The teens from Sullivan and Exeter will all attend here. High school is grades 7-12 in Australia (we don't have middle school), so all teens will go here. I'm planning on building a primary school (or rather, making a copy of this school and modifying it) too. That will be in Sullivan and will be for all children.
What you see here is what I have so far. If you click for the large version of the pic, you can likely see that the building is completely empty. I haven't even placed any internal walls yet but when I started sharing Sullivan online, one of my intentions was to show the behind the scenes stuff too because I always love that about other people's blogs.
I have not yet decided how I'm going to run it. I've downloaded Inge's school stuff and she specifies that it's for running a school on a residential lot. I would personally prefer to run it as an owned community lot. From my very preliminary experiments last night though, it appears the objects might work on community lots too. It takes a bit of wrangling to get them there (you have to zone it as residential, place them and then rezone as commercial) but the options all appear for the objects, so it's just a matter of figuring out whether the options will work as intended.
If anyone has done this (owned community lot school) and can spot any major flaws in my logic, please feel free to jump in and tell me! As far as I can tell, it might work okay but I still have to do some more experimentation.
Nice looking high school. You know it's strange wher eI'm from we have a mix. I went through elementary, then middle, then high school. But out where I live now (same city different area) the middle and high school are combined in the same building.
ReplyDeleteIf I remember Pine Hollow has a community owned school and she's using Inge's hack as well. And I have been thinking about switching my school over to a community lot as well.
So I have to rezone it as a residental lot, place the pics, then save, then rezone it back to commuity. Or after rezoning to residental do I exit the game, then re enter? I'm confused. here goes my brain hurting once more. lol
Cool, I love behind the scenes stuff!
ReplyDeleteYou can also get Wardrobe Wrangler (http://www.djssims.com/index.php?category=1&subcat=5) - that program will allow you to set Inge's objects as community objects too. So you don't have to rezone and stuff
Riverdale, you don't need to exit the game. Just rezone as residential, exit the lot (not the game), re-enter the lot, place the objects, then rezone as commercial.
ReplyDeleteI thought Pine Hollow actually had a residential school. The Smith family lives there, don't they? I think Laura's schools might be community lots. Must go check.
Simstate, have you tried that? I'm going to give it a shot but I'm not sure it will work. I managed to get the objects to show up on a community lot by putting them in a collection but when I tried to place them, they were greyed out and I couldn't. I wonder if WW changes the coding in some way so that they can be placed.
I have a community lot school in my neighbourhood, and all the objects seem to work as intended. The way I get around the problem is to have the teacher buy the pictures/class-controllers etc at home, put them in her inventory, and then get them out once she's at school. One side effect that I've found is that if I make a random neighbourhood sim a teacher (for, say, sport on wednesday afternoons), they will appear on the lot when I start school along with the kids.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Claire. I considered the inventory thing but wasn't sure if it would work. Good to know!
ReplyDeleteI hope that teacher thing won't bother me too much but I haven't play-tested at all, so we'll have to see!
Hi Claire, I've used Wardrobe Wrangler to make items appear in community buy mode, including inge's stuff. It's just a matter of checking off the community lot box. But better make a back-up just in case, but I've never had a problem when I've done it myself.
ReplyDeleteI prefer doing the owned community lot way - that way anyone can visit it, and also your owner can have their own private residence without visitors running around all the time.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like everything should work. The hardest part is getting the objects there, but once they are, they should be completely usable.
The school looks great! I always have empty buildings around too. My Lake City School is empty like that right now, lol!
I can't wait to see it in action :)
The thing I've always been unsure how to work around is what to do with the kids on my home lots. If they're enrolled in Inge's flexi school, they end up spending all their time at home, which has always seemed a bit unrealistic to me.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the double comment - it's just nice to have discussions with other simmers about issues like this!
Claire, what *is* flexi-school? I didn't see any mention of that on Inge's page. I don't mind double, triple or quadruple comments, by the way. I'm very happy to have these kinds of discussions here!
ReplyDeleteLaura, thanks! I hate home businesses and definitely wouldn't want to run something as complicated as a school from home, which was my main reason for trying it on a community lot. I wanted to have the freedom to go to it when I wanted to and an owned community lot works well in that capacity.
Well, you said you didn't mind triple comments....
ReplyDeleteFlexi school is one of Inge's custom school types. It's used for kids who are educated at home or go to a player run school. It has no set days, which means the kids don't go off on the school bus while they are already at your school, or lose a grade for missing a day.
Yeah, Pine Hollow is a owned community lot now, since she moved the school teacher into another apt. lot.
ReplyDeleteI haven't used flexi school. What I do is, before I play my rotation round I play my school first. I have a CAS NPC that "lives" there. He's my janitor, cleans up the school and grounds while my teachers and students are there.
I play the lot for 5 sim days. You can see the schedule on my main site, under council notes. When school is closed I FF the lot so I don't play my NPC.
I also let the kids go to the Maxis school when I play their lot. So they are still "attending" Riverdale School of Excellence and still building skills at home that are needed for college.
I use the Inge's tokens for my students and teachers. But since I'm thinking about switching the school to a owned community lot I might have to change my rotation. Since I will have to play the house of the lot owner as well. We'll see. I just set up my new schedule and I'll have to move it around again, lol.
Simstate, that's for the link!
I'm just now getting a chance to catch up on the latest posts on the blogs I read, so I just saw this discussion. My school was originally a residential lot, since Inge made the objects work on residential lots. But I did change it over to a community lot and used the Sim Categorizer to change them to work on community lots (I see in your next post that you've done that now!). It's much easier to run the school as a community lot than as a residential since I no longer have to keep the rest of the teacher's family occupied during school hours.
ReplyDeleteI once, in my old hood, set everyone to the Flexi school, but I didn't like how they were home all day whenever I played their houses. So now, I just let all of my students attend the regular Maxis school when I play their lots and then play the actual school days when I'm playing the teacher's lot. The only student that now is set to Flexi school is Ian Lloyd, since he lives with his grandfather who is the school teacher. Ian goes off to the community lot with Aidan each morning and by setting him to the Flexi school, the bus doesn't come to pick him up and he doesn't lose a grade for missing school.
Anyway, your school looks great! I'm looking forward to seeing it in action! :)
Thank you all for sharing how you use the school stuff in your games. I've never used this stuff before, so I'm a complete novice!
ReplyDeleteI posted on N99 about the flexi-school and it seems like you don't need to use that for the school stuff, and Inge herself confirmed that the hacks are completely separate. So I won't be using it - I can't think of any reason my Sim kids would be hanging around during the day.
I'm getting excited to start playing with it! I'll have to wait until the next round though, because I'm done with all my teens and with all the Sims I might want working at the school. I might duck in to the Moretti residence and have Simona set it up, just so it's ready for me next time. Not sure who will run the primary school. My first thought was Cedric, but he's only got about a round and a half left. :\