Cooking Up More Hobby Dorms

I love Freetime. Doesn't everyone? I also love University. Not everyone loves University, but I do. So naturally, about half a decade back, I came up with the idea for Hobby Dorms, so that Sims might indulge in their favorite hobbies, hone their mastery of mitigating idleness and, perhaps, earn a little extra money to help cover college expenses (at least for nine hobbies out of ten; sorry, Sports, but you're still practically useless).

Unfortunately, at the time, I was haunting that one big site with the domineering clique full of passive-aggressives and their beloved Dislike buttons, so my idea for sharing my hobby dorms went over like a uranium balloon. But, nil desperandum; even if no one else wants hobby dorms, I still do. So I just build them for myself these days. And the liberating thing about not creating them for upload is that I can toss in Custom Content with wild abandon and no one will care. So I still piece together a new hobby dorm — with or without CC — from time to time. And this is one of those times.

Each hobby dorm is themed to focus on one or two of the ten hobbies; in the case of two-hobby dorms, the hobbies are connected by either practicality (ie. Nature Sims grow and/or catch the food, and Cuisine Sims cook the food) or a shared Personality trait (ie. Active Sims can excel at both Fitness and Sports). And there must be objects in each hobby dorm for building all seven Skills, whether or not the themed hobby includes objects for any particular Skill (ie. Games has the bowling alley to build Body skill, but Arts & Crafts has no Body-building objects and therefore must borrow them from another hobby, be it Games, Music & Dance, Fitness or Sports). And decorating each dorm with objects that can be Viewed for a quick shot of hobby enthusiasm (ie. molecule models for Science, sports pendants for Sports, racks of china dishes for Cuisine, gardening tools for Nature, damned near everything for Arts & Crafts....) is practically mandatory.

And, with that in mind for however many years, I've come up with, built and completed several hobby dorms so far:


Planned / What I Yet Need:

• A "Dinner and a Movie" dorm [Hobbies: Cuisine + Film & Literature. Connection? Both are Lazy hobbies.]
• A "Simba Dance!" Zumba-like or Jazzercise-like dance studio/dorm [Hobbies: Fitness + Music & Dance. Connection? Both are Outgoing hobbies.]
• An "Industrial Art" dorm [Hobbies: Tinkering + Arts & Crafts. Connection? Hobbies for Nice Sims.]
• A dorm for Music & Dance alone.
• A new replacement for the Hwang Motors Dorm (see below), with fewer dorm rooms, more vehicle bays and possibly a "scrapyard" full of discarded appliances, electronic toys and plumbing fixtures that Sims can Tinker with.
• Anything else?


Under Construction (in my special University subhood where I can build, clone and test dorms before completing them, turning them into dorms with the ChangeLotZoning cheat and packaging them):

• The Brick Gymhouse (Hobbies: Fitness + Sports. Includes plenty of exercise machines, workout mats and kickbags, with an indoor basketball half-court (made possible with the Move Objects cheat), a soccer net on the roof and a swimming pool as a "moat" around the entire gym so that Sims can swim laps.)

Spoiler (Click to View)

Spoiler (Click to View)

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• The Hypatian Archive (Hobby: Film & Literature. The dorm's very large library is loosely modeled after surviving depictions of the Library of Alexandria, and the whole lot is named on behalf of Hypatia of Alexandria, two wonderful Late Roman and Alexandrian things that the early Christians wantonly sacked, destroyed and/or brutally murdered by way of saying, "Thanks for converting to Christianity and liberating us from Roman oppression, Emperor Constantine! Now screw off!" Highbrow historical references there, right?)
(I need to throw out one of those ShinyTyme stoves and pave a walkway up to the entrance, come to think of it. Sadly, that rolling bookshelf ladder doesn't actually move anywhere, but it's not like Sims need to climb that high to get books from those two-story in-the-wall bookshelves anyway. The "Film" part of "Film & Literature" will be served by movie props and a small movie theatre or two in the library's top floor.)

Spoiler (Click to View)

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• Wild Deuce's Cards and Lodging (Hobby: Games. Includes a cards den or two, a small bowling alley, a video game arcade and a swimming pool where Sims can play "Klimtog Turno" to build Body and Games enthusiasm at the same time, in case that bowling alley alone isn't enough.)

Spoiler (Click to View)

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Completed and In Use:

• Hwang Motors Dorm (Hobby: Tinkering. Themed after a small automotive factory or garage with crew living quarters. In hindsight, I should have taken out half the dorm rooms and added more vehicle bays. Students buy their own junk cars, of course.)

Spoiler (Click to View)

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• Fruityboo Farms Dormitory (Hobbies: Nature + Cuisine. Themed to resemble a small to mid-sized farm with a large, rustic kitchen and a creek for fishing. The water tower doesn't actually do anything, alas.)

Spoiler (Click to View)

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• Abstractivism NOW! Quarters (Hobby: Arts & Crafts. Themed to resemble an "art village," albeit with an Upper Class "Artiste" half and a Lower Class "Bohemian" half. Includes a two-story art gallery for student-submitted paintings, a still life painting studio, a live Figure Drawing studio, a pottery room and a sewing room.)

Spoiler (Click to View)

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• Bellum Center for Xenobiology (Hobbies: Science + Nature, with a bit of Fitness thrown in. Includes a large rooftop stargazing area with telescopes, an attached greenhouse, a stock tank for various fish species (and no rules against fishing, yay) and an outdoor fitness area because daggit, if those wily extraterrestrials insist on kidnapping and probing Simmy astronomers, then those Sims might as well be physically fit enough for space travel!)

Spoiler (Click to View)

Spoiler (Click to View)

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Ex-Hobby Dorms:

• Vanity Orchard (Hobby: Nature. Vacated, cleansed and bulldozed because a few placed objects made the whole lot buggy. The objects were identified and removed from the catalog — and from all lots in the game — soonafter.)

• Chef Rocco's Dorm (Hobby: Cuisine. Cleaned out and bulldozed because of a terrain bug which blocked vehicles on the adjoining street and, as this was shortly after Vanity Orchard's demise, also bulldozed in the advent of creating the Fruityboo Farms dorm to take both their places...not that there's anything wrong with single-hobby Hobby Dorms, mind you....)


So what are some good ideas for new or future hobby dorms? Is there anything that I should alter, cut out or replace? Is there any CC that I should download, install and plunk down somewhere to make those dorms even better? Which hobbies do you and your Sims like to play with most of all? What's the temperature of a Baked Alaska? I'm all ears.

wow those are some creative builds!!! I love how the moat goes all the way to the house I would've never thought of doing that but it creates a nice effect, just thought I might try that next and then maybe use numenors wall windows on some parts of the story below to look out into the pool wonder if that works.
I love the abstract one just the look from the outside it's really cool how you put it all together, whenever I try to do something like that it just ends up ugly..
oh and someone else but me who takes screenshots with the grid visible I always forget to click away before taking the pictures and don't realise it until after I closed the game...
You didn't picture the movie theater but just in case there are two big screens on mts for creating a theater one with transparent back and one as a large flatscreen
don't ever let others discourage you from building your way!

I just thought I'd revisit the Abstractivism NOW! (Arts & Crafts) hobby dorm. My students have added a few odds and ends (ie. paintings, Bon Voyage souvenirs, flower vases created by past Simmy art students — including some of those wonderful snapdragon bouquets — and more) since I was on That Site, so we're not quite looking at this dorm in its pristine state, as it originally was when it was created, submitted and summarily gunned down by That Site's Powers That Be. Pics are spoilered because I'm saving in .png format again; .png looks gorgeous and has wonderful clarity (not to mention certain useful features like image transparency), but it can be a real memory hog.

Spoiler (Click to View)

The Abstractivism NOW! Quarters exterior, main entrance.

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Still life studio, with a closet full of still life subjects that can be brought out and posed as I see fit.

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Live model studio. (I have about twenty different pose boxes stashed up on the flat portion of the rooftop; if I have roof transparency on, I can switch to the Simmy art model, go up to the roof level and use the pose boxes until I get the pose that I want — while being able to see my Simmy art model all the while — then come back down to the stage level and use Move_Objects to move and rotate the model as needed.)

(Also, Terpsichore there would like to remind us that Sims can occasionally defy gravity. Hair doesn't really "hang" or lie like that on someone who is supine or inverted. Neither do breasts. )

Spoiler (Click to View)

Art gallery, first floor. (I finally decided to hang that still life painting in here. It's a masterpiece worth 606 Simoleons, but I'm displaying it anyway! )

And well, poopy. I forgot to snap some screenshots of the sewing room, the pottery room and the café; I'll have to add those screenshots later. I wish that I had added a floral arrangement room as well.


(I got those TVs, by the way. Thank you! )

@Pizzatron-9000

That's some awesome work right there! I have so much CC integrated into everything I do, that I don't know who created, or where it come from, I couldn't upload anything, anyways.

Well, it kinda-sorta helps that I have the original Fruityboo and Abstractivism dorms in their pristine finalized states in my University testing subhood, so I could still upload them to a site if I wanted to. But there's the rub: after my experiences on That Site, I don't want to do that anymore. After I stopped wanting to upload content, I started adding CC to whatever other lots I created. So I'm in the same boat as you now; why bother tracking every last object that we downloaded and installed now? Which Upload Managers are we trying to impress? None of them, not anymore.

I think I'll go ahead and finish one or two of those dorms-in-progress so I can go ahead and send some Crash Test Simmies through them, make sure there aren't any problems with the lot. But then, maybe I don't need to go through that much trouble anymore; I was originally using that two-hood dorm creation process in a vain attempt to appease the Upload Manager on That Site, but since getting my lots approved for upload is no longer on my agenda, do I even need that test hood anymore? Why can't I just build the dorms in Sim State University directly, then just use the Boolprop Dormspecifictools Disabled cheat if I run into any problems? Maybe I'll go back to doing that.


(Speaking of nude art models, did you ever watch this Vancouver Film School short? It's uncomfortably hilarious! Ten years later, I still remembered it and dug it up again! My college's Figure Drawing I classes only ever had one model at a time, but admittedly, having two naked people bickering loudly in front of us, while it would have been undoubtedly distracting, would have made Figure Drawing class even more interesting than it already was! I did once have an elderly model come out of her pose, lean just a few inches over my shoulder — while she was still skyclad, bear in mind — and compliment me on how well I was sketching her belly and her thighs, so I reckon that that was interesting too.

WARNING: May contain some naked manly butt. But no naked girly butt. I can imagine everyone's disappointment in this. )

Finally, the Brick Gymhouse hobby dorm is a go!

It has nine dorm rooms and plenty of goodies for catering to the Fitness and Sports hobbies, and it should have everything that Sims need to build all seven Skills and their Class Performances.


But there's only one way to make sure of all that. Adding some crash test Simmies!

Seven Young Adult Sims, four of them natural Fitness buffs and three natural Sports buffs: Naiad Deeprunner (the designated swimmer), Quigley Quadriceps (bodybuilding), Biff Beefcake (also bodybuilding), Trixie Centerguard (basketball), Reggie Fullback (American Football or European/international equivalent, which would probably be rugby), Rowena Strong (just a general Sports fan, seeing as her personality triggers no One True Hobby for her, so the game defaults to Sports), and Jett Dasher (track and field). Let's toss them in and see how they go!


I just had to show off the "swimming moat," of course!

Jett has a Fear of growing fat. There's one Fear that will never be a problem at the Brick Gymhouse!


The gym/fitness center.


Naturally, even though all of them have been exercising since the moment they arrived, one of the coaches still dropped in and started yelling at them to make them do some impromptu PT.

I guess that's not too far removed from coaches in real life.


More cafeteria stuff.


Seeing as the Brick Gymhouse only houses nine students, those two cafeteria tables against the far wall will probably never be used (unless I make students do their assignments while standing near them, perhaps).

Oh, well.


The library or study area (or whatever passes for such in a dorm full of jocks).

Watching sports on TV is a Lazy activity, and Active Sims (for example, natural Fitness Sims and natural Sports Sims) dislike doing Lazy activities. So Sims continue to have a love/hate relationship with the Simmy Sports channel. Good job, Maxis!


Around this time, Quigley alerted me to one small problem: I had forgotten to put lights in the dorm rooms!


Easily rectified, of course. No big deal.


The medical benches are actually beds, Klingon Sleeping Surfaces from the Blue Heaven Sims site. Sure, Sims don't really have to worry about suffering injuries from sports or rigorous work-outs, but why not give them a little infirmary anyway?


And I almost forgot to show off the rooftop Soccer/European Football/Futbol/(yeah, that sport) net. So there's that!

I'll keep these Simmy students here at the Brick Gymhouse until they graduate, of course. If a handful of missing lights are the worst design flaw for this dorm, then I guess I did all right!

Oh, yes...



The indoor basketball net is good to go, too.

That is all.