I've been watching a lot of Time Team and felt inspired to make an Iron Age roundhouse. Pictures of the house from the exterior, "ceiling," and overhead are attached at the bottom. I had previously furnished it, but was running into issues with routing, and so took out everything and decided to come here to ask for advice.

I have an octagonal main building which is about ten tiles by ten tiles wide, and a "porch" entry that's four tiles square. I don't think I can quite round out the building to be a proper circle--most of the "fake wall" columns I've seen are meant for one tile use, not a massive octagon ten tiles across. (Unless someone knows something I don't?)

I'm using The Merrye Makers' medieval campfire as a hearth, since a central fireplace was very common per my initial research. (I also like the aesthetic of it.)

The left-hand enclosure is meant to be a vegetable garden; the dark patch at the back for toilet facilities, and the right-hand enclosure is for Danjaley's steakplant pigs.

I'm using the following resources for aesthetics, and am quite happy to do more research in order to make the house look more authentic.
BBC History Site
Butser Ancient Farm Site

This is what I'd like to know.

1. What edits would you all suggest to make this lot more playable?
2. Is there a way to make the kitchen facilities less obtrusive if I put them on one of the diagonal walls?
3. Would it be better to replace the campfire with a period-looking firepit, so that it's easier for Sims to sit around the hearth and eat?
4. What changes would need to be made if I were to submit this for upload?

Thank you!

I hope it's not bad form for me to add some updates. Images are attached at the bottom.

I switched the roof type to look more like it had ridgepoles.

A lot of reconstructions have a double door on the "porch" and then a curtain door on the interior, which I've replicated.

I also took a leaf from the Ancient Technology Centre's book and put the adult beds on Sandy's tiny house platforms. The toddler's bed and the cradle are unable to go up on the platform--probably for the best--and so now sit under the "parent" bed platform. The larger beds looked a little silly, so I switched to the single beds. I then had to increase the house size a bit in order to have more room. I plan to put seating under the other beds, and perhaps looms and other objects to mimic workspaces.

The larger size meant I had to get rid of the fences entirely, so I'll move the house (which is now twelve tiles across on the straight sides) to a larger lot. Maybe 30x30? At the moment, it can house six child or older sims, one toddler, and one baby.

I think this looks nice. I'm not familiar with the elevated cc bed you are using(make sure your sims can use it and route to it). I think I would make pens that contour to the shape of the outer fence wall and not square(to have at least 2 free space to improve routing)if you decide to recreate animal pens on your new expanded lot like your first series of pictures.

Thank you! I'm really enjoying this build. I've already started testing it and the platform double bed does have routing issues...back to the drawing board.

What do you mean by 'contouring to the outer fence'? Like another little octagon on each "wing" where I had the garden/pigpen earlier?

edit: I totally did not notice that you were wanting to make this for upload, so most of the ideas I so enthusiastically burbled about in this reply are irrelevant. I left them because maybe you can use them in some other way.

In Sims 2 I made yurts by recoloring bluetexasbonnie's tower windows. I have not seen a similar mesh for Sims 3, unfortunately. I forget, can you cook something more than marshmallows (hot dogs for example) with the firepit? If so, I would use a simple firepit & maybe place some deco rocks around the fire itself with moveobjects & alt? & somewhere I saw dining chairs in the shape of boulders and some in cut-off logs though I think that there's a few stool designs, like the Awesims midcentury one or I think maybe one in the Store Africa set that I think would actually be more authentic if you took some care in using wicker and wood patterns to recolor them? Are those logs loveseats though? Because that probably work fines. In my downloads I have a thing called a "community grill" which is a cauldron with a grill on it hanging over a campfire but I cannot remember where that came frrom.

Another thing I can't remember where it came from is a bee tree which is a functional beehive from Supernatural in the shape of a hollow tree. There's some rustic off the grid plumbing here at MTS, and it's reasonable to have a few harvestables-you could go through the list & stick to the most authentic if you cared, or you could have some of the available harvestables stand in for the ones you know your guys would really be eating. Since you're moving the house to a larger lot anyway you might have room in a corner for a fish pond- run one of cyclonesue's crooked fences across it for a weir, maybe? Since the store chicken house can't be recolored to look like wattle & daub, maybe you'd rather use Mspoodle's hen plant mod to get eggs for your iron age sims? I forget when the chicken we know came out of southeast asia to feed the world-I know it was a long time ago-but if it was later than that, you could just say "it's a grouse" or something...

Oh and instead of a refrigerator you could use one of Around The Sims Sandy's "chestlike" baskets too keep the food from going bad. I assume you'll use the peeing bush, which I think is actually an EA thing, not custom content. I'm pretty sure there's several waterfall showers & a sink that basically looks like a rock pool, but I can't be as sure about that last thing because if it exists I don't have it & why wouldn't I? TGhough I don't have much of the ATS prehistoric deco either. She has some toys and things for prehistoric children.

What I meant was possibly altering your fence area to allow a 2 space routing between your structure and fenced area so it does not become obstructed by sim traffic. I understand that you are placing this lot on a larger sized one and may have increased area for animals and routing(just keep in mind sims route better if they have a 2 space minimum). Here is a picture of what I mean by changing your fencing.

Another thing to consider for creating a lot for upload would be landscaping(trees,plants, terrain paint). You can find the guidelines for a Sims 3 lot and house here.

These are all good ideas! I might use them for the version that I play with, while the uploaded version is of course a bit more CC-light.

I think Sims can cook fish on the firepit, which would probably be nicer; I'm going to have to see if I can put it over the campfire mesh without it causing a major problem in terms of routing. (I really want them to have a fireplace, which is probably going to have to go by the wayside...)

I've included some attached images of the improved build and some playtesting I did with the Funke family.

I wound up giving them a cookhouse, so it's a bit less jarring for them to have a "stone shelf" fridge for food storage, as well as improving routing. (They'll probably complain in the winter. Builds character!) I also added Danjaley's "spring" well, so they don't HAVE to go out to a community well unless they have to. They also have an "outhouse" where I'll put a medieval toilet (or two) once I figure out which one I want to use; there's also room for a bucket sink and the functional washing tub. (Notice I neglected to put in a shower or a bathtub; reconfiguring may be necessary; also I forgot to take pictures of the outhouse.)

The playthrough taught me that the platform double bed doesn't have enough space for the 'parents' to route onto it, so I'll replace that with a double bed on the floor. I may just put another double bed on the floor for the children; it's warmer and it may well be cuter, too.

Thank you! On the larger lot, there is now a two-tile path minimum between the house and the vegetable garden, outhouse, and cookhouse.

I'll work on landscaping once I finish the playtesting--I'm definitely going to have dirt paths towards areas of interest such as the outhouse and the garden, but I will have to think about which plants and where.

This is very interesting to see! I love that loom. Where did you get it?

I wound up doing more research and realizing that a conical roof was more appropriate for the house, so it's switched back again. (Thinking about the earlier comments about a pee bush, plus some googling of what the village the house is situated in would have looked like, has made me go back and forth and actually delete a lot of the outbuildings while I ponder!)

The roof style shown here (the ridges of thatch, not so much the finials since that's probably not very possible) is really intriguing me here.

I'm so sorry, I missed this reply. It's by murfeelee, in her Dragon Age: Origins Artsy set! https://murfeelee.tumblr.com/post/1...0/dao-artsy-set

Playtesting with the Funke family--which is big enough that they'd really highlight any issues--has gone very well so far! There were a few route tantrums at first, but they've gotten better at navigating. (They also can pillow-fight in front of the beds, which worried me at first because I thought that meant there was too much room.)

I'm trying to do some landscaping--which I'm not terribly good at. I like the way the heather at the gates looks, but I don't want this to look very manicured or neat. (It's not a fancy house!)

These tutorials may help you with landscaping: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?li...5568BC59582D916

Thank you for the link, but I'm Deaf and find video tutorials rather difficult to follow. Is there a text version of these tutorials? (Or is it similar to the tutorial listed here: https://modthesims.info/wiki.php?ti...ior#Landscaping ?)

I am sorry, I thought those would help you. The tutorial you have posted seems good. There is also this one: Link

It's okay! You had no way of knowing, and I appreciate the thought. Don't worry! I'll be sure to look at those links.

I have some update pictures!

I think this looks very good!

Thank you very much!

Thank you! I just got it.