Welcome to Round 3, @Pebblerocker

Round 3: Veronaville Baths




Diana Silke has always loved outings and wanted to open her own venue but couldn't decide on what. That was until she discovered the old Veronaville Baths. After being abandoned for many years, they required some restoration. Now they are a beautiful piece of history and a fun place for sims of all ages. Their luxurious pool is lined with emerald green tiles and the glass roof open to the sky is truly is an experience. Enjoy an afternoon by the pool and have some hotdogs!

Veronaville Baths has showers and elevator access for older patrons and wheelchair users as well as accessable bathrooms!

Welcome to Round 3, @Meowingcookie

The bad news is that the clock runs out in about 5 hours (my time, which will be midnight where I live).
The good news (?) is that I will only close the round tomorrow - I am off to my daughter for the night, have completely forgotten that it is her birthday tomorrow and that I am supposed to babysit tonight (and have breakfast with her tomorrow morning).

This does mean that you all will have around 12 extra hours, if you want to add some extra pics (@AndrewGloria) and if you are still going to take part (@Pollino and @simsfreq ).

The rest of you, have a peaceful night, your work for the round is done

I will be back later tomorrow.

If you can also let me know if you will be able to judge, @HarVee - or I will stand in for you again.

I've added a lot of extra pics to my entry, so I've now got the maximum 20 additional pictures allowed. What I haven't done is proof-read my entry. I might use some of the extra time for that. But if anyone reading my post spots any typos, please let me know. I think it's easier to spot mistakes in somebody else's work. I'm sorry if my entry post is a bit verbose, but I like to caption all the pictures. And keep you all in the loop with what my Sims are saying and thinking.

On my phone, which is a bit more difficult.
I have not looked at your entry again, but relembered you said you might want to post more pics.

Don't stop the verbose part, we all enjoy that.

What I found is that when I placed the ticket machine before purchasing the lot the "under construction" sign stayed, even though it was charging sims normally. When I deleted that one and placed a new machine while the owner was on the lot the sign disappeared. Not sure if this was a one-time fluke or not.

I fixed my game so I will be able to submit an entry Thank you for the extra time.

Mine stayed as under construction too but seemed to be non functional. So I just sold and repurchased the ticket machine and it worked fine after that

Diana Silke, Birth Queen of SimMars, is extremely proud: her Colony Drones - all 483 of them - have finally grown up, and are ready to pollinate the galaxy on their own. Having more time for herself, Diana has decided to open a business in the Strangetown area of SimEarth: The Alien Culture Interactive Museum.



Why, you may ask? Well, Diana has come to love those weird and quirky being called humans. They love discovering what is secret, they are obsessed by what is forbidden, they need to know what's under the carpet. And Diana will offer them just what they crave: a guided, interactive tour of one of her many U.F.O.s. Just don’t expect it to be free.

Hi, a small question about Round 4.

If I make a Fish farm, is it OK for the shop to sell fishing related deco items rather than garden related?

I will accept that

Thanks.

My entry for round 3.




The soft play centre! Where everything... is soft.

I am classing this as a physical activity because children can climb, slide, jump and play on the play structure and in the ball pits. So my main activity consists of:

Climbing walls/rope ladders (do not give fun)
Slides (which DID work in testing but now won't, and I don't have time to troubleshoot, so they are now just deco unfortunately)
Some hidden items in the deco ball pits which use the animations for jumping on a couch and splashing in a puddle.
Pirate crow's nest item.

I'm counting that as one activity, because that is what makes up the soft play structure. However, if it is classed as multiple activities, then I will accept the point deduction.

Although it is a physical activity lot, I did not include showers because showers are not normally found at this kind of business and it did not make sense.

Unfortunately, no in-use photos because my screenshot program wasn't running and I had to go back and redo all the ones without sims in.

My entry is updated with fresh, better-looking pictures (it's autumn in real life as well as in my game, my favourite time of year!) and I added a couple of important things I'd missed. Thank you for allowing a little extra time!

I'm really amazed at the creativity in this round. How did everyone come up with such great ideas?

(I promise I will get started on round 4 early enough to let me troubleshoot and fix things and redo screenshots and such One must plan for these things!)

My invisible items issue turned out to be that I had disabled smooth edges because with my NVidia card, I could get it to handle anti-aliasing outside the game, and this looked better. But now I have a Radeon card, I needed to turn it on. I have absolutely no idea why that would cause the game to constantly flicker and make everything invisible and I am very annoyed that it was such a simple fix, because I could have fixed it much earlier. But never mind, it's working now.

Now I should get back to my IRL family. My 6yo was very pleased with my build, and helped me decide which screenshots to take by taking a virtual tour. He even did a real, excited "oooooh!" when he saw the ball pit. So I think for me that is the score which matters (I look forward to feedback from the judges, but I won't be too disheartened if the numbers are low).

Round 3 is now closed.

Welcome to Round 3 @Pollino and @simsfreq! Good to see your entries

Very happy you could sort out your game, simsfreq - I know how frustrating that can be!

Calling in the Judges: @CatherineTCJD @joandsarah77 @HarVee (or me).

Have fun with the last round!

@Craft90 and @simmingregency - please pop in from time to time, we want to know how you are doing.

I am recovering from a great week of birthday celebrations for my now 21 year old.
We finished the celebrations with a short weekend at Disney - Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom.
Every muscle in my body is protesting (when did my body get so decrepit?)
We had a lot of fun - even in the heat (92F) and with the crowds.

I will start my judging round on Monday. It's gonna be another really tough round to judge! Oh MY!
You guys keep out-doing yourselves!

My son is helping me get started on the last round. He says for a fruit farm, can we grow strawberries as well, even though they are on plots and not trees?

Yes, you can.

Thanks for the answer!

Would it be helpful/allowed if I edit the screenshots of my round 3 entry, to make it more clear what is part of the currently viewed floor vs a visible lower floor, for the top down floor plan views? I don't want to break rules by adding extra screenshots, and I didn't do it earlier because it would have taken too long, but it wouldn't really be extra, it would just be a clearer floorplan.

I'm here. 84 wheels a rolling.

(for those confused that refers to a road train truck here in Australia that hauls things across the vast outback)

Yes, you can.

Since I have not heard from @HarVee yet, I will start judging later today. Thank you, Cat and Jo

Thank you to all our contestants too; you have put an immense effort into this round!

@Meowingcookie : I like your Veronaville Baths.

I can't resist comparing and contrasting it with our Veronaville Swim Centre, the very first lot that I built. I built it in my first weeks as a Simmer, even before I added Julian Moltke (Andrew's boyfriend -- now his husband) to my game. Starting in early December 2012, it went through a few makeovers in its first three months, but by March 2013, it was more or less in its present form:


The furthest away building contains the kitchen and the podium for the Poolside Restaurant, but all the tables are outside. Before that it briefly served as a self-service food preparation area. I've posted a very early picture of Julian making espresso there with Andrew looking on. The building along the right hand side of the pool contains the toilets and showers. The kiosk near the front street on the left hand is a slightly more recent addition, but I'm pretty sure it was there by the end of 2013. The most recent addition are the towels for sunbathing on the grass, inspired by the Liegewiesen (relaxing meadows) beside German Schwimmbäder, but even they have been there for five or six years now.

However, as I'm sure Andrew would be happy to tell you, when the pool first opened in early December 2012, I was a complete newbie when it came to The Sims, and I hadn't a clue how to do things. When it first opened, it was really just a very large and irregularly shaped swimming pool in a field. I had started to build the toilet block, but I hadn't a clue what I was doing. There were no toilets inside, no wall-coverings, no roof, no door, and no steps up to foundation level. At that time Andrew had put a lot of weight on, as a result of eating three substantial meals every day, so I sent him to the new pool to try to lose some of this weight. He did lose weight as a result of some very vigorous swimming. But then he needed the toilet, only to realise that there wasn't one. I'm sorry to say, he had an "accident" while he was waiting for his taxi. Being Andrew, he quickly whipped out a mop and cleaned up the puddle, but he has never forgotten the incident, nor who was responsible for there not being a toilet there! Now Andrew famously doesn't like using public toilets, but, as he frequently reminds me, they're a lot better than the alternative! I made sure the toilets were working before Andrew went back there again. I worked out what to do by opening Maxis community lots (especially Stratford Strip) in Build View and seeing how Maxis had done it.

I really hadn't a clue what I was doing when I first built that pool. I didn't realise that Sims could only enter and leave the lot by the front street. Since this was built on a corner site, I thought they'd be able to use both roads. I also thought that, since almost all Maxis community lots had a car park, car parks might be required. So I built a car park on the road on the right -- the one my Sims can't use. I intended this to be the main entrance to the lot. I also built a perimeter wall (technically a fence) round the lot. Due to my incompetence, I left a few gaps in this wall. Fortunately this included some in the front street -- otherwise my Sims wouldn't have been able to reach the water! To this day, the perimeter wall is largely as originally built; note the gap behind the restaurant tables. Originally the pool was a little bit larger, and more irregular in shape, but some bits were filled in to make way for the surrounding buildings. It's still a very large pool though -- ideal if, like Andrew, you want to work some weight off. Provided that is you don't put the weight back on again in the restaurant!

Despite its age and uncertain beginnings, the Swim Centre remains a popular destination for Veronavillians. It now has a couple of outdoor showers, where you can shower in your swimsuit, and many of my Sims, on the way home from an outing, will stop off here for a quick shower. Once here of course they may be tempted by the other facilities, especially the restaurant, which has its own idiosyncrasies. Sometimes, when it's quiet in the very early morning (around 3 a.m.), Remington Hurt, the regular waiter here, will change into his Maxis swimming trunks, swim across the pool and nip home. He will of course come back if he's needed, and serve the new arrivals, still in his swimwear. This brings me to why I built this pool at the very beginning of my game in the first place. Well, I'd noticed that Veronaville, unlike Pleasantvirew or Strangetown, had no public swimming pool. Having downloaded, and in some cases made, skimpy swimwear for my lovely new Sims (boys as well as girls) I wanted to see them wearing it. Not yet knowing about hot tubs and love tubs, and how Sims love to soak in them, I thought they needed a swimming pool!