BYO Apartments and How Would You Want Dorms to Function?

Cinderellimouse

A conversation cropped up in another thread regarding what we would like to see in future packs regarding apartments/dorms/resorts/etc. I'd like to know, what are your current problems with apartments and multiple sims living on one lot? And what features would you like to see added in future packs like dorms or resorts? How do you see those working and what functions would you like?

Some ideas that were suggested include:

* Personal Accounts - Having individual funds for Sims in addition to the usual household funds would be helpful for many reasons. Children could receive spending money, perhaps for doing chores. Teens could have their own money from a part-time job to save up for college or their first car. It could also help when a Sim moves out of a household, as they could take a specified amount of money with them. Currently, when we have multiple families on one lot and are pretending they live in separate units, they still have a shared household account, so you'll earn money when your neighbour goes to work, or they'll spend money when they cook. Personal funds would address this as money could be tuned to go in and out of the personal accounts instead. Then money could be transferred between the personal and household accounts in a similar way to retail and restaurant funds.

* No Shared Inventories on Bookshelves and Fridges - Currently if you have two fridges on a lot they will share the inventory, so the neighbour has access to your freshly grown produce, and will eat it and dump mouldy old cereal in your fridge instead. #rude Specific inventories tied to specific objects would be more helpful than the current shared inventories that appear to belong to the whole lot.

* Apartment/Dorm Doors and Advanced Door Locking - 'The Owned door could also provide extensive door locking system. A door (and the apartment in it) could be marked to be owned by several different sims, for example a couple and their children. With that the people in different apartments would be part of the same household, but with the door locking they would "recognize" which part of the lot is theirs - they wouldn't start cooking in their neighbor's kitchen! I have built and downloaded apartments like that and I would love to have at least that.' (quoted Nellythekidd)

* Room Markers - Like in TS3. These objects can be placed in Buy/Build mode but are invisible in Live Mode. They are used to designate areas. So you might use them to assign certain rooms to certain sims, or to set a room as a communal area. These would be useful for dorms, where we could assign certain apartments to certain sims, but have areas like the kitchen and laundry accessible to all sims. Or they could be used to create apartments over shops like in TS2. They would also be used when building our own apartments to tell the game which room belong to which Sims.

* Option to Rent All Residential Lots -

* Option to BE a Landlord and Rent Out Property -

* A Way to Set Household Funds When Moving Sims In/Out - because we may want Sims to start with nothing, or we may want them to be rich.

* Late Night Style Apartment Post Boxes -

* Advertise For Roommates - Rent out rooms within your property to NPC sims. (Even better if we can rent out rooms and have other active Sims move in but to control them separately as another option). Place ads in the paper or online. Designate rooms that they can access. Option to set up a boarding house.

* Ability to mark a household sim as 'uncontrolled' so they behave like an NPC.

* Ability to make boarding schools with a school pack.


I'd basically like features that make my apartment and terraced houses function better. I can make an 'apartment' now and move in a household. I can separate the sims in this household into smaller units. I can lock doors and assign beds. So to an extent I can make semi-functional apartments. But then there are problems with shared inventories and funds. I'd also like a way to focus on a specific unit, in TS3 Ani made a mod where we could hide the UI for inactive units within the household, and I think they had personal funds too. It would be good if the room markers would blank out or smokescreen inactive units too.

Ani's apartment mod for TS3: http://modthesims.info/d/498857



You can see how Ani sets the smaller units up within the household; how she assigns them funds; how she sets their rent; and how when she toggles between them the UI changes. I don't think it would look exactly like this in TS4 but I would like similar mechanics, where I can play different units within one household independently. And also, importantly, build my own apartments and use the features on all lots in my own way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3_fUnCrKYQ


(Original apartments conversations: http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/902594/the-worst-thing-about-city-living-it-will-sell-like-hot-cakes/p3)

And quick disclaimer, this isn't a thread to bash CL apartments. I am excited for them and living in a city! I'm just thinking of what I'd like in future packs, and re-looking at what needs I have for my game now.

Please discuss your thoughts on the things I've posted here, I'd love to know if you have any further comments or suggestions. I'd really like to hear how you see dorms working if we do get a Uni life expansion. And any general ideas you have regarding lot ownership, renting, roommates, etc.

Renamed2002180839

I think this is a nice sentiment and as soon as Toddlers arrive and in any way, shape or form matching anything from the exhaustive list compiled on them in General OR if anything from any of the hope lists actually makes it into production and release then I may post ideas here but I doubt it will happen. EA/Maxis has it's game mapped out and set. You can join in, play for whatever fun there is and whatever amusement you find or not but all of this hoping and wishing and petitions and lists and dreams and on and on and on doesn't matter. They don't listen imo. That said, nice sentiment again and I'm sure that you mean it very well.

Cinderellimouse

Alright, well if you change your mind you know where I am.

Nellythekidd

Great compilation! I thought of another thing: that the sims from "Unplayed, Not In World" households could show up as potential NPC roommates for your sims. They could be chosen the same way that sims can hire staff for their restaurant so you could see some information about them before having them as roommates. If I remember correctly, in TS2 you could find roommates in the newspaper in Apartment Life expansion but here it could be via computer or phone. I think NPC roommates had already been suggested for CL. I would love to have all these features in the future!

luthienrising

Here's what I'd like, and it's a lot more to do with housesharing, because I'm not terribly interested in doing "university" again if it's as much like a separate game as it was before, and if it's as stereotypical "U.S. College You Watched in Animal Farm" as before (I used the previous two packs almost never):

1. I'd like to be able to have an NPC roommate/housemate.
2. I'd like to be able to find that person with a rental-system that only lets me pick from what I can see, and to designate which rooms in my house are that person's and which they can't enter.
3. I'd like to be able to designate a building as a roominghouse, and designate which bedrooms are NPC, which are open to a played household. Then I'd like to be able to rent that room and live with those people.

I think this would be great in combination with a mortgage/loan system, where I'd have incentive to try to use some of the house I've bought to make money. As an alternative, I'd like to be able to mark a household Sim "uncontrolled", so that they behave fully like an NPC in terms of their autonomy. And I'd like to combine that with individual accounts and/or a point when a Sim moves out that lets me change how much money they take with them.

Caveat on my nope, not university again please: I'd love to have active school for elementary and high school, and if that included a private boarding school that I could still play in, not one where a Sim disappeared from the household for a long time, unplayable, a dorm system there would be fun. I'd like that dorm system to be sort of like this:

2. A UK-style house system (those are common where I live too, though we have fewer boarding schools)
3. "Houses" having traits - like a mix of clubs and lots in a way, if that makes sense? My Sim might fit in or not.
4. NPC housemates
5. NPC floor advisors/proctors/whatevers - someone whose supposed to punish us when we break the rules
6. A dining hall

Neia

@luthienrising
I would love boarding school with a house system too, it would feel different from the stereotypical university and that would be a nice change of scenery. I would add a customizable school uniform to your list too, perhaps like the restaurants uniforms so we could assign uniform to houses.

Active school + Supernatural would be a good combo I think !

Cinderellimouse

Thanks for contributing, I've added a few things to the OP.

@luthienrising I'd like an official active schools pack as well. Zerbu's mods are fantastic, but not everyone uses mods and I feel this is something that has never been officially done before and has been a long time coming. However, University is such a key life stage for me, a right of passage for many Sims, and it's also important to me to have that back. An active education expansion might be a good idea, as a move on from Uni. Sort of like a cross between Uni and Gens.

I preferred the TS2 public school over the TS3 boarding school, because I disliked sending my kids away. But having both as options would be good too, especially if they were active so people could make Hogwarts scenarios. I don't know about the rest of the UK but I don't know of any boarding schools in my area, I'd say they were uncommon, but private schools (fee paying/religious/grammar) are very common along with state schools.

Cinderellimouse

Just popping this here to keep things tidy. ^___^

Rowlena_Lauchenbaum wrote: »

@Cinderellimouse ooooh!!! I just loved your "thinking out loud" post on this thread. Honestly those were my thought exactly. The majority of fans, I think, would be thrilled to have:

--a feature that assigns rooms to different sims (so you can put a family in an apartment), and one that assigns rooms as "communal"

--a feature that separates sims' money (or combines it if you have a joint bank account)

I know that I've just repeated what you said. My point is that with these two features, so many people would be very happy.

http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/15295999#Comment_15295999

thetinfoilgnome

I had written earlier that I think that two simple changes would make it possible to have functional apartments.

Do you think that it might be possible to create a mod that allows for these functions ? (in the meantime, that is. Obviously, official content would be preferable)