Construction Taking Forever

[CharmingFirewaller]

I don't know if it's my system or if I'm just not as familiar with the Sims 3 controls as I am with Sims 2 but has anyone else noticed how long it takes to build houses now?

In the Sims 2 I could move a family into a lot, build them a small yet decent home and get ready to play in less than 15 minutes. Now, though, it's like I take ages just to get the first floor done.

I'm not even looking for a tool to customize my hood seeing as I can't customize Sunset Valley alone. I imagine it would take forever. Any tips?

[Rikachu]

It's just about the same for me. ;)

[cx2k5]

Yeah, I feel the same way, although it's partly my fault for being picky with the color schemes where i customize every little thing (not complaining, as I love the customization/patterns stuff). Making homes is fun for me but gets time consuming when I could be doing more important things like eating and sleeping..... sometimes, though, it's a nice break from actually playing the game. I have a goal to make something good enough to match the quality of the homes so many talented artists are creating here! :)

I have more issue with how placing a pre-made home on a lot (downloaded from here or even the pre-made homes that came with the game) takes 6-10 MINUTES whereas everything else in the game in terms of loading/saving etc takes only 6-10 seconds if that. (I have a decent computer - athlon64 with 2GB ram and 512MB video card). Does it really take that long for the program to figure out one of 4 directional orientations for the lot? I timed one placement of a 30x30 home on a 30x40 lot and it took 8 minutes and 30 seconds! :|

[haylz320]

Mine takes about 30 seconds, but my computer specs are higher...4GB of ram and I'm fairly sure a larger video card.

[cx2k5]

Hmm (jealous) ... It's a minor annoyance, the loading thing... I just go and grab something to eat while it's loading.

[Sookielee]

One of my favorite things about TS3 is CAST. One of the things that gives me the biggest headaches is CAST. I've started several houses and end up getting board or just plain tires of working on it because I have a need to redesign everything.

cx2k5: I agree it take forever to place a bin house no matter where it came from.

[Suzicube]

Well, I can't help you. I just download houses and redecorated the whole thing. Today one took me from 8:00am -6:00pm. Now I'm getting ready to play the house. I have found that it's hard to play three people. I don't know how other people do larger families. Turning on High Free Will helped a bit but then I end up chasing them all over the house! I think I play a session until they go to bed twice and I'm simmed out but I can decorate for hours. LOL

[Suzicube]

Well, I can't help you. I just download houses and redecorated the whole thing. Today one took me from 8:00am -6:00pm. Now I'm getting ready to play the house. I have found that it's hard to play three people. I don't know how other people do larger families. Turning on High Free Will helped a bit but then I end up chasing them all over the house! I think I play a session until they go to bed twice and I'm simmed out but I can decorate for hours. LOL

[edejan]

It takes me forever too. I don't think there's any way around that other than downloading already built houses. Which are usually much better looking than mine anyway.

[CharmingFirewaller]

Yeah that's what I had planned to do too. Of course, downloading now comes with a price...lol. Especially for players like me with low PC specs, dumping a downloaded home on a lot now takes forever to load.

[DrowningFishy]

Takes me forever to build houses too, but if it was any fast I would not have to do at work. Takes me a good portion of my work shift to get the shell and the outline of the house started. In matter of fact the baby I've been working on has taken up three work days (seen in the twilight zone post I made (pool)). -_- Just a sim house, not like I have the confidence to post them anywhere OTHER then my AIM list.

[CharmingFirewaller]

You're working on a baby? So you've been woohoo-ing for three days? :P

Fine, I'll go check the Twilight Zone post. I hate how it takes so damn long to build one freaking house. I could rush but it would look really bad.

[DrowningFishy]

No, haha, that term was coined because it's the first house that triggered my OCness. OMG that house is pretty but god forbid it can ever be done. Note where the pool is and the color and how it plays in. it's driving me nuts that I doubt this house will ever be called done.

[CharmingFirewaller]

No, haha, that term was coined because it's the first house that triggered my OCness. OMG that house is pretty but god forbid it can ever be done. Note where the pool is and the color and how it plays in. it's driving me nuts that I doubt this house will ever be called done.

Yeah I like how your sim managed to poop in it. :lol: Hence the color?

I really thought I'd enjoy building houses in Sims 3 and while I do, after a while it gets tedious and by the time I'm done with a lot I don't even feel like moving sims in and playing them.

So much for my custom Sunset Valley. I wanted to use one of the empty templates with absolutely NOTHING in it, but when I loaded that up I freaked out. I was like, "Dear God, how am I gonna populate this?!"

[DrowningFishy]

HAHA I just burned everything down with awesome mod and I went to look at the map I was like X_X crud. Wow, that is what Inferno Disco does. And might I add that water park that someone made on this site looks so pretty when it's burning. Like a fancy foreign candle. Well time to get rebuilding.

[CharmingFirewaller]

Yay, apocalypse! :)

I wanted to recreate Sunnydale from Buffy the Vampire Slayer but didn't know where to start. It's bad enough there aren't any lots online that would fit. So then I thought I'd just get random ones from here. I really like the alternate version of Central Park that someone made. Of course, it took a lifetime to get it in the hood. You know, when it does that "Processing..." thing. Grr!

[Misty_2004]

I have more issue with how placing a pre-made home on a lot (downloaded from here or even the pre-made homes that came with the game) takes 6-10 MINUTES whereas everything else in the game in terms of loading/saving etc takes only 6-10 seconds if that. (I have a decent computer - athlon64 with 2GB ram and 512MB video card).
I have very similar system specs as far as RAM and video go (athlon64 doesn't say much about your processor speed, though) and have not run into problems placing lots I've downloaded. I haven't downloaded any absolutely huge ones because they would need to go onto lots with vista buffs and placing them destroys the buff so I'll build my own big ones as needed, but the ones I have placed loaded in a reasonable amount of time.

As for building, oh yeah, it takes a while. I can build, furnish, and do all the CaST tweaking for three small to medium-sized houses in a day. A large house is going to take me anywhere from two to four days to finish. The more familiar I become with what can and can't be done, the faster it's going, though. A huge chunk of time on the larger building projects gets spent on just figuring out where to put the house on the lot and getting the framework put up. Then another huge chunk of time gets spent on going back and re-doing this or that. Then another big chunk gets spent on the finishing and yard work.

I'm working on a huge modern mansion at the moment (I snuck it in between some of the houses for my old-timey housing project) and as soon as that's done I should have it as well as several other houses to upload.

[VoiceIHear]

Hmmm.. it doesn't take me that long. And the customization tool goes pretty fast for me. And my computer (particularly my graphics card) isn't that great either. The only times it takes ages to build a house is if i'm putting a lot of work into my house. Otherwise it doesn't take me very long at all.

[bloodsight]

I think the worst part of building a house is how all the wallpaper and stuff only has presets in the most random colors or bland neutrals.

I'd say spend a day in CAStyle and make nice flooring, wallpaper and whatnot, save them as presets in the game (I don't know what they are called. Style options or something) so next time you build you already have nice styles to chose from.

Or save anything you recolor, which is pretty much what I do.

[TheLB]

Oh it takes me forever, but only because I'm really detail-oriented and everything has to coordinate perfectly before I'm satisfied. Which turns out really bad considering I have sim family ADD and I get the urges to create families all the time, but I dread the actual house-building.

Recently I tried making a Japanese house and it seemed like a great idea at the time but then I got frustrated with the lack of appropriate skins/items and had to settle for several 'next-best-thing's. It took one day to build and another day to furnish. Just building an appropriate roof took a couple hours in itself.

I think it turned out great, but it's disappointing that I spend so much more time in house-making than I do in house-playing.

[CharmingFirewaller]

Oh it takes me forever, but only because I'm really detail-oriented and everything has to coordinate perfectly before I'm satisfied. Which turns out really bad considering I have sim family ADD and I get the urges to create families all the time, but I dread the actual house-building.

Recently I tried making a Japanese house and it seemed like a great idea at the time but then I got frustrated with the lack of appropriate skins/items and had to settle for several 'next-best-thing's. It took one day to build and another day to furnish. Just building an appropriate roof took a couple hours in itself.

I think it turned out great, but it's disappointing that I spend so much more time in house-making than I do in house-playing.

I can totally relate. This is partly the reason why I can never finish a town project. I keep telling myself I'd get the empty Sunset Valley template and build from that but by the time I'm done with one house I'm too tired to continue.

[Misty_2004]

I made empty neighborhood "templates" for myself so I could save the Beautiful Vista buff. My thought wasn't to create a brand new town all in one sitting but I work on them when I'm in the mood. Probably about the time I finish one I'll be ready to plunk some new Sims into a town. In the meantime, I have families in a couple of default towns that I play with. Now that the latest patch fixes some town issues I'll be cleaning out maps again. :P I also want to see if the bulldozing will now leave the beautiful vista buff alone instead of deleting it. I had planned on doing all that this evening but decided I didn't want to dig into it after all.