man I've been trying to make my fiinal round entry and I have lost count on how many drafts I made and deleted =))

I've just spent two hours on two units. Four to go and the landscaping. Next contest I enter will be with cc allowed. Why Maxis created so many things without matching them to anything else is bizarre.

I'll have to start thinking about my entry for round 3 today. Luckily I already have a shell built eons ago ready for round 4

I am back from my holiday now to get on and finish my entry

Buyable reagents--are they in the buyable craftables/career rewards category? I wanted to decorate an apartment for witches, but I'm realizing I don't have a lot of options to make things "witchy," especially since I still can't find a buyable cauldron and pedestal.

Round 3: The Housemate Hacienda, located at 5 N. Calle de Residencia, Nova Colonia.

Except that a number of these pictures were taken in a copy in Port Cochere Take 6, a test neighborhood. I still haven't fixed the weirdness in my AGS, though I do know what to try next, and I had to take pictures when and where I could. Alas, these are all sterile, simless pics, since none of my playtest pics made it to the final cut. Esta la vida, baby.


A six-unit, three-story complex designed for young urban professionals, 5 N. Calle de Residencia is affordable as long as there's two of you making a decent income. The patio, with its lush landscaping and water features, is a great place to get to know your neighbors. Though the upstairs common areas are primarily intended as transitional space, the ground floor is simultaneously roomy and denlike, for those rainy afternoons when you don't dare sit in the hot tub, but don't want to be alone in your apartment. Your apartment, however, will be spacious, comfortable, and personalized, with plenty of room for parties. Unlike most apartments, the fixtures vary from unit to unit, so you and your housemate will never be confused about whose apartment you're waking up in after a wild night.

Required Shots (Back, Front, Lot Plan, Floor Plans x 3)


8 Pictures of Structure


Pictures of Units
Without the focus of four playtest families when I took the unit shots, I took lots of pictures of all six lots, whittled them down to the six best of each, and then whittled that down to the 24 pictures I thought best represented the complex. I trust this isn't too confusing.


And there we are! Hope y'all like it.

Great entry, Peni

But now I got curious about Harry The Spotlight and his pizza loving friends

Double and triple sigh! The weather has been a nightmare this past week. Been so hot it was unbearable in my PC room, even with double fans it made me feel sick to be in here. And when it finally started getting a tad more bearable temperature-wise thunderstorms came and caused trouble instead. Haven't been able to get to my pc in two days, first because of unstable electricity making it risky to use pc, and then internet wouldn't work. I am so over this summer. I'm really sorry everyone. I know it might not seem like it but I am trying my best.

Internet still very unstable but electricity is stable enough at least, so will do my best to finish today. I have a couple of more lots to go over for host bonus but if electricity remains stable I should be able to finish today. All judges scores are in so will go over it once host bonus is done. If all goes well might be able to get scores up before going to bed, but it depends on if I need to talk to any of the judges about something, and if they are available now or not. Will do my best to get them up asap

We do believe you, Gummi! We've all been there. If your internet won't work and you're heatsick, it doesn't matter what you want to do online, you can't do it. All you can do is the best you can do, and that has to be enough.

As for Harry the Spotlight - I'm afraid you'll just have to imagine his shenanigans, Kuuk. I'm sure you can come up with good ones.

Thank you for understanding Host bonus judging is giving me 90s dial-up modem flashbacks. Internet is so bad every picture I want to view is loading so so slowly, one tiny sliver at time

KUUK?? Oh how many times I would have hoped I would of picked any other name than that Managed to do it at Leefish but not in here :D

Lol, maybe make the "Call me Ellu" bit in your signature a bit more bold? Honestly my eyes tend to glance over signatures and I was wondering at first just who this "Ellu" person everyone was talking about was. It took me a while to catch on..

Round 2 scores

OH you! I owe you a hudge thanks, that idea of using shelves as filling counters.. PURE GENIOUS @Magnolia <3 <3

I'm very sorry, Ellu! I know how annoying it is when people get your name wrong. I'll be more careful in future.

Thanks for getting the scores up under such difficulties, Gummilutt! I'm still eating dust here but that's okay - I made some calls based on the Nova Colonia ambiance and I paid for them, which is fair. The thing is that there is no grungy stucco without CC (and precious little with it), except a handful of muted neutral tints, and Nova Colonia's style is colorful stucco. And I am always reluctant to use the trash chutes because I feel like I have to make waste space on each floor for the chute, and then at the bottom for the trash, and that's just not something I like. Except for chimneys. For some reason I don't mind doing it for chimneys, as I did in 5 Calle de Residencia.

I probably should have pushed harder to get everything perfect in the housemate building, but I'm just not up to pushing right now. I had a really good week the week before last, and then this past week stole all my momentum. I can see where I forgot a burglar alarm, and I probably should have done - something - more with the second and third floor common areas. But I fixed the blocked routing and the backwards stove and I have great hopes that my decorating and landscaping will pass muster this time, so onward and upward, and maybe I'll get a rush of energy to make a few more changes, take a few more pictures, and swap some out before judging starts on Round 3. It could happen.

No worryes at all! <3 LOL after all i decited to get the so loooong name what nobody cannot pronounce, but that was when I tought I will never ever say anything.

Ha! Thanks! It was random happenstance really! I was annoyed to find with my first entry that the two back slots kept the counter accessible but clipped horribly with the wall and the front middle slot blocked sims using the counter. So I decided to try the shelf thing and it worked! Sims can use the counter and I get to have my clutter!

Thank you judges for the wonderful reviews! Super happy you guys like my entry!

Thank you for the comments judges; I'm glad you like my swimmable lake. I had fun making my cabins, but I've saved a half finished version of the lot so that I don't have to do the lake again if I want to make different buildings on another lake at some point.

The cabinets I used in the kitchen are not CC. They are the wine rack placed backwards with move objects, and for handles I used one of the pairs of bells from the holiday deco and placed them with both the move objects and snap to grid cheats. Are those the reason for the 0 under requirements, or did I miss something else?

Gummilutt, thanks for taking the time and putting up with a slow connection to get the scores up. I hope it cools down for you soon.

I didn't know burglar alarms were obligatory. I read somewhere they were not. The reason the trash chutes were on the outside was that when I played an apartment with them on the inside they disappeared for some reason.

Trash chutes are wastebaskets and aren't defined as fixtures for purposes of remaining when the apartment is rented. You put them in the common area, and they stay. You put them in the unit, and they go.

I don't think burglar alarms are mandatory; but I put them in every apartment but one so I anticipate losing a point for carelessness if I don't revise before the end of the round.

Forgot to say, also, that the posters on the front of the tenement building are meant to be flyers for bands playing in the vicinity, slapped up on the front without asking the permission of the management. If they were intended as building decoration they'd be inside. It would've been more obvious and sold better had they been overlapping thickly, but overlapping those posters just makes them impossible to make out. I hadn't thought of using algae for weeds. I'll have to try that out.

Oooooooooh! What a great idea! You should have mentioned that's what you did in the write up (It's the bell/handles that got me - if the cabinets hadn't had handles, I would've thought about the wine rack placed backwards.) Yes, that was the 5 point reduction. Since they are not CC, you should definitely get your 5 points back! @gummilutt - please add 5 points back to stitching's scores for me, K?

RE: trash, phones and alarms - every judge is different. For me, trash and phones are necessary - and I will deduct for them if I can't see them (if you specify they are present in your write up, I'll believe you!) I also think every ignitable item should be fire alarmed - but, it has been mentioned earlier in this thread, that the fire department has ESP where apartments are concerned - and they will show up with or without an alarm. Burglar alarms are nice for higher class digs, and kinda silly in the slums IMHO. Just to be clear, I will not take off points for either alarm in this contest. But remember - every judge is different - that's why there are three of us .

Thank you! I can't take credit for that cabinet idea, though. There was a thread on here a year or so ago where people were sharing build and decorating ideas, and I remembered someone sharing that trick.

Thank you kindly for the scores judges, I gambled on the great divide usage, and it only really mattered to one judge that playability was different, if I package this up for download, I will probably remove the divide and have rent go over 1K, as it was only there to keep that rent low. Thanks Gummi for reviewing all the extra stuff, I am glad i figured out what a full ground floor pic meant after hours of contemplation. I had no idea the cement belt would be offensive on the eyes! I thought about trying something different on the outer cover since I did majority bricks on round 1. Oh well, as we all know, can't be pleasing all judges every time. I'm done with round 3 and pics, it'll be a desert-y delight!



@Peni - Is that a random thing that happens? Because when I play-tested my first lot with wastebaskets, they were all there when rented and when I tested the lofts all the inside trash chutes stayed when rented.

Did I miss the part in the rules that burglar alarms are required? I never use them. I always put smoke alarms, but hidden behind an appliance. And phones? Why? They have cell phones.

No. My second round had no burglar alarms at all, as I mentioned in the description. It's just that all the apartments in my complex this round have a burglar alarm - except one! That's the sort of lack of attention to detail that costs points with most judges.

The trash chutes and wastebasket disappearing or not may be an example of glitchy apartment code; or it may be a case of the game working differently for different people in different set-ups. Who knows which is vanilla code?

I haven't lived in a lot of apartments, myself, and then it was on the ground floor, but my impression is that trash chutes are a community thing anyway, a single shaft going through all floors so that all the trash on every floor is dumped straight down to the dumpster sitting at the bottom.

Sometimes I put them on walls enclosing chimneys, with the idea that it all goes straight to an incinerator in the basement.