It is both sad and happy for me to say this.
We are done with Let's Build a House!
Originally I was going to post this in one giant post, but I decided to split it into two posts. I will update the list in the first post as soon as I upload the house.
I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the following people. Not all of them built, and some have left the forum since, but they all volunteered to help:
| Gogowars329 | TallStar | jessiethedog |
| imaGleek | Choccolatee | Simlishlol |
| fortheloveofcake | Sportsfan | Audren |
| ZapKid | Chopsticks | MissMaths |
| AnnBeiFong | TheDarkPlumbob | AbrahamC |
| MissPlumbBob | CharlotteDaBookworm | Tommyo3000 |
| CandyHeartedSim | Simstar3 | Samoht04 |
And of course, to Carl and Pam for letting me organise this project.
We asked the people involved in this project to answer a few questions about it. The questions we asked were: "What was your favourite part of this project?" and "If you could change one aspect of this, what would you change?" Here are their responses.
Seabody:
1. My favourite part was seeing the whole house come together into a great big community shelter. I'm quite glad with how it turned out - if I had built this myself, I wouldn't have come close to the quality of the whole house. I'm looking forward to downloading the finished product.
2. If I could change one thing, I'd probably not change much. I'm working on the next one, so I need to be thinking like this, though I can't find much to change. I'd probably change the lot size - we had an issue where builders needed to bulldoze the Science Facility in Sunset Valley to place the lot.
Gogowars329:
My favourite part was being able to create the room. I was happy that I wasn't the first person as I wouldn't know what colours to use but since I was second I had an idea of the colours and style.
2. The only thing I would change would be the fact the lot is the 64 x 64 one. I think it should've been on a smaller one because so far, I can see we are only using a small portion of the lot. Landscaping will be pretty hard!!
Thank you Seabody for this great fun and I hope we get to create another house!
Gogo.
TallStar:
My favorite part of this project was being responsible for only one room, where I could focus all of my efforts, instead of spreading it out and building a whole house where I may not have put as much attention into some rooms.
If I could change one thing, I'm not entirely sure what it would be because it contains evrything it needs to:1) fun, 2) unique-ness in every room because they're all done by different people.
Jessiethedog:
1: Seeing what everyone else was building, and using this to develop my own building skills.
2: I wish more people could take part! I understand this would be hard to organise, though. Anyway, I loved the project and would definately take part in another!
Thanks for letting me take part, it's been great.
imaGleek:
My favourite part was furnishing my room.
If I could change one thing, I think I would have signed up earlier instead of last minute.
Chocolatee:
My favourite part was loading it in my game and seeing everyone's creations close up.
And I would like to change my library's theme to more modern.
simlishlol:
1. I think my favorite part was just being able to take part in this cool project.
2. If I could change one thing, I would add more decorations to the TV viewing area, because the wall looks very bare there.
Fortheloveofcake:
1. My favourite part of this project was definitely being somewhat confined to the space I had available. I knew that I had to leave enough space for all the builders who were to go after me, but still try to make a nice room. It was way more fun than my usual arrangement of several rectangular rooms all squished together!
2. I wouldn't change a thing about this project! It was a great idea to allow builders to show their talent, for the entire forum to see. I hope there are many more of these to come, and I'll participate as often as I can!
Sportsfan:
My favorite part of this project was seeing how it evolved from one builder to the next. Each put their own personal flair on it, which made each room special. I was very happy that after all of my troubles with this I was finally able to participate and build a room.
I would change the fact that it was mistakenly placed on a 64x64 lot instead of the intended 60x60. Also, I think I'd like to have seen an outline of the house first so that we knew what amount of room we had to leave for others.
AnnBeiFong:
My favorite part of this project was that it was very cooperative. Normally I hate building houses in Sims, but only building one room and having my creativity mashed together with everyone else's to make a magnificent house was a refreshing change.
If I could change one aspect... it would be the whole base content only scenario. I know it was supposed to let everyone use the house and everything, but I like being able to use all of the cool stuff the creators gave us in the expansions.
ZapKid:
My favorite part was actually building my part,
and I would change the size of the house / number of rooms.
AbrahamC:
I have only just PM'd him, I thought I had already done it.
And finally, here's a few words from Sportsfan and I about this.
Seabody:
My take on the project is that we've done really well! I think that we should all be ready to kick it up a notch next time, because it's going to be a lot more interesting. I think the project has gone quite well overall - I'm really glad I asked Sportsfan to help, because if I can't make it on to the forum, or I'm busy playing Sims, or Evil Genius (Vivendi game about conquering the world), he's been there directing the project, helping people work things out, and generally being a great person.
Sportsfan:
It was July 17, and I just joined the forum only 3 weeks ago. So I'm sitting at my house, getting ready to leave for vacation in a few days, when I get this:
Sportsfan, would you like to help me with a project for the Swap Shop where members put their names down for certain rooms, and then we create a house based around that?
Here's an example (names were random, I just thought of usernames):
Member Room Uploaded
Seabody Kitchen URL to upload link in thread
danefaith Dining Room URL to upload link in thread
Simstar3 Master Bedroom URL to upload link in thread
Samoht04 Ensuite Bathroom URL to upload link in thread
Joria Outside Patio URL to upload link in thread
Anushka Landscaping URL to upload link in thread
There would be simple rules, e.g
No altering other people's rooms
You must stick to the room you chose
and so on.
Once the first person has finished, then they upload it for the next person to download and build on.
I have Carl's permission to do this.
I understand if you can't because you're often on a mobile.
So what do I immediately do? PM the other people that he mentioned in there of course! I wanted to know if they knew about it. Nobody mentioned in there did. But me.
Also, you have to realize at the time that I was just getting comfortable around the members here. I was shy, and to get a pm from someone with the amount of posts and expertise as Seabody, who was like a Titan to me, was incredibly surprising.
I've asked him many times, and I don't think that either of us knows why he chose me to send that pm to. He says "because you seemed like a nice guy". So are many of the other members on the forum.
So we take up the task of working on this together. The original rules were quite different than the final piece. We added some stuff in, took some stuff out, and corrected typos. He had the ideas, I just proofread them for him. We had some disagreements along the way, most notably regarding the basement tool.
While he worked on the rules, I worked on finding people that could participate. I made the mistake of thinking that it was a good idea to choose younger members exclusively, which ended up just seeming to be discriminatory. Also, I chose members with enough posts that I could rely on them to be online regularly enough to know when it is their turn.
12 days later, after a lot of hard work, editing, and PMing, we agreed that it was ready to show to the public. So, on July 29, seabody posted
Let's build a house!. The popularity of the idea was obvious; a page of comments in the span of an hour is quite impressive.
I had difficulties from the start with this. I hadn't used the swap shop before, and found that my computer placed the downloads in a different place than what I expected. Sadly, I had to drop out then. I joined the waiting list after I thought that I had figured it out, but then could not participate when it was my turn because of patching issues. We were running low on back ups, and me, now patched up, decided to try one more time in hopes of redeeming myself. I was glad that I got the opportunity to build a room again, and finally I succeeded.
With school starting, a lot of the members were busy, so quite a few people had to drop out.
The impact that this project made on me was that I realized that anyone could build to a high enough level that they could make a room of the house. It is much easier for people to just make one room and focus all of their attention on it than it is for them to build an entire house. Not everyone can build a great house, but anyone can build a great room.
This was a ton of fun to be a part of, and a big thank you to Seabody for thinking of the concept, to Carl for approving it, to everyone that participated, and to the people that gave the participants encouragement throughout.
