really wonderful
thank you mairi

thank you for making a beautiful house in a 3x3 lot !

Oh so beautiful!
I love the layout of the home.
Thank you!!

Oh my... that is beautiful! I'm so jealous of your graphics :P
I just have to download this one! Thank you so much :D

Oh how truelly gracious the splendor of this home is. You've done a magnificent job and it's absolutly beautiful. A thousand thanks for this Mediterranean abode.

Beautiful! Just a quick quesiton though, where and or how did you get the moon to show up?

I played around with the time in the game (using the setHour cheat) and tried different camera angles until the moon was positioned where I wanted it.

Thanks for all the kind comments, everyone!

For those of you who are waiting for Saraceno, it is in queue now and should be released any time now.

See you soon!

Mairi

i'm having trouble with a corrupt zip on the paintings file. redownloaded a couple of times but it hasn't helped.

The houses look beautiful though, i've downloaded all the mediterranean series so far, looking forward to more. Great work.

I tested the Paintings zip with WinRAR and had a problem with it being corrupted as well, but when I used WinZIP 11 I had no problem with it. I think it might be the compression method I used to package the file--give me a little bit and I will upload a new version of it.

Thanks for bringing that to my attention!

Mairi

Thank you Mairi for a quick response, haven't had time to try out the houses in game yet, must go do that while i'm thinking about it

i'll grab a new copy of the file too.

Your pictures are amazing! It brings out how pretty and homey the house is. Good job!

Thanks Kaikou! You don't even want to know how long I spend getting each picture just right. . .I take a LOT of pictures and then select only a few of the best to upload. I guess you could say that I am a bit of a perfectionist. It drives my husband nuts!

Mairi

This series of houses are beautiful. Is hard to compared them with anything else I seeing as they have a very unique style and elegance..
I just love them.

I tried to play some of them but they all crashed my game. I have the feeling is those gorgeous stain glass windows and doors as they are not in the pack and you give no information as of where to get them. I would like to know where are they so I can download them. If they are from one of the ep I just haven't seeing them yet. And then I really would not know what is happening that I can't get in any of your houses.

I love the houses all of them.. I even subscribe to the other site just to get the Arriosa.. which also crashed the game.. for now I deleted them from the game but will love to give it another try. I do have the reflective floors and all expantions and stuff packs.

Thank you for sharing,
Makai

Makai I'm sorry! I hate to hear that someone had a problem like that with one of my houses! I am so careful when I build them, as I don't want anyone to ever have a problem. I have used no custom content in these houses except for the paintings (Maxis recolors) that I created myself and provided in the zip file. I don't have any custom content installed on my computers at all, as a matter of fact (except for the paintings).

The doors and windows are all Maxis items, not sure which expansion they are from.

What exactly happens when you try to get in the houses? Does your computer freeze and lock up? Or does something drastic happen to your game? Please get in touch with me and describe exactly what happens so that I can help you figure this out.

Make sure that your computer has enough RAM and a good enough graphics card that can support houses of this size (they are very graphics-intensive and can take a lot of memory).

If it is a glitch with the houses I will try to fix it but I haven't heard of anyone else having problems (and I myself have very thoroughly tested each house on several different computers with different graphics cards).

I would really like to help you figure this out so that you can play the houses! Please get back in touch with me.

Thanks,

Mairi

Thank you very much Mairi for answering me. I get the house in a lot. I click to go inside and it only loads about the first 3 or 4 bars of the loading page and it just stay there till it tell me that the game has crashed and that it needs to close.
I have 2gigs of memory in my computer and Radeon All-in-Wonder 9800 Series w/ 128 Mem Ram. For X-mas my husband got me a 22" flat screen LCD monitor that is off the hook! The graphic looks out of this world (which probably all LCD do regarless de size) LOL
Actually I just have my computer check for the new OS Vista and it passed with flying colors.. over and above the requirements (not that I am going to buy it, but wanted to know) So now I know I do have an above average computer.
I am going to try the house again later tonight as I have to see them in game.
Your houses all of them are OFF THE HOOK!
Thank you for sharing,
Makai

Makai,

Make sure that you have all of the latest drivers for your sound card, graphics card, the latest DirectX, etc. Make sure that your game is updated, and that you have done regular maintenance to your PC (Windows Update, defragment, etc.).

Make sure that all of the following expansion packs are installed correctly (sometimes the expansion pack files can overwrite each other or the game files when installing, so that you won't be able to play a house that requires all expansions without crashing): University, Nightlife, Open For Business, Pets, Family Fun Pack. Check in neighborhood view and make sure that all of the optional buttons for the different expansions at the top left of your screen work correctly.

I have run the houses successfully on another computer (not the one that they were built with) with the following specs: 1.5 gig RAM, ATI Radeon 9550 256 mb graphics card, 2.42 gig processor. My husband's computer is similar and they ran fine on his too. Don't know if that helps or not.

Here are a few questions that might help me figure out what is going on:

-Do you have a problem entering anyone else's house?
-Which version of Ferretti do you have?
-Can you enter the houses in Build mode?
-Have you tried entering the houses with a different family? Sometimes a family can get glitched during the evicting and moving process and can crash a house upon entering.

Let me know if you get the houses working correctly--I need to figure out if this is a problem with my houses that I can fix. I really want you to be able to enjoy them!

Thanks for your patience,

Mairi

Bravo!

Hi Mairi,

I have all those bases covered. I am going to try and installed one of them with the Q from MSTS.

And NO I have no problems entering any other house that I have downloaded. That is why I was so taken back by this happening. As this is not something that happenes to me often.. Actually this is the second time since my first Sims 1 game back in 1999.


Thanks,
Makai

Makai,

I'm sorry about that--I have done a good bit of research on the subject to try and find out what is causing this, and haven't come up with much. It appears to be a rather murky issue that doesn't have any easy answers. I sincerely hope that it isn't a problem with my houses, but I haven't had any other reports like that about them. Let me know if you figure something out--I feel really bad about this.

If anybody else out there has any information or ideas about what could be causing this, please let us know!

Thanks,

Mairi

Makai,

Okay, I have been researching your problem some more (and having some friends of mine test my houses on different systems), and have something for you to try. I think it might be a performance problem with the size of my houses. My houses all use a lot of cheats and are very graphics-intensive (lots of mirrors, embedded objects, special lighting effects, etc.).

Try this: Open Windows Task Manager while one of my houses is loading (CTRL + ALT + Delete) and go to the Performance tab. If the CPU and/or Page File usage is spiking as it loads, and/or the number for "Physical Memory (K) / Available" is very low, or "Commit Charge (K) / Total" is very close to the number for "Commit Charge (K) Limit," this is a good indication that your system doesn't have the specs to handle these houses. You do have a nice above-average system, but some of these houses (especially my Arriosa house) are HUGE as far as graphics go. I test my houses on computers with 256 mb Radeon graphics cards and dual core processors that are custom-built for gaming and intensive graphics.

If you try that and it is a performance issue, you can try reducing the graphics options in your game. If that doesn't work--I really am sorry! I want everyone to be able to enjoy my creations! If performance is the issue, I have a new house coming out (Tiavani) that is less graphics-intensive and will probably work fine for you.

If you use a Mac, that could also explain it--Macs are known for crashing some Sims houses.

Hope that helps,

Mairi

awesome thanks