Sparkling Homes

Sneaking back to blog

simsparkle — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 22:33:47 +0000

UPDATE 02/11/2010: Thought it was about time I posted something just to say that I am still here, still about and still doing stuff. There… I’ve done that. Going now….

Nah! I’ll give a bit more of an update than that! Basically I’ve been taking another break following the…. exchange mess-up that was Qube. I got really upset and stressed about how well or not it was doing at the time I uploaded it and someone pointed out that they were kinda worried about me so I thought it was a better idea to take a step back for a while. The exchange in the state it is in is just straight out maddening and trying to take advantage of any particular time is just pointless at the moment. So I haven’t opened my game since I uploaded Qube and redecorated it in the classic style. Yes you read that right, just after upload I went back into the game and reCASted Qube into Classic Cube…. that is Qube in the style of Classic Gem. It looks quite good and I was planning to upload it a week later but then I just got depressed with the exchange and abandoned the idea. I’m planning to try an Ultra Cube as well (in the style of Ultra Innigh of course) just to see what it’s like and if it works. If it does, I’ll probably upload that too. Then I’ll move back to another house rather than re-hashing the same old starter LOL

I do want to take this time to say thank you to MS3B for linking to my page here, that’s happened since my hiatus so I’ve only realised recently and this is the first time I’ve really had a chance to say thank you, so thank you!

I’m also really really happy to see Solar Echo hit the 1000 download mark and with so many recs and wanted to say thank you to anyone who downloaded or took the time to rec (or both!).

That’s really it for now…. I don’t have any new pictures as I’ve been out of my game (and playing sims 2 again) and while I’m sure you would love to see new buildings I’m also sure you don’t really want to hear or see my sims 2 piccies I have been having fun growing up some of the gen 6′s who were stuck as children when I left though

Sneak Peak of Qube

simsparkle — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 13:42:16 +0000

UPDATE 01/10/10: I’ll be uploading this in the next couple of days. Although the walk-through is mostly drafted it’s not quite in a state to be released yet, so I’m afraid you’ll have to put with just having the front cover as your “sneak”, I hope it’s enough. The house is a couple’s starter Micro House and comes with most of the basics. Hopefully despite the budget it still has that homely, lived in feel to it.

In other news, I’ve started working on revamping Ocean Spray. I think I mentioned a few months ago that it was something I wanted to do. but when I opened the house to work on it my mind went blank on what to do. The fact EA have messed up the interior window reflections has kinda put a dampener on the whole thing since the idea of the house is that you can see out of any window from anywhere and since the reflections stop you seeing out of the windows now… that kinda doesn’t work any more. But Alli gave me some ideas the other day, mainly to divide up the space with walls and use arches to achieve that open effect, so that’s what I’m doing. I will hopefully have a WIP picture or two ready soon.

Robot WIP

simsparkle — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:57:07 +0000

UPDATE 28/09/2010: Sunday night I created and furnished a Micro Starter Shell, I’m giving it the working title “Robot” because to me, the house shell looks like a robot. Yesterday I finished the placement and started the CASting. This is now almost final, at least in terms of furniture placement if not in terms of CASting. I’ve just been playesting the layout and I’m really happy with it. Heck it’s a couple’s starter that gives the sims a decorated moodlet so that’s got to be good! As to the CASting, I need to do the “fresh eyes” test, where I leave a build for a day or so and then come back and look at it with fresh eyes to work out whether I still like what I did and whether it really does work the way I thought it did at the time I made it. Looking at this picture it strikes me that there are a lot of patterns in the room but this doesn’t really show up once you see the build in full. Anyway, I thought you guys might like to see a sneaky peak:

I think I might owe Linday a word of thanks here however. I seem to remember having a conversation with her the other day about decorating and the colour scheme of black, white and purple came up. I remember at the time thinking it would probably be a really nice set to work with. When I started CASting this, I honestly had NO intention of using those colours (though I did want black and white) but somehow the purple snuck in on me and I just went with it. I hope you don’t mind and like the result.

Joining the Micro Crew

simsparkle — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:15:10 +0000

UPDATE 27/09/2010: It seems that recently there has been a flood of micro houses on to the exchange (though not all of these are micro’s in the true 1 sim starter sense) and it’s something I’ve been thinking for a while; that all my houses are rather expensive and obviously built for families. So I’ve decided to have a go at building a starter micro, though due to issues with finances, it will be a couple starter and not a 1 sim starter. I’m actually mostly done with this already, it just needs CASting before it will be in an exceptable shape to up upload. It’s on a 10×10 that I have placed in the hood so doesn’t have a designated address and because it’s so small the house fills the space so there’s little to no landscaping to do…. YAY! I’ve already done the shell and the furniture placement and I have about $500 left to play with when I decorate and CASt, should be enough to add a few nic naks at the end if I want to.

I’m also working on a new shell, it’s a sort of suspended house…. difficult to explain and I don’t have a picture decent enough to show yet as I’ve only mocked up something very crude and basic so I can modify as I go. It’s overly big and very ungainly at the moment. But then my micro starter looks like a cross between an alien and robot so you never know what this might end up looking like.

In the mean time, I told you guys a while ago that I was working on a secret project and that I might be able to show you a pic, even if I can’t tell you what it is… we’ll I got permission to show the pic:

My sims fire and media blog….

simsparkle — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 12:41:00 +0000

UPDATE 26/09/2010: Or something like that…. just a quick post really, first to announce that the first batch of houses are available on media fire. These are the ones for which I still have the export files on my computer. The others I will try to get done this week. So far teh houses you can download on mediafire are:

Alice Grove

Classic Gem

Cypress Creek

Greystone

Solar Echo

Ultra Innigh

And with the kind permisson of Peacemaker_ic Morgan Lodge.

Second, I want to thank mysims3blog for featuring Solar Echo! Thank you so very much!

Solar Echo is up and shining!

simsparkle — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 16:07:07 +0000

UPDATE 25/09/2010: Early today, for some MAD reason, I thought the exchange was working and decided to upload Solar Echo, that eco lot I’ve been telling you about for some time. Time will tell how badly the latest exchange bork up will mess with things.

You can download from here if you like the exchange.

However I have added something new to the walkthroughs, now not only do they link to the exchange but I have provided a mediafire download link as well, so if you prefer a non exchange download, go here and then click on the link below the front cover image. It’s the same file (I’m not sure why the size is different). You’re getting exactly the same sims pack you would get from the exchange, I haven’t altered anything, it just isn’t coming from the EA site. At the moment Solar Echo is the only house available via mediafire however I plan to get a few more up over the next few days. Unfortunately I don’t have all of the sims packs for my previous houses so am going to have to go and re-package them to make them available. I’ll post again to let you know when things become available that way.
For anyone who wants to leave a comment, you can do so here on the walkthrough thread or visit the main exchange thread.

One last piece of news, for those of you on FB, I now have an account (it finally let me join after 6+ months of saying I wasn’t allowed) My profile is http://www.facebook.com/sparkle.sf I’ll be posting updates there and while most of my updates will still come here first, you might see some bits following on there.

I’m working… Honest!

simsparkle — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 19:34:08 +0000

UPDATE 19/09/2010: I have been exceptionally lazy for the last few weeks. I just couldn’t face all that hassle that’s involved in taking sims 3 interior pics and creating the front cover and making sure I have all the shots I need for the walkthrough. But today, I finally bit the bullet and got on with it… after a little bit of a confidence crises about how wonderful certain other creators houses are in comparison to mine anyway. And because I feel rather guilty about not having done anything for so long (ok it’s not the 4 months at the beginning of the year, but I still feel bad!) I thought you’d like a REALLY early sneak peak of the new Eco lot front cover.

It DOES have a name, but I’m keeping that to myself for the moment, hence the blank area at the top It’s not completely finished as I haven’t added the “sparkles” to the picture yet.

Something else that I’m also thinking about doing is added my house files to a media fire account and making them available to download there as well as at the exchange. If I decide to go ahead with this, I’ll stick the necessary links in below the download pictures here on the blog.

Going Eco? Maybe!

simsparkle — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 13:20:56 +0000

UPDATE 05/09/2010: You’ve probably noticed that Eco’s provisional upload date has come and gone and nothing new has appeared. The simple reason is that I didn’t have many chances to get on my computer last week as I was busy either with real life stuff or else with trying to make sure my vision does not deteriorate due to stupid amounts of time on the computer. Between those two things I was playing Plants Vs Zombies as I have discovered the Cob Cannon and am having a ball blowing up Gargantuas in two shots! I’ll admit I was also put off uploading by the fact that reports are coming in that the forums are messed up…. again. I could have completely knackered myself on Friday trying to get everything ready for a late night upload but once that news came in I settled down to play rock band 2 instead.

So when will the Eco be up? I’m now penciling in this friday as a possibility… note the word possibility please. I’m going to TRY and get the play testing, picture taking and front cover mock up done tomorrow, we’ll see how that goes. I am on holiday again at the end of the month so I will definitely have it up by the end of September as I can guarantee that I will have the time, I’m just not completely sure about when.

Going Green – Eco is Finished!

simsparkle — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:43:41 +0000

UPDATE 25/08/2010: I thought I would let the Innigh settle in a bit before stealing its limelight by posting about the status of the Eco. I think it’s had long enough now so it’s time for an update I actually finished the Eco last Thursday but was then busy preparing for the upload of Innigh and getting bits and pieces ready for that. I also didn’t want to put my post count up so high that you guys got sick of me he he.

Anyway, I thought you’d like to see some pictures of my likely next upload. Provisional upload date is currently a week Friday (the 4th of September) but as I say, that’s provisional and depends on whether I get the playtesting and walkthrough pictures done and ready along with putting the front cover together.

But now on with the pictures, I’m going to show a selection which includes my favourite room (I lovesssss it precioussssssssss!)

This is a real WIP picture, as you can see the laundry room through the door hasn’t been CASt at this stage (I promise it is done now though!) this shows you the stairs leading to the landing, the hallway and the view through into the kitchen. The colour scheme is the same throughout the house but with a different focus in the bathrooms and a different colour in the bedrooms.

Here you can see the upstairs bathroom, the down stairs one is similar but smaller. The colour scheme here is the same but without the focus on the wood, more cream. It also contains white which only one other room “in the house” does. I say “in the house” because it’s acually the art studio…. which is in the shed you can see through the window lol.

This last picture is my favourite room in the house, and that’s all I’m going to say:

Come get your Ultra Innigh!

simsparkle — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 22:29:24 +0000

UPDATE 20/08/2010: I have just (about an hour ago anyway) uploaded the Ultra Innigh. I can’t believe it takes that long to do all the extra bits and pieces (adding all the links here, posting on the main forum and a few other places, twittering (hey it sounds prettier!)! 40 minutes to an hour! shesh… I’m tired, can I go bed now? LOL Sorry, what’s that? Oh you want the link? Well why didn’t you say!

Tis here: http://gb.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=2961241

The walkthrough has obviously been up for a couple of days but if you weren’t lucky enough to get here before now, you’ll find it here: http://sparkleuk.wordpress.com/general-builds/ultra-innigh/

In other news, The Eco is now completely finished so give me two weeks to get all the walkthrough piccies and such done and you might actually get another house from me! And moving on from that I have Twister to finish of as well so lots of work going on at the moment…. though I am back at work next week so things might not move along quite so quickly now.