Cannot upload to Sims 3 Exchange

I've been trying for a couple of days to upload my kennel to The Sims 3 Exchange with no luck. Apparently others are also experiencing this problem, whereas many are able to upload fine since I do see recent additions as of today...

I'm not sure what the problem is, since the upload appears to be successful according to the launcher when it opens and I choose upload. I am getting the "uploaded" icon and I can see the repeated attempts I've made saved to my sim bin ingame.

I did some searches of the technical forum and didn't come up with any answers, only a lot of complaints about this problem that span back over the past year so apparently this is a sporadic, chronic issue for many players. I blame EA's crappy servers. Their forums and exchange site are apparently hosted on hamster-wheel driven hardware. :(  Funny though, their 'store' site (where you know, they take your money for paid content) runs like a dream. I can tell where their priorities are... (/sarcasm)

Are you having problems too? If so, voice it here on the technical forums:

http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/forums/show/10.page

I guess I should be thankful my game runs at all judging by the sheer volume of crashing / won't run posts there. While I love my Sims dearly and have been playing for years... I really wish EA would improve their customer service, server stability and fix a lot of really basic bugs that I use mods to overcome. If the modding community (yay for Twallan and Pescado fans) can repair this stuff, why can't EA?

Sims 3 Pets - Pampered Pedigrees Kennel

1004 Pamona Promenade (flipped) becomes "Pampered Pedigree Kennel"

The lovely backyard view of the kennel, play area and pond

The very first thing I wanted to do after playing the town of Appaloosa Plains in the new Sims 3 Pets expansion was build a dog breeding kennel since there's currently nowhere for dog lovers to trade/sell/adopt dogs. My version has only a neighborhood cat adoption for some reason.




And so I created "Pamona Pampered Pedigrees" a dog grooming shop and breeding/boarding kennel.

The above picture shows the front of the property after I added a second floor which has a large master bedroom, a second bathroom and a 'family room' with nursery needs and study.

Close up of the kennel runs. Two are for 'breeding pairs' with doghouses

Arial view of the inside of kennel - roof off.

The grooming shop - complete with fancy "Pet Hygienator!"

The kennel is a very nice second building adjacent to the house but not connected.

It has both indoor and outdoor access for the dogs. Up to 6-8 dogs can live in the kennels. Two of the kennels are double wide and for 'breeding pairs'.

 I decided to take the currently unfurnished 1 bedroom house located at 1004 Pamona Promenade (just down the road from the fancy horse park and racing stadium) and 'flip' it into a larger family house with a separate kennel and grooming shop for dogs. The small house sits on a rather roomy lot (50x50) and is perfect for adding onto.




 The grooming shop is as you enter on the left, and the boarding / breeding kennel is through another set of double doors and spans to the right with four separate dog runs. Each kennel has an outdoor dog run lots of toys and bedding.

Inside view of one of the dog runs - lots of room!

This lot would be perfect for the Sim who wants to breed pedigree dogs or run an adoption shelter for the neighborhood. It's currently a residential lot but could probably be flipped to commercial with some minor adjustments to the house.






If you would like to download and play my dog kennel, you can download it from the Sims 3 Exchange here:

(Uploads to the Exchange are not updating. Tried twice, says upload successful but no link from my studio... check here to see if it uploads eventually...whenever their servers get around to it) :

http://www.thesims3.com/userExchange.html?selectedAsstType=all&persona=Envie42


Also, be sure you download the totally free (and fun) IAMS Pet Starter pack so you can get the cool doghouse, dish, toy, dogfood bag and bed that I have put in my kennels. You can get it from the Sims 3 Store here:

http://store.thesims3.com/iams

In order to play this lot where it was originally built, go into 'Edit Town' mode on your version of Appaloosa Plains, the town that comes with the Pets Expansion pack. Locate 1004 Pomona Promenade, a 50x50 lot just up the road from the Equestrian Competition grounds and horse park. "Bulldoze" the lot and place my version onto the same lot.

The original lot has an unfurnished, small 1 bedroom house with a pond out back. I simply 'flipped' the house, decorated it, and added the kennels. It now has 2 stories, a lovely flower covered back patio...fully furnished master bedroom, family room with study and nursery area upstairs, kids bunk room and 'puppy pen' downstairs plus laundry and two bathrooms. I stocked the pond too. The lot is still infested with a lot of insects but I left those for things to 'hunt' and added a rodent spawn.

Makin Magic TS3 Style

Lady Maia finally succeeds in casting a spell!

I finally got the Gothique Library Set so my fantasy theme world sims could have some magic (and some nice new furniture/building objects)!

SimsVIP has a great review and some detailed photos of it on their site. I'm too busy / lazy right now to do a full review.

I highly recommend this set. The building is nicely done and the magic book (its actually a book on a gothic looking pulpit thing) is a lot of fun. I've had some humorous outcomes to some of the spells my favorite sim has been practicing.

Especially fun is the ability to 'summon' other sims. When you do the random method, you never know who you will get! She summoned a ghost from the graveyard once, and it never went back to the graveyard, hung around the castle for quite a few days before finally vanishing...

You can download the set at the Sims3 store here:

Gothique Library Set

Have fun!

Simdroid Moms

Another cool random screenshot... It's the Mama crew from Simdroid Isle! Seven of the Eight lovely ladies chosen to participate in the 'Simdroid' production program. All are smart, beautiful members of the Envious Sims Laboratories science team. Ariel, the team white lead, is missing from this photo. Each of these sims donated their base genetics with a compatible simbot, to create the amazing simdroid children. (Actually they woohoo'd and had babies with them!) ;)

Random Sims3 Hilarity

Ok. I'm gonna confess - I am not very good at journaling Sims3 stories yet. I've started several great ones. I take screenshots, and then I get so caught up in playing that I forget to journal, and then I'm bored with it later.

So I thought I'd share a screenshot or two from my past attempts that I think are particularly funny or interesting.

To kick off the fun, I'm presenting a shot from my Military Sims neighborhood. I played this one out in a really cool world built by ehaught58 called "Fort Sims". If you would like to see his world screenshots or download it go here. He's one of my absolute favorite builders in the Sims3 community. If you're a Sims3 player and never downloaded player-made content, I highly recommend Ed's stuff to start out with. Everything he builds is solidly made, mostly custom content free, and always playable/bug free. He also builds really unique practical stuff for your towns, like a cool highschool football stadium, a YMCA gym, coffee house, etc. etc.

Anyways... I made some 'barracks' life sims for Fort Sims military base. I created 4 'companies' (8 sims ea) of random, young adult sims - 2 sets of females, and 2 sets of males, for a total 36 "recruits." I then followed their progress through military flight school training as well as social life outside their training. I got a lot of hilarious screenshots.

The one I'm showcasing was taken shortly after rotating between each of my four companies and having them all join the military career. The base has a nice pool and outdoor gym behind the building, so the first thing a lot of them did (since they all are athletic sims) was to go for a swim. There's just one thing. They were all skinny dipping!

I'm not sure whether to chalk it up to the new patch for latenight that had 'tweaked' the skinny dipping urge, or the herd phenomenon was in full effect for all these young crazy new recruits... but there you have it - a skinny dipping party. For the story, I describe it as a 'hazing' ceremony.

I don't think the lifeguard (in the red shorts) is quite sure what to do here...

What fun!

The Sims Social Frenemies

Sims Social is about to hit facebook. Yet another social network game to annoy your 582 closest 'friends' with spam they're too cool to play. ;)

The Sims 3 Pets Announce Trailer

Here's a new expansion pack I'm really getting excited about. Finally... pets! And best of all, a pet that has never been seen in any previous Sims version - horses! I foresee a lot of really cool wild west towns created in the near future!

Horses will also be absolutely fabulous additions to my slowly growing medieval themed neighborhood. See my previous blog post here to see the big project I've been working on over there. Yes, I really have been building a medieval 'keep' - a very large detailed lot that takes hours of building and decorating. I'm quite proud of my first really big construction project. Horses will be a perfect addition as I've got stables built and ready on both the keep and Inn lots.