My gift is sent and now I can share the wonderful gift from my Secret Santa the Amazing Almighty Hat! Everything is wonderful and I will place all my new pretties on my game.
Look at it all, lots, geeky baby clothes and hairs!. I got totally spoiled this year.
Happy Holidays, Dark_moon, it is I, your Secret Santa, Almighty Hat!
I'm really proud of that title card, I feel like it turned out fantastically-- the moon cooperated beautifully.
In your post and your hints letter, you said you don't like building lots, so I said, "I can build lots!"
TOP VIEW, ROOF ON |
TOP VIEW, ROOF OFF |
TOP VIEW, HOUSE LAYOUT |
INTERIOR "PRIVACY" |
INTERIOR "HEARTH" |
INTERIOR "CHIMNEY"From your pictures on tumblr, your Medieval game is heavily peasant-based, as these things should be, so here's a nice peasant roundhouse (with a fancy roof because non-fancy roofs don't go down low enough to look peasanty) as a starter home. It's a modest home, suitable (and affordable) for a single Sim or a small family, complete with all of life's absolute necessities cordoned off by floor dividers for the illusion of privacy. (This is legitimately historical; what we consider modern privacy wasn't really a
thing until the late 1500s and the invention of the chimney. Before then, whenever possible everybody in the household ate, slept, washed, peed, and, um, woohoo'd in the same big room, because that's where the fire was, so that's where it wasn't freezing.) Outside you have plots of dirt enough to easily organize your Seasons crops (no trees, those are expensive) and a little bit of space to expand as your Sims move forward in life-- build a pigsty outside, build a loft and make an upstairs, it's your hovel now, do whatever you please with it.
It's custom-content free, so the decorating is ridiculous.
Seriously, please consider this a nice shell to re-do with your favorite Medieval content.
Swap out the green oven in the middle of the room for a nice deco fire and cookpot stove, replace the cheap Maxis furniture with some cheap custom furniture, put in a pantry instead of a mini-fridge, replace the packed-dirt floors with something more fun, tear out the Maxis plots and plant Sun & Moon crops. It's a starter! Do what you will with it.
TOP VIEW, ROOF ON |
TOP VIEW, ROOF OFF |
SALES FLOOR |
RESTROOMS |
BREAK ROOM, VIEW 1 |
BREAK ROOM, VIEW 2It's the tiniest shop! Okay not really the tiniest, it's on a 1x3 lot, though, so, pretty tiny! Again, there's no custom content, so everything I've tossed in there is basically a layout suggestion. (I have played a shop built very similar to this, though, it's a nice size for an OFB business-- maybe it'll help in your BACC?)
Anyway, what you have is a nice-sized main room with plate-glass windows to entice window-shoppers, plenty of room to shop, socialize, and stand in line for the cash register. Lots of shelves, but since they're Maxis shelves they're just not that cute. Naturally there are restrooms, but I also made sure to give your employees a nice break room-- they can grab something to eat from the fridge, nap on one of the secondhand-looking couches, play a game of darts, or just... sit, for a while, in a room where no one is complaining at them.
I feel like the decor in this one worked out better than the peasant hut, but again-- redecorate the heck out of it. (The log arch and windows were an attempt to show it can be Medieval if it needs to be.) It's small, it's simple, and it's easy to customize it to your neighborhood's needs.
TOP VIEW, ROOF ON |
TOP VIEW, ROOF OFF |
TOP VIEW, GROUND FLOOREXTERIOR STREET VIEW |
EXTERIOR COURTYARD GRILLSSTUDENT LOUNGE 1 |
STUDENT LOUNGE 2 |
STUDENT LOUNGE 3STUDY HALL 1 |
STUDY HALL 2 |
STUDY HALL 3DINING HALL 1 |
DINING HALL 2DORM ROOM SAMPLE |
STUDENT WASHROOMThis one, I'm actually really proud of! It's a contemporary dorm, which you mentioned needing (my attempt at an apartment building didn't go over as well as I wanted it to)... but as I've never actually lived in a dorm, it might be on the 'luxury' side of things, especially downstairs.
Anyway, you have room for eight students who each get a 3x6 bedroom, with bed, window, blinds, and dorm door included. One bedroom has some other furniture in it as sort of a placement idea, but I figured I should let your Sims express their individuality through buying their own cheap IKEA furniture. You have two communal washrooms with toilet stalls, sinks, mirrors, and showers, and if you want to gender-restrict your dorm it wouldn't be hard to pull down some wall and delete the door you don't want. And that's it for upstairs, besides what feels like an unusually wide hallway.
A double-set of staircases brings you downstairs, where you have a student lounge full of fun or skill-building or fun skill-building things, lots of space to socialize, and another set of bathrooms-- just restrooms, this time, because you never know who's going to show up on a college lot, or how many friends they're going to bring into your house.
If instead you need a quiet place to study, there's a room for that, too! Outfitted with nice bookshelves, cheap tables and chairs, two comfy sofas, and the cheapest computers money can buy, the mini-library is a nice, quiet place to do assignments, study for class, write term papers, or just goof around checking your email for a while.
The fully-equipped dining hall actually turned out really nice (okay, the rubber floor is weird, but I thought it was a pretty color). Naturally it has a Shiny Tyme cooktop, so someone who reliably won't start fires can feed your hungry students and whoever else shows up starving, but after hours a student can always cook a full meal, if they know how to cook something more nutritious than macaroni and cheese. For ease of cleanup, there's a dishwasher and trash compactor. And plenty of seating for dorm residents, their friends, and half the neighborhood.
Outside, we're obviously trying to impress people. You walk up to the entrances over a paved courtyard, edged with low box hedges and stargazer lilies-- which do have sprinklers easily accessible, so no worries about your students ever having to water flowers, or never being able to find broken sprinkler heads. Two birch trees provide shade and frame a square, modern fountain. For something to actually do outside, your students have their choice of grilling out, playing chess, or having a rousing half-court game of basketball.
You will have to enter the changelotzoning dorm cheat yourself. This is deliberate, so it's easy to edit things if you want to move some walls around or build a third floor with more bedrooms (I originally had one, it looked really good, and then I said "These bedrooms are way too big and I don't know if dark_moon LIKES playing with sixteen Sims on one lot.")
Some weird lot caveats overall: For some reason, I couldn't open my Misc/Misc category (I think it's a CEP issue, maybe a mod issue; there was some folder-juggling going on to make sure I only used Maxis content and wasn't tempted by custom stuff), so
none of these lots have trash cans, and the dorm also doesn't have an interior sprinkler system. I left space for them where it seemed logical, but just so you know.
Also, I have Niol's roof shaders installed, so these roofs in your game might not look like they do in my screenshots.
Okay, so that's lots.
Next, you said you were a fan of anything with 'Star' in the title, and also that you needed baby clothes. I had some grand ambitions... that I didn't totally meet. Also the cutest graphics I found weren't actually in your fandom, but we'll get there.
R2-D2 costume by TheWishingElephant on Etsy, applied to a basic tee-and-hat outfit by Theraven. The
hat was horribly mangled, as it's mirrored side-to-side rather than front-to-back. (This foiled my plans to give you a BB-8 baby.) The Artoo hat works best with either no hair or very low-profile hairs, if you're the sort of person who uses infant hairs.
The Chewbacca onesie uses graphics from a mass-produced real-life onesie that were smashed around viciously until they looked cute, on a mesh by Theraven. Let the baby win.
I raided the xkcd store for cute graphics. Same Theraven base as the Artoo tee, just with white socks, no hat, and a black tee. From left to right, you get Compiling (actually the back of a shirt where the front says "I'm not slacking off. My code's compiling"), Raptor-Free Zone, and SCIENCE! (Another shirt that also originally had text-- "Stand back, I'm going to try science!") The text would've been too small to paste and too long for "legible" Simlish, so you just got the graphics, which work pretty well on their own anyway.
Baby Clothes Boilerplate: All outfits are unisex (for nerdy boys AND girls) and enabled for Everyday, PJs, and although I'm not sure it's useful, Gym. They are not townie-enabled, so you'll need Chris Hatch's hack to get them on your nerdy babies.
But wait there's more! Because you told me what hair meshes you liked, you get a mini hair dump all your own!
Woman Inherits The EarthMartini's Newsea Ladder to Heaven/Pooklet textures/Pooklet's actions
13,502 Polys
Toddler-Elder
Female
For some reason, this one just doesn't stop reminding me of Ellie Satler from the first Jurassic Park movie. It was all I could think of while I was working on the Volatile recolor.
SWATCH |
QUARTER |
TURNAROUND
Semi-FormalMel 3t2 Bewitching Bun/Pooklet textures/Pooklet's actions
3,392 Polys
Toddler-Elder
Female
This is a very contemporary bun, with the way it's looped over instead of twisted. It's very flattering, but I feel like I should note that the wispy bits on one side are further forward (or the solid hairline is further back) on the Sim's right.
SWATCH |
TURNAROUND
Fair TradeMartini's Jakea Eternity/Pooklet textures/Pooklet's actions
12,391 Polys
Toddler-Elder
Female
You know that scene in The Little Mermaid where Ariel has just gotten her legs and a dress made out of a sail and she's up on that rock staring at Eric while he stares at her, and she twists her hair around over one shoulder? This hair looks like that.
SWATCH |
TURNAROUND
High PriestessRented Space Plait Perfect/Pooklet and FantasyRogue textures/Pooklet's actions
4,226 Polys
Toddler-Elder
Female
I hardly have any Sims this hair really looks good on. It's got a great feel to it-- very early neo-pagan, if that makes any sense, on the sort of woman who doesn't use hair product, keeps bees, and makes sure to do plenty of skyclad rituals in her backyard. Fair warning, the wispy strand does clip into high cheekbones, especially during certain animations.
CLIPPING |
SWATCH |
TURNAROUNDOkay, that's all my pics and words and such, let's do policy and links!
First of all, no paysites, and if you recolor or retexture, give credit where it's due. I have to give credit to, variously, Theraven for meshes and textures, TheWishingElephant on Etsy for ideas (and graphics), Randall Munro of
xkcd for graphics, Martini, Newsea, Jakea, RentedSpace, and Mel for meshes, Pooklet for textures and color actions, Quaxi for SimPE, and Chris Hatch for figuring out this whole 'custom baby clothes' thing. I did not rename anyone's meshes; you'll have to edit out special characters yourself.
Also, Theraven's policy (at least last I saw) says I have to link to their meshes. You can find Onesibottom (for Chewbacca)
here, and the tee-and-diaper (xkcd) and tee-diaper-hat (Artoo) meshes
here. You have to make an account, but if you're into cute custom baby clothes you probably already have one.
Swatches are included so you don't have to save any photos unless you want the baby combo pics. Link is to Mediafire because I haven't had the spoons to switch to Sims File Share yet. Feel free to share, it's half the fun! Happy holidays, and thank you for multiple granted wishes. I was absolutely thrilled to find out you were my santee.
The download file is 70mb.
