I had an absolutely FANTASTIC time building this lot. I have only played TS3 once or twice before (I'm a creature of habit and keep going back to TS2) and this was only my second lot I have ever built. I'm so paranoid about rejections in TS2 that I made my screenshots perfect and ran my sim through every bit of the house, just to make sure everything was accessible! My back is completely sore now and my husband feels extremely ignored but I am pleased with my efforts. Pleased enough that I am thinking of uploading (not sure the rules on that as this round is still open) but I've still got to figure that one out. I have wanted to enter a contest for awhile but always either missed them or didn't have the time/creativity to give it a go. Love you guys for this!

Are you building in a world that you are playing? I can't place cars on driveways in Edit Town, other lots that I am not playing. I have made a world that I use for building only. The car will place in that world. I don't know why, but has been that way since WA for me.

I have issues guys, and need some input. I spent 4 hours(ish) building a house in a blank neighbourhood devoid of other lots or sims or...anything, and it's looking really good. So I put it in the Bin, shifted over to a live town to get some decent photos of it, but as I attempt to place it, the house is creating a crater in the ground, 1 Wall depth, all the way around it and it looks awful. I've tried levelling the terrain out with CFE but that was of little help as it would still need a rebuild...ick.

Any ideas? I don't want to photo it in the blank 'hood - there's not even a road for the driveway to attach to :P

Yeah, since I never play Sims 3 I only have one world established, and there WAS an active household on another lot. Of course, the active household is Contest Housejumper now. I've only got base game plus the items that I purchased with the 10$ Store credit which came with the game. Since the game already puts such a strain on my computer (and my nerves), I don't really want to push my luck by establishing a second world or installing CC. I might just use Sims 3 only for building. I kind of want Foundation 2, like, right now.

Did anybody ever come out with a mod to get rid of those gawdawful sparkles when placing walls? I couldn't seem to locate one in the WCIF Content List, but it just seems like one of the first things a modder would endeavour to get rid of.

*gasp* Thank you!

I've done something similar before. It's most likely doing this because the game isn't recognizing the terrain around it. Most likely it thinks that the ground is higher where you're placing it than where you built it, causing the game to place the house in a crater in order to keep it at the same level that you built it. That or you're trying to place the lot on a hill, which can go very wrong if you didn't build it on the hill in the first place.

This is merely a guess, though, from my prior tries at placing houses that I didn't intentionally build on that lot.

You might want to either try a different lot or just snapping the photos where you built the house, if no one else has any other suggestions.

Did you try using the leveling terrain tool, instead of CFE?

Maybe try using Regina's Empty Towns, if you only have Sunset then download that and make it a build only world. It should be less taxing cause there is no sims in the world. This is what I use.

Plop some lots around the one you are building so it doesn't look empty. Just a suggestion.

Well after building a house up, changing my mind, tearing it down, searching more house plans...The third time was the charm. That was a lot of work. But I am satisfied.

Wow...everyone has great entries so far. I am excited and nervous!

every time I work on this house the game stops responding. I swear, I've been through a billion different designs, and I finally found one that was perfect, and works, and it stops.

I want to enter, but the chances are slim, if the games keeps acting up.

Don't know if it'll work but you could try going into the lot you want to place your house in and raise it so that it's one wall high. Then in theory when it drops the house one wall length it should level out...in theory

Also, it doesn't matter if there's a road or not. You don't have to have the road in your pics. The street level one is from the sim's eye view so you could just snap it from the very start of the front garden (or crop to that point at least) and for the plan view just crop out the part where the road would be. Though to be honest, they're judging the lot you create, I doubt you would be docked points for anything that's outside the lot (or not in this case)

Matrix, on the entry thread they've been discussing how many slots are left. Somebody counted and I think they said there was only 14 left...they're filling up quickly so I hope you get your issues sorted in time

Or, You both could use my Builder's Island Haha, just a little advertise, but that's what I use cause it only takes few seconds to load and has the most of the basic lotsizes.

Thread is updated with the contestant list. 13 spots left.

Please add me in!

Rez Delnava - Either you edited or I didn't see your question the first time. Regarding the avatars, I'll be making those (unless some other awesome staff member wants to do it for me... come on, ppl, GUILT TRIP).

I was building a modern house for the contest, but when I furnishing, my pc crashed D: now I have to build the whole house new, and I sat 4 hours on the design only
But Im not going to rebuild the house, contests are not really my thing, with limited building possibilities (bad english?xD)

Oh I would if I actually had some tallent lol

I come home from work this AM to see almost all the spots taken. Then I read HP's post that there will be an extension.

So I scale back the project and rip the top floor off my house and go to work on revamping the whole thing, trying to meet the deadline.

Now there is a storm rolling through and the power keeps going out.

So I guess at this point I am admitting defeat. Between the constant saving, rebooting after a power outage, redoing what I didn't get saved . . . I give up

But above all I have had fun trying. So I'll finish the house and if it looks good enough I'll upload and share it.

My hats off to all that have and will get their entries posted in time and good luck to you and the staff trying to pick winners. All the houses look great!

Woop, woop! I finally finished with only half an hour or something to go, thought I wasn't gonna get there. Can't wait to see the results now but I imagine they'll take a while 'cause there must be nearly 70 contestants now and they're still rolling in. I judged a 'for fun' contest on here once and with 17 contestants it took me 3 or 4 hours to go through them all and give comments etc so 70 is gonna take forever and a day...glad it's not me

PS good luck to all contestants :D

It's frustrating. I read about this contest around 11:30 a.m. this morning and immediately started to build the house. I thought I'd have enough time but I've been wrong - I'm too slow, I put too much time into details. The house is almost done but the garden is still poor. And even if I had been able to finish the house till now I'd still have to take pictures and and and.....

I just realized that I'm not a "fast-creation artist" and so I give up for now before I start to do a sloppy work. I already said it before... it's frustrating. *sighs*

Anyway, there are some really excellent creations in the contest. It'll be fun to see more creations in the next rounds. Good luck to all participants!

69 ENTRIES!!! WOOO!!!



Ya'll have no idea how much this makes me giggle.

WAIT NO.

70.

I finished my house ... alas, the contest is already closed. I know I had no chance of winning anything or being in any sort of competition with you awesomely awesome builders. I just really wanted to participate... and I did, just not officially. And I'm rambling.

Good luck all!

Okay, really silly question as I understand how the scoring works but am I right in assuming that only those who entered R1 will be able to compete in the subsequent rounds? Or will we have the mad rush trying to beat out anyone else who manages to build faster?

While I hate to complain about the practices of this site, I just want to say that I feel short-changed by the many alterations to the rules of this contest. First it will run til Thursday but with a limit of 50 participants. Then the limit is lifted, but if you're busy elsewhere you've missed the new deadline. Which I did - by a whole 26 minutes. Well, so much for that I guess. If anyone wants to see the one image I successfully managed to upload it is at the end of the official contest thread. I tried following one of the tutorials for loading photos in blogs, etc., but aside from that one image, the rest is gobbledygook! And the darn Internet Explorer insists on wanting to work offline, even though I've got DSL, so I have to turn it on again every time I change sites or pages.
This is why I have actually stopped creating since Sims2. There is such an emphasis on photowork, which is my dread weak point, that uploading became too much frustration. So, now I'll just go back to creating solely for myself.
Okay, now I have that frustration sandwich off my chest - thanks for listening!
By the by, I do wish all those who successfully entered the best of luck and look forward to seeing all your ideas!

I wish I'd taken a screenie of when my entry house caught on fire - I had enlisted Gobias Koffi (I hates him) as caretaker, playability tester and firelighter, and as I was trying to capture the study for the picture, a fire broke out in the Drawing Room - all he did was run around screaming, so I had to make him call the firefighters - as I hadnt installed a smoke detector (not very Victorian) .. it was funny at the time lol! He had to have a lie down afterwards and despite a lovely bedroom being at his disposal he slept in the servants bedroom But I did take pics of the damage and poor Gobias sleeping it off

Oh, BTW... thank you, thank you, thank you, HP, for driving this contest. I had a great time building the house (I have not been playing Sims long and have only built a couple from scratch). It was a fun challenge and I learned quite a bit. (I still can't figure out how to do the roofs properly. They really cause me trouble).