Next post is the last of November, then December has a handful posts, and then... tada, 1184! And you know what that means, right?
Yep! University opening!
So, with that in mind, here's a nice post about some university population stuff. In the quite-likely event of interest being lost, I'll start with the part I need help with...
Residence Population
So, in preparation for the term, I just whipped up a bunch of new boards on the character profiles, including the twelve houses of Residence, Phase One. There are six houses per sex, and each house will be home for eight students, which--in terms of students who actually have Sims (I think it goes without saying that the university population on paper is much greater than it will be in my game)--should last me for a while. However, there are two ways I can populate these houses, and I'd like your help to decide which is better.
(There's also the option of compromise between the two, but I don't want that. Mainly for silly compulsive reasons.)
I'll also mention (because it plays into the pros and cons) that when I actually build these houses, the residences will be the second and third floors, and the first floor will be the classrooms for a particular faculty--though in terms of story canon, there are separate academic buildings. It's just much easier to shoot on residential lots, and the numbers worked, so I figured... eh, why not combine them?
Residence Population Scenario A
The university's first six students are all of the same sex. The university puts them all in the same house.
Pros: Roommates are close in age, maintenance and janitorial staff have less work, encourages socializing, should be at least one out-of-shot Sim with an empty action cue
Cons: Placeholder Sims required on empty houses for longer (in case of classroom shoots), decreased student privacy, increased potential for high-running tensions and mischief, wasted space
Residence Population Scenario B
The opposite. The university's first six students are all of the same sex. The university puts one in each of the houses for that sex.
Pros and cons are pretty much the reverse of the above.
Each student will have their own bedroom with a double bed (because, let's face it, this is Naroni), and there will be one bathroom per two bedrooms. Knowing this, plus all the information above, which scenario sounds better to you? Luckily, I only have Sev to deal with for the winter term, but I've got three more young men (the Wythleit "twins" and Landus del Marinos) joining him in the spring, so any feedback that can help me choose will be much appreciated.
Now that that's done, on for a second, mainly FYI-type bit...
In order to amp up the population of students who might actually appear in posts, I've randomized a complete set of Carvallon nobles, some of whom are of an age to be starting university soon, and many of whom will be reproducing in the background at the whims of my dice. If I need them to appear in the background--or, though I have no current plans, in a more prominent role--I'll repurpose some dead characters or townies as opposed to creating new character files.
Since I did this around the time that Morgaine released her Albion Heraldry MegaPack (and since the Carvalli noble families I do have were already pretty much wearing Albion colors... and since I have a bunch of clothing sets in the Albion colors... and because Albion is awesome...), the Carvalli noble colors are based on the Albion ones (er, including GoS and Emrys, because they were in the heraldry pack).
Anyway, here are the families, as well as their ranks and the shires they hail from, plus their Albion-equivalent colors:
The Mardalieths of Ebbenswake and Carvallon, Royal (Gwynedd... though I do also have the "Carvallon" colors from my own set, but it makes sense that the royals would have more clothes to choose from)
The Falenbraes of Rostenfeld, Duke (Emrys)
The Ardenflors of Jaderidge, Marquis (GoS)
The Cavahals of Braiswyck, Earl (Pendragon)
The Alderfells of Hargrath, Earl (du Lac)
The Maudrels of Meralis, Baron (le Fay)
The Tirsleys of Idengrave, Baron (de Ganis)
The Brycells of Aythwing, Lord (Carpenter)
The Rygards of Cadderfray, Lord (Ferreira)
The Ordians of Nightvale, Lord (Orkney)
Devidra is an Alderfell by birth, but she wears Mardalieth colors (she and her father weren't on the best of terms). The only non-royal Carvalli nobles we've seen so far are Anna's friend Adinaye and her daughter Emeline; Adinaye is the Countess of Braiswyck, making her a Cavahal by marriage and a Maudrel by birth (Adinaye is the self-sim of adienaynay, who writes The Cavalho Legacy; "Cavahal" is a rather obvious bastardization of "Cavalho", and Maudrel is derived from the name of the main character, Maudrun). Honora Carpion and her children are descendants of House Brycell due to affairs with the help.
Aaaand the only other family I have a comment for is House Rygard... or, more their colors. Since Cadderfray is where Fred and Dania are from, and since Fred and Dania are both Albion imports from House Ferreira, the Rygards of course had to have the Ferreira colors.
Scenario A sounds much more practical to me in terms of photo shoots. Hell, tensions and mischief would be pros to me, though maybe not to your outlines. Scenario B seems more wasteful when there are so few of them there.
ReplyDeleteI love how you're using the Albion colors for the Carvalli (another one for the spell check dictionary!) nobles. The Mardalieth greens suit Devidra better than her birth colors, just as I imagine being Queen/Queen Mother suits her more than being someone's daughter ever did.
Thanks for the feedback!
DeleteIt's true that I can do a lot more with roommates than I can do with one person who either likes or dislikes the classmate who lives down the street. My main concern for Scenario A is the placeholder Sims holding down the forts in the empty houses in case I need to shoot in those classrooms.
Thanks! I figure, I have so many of Andavris sets, and a lot of them are in Albion colors, so why not make use of the color schemes? And yeah, I don't know if royal blue is Devidra's color, but the green suits her (and so does her current role rather than her former one, for all she probably went into her marriage kicking and screaming).
Hmm ... if it were me playing it, I'd put everyone in one house, and expand as necessary. (I tend to be in favor of minimizing the number of houses I have to get through every round.) It also makes sense from the university's perspective to put everybody into one house. Plus, like you said, this gives you more storytelling possibilities. Roommates can get into much more interesting conflicts than mere classmates. ;)
ReplyDeleteAnd as for the classroom space ... well, how much of an issue is that going to be, really? I mean, would an economics classroom really look that different from a history classroom? If worst comes to worst, you can repaint the walls, recolor the furniture, and make sure that none of the shots point out the windows/use stained-glass windows you can't see out of to pretend that they're different classrooms. I think you're more likely to run into trouble with spaces like art studios and science labs, and since boys and girls won't be living in the same spaces, you can make the boys' dorm have an art studio and the girls' have a science lab and build your way up from there. :)
You know, I also just thought of another possibility ... if Remiel is still around, perhaps he could make some Servos as placeholder Sims? (You aren't running this in an actual Uni hood, right?) They don't actually need a place to sleep, they never age, and with only 6 students per household, you do have 2 extra places before you're bumping against any Sim limits.
Of course the problem with that is that you do like to limit your character files, and this would require a dozen more character files. Still, you could make the Servos as needed, and only move them in when you need a placeholder. :)
Also, can I say that I'm tickled pink you're using Albion colors? :D
If I were playing these Sims, they'd absolutely be going in the same house. ;)
DeleteYeah, the classes I'm more likely to show are the ones that I'd actually know something about (and I don't know squat about economics, nor do I care to do the necessary research), so it may be a while before we see any of the classrooms in action. If I fill the residences one at a time, I can always stick a clergy teacher in a lot that I need for the classroom (I'm a painfully lazy decorator--but you're right, many of the classrooms will be similar if not identical in terms of at least layout).
Eeeheee... I do love a good reference opportunity. :D