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Scholar
Original Poster
#1 Old 10th Sep 2019 at 11:35 PM
Default How do you handle your dorms?
I'm not a fan of dorms and only use them for new arrivals or townie teens I've sent to Uni that stay playable. I move sims out as soon as I can which is usually Sophmore year. Usually to a frat/sorority, housing shares or in rare cases single homes. The part that frustrates me is that dorms don't reset when you move the last sim out. I know it's to keep all the items intact but I find it screws up bills and the dorm just lags more and more. Worst of all is my dormies get muddled up. I found Pescado's dormbillfix didn't solve the exact issues I was having where bills would just never come again after the first generation.

I've solved this issue by selecting the dorms I want to use and altering them to my liking then I move them to the bin and then replace it so I will have a copy. When my last sim moves out of the dorm I bulldoze the dorm and replace it with a copy. This effectively resets the dorm for the next generation of sims. I just find I have fewer problems overall if I do this.
Does anyone else have these same issues? Any other solutions for handling them?
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Instructor
#2 Old 11th Sep 2019 at 12:10 AM
I've never used them. Way too small. I normally send a townie friend with a playable who goes and they live in a small 3 or 3 BR house. I stopped using fraternites/sororities pretty quickly.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#3 Old 11th Sep 2019 at 12:25 AM
I enjoy dorms, I have a few small ones filled mostly with playables and a couple of larger ones, the hospital dorm and police academy dorm. I haven't taken any notice if they get bills or not. I don't think dorms should get bills at all so if they stop doesn't bother me. Some of my sims I will move to a house and some might move to a Greek house while others will stay at the dorm the whole 8 days and just move to a house for the last two days. My setup is very custom though, no Maxis dorms or Greek houses in sight. I mostly use Moo's uni with some added lots.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Field Researcher
#4 Old 11th Sep 2019 at 1:00 AM
I love the dorms for having unexpected living situations. There are 5 in my hood and I roll the dice when Sims start uni to see where they will live.

It's really interesting to see how romances can be impacted by who lives together and who doesn't. Dustin Broke didn't stand a chance when he ended up in the same dorm as Lilith Pleasant and Angela ended up with Jimmy Phoenix.
Field Researcher
#5 Old 11th Sep 2019 at 1:16 AM
Um.. I just use the default dorms. I like the social aspect, but be sure to claim and lock your doors unless you want them to steal your bed. The school cheer is pretty annoying, and the cow can be at times, but I also find some of the antics to be pretty hilarious (including said cow).
Mad Poster
#6 Old 11th Sep 2019 at 9:08 AM
Dorms, despite the glitches, remains my choice of housing for playables and I seldom use anything else, except if there is one student coming to Uni and my six 6-room-domrs are filled with playables. (Greek houses and those are not a thing in my country).

I never get bills at any dorm, although the postal sim arrives at the postal box regularly - and I really do not mind that at all I don't even think the first generation received any.

Dormies are supposed to move out when your sims move in, and in my experience they will do that most of the time. In my game, it seems that two specific dormies, Nolan Das and MacKenzie something, are the two that simply refuse to move out when they are supposed to. . I have occasionally bulldozed lots to get rid of those two and placed new ones. (Still no bills, I guess Pescado's mod works well in my game). Nolan and MacKenzie may have keys to several dorms imho, although HC says they only have one each - I have kind of starting to like the two of them, but one of them really messes up bathrooms.

I really can't complain about lagging in my game.

Sometimes, after graduating, a sim will just wander back into the dorm, because the taxi does not come - I then have to get him moved by using the move back to option on the phone. There is no logical thing here, the next two may get into the taxi, the next two don't get a taxi, and the next one gets one again. So what - I can get them back home one way or another, and they had their party

I use the 6-dorm room in the bin (I think it is Lam Plaza in Academie Le Tour) - I did make it over a bit to suit my play style better (my sims mostly only sleep there, they go to community lots for the rest). There are two bookcases, one computer, one empty desk and a TV in each dorm. But I have built them perfectly good community lots for gaining skills - and others for having fun - so use them they will
Forum Resident
#7 Old 11th Sep 2019 at 11:32 AM
I play Uni in the main hood and tend to make the dorms into apartments.

You can call me Diddy (or Eve, if you want to go by my real name) :)
My Simblr is simping-simmer. Come and join me there for a chat!
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Mad Poster
#8 Old 11th Sep 2019 at 11:53 AM
When I first played a proper Uni, I used a smaller dorm, and was totally frustrated by the arrangements.
Because I use a modified college hack (48 hours) it became tiresome to play the dorm with so many in it, and it glitched half-way through the semesters. So I moved them out to smaller (2 person house) dorms. That seemed to be fine, but I got tired of rotating through all of them during a play-and graduated them all at the same time.
I'm still unsure if I'll play the uni hood again in TT, because it just didn't live up to my expectations. Perhaps I'll move the next batch into it for one day, use the hacked diploma to give them their degrees and then have done with it.

Receptacle Refugee & Resident Polar Bear
"Get out of my way, young'un, I'm a ninja!"
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Instructor
#9 Old 11th Sep 2019 at 6:10 PM
Even in houses the annoying ones show up. I use VC to ban all uni NPCs.
Inventor
#10 Old 11th Sep 2019 at 7:16 PM
When I first started playing the Uni subhoods, I got confused by the non-resetting of the dorms as well. Especially since I think it even has a popup that says you have to save to reset the dorm when the last playable leaves? The thing I didn't like was that if a sim threw a graduation party, then the mess got left behind to be cleaned up by someone else unless I went in build/buy to take care of it. The upside was that I could gradually improve/change the dorm or leave behind some bits of history for the dorm, such as paintings students did or books that they wrote.

I've never managed to keep a hood long enough to go through more than about two or three generations of students and I tended to spread them all out to the different dorms. So the only glitch I ever really experienced was the one where bills stopped coming. I don't think I noticed any lagging, but I might not have used any one dorm enough to get to that point it normally happens for you.

At this point, I mostly play Uni in the main hood. I've had a lot of students remain living at home while they attended classes. I have used Lion's Gold Record to make dorms, but sometimes I don't bother to build one unless I have enough students to really justify it. There's one in my current hood, with a second scheduled to be finished before the next turn for the dorm students. Whether those dorms will have glitches is not something I'll know until I've played them more, I think.
Mad Poster
#11 Old 11th Sep 2019 at 8:29 PM
@terula8

At one point I downloaded and used Brainania (Mootilda's University) - and I was very surprised to see that she had rooms for for couples, if I remember correctly - and the dorm room simply had two of those Myne Doors instead of one - so there is away around just 1 sim in a room too!
Field Researcher
#12 Old 11th Sep 2019 at 9:09 PM
The first thing I do is sell the arcade game. It's one of those objects that all of the Sims are drawn to, and the noises got annoying quickly.
Forum Resident
#13 Old 11th Sep 2019 at 9:33 PM
I like to play with the default dorms. I like to keep it simple and the Maxis dorms have enough of what's needed. I will have popularity sims move to a frat or sorority their sophomore year. I don't reset the dorms typically mostly since I never thought to do that until this thread! I've not had a problem not resetting them, but I guess it naturally happens if I don't have a new batch of college sims when some have graduated, which happens occasionally.

aka fir3princ3ss
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Field Researcher
#14 Old 11th Sep 2019 at 10:42 PM
Oooh all this thread is making.mr consider different options.

Perhaps I will make a dorm for students in 3rd and 4th year, and have the other 4 be for new students.

I have 3 Greek Houses - Tri Var and Annya Annya Nagard for the girls and Oresha Cham for the boys.
I also have some of my Sims rent, depending on personalities. Couples will often rent a house and if they get pregnant, that's okay too
Scholar
Original Poster
#15 Old 12th Sep 2019 at 3:17 AM
@Neverwinter_Knight77 I also get rid of those annoying arcade games, they get pinball instead.

I guess my dorms seem to be much glitchier than others especially when you get to say generation 3. I love playing Uni in general but the things I like most about it like dating and parties are more of a pain in a dorm. I only use small dorms with the largest being 8 rooms and I keep them pretty basic as far as furnishings go. I do keep couples separate in fact I separate by gender preference. It makes it too easy to have couples living together or sims that are even attracted to each other for that matter. They should have to make some effort to date after all.
Professors are the only NPC's I ban completely until I eventually ban the streaker as well cause it just gets old. The mascots I find amusing.
At the very least my resetting the dorms with an exact copy every generation means the bathrooms will be clean for the new students that move in.
Lab Assistant
#16 Old 13th Sep 2019 at 8:27 PM
I play with the Uni test record, but I still use dorms.

I have some bill glitches (mostly being way too high) so I just ban the mail carrier with the Visitor Controller. Freshmen students are required to pay 500 simoleans for the dorms. After Freshman year, only 1 student is allowed to stay in the dorms. They're the RA, and they don't pay any dorm fees. (They keep the dorm clean and teleport in the new freshmen.)

The dorm itself has very limited skilling and studying items, so students have to go out to community lots if they want to get decent grades.

Dormies are usually made from teen townies and NPC's. They're not forced out of the dorm unless they join a fraternity or sorority, but when the playable who went to Uni at the same time they did graduates, the dormie gets made playable, grown up, then turned into either a townie or a downtownie. I generally have very small dorms to limit the number of dormies required.
Lab Assistant
#17 Old 13th Sep 2019 at 10:37 PM
Stupid question, sorry, but I haven't played with Uni in a while and this is making me want to start again!

I don't create my own townies/downtownies/dormies (partially because I'm lazy and partially because I like the surprise), but I'd like my dorms to be separated male and female. Is there a controller or something I can place in the lot to determine the gender of who moves in?
Forum Resident
#18 Old 13th Sep 2019 at 10:38 PM
Quote: Originally posted by pinkdynamite
Stupid question, sorry, but I haven't played with Uni in a while and this is making me want to start again!

I don't create my own townies/downtownies/dormies (partially because I'm lazy and partially because I like the surprise), but I'd like my dorms to be separated male and female. Is there a controller or something I can place in the lot to determine the gender of who moves in?


Visitor Controller? You can sort by gender on that.

You can call me Diddy (or Eve, if you want to go by my real name) :)
My Simblr is simping-simmer. Come and join me there for a chat!
You can also find me on the MTS or PBK Discord servers under the name 'Evenfall'.
Want to know the latest news in Carregffynon? Click here!
Lab Assistant
#19 Old 13th Sep 2019 at 11:19 PM
Quote: Originally posted by didyouevenmakeasound
Visitor Controller? You can sort by gender on that.


Will that affect visitors as well though? Or would I use it to set the gender while the dormies are moving in and then shut it off afterwards? Sorry, I've never used it before.
Forum Resident
#20 Old 13th Sep 2019 at 11:32 PM
Quote: Originally posted by pinkdynamite
I don't create my own townies/downtownies/dormies (partially because I'm lazy and partially because I like the surprise), but I'd like my dorms to be separated male and female. Is there a controller or something I can place in the lot to determine the gender of who moves in?


TwoJeffs' Dormie Gender Controller, found at http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php?topic=7.0 and elsewhere. If you are also using NoDormieRegen, put a Z in front of the Gender Controller, ie: zDormie Gender Controller.package. That will make it load later and it should still work.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#21 Old 14th Sep 2019 at 12:11 AM
Quote: Originally posted by pinkdynamite
Will that affect visitors as well though? Or would I use it to set the gender while the dormies are moving in and then shut it off afterwards? Sorry, I've never used it before.


Yes, that's why it's called the Visitor Controller, it controls visitors. If you ban females no females will show up, if you ban males, no males will show up-ever. So yes you could set it at move-in then unban them later.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Lab Assistant
#22 Old 14th Sep 2019 at 4:40 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Sims2Maven
TwoJeffs' Dormie Gender Controller, found at http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php?topic=7.0 and elsewhere. If you are also using NoDormieRegen, put a Z in front of the Gender Controller, ie: zDormie Gender Controller.package. That will make it load later and it should still work.

Thank you, that's super helpful!

Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
Yes, that's why it's called the Visitor Controller, it controls visitors. If you ban females no females will show up, if you ban males, no males will show up-ever. So yes you could set it at move-in then unban them later.

Sorry, didn't mean to sound stupid. I've just never used it before so I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to mess anything up.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#23 Old 14th Sep 2019 at 11:39 PM
Don't worry about setting it wrong, just change it, if it is. The way it reads is confusing, it's set opposite to what it says. If it says Allow males that means males are banned and if you want to allow them you click allow males and it changes to banned. The VS only controls visitors not sims living on the lot.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Lab Assistant
#24 Old 15th Sep 2019 at 1:22 AM
Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
The way it reads is confusing, it's set opposite to what it says.

Thanks for the clarification. Otherwise I'm sure I would just be starting blankly at the screen wondering how the heck to make it work!
Alchemist
#25 Old 15th Sep 2019 at 5:29 AM
I love dorms! I do experience the problems with the billing--where items on the lot depreciate to nothing and so students living there get no bills. But I think you're doing the exact right thing to solve it, Clashfan, by placing a new copy of the dorm down every so often. From a story prospective, this makes sense, too--the University, or us players, has to upkeep the dorms and buy new furniture, make repairs, paint, etc. But instead of redesigning, you just rebuild to the exact same specifications! In any case, I don't think dorm bill fix addresses this issue at all, and instead repairs a different issue. The only other thing I can think of is using Mootilda's Fix Lot Value after using the Stay-Things Shrub, but honestly, idk if that will be a good fix, because I'm not sure that it would reset items to their full value. No, the best thing to do is probably to place a new copy of the lot. I can't say that I experience too much lagging, though.

I play the premade dorms and, having played them for so long, I've renovated/updated almost all the buildings on each campus, so I've my own updated versions of all the premade dorm lots (the ones already placed in the uni hoods, anyway; I don't think I've touch most of the ones in the lot bin) and I've built a dorm or two myself. I tended to go all out for my dorms, so they've got pretty much everything--tvs, pool tables, instruments, telescopes, cafeterias--even hot tubs and photo booths sometimes. And the rooms are usually very spacious, too. My last renovation was of Sim State Dormitory and I think I ended up putting double beds in all the rooms. So yeah, I've got massive dorms and small dorms, and I quite like having dormies around, for the most part. Every now and then some dormie gets him or herself in trouble by starting a love triangle through ACR, but honestly, that's part of the fun. I mostly play a mix of Greek houses and dorms--my sims don't usually move off campus unless it's to a Greek house. While I like the idea of the frats and sororities pooling their money together to renovate their houses into plush party pads, I generally dislike focusing on house renovation for regular uni sims. Maybe if I designed some private housing, I'd move more sims out of the dorms, but I've never seen a need. My dorms are quite nice and if any snooty rich sim needed something better, they'd go Greek.

So, generally, I love playing uni--it's a nice break from the main hood, and I usually just try to roll with the hood's quirks. I find that 5-6 sims in a uni household is the sweet spot for me, and I usually rotate my attention between sims, with sims not requiring my full attention at the moment focusing on skilling or grades. That's one benefit to having skilling items in the dorm, as well as playing a large dorm. If there are plenty of dormies around, sims can start to form their own relationships without my direction. Then when I have time to focus on a sim, I can have them work on that final push to friend/best friendship. I usually have sims hire a maid because my dorms tend to have separate bathrooms for each gender and because I don't usually want to waste my sims' time with cleaning--they'd have to be desperate for a cleaning point for me to make them bother. I do make sure that all dorm rooms have a single bed, dresser, mirror, and desk. In most dorms there are computers in half of the dorm rooms, though there's always public computers for sims to use, too. If there's no room for double beds (and I try to make sure there's at least one double bed on the lot), then I use Honeywell's Cop-A-Feel: Loveseat, which lets my sims use their bed like a sofa (and so with ACR, they can woohoo). And I do use Pescado's no vanish in dorms so visitors stop going in dormies' rooms and getting stuck. That used to drive me nuts.

But I have been thinking of ideas to spice things up, too, though, so I did find this thread useful. For example, Lady L., I love the idea of having an RA! I think that'd be the perfect way to introduce some new playables to my main hood. And terula8, I really like the idea of freshman dorms, too, especially combined with Coriel_Muroz's tactic of randomizing where sims live. I've got all sorts of ideas now, about having a limited number of seats in each uni "class" that playables have to compete for. If there's no spots in the dorms, sims won't be able to go, and will have to try and apply at another school, or see if they can get in a year or two later. Maybe that's what I can use private housing for, as the place for sims in a two year program/sims who are attending part time or sims who need to take extra courses before they can reapply for the 4 year program. Oh, the possibilities!

And a few simmers, including Justpetro, have given me the idea to make my sims go to community lots for skilling, rather than having all the skilling items on the home lot. I've been thinking of ways to incorporate this, and in Uni, I was thinking of redoing my dorms so that they wouldn't have skilling stuff or much entertainment. Sims would have to visit community lots and bring stuff with them from home/buy stuff for their dorm room. There was some talk in a previous thread about sims' bring stuff to uni, like books and things. And I think that'd be cool, too. My sims already pay a tuition, so, if they go to Sim State or La Fiesta, they'd have to by books to study with, a laptop to do their term papers, and skilling items for their major. And since I love deco, I think I might have them decorate their room, too, buying posters, alarm clocks, school banners, rugs, blankets, etc.! My sims could get into the college shopping spirit! And, in typical state school fashion, there'd be a sports party every weekend, where everyone dresses in the school colors and watches the big game.

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