Issue when placing community lots

[shanice1219]

Hi guys!

I came to this forum because I thought someone here may be able to help me with this issue I am having. If this is not the place for my question I apologize and will move it elsewhere.

I apologize if this is a little confusing, but I couldn't seem to find the answer anywhere:

When I place a community lot (or build my own) say in Newcrest, or any world, none of the custom lots seem to be registering as what they are labeled.

For example: When I placed a museum and made sure it was labeled as a museum and that it met all the requirements I would save my game and go about playing with my sim. Well when I take my sim to the museum to meet the "view art at gallery" requirements for her aspiration, viewing art at the custom museum doesn't count towards her goals. It only seems to count if I go to the premade museums that come with the world.

I also have this issue when placing\building libraries. None of the skill books show up on the shelves. Effectively making these lots pretty useless.

I am wondering what I am doing wrong here? Again I'm sorry if it is confusing and will try to clear up any questions you guys have in order to fix this issue. While I can still use the premade lots to get stuff done, I really wanted to be able to build and use my own lots in Newcrest.

[Playalot]

You are not doing anything wrong. These are just limitations of the game to be honest. Custom lots will not register towards base game aspiration achievements.

A work around for the library might be to make it a residential lot temporarily and move a sim in to purchase skill books, then move the temp sim out, and then re-designate the lot. I haven't tried this but it may work. You could also try placing a Maxis made library and then deleting everything apart from the bookcases and build around it. Maybe place the bookcases into a temp basement and replace them where you want them once the build is how you want it? Once you have a template that works (i.e. has skill books) then saving it to your library and replacing it in other saves/worlds should allow it to retain the skill books. But this is all guess work, as I said I haven't tested this.

[HelenP]

I found a trick for libraries.  The bookcases from the Willow Creek lot will add skill books to an existing library. I've used this to add skill books to the library in Windenburg although I've not tried it on a library I've made.

Place a Willow Creek Library bookcase in a separate room on the lot, it doesn't have to have doors or windows just enough room to put the bookcase in.  Save the room to your gallery.  Go into build mode at another library, place the bookcase room on the lot and move the bookcase into the main library building.  Delete the (now empty) bookcase room from the lot. You should now have skill books available in all the bookcases in the library.

The bookcases in Willow Creek library have a special code attached to them which makes the skill books available, I've seen it while looking at modding some other stuff but I don't know enough about modding to attach the code to a different bookcase so transfering the Willow Creek library bookcase is the only way I can do it.

Hope this helps.

ETA I've just made my own library to test this and it works.

[Playalot]

Awesome tip HelenP!