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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 12:23 AM
Default Favorite community lots to play on and build?
What are you favorite style of community lots:
-- to have your sims visit?
-- to build, if they're different?

I'll begin; one of my favorite lots to play has been a cute little fish market I built that sells raw fish, cooked meals involving fish, and cakes and pies. It also has a pond on the lot so that visiting sims can pay to spend some time fishing.

I also really enjoy lots where younger sims can go to meet other sims their own age from the neighborhood, using a mod that allows for that. I have Mootilda's tiny video arcade in my neighborhood and only teens are allowed to visit; and there's a playground for children to meet other children.

What are your favorites?
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retired moderator
#2 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 12:44 AM
All the lots that I need for my hood to function as a town. So pretty much every kind of shop and venue that you can think of.

I prefer to download lots and tweak them.
I build when I can't find what I want and then I often upload them to this site.

My favourite lots are beach lots. I like the scenery from them and that they can have a range of activities plus all the special beach activities.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Alchemist
#3 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 2:45 AM Last edited by Sunrader : 10th Feb 2019 at 3:00 AM.
I prefer makeovers of Maxis lots and I make them run as autonomously as possible, so I can sit back and enjoy the show. Some of my favorites are my public pool, my local bar, my bowling alley... my most recent favorite is a tiny restaurant that is an embellished hot dog stand so it runs itself. I like my community garden, too.
Field Researcher
#4 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 2:48 AM
I like parks to build, because they're the easiest .-.
Mad Poster
#5 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 5:22 AM
Usually I like the public community lots-like a town hall where everyone comes to visit-it's interesting to watch the other pixels interact with one another. I like to build one that has food available, games and musical instruments. Between all of those the pixels amuse themselves.

Receptacle Refugee & Resident Polar Bear
"Get out of my way, young'un, I'm a ninja!"
Grave Matters: The funeral podium is available here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/e6tj...albits.zip/file
My other downloads are here: https://app.mediafire.com/myfiles
Mad Poster
#6 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 9:24 AM
I like a variety of community lots and basically only want:

- it has to play well, even though it may not look like a contest winner
- it has to offer some enjoyable activities - but I am not fond of putting everything a sim can do on one lot.

I like restaurants, because I like to have family dinners, annual dinners, business lunches (and dinners) work dinners for sims in the same career, etc. (Oh,and they are nice for dates too )
Also clubs and bars - trying to have each one offers something the "competition" does not.
Parks too - besides for fishing, playing catch and admiring the scenery, I also have (and really like) an art park (which is basically a normal park with a lot of easels where sims go and paint. It is a lot of fum and some of my sims were lucky enough to discover masterpieces painted by townies which they could sell . There is a sport park as well.

Like to build - well, that's another question. I like to build when I am in the mood for building, but I mostly build something that I think a hood - whether it is a Uni hood or a main hood or a vacation hood - may need.
Alchemist
#7 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 11:08 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Justpetro

Parks too - besides for fishing, playing catch and admiring the scenery, I also have (and really like) an art park (which is basically a normal park with a lot of easels where sims go and paint. It is a lot of fum and some of my sims were lucky enough to discover masterpieces painted by townies which they could sell . There is a sport park as well.




Oh, I love this idea! Did you have to do anything special to make it work? Will the easels work vanilla?
Theorist
#8 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 3:00 PM
Anything I make myself is my favorite... there's just something really satisfying watching the sims go about on the lots I've made.

So far I have an all-in-one corner store with a food stand and small stage/park area and pool table upstairs, a wooded park with espresso, log rolling, a pavilion & buffet and a small lookout area, an interactive museum for career rewards and a teen hangout beach lot that I just finished and is ready for my "real" sims to go play. Excited for that!

The Corner Store | Founders Square Park | Please Play Museum | Willow Lake

Mad Poster
#9 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 3:25 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Sunrader
Oh, I love this idea! Did you have to do anything special to make it work? Will the easels work vanilla?


Mine works without a mod (as far as I know)!
Scholar
#10 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 5:52 PM
If I have Downtown, I usually send teens to the Comandgo Emporium to buy their cell phones, etc. It always seems to be busy, unlike a lot of other community lots, so it's a good place for them to meet new people. The Downtown bowling alleys or Belladonna Cove arcade are also popular with teens who just want to get out of the house for a bit, and of course every hood needs at least one pet store.

My custom community lots are usually either parks, with fishing or ice skating, or tiny general stores. I'll sometimes have an owned nightclub or sports bar, too.
Alchemist
#11 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 7:01 PM
I'm another that likes to renovate Maxis lots and if I'm not using one of my renovated lots, then I'm using a regular old Maxis lot. Comandgo Emporium is a popular place for sims to hang out and I often send my sims there since, if I'm feeling lazy, I don't have to do much to it other than add a jewelry stand, a perfume stand, and Monique's ATM. Another favorite of mine is Go Here Sunshine Park; it's super simple: just a coffee stand, grill, chess tables, a fountain, and two bathrooms, but it's a great place to meet sims and everyone seems to go through there. Because of my love for that lot, any neighborhood I build needs a town square, and that square will have basically the same stuff on it. Usually my towns also get a coffee house, too. I've made over that cafe in the bin and have used it a lot in my hoods, especially if I didn't feel like building a new hood-specific one.

Except for Go Here Sunshine Park, my preferences for community lots have changed over time. Before I used Comandgo all the time, I used my renovated Corner Shoppes, which had a restaurant, games room, and clothes store; my renovated Hub, which I basically just made over after Seasons so that the upstairs dance floor wouldn't get rained on, ; and the Lucky Shack. My sims still visit those, just not quite as often. Nowadays, Speedy's Fast Lanes Bowling and Eats and Red’s Famous ‘50s Diner are my go to date & outing lots. I use them as is; I haven't renovated them yet, though I expect to get around to it eventually. (I've started making over downtown again and I hope to include entertain items from later EPs and make it so there's hangouts for sims of different classes. That way duplicates of each hangout will at least make sense; they'll be some posh/upscale clubs and shopping centers, some middle of the road ones, and some seedy ones.)

I like to renovate more than build--facades and the overall outside look of a lot is much harder for me to come up with from scratch, so I prefer to makeover lots as I need them.

"May the sunlight find you, thy days be long, thy winters kind, thy roots be strong." -Grand Oak Tree, DAO

XPTL Mod Archive | Change a Mod's Mesh into a CC Object | Increasing the Game Difficulty | Editing ACR 4 Your Age Mod
Bored? Read an unfinished legacy or sim story. | aka Kelyns | she/her
Mad Poster
#12 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 9:18 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Sunrader
Oh, I love this idea! Did you have to do anything special to make it work? Will the easels work vanilla?

I know this because I've tried. The Maxis easels that come with the game work just fine on community lots. It's the modded ones I use that are only available on residential lots. Grrr.
Alchemist
#13 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 9:20 PM
You should be able to edit that in simPE.

"May the sunlight find you, thy days be long, thy winters kind, thy roots be strong." -Grand Oak Tree, DAO

XPTL Mod Archive | Change a Mod's Mesh into a CC Object | Increasing the Game Difficulty | Editing ACR 4 Your Age Mod
Bored? Read an unfinished legacy or sim story. | aka Kelyns | she/her
Alchemist
#14 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 9:25 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Phantomknight
You should be able to edit that in simPE.



Yep, In SimPE Change the OBJD, Raw Data/Community Sort. Change in Decimal to 131.

I really prefer to renovate Maxis most of the time. Something satisfying about "fixing" them. Most of them start out much too large. Speedy's and Lucky's are two of my favorites that are much improved, imo. It would be fun to see what different people have done with the same lot. Want to share? I'm sure I have pics of those two already.
Mad Poster
#15 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 10:07 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Sunrader
Yep, In SimPE Change the OBJD, Raw Data/Community Sort. Change in Decimal to 131.

Thanks! I'll have a look at that as soon as I get done playing this round. SimPE usually doesn't like me, but this sounds easy enough that even I might be able to manage it.

Quote: Originally posted by BlueAlien
If I have Downtown, I usually send teens to the Comandgo Emporium to buy their cell phones, etc. It always seems to be busy, unlike a lot of other community lots, so it's a good place for them to meet new people.

This is because small lots are easier for your computer to handle. I remember on one of my older computers I never bothered visiting the larger community lots because they ran so slowly and hardly anybody ever spawned to visit them.

The amount of objects can also make a difference. Even on the computer I use now, some of the lots in hoods I've downloaded will slow to a crawl and spawn very few visitors because moveobjects on was used to cram half a dozen flowers and shrubs into every available square of ground space. Fewer and larger objects are better for that. Usually I prefer to avoid lots of CC, but Castaway Stories had bigger meshes for the Sims 2 flowering shrubs, so it's possible to get the same lush overgrown look with the same plants and still use much fewer shrubs than you get by MOOing in way too many of the same Sims 2 plants. [end rant]
Theorist
#16 Old 10th Feb 2019 at 10:19 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Sunrader
Yep, In SimPE Change the OBJD, Raw Data/Community Sort. Change in Decimal to 131.

I really prefer to renovate Maxis most of the time. Something satisfying about "fixing" them. Most of them start out much too large. Speedy's and Lucky's are two of my favorites that are much improved, imo. It would be fun to see what different people have done with the same lot. Want to share? I'm sure I have pics of those two already.

I don't have any to share but I'd love to see your lot renos!

p.s. I have an even 1900 posts now so forgive me for never posting again so I can keep that satisfying number.
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#17 Old 11th Feb 2019 at 12:57 AM
@Honeywell I love the idea of a teen only beach lot! I might have to build one in my own neighborhood :D

As far as easels and public painting -- one of my sims owns an art gallery where there are a lot of easels around for sims to paint on if they want. Sometimes the owner or the staff will give them advice on their paintings as they work (share hobby tips). They do keep them and sell them if they are any good when finished, which may not seem fair, but I guess not all is fair in Simland. :D
Forum Resident
#18 Old 11th Feb 2019 at 7:01 AM
Schools/uni lots- I love coming up with activities and opportunities for skilling that looks realistic, and then having all the kids/students show up and use it.

Wedding venues- no specific type of lot, they fall under many categories, but I like turning community lots into spaces I can have community lot weddings. Parks, museums, city hall, beaches. It's fun to take an existing lot, throw up some decorations, and have weddings at a space that matches the couple better than cramming it into a backyard or tiny apartment.
Forum Resident
#19 Old 11th Feb 2019 at 5:49 PM
I'm super stubborn about community lots. I don't like placeholders or unusable spaces, so my buildings are constrained by how much I can put in that my sims will actually use, even if it's just benches to sit and rest. I prefer for each one to have a purpose, but I don't mind building two or three of something as long as their all different. A hood might have two cinemas, one on each side of town, or multiple Burger World restaurants, because it's a chain. I like to build to suit a particular architectural style that I have in mind for each hood, and it's both fun and challenging to get the exteriors to be unique, but still within the bounds of that particular hood's style.

I love building what I think of as 'detail' lots, so things like Gas Stations, little fast-food joints, pharmacies, job centres, the local doctor's office versus the big city hospital, things like that. It just makes my hoods feel more realistic. I'm kind of eager to build a car dealership since I've never built one, and I always enjoy creating trailer parks, nightclubs, apartments, and the local junk yard where the bad teens hang out lol. I leave little easter eggs on my lots for myself < that's probably weird - but I'll build a closet and leave a pack of simslice beer in it, or sneak a tv into a back room, or just add little cute hidden things - like the secret massage table in the manager's office etc.
Mad Poster
#20 Old 11th Feb 2019 at 7:37 PM
I build my own, and the three I use on most lots are:
Boardwalk-- a beach lot. On the boardwalk are a place to buy coffee & souvenirs, use the photo booth (so many uses!), benches, 2 chess tables, and a telescope. The only building is a unisex bathroom with a shower. There is a tent, hammock, and fire pit, as well as place to make & eat hotdogs.
Summer Park - a pet & child friendly park, it has a playground and all the pet stuff you might need. So if you bring the kids & pets OTHERS will show up. Again, the only building is the full bathroom. Other fun and usefull things are: a pond, swim pool, snack bar, chess tables, darts, ALL the musical instruments (the only time I turn sound on, to hear the -mostly terrible- band players), There is also a microphone to perform on, which is right behind the WEDDING ARCH, which has a bunch of chairs. People will watch the band or performer..and if a couple go there to get married everyone whips into formals to watch! I just got a new mod, a flamingo that summons a dance teacher (general dancing, slap dance, etc); oddly, Sims find that very attractive even though they have to wear formals.
Shopping - for the total shopping experience! One big building with the shops around the edges, a central courtyard and a raised area for the band, coffee, and free desserts. It has everything you could need: restaurant, big radio (for dancing), photo booth, that special glasses rack that makes flirting more productive, two full bathrooms, beauty shop (makeover chair, perfume), clothes shop (with jewelry), small grocery store, book store (with places to study & play chess), job board, pet shop (with collars). It's also "pet friendly" for the pet you buy or who just show up. And a spa: steam room, hot tub, and a punching bag (handy for asking the Charlatan for lessons!)
Of course, not of this is useful without lots of mods...

Stand up, speak out. Just not to me..
Alchemist
#21 Old 11th Feb 2019 at 10:07 PM Last edited by Sunrader : 12th Feb 2019 at 1:08 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by terula8
I leave little easter eggs on my lots for myself < that's probably weird - but I'll build a closet and leave a pack of simslice beer in it, or sneak a tv into a back room, or just add little cute hidden things - like the secret massage table in the manager's office etc.


It's totally weird! We have so much in common!

I did stow a manager in one of my manager's offices, though, even though it can't be accessed (deco doors) and I SimSurgeried the NPC that spawns as a playable.

The closet in my minister's apartments reveals his other interests. Again, only a deco door.

Today I'm ridiculously pleased because I recolored these two different unrelated items, the dishrack and the cupcake plate, with the Soup Kitchen's logo.

Recently, I went to a lot of trouble to hide a ghost on different lots, so that I'd be surprised when she pops up in different places while I play. That's been really fun. I've always thought it was funny that we say both: God is in the details and the Devil is in the details.
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#22 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 7:10 PM
@terula8 and @sunrader I love the idea of weird little easter eggs on lots. I might have to start doing that myself. For sim-owned businesses it's definitely more fun if it reflects the sim's personality and life.
Alchemist
#23 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 7:56 PM
last time I sent any sim to community lot I think was a number of months ago. a pet shop.
last time for frequent community lot trips; I think when I had just base game. I think ones that had a number of different shops.

have not edited pre-made community lots.
last time I created a community lot was when I had just base game.
Mad Poster
#24 Old 13th Feb 2019 at 9:44 PM Last edited by gazania : 14th Feb 2019 at 2:24 AM.
I can't choose. Honestly, I can't.

Community lots are my favorite things to build and play, be they campus (well, those college students should be doing SOMETHING other than studying), vacation (I am not enamored of the Maxis vacation hoods, and created two custom ones of my own, though I still have the Maxis ones as well), or main or subhood. I enjoy loading them with lots of things to do ... extra points if they are skill-builders, though some lots don't exactly call for those. While I have downloaded some community lots, and do have some Maxis ones, at least 70% or so of my lots are custom-made. It seems to be an addiction ...

Most of the time, I can't find exactly the type of lot I want, so I wind up building my own. I sincerely doubt most of them would win anything in a community lot contest, and in the case of strip mall community lots, those are often pretty basic. But not always, perhaps.

After writing to gdayars that I could not make a bar during a previous contest, I did try my hand at a couple. This example below is why I should not make bars. I was going for colorful and a little tacky (in a good way) and I think I succeeded. The vacation hood is a tropical one, though in my case it's more of a beachy/seashore hood. This is a corner store in a strip mall configuration. (Under spoiler.)

When my Sims visit, this is one of the places they must go. There's a tapas-esque food stand (thanks to Community Lot Revolution), fire pits, a whack-a-mole game, a DJ and a bar. So I GUESS this is my current favorite ... or theirs? It can change in a month or two. (And oops ... I see a mistake in the routing. I'll fix it later. I think you get the idea, though!)



Making community lots allows me to be as varied as I want to be. I have no qualms mixing styles. This is a spa in the same vacation hood. I wanted a dripping cherub effect (ornate to the point of almost-excess) ... I went for it! This is about as fancy as I usually get, though. It's not perfect ... I couldn't get the symmetrical effect I wanted in the front. But it's OK enough, I think!



I think I should not post any more pictures here. I might be borderline here as it is! (I believe we're supposed to post more than a picture or two in the Pictures thread.) But I hope the two pics show how I find community lots challenging and fun, and hey ... I don't mind tacky.

What I crave in community lots is VARIETY. There are so many skill-building mods and objects out there, and I will often want to make a building around the skill-builder. I then think, "OK ... I want this lot. Can I find something like it in someone's downloads? If not (and usually, not), I think, "What is the effect I'm going for here?" I Google for images and floor plans to inspire me. Sometimes, I go by memory. One of my community lots in that vacation hood was inspired by the wine-and-cheese-bar decor of the 70s, and the floor plan was based on a retro house design.

Then there is the fun of watching Sims actually use the place after I spent days working on it. I don't think I ever want to get over that feeling.

Thanks to ALL free-site creators, admins and mods.

RIP Sunni ... truly a ray of light.
Alchemist
#25 Old 13th Feb 2019 at 10:31 PM
Quote: Originally posted by gazania
I can't choose. Honestly, I can't.

I think I should not post any more pictures here. I might be borderline here as it is! (I believe we're supposed to post more than a picture or two in the Pictures thread.) But I hope the two pics show how I find community lots challenging and fun, and hey ... I don't mind tacky.

Then there is the fun of watching Sims actually use the place after I spent days working on it. I don't think I ever want to get over that feeling.


This is the part I love so much! Building it is like a puzzle and, if I do it right, it comes to life! I always have my vantage point in mind when I'm building. Love your ideas and you're tacky. :D

Personally, I think putting pics under spoilers to illustrate an on-topic post are great. Pasting large pics that we must scroll through not as much.
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