Neohomes 2.0

[Goldenchaos]

http://www.neopets.com/~sassafrass99__ll

Well, ran across that, and it seems its the look of the new Neohomes. They look pretty good, but ..now I wonder what will happen with the old ones. I hope they leave them as is..since these new ones don't leave much room for creativity by the looks of them.

[Rainbow Daydreamer]

Snarkie, a Neopets programmer, has on her lookup (beneath her Neohome)
"Click here to visit my classic Neohome!"

That suggests they're keeping the old ones as well as whatever the new ones will bring.

[Officer 1BDI]

I heard (from PPT?) that both v.1 and v.2 NeoHomes will be available. What this means for the contest and such, I have no idea.

Thanks for the link to that petpage, GoldenChaos. I need that Roo Island house now.

[hebdenhippy]

I'm really excited about these, they look like fun! The houses are lovely, I like Krawk Island, I think I'll get that, and it's nice that they're shown with all that land. It would be nice if there was more than one room though :/ perhaps it's an option they'll introduce later.

[Seerow]

They are pretty fun I got to Beta test them.

One of the neatest features is that now you can put your Neopets in the home. And with the option to move furniture/pets up and down, you can put lamps on a desk or your pets on the couch.

However, at least right now, your house is just one large room with no walls. At the moment there isn't a way to build any walls, so I'm hoping there will be later.

[mellaka]

I think they're OK. The default designs they give you for each area are kind of neat. I chose a home in (on?) Darigan Citadel, but will probably go with Haunted Woods after they are out of beta.

I've never been much of a classic neohomer but I still find these kind of uninspired and boring. They're basically like the original Sims game homes minus the ability to actually build the home, so far at least.

I guess my favorite thing about them is that I have my draik flying (sitting) in the air out front of my neohome.

[Goldenchaos]

Oh thats good to know, even though I never did anything with the classic neohome myself.

Ahh, I love some of the lands..Ill likely go with Roo Island. Faerieland reminds me SO much of Care-a-Lot.

[daisybell]

I love the Roo Island one- it's so perfect for a neohome for all my pets, with water close by... that's how I'd always imagined a neohome on Roo Island would be. And it's so cute, too!

The insides are less cute- very much like the original Sims, only without any dividing walls. They'll be a bit weird without any dividers or the ability to build walls as an integral part of the neohome, and I'd like to have a smaller second storey room too. The art quality is more uniform than on the classic neohomes, where some art looked very outdated and the top-down perspective was restrictive and didn't show off the full prettiness of some items, especially the stained glass windows. It was possible to be more creative with the old neohomes, but only by using items like Lego bricks rather than for their intended purpose, and that always annoyed my obssessive perfectionist side. Thus, I never really developed my neohome that much... I guess maybe I wouldn't do very much to a 2.0 neohome either, but the outside would be prettier to look at

[Officer 1BDI]

I did see walls fences tagged for the neocash item section, so I'm hoping by the time this gets out of beta we'll have the option to put our own walls in.

Incidentally, is anyone else disappointed (or severely annoyed) that all of the neat, decorative stuff in beta seems to be neocash only? And that, as someone at PPT pointed out, at current prices it would cost over $20 to buy every item from a single theme, including a single window and single wall/fence section?

[mellaka]

Yeah I think the Neocash aspect of it is a bit crazy, and I don't see myself buying any Neohome items with real $$. Then again, I said that about pet items too and, well, I lasted until Halloween items came out ...

[Wingsrising]

As someone who's spent many, many hours and many, many millions of NP on my current Neohome, I'm very much hoping we have the option of keeping our old homes as-is. I realize we can do it NOW -- but then, keeping our old pets was an option in the clothing beta, too, and we were unpleasantly surprised to see it wasn't an option once it was out of beta. So I'm hoping very much we can keep our old homes once this goes online.

That said, I'd enjoy the chance to play around with this, but not at the expense of my current Neohome. As it stands this doesn't seem to allow for nearly the creativity that current Neohomes do.

[Huggles]

Finally. The outsides are nice, but not spectacular. After all this time, I'm surprised to say they're a bit too cartoony for me. Well, maybe the homes I pictured in my head were always more refined. I find the Darigan landscape to be a disappointment. The placement of the house on an outcropping like that feels wrong. It seems like that area encompasses at least a few square miles, and the house should be in a more urban setting. I imagine something along the lines of tightly placed estates in mid-century London, if London had been taken over by a cursed bat overlord. If I were still playing, I'd take the Mystery Island home and stick it on Lutari Island for a nifty tree house or Krawk Island to play in the skull cave. I'm assuming you can place native houses and additions on foreign lands? It'd be stupid if you couldn't.

Oh, and it took me a good long while to figure out which one was Roo Island. Shroomland? Where the heck is Shroomland?

Oh good gods, The Sims. I made the mistake of offering to make a Sim of virtually everyone on a forum one summer. What followed was an endless procession of updates on individual Sims every few minutes. When I had had enough, I think I built walls around them all and let them starve.

The lack of interior walls and different levels is odd at best. They appeared to have addressed the proportion issues and the quality of the art seems consistent, so far. I also find the isometric view more natural. However, judging by the screenshots, they're still drawing the items by hand. So that means instead of one image like before, they have to draw one for each, presumably, 90 degree rotation. That brings the total up to four. It's probably harder to create an item now, but I'm not sure if it's easier than going fully 3-D. If they've got more artists than programmers, it might be. I'm sure if TNT really wanted to, they could have pulled out something so amazing that even I might be tempted to return. I wouldn't return, but still. It either came down to money and time, even though 3-D virtual homes have been freely available on sites for 10 years, or keeping the system compatible with really really ancient computers.

Do I like it more? Depends on what the rest of the furniture looks like, along with the whole walls thing. The freebie stuff looks like it's made of jelly.

[Officer 1BDI]

The public, beta version of Neohomes 2.0 is now live. And laggy as hell.

ETA: If you need more cheapish furniture, you can buy some here. For some odd reason, you can't actually put it into the new neohomes, however.

[Huggles]

I built a Beta neohome and it did not destroy my old neohome. The Beta version shows up as the main linking image, but there's an option underneath to visit My Classic Neohome.

[Bif]

If you go to Jellyneo, they have a heap of info, including the conformation that there will be Neohomes and Neohomes 2.0. Meaning that we do not have to choose between the two, they will live side-by-side. Which is a wonderful development.