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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 2nd Oct 2022 at 2:56 PM
Just a thought...
So I was sitting here bored to death and not really wanting to load up my sims because it just takes so long and I'm at a point in the building where I don't know what I want to do next. This got me thinking about the game in general and what to do with my NEIGHBORHOOD. Then I realized what that word meant and I wondered if anyone else is playing like their "town" is just a neighborhood in a larger town? Everything I've seen so far with neighborhood terrains is that they are made as a stand alone town and not a neighborhood in a larger town. When I make terrains in SC4 I always want a road that will lead to the next town.

Thought...comments ???????
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retired moderator
#2 Old 2nd Oct 2022 at 3:41 PM
Yes, I feel the same! I like to know which road my sims are driving down when they are visiting a subhood, and where the roads lead to. So much so that I made a whole set of SC4 templates that I used for some of my neighbourhoods, just so that I could picture the region in my mind!
https://modthesims.info/d/309624
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#3 Old 2nd Oct 2022 at 3:58 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simsample
Yes, I feel the same! I like to know which road my sims are driving down when they are visiting a subhood, and where the roads lead to. So much so that I made a whole set of SC4 templates that I used for some of my neighbourhoods, just so that I could picture the region in my mind!
https://modthesims.info/d/309624


I actually have all of those and haven't used them yet. I am wanting to tackle a Los Angeles type of "game" but I don't know where to start with the SC 4 template/terrains.
Scholar
#4 Old 2nd Oct 2022 at 4:05 PM
In my mind, they are all connected, although I haven't worried much about where the actual roads go. I do require my Sims to have a car or call a taxi to go outside their own neighborhood. Technically, they could walk downtown, but that makes no sense to me.

I did get to thinking about this one day because what was bothering me was the closed world and the different locales (desert vs. countryside, etc.). As far as I can determine, my Sims live on another planet that is mostly water. This explains a lot of things, such as the unusual biological species around (cowplants, plant Sims), the different life stages (Sims have longer gestational periods and shorter early developmental ones), and the differences in time. I figure their planet revolves very slowly, which is why they age every "day," and it also orbits the planet slowly, which is why a "year" (or four seasons) takes so much of their lifespans. The aliens come from a planet in the same solar system with much more advanced technology.

All of my neighborhoods are on one small continent in a vast ocean. Farthest north are Sim City (downtown) and its suburb, Pleasantview, which is also the seat of government; they have the standard four seasons. Veronaville is south but close to the coast, which makes it the primary agricultural area and the habitat of most plant and animal species; they have spring-spring-summer-summer. Strangetown is also south but inland, so it's desert; they have spring-summer-summer-fall. If I ever want to add on a subhood, I think it will be a new area of land--an island, most likely--that the current Sims "discover" elsewhere on their planet. Maybe an entirely new species of Sim will live there. Hmmm.

Yeah, I think about this stuff too much.
Forum Resident
#5 Old 2nd Oct 2022 at 4:19 PM
I always imagine that all roads lead somewhere, regardless of whether the limits are different, I can imagine that there is one more piece of land between one neighborhood and another neighborhood.

In the case of my custom neighborhoods, I am building them in the same simcity template.
Screenshots
Mad Poster
#6 Old 2nd Oct 2022 at 5:20 PM
"Neighborhood" is just the technical term for the unit of play in a Sims 2 game and doesn't mean the same thing as "neighborhood" in another context, except by coincidence with one person's playstyle in an individual hood. Making this distinction is why I personally fell into shortening the term to "hood," which I never do when speaking of real life neighborhoods.

Different people will inevitably conceive their neighborhoods differently and sometimes, the same person will conceive their own neighborhoods differently, with one a small town, another a single sprawling metropolis, another a selection of different communities, possibly a central hub city with various satellite small towns. This is the beauty of the game. I always want a road leading off-screen unless it's an island, because wholly isolated communities don't exist.

@Sturlington, if you put in some public transportation deco, you can tell yourself that sims who "walk to lot" to go downtown are catching the bus or the ferry or whatever. I hate waiting for the taxi, myself, so I also make sure to place bus stops and other such deco, as appropriate to the area. This also covers visits from people in other neighborhoods, who always show up walking: they took the commuter train or the bus or whatever. When playing the Genderswapped Uberhood, I decided that all the polities of the GU were connected with bullet trains, with Downtown as the hub (plenty of places to put a Grand Central Station on that map), and the GU Consolidated School System had special school shuttles to centrally located schools, to which the school buses were taking them, so that it didn't bug me when sims from different neighborhoods came home from school with Rhett's numerous offspring. The bullets became a crucial aspect of the story I wound up telling there, too.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Theorist
#7 Old 2nd Oct 2022 at 5:43 PM
Yeah, as I wrote in the other thread, to me the "neighourhoods" are just that, neighbourhoods or suburbs of Sim City, the first two games frequently mention Sim City even in a context that makes it clear that the Sims are meant to live in it (of course everybody can hadcanon that in various other ways, but I like it). When I make a Uberhood/Combined Hood then I see all of the neighbourhoods (Pleasantview, Blue Water Village, Strangetown) as different suburbs (Strangetown is, probably the farthest away from the "city centre", located somewhere on the other side of mountains that keep the rain from reaching the desert)
There's heaps of other, unseen neighbourhoods and districts in my headcanon where the Sims go to work and where the townies and NPCs live.

Avatar by MasterRed
Taking an extended break from Sims stuff. Might be around, might not.
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retired moderator
#8 Old 2nd Oct 2022 at 6:09 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Peni Griffin
I always want a road leading off-screen unless it's an island, because wholly isolated communities don't exist.

I did have an island neighbourhood, that had Criquette's ferry terminal and a little harbour to explain where they got their supplies.
https://modthesims.info/journal.php?do=showentry&e=7431
I'm working on an island neighbourhood at the moment which is supposed to be isolated and self contained, but in a simplified way! I try not to get bogged down with making it 'realistic', as long as it's 'sim-realistic' it's okay by me!
Mad Poster
#9 Old 2nd Oct 2022 at 9:40 PM
I have Dodge as a main central district in that town and will have two neghborhoods in Dodge when the first shopping district is added to that game.Adding shopping districts or downtowns expands the town and makes a tiny single-district become a community with multiple neighborhoods or a small city though that can take a very long time to arrive at that point in my games.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#10 Old 2nd Oct 2022 at 10:57 PM
Quote: Originally posted by wowrosanna
So I was sitting here bored to death and not really wanting to load up my sims because it just takes so long and I'm at a point in the building where I don't know what I want to do next. This got me thinking about the game in general and what to do with my NEIGHBORHOOD. Then I realized what that word meant and I wondered if anyone else is playing like their "town" is just a neighborhood in a larger town? Everything I've seen so far with neighborhood terrains is that they are made as a stand alone town and not a neighborhood in a larger town. When I make terrains in SC4 I always want a road that will lead to the next town.

Thought...comments ???????


I'm from the country so my towns are small towns with lots of rural and bush in between as it is here in Australia. I guess we are pretty unique in having THAT much space but only a small population. Our entire population could fit inside of Texas USA.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Instructor
#11 Old 3rd Oct 2022 at 4:38 AM
In the Sims 1 I always thought of the neighbourhoods as neighbourhoods, but it gets a bit boring playing city suburbs in the end. I started trying to build small rural communities, miles apart in the countryside, instead and it was a bit like coming home, But right now I have Orchard Isle, which I think of as an island somewhere off the coast from Pleasantview, with reasonable ferry connections for commuters.
Field Researcher
#12 Old 3rd Oct 2022 at 7:52 PM
I've thought the same thing, that the neighborhoods seem a bit too far away to be suburbs of the same city (even though that's basically what the game says), while also being close enough to something big enough so base game jobs and careers could be available to them. And I'm taking a guess that allowing every neighborhood to interact with each other in the base game was technically impractical if not impossible at the time TS2 was released.

I've also played as if the neighborhood is a town in the middle of nowhere, settled by people that want to 'get away from everything' for whatever reason. A single store took care of their needs, and changes to the world make the 'buy things instantly and place them in their home' seem even more realistic. When the carpool comes, I imagined that the Sims went to either a facility that needs to be in the middle of nowhere and/or they went to a location where they otherwise performed their jobs semi-remotely (this was all before 2020, BTW).

Quote:
I am wanting to tackle a Los Angeles type of "game" but I don't know where to start with the SC 4 template/terrains.
Even the largest places start small:
Quote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Los_Angeles
The history of Los Angeles began in 1781 when 44 settlers from New Spain established a permanent settlement in what is now Downtown Los Angeles…
I know this was a 'thought' thread versus a gameplay suggestion thread, yet a thought is starting with a map as the "original" city, then go from there. If you're wanting to start as if the city has been there for some time you could use some of the decorative/'prop' buildings until building out more.
Test Subject
#13 Old 4th Oct 2022 at 6:56 AM
Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
I'm from the country so my towns are small towns with lots of rural and bush in between as it is here in Australia. I guess we are pretty unique in having THAT much space but only a small population. Our entire population could fit inside of Texas USA.


To be fair, if all the land were equally habitable, the entire population of the world could fit in Texas with about a half acre per person. All 7 billion of us.
Forum Resident
#14 Old 4th Oct 2022 at 7:11 AM Last edited by kanzen : 4th Oct 2022 at 12:33 PM.
my main hood and university are islands so I put ferry ports and docks
for example, in my main hood, I have one community lot that is "connected" to the docks with hood decor, and one community beach lot with boats.
since I live in an archipelago, every summer my family would go island hopping and we did this by boat. Our vehicles would either be parked at the port or ferried to the other island.

For my vacation hood, I put train tracks and a train station for my modified takemizu as a homage to various tourist spots in Japan that you can reach by train.

I will probably do a mix for my downtown - accessible by ferry/boat and has a train station for it to access the vacation hood.
Top Secret Researcher
#15 Old 4th Oct 2022 at 3:08 PM
I don't think about how the roads work, in my mind it's all connected somehow. I play a megahood that includes (among others) Strangetown and Riverblossom Hills. I'm really not worried about making sense lol.

My Simblr
He/They
Alchemist
#16 Old 6th Oct 2022 at 4:26 PM
I also modify my terrains so the roads connect to each other. Widespot, for example, has PV HWY leading out of it complete with a highway rest stop along the way. I don't even keep all my hoods in the same game folder but they are all connected by characters, story, lore, "franchized" shops, and roads. I would really like to make the road out of PV to ST start to get more desert-like as you leave the hood but have not figured out a good way to do that yet.
Lab Assistant
#17 Old 19th Oct 2022 at 5:29 AM
Quote: Originally posted by wowrosanna
Thought...comments ???????


Since we got Downtowns (Nightlife), I have created hoods as separate Towns/Cities. Downtowns are larger Metro cities or even Capitals of a region. The Shopping District can be a business hub, or a manufacturing town, or even a rural or mining/raw materials town, though in the last few years I don't even bother adding one as I don't need the extra housing space for it. I don't see any "Hood Template" as a neighborhood but rather a City Template. I will name outgoing roads based on which neighboring town they are going to and in the next town the outgoing road will be named the same. i.e. N Highway 97 going north out of my main hood will be S Highway 97 going south out of my downtown. Yes, geographical orientation matters that much to me.

I loved SimCity, especially SC4 which I can not currently play thanks to Win10 being what it is. Most of the time I play Sims 2 just for the city building aspect. It's very mentally satisfying and therapeutic for me. I don't have to ever play the game with sims to enjoy it. I just build, admire my creation, and start over anew. I do miss being able to create my own templates!

If my sims want to visit another town they must be mindful of how far and long the journey will be. If my sim who lives in the main hood wants to visit downtown, they must either have a car, or be sure to leave in the morning to give them time to take the bus or train to get there. I pretend when they are walking to a community lot that they take the public transportation off screen.

No chemicals or GMOs in my sims' food.
Mad Poster
#18 Old 19th Oct 2022 at 7:39 AM
I've plannded on adding a shopping district to Pleasantview once enough coupleshave settled there and have begun to have their kids growing up and other new colonists begin arriving on the 17th century wooden sailing ships to begin their new lives as colonial settlers in Early America.My first shopping district is to be a farming district and other shopping districts come alter as the population growth rate increases.I'll add a downtown when it's needed for the larger population and for placing more of the apartment homes.
Link Ninja
#20 Old 19th Oct 2022 at 5:26 PM
I'd like to think all mine connect. I consider my 'hood' as a collection of settlements within a region. True, the main hood is the sleepy island town of Isla Del Kashmire with its main street attractions, residential homes, farms, community college, and estates but then there is the urban city center Scandalica City which isn't too far away that is the seat of political power and vast nightlife culture, then a Trendy Metropolitan City North of that called Memosa Bay that focuses on nature and the arts with its large green spaces, music venues, and an art museum, then a drive south leads to a small tourist town called Kashmire Point with plenty to entertain on its boardwalks, and a longer drive south is Pandora , the small desert town that is experiencing a development boom and becoming more of a tourist place despite its reputation for shady encounters at the casino and it's premiere house of escorts that happens to be on the same street as two chapels.

Uh oh! My social bar is low - that's why I posted today.

Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#21 Old 19th Oct 2022 at 10:57 PM
Quote: Originally posted by 31337grl
To be fair, if all the land were equally habitable, the entire population of the world could fit in Texas with about a half acre per person. All 7 billion of us.


I didn't mean in size I meant the population of our country is about the same as the Texas while our countries size is about equal to the USA (- Alaska) Our entire population is about 26 million and the population of Texas is about 28 million.

Due to being a very large country with very low population we literally do have a town and then a long stretch of road going through bush, scrub or farm land until you reach another town. Some of these roads are quite straight and the towns nothing more than a hiccup, close your eyes and you could miss them, others are larger. This is why I can easily picture different hoods as larger towns with the road going off the map one of the roads between them. There are few or no people between them. Between cities you are better of flying, certainly no one would casually drive from Adelaide to Perth which is 29 hr (2,695.1 km) If you drove across Europe that distance you would pass through many countries all densely populated. We are something of an anomaly.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#22 Old 26th Oct 2022 at 9:28 PM
Towns are around 63 miles apart in my country and I may have explained this before, but for those who don't know: A big population migration took place in the 1800's. 63 miles - or 110 km, which is what we use - is the distance the people with their wagons and their oxen could travel until they needed to stop so that the oxen could rest, eat and drink water. Some towns are a bit closer and some a bit further apart, depending on the geography, but all are very close to the average.

A hood could then be a town, and the roads out of the town would take them to the next town. All I like then is to have roads leading in and out on the map Or it could be a city with several suburbs. Yet even smaller towns - and large rural towns - have different areas with different names and different types of housing. My former town had 4 areas: Old Town, the New Extension, the hill (I lived on the hill) and the industrial area. They had names. Nobody used them

But sometimes, because I play SC4 as well, I just imagine my hood is close to SimCity
Mad Poster
#23 Old 27th Oct 2022 at 3:36 AM
I intend on starting with Pleasant Valley as being an entire town though it's actually starting out as a new colonial settlement in early Aerica from the 17th century and it will become a neighorhood when the first shopping district is activated though I won't need the default Bluewater Villiage first unless I want to acticate it first.It's going to be a terrain for a custom shopping district first and that will be a farming township at first.
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