Sims 2 Custom Neighborhoods

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This innocent question is what started this massive novel-length guide / talkthrough of how I go about building my custom neighborhoods (without any of the technical stuff though, like empty templates and batch-creating townies), don’t you just love it when things get completely out of hand? Since I spent so much time writing this though, I thought it best to immortalize it on a page of its own. :z

2) Place Custom Contents into My Documents EA Games The Sims 2 Downloads 3) Place the entire N165 folder into My Documents EA Games The Sims 2 Neighborhoods Please note: If you have a Neighborhood N165 already in your Neighborhoods folder you will need to rename the new one to something that you don't have. 4) Close the windows and start The. First look at Feverfew Custom Neighborhood in The Sims 2 by Criquette Nimi (NH decorator) reacts. Scrolling around in Feverfew, a custom pre-decorated neighborhood for The Sims 2, made by the master of neighborhood decorating: Criquette!

So without further ado…

Sims 2 Custom Content Neighbourhood

Deciding on what type of neighborhood it’s going to be:
First things first, what kind of neighborhood are you making? It’s always a good idea to have a general outline of what type of ‘hood it is, what type of sims you want to put into it, are you going to use university, are you going to build the lots yourself, are the families going to expand legacy-style or individually, how are you going to rotate (if at all), any plans to include supernaturals (in my case this generally only revolves around who I plan to have abducted by aliens, since that’s something I really love doing), businesses, pets… the list goes on pretty much forever! Obviously I don’t decide every tiny little detail about everything I’m ever putting into the ‘hood straight away, but generally when I feel like starting a new 'hood it’s because I want to do something specific (or just to get a fresh start, haha), like my newest 'hood - I want to attempt things I don’t usually do, which means I want at least one witch and two-three businesses in the mix, worked around my “original playstyle”. I’m also 99% sure I won’t be building a university this time around, and I want to try having a desert subhood to experiment with building houses more for a spring-summer-spring-summer seasonal rotation… i.e HOT! :)
Another thing to consider is probably the visual aesthetics of the neighborhood. Anyone that’s scrolled through my blog once or twice might find it painfully obvious that I only really enjoy playing with one style - bright, colorful, clean and generally a bit “this 'hood would be paradise on earth IRL” - I’m kinda into keeping my sims happy with no real poverty and/or bad incidents occuring… that’s something that’s pretty much been a constant with me since I lost interest in removing the pool ladders, but for you it might be something to consider? There are several other decorating styles and general style “feels” I like the idea of (maxis matchy grunge, for example!) - but I’m a creature of habit, haha. Some people also like dividing their 'hoods into districts, putting starter houses / poorer families in one place, uptown shops and apartments in another and the rich folk somewhere else, maybe you wanna start planning something like that? :)

Picking a terrain suited for your neighborhood:
Once you’ve more or less ironed out the details of what type of 'hood you’re building, it’s probably sensible to start looking for a good terrain to build all of it on. Big or small? Lush or desert? Something suited for mostly pine trees to make it a “mountain-y climate” or something more tropical? Island or mainland? Flat or bumpy? This part of the process is usually what takes the absolute longest for me, and I can change my mind so many times over, it’s crazy. x) A neat trick for picking one though is to first go through for example MTS’ terrain section (and I highly recommend Nimi’s terrains as well, they’re all gorgeous!) and download a bunch of different ones that look promising in the previews, then start a new neighborhood in game to test and look at them all in more detail there - since (if you have OFB) you can use the subhood shopping district option to add as many maps as you want to look at them too, without having to create an entire neighborhood every time you want to look at a map.
Or, if you’re feeling particularly courageous / creative, or if you have a very specific idea for what you want your neighborhood terrain to look like, you could create one yourself using SimCity4 (you can get it on Steam pretty cheaply, but it is also pirate-able - if you’re into that sort of thing). I’ve dabbled in this myself once or twice, but I kinda feel like I can never come up with anything particularly unique and I’ve never made a map I’ve been happy enough with to keep… :3 There are several tutorials on terrain-making on the interbutts, but I found one here @ TSR with pictures and one here @ MTS with just writing (second one is more detailed, but the first one is better if you’re a visual learner, I guess!)

Sims 2 Custom Neighborhoods

Initial neighborhood decoration:
I seriously can’t stand the look of an empty neighborhood, so I always find that I have to throw out decorations when I’ve picked a map and created a 'hood. TREES. TREES EVERYWHERE! I’m also OCD like that because I have the lot view distance set to max and I can’t have lots without 'hood deco visible. The initial 'hood decoration is what I posted here, so I only really do central areas at first (mostly because I find decorating neighborhoods for hours at a time really boring).

Choosing the first couple of inhabitants:
I really like spouse-hunting, so I pretty much always start my neighborhoods with a couple of households of single sims. Apple Springs was started with five founding households, my new hood with businesses will start with three (I think!). When I make my founding sims I usually just mess about in Bodyshop until ideas for sims strike, or like with my new hood, I’m using some of the sims I recently uploaded on my blog - which came from prompts, so if you have trouble thinking of something yourself, take advantage of other people’s creativity and ask for prompts! Or you could always just download someone else’s sims and alter them in CAS to your liking (and/or to make them different from the originals)… no harm in borrowing other people’s base!
Generally I don’t like cheating, but in my new 'hood I’ve used kaching a couple of times just to make the starter houses I built for the first sims a little nicer. I like building small-ish houses with room for expansion on a bigger lot for the founders, because I made the mistake in Apple Springs of giving the Evergreens too small a lot and it annoys me to no end that their house can’t be altered now that they’re approaching the end of the 2nd generation - the exact same house gets boring after a while.

Building the bare essentials:
Empty neighborhoods are such a curse for me, because chances are relatively high I’ll lose interest because there’s just so many things I want to build all at once - not just houses! Community lots! Shops! Parks! Hang-outs! Oh my! In a way it is a problem of my own making though, since I’m not fond of downloading other people’s lots and I feel the need to build everything myself. x) I should probably stop doing that… it’s unlikely that I will though!
Since I like starting with single sims that marry townies, I like building a couple of public community lots to start with, like a grocery shop, park, restaurant or bowling alley - it gets boring after a while to wait for townies to wander by their houses, and single sims on their own are usually pretty boring anyway, so I like having somewhere to send them. Plus, building community lots makes the 'hood look less empty. :)

Sims 2 Custom Neighborhoods

Starting out with the actual gameplay:
Once everything is in order and I’ve picked a terrain, some sims and built a few lots (including starters for the founders) it’s play time! I’m pretty liberal with how long I play my sims for the first few sessions in a new 'hood - I’ve mentioned this before; I don’t start rotating by seasons straight away… I just play the families one by one “for a while” (1-3 seasons maybe?) or until I get bored with them, so that their ages aren’t all sync’d up to the day and I get a feel for what I actually want to do with them. It’s pretty much my testing period, checking for failures in the community lots and making over fashion crisis townies as I encounter them, so that the 'hood works and looks the way I want it to when it’s time to start screenshotting stuff. :)
I’m generally a pretty impatient player, and three households will never be enough for me to start with, I’m entirely aware of it… what I did in Apple Springs that worked out pretty well for me to expand the size of the playable-base in the 'hood was to add a new household every now and then when I felt like it and working them into the rotations as they started properly. When it comes to expanding the amount of lots in the 'hood I did that in a pretty similar way as well, by just building whatever I felt like whenever I felt like it - plus at times I felt the pressure to have enough empty lots available when the children of sims’ grew up and needed houses of their own, but I guess that part belongs more to the advanced side and isn’t really something worth worrying about straight away. Besides, it’s a game meant to be enjoyed, there isn’t really much point in over-planning or worrying too much about anything!

At the end of all that, I’d say I’m pretty much done starting a new 'hood, since all that really remains is to play it and have fun with it! I’d definitely say that there isn’t really any one specific recipe or way to start a custom 'hood, and you should try to just do what you feel works for you, and to make it fun for yourself! That’s all that matters, after all.

The Sims 2 Custom Neighborhoods

P.S. Now that this has gone this far, maybe later I’ll go back and edit this to include the technical side of a custom neighborhood… even though I don’t really need to, stuff like that already exists. For reference (or interest), there’s a tutorial on that here, for example.

Sims 2 Custom Neighborhoods

Happy simming! ^_^
~ vimpse