Sorry Skimmer, you can't use that one. It very much breaks the 8x8 rule. The building cannot use more than 64 tiles per floor. Yours is over by a bit. It wouldn't take much to fix it though, you just need to shave off 8 tiles somewhere.

Reyea, that's exactly what I do now. I used to have an AnyGame set up for this so I wouldn't have to move my Downloads folder, but something went janky with it when I reinstalled Windows. If you'll notice, the dead tree was left in the catalog, anything dead and ugly would be perfectly acceptable (as long as it isn't some sort of weird magic plant like the snapdragon or something. Dead deco is ok. I've already got that demolition set in my downloads folder, but I felt too scared for my poor simmies sakes to make them live in a place the zombies can get at them. I'll prolly use them somewhere though.

Phae-

I love this enough to reccomend this to reccomend this as a follow-up/sequel to my Zombie Apocalypse Challenge!

well i made 3 houses last night. not sure if they are 100% chalenge-worthy as their overall footprint may (on 2 at least) go over the tile limit. but they make great deco and could potentialy be alowable if its *useable* footprint.

i used the demolition set to make about half of house number 1 unuseable. front door, back parlor on the ground floor, and all but one room upstairs look like they are totaly unuseable. admitedly downstairs back could be useable becasue it has a floor and they are only crack windows, but i can (on my game at least) use numenors invisible wall to block the areas off i dont want them accessing.
the broken windows and broken kitchen i got for cheap sims years ago are a godsend now, becasue they fit right in.
house number 2 is acutaly a shack built on the side of another derrelict home. its made to look like they built the shack on the side of a bathroom that was left intact (ish) becasue it still had a useable toilet. oh how i wish had a deco only bath and sink XD and a busted broken toilet that i could use for upstairs ruined bathrooms so my sims wouldnt keep wanting to use them.

house 3 is a watchtower style place with a double floor matress and direct to septic-tank style bathroom of loo and sink (i love the colony bunker bat set for this, its so rusty and industrial. still kinda half done.

they may not be any good (looks at Pheno to check that its actual floorspace and not just useable floorspace) for the actual chalenge but they could be good for deco and for moving famlies into as they occupy more derelict homes or moving out infecteds you want to keep playing with.
will try to post pics if anyone wants to see.

Come on Rayea, lets spell my name right, it's Phae I've already ruled before about the difference between the spirit of the rules and the letter of the law. As long as those unusable spaces really aren't usable, they can't just look unusable. If a sim can hang out in there and do his thing to get out of the way of the rest of the family, that's cheating, but if its more like a blocked off hallway they can't get to, its fine. I'd love to see pics!

sorry Phae

well i didnt want to use the invisible walls on them if i was going to upload them anyplace. and i cant find anything suitable that i can place to block the door off. but i CAN block them off if i was playing.
next house may have no doors to the damaged parts. if i just use the window versions that might work. (since there are door versions, i used them in the side of the wall for the clamp-on shack
infact, im getting a mental image of a hallway with no floor ^^ to stop them pesky sims getting up there XD hmmm......

will have to attach some picks (if i can remember how to do that here XD been a couple of years or more..about 09 when i last uploaded anything to the site lol.)
has anyone seen any deco furniture and items anyplace? like a deco only door, kitchen apliances ect. i realy REALY need deco only bathroom stuff, especialy baths and toilets, and a door that i can place thats just not realy a door. a painting version that was not even 'view'able by sims would be perfect (and uses the basic base game door's textures would be amzing XD as i have the recolor'd metal and wood doors from pixlehates stuff.)

My founder is still in college, rolling the dice every day is nerve-wracking! But he is in the later half of sophomore year now.

My question is one related to when he gets out of college!

I notice two of the rules for natural science (which is in tier 2) are
1-You may not order groceries for delivery via the phone or computer.
2-You may not plant fruit bearing trees, garden vegetables, or the Cow Plant.

The refrigerator appears to be allowed (Does anyone know of a non-refrigerator looking one. Maybe that looks more like a pantry closet? Going to get nice cold food and drinks from a running fridge right after the disaster just sounds funny to me)

But once the frig is empty of its inital supply, how does my sim get more food, or am I missing something here?

Maybe there is a small supply base (in the form of a grocery store?) at the soup kitchen or military base that I dont know about? I could imagine survivors line up for weekly rations? Which I could restock from on my allowed weekly outing in that case. Hmm!

i have had a good few medievil looking pantrys from mod the sims but they are usualy built on the more expensive kitchen sets and still tend to look like fridges (at least to me lol)

try the KIS (keep it simple) set from here, its cheap, looks like its an antique (allthough it could do with a worn looking version, looks like great grandma kept her heirlooms in covers hehe) and is low poly
http://thesorceressandcompany.com/F...php?topic=988.0
you will need to grab the master file to make sure you dont get blue flashy (as i found out after i coped em into my zombie folder and forgot which item WAS the master XD so had to copy the whole set in, meh no worries)

of there are the woodcutters pantries at parsim
http://www.parsimonious.org/furnitu...y_Kitchen.shtml
this one will have the original mesh, but page befor this one will have the dark wood (dusty) version as well as the mesh.

hm...there must be a super-duper mart someplace in the hood..shame we cant stock it with Raiders or zombies XD
i might try making a food bank again, my last one wasnt satisfying (i wasnt happy with it lol)
my problem is, i have only one pack of cans i can use to stock the shelves and they arent post OfB so i have to work around. anyone know of deco cans here at MtS?
oh and check the medievil section themed area for wooden recols of the supermarket if you want basic, or
http://www.parsimonious.org/furnitu...ay_Market.shtml
the shelves look good for a knocked together feel too (and you need at least one shelf as its a master repository set)

*edit* im finding THE most fantastic sets at GoS from someone called Kativip. not everything in them is good, some have some not so nice extras (like 1940's wartime items hehe) but its worth getting them for the fantastic OTHER bits like sandbags and bed barricades im saving the links to a notepad so i dont forget where i got them, and what ones they are...damnit, my DL folder for the apocalipse is going to be as big as my normal roman/medievil set XD

oh, and i sugest grabbing the medievil replacement food set from here at MtS becaue it makes all the food look much less..modern, admitedly but it swaps a good few of the foods. mac'n cheese turned into something that looks like brown mush ^^ (much more apropriate for the end of your world *grin* than happy shiny cheesey pasta)

Thanks for the links, I really like the dusty pantry stuff, and also on page 8 there is whats called colony bunker kitchen, which could work for this as well.

Going to check out the rest of these I am certain I will find useful! Thanks.

Been away a few days and no time to play until the weekend. I'm a teacher and back to school in Canada was this week.

My bottom "floor" in a wall-less driveway with the pillared home atop it. I already have 2 fridges stored down there. I'll sell them once I can, but until then they sit in the carport. I do have grocery bins set up at my community lot "Emergency Supply Centre" but since I still have toddlers in the home and still need everyone to travel together, the emergency supplies have only been accessed once by my founder when he went to get his culinary job there. The toughest things currently have been feeding, bathing, and remembering not to sell items by deleting them.

My oldest child is a teen now, and he is actually going to be my founder because I cheated by accident early on but in an important way. (Great suggestion for salvaging Phae!) So I'm letting the parents keep with their jobs, but lift no restrictions. It's easier because there is more money coming in, but much much harder because I have too many mouths to feed and many, many days before a single restriction can be lifted. Someone will die of starvation, it's just who....... The family had 4 kids, anticipating the culinary being lifted by the time they were all child and up. Now that it is not happening, the daily meal of hamburgers is not enough.

Feeding trick though. Let them go to work hungry. They'll come home fed. One less mouth.......

My items I brought over were a bed, a half full fridge, and a sofa.

well i finaly grabbed some pics

thanks to Kativip's 'Memories' series at GoS (the one thats designed around a WW2 and resistance theme) i have more sandbags, home lot old store deco (so it looks like someone may have to later on open a food bank store, or maybe i will have to make an NPC who looks after the food bank....)

hey thats a question, Phae..
alot of nice things are home lot only, so this one is....if the NPC-Sim isnt taking part in the chalenge by unlocking, can you make a home buisnes lot for them that includes all the wonderfull things. this sim would be like a bodyguard for a com lot (although becasue of the item makers choice, the lot is actualy a home lot) you could just send your sim to the NPC-Sims lot *as if* it was a com lot, most of the normal chalenge restrictions would still work if you had the chalenge mods in place, right?
this sim wouldnt be allowed to be played much, or even at all, untill after the buisness restrictions were lifted (probably not at all since technicaly they are profiteering off the poor XD) but it *would* allow for a more community feeling lot in one or two instances (feel free to whack me if thats too much XD)

the other one is, im having trouble building com lots on the 5x5 when they arent large military run places. i wanted to make a container yard-esk food kitchen (especialy as i found the old Simlogical prizon-school food server that serves 3 kinds of Sim-Mush rather than nice food) but the 5x5 size makes it gloat at me and im left looking at the screen wondering where to put everything...is the 5x5 rule for just the founders home base? i been using 3x3 mainly becasue they let me place copies all over the place for deco look hehe.

but still, once i get those deco beds and rubble into the houses to block off the areas i dont want them using, my houses can look derrelict AND be useable

hweldon, I'm really enjoying hearing about your story, and yup, you found the answer to the fridge problem. You just have to buy more and let the empty ones sit and rot out in the yard. As they are empty and no longer useful, you don't have to keep them in your 8x8. See the bottom pic

Rayea, the pics are looking great! I have no idea which rooms are accessible, but I'm trusting you to not go over 64 tiles. The 5x5 lot restriction isn't required for the comm lots, it's barely required for founder lots. These comm lots are supposed to continued existing after you've completed the challenge, so it should be built on what fits your hood and what is right for the building itself. As for other sims, only career based community lots can ignore unlocked restrictions, and then only of their career's restriction. If a sim were living on a career based lot, it would stand to reason that they were the ones who had unlocked it, and as they haven't lifted it yet, it doesn't make much sense. I could see one of your bloodline sims moving out on her own, going to a church or cemetary to join Paranormal, working her way up, lifting it, and then turning her house into a Cult Shoppe, but there wouldn't be much reason for your other sims to visit her there as her restriction has been lifted. I might not really be understanding what you are asking about, but the answer is nope. Your legacy family is supposed to be the bright hope for the future, they are the ones with all the shiny things.

well i just found out that if i realy want a food bank with the simlogical slop server ^^ i will have to use it on a home lot (bah, humbug) and i cant make a shop style food bank at home (cause the food bins dont show up in buy. maybe they do if you make a buisness, i dunno lol) so that ones out too *mutter, twitch*

i made sure that the third house pictured had 64 (or as i though, 62 lol) tiles in areas i can access. the back room behind the room with the beds has no access, up past the top step of the stairs is currently floored with the Muse invisible tile and a lot of the splintered wood fence from the demo set (to give the impression that alot of the houses 2nd floor is unsafe to even walk on) but i will be sure to place something ruble like in there if i use it.

im going to make a befor-after house at some point. take a nice suburban home from my hood befor the Event and then trash the frell out of it, reducing the place to the required 64 or less useable floor tiles.
however that will have to wait a while...casue the good news is..I THINK I GOT MY MAN ADDICTED TO SIMS ^^
lol
i also think i know why my hood looks like its allready been hit befor the Event. i decided it was allready in the desert, casue the founders from a century ago, were all rich paranoids that expected the bomb. but after it never came, the real estate people pulled up nearly all of the family home shelters left to make swimming pools and underground garages XD so there arent more than abour 3 or 4 left, and i decided where 2 of those are. one is under the old supermarket (owned my a town founders family member) and the other is under the supermarkets owners house XD (the one thing they passed on in their family line was...paranoia XD so he kept the shelters expecting some conspiracy. once the Event hits, he's gona be hunkered down inside his little Vault-tech bunker lol. the others might end up as areas that got exposed after earthquake or somethin, im not sure.

right now, im gong to go see if i can find the radio stuff from fallout3, if they are MP3's....*grin*

also, sorry if i keep asking dumb questions, Phae. i just like to make sure im not doing it wrong :P

I'm really glad you're asking all those questions, Rayea - because I'm (and probably others are, too) learning from the answers.

I am looking forward to starting this soon. I'm going to do a mid-Uni start because it sounds the most intriguing. I played the Apocalypse challenge a long time ago and had my sim graduate college. During that time she maxed out all of her skills and made about 15 or so best friends. So she was well prepared. But that's not very realistic.

I'm excited about all the mods made to protect the player from making mistakes because, even though I tried my hardest to do everything right, there was just way too much stuff to remember.

Has anyone tried this with Pescado's Zombie Apocalypse installed? I'm thinking of trying it, but I'm not sure if I want to always be in danger of becoming a zombie. It would be exciting, but boy would I get mad if I spent hours worth of set up time just to become a zombie and for it all to be over.

And that's a brilliant idea - to take a house that's all ready built and then trashify it - hmmm....Might be a good option for me since I hate building. All of my community buildings will be downloaded, lol.

Nice house Rayea!

My founder is in the 2nd half of junior year and so far so good, no disaster yet. He just fell in love with a girl that lives in the dorm, and being in 2nd half of junior year and a family sim, he decided to get engaged! So hopefully after the disaster and hope is restored maybe theyll be reunited.. we will see. I am almost hoping that the disaster does happen before he graduates, because I plan to transport as much elixir of life as I can back from college, and that would give me 3 spaces towork with instead of 2!

-edit update: My founder just graduated. Looks like I pretty much have a full-uni start after all... I was surprised I didnt roll any double sixes (used random.org for my numbers)

I love the ideas of a random Uni Start and the two-day jump on an Adult Start. I suppose if you wanted to increase the suspense on the Uni Start, you could roll one die and use 6 as the Apocalypse trigger.

Hmm, maybe this should be obvious, but how is my founder supposed to increase body skills? I thought there was supposed to be a workout option on the cheap radio that is allowed but there is not...

Everyone is still alive....barely. If the family dog didn't have a job, he'd be a goner for sure!

Mom just finally started the medical field because the whole household is now child and up. There are two teens and two children (twins) in the house. The oldest teen son, Kaynan, tried to get a job also on their family trip to the "Emergency Supply Centre" but was denied due to his poor grades. I guess he gets to continue skilling and I can hold off on work until he turns adult. The father is three days from elder, where he becomes uncontrollable. That will be interesting keeping him out of the kitchen.

Still a really fun challenge. Money is now starting to wear on me. I think they might have too many expensive chairs because each week they lose all their funds. Stupid criminals.....

Oh that brings up another question, Im still in my first week of play but when Monday rolls around what happens if I cant afford to pay the criminals the full amount, do I just pay all the money I have?

I spent the first couple of days fixing up a restorable car so I wouldnt be breaking the 'walk to' rule, even if it doesnt apply to the allowable visits it sounded strange to go strolling around the block alone and unprotected, so my play week started Mon but I didnt get a job until Wed.

My founder joined the military. The story in my mind is that right after graduation the disaster struck, and as he trudged his way back to his hometown in the ever-deepening cold and snow, he joined up with a military convoy. Being a young man fresh out of college and returning to a hometown that is nothing like he remembered, he decided to enlist with the military. I placed the founders lot that Phae created (stripped within an inch of its life so that my founder could afford it) adjacent to the military base, as well as a couple of copies of it so it looks like it is sort of part of the base, maybe bunkers/quarters for the higher ranking. Or those brave/foolish enough to live off the base.. haha! - I cant figure a way to gain body skill however, I was under the impression I would be able to use the equipment at the military base to do so, but it doesnt seem to work..

Also I have the zombie mod in place, Im guessing it wont really do anything until an initial zombie is somehow brought into being in the hood? Not that I am eager to see brains eaten, Im actually worried that it would turn all the non-playables into zombies rather quickly and I would have no one to make a spouse for my heir and the human race would end...

edit - oh! also, I wanted to 'invite over' the girl he had gotten engaged to in college, but the option is not on the phone! I thought if they had red hearts or were engaged we were allowed to invite them over. Hopefully if I lift military I can invite anyone over then it looks like. It was only because his social was tanking... it wouldnt fit my story anyways, it would have had to have been a dream hehe.

from what i remember, you have to have your founder reach 10 in the military to use the obsticle coiurse, and he cant do any of those interactions (ask over ect) untill he is also at 10 career. then the game gets saved, you take out the military section one rule mod and restart your game, go into your founders lot and he should then be able to use the course and ask his love over?

(peers at Phae to check that right or off a bit) :P
but im not sure but i think also that you still wolndnt be able to invite just anyone over, only your potential spouse casue love is Dumb and dosent care about nuclear winters XD

Body skill - do you get the option to "jump rope?" Because that is the cheap, fun way to body skill heaven.

I was going to use 'jump rope' for body skilling, too, but it's forbidden because of Athletic.

I have a really stupid question. I have heard that you can use lots that have different EP/SP configurations than your own, if you use Cleanpack installer. But how can you tell which items come with which EP's and SP's? I can't use any of Phae's buildings (or several of the others) because I don't have the correct SP's.

Oh, and one more. Phae, you said you highly recommend Pescado's Zombie Apocalypse and ARC for this challenge to make the threat of zombies real. What is ARC?

Well, my founder made General and moments ago my pet made it to the top of Security. So far neither has bought me much relief. True, my Founder could marry his collage sweetheart and have an heir, but he'll be an elder before the child reaches teen. Mom is working on Medical. She's only on level 2 and on a day off. Will she have to quit to take care of the kid when dad reaches elder? The obstacle course can't be placed on the lot because it won't fit the approved footprint. I can't afford better beds. Life will just have to go on as it has to date with no improvement, I guess.

Peni, jump rope is restricted by Athlete. Be a couple generations before that is unlocked. Buy a boom box.

The option to workout to the boombox won't appear if your Sim's Fun level is too high. I usually have them sit and skill something else to drain Fun, then have them workout. It always sort of ticked me off about the boombox being the only way to build Body at the beginning of the challenge. At least once you get three points you can switch to Yoga, which I like better than exercise equipment anyway.

It sounds like everyone is still surviving. That's really good. You know, you could write up your own Sims Stories and post them over in the Sims 2 Story forum. You'd just need decent pictures and a bit of writing flair. Catch all the funny and interesting things that happen along the way, you've already got the plot - survival! You can earn your MTS Storyteller badge that way.

I'll look into the issue about the Invite Over, that might have gotten tossed in without regard for the <3 exceptions. You can use Inge's Teleporter Cat to summon over your sweetheart if that was the case.

I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see the Apocalypse Challenge is alive, well and continuing to improve!

I'm an old granny with very little time to play Sims, but I have to say you are sorely tempting me to carve out a little time for my old passion.