[Old] What is in your Del Sol Valley?

Well, for a long time I made no changes in Del Sol Valley, but lately a few big changes. The Showbiz Academy is located at Mirage Park. This is a non-boarding High School where main classes are within the entertainment area. School Principal is Judith Ward, no less :) She tend to drag way too much attention away from the students, when they perform their exam on the school's stage, Judith sits in the audience to judge them, and the paparazzi flock to her. Of course she enjoys it, and well, perhaps it could be a tough but needed lesson for the students - there will always be someone more popular than you...

Next door is the Butler Academy, this year celebrating its 100th anniversary! It's where the nobility's Servants get their training. It's organized as a boarding high school, and unlike the Showbiz Academy, the Butler Academy students wear uniforms and are a bit more organized. Current Principal is Abraham Golden, descendant of the founder.

Up at The Pinnacles I built a royal palace. It's a huuuuge thing that is hardly playable. I normally go too detailed, adding lots of clutter, but I had to stop before building the basement vaults. HRH King Tarriot and HRH Queen Venezia reside there with some Servants, and the youngest Prince Marcus, stays there, too. Crown Princess Emireza, Prince Bazillimus are in boarding school in Windenburg, and Prince Cesil will join them soon.

In the middle hood (always forget the name) I made very few changes. A Beauty/Stylist Salon was added in the backyard of Go-Go Lounge, and a sauna was added to the gym, and that is pretty much it. I hardly use the museum, so I have a vague plan of making it into a fancy restaurant, probably with some of the museum intact, but categorized as a restaurant.

Del Sol Valley depresses me. Seriously not enough lots! :disappointed:

But with what little space we've got I have a cafe, spa/gym, two lounges, and a nightclub in the commercial area. Then residential builds for the remaining lots, which house celebrities or up-and-comers.

Depending on which Erik Cantrell iteration it is, I've used the large park next to the tiny lot as a concert venue. I finally found the perfect restaurant, instead in the past three iterations of Erik Cantrell. The Dragon House, from the Gallery. Everything else is the same, with the exception of my NEW Main save, which has a gorgeous remodel of the PBP Studios Lounge.

https://i.imgur.com/YC0m3ii.jpg

Starter region:
- A fenced in genetic research center (residential for scientists and mermaids)
- A junkyard (residential for a fabricaton & robotics focused family)
- A community center (currently voted as crafting center)

Downtown:
- The starlight accolades have moved over to Stargazer Lounge, the old lounge still exists but doesn't see use (and I removed its hottest spot lot trait)
- I put a combined bowling/center cinema where once a gym (?) was (bar)
- The small park now is a player owned foot cart (restaurant)
- My city hall (generic lot) is placed here, I think the lot used to be a museum

Hill region:
- Judith Ward's estate is now the Governor's seat (currently unoccupied since no played sims holds that office)
- The large lot is now a pool lot for my sims to ride their aqua zippers (vehicles have to be placed anew every time the lot loads, it's not ideal, but the view is fantastic)
- The final lot is unoccupied

Celebrities, duh (lol kidding).

Hmmm....I always delete all premade lots/sims and rebuild my own stuff depending on what I feel fits the world and sims living there. I seriously need to get an image host to show my builds. I also rename all the lots with the street name being the name of the neighborhood and then 1,2,3.

So, in the Mirage Park area. There are three mid-century modern homes with garages facing the alley, typically in neighborhoods like this that's the access road for parking and trash trucks. So I made their garages into home gyms with the trash outside next to the "driveway".

The "'downtown" area is a little harder to describe. I spent way too much time studying buildings in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas and then attempted to build lots that would fit there. I have two lounges, a karaoke bar, a bar, and a café. One of the lounges is the replacement for Studio PBP (which I found way too loud for my personal tastes). All the other lots are up and coming. It's the only lots where celebrities are allowed to be celebrities. Everywhere else, I'm using a mod that disallows fangirl/boying and paparazzi. My actors club meets at the bar and I have placed everything they need to practice their craft and enough space for the fans to swarm them.

Of all my lots in all the worlds, the karoake bar is by far the most active. Sims do so much there, they auto use everything on it. I'm not sure why that lot is different but it's definitely the one I enjoy sending my sims to the most. I also like watching the sims react to the 5-star celebrities strolling in.

The café is where that sad little park used to be, I made sure to add busking stations to all the lots so these up and coming celebrities can try to catch the eye of a talent scout (lol).

ETA: I don't use the Pinnacles. The lots are too big and I really hate making houses or landscaping to fit massive lots. I tend to just leave them empty.

Del Sol Whatnow?

I'm actually building a family friendly fast food restaurant for rich folk with extremely spoiled kids. It's called Patty's Fatty Patties and it's not yet complete. I began building it in 2021 but I keep forgetting about that build, same way I keep forgetting about Del Sol Valley. :D

Let's see if I can do this, here are some of my builds in DSV.

These are my residential lots in Mirage Park. I placed my "Old Hollywood" family in the bigger one. It's grandparents who are 5-star celebrities and level 10 actors living with their son and his family. The son and wife are also 5-star celebrities and level 10 actors. They have two teens. The second house is for my Bollywood family. The third lot is an empty house, I didn't show that one.

https://i.imgur.com/sclUiWf.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/V0duEqf.png


Here are a couple of my community lots. The actors bar and the karaoke bar (called the Pink Orchid because it's all pink inside).

https://i.imgur.com/9Bs77SE.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/IY4FPX4.png


Sorry for the quality, I'm kind of bad at taking screenshots.

ETA: My builds are not on the gallery and won't be. I get my inspiration from floor plans; things I see while travelling or in RL, OR from other builders. Since I can't remember who those builders are, I do not want to neglect to give credit where it is due. So I don't share. I don't feel like it would be right.

Disclaimer: I employ heavy use of mods and this is heavily reflects how I play the Sims.

My 50 Sim household lives in Chateau Park and is the main save file I play on in general. It has a dungeon, a castle, a base, an observatory, a mother plant, an observatory, a ramshakle house, and a volcano. They're extremely wealthy but they have to deal with random alien abductions, earthquakes, poisonous creatures, volcanic eruptions, randomly breaking appliances, extreme weather changes, creepy possessed Sims, lightning strikes in clear skies, vampires and spellcasters among their ranks messing around with them and paparazzi.

I'm very hyperfocused on that lot since I rarely leave it and practically all Sims I want to play as are jammed into it. Can only play with slowed down time, slower needs decay, and autonomy off. And it doesn't run optimally and the micromanaging is very extreme.

I like it because it's like a mini-neighborhood and it eliminates needing to opt through loading screens if I want to play as another household because they're already there in their own "house". Sometimes it gets very exhausting and I want to downscale lol.

https://i.imgur.com/0xWKPcA.png
https://i.imgur.com/wc7K9MJ.png
https://i.imgur.com/qFXH4Ls.png

This lot initially didn't look like this, and it was gradually built on over time. I wanted to be as minimalist as possible because my huge amount of Sims was already pushing it but once the buildings got upgraded and things were already very stuffed, why not go all the way.

BTW to anyone curious, the lot's worth is around 1.5 million.

"EnkiSchmidt;c-18183317" wrote:
@DeiraShadeweaver Have you tried my second-favorite mod, noprerollautonomy? I think there are two mods that do the same, namely disabling the autonomous actions sims attempt during the loading screen. Maybe loading times will be quicker if the game doesn't have to calculate those for ten sims.

Keeping autonomy off ihelps a lot, and I also have neighborhood stories off and use both simulationlagfix and simulation unclogger. The most I ever played this way were thirty sims during a detective career staff outing. Fifty would probably cause me physical headache, keeping track of so many is really impressive!

MCCC also has a setting to pause on load, which I use, and its really great. No more lasso'ing in sims that scatter to all kinds of activities before I can catch my breath. That said, I get in trouble with 4-5+ sims in a house, 50 or even 30 would be impossible :D

Anyway, I rarely do anything to DSV. I've built a few houses mainly for gallery upload, and my test-sims live there. Also think I played the Bailey-Moon house for a short time. Its just not a town I enjoy all that much, its kind of boring to me. Besides, I've not found a place to fish there, and most of my sims are the fishing types.

What's in my Del Sol valley? Lots of wasted effort and bad decisions.