Anyone's Houseboat or Beachfront Story?

DivinylsFan

Hi
Does anyone have a story on a houseboat or on a lot on a beachfront like the lots in Isla Paradiso? I'm interested in seeing pictures of it in action. If not, can anyone tell me about their experience playing one, anything to watch out for, tips?
Also, any from an island lot, as in have to travel by boat to town and work? Is it too much trouble and mucking around or does it make it a bit interesting?

Thanks Hugs xx.

@Karritz I see you have an Isla Paradiso series. Which episode has them living on a houseboat, or a half-submerged/waterfront lot or a total island lot where they have to take a boat to go anywhere all the time? Did your sims ever live on any of those types of lots? What was it like?

ley65

i don't have any stories unfortunately, but i will warn you that isla paradiso is a really laggy world! everytime i try to play in it i find that my game is freezing every 3 minutes or so, and apparently it's a common issue and just a problem with the world! so, that might be something to watch out for!

DivinylsFan

@ley65 At some point in my Memories stories on my My Page, there is a story about Ragnar the guy who likes disco and has a 70's moustache, who lived in Paradiso. It was the first time I'd played that world. Igazor had forewarned me about the lag and advised activating the cheat for discovering all islands, which I did. I didn't have any bad lag problems with Ragnar's save. His lot was large and totally on land, on the main island.
However, the female sim I've been playing now recently, in a new save of IP, has had the lag, but not really as bad as people have made out it can be. I didn't activate the discover all islands cheat. And she has always been on a houseboat. And I have my graphics turned right up to maximum.
So, it probably depends on what type of lot your sim lives on and it probably does make a difference to use the discover all islands cheat. And your computer or device, how much cc you have and what kind of gameplay you do. Possibly how many expansions too. I don't have all of them, and I had slightly less back then during Ragnar's game.

CAPTAIN_NXR7

I mainly played on houseboats in Isla Paradiso. One of my favorite saves ever in ANY sims title was a houseboat save.

It was a story about a writer turned explorer, who bought a small fixer upper fishing trawler from a dodgy bunch of lads, to explore the seas in search of “The Monster”. He’d document the entire thing in order to prove all the monster skeptics wrong. He lived on the boat with his most loyal crew member and best friend: a small brown mutt named “Lucky”.

As soon as he had the boat undocked and moved it out into the open ocean, the famous lag was gone. My sim would either use a rowing boat or swim/ dive to get to the smaller islands, he rarely visited the “mainland”.

Life on a houseboat at sea went very smooth for me and I found it extremely enjoyable, but note that the boat DOES move on the waves, so if one is prone to motion sickness I’d advice against playing on a boat for a long period of time. Sims may experience seasickness too, if they don’t have an immunity trait.

I own all expansions, however, I do use the Mastercontroller mod with most modules installed. For that specific save I turned off some vehicles, horses and limited the amount of wildlife spawns.

I will try and dig up a couple of screenshot that I have backed up some place. Man, I loved my wee auld rusty trawler and that little mutt!

octotiger

I am loving Isla Paradiso so far and have only played houseboats in that world at the moment. I just installed that expansion a month ago and wish I had started playing with that expansion sooner, because it has some nice features. I don't have a way to upload pictures onto this message board yet, but I did take a few screenshots while in Isla Paradiso. I think the only issue with houseboat living is that the sims throw up a lot, but then I got them the reward that stops that behavior. I like watching my sims boat around, but with mermaids it can get tricky as they prefer to swim which takes forever. Also, some of the ports with the deep "L" shape can cause boats and water taxis to have routing issues, so I had to fix a couple ports to make the "L" shape less deep, or I used edit town mode to make some ports "no visitors allowed." I had to use TestingCheatsEnabled and the EnableLotLocking True cheats to be able to edit ports I believe.

I was also playing around with the beydebug cheat in one of my saves and I have two sims living in a highrise object in the middle of the water.

octotiger

I just remembered that I only have my active households living on houseboats right now though. I moved all the inactive premade families into land houses through edit town mode, because I had read that they can have routing issues if allowed to stay on their houseboats.

DivinylsFan

@CAPTAIN_NXR7 I would love to see your pictures!

My sim has started with one of the cheapest pre-made houseboats, the plain one-roomed one with the all-in-one toilet ... is that the one you had? Or did you make your own?

Its become a two-story thing with a rooftop and basement, so 4 levels. Hardly any of the old thing left. Its rather small in diameter. I've been trying to style it off of pictures of houseboats on google, as well as adding bits of my sim's character.
It was a while before I realised the houseboat could be driven around! Then I got her to move it to near the Junkyard's island right before any time she was going to go on holiday or to university, because the departure/arrival spot was outside the junkyard. Then she didn't have far to go to and ran to the spot instead of taxi, once on the beach. She carried with her a jet-ski which she used to get from the houseboat to the beach. I thought that was cool. She parks the jet-ski, and motorbike, on her houseboat rooftop. When its time to do a stint of work at the hospital, she moves the houseboat to the closest beach to the closest dirt trail to it.
She recently bought a beachfront/water property near the hospital where she has a vegetable garden ... I'm yet to build a part house-part dock on it. I'd love to see someone else's successfully playable one, for inspiration.

I've got some screenshots I'll post when I'm on my other device later.

Baronwyn

I bought the house I wanted in Isla Paradiso because it was on the beach, so I did end up boating to work on the main island. It was fun. Much different than the usual commute. Later I had bought up enough property and resorts to quit the job. Whee! (Which is not to say I quit working. I run four 5-star resorts at the moment. Lots of random cleaning, rehiring cleaning employees every day, getting rid of cockroaches, etc. Upgrading everything at all four resorts to Unbreakable, now that was a project.) Love it, even the boat commute to work.

DivinylsFan

@Baronwyn I haven't tried resorts yet :O I've recently given a couple of self-employed professions a go, the home reno one and the sculptor one. The reno one is really time consuming. There's never a quick one.
How's your waterfront lot working out? Have you put a jetty on it? Or a houseboat. Or just a house, and a moor.

Baronwyn

I built a beach house on the dock out over the water with a couple of moorings for my toys. It's so peaceful out there. I didn't know you could do self-employed professions! Now I feel like I missed half the jobs in the game. The sculptor one sounds pretty awesome. How's it going in your game? (I have to admit, with resorts, I haven't figured out how to get rid of trash piles that somehow get left on top of the flat roof level *under the roof. But who cares--I can go to my beach house!)

DivinylsFan

@Baronwyn the sculptor one is just sculpting. That's all I got from it anyway. Maybe there's more to it.
... Not that I will know for some time now because the game is broken with the launcher switch and I'm too busy to muck around with fixing it and I will never play 4 instead. On principle and I don't like it.
With Island Paradise came the professions Lifesaver ... and something else can't remember. If you have the Ambitions expansion, all of the professions should be available to you, and some of them have a community lot in the lot bin/library to plonk down somewhere, but Isla Paradiso already has a stylist salon placed, and I think a fire station, consignment store and junkyard. You can look in the newspaper for a profession, and on the smart phone/computer in "jobs and professions", or you can just register one at Town Hall.

octotiger

I've been playing one save in Isla Paradiso so far. It has a household made of five young adult sims who are roommates. They all have parents that live in Isla Paradiso as well, but I am just having fun playing with these girls. The household members are Cayli (mermaid), Gilly (mermaid), Tyrania (mermaid), Vanda (mermaid), and Acara (a genie! I installed Island Paradise and Showtime about the same time so I wanted to play with a genie, too). The roommates originally lived in the Odyssey (Odyssea?), a premade houseboat, but when they earned enough simoleons I built them a new houseboat with enough rooms for the five sims. No particular storyline at the moment, but I like playing the game without specific plans; allowing the sims to build their skills and play out their lives. At the moment, I have aging turned off but will turn it back on soon. I just wanted a chance to see the premade sims before they all died out from old age. Here are pictures from my Isla Paradiso save:

The current houseboat for my active household


Acara driving the houseboat


And Acara genie floating along the paths of the big island.


Tyrania hunting for eggs during the spring festival


Vanda windsurfing


Gilly at a neighbor's house (a premade house by EA)


Cayli at the lab, researching through the science station. I added to the science lab, since it's just a rabbithole on Isla Paradiso, so it's like a fishery and sims can study at the science station.


Driving a firetruck through Isla Paradiso



Boating through Isla Paradiso. I had the girls save up their reward points to become mermaids then realized that mermaids have a penchant for swimming everywhere and thus being late for all engagements, but thankfully I can buy them boats by clicking on mooring posts and cleats around the island and a boat gets added to their personal inventories. I can then click on a location and select "boat here" to save time.


Vanda at a fishing spot


And in front of the bistro


Cayli in front of the theater


Mermaids are natural divers



I really like the Island Paradise expansion! It's possible to create diving lots in other worlds using the buydebug cheat, too, which is great! I created a brother/sister in Bridgeport as mermaids. I created dive lots for them, and they live in a high rise partially submerged in the water. I hope the images show up:

DivinylsFan

I like your houseboat. I don't know why I keep having the wheel on the roof. It makes sense to have it indoors, unless its like, 300 years old or something.
The Odyssey is an ancient Greek epic by Homer where many of the myths are told, including about the Sirens (mermaids).

Karritz

I just found this thread this morning. The Isla Paradiso Bunch Playlist 1 has lots of episodes that include houseboats. Later episodes show them in their resort that is partly built over water.

I have a rollercoaster lot in my studio that is partly built over water and have used it in several different series.

The last few episodes of Caroline And Friends Part 1 show them living on a houseboat, but that houseboat was built by a simmer and it is a party boat. Lots of fun.

My series 30 Grandchildren have them on houseboats too. In one episode the kraken visits.

I'd have to play through all of the episodes of each series to find which specific episodes have them on houseboats.

octotiger

DivinylsFan wrote: »

I like your houseboat. I don't know why I keep having the wheel on the roof. It makes sense to have it indoors, unless its like, 300 years old or something.
The Odyssey is an ancient Greek epic by Homer where many of the myths are told, including about the Sirens (mermaids).

Thank you! That is interesting. I didn't know mermaids were in ancient Greek stories.

DivinylsFan

octotiger wrote: »

DivinylsFan wrote: »

I like your houseboat. I don't know why I keep having the wheel on the roof. It makes sense to have it indoors, unless its like, 300 years old or something.
The Odyssey is an ancient Greek epic by Homer where many of the myths are told, including about the Sirens (mermaids).

Thank you! That is interesting. I didn't know mermaids were in ancient Greek stories.

There are two main epics people know, that are from the ancient Greek poet guy named Homer: The Odyssey, which has all the monsters, including the sirens (mermaids), and The Iliad which is all about Troy. You'll see something in the opening credits of movies and TV shows about Troy that say something about the author named Homer. Homer lived in around 750 BC. So if the other ancient civilizations who tell stories about mermaids are not older than that, then it could be said Homer was the original (about mermaids). Both the Iliad and the Odyssey are really easy to find in libraries and on Audiobooks - they've been done and redone by a gazillion authors as much as Shakespeare, and probably more. They're worth reading and learning, because once you do, you'll see them everywhere, parts and characters mentioned all the time. Its like a new dimension gets opened up to you.

octotiger

Thank you! I'll have to check that out.