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Sims 2 Wall, Floor, and Terrain Guidelines

When uploading a wall covering, floor tile, or terrain paint for The Sims 2 to Mod The Sims, we have some basic requirements to ensure that your upload is good, shown well, and has the correct info and files needed for people to use it in their games. This allows both moderators to check your uploads for quality, and for downloaders to see if your item is something they want to add to their games.


Quality

  • Clear Textures: Textures should be crisp - not blurry or pixelated.
  • Texture Details: Use shading and highlighting where appropriate to give a 3D effect.
  • Brightness: Neon or bright colours are fine, but don't go too bright - 80% saturation is usually plenty for even neon textures, but more just looks blinding!
  • Usefulness: Walls, floors, and terrains should be something useable in-game, and something that your sims will want to decorate their house with. Random patterns and pictures are generally not suitable for walls, floors, and terrain.
  • Scale: The texture scale should make sense for the game. A terrain paint shouldn't have leaves the size of pool tables, or flowers the size of a sim's head. Compare the texture to a sim's head or hand, and make sure the scale is correct.
  • Seamless: Textures must be seamless, so that the edges of each tile are not obvious.
  • Paintings and Logos: Most of the time, it's best to do these as recolours of objects (i.e. make them a picture your sims can hang on the wall, not the wall itself). For murals or full-wall-designs, consider recolouring the FullPoster Wall Overlays instead.
  • Undistorted: Make sure the textures are not stretched or squashed. Use the correct aspect ratio. Please note that if wall textures are made at the template size of 256x512, they will be distorted in-game (if you make a circle, it'll turn into an oval). You must make your textures at 256x768 and then resize them to 256x512 before importing into Homecrafter for them to look correct in-game.

Files

Package files
Walls, floors, and terrain paints must be shared on MTS as .package files, not as .sims2pack files.
Upload in sets
If you have created several items in a set, or similar items in the same sort of theme at the same time, please upload these together in a single set, all on one thread (instead of all separately, one by one, on different threads). This is easier for everyone: on our upload moderators, as they only have one thread to review rather than several... on you, as submitting a single thread is much quicker and easier than several... and on downloaders, as they can get everything they want all in one place rather than having to hunt around.

If you are doing a huge set, you can always break the set up into pieces, posting more screenshots along with the downloads as comments in the thread, as is done here and here. To do that, create a new thread in the Creator Issues Forum and arrange your thread there, using the first post as an introduction, and attach your uploads and images to subsequent posts in the thread. When you're done, PM a moderator to have it moved to the upload queue. For more information, read the message that displays when you go to post in Creator Issues.

Zip, Rar, or 7z
To upload your file(s) to MTS, you will need to compress them into an archive file, which makes them smaller and allows you to include many files in one download. The archive file formats we currently accept are .zip, .rar, and .7z.

For instructions on compressing your files into an archive, please see: Creator Guidelines: Creating Archive Files.

  • Do not include multiple archives with the same contents - that is, please don't put your files in both a .zip as well as a .rar because some people only want .zip files. Choose one format.
  • Do not double-compress your files... a .rar file inside another .rar file (or any other archive inside another) doesn't compress it anymore, and it makes it so we can't see the contents without downloading, and also just makes an extra step for the people downloading.
  • The file size limit on MTS is 50 mb. If you exceed this limit you will need to split your archives. This should probably never come up except for large worlds for The Sims 3, or huge sets of smaller items.


Information

Title & Description
Give your upload a descriptive title and write a text description for your upload, describing what you're uploading. Your title and description must be in English or provide an English translation. If you are not a native English speaker, using Google Translate is okay. You can also ask for help writing your description in the Creator Feedback Forum.
Required information
Give the in-game location of your creations (i.e. carpet, tile, grass, etc.) and for walls and floors, be sure to include the in-game price as well.
Expansion Packs or Stuff Packs required?
Walls, floors, and terrain paints never require any expansion or stuff packs. Do not tick any as required.


Screenshots

Screenshots
You will need to include certain screenshots. You must at least have:
  • A picture of each texture, shown over several tiles. This means showing at least 3 tiles of wall, or 2x2 tiles of floor.
  • Show all items: If you use the same textures for everything, just in different colours, it's okay to show one or two good full-size pics and then texture swatches for the rest. If you use different textures for everything, you need to show everything full-size.
  • Unobstructed: You can put things like a couch, a window, or a plant, but make sure they're not in the way of your wall, floor, or terrain paint.
  • Angle: Please take pictures at an angle that show your creation clearly. As far as possible, screenshots should be taken face-on - from directly in front of the wall, or top-down for floors and ground cover.
  • In-game: Pictures must be taken actually in-game, on a lot. It is not enough to just show pictures taken in Homecrafter, or to just show the textures without also showing in-game pics.
  • TIP: Make sure you have square pixels set to on so your images don't appear distorted.

Keep the following in mind for your screenshots, especially the required ones:

  • Size: 800 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall is a good size for the smallest pic you would want to upload. Your images can be up to 2560x1440 pixels, and 800 kb, so you have lots of space to work with!
  • Lighting: For most things, it's best to take pictures in an interior room with good lighting. For lots, pictures should be taken during a nice sunny day, for floorplans, take the pictures with the lights ON.
  • Clarity: Neither blurry, nor pixellated/crunchy. Do not size up small pictures to make a large one as this will blur them, and make sure not to use too much compression/too low quality when saving your images.
  • Distance: Take your pictures so that your creation fills the screen without anything cut off at top or bottom - neither zoomed in too close, nor zoomed out too far.
  • Distortion: If you resize your images, retain the aspect ratio so they don't get stretched or squashed. Take care when zooming in and out with the camera that you do not create a fisheye effect on your pictures.
  • Photoshopping: Do not apply filters like sharpen, contrast, etc. to the required pictures, as downloaders want to see what your creation will look like in their game, not your skills at using Photoshop.
  • Attached: All required images must be attached directly to the MTS upload, not just inserted using the img tag, so that even if the pics get deleted from your Photobucket (or other host), the upload on MTS is still complete.
  • Show all items: For most areas, if you are uploading a set, you must take all the required pics for each item in the set. If there is an exception, it will be noted.
  • Picture limit: You may upload up to 100 pictures for a single upload thread, so feel free to add some additional pictures just to show off your work to its best. Of course, keep it reasonable - nobody needs 50 pics to show off one sim or hair.
  • Inline pictures: Inline pictures are those that use the [img] tag to show up in with the description text. So that it doesn't take too long to load, please keep this to no more than 4 pictures done inline, unless you put them inside an [infobutton] tag. To do this, see our guide on post formatting.

Other

Uploads not allowed on MTS
These items are not allowed on MTS in any category.
Pay/Pirated Content

Everything required or recommended for an upload must be freely available, without having to pay.

  • No uploads requiring pay content: We do not host content (for example, recolours of a pay hair or object mesh) that absolutely require pay content to function in-game.
  • No optional pay, pirated, or stolen content: Even for optional or recommended content not absolutely required for the creation to work (for example, hair on a sim or a couch on a lot), this means:
    • No content you must pay for. This means you cannot use items that are pay, donation, subscriber only, "special gift", etc. type content, anything accessible only when you pay money or subscribe.
    • No content from sites that are repositories of unmodified content when it is still available from the original creator, whether these items are pay or free (no Booty or Simscave, torrents, sites full of stolen content or similar, but the Graveyard and sites that offer recolours or modifications with the mesh are okay).
    • No EA content simply converted to base game use with no other changes.
    • No pirated EA Store content. EA Store content, linked to the legitimate EA Store, is okay though. TS2 store content may be included, with proper credit, since the store is no longer available.
Other content not allowed
  • Items that belong on the adult site: No content posted on MTS can have visible nudity, sexual content, or adult content, and instead must be posted on our adult site, Sexy Sims. This means on MTS, you may not post:
    • Content that contains nudity, which we define as exposing the female nipples, or the butt crack/genitals of either gender, including semi-transparent stuff like a sheer bra. Items that are merely "sexy" like skimpy miniskirts or string bikinis are fine on MTS. Transsexual/transgender items are also not considered adult content unless they contain nudity.
    • Skintones containing genital details - female nipples are okay on MTS but see below regarding screenshots.
    • Images of skintones with uncensored female nipples. Please blur or cover the nipples, butt crack, and genital area when taking screenshots of your skintones.
    • Fine art uploads containing visible nudity.
    • Items with specifically sexual content (sex toys, sexual poses).
    • Items containing swear/curse words
    • Items relating to illegal drugs. Prescription and over-the-counter drugs, alcohol, and tobacco are okay on MTS though.
  • Sexualized children: We do not allow any sexy/sexualized content for baby, toddler, or child sims in any way - no breasts whatsoever on child sims, no "sexy" outfits, etc. If you want to make preteens, make a less developed body for teen sims. Sexualized child content is not allowed at our adult site either.
  • Offensive content: Racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, bigoted, hateful or otherwise offensive content will not be allowed. Again, also not allowed at our adult site.
  • Gore/violence: We do not allow uploads which feature prominent, graphic violence and/or gore. Examples of things we do not allow would include items centred around mass shootings, images showing explicit violent imagery, cannibalism, and infanticide. Limited violence and gore may be featured if not the dominant focus of the upload, and not excessively graphic. Think a PG-13 movie. If uncertain whether your upload crosses this line, we suggest making a thread in the Creator Issues forum asking for feedback from a moderator before uploading.
  • EXE installers: Creators are not allowed to post exe (or other executable) files for any area of the site but Modding Tools. If your content needs to be installed to a certain directory, you can compress your files and leave the directory structure intact, so you can tell people to just install to Program Files, for instance, and the files will go where they need to. Executable installers can easily hold viruses, and are generally not needed for installing most content.
  • Preorder bonus content: Certain items were only available if you preordered certain expansions or stuff packs from certain retailers. It's unfortunate if someone missed out on getting them, but they can't be redistributed here as EA has made it clear that they do not allow it.
  • Unmodified EP/SP/Store content: While it is common practice to modify and use bits and pieces of game content to create custom content, extracting content from an expansion, stuff pack, or Store item and uploading it unmodified is not allowed on this site. You are welcome to upload significantly modified versions of expansion, stuff pack, or Store content, but you can't just be ripping it and changing one tiny thing (or nothing) just so people who didn't purchase it can still use it.
  • Stolen/reuploaded content: This should go without saying, but do not upload content made by others and claim it as your own, in whole or in part. Don't upload the work of someone else without their permission... if they wanted to share it at MTS, they can easily upload it here themselves.
  • Uncredited content/violating permissions: If any part of what you have uploaded (mesh, textures, alphas, bump maps, coding, etc.) comes from somebody else's work, you MUST provide a link and credit in the text of your post, for the original author. State what you've used of theirs, the author's name, and give a link back to them. You must check the author's policies to see if you can use their content in the way you want, and you may not violate any policies stated. If there are no policies or they don't disallow your type of usage, or the site is permanently offline, then you can assume it's okay. Please see here for more details: Updates and Remixes of Creations.
  • Redirects: If you want to move a creation to another site, please remove your upload from MTS, don't just edit the text to point to a different site.
Helpful links
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