Hello, i really want to make my own Neighborhood and after trying to find some really guide i dont get it.

I mean, okay we made/create map, ok i make clear templates and what i need to do after? What mod i need? How much townie i need to create? They will have random skills and career if i make them townies?

How to make storytelling? How to make them play in one time like when you create ur sim? I get how to create memories in SimPE for better storytelling but how to make album that will be okay after downloading?

Also how to create own barista, cashier and etc?

This is a huge project, maybe it makes sense to work on some smaller projects first? For example, create some lots for upload, create some custom neighbourhoods for your own game and play with them for a while.

The tutorial I used when creating Widespot was this one: https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=420196

It is now a bit outdated but it did the job for me, with my AGS setup and my desire to build a base-game hood. Don't be thrown by the "subhood" thing - you have to make the neighborhood template before you make it a subhood, so if you want a main hood you just skip the "make it a subhood" steps.

A more up-to-date tutorial, including creative as well as technical advice, is found in a multi-post tumblr thread here: https://www.tumblr.com/katatty/1733...hbourhood-guide . I know tumblr is disorienting for people not used to it but that link should lead you to the first one and then everything's linked straight from it. Check the "reblog" sign at the bottom (the crooked arrows) and the comments (the speech bubble) for added value.

The Legacy version is too new to have a tutorial yet, but perhaps you'll be the one to figure it out and write it, if it's necessary.

My own best advice is: Keep It Simple. Strip your vision down to its bare bones. The more complicated something is, the more likely you are to get confused, make mistakes, and finally abandon the project. Don't skimp on anything truly essential to your vision, but don't let temporary enthusiasm tempt you to bite off more than you can chew. Slow and steady wins this race.

My other best advice is: Back up Every Version. And by "every version" I mean "every time you save, make a backup." And by backup I mean "Full copy of the neighborhood file." Don't rely on SimPE or hoodchecker backups, or anything your computer does on its own. Consciously make and label each and every save in a way that's easy for you to find. That way, if you realize three sessions later that you made a huge mistake, you can just restore the save from three sessions ago and proceed from there, instead of starting again from scratch or scrambling among editing tools and cheats to chase down all the unintended repercussions of the mistake.

Take it slow, treat it as work, but also have fun and I hope to see your creation someday.

I second Simsfreq. This is not the days of the exchange where one could slap something together and the masses would be like "oh that's cool!", people who make stuff for download do so as a serious hobby. Don't let us squash your hopes, but be prepared for this to be a very time/dedication/skill intensive, and be careful not to let it burn you out on the game. Never forget this is a game, you're supposed to have some fun with it, and there's nothing wrong with doing side projects for your own enjoyment that don't require all of the intricate details that your downloadable projects require. I've been working on a megahood project on and off for over ten years and it's still not even close to finished. I wonder if people will even be playing this game still when I complete it, lol.

I think that if you are determined to do it, first you should know a little about the mods and the game and play and watch videos of people who have done it plus the things that they are recommending in this topic. Maybe it would be good for you to start with a test neighborhood and try to learn how to do each thing you want to do.

I know that will be huge, but i have vision and already make a story so i think i can do it



Im make it in Ultimate ver. so i think its will be less buggy, thank u i really appreciate ur help, i use this tutorial but i hate that they dont have mods page (or maybe i dont see it i have bad eng but trying to translate it with my own) For Example: How to make jobs what i want to sim? how to freeze time while i make setup for story by changing their skills and etc and after i do it how to make them in one time with another people in town? I mean everybody start like Monday 8am

Also if i use Insimenator for add career will it have have consequences?

I highly recommend AlexArt's Youtube video How to Create a Custom Neighborhood?. It covers all your questions, point by point.

You just play the game.

I mean, there are mods and cheats - teleporters, the batbox, various clothing tools, the job board, and of course boolprop testingcheatsenabled true - which allows you to spawn things like the Tombstone of Life and Death, Rodney's Death Creator, and the Badge Juicer as well as directly manipulate skills. There's editing tools like SimPE, which will allow you to create memories and set things like jobs directly without relying on the vagaries of the game. There's three or four different ways to do most things depending on what you're most comfortable with. But for setting up the story and getting time to move along, get past the first "what's this?" moments and the welcome wagons and all that, not to mention training the sims to be the characters you want, nothing beats just playing it out.

Not only will play activate the training mechanism (a subtle effect, but a real one - the more often you fill a want, the more likely it is to be rolled; the more often you direct a sim to do something, the more likely they are to do it autonomously), it will allow you to discover and create things on the fly that you never thought of beforehand. For instance, I assumed when I made Widespot that Valentine Hart would mostly be played as a Dirty Old Man; but in actually setting up the story, I only directed him to romance his wife, until she died, and Mary Land after that. However, in order to set Mary's conflict I had to get her pregnant by Valentine and also fall in love with Junior Mann. The result was that, in vanilla play (without ACR or other mods affecting erotic behavior), Mary is actually more likely to cheat on Valentine than Valentine is to cheat on her! The detail of Rhett Hart catching Sandy Beech interacting romantically with her husband and getting jealous, which to finish setting up the story involved making up with her and getting her pregnant, was a complete accident - it happened in the background of a community lot trip I made from a different household. Crabby Family teen Sadie Wilkie, the cashier at the General Store, was generated randomly in the game and a lot of people have had a lot of fun making her playable. And it was a complete accident that a firefighter generated when Hamilton started a fire by putting toaster pastries into the oven and then wandering off, giving several sims a Fire memory.

Developmental play also lets you playtest your lots, get pictures for your storytelling album, manipulate relationships with appropriate memories generating naturally (manipulating memories in SimPE is incredibly tedious and therefore easy to get wrong; I accidentally uploaded Widespot with a teen having a memory of potty-training his father, for instance. Any memories you need that the game can do for you, I say let the game do it!). By all means use the cheats and editing tools for anything that it would take more than a few days to play, but to set up the starting personal relationships and situations, nothing beats doing it in the game.

The language barrier to using some of these tools and following the tutorials is a serious problem which I am unlikely to be able to help you with, and you can't trust translation programs with the sort of jargon used in a Sims 2 tutorial. What is your native language? Perhaps we can find someone else who speaks it but has more experience with parsing technical stuff about the games to help you figure them out.

It should not, assuming you mean "use insiminator to give a sim the job I want" and not "add a custom career." Jobs can be given or changed in more than one way - with a hacked object, a mod like Insiminator, or with an editing tool like SimPE - and it's just as if the sim got them through the newspaper.

If you watch April Black's video on corruption you may have more confidence using the tools you have available, as you'll have a better idea of what does and doesn't corrupt the hood or the game. The more you understand about the game mechanics, the less intimidating this whole project will be.

And remember - back up your progress regularly! That way if you do make a horrible mistake, you can go back to before you made it!

Yes, what Peni says is a good way to start, although it may result in a slightly more chaotic file if you don't first eliminate the creation of steal hoods or things like that, even so, if you don't do very crazy things it will probably result in something clean, especially if you use no unlink no delete and all those basic mods. In fact, it's a bit like how I learned with Jeans Shaker Oasis, although I already had some prior knowledge, I really decided to let myself go and let the game show me the way xD really part of the magic resulted in "playing" and letting myself go. There are people who prefer to do everything with SimPE or Mods. Others use each tool as it suits, but it can also be done just by playing.

I really did not like the Insimenator all that much and rather use either the Sim Blender or the Sim Manipulator, both are single item to use.

I would use either the Sim Manipulator or the Sim Blender
Sim Manipulator: https://simmanipulator.forumotion.c...sim-manipulator

There maybe a download for the Sim Blender other than the way back machine but I don't know it.
Sim Blender can still be downloaded using the way back machine: https://web.archive.org/web/2016090....php?topic=20.0

Insimentator is very useful for the family tree, but Simblender is very useful for giving the elderly the adult jobs xD. Each mod has its pluses and minuses. For example, some relations do not add well with insimenator and must be done carefully or other mods. Personally I use all 3 as it suits me.

I don't have much to add, I also only made empty hoods without sims - but I want to say: Go for it!

It is a huge task and there may be days when you will say to yourself: What the hell did I think when I started this? Those are the days to keep your vision in mind!

Back up, back up, back up - I was a bit careless and had to do a lot more work than I probably should have done when my pc broke and I lost around 20 lots.

Most importantly, always remember that it is a learning curve, but an enjoyable one. If you run into problems with anything, ask for help, you will find it here

Looking forward to see what you are going to do.

One more thing before I bow out of this thread.
Use the "Creator Feedback Forum" so others can help test your hood before you upload it, many eyes on it can help find things the the creator missed. https://modthesims.info/forumdisplay.php?f=611

Here is the Simbology SFS archive.
https://simfileshare.net/folder/92516/

Great advice here. It does seem to be a process to make a downloadable custom hood. The thought process is very different than creating a hood for personal use only.

If your hood has a plot or storyline, maybe work on that first. Write out your settling, plot, characters, protagonists, antagonists, overall theme, and conflict of the hood.

Once all that is done (writing biographies for sims isn't as easy as you think), Then work on creating the map, lots, residents, townies. etc....

As for tools, knowing how to operate SimPE is a big plus. You can edit sims' attributes, without even loading up the game. There are in-game tools like TestingCheats, Sim Blender, InSim, and the Teleporter that are harmless if you know how to use them.

As everyone else said, patience is key with this. Take your time. Don't be so in rush to upload your hood that you end up with many errors and mistakes.

LOL .. tell me 'bout it .. I've been makin one .. well more than one really as it's a main with a few subs and unis and it's takin me more than a handful of years .. ok so part of that is my own doin but still .. they're not quick things to make

There's a lot of great advice and links in this thread, so there isn't much more I can add personally except to give you a bit of perspective on my creation process of a neighborhood and hope it helps you and others that read this. For this I'll be talking only of Plot of Land and not my other WIP yet-to-be-shared neighborhood.

It first starts with the concept, one must ask themselves "What do I want to achieve with this neighborhood?" At first my neighborhood Plot of Land was merely a testing ground without an identity, after sharing some screens in the neighborhood pictures thread and getting some positive feedback from @simsample and @Sokisims I began to think about that above question, and I realized two things. The first being that I really liked the story concepts of Bustin' Out and the second that I really like poking fun at our hectic real world. So, it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I then knew what I wanted to do.

I then began creating some starter families using the in-game create-a-sim. At first it was a bit painful having to create them all until I got into the swing of things. The first family I created was the Cortez family, which at the time I didn't have a story concept for. That was until there was a house fire because Vincente burnt some food and died. It was a spur of the moment, in-game thing that naturally occurred. I used his death to create a small side story of tragedy, and a child left fatherless.

When you are making a neighborhood, things that occur during playtesting feel more natural than stuff that is forced. However, there are some things I couldn't achieve without them being forced. the story between Malcolm Landgraab and Alabaster Cowl was some-what forced because there was no in-game to replicate exactly what I wanted to achieve with that storyline. However, some of the events, such as when Malcolm attacked Alabaster were entirely coincidental. I wasn't quite expecting them at first to be enemies right off the bat in a natural game setting and I thought I'd have to force that specific attacking action, but it oddly happened naturally. There are other families in my neighborhood where things occurred naturally such as Lucien III's running away and Regina Maple catching Barry cheating on her. All-in-all I'm simply trying to let you know that the best way to make an engaging story is simply to just let certain events happen naturally within the game.

For many of the Sim memories however, I had to edit using SimPE because a Sim got a memory I didn't want them to have and/or the memories became disorganized and made no chronological sense to the story. So, I strongly suggest familiarizing yourself with SimPE as you'll be needing it to make changes that can't be done in-game.

Once the families are all created the creation process becomes much easier and you now have a playground of possibilities you can do within your neighborhood.

I'd like to warn you however, there are times when you might feel fatigued with the creation process. When times like this happen, I find it best to simply take a couple days, a week maybe even a couple of months away from creating the neighborhood. Not only will this get the fatigue feeling to go away but will also allow you to return with a fresher mindset, and with a fresh mindset you might try new things in your 'hood you otherwise wouldn't have tried prior.

Thank you everyone for tips!!! <3


I use my neighbor for testing my skills im playing sims 2 for like 15 years and learn some thing i want make some storie for play soo i perceive its like place for RP for another player. Also ur service area is one of my favorite hood!!!


im russian so i belive in Loshede supremacy and will find tutorials.

as i say i think make town to play for another players its more like game master thing so i like to make place for another people to play



Its very hard i write some plot but while i start building i understand that i need to change one thing or another!


Thx very helpful!! I start it watching before make thread but in one moment get overwhelmed cos also read some another source for making


Thats my Achille's heel. Im bipolar so im making in my Hypomania time and scared i can't build it before thats episode gone

Maybe you should try to have a small number of families, that will help you prevent the process from becoming very long. If I ever make another neighborhood again, I assure you it will be small. I'm never going to embark on a 16-family madness again.

edit: except for Aberon Garden

I can relate to this on a deep level actually. I have schizoaffective disorder which is Bipolar and Schizophrenia combined. There are many times I've felt that I couldn't do it anymore because of the depressive episode. What I can suggest to help is find your muse with the neighborhood you want to create. My neighborhood is very Bustin' Out inspired so for me it's simply playing Bustin' Out or listening to the soundtrack. Doing something Bustin' Out related helps me stayed focused when I'm feeling depressed and motivates me to stay with the project. For you, your muse could be anything. A song or book that inspires, maybe a movie or TV show perhaps? Something that makes you happy essentially and takes your mind off the depression.

I know it is easier said than it is done but getting into a practice like this not only helps with your project, but can help you stay mentally sound long-term.

What I mean when I say "you just play" is you play to a certain point, and then you release it to the players. You need to have that point in mind, and direct your play toward that goal, freely using cheats and hacks and whatever you need to make the situations happen in play. Then, at the key moment, you save and you quit and you double-check whatever you can double-check in SimPE; and then you advertise for playtesters.

Playing is the only way to get past the welcome wagon and make people meet each other. Since we can't edit the Sim Wants and Fears file it's the only way to engage the training mechanism. It's the simplest way to do a lot of things, and also a spur to your creativity. If you try to do everything without playing, you won't have as satisfactory an experience or end result. But you do need to be able to pick the right moment to stop. This is another advantage of all those backups - if you realize you've overshot the mark, you can easily back up a save or two and do it again.

I played four full days of development in Widespot. During that time I used teleporters and cheats to make sure the correct people met each other and had the correct kind of relationships with each other. When I wanted to playtest a community lot I would send a sim who had people they needed to meet out to the community lot, and with so few sims in the hood they almost always met up with who they needed to meet up with. If they didn't, tht's what the teleporters were for, but it made for more organic play to let it happen naturally. Penny starts with lots of friends because I used a testingcheats (or was it Tombstone of L&D? Gosh, this was a long time ago!) function: "Make me/friendly with everyone here." (Or something along those lines.) Because I sent her to the General Store so many times, one of the sims she made friends with this way was the cashier, and unintended consequence. I had no actual story in mind for the teens and children, so their friendships and interactions were all spontaneous, with Dixie and Virginia making best friends, Goldie being too shy to make friends, River making friends with Junior, and Scot and River admiring Candy. I did not plan for Virginia to reject Woody's attempt at a first kiss; he rolled a want for it at a time when they were alone and the relationship was at a point that she could have gone either way, and she rejected it. A lot of people have taken that for a key moment to build both characters. And I wasn't originally going to have Candy woohoo both Rich and Junior; she wanted that, so I did it, trying for baby both times, and Junior was the one who succeeded. Talk about defining moments! Candy walking in on her father seducing Mary right next to her mother's urn was another unplanned gift from the game.

And I took pictures. So many pictures. I needed screenshots of the finalized houses and the sims for the upload thread, but I also took story album pictures. You always take more pictures than you need and then cut back; it's how the professionals work, too. You can't edit gameplay but you can edit what the players are going to see when they open the hood.

Don't let the bipolar thing stop you. If you have to quit to work through a low point, just leave everything where it is and when you start coming back up you'll get back to it.

There is also a point in the creative process that my writing friends call "the saggy middle." It's between the first rush of inspiration and the final rush of completion. Don't confuse it with a bipolar phase and get discouraged because you feel yourself sinking every time you go back to the project! When you hit the saggy middle, you need to work on it a bit at a time during your more even-keeled phases, and one day you'll hit that downhill slide to completion and it'll feel good again. I promise.

Oh i think right now im in moment when i dont know how to make lines between some character and thing like how much family i need, but also i dont know how many townies i need with biography to make it look more solid for plot line but also not everyone will meet all of townies while playing



My main inspire its World of Darkness but their storys not so PG-13 and also i cant make everyone vampire like i want cos its make gameplay poor. Soo im on edge with adult theme and make hood more family friendly
I really appreciate that you share ur experience <3



Oh if i make their relationship with SimPE will i get needy Wants? I think i will testing it after setup, but if i play will another player get welcome wagon?



If i correct understand every picture i can use if i sent it to storytelling folder? For example i made back up and play game all i need just change folders and will get pic from non clean hood?



I think i will get Saggy middle while making their relathionship. I mean in my life bipolar will take more resource for doing simple thing like just cooking for yourself. Its just mixing with my up and down moment of isnpiration soo if i doing that project i will just planning but not making it :c
Why u dont make a guide about it? Ur so talented and experienced and i think its will be great just read ur thought about making a hood

When i read what i write i feel like Sofia from modern family

Guides are not my thing. I'm a terrible teacher. The katatty guide I linked earlier should help you plenty.

Welcome wagons come only to households that have just moved in. If you've played past the welcome wagon in a household, it won't get another one when a new player starts. The game can't tell who played last. There'll be a neighborhood reset for everyone whose setup doesn't exactly match your development environment (i.e. practically everyone), but welcome wagons and What's This on the last thing placed on the lot and so on will not happen, because you've played past them. As far as the game's concerned, you did that play, saved, and then changed your setup, so it'll go to the place you left off and react to the setup changes.

It sounds to me like you need to sit down, with the game closed, to map out what you want this hood to be. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed by the stuff at the edges: what are the central elements necessary to make the hood you want to share? You don't have to link everyone (play will do that, yours and the players), only certain key people. Don't worry about townies right now. What is the <i>main thing</i> you're trying to accomplish? Which sims and which situations do you need to accomplish that? What is the starting point? What game mechanics need to be taken into account - which ones will help you, which need to be prevented from hindering you? At what point, roughly, do you want the players to start?

For instance: My goal in creating Widespot was to make a base game neighborhood that might have shipped with the initial game. I wanted each household to be in a decision point, and I wanted to lean hard into the soap opera elements, using the soap operas my mom used to watch when I was a kid as my model. I wanted matriarchs, relationship drama, generational conflict, unplanned pregnancies, the rich and the poor and the established families and the newcomers complicating each other's lives. I also wanted each household to be identifiable with each available aspiration. Since it was a base game hood, that meant five households (no Pleasure or Grilled Cheese aspirations). I wrote down ideas for each household, which were modified as time went on. For instance, I wanted my Family Matriarch to be an elementary school teacher, but there was no education career in the base game, so I had to settle for making her an administrative assistant, the kind of low-level job that a woman who spent most of her life raising kids instead of developing job skills could land. I wanted a single daughter of the household to be eligible for adult relationship drama, but I wanted lots of kids and each lifestage represented, so I had to find the simplest way to make a household consisting of Elders, Adults, Teens, and Children, in which the adult was the child of the elders and the sibling of the teens and children - not something the game is easily persuaded to do.

When I decided the Fortune Patriarch would be a Criminal Mastermind, I decided I needed to make him the Telescope Slapper - paranoid about his illicit activities being spied on - which meant he had to be the lowest-numbered sim in the hood, so I had to make the Fortune family first, even though the Manns were supposed to be newcomers. Having decided that Homer Land would be in the Law Enforcement career at a low level, it made sense for him to be the one to show up to reprimand the Manns when they looked through the telescope during the day, so I had to make the Land family second. And when I built the Mann's house, I made sure that they had a telescope pointed straight at the Land house! I made all the households in CAS, then moved them in to their houses one at a time and played them in the order in which they were supposed to have moved in, so that the established residents all remembered meeting each other before they met the newcomers without meddling with the memories. This is the kind of effect that players really appreciate, and it can't be carried off without pre-planning.

The plan I made ahead of time, with family trees and diagrams showing which relationships had to be developed, was modified several times in development. It's better not to be too rigid in your planning, as you need to leave yourself room to have a Better Idea; but it can help keep you anchored to the important things and prevent yourself from burying yourself in an avalanche of piddly detail. Front loading this work now will mean making fewer decisions on the fly with the risks not having your development tools ready to implement the decision, or of changing your mind and having to back up a save.

When writing a book, it's a good idea to write every day and stop your writing session at a point at which you know what the next sentence is. That makes it easier to start up again the next day. When developing a Sims neighborhood, it's a good idea to do a step or two of development every day, and stop when you know what the next step is, but not the step after that. This will maintain your creative momentum.

Breathe. Pace yourself. You don't need to know everything ahead of time or do everything at once; you just need to know the direction you're going in and what you need to know and do to get there.