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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 1st Aug 2012 at 2:07 PM
Default The secrets of layout bar?
What is the deal with layout bar? Has anyone got it full? If yes, how did you do it? Pretty please for pictures.

Most of the time I get one or two and I try really hard make the space efficient since it takes forever for the sims get things done anyways.



And when I just want quickly to set up a family I get the bar half way full. Also notice how the furniture bar is almost full.

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Theorist
#2 Old 1st Aug 2012 at 2:29 PM
I'd also like to know this. I've never had much success with the layout bar myself, no matter what I do with the house!

The upkeep bar also irritates me. When my sim first moves into a house it's full, but after that it's always one point short of full, even when I can find nothing wrong with the lot at all (everything clean, repaired, watered etc.). It looks like it's the same in your two photos.

"Your life was a liner I voyaged in."
Scholar
#3 Old 1st Aug 2012 at 5:33 PM
I think how to do it is quite clearly stated:
"the less time it takes to go from one object to another"
So while a big house with the most expensive items and no filth anywhere may max every other category, it empties out "layout" since it takes LONGER to get from say, the couch to watch tv to the bed upstairs and down the hall to go to sleep.

Thats why its more full in the second pic of the shack. All the items are a few tiles away. And I suspect that if you were to put them closer still, line them up in a row even, the bar would fill more.
I just never pay attention to that category.

The only issue I have is after a few sim weeks, I get a swarm of flies that flies around the house, and wont go away no matter how much I clean. The only remedy is to move out and back in, but they always return.
Theorist
#4 Old 1st Aug 2012 at 5:56 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Night Racer
The only issue I have is after a few sim weeks, I get a swarm of flies that flies around the house, and wont go away no matter how much I clean. The only remedy is to move out and back in, but they always return.

I usually turn move_objects on and delete the flies. I don't believe there is another way to get rid of them, although apparently sometimes pets will try to swat at them/hunt them. I can't remember if it's just cats that do that or if both cats and dogs do, but I'm not sure if it actually gets rid of the flies anyway.

"Your life was a liner I voyaged in."
Theorist
#5 Old 3rd Aug 2012 at 6:42 PM
(Hope the double post is okay!)

I built this house yesterday (based roughly on the layout of my neighbors' house). I hope you can make out the rough floorplan from the pictures, the top two rooms that have been cut off are just a square bedroom and long rectangular bathroom:

First floor:


Second floor:


That's the best I've ever gotten the layout bar. Sometimes when I put in more furniture that bar would drop by one to two points, but with some moving around and a bit of waiting it went back up to two short of full. Personally I don't think the house is actually that practical for the sims...they tended to have routing problems with three of them getting stuck regularly in the small downstairs bathroom in the center of the house. But apparently they think otherwise!

"Your life was a liner I voyaged in."
Lab Assistant
#6 Old 3rd Aug 2012 at 6:54 PM
Ooooh, I like your house Phoeberg! And I recognize the couch since I just downloaded the same one from Parsimonious I think! I try to add a second bathroom as soon as I can to their houses, and have 2 doors in the bathroom if possible. They still love to congregate in there however. I don't pay that much attention to the layout bar. It tends to be pretty low though.

I forgot whether it was the Newbies, or the Goths, but all their bars were high except the layout was at zero. And they're both pretty small houses. Although I did add on to the Goth house. I almost always expand the existing houses, adding a second floor if it doesn't have one, or making it bigger if it does. Too bad the old exchange isn't still up. I remember there were like 5 houses I built from scratch and had uploaded (in the days before I had a clue I could Save Those Files!)

Guess I'll just have to build some new sim houses from scratch sometime. One was a log cabin with all western stuff.
Scholar
#7 Old 4th Aug 2012 at 12:28 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Phoeberg
I usually turn move_objects on and delete the flies. I don't believe there is another way to get rid of them, although apparently sometimes pets will try to swat at them/hunt them. I can't remember if it's just cats that do that or if both cats and dogs do, but I'm not sure if it actually gets rid of the flies anyway.
I think the cats will go to chase mice and eat them up. Don't remember what about the flies.

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Lab Assistant
#8 Old 5th Aug 2012 at 2:37 AM
My sim's new house and decor. The Layout bar says "0" . I'm not sure how you guys get the interface in your pic? I'm sure it's really easy and I haven't figured it out.









I like the Layout anyhow. I can't really figure out what's wrong with it. Also the house was built by maxis (Vanilla House) so they built themselves a "0" Layout house!
Theorist
#9 Old 5th Aug 2012 at 4:22 PM
Quote: Originally posted by zorba2357
My sim's new house and decor. The Layout bar says "0" . I'm not sure how you guys get the interface in your pic? I'm sure it's really easy and I haven't figured it out.

I use the print screen button to capture the entire screen and then minimize and save the picture using Paint. I used to have Fraps downloaded though, which was much easier seeing as it eliminated all the minimizing. I might redownload that actually.

Quote: Originally posted by zorba2357
I like the Layout anyhow. I can't really figure out what's wrong with it. Also the house was built by maxis (Vanilla House) so they built themselves a "0" Layout house!

Personally I can't see the problem either. The house is pretty open plan, so no narrow passages or walls in the way, and if how close all the furniture is affects the layout bar then your furniture is all much closer than the furniture in the house I posted.

"Your life was a liner I voyaged in."
Scholar
#10 Old 5th Aug 2012 at 5:12 PM
I don't think it's just how close it all is, it's the actual layout.
For example, to cook, a sim goes from fridge to counter to cooker to counter, so if your layout is fridge counter cooker counter in that order then the layout is better, as it's a straight path for your sim. It's the direct path your sim takes, so if it's doubling back on itself to lay food on counter 1 because you didn't put counter 2 in or you have other stuff on counter 2 so they have to walk further or across to the other side of the room to lay a plate down then your layout score goes down.
Personally I always decorated as I wanted it to be and ignored the layout guide, unless my sim family was hard to play and then I might have changed things around to take advantage of shortest route to make things simpler.
It should be 4 tiles (including start (fridge) and finish (last counter) that your sim travels to cook.
Zorba, your layout takes around 8 tiles of travel, which is partly why your score has been knocked down. But I'm with you, I like the layout of your house, who cares if it says 0. The layout count is really a time travelled count, all it means is that it could be arranged more conveniently.
Mad Poster
#11 Old 6th Aug 2012 at 6:00 AM
That little house was impossible as built - most of them were. I learned a lot of routing layout tricks and still never got my layout bar up past the mid-point, but after I'd been playing awhile I figured I understood my sims' needs better than the people who coded the layout bar, so I stopped worrying about it.

Your shower also blocks the route from door to door in your bathroom and the sim has to cross two tiles to wash his hands after using the commode. When you have a three-tile bathroom, the most efficient layout is commode-sink-shower, making sure that the commode doesn't back up to a sink on the other side of the wall. But the shape of that bathroom is also inefficient, and that's the builder's fault. I always wound up changing that room into a three-by-three square, gaining more space in the adjacent area, if I didn't move the bathroom altogether. I tried several ways to expand that house as the family grew, and never really liked any of them.

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The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#12 Old 6th Aug 2012 at 10:13 AM
Is that the Newbie House? I seem to remember converting that to a two-floor mock-Tudor on one occasion.

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
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Mad Poster
#13 Old 6th Aug 2012 at 2:32 PM
No, that's the one at 1 Sim Lane, in the bottom left corner of Neighborhood 1. Front room not quite big enough to have both a dining table and a couch, awkward bathroom, patio. I tended to put Micheal Bachelor in it.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Lab Assistant
#14 Old 6th Aug 2012 at 6:59 PM Last edited by zorba2357 : 6th Aug 2012 at 7:19 PM.
I'm not sure if any of you are referring to my house, but it's called "Vanilla House" and comes with the neighborhood. I'll have to look up the lot # when I have my game loaded. I don't worry about the layout at all either. I just play how seems most convenient for me, or my sims I mean .

The house she lived in before was a sprawling mansion, ranch style (also built by maxis) and I didn't like it, that's why I moved her. The house was huge. And my sim would take the longest route to get from point A to point B.

I haven't considered the bathroom much as far as layout points. But I did know how the kitchen "should" be , with a direct path from fridge, to food processor , to stove, even though I don't always get it placed that way.

I usually start Michael Bachelor off in that really small house also, I think it's the same one you're talking about. Although on occasion I have built him some really nice houses. One was an octogonal, or hexagon (looked round!) tiki house up on stilts (columns) . At the time I thought that was So Cool!

I looked at the neighborhood map, lot 6 is where Michael Bachelor goes. It's very small.
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