. Yay!

I'll leave on Wednesday with my friends Doug and Scott, to head to Columbus for the convention. It's about a six hour drive, so we should get there about dinner time. Now that I'm decompressing a bit from this past week, I'm starting to look forward to it.

I went last year, and it was quite a bit of fun. This year it should be even better because I actually have ac ouple of close friends there with me. Last year, I only knew a couple of people peripherally, and they were busy with their own thing. Now I've got pals to pal around with, in addition to 10,000 other gamer geeks to be dorky with.

On the simming front, I had hoped to get the next BC update done and out before I left for Origins, but I don't think that's going to be happening. I've got it somewhat pulled together, but the writing isn't quite there.

Even though I wasn't able to jump start myself writing, I did do some building. Yay!





The Elevated Contemporary was first. I like some of the houses that come with Nightlife downtown, but the lots are usually way too small for my tastes. While I was tooling around on the internet looking for floor plans I wanted to try, I came across one that looked something like this.

Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
(This one uses all expansions, up to FreeTime, and may have some walls/floors from Kitchen and Bath Stuff.)

In some respects, this one is probably a little smaller than I usually build, but that's a good thing. Very often, I go overboard when I'm creating a new house, and they end up pretty huge. It's almost like I ALWAYS build for a multi-generational family. Either way, this one could still serve, it would probably just need a room converted into a bedroom on the first floor.

Open floor plans seemed to be my theme this time around, so I'm really happy with the main living space in this one. It'd probably do pretty well for a partying type of family.



Next up is the Creative Craftsman. You'll notice the nifty little pictures I've made here. I finally decided to look into how to replace the image so it's a nice cool one when you upload. I made one for both of these houses, but could only get this one to actually work on the exchange.

Regardless, I'm pretty happy with this house. I got to experiment a bit with the roofs, which is fun now that I understand how to use the individualroofslopeangle cheat. I really liked the look of his house, so wanted to give it a try.

Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
(This one only needs up to Seasons and uses no stuff packs. Yay for AGS!)

I think this one looks like a nice, cozy little house, but it turned out much bigger than I expected. There are actually four good sized bedrooms upstairs (a master suite plus two more that can fit double beds), a nursery on the first floor, and space in the basement for another bedroom if you must.

Anyway, there they are. Most of you that are remotely interested have probably already seen them since I posted them on Boolprop previously. Still, I'm curious about what you think.

Comments

[penguingirl03.livejournal.com]

You know, I think I would like to live in the creative craftsman! It looks really cute! And I can install it right now! I don't know what is still holding me up on FT I have all of the lots in the Penguino neighborhood preped for it (no visitors, no pregnancies, no carpools on their way, everyone at home) but still haven't done it. Where do you look at house plans? I think I might be able to build better if I had layouts to go off of.

Have fun in Columbus. Is your convention on the university campus?

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

The trick with using floor plans is to know what you need to modify. Real house plans tend to have little tiny bathrooms tucked in places. Those won't work for sims. Also, you have to take out any closets. I usually use the floor plan as a whole for setting up the look of the house, and then I divide where things go inside loosely based on the plan.

Another key thing is to decide where you want your staircase to go (so you've taken it into account with your building) and to NOT put windows in until you've put your roof in. If you do anything besides auto roof, the roof tool is very particular about windows and stairs.

For floor plans, I've gotten a lot from: http://www.architecturalhouseplans.com/. In fact, they've got the Creative Craftsman featured right now. I also found some on http://www.theplancollection.com/. That site is a little slower, but is still pretty cool. I think the Elevated Contemporary came from there.

[penguingirl03.livejournal.com]

Yeah I know the bathrooms can be a problem. I once made a replica of a house I was renting a few years ago and the bathroom and the half bath had to be made bigger in order for it to be liveable for sims. Actually, I was pretty proud of the way that one came out so I know that using a known plan tends to make my houses a lot more interesting than my current box style. I'll have to check out those sites.