#7
14th Oct 2004 at 6:31 AM
Yes, I agree totally. My first house project was inspired from a real life house that is up for sale not far from me (anyone have a spare 3 million+ bucks I can have?) in one of the upscale suburbs.
Unfortunately, due to the relative stupidity of individual sims, in order to keep them from dying of hunger on their 30-60 minute walk from one side of the house to the other, I have taken to putting everything a sim needs in each region of the house. Each floor has its own kitchen, dining room, bathrooms, and living quarters.
The problem crops up in that my sims will go to the nearest kitchen, make food, walk right past the formal dining room to the family dining room in another part of the house (which also has its own small kitchen and all the same appliances), set food at the table (and on an empty countertop in the bathroom of all places! - gotta remember to fill countertops with candles and flowers and such), eat a meal, then walk all the way back to the other side of the house to put the dishes in the washer.
They also have an annoying tendency to sleep in any bed in the house. If I design a room to be a child's bedroom, I don't want one of the parents crashing in it at night. Would be nice if you could assign a sim to a particular bedroom so they wouldn't just find the nearest room to sleep in when they're tired.
Anyway, I agree that most downloadable houses tend to wind up being ornamental rather than functional simply because the average sim goes psychotic when given overloaded with multiple choices on places to eat/sleep/relieve bladder...
Still, its nice to play with the design tool. If not for some limitations in the tools, I think Maxis could almost make a standalone 'Design Your Own Home' program, I've seen at least half a dozen at the local [short]Circuit City.