Mesa Flats (aka Midnight Masquerade): Neighborhood Recreation - No CC *Update! (V2)* (12/25/2024)

Update (V2)!! (12/25/2024)
Ever wanted to play Mesa Flats in TS2, but with its original lore from the Sims Pet Stories? Well, now you can! We've updated the recreated neighborhood that me made years ago and uploaded new and refreshed versions of Mesa Flats.

In these versions, you'd be greeted with a freshly "unlocked" free-play neighborhood just like in Sims Pet Stories, except for the part that it was technically never "locked" in story mode, but it'd at least feel like you've just finished the story as you open the neighborhood. We've also updated the lots to make them look more accurate to the originals using a Uni+NL+OFB+Pets anygame, as well as fixing small oversights in the original neighborhood (i.e. fixing the pets' names for foreign languages).

In Sims Pet Stories, right before the end of story Midnight Masquerade, the main character Stephen gets to choose one of his romantic interests; Rachel or Erin as his date for the midnight masquerade. Depending on whom the player choses, the outcome of the story will be different:

• Option A: Stephen chooses Rachel - Rachel moves in with Stephen, Erin is heartbroken, thinking that she and Stephen had something special, but eventually leaves the lot after crying. In the end, Rachel gives Stephen a hot tub as a present.
• Option B: Stephen chooses Erin - Stephen and Erin get engaged, Rachel is upset and throws a tantrum, but then she also leaves the lot. In the end, Stephen and Erin go on honeymoon to the Simaican Isles.

We recreated both scenarios, so you can download either neighborhood, based on your preferred ending. Oh, and at the very end of the story, Celeste, Stephen's cousin, is mentioned to have gone on a cruise with her husband. But in Sims Pet Stories she and her husband go mysteriously missing and actually never return home even after the story's completed.

We thought, this might be a reference to the Queen Solomon cruise ship of the Shipwrecked and Single story from The Sims Castaway Stories, which crashes and eventually sinks. Alas, Celeste and Damien may have drowned, since they don't appear in the game's story as survivors, which would also explain why they never return to Mesa Flats. We implemented this! So, the neighborhood starts just as Stephen got home from the midnight masquerade and heard about the sad news about his cousin. (Well, in TS2, you could technically resurrect Celeste and Damien and pretend it never happened... so that's up to you, lol!)

The old versions are still available for upload, in case you'd want to play them without the lore from Sims Pet Stories. This concludes our series of updated versions of the recreated neighborhoods but with the original lore from the Sims Stories.

But hold on, there's more coming up soon! After receiving many requests, we've also decided to do optional Townie&NPC pools for every recreated Sims Stories neighborhood, just like we did with Four Corners earlier this year! So you can really have all the original townies & NPCs (& strays) from the Sims Stories in your TS2 game! So.. stay tuned for them!

As always, happy simming!

Stephen Loyal is an accomplished SimCity chef who leads a quiet and ordered life in the desert suburb of Mesa Flats. Lately he's been unusually busy getting ready for his cousin's wedding and helping his employer Julianne cater the annual Mesa Flats Midnight Masquerade ball. Little does Stephen know that his life is about to get turned upside down...

Install Instructions
For The Primary Hood Version:
1. Put the folder PSS1 into your Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods
2. If you only have the Base Game installed, you have to copy the contents of the Storytelling folder into your Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Storytelling folder in order for it to function properly. Later EPs do not have this requirement.

For The Shopping District Subhood Version:
1. Put the folder BPSS into your Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Open For Business\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate
Note: If you have The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection, put it here instead: Program Files\Origin Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Best of Business\EP3\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate

For The Downtown Subhood Version:
1. Put the folder DPSS into your Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate
Note: If you have The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection, put it here instead: Program Files\Origin Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Double Deluxe\EP2\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate

In order to use the subhood template, please take note of the following:
-You need Mootilda's mods to fix the subhood selections, available here.
-To use Mootilda's mods, you will need Pets or a later EP/SP installed.
However, if you don't have Pets or a later EP/SP installed, you can temporarily remove Bluewater Village (B001) or Downtown (D001) from the NeighborhoodTemplate folder and move this subhood in there. It will still be referred as Bluewater Village or Downtown in the game. But the game will add Mesa Flats to your neighborhood. Restore B001 or D001 after adding the subhood and you're done.

A warning about the downtown version:

By default, only the first downtown added to a neighborhood will have its sims. All other downtowns will be empty. So, if you add Downtown first, then you won't have the Mesa Flats sims (or vice versa). They will simply be deleted - and, as you know, EA doesn't delete the sims properly - the junk references can be seen in SimPE. In order to solve this issue, please try this method.

However, if you plan to add only one populated downtown to your hood, you won't need to use this method.

Further Information:
There aren't any townies or any NPCs in the neighborhood. So, you have to generate them yourself if you really want them.
You don't need to install a camera mod for this neighborhood. You will see all of the lots in a vanilla game.

All of the lots have been compressed with Mootilda's Lot Compressor.
Mesa Flats is base game compatible and doesn't have any CC in it. However. the shopping district/suburb subhood requires Open For Business EP.
We also included a version with the playables and their pets from The Sims Pet Stories. This version obviously requires Pets EP in order to work.

This is a ground up recreation of Midnight Masquerade from Pet Stories game using Numenor's AnyGameStarter and Mootilda's HoodReplace to create the neighborhood with no Maxis content and to get the original look of the neighborhood with its original roads, neighborhood terrain, trees and decorations.

All of the Mesa Flats lots have been recreated by marka93 and all of the playable sims of Mesa Flats have been cloned, fixed and recreated (using fixed clones) by Jawusa.

There are 10 families in total; 16 sims and 8 pets (if you get the Pets version).
Mesa Flats has 21 lots; 11 of them are community lots, the other 10 are all residential lots. If you get the shopping district version, there are 2 owned properties.
Look in the comments for this neighborhood to read more about the individual families and lots.

marka93 has tried to rebuild each house as close as possible to the original using the base game only. Because The Sims Pet Stories is based on pets, we also decided to include a version with pets. So, we only recommend to get the BG version if you don't have The Sims 2 Pets installed.

We also recommend adding Mesa Flats as a subhood to Four Corners, Bitville or Garden Heights. This way, you can create your own Sims Stories megahood for TS2.
The last remaining The Sims Pet Stories neighborhoods, Arbor Falls, is already in the works and will be uploaded very soon!

As always, stay tuned for more neighborhoods to come!

Additional Credits:
Numenor for his AnyGameStarter which we used to make this neighborhood base game compatible and empty.
Mootilda for her Lot Compressor which we used to compress all of the lots in the neighborhood and for her LotAdjuster which we used on some lots as well as for her helpful HoodChecker (to see whether there are any problems or not) and for Hood Replace which we used to copy the neighborhood terrain with its roads, trees, decorations from PS into this neighborhood.
Compressjpeg.com for compressing the size of the required images for the download page.
The makers of SimPE
Of course, EA for The Sims Pet Stories and for the original Mesa Flats!