on the beach

(click for bigger)

Updates on my LH world progress. The main Lake City areas of the map are mostly all plotted out now. That's on the left side there, the city grid you see between the two bridges. That will represent Lake City, West Washington, Old West End, and LCU.

And having finished up the bulk of work on Lake City's streets, I've just now begun work on the Lakeside Heights/Bluewater half of the map. I'm still pretty unsure about what I'll do with Bluewater. I hadn't wanted to erase all those lovely farm fields, but I also don't want Bluewater there in that spot either. And I don't need the farm fields to take up quite so much space. I suppose I better practice my terrain painting then ;)

But what I'm quite happy with though is Lakeside Beach! I've only just started work on it, and I'm already in love with it. I can't wait to rebuild Deppiesse's Lakefront Bistro, and the boardwalks, and Riley Hall, and the Marina House! :D

These are in-game pics of the LH WIP-hood, draft #2.

Do you see the sailboats!?! :D

I haven't gotten to do much building yet, since I don't have EIG (edit-in-game) working for my current CAW setup. So I don't really want to do too much building now that I'll only have to bin and move manually later. But I am getting started with a little bit of building, especially things I'll need to use right away in the story.

Here's my start on the moon base complex:

I'll be moving this to a larger lot, because I need to make room for the terrarium still on the first floor. Oops, lol!

There are no windows or doors on this first level. And the second level will have windows only in the observation deck, but no doors or stairs to the outside world. They have everything they need in here, and they're even able to go to work in their military careers through the rabbithole rug. And this lot will be hidden in some far-off corner of the map, so that it's out of view from the main part of the hood. I'll also be doing something similar with my study-abroad students, in between trips to the vacation hoods for intermittent story sessions (because I can't keep them there, and still play the rest of the hood, like I could in TS2).

So this is meant to keep the troops isolated from the rest of the Sims in my hood, to keep up the illusion that they're really "away", and so that you won't see them wandering around in the background of story shots. It's working pretty well so far, as I haven't seen them around. I also haven't given it much testing time in-game, so we'll see if that holds up.

And as for exterior space shots, if I ever need them??? Hmmm, photoshop magic? I don't know, I'll figure something out.

And finally, I did a little bit of test-building for row houses, and unfortunately, this is as close as the game will allow buildings to be built on their own individual lots. This isn't actually bad, if I wanted to make a little condo village or something (and the houses turned out kind of cute, so I might do that still). But they're not rowhouses. Not even close! With current TS3 building tools, there doesn't appear to be any way to make stand-alone rowhouse units like we can in TS2.

So instead, in the places where I do want real and actual rowhouses, I'll be doing blocks of rowhouse buildings with one house of each block being a buyable apartment. It's not the worst compromise. Overall, it'll result in much more residential space taken up for much less usable housing. But at least all those buildings will look pretty in the hood? It'll give my NPCs somewhere to live as well - or well, a door to pretend they live behind, at least, lol!

And since you can't actually visit them, there's no point in actually decorating all those extra apartments. Bonus!