Harrington Hall
A small luxury dormitory



The Dermotrial girls arrive at Harrington Hall
SimsHost subscribers can click on the image to download Harrington Hall.
Warning: Very large download, 8.50 MB.
Unoccupied. Fully furnished.
Requires The Sims 2 University. (Obviously. It's a dorm.)
Use a clean installer if you want to filter game hacks. The only hacks I have installed are from J. M. Pescado, TwoJeffs, and SimLogical.

In the topic about Parkview Dormitory, Sita asked, "Do you ever make anything small?"

Well... so far, this is the smallest dorm I've ever built. It has only four student rooms. I built it especially for the four Dermotrial teens in Xanadu. They were rolling in dough--$30,000 in scholarships among them--but I wanted them to have the advantages of living in a dorm with an NPC cook and folks stopping by all the time.

Harrington Hall First Floor

Let's take a little tour. Here's the first floor.



Harrington Hall First Floor


There are four luxury rooms, each with two desks--one for the computer and one for doing assignments. The rooms also come with a double bed, easel, chest of drawers, bookcase, and beside tables with lamps.



One of four almost identical bedrooms
That's Lidina Dermotrial, daughter of Lida, at the easel.


I didn't play any games with private bathrooms for this one. There are two-place potties for men and women on the first floor and one-place locker rooms in the basement.



Harrington Hall Refectory


Just one six-place table for this small dorm, but look who stopped by for breakfast! His companion is a coed named Solveig who was also visiting. The cook's name is Jacqueline.



Front Room on the First Floor


I put the piano on the first floor so that I wouldn't have sims traipsing up and down the steps to put money in the furshlugginer busker jar. It also looks like I might have goofed and left one of Inge's recolored restroom doors in the download. Oops.

Harrington Hall Basement



Recreation Room in the Basement


The basement features The Pool Room, where you can play it or swim in it. There are also men's and women's locker rooms, an exercise machine, and sundry electronic toys.



In the Pool Room


And here's a sim's eye view of the fun stuff.

Harrington Hall Atrium Loft


Study Loft


The gathering spot for group study is in a loft above the first-floor great room. The television and another stereo fit nicely up here, too.

I used outdoor stairs so that I could get away with just having one staircase. Sims don't have to wait for an outdoor stair to clear before they'll start up it.

Harrington Hall



Harrington Hall
Named for Honor Harrington, a fictional character created by David Weber.
The Dermotrial girls were just arriving when I made this screen shot.


I must not have been too unhappy with David Weber's latest Honor Harrington book since I named a dorm after his main protagonist.

The dorm is performing well in play-testing, but there are spots where it could be tuned up if anybody can figure out how.

The traffic bottleneck for sims getting to their rooms is a bit more of a problem that I expected. There's a brief one-square passage to the two rooms on each side. I didn't expect that to be a problem because only two sims would ever pass through those areas, and only when they are going to or from their bedrooms. However, I've already had a couple of collisions that delayed their transit.

There is also a strange anomaly with the front bedroom, the one on the right if you're outside facing the dorm. It has been behaving like an NPC student room, where the contents of the room disappear. They reappear with the student is in the room. To get the resident (Medina Dermotrial) to do something with stuff in her room, I first have to tell her to go there. Then her computer and desk and stuff all appear and I can direct her to do things.

I don't yet know why this is happening. I've looked all over that room and don't see any way that it's different from the others. It started happening the first moment Medina put her face on the door.

It might have been the timing of the game play, rather than anything odd about the dorm. I have a theory that the game was in the process of generating an NPC student to move into that room when Medina grabbed it. Or maybe the game somehow requires that you have at least one non-playable student in a dorm.

Getting back to Sita's question, I just thought of another time I built something really small!

It's the Sim House Limbo challenge! How low can you go?

(That topic also has my attempts at building the smallest possible fully functional bathroom.)

Greg wrote:

In the topic about Parkview Dormitory, Sita asked, "Do you ever make anything small?" Well... so far, this is the smallest dorm I've ever built.

So that'd be a "no", then. *8)

(Gorgeous building!)

That's pretty - downloading will let you know how I get on.

dmchess wrote:

Greg wrote: In the topic about Parkview Dormitory, Sita asked, "Do you ever make anything small?" Well... so far, this is the smallest dorm I've ever built. So that'd be a "no", then. *8) (Gorgeous building!)

Now that brings up an interesting challenge: How to design the smallest possible dormitory.

The trouble with dorms is that they have to have certain basic amenities even if there's only one student room.

B'b'but... now that I'm thinking about it... it would be possible to put all the recreational stuff into a community lot and just let the students go there to play. I'm not sure that they can get credit for group research and skilling on a community lot, but it's worth a try!

I'll trying building a dorm that's nothing but bedrooms and a kitchen, with a community lot that provides all the other stuff. If it works, that would be the least expensive college environment possible.

On the other hand, maybe I'd better try skilling and studying on a community lot first.

Sita wrote:

That's pretty - downloading will let you know how I get on.

Hooray! The file size is rather large, and expands to 20 megs in the game, but I think that's inevitable with a fully furnished dorm.

Looking at it, I realize that I have quite a few fan-created goodies in that lot which I should clean out if I'm going to offer it for download. I wasn't planning on putting that one on line so I just wasn't thinking. It's got Inge's reservable beds and desks from SimLogical and some of Danny's special toys from DMA sims.

Oh well. At least there's not a brothel in the basement!

Isn't that what the Maxis setup invites us to do? You should play some of the Uni students who are living in the tiny houses on the edges of campus - they HAVE to go to community lots. Or do all yours move into the luxurious dorms?

I'm sure they get credit for skilling on University community lots. (They don't in NL Downtown though )

Quote:

B'b'but... now that I'm thinking about it... it would be possible to put all the recreational stuff into a community lot and just let the students go there to play. I'm not sure that they can get credit for group research and skilling on a community lot, but it's worth a try! I'll trying building a dorm that's nothing but bedrooms and a kitchen, with a community lot that provides all the other stuff. If it works, that would be the least expensive college environment possible. On the other hand, maybe I'd better try skilling and studying on a community lot first.

Confirmed. They do get credit for skilling and studying in community lots on campus.

It's risky business, though. It appears that if too many events happen while you're on a community lot, the game will crash and you lose everything you've accomplished.

EEK! Greg, you, on Big Blue there - YOU get crashes on community lots? That's scary!

One thing that doesn't usually happen to me....

I think I crash on community lots because I hang out there too long. Lots of events happen and overrun some memory buffer in the game.

It might help if I didn't tend to build kitchens and hotels on community lots.

Microdorm

It works! I created a tiny little dorm on a 2x2 lot on campus in Xanadu. Then I moved in a student. Here's the first floor.


Microdorm
Eight student rooms on a 2x2 lot


The bedrooms are tiny, just 2x3; no room for anything but a bed and a poster on the wall. I took this picture while townies were moving in. That's why half the beds have disappeared.

My student is Genesis Lam. She's not the maid you might have met, but she is a converted game-generated coed. I found an interesting way to convert a coed to a playable character: I used Merola's Mind Control Mirror to tell a townie dormie, in a different dorm, to 'Find Own Place.' When she moved out, she ended up in the Sim Bin as a playable character.

Genesis spends most of her time at the library. There's no room in this dorm for most of the things she needs so she goes there to write her term paper, do her assignments, and meet her study group.



Microdorm Front Entrance

It's just an ugly little stucco box so I'm not planning to zip it up for download unless someone really wants it.


Genesis sends these warnings about frolicking at the library:

1. You can get pregnant there.
2. If you get pregnant at the library, your pregnancy will progress while you're living in the dorm.
3. There are no maternity clothes for Young Adults.

"Genesis, I told you to use protection, even at the library!"
Genesis is using my new default tan skin tone.


On the other hand, Genesis's pregnancy is not progressing during the time she spends at the library. I was thinking I'd have to move her out when it's time for the baby to come so she'd have room for the little bundle of joy, but I just might be able to get her through college before the stork arrives.

If I have her spend all her time at the library, going home every few hours to save the game and clear out whatever makes it crash, this just might work. Let's see... she's about 30 hours pregnant. 8 semesters * 4 hours at home per semester = 32 hours at home. That's a total of 62 hours, well short of the anticipated gestation period of 75 hours. She just might make it!