I'd love to hear about creative things you have done in your game. One of the best things about the Sims community is we take the game so much further than just the product EA gave us, with inventing our own complicated systems for everything from taxes to religion to schooling systems. Over the years I've drawn so much inspiration from things other people share on the forum, so I thought it might be fun to ask people to talk about some creative things they've gotten up to with their game-play.

For example, I once read of someone (I'm sorry I don't remember your name <3) that would record videos of her Sims doing things, and replace the video files for the Sim TV with her recordings, so that the TV was higher resolution and it was her own Sims appearing. I always thought that was such a neat idea and I've been meaning to record my chef Sim cooking to add to the cooking channel, and have my recording artist do a music video, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. It's on my list and I still think it's a really really great idea, that I would never have come up with myself. I'm sure there are plenty of other equally cool ideas I'd never come up with out there being done, and I want to hear about all of them

I don't know, my creativity centres more around thinking of real things that I want and trying to find ways of achieving it in some way, like my criminals taking items from lots, running a hospital with a cocktail of smaller mods and cc or having Summer Camp for kids.

I have taken Design Seed pictures and had my sims paint them and base their house decoration around it. Not my idea, that one came from Jessa of the JessaChannel.

I've never looked into the Tv and how that all works. Having one of my own cooks on Tv is something I would like though.

I agree! I love getting and giving inspiration to the community. Some of the things I have done I was really proud of, creative-wise!

--BUSINESS--

1. Bird Sanctuary business - I posted a few years back about this but the bird cages use a cc reskin that makes them look like open-air perches and the business owner opens up a luncheon to guests and lets them play with the birds from dawn till dusk, or just hang out and play chess in the enclosure while the birds fly around. The pay model is the ticket machine.

2. Travel Agency business - this one is newer and utilizes Kestrellyn's property transfer mod to 'rent out' romantic getaway vacation homes The sims come into the agency, pay a nominal 'fee' for a ticket to have the owner consult what kind of property would be best for them (using the 'show item to' function) then they purchase a cheap little picture that represents the property of which vacation rental they want and the owner immediately gives them the deed through the mod's function. Then I go play that sim household, take them on vacation for their getaway, when they come back I use the money transfer mod by pescado to transfer the funds to the original owner and transfer the property back! It's kind of fun to see what the sims will choose in the travel agency!

3. Surf Shack business - this one was really fun to play because I added the MSD surf mod and then had a sim sell the surfboards to random sims throughout the hood. Then when sims with the boards in their inventory ended up on either Twikkii beaches or my shopping subhood's boardwalk beaches, they could ask other sims that had bought them to go surfing with them!

--EDUCATION AND OCCUPATIONS--

I set up a community college lot campus in my main hood thanks to Squinge's mega college hack and use it for sims who maybe want to be future business-owners to work on necessary badges while attending classes. It's a nice alternative to sending them to Uni.

Concerning jobs, I have a process where if there's a captain hero in the hood, there's a freeze on criminal hires and vice versa - if there is no captain hero criminals can be hired and are allowed to advance to the top of the criminal career until a new captain hero is promoted. Only one mayor can happen at a time, as I view them as the head honcho of politics over the entire hood and subhoods.

--VACATIONS--

Recently, based off a failed random chance card in Takemizu, I created a whole new lot called house of the yellow rose because there's a 'yellow rose clan' that stole my sims' wallet when she allegedly entered their turf in the great bamboo forest. I'm thinking this lot is a front for their activity, but vacationers can travel off the beaten path to eat hibachi, sing karaoke, or play mahjong at the place.

Speaking of the great bamboo forest, I built a bamboo forest in Takemizu when I re-vamped it and made these little sleeping huts for a 'camping' option, along with a swimmable lake, hot spring, and other nature-y things. Thanks to Sunrader for creating an object that acts as a 'check in' point like a tent so then my sims can be saved at the lot!

Speaking of camping (I also posted about this awhile back) right here in this very forum members discussing hiking trails inspired me to create 7 camping lots in Three Lakes to simulate a rustic backwoods trail hike/camping type of vacation where the sims couldn't go to any community lots and had to entertain themselves for the days they stayed.

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I just have to say sims 2 is a wonderful sandbox of a game, and I have a fountain of ideas for play, building, and creating still spewing forth after 10+ years!

Currently working on more farms, and new community lots like a skate park, wedding venues, and an axe bar for my sims to entertain themselves at.

Similarly to this, I've used clips of Sims 2 horror movies from Youtube and made a horror channel for them. It's fun to have sims watch them at night, especially during dates or when they're at the cinema lot. Theoretically you could extend that idea to lots of things, like shooting yourself some TS2 westerns, or sci-fi movies. If you have some sort of celebrity class in your game you could even use those sims as the actors. The sky's the limit if you have the patience to put it all together.

Awwww, you're welcome! I was just thinking about your bird sanctuary. I love that lot!

I have elaborate stories that cross hoods and last years. One of my favorites is a story of a ghost that haunts the entire town. I made it so she will pop up on different lots, and I hid the places all over town, even from myself, so that I am surprised whenever she does. Gradually, an elaborate mystery is growing around this haunted town and it's inspired more creativity as I make new objects or lots to fit the story.

The first thing that comes to mind is an open neighborhood... which now doesn't sound that cool at all :/ I used the apartment system to build an entire street on one lot, and unlocked some road pieces to rebuild a replica of a Maxis roads that splits the lot in two.

Highway to Respite: a cross between a board game and a BACC. The Bluewater Village Sims, along with the Sedona guys and the family bin Sims, set out from Bluewater (head canon: submerged by rising sea water levels) in search of a new place to live. Malcolm Landgraab with his two henchmen, Matthew Picaso and Cyd Roseland, went by helicopter to Respite, a pleasant green valley. The others had to make their way along the Road to Nowhere, which I set up with 60 small lots all along its length.

How far each family got each depended on the dice, and which die I used depended on family composition: D4 for a family with preschoolers; D6 if there were children or elders; D8 if the weakest member was a young teen; D10 if everyone was an adult. A family with a large dog used the next die up, as the dog could haul a travois and make things a bit easier - so Julien Cooke, who took in Danny and Sarah Critter, used a D12.

When the refugees reached a gas station in the middle of nowhere (Sedona), they began to settle down. There were a few dilapidated houses that the first arrivals were able to take, and now the hood has turned into a BACC; nearly everyone in Sedona works construction, and other careers and services are being slowly added in.

Those things are pretty creative too. Just a different area of creativity I seem to remember reading that you've set up lots of real-life type businesses like banks and other things that don't necessarily come naturally to the vanilla game. I'd love to hear more about how you set up things like your hospital



Not intended as a competition, don't feel down! I think that's a super neat idea. Perhaps you can show us a picture of how you did it? I love apartments so always down to see more cool apartment setups

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Charmful: Wow! That's so many neat ideas. I especially like your vacation-related ideas. I love BV, so I'll have to remember your post and see if I can't take inspiration for some new community lots. I really wish BV got more love in terms of lot uploads. There's so many residential home type uploads, but not much in terms of expanding on the premade vacation destinations.

Bubblebeam: Cool! Fun to hear of someone else doing that sort of thing. I have a Sim that wants to be an actress so I'd like to do movies with her down the line, but we'll see if I have the stamina for it

Sunrader: What a fun idea. I love that you even made it a surprise for yourself.

BlueAlien: How interesting. Not something I'd wanna do myself, but that sounds like something a lot of Sims players would love to play through. What happened to families whose dice rolls made them drop out before reaching the end of the 60 lot corridor? Did they settle down there, or did they perish?

This is a cool idea. Can you explain it a little more, maybe with an example of a what effect a dice roll would have, and what sort of lots you had along the way. Sixty is a lot. What were they?




Yeah, I spend a lot of effort trying to find ways to hide things from myself to make it all seem more alive, like making a sim pregnant with an unknown father by blindly inserting a male adult NID, then waiting for the father to show up, because he knows he has a relationship with the baby, even if I don't.

My retirement subhood.

Elderberry is where most of the elders move to in order to retire. They have a number of community lots (including a graveyard and a wedding venue right next to it, because one can meet your next spouse at your first spouse's funeral ; one couple runs their grocery shop and they have a library and a gym of their own. They have, in their golden years, time to invite the family over for meals, time to have golden wedding anniversaries, time to take their grandchildren on vacation and time to share their wisdom - whether it is knowledge or hobby tips - with the younger generations.

I think it has to be all the stuff I've done with TS2 babies - making clothes, toys, posing, accessories, hairs, etc. Had a proper creative boost a few years back. Not so much nowadays, although it's still fun to come up with new ideas (I just have to get into the creative zone again - I still have a ton of unfinished projects collecting dust... ).

First idea from this thread to make it into my game, a karaoke/bar lot for twikki inspired by Charmful Thank you for the idea! Can't wait to take my next YA-vacationers to this lot for a party.

Oh cute!! I don't think I even have a karaoke place in Twikkii at the moment but I love this open air tikki bar with karaoke. I think if they can't walk up stairs due to the pole, they can at least try the other side of the stairs. The only sort of functional annoyance I could anticipate from this is if they turn on the juke box while there's singing going on from the karaoke, audio-wise. Personally, I get discombobulated at dissonant sounds but if it doesn't bother you then you are golden!


At some point I will gather up all the stuff and make a post about my vacation re-vamps and what I added into them in full, at least for inspiration. There's different lodgings, activities, and remodels that really spruced up the whole vacation experience in my game for all three of the classic destinations.

Actually, now that I think of it, if you are interested in downloads for Vacation hoods, plumbtales on tumblr did stellar remodels of all the vacation lots, here is the directory but links to a post with pics and download links!

the opportunities are endless in The Sims 2 both in and out of the game itself, modding, movies, music you can do pretty much anything you want too

You can create your own custom The Sims 2 radio station, in the sound options menu, You can also add your own music, and as some already mentioned, adding your own videos, for your sims to watch on their own televisions, and sims with higher skill in painting can also custom paint photo on the in-game easel in the Sims 2 as well as take a photo in the game and paint that as well, and hang up that painting on the sims wall or sell it in-game also.

To add music you can rip or download MP3 files to your EA Games The Sims 2 Music folder but they need to be in MP3 format

even create custom video game playing videos under movies folder, you can also record movies in the sims 2 and it will store them in my documents, EA Games The Sims 2 Movies folder.

but note the My Windows 10 PC does not let me view the videos by default, because it's says my that the movie format it not supported

LOL you can even add your own sim commercials to the your custom tv or radio stations.

I love all the ideas being shared on here.

I don't know how creative this idea is, but I've been playing with a hospital in Strangetown, and it's really livened up my gameplay by introducing some unexpected twists. If any adult or elder Sim gets a serious disease (flu, pneumonia, or food poisoning), or if they go into aspiration failure and are not cured by the initial "therapy," they have to go into hospital. That means moving out of their family home into the hospital lot, where they can't work (so they may lose their job) or have visitors (due to risk of contagion). They stay until they are cured (or die) or they get their aspiration out of the red. Also any werewolves put in hospital are cured of lycanthropy. This means that some Sims are abruptly taken out of their family homes and must live with a random assortment of strangers, which can shake things up, relationship-wise. And back home, spouses are free to have affairs or whatever, if they want. My hospital is run by Trisha Traveller (who owns the lot), and all my zombies also live there. They perform janitorial duties. It's funded by patients providing a a portion of their household funds when they move in, and if the hospital runs out of money while they're staying there, their family has to send them additional cash to pay their "bill."

I don't really enjoy playing single Sims, so I have a seedy motel where they live together. They pay "rent" via the mortgage shrubs. They get kicked out if and when they get married or pregnant, and then they go into a more traditional family home. This lot is a lot of fun to play, as the hotel itself is not really up to code, and there have been accidents involving kitchen fires and food poisoning, not to mention all the hooking up that goes on. Recently, I've gotten too many singles for my hotel, so the Ottomases, who own a huge house with a lot of bedrooms, are now renting out rooms to singles. I guess the creative part of this is coming up with ways to have Sims living together that are alternatives to traditional nuclear families and also don't force me to play houses with only one Sim in them.

@sturlington
I really love the idea of the functional hospital you play and it reminded me I had this small idea I never went through with (yet) for a therapy practice, because one of my sims were in the red and they just have so much going on and vacation wasn't cheering them up even. I want a kind of therapy business a sim graduating in Psychology runs where it's a ticket machine set up pay by the hour and maybe somehow limit it to one sim patron on the lot as a time but they help the sim get out of the red by socializing with them and help them reach any reasonably-attainable short term 'want' while visiting and plan out how to make some of the longer-term wants happen.

I also am very intrigued by the seedy hostel. I was in the process of re-vamping my seedy motel for the purpose of sims going there to have affairs (with the sleep anywhere mod that helps) but to put a bunch of down on their luck, struggling single sims all in one place I agree would be very engaging and interesting to play. I have single sims in apartments and enjoy playing them for the most part - probably because I like their apartments lol.

You probably just need a program that lets you view the files.

The old Windows Media Player (It's probably still accessible somewhere, works fine on Win10, I needed it a year or two back to access an old video project) or VLC or some other downloadable player will probably let you watch the files.

Has to do with the what kinds of formats and encoding the program you're trying to open the video in can handle, and not so much with Windows 10 - although 10 doesn't come with any particularly useful programs for multimedia (even the picture viewer is kinda useless) .

They should have perished, but I can never bring myself to kill my Sims. I placed a single apartment building and shop at the midpoint, so Sims could take a brief break from the road and stock up on groceries (Tessa Ramirez had the Grilled Cheese aspiration as her secondary right from the start, because grilled cheese was the first hot food she'd ever had). The head canon was that it was a former resort that had pretty much closed down, but Landgraab Enterprises saw a great opportunity to take advantage of the refugees by charging a week's rent for a one-night stay. The Ottomas family were hopeless, and I only saved them by having David go ahead on his own to get help - he persuaded family friend Cyd Roseland to persuade Malcolm Landgraab to send the helicopter for them, in return for which he had no choice but to work for Landgraab Enterprises. Thanks to this connection, the Ottomases are now one of the most successful and respected families in Sedona.



I'll try to put this under a spoiler, as it's a bit long!

@charmful: Thanks! I should have mentioned that I don't have Apartment Life, which is why I don't play apartment-style.

I simulate the seediness of the hotel by purposefully giving it a kitchen where fires would be particularly dangerous--hard to maneuver around or for the firefighters to access if there are a lot of Sims in there screaming and jumping around, no fire extinguishers. It also has uncomfortable furniture and there's no maid service or handyman, so nobody cleans or repairs unless they do it autonomously or they need the skill point. I use bigger bills, which adds to the rent, and then the single Sims have to save up for their own place from their work earnings.

There's also another motel down the road that is the kind that rents rooms by the hour, for my married Sims who are trying to be discreet.

Your hospital stuff is pretty creative too I use a bunch of your stuff with my preemie-babies. Some mothers struggle so with pregnancy that they go to my hospital for a pre-term delivery, and the babies have to be in nicu with oxygen for a bit.



Yeah I'm hoping at least 50% of the stair is functional, since it's modular, but I'll see when I bring someone there., I play muted so the clashing of karaoke and jukebox won't be an issue for me, and I felt like clashing kinda suited the shenanigans I envision happening there

Inspiration posts of BV-related lots would be lovely. As I said I'm mediocre so I don't have that many great ideas myself when it comes to building, but if someone gets the wheels turning I can usually whip up something that's good enough for my game Thanks for the tip, will definitely check out Plumbtales stuff

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Sturlington - What a fun way to do a hospital And your seedy hotel sounds really fun too. I do like playing single households, but some Sims aren't really suited to be alone so there I make full use of the multiple roommates mod. It's really fun to watch a bunch of Sims get in each others way in a tight housing situation and see what sort of things they get up to.

BlueAlien - I know how you feel... I am very attached to my Sims, I wouldn't be able to kill off a bunch either. I'm getting close to the first elder dying of old age (I use a greatly extended age mod) and I'm dreading it. I briefly toyed with the idea of letting one die when she got whoopsie pregnant 10 days before going elder, cause I really didn't want another kid in that family and it felt like an interesting plot, but I can't make myself do it, so whoopsie baby it is. Her kids are all grown up and have kids of their own so it'll be weird for some of the grandkids to have an uncle that's younger than they are.

I appreciate you elaborating on how you did your Sedona thing, it's really very interesting and I imagine a bunch of people will make use of it for their own stories. Building up things from the ground seems a really popular model for new hoods

Poor things! They needed my fire! https://sunradersims.com/2019/05/autonomous-fire/ LOL. Love this, thanks for the detail!

I remembered another really fun time I had when I modded a zombie apocalypse. See, the computers that Humble delivers, well, they had a virus that jumped to Sims and, well... the whole hood became a limping blue horror! The funnest part is that children cannot be turned, so the game becomes a challenge to try to cure or kill zombies before all children in the hood turn into teens and are lost forever. I made sure there were a good number of children, first, and it was really fun as they tried to keep the adults that were still human safe and take care of themselves cooking on those little kid stoves... I did hide a magic fountain that could cure zombies on a community lot, but not many found it... ah... good times!

I outlined many of my businesses on my 'Business and career' thread -in my siggy. Including my hospital.

Running a hospital - without Chris Hatch hospital mod.

I use a residential lot that looks like a small hospital with one section for the family who live there. You have much more control over things on a residential lot including having patients stay overnight or longer.

Doctors Office
For general checkups, I have the doctor talk to the patient and most times use the pcsims doctor bag. This allows your doctor (who needs at 5 mechanical to use the bag) to check over another sim to discover if they are sick, unimmunized or in low aspiration. Now the bag will fix these issues, so if you don't wish for sims to be cured immediately don't use it yet. This is an old mod and somewhat buggy in that sims can have some trouble getting into the doctor and patient 'slot' they walk around and may foot stomp and end up not being treated face to face. Having a large room helps.
I also have an eye chart and a pregnancy test they can use or I can just make the sim selectable and check aspiration and check health with the sim manipulator heath object. The doctor bag makes a small amount of money each time it is used or I can use the wallet token controller to pay the doctor.

pharmacy/Gift shop
Because I don't want to focus on the shop side of things I use an auto till and an auto restocker. The pharmacy sells working pc sims medicines, glasses that are deco, some potions and working birth control. Then the other side sells flowers, teddy bears and magazines.
It use to sell deco BC but Willam made a working version on pick n mix mods.

Nurse Station
Is behind a desk area at the pharmacy to make it look more realistic. I bring one of my nurses to 'work' with the Simlogical meeting controller which means he or she arrives controllable. I then have them sit and write articles on Monique's computer unless I need them for something else.

Maternity ward
Sims who have had a miscarriage warning can come and stay and have the baby at the hospital. Here I use Christianlove's transfer mirror which temp moves sims in.
They have rooms with all they need like a bed, a private bathroom, a wall tv and books. I also have a town midwife who I teleport over for the birth.

sick rooms
For sims who have the flu.
psych room
For sims who have had aspiration issues. Depending on how bad they are they will have a few sessions with the other doctor before being cured.
Operating Theatre
Offers plastic surgery.

I have thought about inventing issues such as cow disease or simpox and deciding if a sim will get these by dice roll. These are for fun, so they will wear a cow suit or use spotted makup.

Well, I guess that, too
Needed/wanted a lot of hospital stuff for storytelling, and figured the fastest way was to make it myself. Most of the hospital stuff comes from either having used it in stories or pictures, or planning to use it at some point.

My previous project was to make CC snow stuff just to take a small set of snow landscape pictures without actually having to deal with ingame snow (didn't want to test snow just yet, plus I wanted some snow that didn't crush game performance or fall on objects). There's not a single scrap of ingame snow in those pictures - it's actually summer , and the only Photoshop snow is a little bit of falling snow (I've tried making that for ingame use before, but it looks kinda awful) and footprints.

Well, this in-depth detailing of your hospital makes me want to convert my hospital to residential, seems easier...

Speaking of hospitals to be realistic, Psychiatric Struggles, and Physical Illness are usually in separate hospitals all together, OR in some smaller towns and urban areas in a different section of a medical hospital, Sims with low Aspiration to me? would need to be in a different section of a hospital OR a different hospital all together if we are talking major city area

I am Not referring to an insane facility, just a temporary psychiatric treatment facility, the kind that treat things like Manic Depression, Bi-Polar, and Schizophrenia ADHD, Autism, Asperger or even Adduction Habits like Alcohol Abusage (etc)

Requirements for a Psychiatric Hospital

REQUIRED:
1: Nurse Station
2: Medication Counter
3: Bed Rooms with 2 beds and private bathroom with shower
4: Day Rooms
5: Café
6: Doctor's Offices
7: Group Session Rooms
8: Visitor's Room or rooms
9: Staff Lounge:

OPTIONAL:

1: Indoor Gym
2: Court Yard