Dormitory

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Dormitories are a special type of residential lots that can only be found in college sub-neighborhoods. Dormitory housing is one of the two types of housing available to all young adult Sims. Unlike renting a house on campus, there is no cost to move into a dormitory, so dorm housing is available to even the poorest students. Each college has its own pre-made dormitories but players are allowed to make their own by creating a residential lot, and using the appropriate cheat code to zone it as a dormitory. Players can also edit the pre-existing dormitories, but will not have full access to Buy and Build mode options unless a cheat code is used.

While living in a dormitory, playable Sims live with young adult Townies. They cannot be asked to join the household, but do reduce the amount of the household's bills.

Dormitory rooms use the Myne Door. This door is able to be "claimed" by a single Sim, making a room his/hers and giving him/her the ability to restrict access to the room. After a Sim has claimed a room, his or her picture will appear on the door. This picture will not change if the Sim's appearance is changed. Townies that live in the dorm also claim rooms; players are given a slight head-start (about an hour of game time) to claim the rooms they want the playable Sims to have. To maximize frame rate, rooms claimed by Townies appear empty unless a playable Sim walks into them. This also creates a "What's going on in there!?" effect, which adds realism.

In addition to dorm rooms, most dormitories have a cafeteria and/or cooking facilities, restrooms with showers, at least one bookcase, items for building creativity and logic, recreational items, and areas for lounging or doing class assignments.

Advantages and disadvantages of dorm life

One large advantage to dorm life is that it's cheap. There's no cost to move into a dorm, and bills are low. While the cafeteria food isn't great, it's free, plentiful, and available at almost all hours. (Sims can still cook their own food in the kitchen whenever they wish.) The other main advantage is social. The Townies living in the dorm (often called "Dormies") are a ready-made pool of Sims for the playable Sims in the dorm to interact with and make friends with. It's also likely that some of them will be members of the secret society.

The disadvantages mostly center around the Dormies. They will do assignments very often, and frequently leave unfinished assignments on desks and cafeteria tables. They may have a tendency to do research, and do not always put the books away. If a bookcase is near a television set, chess table, computer, etc., seats in front of those items may be monopolized by Dormies doing research. Dormies will not always shower when they need to, and will rarely, if ever, clean a toilet stall, shower, or bathroom sink without being influenced to clean. Also, tables will occasionally get "stuck", so that they're considered to be in use even though they're not being used, which can be annoying if a Sim is very hungry. Another disadvantage is that when a Sim throws a party or invites other Sims over, the guests often disappear into Dormies' rooms for hours at a time, even if they have no relationships with the Dormies. Guests cannot be interacted with while in Dormies' rooms, nor can they be stopped from going there (as soon as they start walking toward a dorm room, there are no options to interact with them). This can make it difficult to throw a successful party at a dorm. It may also make joining a Greek house while on a dorm lot a challenge, since the members of the Greek house who arrive to "check out" the prospective member need to be socialized with, but often make themselves totally unavailable.