I've been playing the Sims for a long time now.  Suffice to say, I'm a bit of an addict.  I didn't play anything yesterday, and went the whole day feeling like I was missing something (someone should start a Sims Anonymous...).  The first two games, I built houses, never uploaded anything (that I can remember), downloaded lots and lots of stuff.  But the Sims 3 has given me new light to architecture in general.

My sister is an architect.  My boyfriend's father is an architect.  So lately, I've come to study general architecture, both commercial and residential, and compared these buildings to that which I create virtually.  I was never good at design, color, art is generally not my field.  I'm a writer, through and through, down to the bitter core.  So when I build houses, I have no idea what the hell I'm doing.  But I think I'm actually getting the hang of it.  Here are some things that I've learned:

1. Remember to generally keep the plumbing in one place.  I've noticed in all houses, bathrooms are stacked on top of each other, or near major plumbing lines.  I knew this, it's common sense, but it never registered with me.  So as I'd build sims homes in Sims 2, I'd have bathrooms all over the place, basically wherever I felt they needed to be.  But realistically speaking, it's feasible, but not exactly wise to just throw a john in here or there.

2. Efficiency.  It's so wonderful to create these monstrous estates in the Sims, we all want our sims to live large.  However, I find it INCREDIBLY annoying for my sims (in Sims 3) to take a good half hour to an hour getting from one part of the house to the other.  As I look over real life floor plans of houses and commercial lots, I notice the more direct routes through the core of the house, the efficiency of movement, the placement of general rooms and how they branch off to different sections of the house.  It shouldn't take my sims half an hour to get from the kitchen to the sidewalk to go to work.  That drives me guano.

3. Waste of space.  Given that all sims houses are on a grid, and we have to make due with the space we're given, I'm discovering a severe waste of space in designs.  I'm just going to slam a couch, loveseat, coffee table, bookshelf, lamp, TV and stereo in a 10x10 square room, and hope for the best.  In the Sims 1 & 2, we had to do that.  Now that we don't have to snap crap to a grid, we can cut the size of the room in half, hold down the alt button, and maneuver.  It's wonderful!  More room for...what?  Do I really need a 40x40 lot?  Nah.  Cut that sucker down to 20 and you can still throw a pond in there to fish out of.

4. Structural physics.  There's a reason, I discovered, that floor tiles can't be placed more than two spaces outside of a wall.  Realisticly and virtually speaking, anything past 2 spaces in real life would collapse (assuming that the metric equivilant to a sims "space square" would be 3-4 feet).  No support.  So I built a house in my Sims 3 game.  It had balconies reaching into the sunset, glass walls, jutting slabs of roof, et. al.  Wonderful, I was pumped, all kinds of happy and proud of my architectural prowess, and showed it to my sister.  She shook her head.  "Looks great, but that sucker would collapse so quickly.  Too bad you don't have lawsuits in the Sims..."  After explaining to me the physics of basic architecture, I had to get somewhat bitter.  I personally think that in the Sims, they need to create some sort of architectural collapse feature, so I don't get too crazy with my weirdo designs.  Glass houses, as wonderful as they look, couldn't go over well, unless seriously thick glass is used (thus turning the home into a greenhouse...), due to cracking and collapse of glass.  Beams and columns are needed every once in a while to keep the house from caving in.  And seriously, if that feature was in the sims, the collapse and caving in feature, I'd be one frustrated builder.  "My house keeps caving in!!  Why?!"

My houses that I create will most likely never be published unless I feel particularly proud of one and it passes my sister's seal of architectural approval.  I know what everone thinks.  "Sal, this is a game.  A virtual world where anything is possible with cheats."  I know this.  But I'm into realism.  I like to make my sims as real as they can possibly get.  Judging by the custom content floating around in the community, so does everyone else.  Oh yeah, sure, it's good to dream up amazing modern homes, and I fall victim to dreamland too.  But, as my first gallery will show (if it does show up on my minipage), the house looks great, but it's completely and utterly ridiculous, architecturally speaking.

I'm gonna need to study a bit more...