(Brace yourselves; there's a mess of Spoiler tags ahead, with about 53 pics inside.)

So some of you may remember how my first vampire, Carmilla von Carstein (who's still going strong, by the way) moved out of her little stone tower and into this skeevy old manor on top of a hill, right?



And my second vampire, Viviana La Morde, lives in a cute little white church:


Yeah, I typo'ed her name because I suck sometimes.

So some time last year, I got a bright idea. "Hey, self! Since Carmilla and Viviana are now BFFs, and they've Bitten/Turned/Embraced/Whatever several new vampires in the meantime, I should get them all to move in together! It'll have to be a big place, but between Carmilla's Mad Scientist career and Viviana's Visionary career, they've saved up a pretty good pile of cash. So I'm thinking that this place has to be some sort of fusion between Carmilla's home and Viviana's home, but it has to be something even grander than either one! How am I going to accomplish that?"


I think I nailed it.


Streetside View. Get your best walking shoes on, because we're going to church!


I'm loving the whole "Carpathian forest" vibe here. Too bad I can't paint the underside of that dome roof over the vault; it kind of stands out in a bad way, doesn't it?


The approach. I told you it was bigger.


How the exterior looks by night. I'll have to wait until I playtest the lot to see how it looks when all those candelabras along the path light up.


The front entrance. Some of you might want to grab an online glossary on architectural terminology for Catholic churches; I'm about to get a little bit technical with the descriptions, so I might lose you.

For starters, tempted as I am to call this crazy place a "cathedral," anyone who was raised Roman Catholic (like myself) knows that the one thing which defines a cathedral is whether or not the bishop of a diocese -- or maybe the archbishop of an archdiocese -- does or ever did reside and preside there. Ya got a bishop? Ya got a cathedral. No bishop? Then all you have is a big, fancy church. You say ya got tons of deacons and priests, and maybe a resident abbot, a monsignor or an archdeacon leading them? Doesn't matter; it's still just a church. Out in the boondocks in some parts of the planet, you might even have a bishop living in some rinky-dink little four-room chapel that you could haul off with two or three flatbed trucks. Guess what? It's a cathedral too.

So yeah, I'm about to start saying a bunch of weird words. Try to keep up as we continue our look-over.


The Belltowers (typically called Steeples, but only when there's one to a church), with spires (or pinnacles) and lightning rods. Ginormous bells not included. Maxis? Where are my ginormous freakin' bells, dangitall?


The Gospel-side exterior. As you can see, I made sure to include the Nave, Gallery and Clerestory levels of the Sanctuary, along with a Vault above the Clerestory. Unless it's possible to add a foundation or a half-level between the Gallery and the Clerestory, I'm afraid I won't be including a Triforium. Sorry.


The entrance to the Vestibule, adjoined to the exterior of the Confessional. This cathedral big, fancy church doesn't have a transept because there's nowhere to put an entrance on the opposite side. So we just have a Vestibule.


Roof (with spires) and loft over the Rectory in the rear. You're going to have to move those gargoyles if you want your Sims to be able to View them; apparently Simmy eyesight isn't sharp enough to appreciate them from the ground floor.


The rear of the cathedral big, fancy church. This is the exterior of the adjoining Rectory, which includes a Refectory and a pair of latrines.


The Epistle-side exterior. I think I got it right. The Epistle side of a church typically faces South. How do I check the directions in my Simmy subhood without a working compass, anyway? Simply finding the sun's location and referencing the time of day may or may not be accurate. Or maybe I'm just overthinking things.


The Belltowers, as seen from the dome over the Vault. Maxis really could have done a better job with the dome roofs, couldn't they? I was tempted to include Custom Content for this part, but...no CC for my uploads, thanks.


Belltower interiors, pinnacle floor. If your Sims are up here, then they're seven or eight floors from the bedrock. Thanks, SetHighestAllowedLevel cheat!


More belltower interiors. Goin' down!


The Narthex, as seen from the Nave. Admittedly, it's a pretty tiny narthex.


The Choir Loft (as seen from the Nave and from the Gallery, respectively).


The Confessional. This one has been repurposed so that your Sims have a small, quiet place to read and shut themselves away from the world for a while. I always dreaded having to go to Confession (aka. Holy Confession or Holy Absolution), especially that one time after I got caught shoplifting Penny Racers from the local K-Mart, because kids always do stupid things that they later regret. So I might as well make light of things.

I'll have to check again. I did remember to put lamps in there somewhere, I think...right?


The Chancel or Presbytery -- with altar and pulpit -- as viewed from the Nave. Or maybe I'm viewing it from the Gallery. Eh...I'm somewhere in the Sanctuary, all right?

I'm not a fan of how the feet on those half-walls forming the pulpit stick out into space like that. Too bad TS2 won't let me put cornices on interior foundations (or on foundations in general); that might have looked good.


Okay, we're definitely in the Gallery this time! Anyway, there's the Chancel again, as seen from the Gallery. Go away, grid lines! You're disrupting the view!


The Gospel-Side Aisle (or Pier) and wall, as seen from the Gallery. There's some of the Choir Loft in there too.

Too bad Maxis didn't give us any two-story stained glass windows. If you attend a Catholic elementary school, it's pretty much a given that you're going to church before class every morning, and sure enough, every friggin' morning, the nuns and the laywomen teachers would round up all the children and march us over to Sacred Heart Church for morning Mass. So I ended up going to church six days out of the week when I was just a sprout. No wonder I ended up going apostate! Going to church that often got old in a hurry, but at least I learned how to speak some Latin and a smidgen of Hebrew out of the deal (because conducting Mass by speaking the language of the Jews and early Christians interchangably with the language of the Roman guys who used to beat them both up on a regular basis is totally the right thing to do, I guess).

Anyway, there was many a morning in late autumn or early spring, when I'd be sitting in whichever pew I got ushered into, listening to Deacon Gounis or one of the priests drone on and on and on about this or that, and the morning sunrise would come through those huge, two-story stained glass windows on the Epistle Side of the church (because apparently, to this day, I'm still incapable of saying "left-hand side/North side" and "right-hand side/South side" when I'm talking about a church, so thanks a heap for that, Sister Loretta Lynn...), and that sunlight would break up in the stained glass and just splatter the entire Sanctuary in this absolutely beautiful shower of rainbow-colored rays of light. It was quite the sight to start my day off on the right foot, let me tell you.

I wonder if it's possible to break out the Milkshape and mod up some two-story stained glass windows. Anyway...


The Vault. Churches with Vaults usually have those Vaults all painted up or mosaic'ed up with pretty scenes and pictures of saints and whatnot. I had to settle for hammering out some clumsy "Light versus Darkness" thing (again, with the Light on the sunlit Epistle side of the church). Sorry, no Sistine-Chapel-quality paintings or mosaics up here; I have to work within my limitations. No CC, remember?

I wonder if I should take out those stained glass windows. IIRC, most Vaults don't have those.


The Chancel and the Sanctuary -- with Clerestory, Gallery and Nave levels -- as viewed from the Vault. Oh, yes...almost the entire Vault itself is in there too. Can I pick my screenshot angles or what? :D


...you know, I actually forget what these things or places are called. And, like I said, I was brought up in a Roman Catholic family. Shame on me for forgetting that.

I think they're called "votive shrines," though, but don't quote me on that. You know what I'm talking about; every old Catholic church has at least one of these deals with a whole buttload of white candles, and they're dedicated to the Virgin Mary or one of the saints, and so you'd take the little match or firestick, light one of the candles, kneel on the little knee rest or knee cushion, and pray for wisdom or perseverence or bloody vengeance against your enemies or whatever. Sacred Heart's votive shrine was consecrated to the Virgin Mary, but I'd use that votive shrine to offer up my prayers to Saint Joan of Arc instead, and I'd bring my own little glass Saint Joan of Arc candle (which Monsignor Liebrecht had personally blessed at my request) and light that candle at the votive shrine instead because, even though the Virgin Mary probably had bigger clout (and was thus more capable of getting my prayers to God than Joan of Arc was), I really liked Saint Joan and I was a defiant little cuss like that.

I also sometimes went to church with my Aunt Kris and her brood, and they had had some kind of falling out with Sacred Heart, so they attended the Saint Martin de Porres Church in Hazelwood, Missouri instead, and sure enough, the church had one of these votive shrine thingies set aside for our man (and the church's namesake), Saint Martin of Porres...only their church was pretty cheap; all Saint Martin got was a crummy black iron rack with a bunch of votive candles on it. I'm not even sure if we got a threadbare pillow to kneel on. They also placed their big, chunky, granite baptismal font right there in the middle of the narthex, where you were almost guaranteed to smack your elbows against it when you were coming in or going home. I'm not even sure if Saint Martin's Epistle Side faced south! Going to church at Saint Martin's kind of sucked.


Interior of the Vestibule. You thought I'd forgotten to show off that part, didn't you?

Huh. I should probably move that one window back to its proper spot, shouldn't I?


Beyond the Vestibule, we find the latrines/bathrooms/restrooms/water closets/yeah, those places.


The Refectory. Because priests need to eat too.


The Rectory, with a couple of portals looking out over the Chancel and the Sanctuary (so that a veteran priest can look out and see if the new priest running the Mass might need a little help).

And hey, look at that! One of the bedchambers is a little bit fancier than the others! Let's say that that's where some bishop used to catch some Z's. There! I can call it a cathedral now, right?


And finally, we go all the way back to the Vestibule and find the descent to the Crypt.



"So why are you posting all of this, you sentimental MunchieBot sort of guy?" you ask. Simple: Because many heads are better than one. I want this big, fancy church cathedral to be the best cathedral that it can possibly be, and the sooner I get it into its "Beta phase," the sooner I can copy it and playtest it with my own Sims. And the sooner I playtest it, the sooner I can get it uploaded to MTS.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist like that. While I was composing this post, I noticed that one of the things that I forgot to include was some sort of Sacristy behind the Chancel; I'll have to throw one in before I upload this lot. I'm also a bit detail-oriented. For an example of that, the "common alcoves" for the Crypt originally looked like this:


And from the viewpoint of TS2's mechanics, it was okay (aside from the possible design flaw of Simmy "traffic jams," especially if you fill that crypt with vampirey Sims and they all pop out of their coffins at 7 PM sharp). But then I started thinking about it, and thinking about it, and soonafter questioning the crypt's functionality. "Wait a minute. I was one of the pallbearers when Alzheimer's killed my Grandpa Andy back in 1993. Now, the weight of the coffin isn't much of a problem with six people lugging it around; my Cousin Jennifer was one of the pallbearers right there with us, she's a slight little thing and she was helping us lug Grandpa Andy around just fine. No, the problem with carrying a coffin is the maneuverability. You're carrying this long object with most of its weight unbalanced towards one end, and getting it around corners is the biggest pain, and the pallbearers all have to coordinate their movements just right...how did the pallbearers get those coffins up into those alcoves--without dropping the coffins and their inhabitants, saints forbid--with all those fences and half-walls getting in their way all over the place?!?"

So I implemented a more practical design.


See? Up, over, in, set it down, done.

Of course, that wasn't any problem for this big guy:

...but you get the idea.

So I was hoping to pick a few brains and get some input, feedback and advice. How do I make it better? What could I improve? What do I need to fix? What kind of Simmy name should I give the place?

You know I'd do it for you, right? Lend me your tongues.

Wow, honey....so this is where you've been all day! This is truly a work of art! I have no words. No way could I ever build anything like this...

I know nothing of Catholic stuff soooo...I really have no critique of anything you might have done wrong. The design looks beautiful to me. I would totally download this.

You have to playtest though. Let us know about lag and things like that. Simmy name...hmm...I'll get back to you on that.

This would be great for the Plumbbob of Praise you can download here. I know I know, no CC, buuuut you could play with it

Imagine what you could do with Minecraft

You can't have a cathedral without a bell! Fortunately, you aren't the first person to have that problem. http://modthesims.info/t/441825

Aw, you flatter me! But yeah, I've been tinkering with that lot for the better part of today (or yesterday, as of now). I probably should have been looking for a new job, but I've been Simming instead.

Lead me not into temptation, for I'm perfectly capable of finding it by myself.


Thank you.

I probably should do something about those little chandeliers over the choir loft. I went through all that trouble of making sure that the big chandelier connects to the ceiling, yet there are the little ones, hanging from thin air. Why is it that TS2 checks for a floor when you're placing ceiling lights, but not a ceiling? Silly Maxis.


Okay. I'm wondering if the name should be geographical (like "The Butterroot Forest Cathedral") or ecclesial (like "The Holy House of Saint Landgraabus of the Llamas"). Get back to me with your thoughts, will you?


Already downloaded it, per your recommendation. Thank you again. I'll be adding it to the lot after I upload the lot to MTS, of course.





Pfft! Minecraft? Let's take another step down the evolutionary ladder here. Imagine what I could do with Legos!

And le sigh, it seems that someone has already Disagreed without an explanation...probably just some Abrahamic zealot who earnestly believes that God trashed Sodom and Gomorrah just because some Gomorran jerk let his dog pee on the local synagogue's lawn while he was playing Dungeons & Dragons with a Judas Priest casette blaring in the living room, so I'm going to Hell for building this lot and yadda yadda. Nuts to them, I say.

You're too cool for words. I'll have to sift through those links and see what's good. Thank you, Hitler Cat! :lovestruc

So how do you suppose one would go about modding up a two-story stained glass window, anyway? Would Milkshape work, or is there something better for meshing and painting bits of architecture out there?

You built all that in a day?!! You do know that most Real Life cathedrals took centuries to build? Are you trying to outdo God creating the universe in a week? I'm very, very impressed! It took me about two months to build the little 1x2 house I have uploaded here.

I thought my St. Simeon's Parish Church in Veronaville was big, but I don't think it's even as big as the little white church where Viviana used to live! Though St. Simeon's certainly looks big on a Sunday morning when 7 or 8 Sims gather in front of the pulpit at the front to listen to one of the Rev. Elspeth Anderson's 3 or 4 hour sermons!

By the way I thought the Gospel side of the church was the right hand side looking towards the high altar, and therefore the South side if the church faces East. Similarly the Epistle side is the left or North side. I believe the original reason for an Epistle Candle and a Gospel candle on the altar was purely practical -- the priest would stand next to the appropriate candle just so he could see his bible to read it. Somehow it became traditional to read the Epistle on one side and the Gospel on the other side.

Geographical Orientation? At least some of the Maxis 'hoods give hints as to what direction is North. Downtown has Sim Center North and Sim Center South. The description of Veronaville Market says that that's where East Side Sims do their grocery shopping. So the East Side must be the side of the canal where all the English Tudor style houses are.

In the West at least, the tradition grew up if building churches to face East, because, from a western point of view, the Gospel came from the East. Now most older churches really do face East. But... they don't have to face East... Because the church has "Liturgical East", and in a traditional church, Liturgical East is where the [high] altar is -- whether that's really East or not. So, the altar is always at the East End of the church, even if that's really South (as it is in the church I attend), or West (as it is in St. Simeon's, Veronaville, because I had already built St. Simeon's before I read the description of Veronaville Market!).

Myself I'd settle for a stained glass recolour of these "The Light Pane" Maxis windows that I used for St. Simeon's Church. I wonder of anyone has made any.


I really am impressed that you did all that without using CC. I previously thought that building a convincing church without CC was pretty well impossible.

Truly, I tell you, this is a wonderful creation, my brother, and whatever you end up calling it, it will be the Cathedral of Sainte Jeanne for me :lovestruc
I have no real feedback to offer as you seem to be doing pretty well by yourself^^, and I'm too overwhelmed by this HUGE work you've done and all the details you've thought of to think of anything to add or change myself (except I am not very happy with the presence of those awful creatures in the house of God, obviously, repent ! )

Do you know about these windows by Moon-Ez? And these and these!

(P.S.: Let us hope the Most Reverend can teleport... )

Edit: Charity, looks like those church bells are Sims 3, though?

wow... just wow...
still, I cannot help wondering how long it'll take to climb all those steps

Ah, bugger. Google, you have failed me. I said Sims 2!

Okay, this time they're definitely Sims 2!

http://chukhin.brinkster.net/Lynne/...mes/church.html

http://www.affinitysims.com/IPB/fil...cross-download/

http://www.modthesims.info/d/276603

Also, stained glass windows. http://www.modthesims.info/download...5#startcomments

I honestly have no idea what half of the words you said actually mean
I just sat there confused then decided to look at the pictures and stop reading..

beautiful Cathedral/Church whatever you call it - how much does it cost and how horrible is the lag?

Wow. Any chance you might upload that bad boy?

lol I hear ya!




The Holy House of Saint Landgraabus of the Llamas is hysterical. I'm a pistol with funny names. They always grab me but if you want something regal The Butterroot Forest Cathedral is very pretty




You are very welcome! I put that in all of my churches









Fook yeah Legos...



That...was perfect. You forgot the Ozzy poster in his bedroom wall next to Jesus though

This is definitely a lot to be played with 'aging off'. A sim could die of old age before reaching the front door. (: Nice work!
(why are there no vampire smilies!)

Doesn't this thread fit better as a post in any of the threads over at the Picture-subforum?

Well, it actually took the better part of a year, though I was working on and off, and there were a few months here and there where I took a break from The Sims 2 to play The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion or one of Neverwinter Nights' online servers. It wasn't all done in a single day by any means.


You know what would be great to have in a pulpit? One of the lecturns that the game gives out as career rewards from the Politics or Law career paths. Would your SIms happen to have one of those?


You might be thinking of left and right from the priest's point of view. From the parish's point of view, the Gospel Side is to their left and the Epistle Side is to their right. But for the priest facing the parish, it's quite the opposite, because the Gospel Side is to the priest's right, and it's so named because it's the side where the pulpit is, because the priest is symbolically standing at the Right Hand of God and yadda yadda.

But even though the terms are dictated by the priest's positioning, the terms are typically (and rather contrarily) described from the parish's point of view; therefore, Gospel Side is to the parish's left and Epistle Side is to the parish's right. As for which side faces which geographical direction, I always thought it was a bit odd that the Gospel Side wouldn't face the south, because that's where the sun comes in. Taking World Religions class in college was a bit of an eye opener when we got to the part about how practically any religion on Earth falls into one of two types: Your judgemental "Sky God/Sun God" religions and your nurturing "Earth God/Earth Goddess" religions. And the Abrahamic religions are definitely Sun God religions. So I say that by all means, let's flip that church around! Screw the parish; that priest needs to have the sun coming in on his right side, dangit!

I understand that there are exceptions to the standard, though. "Okay, the archbishop has given us the say-so to build a new church here in Podunksville, but the only available land is this old turnip patch going from north-by-northeast to south-by-southwest!" "Well, then...I guess we're going to have to improvise."


But it's difficult to use that knowledge to use that insight to find North from within the lot itself, doubly so if the neighborhood doesn't have any "North This" or "South That" lots (I'm looking at you, Pleasantview). It could work for certain hoods and subhoods, though. Like Twikki Island; just find the South End Beach and the Boardwalk, there's south, and the opposite side of the island is north. We can assume that the Maxis staff were all using the same virtual compass rose, right?


Were the churches Protestant, by chance? Between my Roman Catholic years and my Wiccan years, I visited several Protestant churches as well as one or two Nontrinitarian churches (or whatever the proper, official term for "Born-Again Christianity" is), and those churches don't play by Catholicism's rules by any means. Even that Saint Martin de Porres Church had a very modern design, with a roof that looked like the ice cream on a soft serve cone and a more circular design which contrasted with the traditional cruciform design that old churches (like Sacred Heart Church) have. If I was walking down the street, and I passed Saint Martin de Porres without knowing its name and its ecclesiarchy, I'd immediately guess that it was a Protestant church. That's how weird Saint Martin de Porres was...that and the whole "Screw it, let's just put the baptismal font right in the middle of the friggin' narthex" thing.

I imagine that there are bound to be some deviations after 2,000 years of Christianity, though. Look at Judaism; Judaism's easily twice as old as Christianity is, and I dare anyone to find any two synagogues on the planet which share the same bearing and floor plan. On the other hand, Islam is the youngest of the Abrahamic religions, and I have yet to hear of a mosque which doesn't face East, because of Mecca and whatnot. Give Islam another millenium and there probably will be mullahs and imams who will find some reason why their mosque should face North or West or South-by-Southeast, though.

But those Protestant churches, though...some of their architectures are just plain crazy. But considering that the entirety of Protestant Christianity has its origins in rebellion and defiance against the norm, I suppose that could be expected. If some reverend out there got the bright idea of starting a Lutheran church by dragging a shrimping ship into someone's yard and facing it any which way, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.


Those actually are Light Pane windows that I'm using in my cathedral, rising from the Nave and the Gallery. I just have them partly covered with two large red curtains and some Second Empire cornices, that's all.

That's a snazzy little church, by the way. I like how the brick on the Nave level contrasts with the stucco on the levels above it.


Well, it definitely helps to have all of the EPs and all of the SPs; there's quite a bit of variety to be found among them all. But including CC definitely would help. I've just decided that none of my uploads to MTS will include CC, because I want people to be able to install the .package or the .Sims2pack and jump right in. And I hate it when I find some awesome-looking CC, and I go to download it, and the creator says, "Thank you for looking over my custom green grocer stand! Just download these two files, then download four more files from Site X, and six more files from Site Y, and delete this file, and move that file to such-and-such directory, and burn some frankincense during the Autumn Equinox, then balance a fork on your head, and you're all set!"

Ah, my tale of me and my little Saint Jeanne d'Arc candle struck a chord with you, didn't it?

(I eventually ended up dropping that candle and shattering the glass (purely by accident, of course). Little pieces of Joan of Arc were all over the place. That was a sad day. Here, let's have some comforting rap music.)


Oh, there are lot builders out there who make me look like a puppy. But I do like to put a lot of thought into anything I design and build, in regards to function and form. Thank you for the kindly words.

As for vampires living in a church, I told you I was a defiant little cuss.

It kind of reminds me of that one issue of Garth Ennis' "Preacher" comic book series, with that flashback interlude where the vampire Cassidy goes to New Orleans and comes across another vampire named Eccarius, who has a bunch of super-Gothy mortal thralls licking his boots at every turn, so Cassidy makes it his mission to set Eccarius straight on vampires and stripping away all the myths about vampires to expose the reality beneath. Part of that process involves Cassidy dragging Eccarius into a church, and they're both sitting in one of the front pews, and Cassidy's just sitting calmly next to Eccarius (albeit with a displeased grimace all over his face), and Eccarius is all wailing and freaking out and gazing fearfully at the big, crucified Jesus over the altar, and Cassidy just casually smacks Eccarius in the head every time Eccarius starts panicking because "OMG we're vampires in a church!" Mind over matter, right?

But it turns out that Eccarius is a murderous vampire who's all about the thirst for blood, and he's supposedly killed hundreds of people by yielding to the blood thirst and draining them dry, while Cassidy is the more-or-less "good guy" vampire with a sense of humanity and restraint. So he ends up nailing Eccarius to the roof of the church and leaving him out for the sunrise. I guess there are some lines that even vampires shouldn't cross.


Nice! I'm not sure about including Atrium windows with a Gothic-styled church, but for a more modern church? Oh, yes. Those windows would be perfect!

And every church should have big screen TVs in it. Parish attendance would go through the roof, and collections might possibly go up with it. "Joe? Here's the collection plate." "Yeah, yeah, here's 20 bucks. Now shush; that girl's about to throw the stick and get rid of the werewolf that used to be her boyfriend." :D


Good idea. Maybe we should fill that cathedral with witches instead. Magivestigium FTW!

But still, Simmy vampires can move pretty quickly when they're flying in bat form, and even faster when they're Stalking from room to room. I still haven't figured out why the Stalk move makes vampires sneak around like burglars when the destination's in the same room, but they Stalk at Mach 1 when the destination's only two or three rooms away. How does Maxis explain that?


Lots and lots of Sim-minutes. Watch out for the sunrise, and don't be late for work!


Google happens.


Mine! Thanks again, Charity! :lovestruc


Oh, is that so? Well, I'm going to narthex you with my triforium and apse your transept while I'm ambulatory-crossing your chevette!

...yeah, I think I just confused myself too. So we're okay.


Right now, the lot costs a little over 340,000 Simoleons (though you could chop quite a bit off the price by editing the lot and deleting all the art objects). As for the lag, I'll have to playtest the lot before I can determine that. But different people use different computers, so your mileage may vary anyway.


Soon. Very soon.


That's why I came up with the same process that I used for the Fruityboo Farms Dormitory (which is still patiently cooling its heels in MTS's queue, alas):

1) Package the lot as soon as you reach an acceptable stage of completion.
2) Find the lot's .Sims2pack file in your PackagedLots subdirectory.
3) Run it and install the pristine lot to your Lots menu.
4) Run the game, go to the Lots menu and place a copy of the lot somewhere else in the neighborhood; this is your "Beta" copy. Keep the original lot where it is.
5) Move some Sims into either lot (preferably the copy, but that's just me), then play with them. Leave the other lot (the original, in my case) uninhabited.
6) Whenever you find something that doesn't work or could stand improvement, make the necessary improvements, Save the game, return to the Neighborhood and make the exact same changes to the original lot.
7) As soon as you stop finding things that are broken or need improvement, your uninhabited copy of the lot is ready to be packaged (again) and uploaded. You can now delete the "Beta" copy from your PackagedLots directory and your Lots menu, if you want.

And that's how I playtest my Simmy lots.


I've seen confessionals which were just two chairs in a little room (and the priest always gets the nicer chair, of course), with no screen between them or anything. Even back in my Catholic days, I would never want to use a confessional like that. It was bad enough with me sitting next to a screen with Father Seper or Monsignor Liebrecht sitting on the other side, and us hearing each other's voices while I dredged up all the bad things that I'd done in the past two weeks, and him listening and dictating how much time I should spend atoning with my Hail Mary prayers and my rosary and the Stations of the Cross and so on. Now imagine Monsignor Liebrecht sitting right across from me, looking me dead in the eye while I'm telling him about when I was staring at little Jacqueline Welsh and her little, developing boobies back around Fifth Grade. I'd be squirming like an epileptic riding through a sugar rush.

As for saintly relics, Sacred Heart had a monstrance with a sliver of bone from the body of Saint Such-and-such...some obscure saint, I forget who he was. And I couldn't help but think, "Holy moley, what happened to him? Somebody was just picking little chunks of bone out of him? Was he martyred by a Roman steamroller or something?"

And somewhere inside the altar itself, there was a sliver of wood which supposedly came from the cross on which Jesus himself was crucified. Of course, given how many other churches make this claim, there's probably enough wood from the original Cross out there to build an entire new church. Another holy miracle, right?


Hmm...I suppose that I should go with a more somber tone for the name; it's a big church, and churches aren't known for being comedy gold. Besides, Simmisms like "Landgraab" and "Llama" are a bit overused. Though we could come up with some other funny Simmy names....


We're just getting over a few months of 90-degree and 100-degree days. I envy you and the temperance of your geographical climate!


Oh, you're right! With as many Ozzy Osbourne/Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper casettes and CDs that I've racked up over the years, I'd probably get my own layer of Hell (at least according to Jack Chick).


Thank you! I wonder how quickly an Active Sim could run through all those stairs and bridges. That might come up during playtesting too.

But yeah, any Lazy Sims living on this lot are definitely screwed.


Truly a mystery for the ages.


Doesn't your head fit better up your ass, you cowardly, passive-aggressive, Swedish twat? Save your self-important minimodding for your limp-wristed Simlish Noir site!

Why does HugeLunatic love you so much, anyway? What have you ever done for the Simming community, Prah? What have you ever created? You unlocked a couple of ugly hats which Maxis probably hid for a good reason. That's it. That's all you've done. You shouldn't be getting carte blanche over weakling shit like that, dude.

I have a gift for you... :lovestruc

Its a bunch of church stuff! And I think some of them are Catholic.

Credit goes to maxon for uploading these on her Polgannon download.



Oh? I'd like that



I love all that music! I was raised by rock and roll!

Arrgh, you posted while I was still editing! Shame on you for not being psychic!





Ooh, goodies! I'll have to comb through them all after lunch. Thank you, and thank maxon too!


You can throw out the next pitch, then. What other names could this big, fancy church have?


So was I, but heavy metal was my godfather. I'm still listening to metal after all these years...the good stuff, anyway. Symphonic metal bands like Epica, Kamelot, Nightwish and After Forever, classic metal bands like Quiet Riot, contemporary thrash metal bands like Five Finger Death Punch, spoofy metal bands like GWAR and Austrian Death Machine...they're all good. But "screamo" bands like Napalm Death and Cradle of Filth can jump off a cliff, and they can take the ear-biting power metal bands like Dragonforce with them. But not Stratovarius. Stratovarius is a rare band that actually produces good power metal, you see.

Rock on, DizzyBoo!

Yes, I am horrible aren't I? :P







Not a problem. Now the gravestones can only be used on owned lots. Can't find them for community which kinda sucks. But they are soooo much fun! They have interactions




Hahaha, I'm not sure. Cathedral of the Lighthearted? Something that sounds like flowers and light and joy and inside is dead vampires :P




My fave band ever is Evanescence, but I also love Disturbed, Metallica, Three Days Grace, Linkon Park, Ludo, AC/DC, a few others. I like Fall Out Boy a lot too. So I'm not full metal or full rock. I enjoy all types of music...

That might be worth a look too. Up until now, the only way I could fill up a cemetery is by rolling up a heaping bunch of randomized Sims, killing off all but one of them (typically by Motherloding them a bunch of money, sending them to Twikki Island, having them find the Mysterious Hut and trying to fix the Witch Doctor's stuff when they all have zero Mechanical skill), then have the remaining Sim send all of their urns to Gothier Green Lawns or wherever. But I have to do it quickly, because I'm a soft-hearted and benevolent Sim God and it grieves me to deliberately kill my Sims.

Danke.


Well, it's tempting to go with "The Holy House of the Whited Sepulcher," but that's too strong of a Biblical reference. How about "The Sacred Platinum Plumbob Cathedral" instead?


Aw, country's not so bad. You just have to pick the peppy stuff, like Trisha Yearwood...not the stuff that gets you all depressed and makes you want to throw yourself off a bridge. That's the bad country music (even if 4 out of 5 long-haul truckers would disagree with me on that).

Rodney Carrington has some great country music, but that's mostly because he sings about naughty, risqué and ultimately hilarious stuff. Search for his tunes while you're on YouTube. You'll see what I mean.

I listened to a lot of Nox Arcana music while I was knocking this cathedral together, though. Nox Arcana really has a way of putting me in the right frame of mind for creating things along that vein. So did one or two or three or four or five or six or seven or, well, lots of tunes from the Castlevania games. Music sets the mood, and mood means all the world when I'm creating things. But isn't that true for all of us?

Speaking of Baljhet Mountains, I wonder if it's possible for me to outdo this lot by extending a lot's size to, say, something huge -- like 12x12 -- and using TS2's terrain tools to create a bona fide mountain, sized to scale, right there in the middle of the neighborhood. This cathedral's just sitting on a foothill by comparison, but an actual mountain...would that be crazy or what? As three years in West Montana assured me, mountains are awesome in the truest sense of the word.

This is one impressive build, Pizzatron! Oh, for a computer that would allow me lots like this.