There are so many... Seems like most of the neighborhoods that I've downloaded had problems of one kind or another.

What about the original Sims 1 neighborhood for Sims 2? I have a copy of someone's attempt at a remake, but it requires every EP and SP. A number of people have expressed interest in getting something like this.

I always just use <print screen>, but they've never complained about the quality of my pictures.

Yes Mootilda I will give any hood a try if it needs to be fixed, I even think I can rescue Sims and houses out of hoods that the player can not get started any more.

I also would not mine it if we had some one like Peni Griffin in on this group to.

Shall I ask her, or would you like to?

How about we both ask her unless you think it would not be right to do. I will leave it up to you for you know how to do it and I don't.

PIcs are hard! I had to redo mine several times; but they're important, not just for the submission process, but for being in the download section. The thread you make in Creator Issues becomes the download page for your item; and without clear, informative pictures, no one will download.

I'm afraid the only thing to do about pictures is to keep going over and over and over the criticisms, taking the same pictures over and over until you get it right. Griping and asking for advice, reading picture tutorials (which I know are a problem due to language issues, plus it's hard to picture what they mean), and other support activities will help; but there's no substitute for practice. I'm much, much better at taking pictures now; but I had to learn to use keystrokes I never knew about, install a camera mod to get the birdseye view of the neighborhood, and take absurd numbers of pictures before I could get what they needed.

It is discouraging that it's taking so long, but if all they're asking for is pictures changes, you really are sooooooo close to done, it'd be a shame to quit now.

I'm not sure about being in a group to recreate and fix existing neighborhoods. My only talent lies at the storytelling/character end, which has already been done in those cases. That, and being accustomed to the process so I don't take certain obstacles seriously that tend to stymie people not accustomed to the editing/copyediting/proofreading/galley reading rigamarole. But I have plenty of that of my own to do.

I heard back about Widespot RFD today. They asked for pictures, told me I could use the original ones, and sent me the link to edit the page for picking the thumbnail picture, identifying the necessary EPs, and all that good stuff. So it looks as though Mootilda's prodding did the trick.

Hi Peni Griffin it is your great storytelling powers that is needed is what I was think of, you never know when something like that will be needed again.

The reason that I believe that you belong in the group, Peni, is because you helped a lot with the neighborhood story for Riverside. If this is a collaborative effort, you were definitely a part of that collaboration.

I think that I'm pretty good at pictures, although I've never done pictures of sims before, just lots. Still, they've always seemed happy with my pictures, and I'm willing to try my best.

Looks like Peni's suggestions didn't make it into the neighborhood story, and the bios are in the wrong place. So, this will take longer than I expected.

I've also removed some of the duplicate pictures. I can't see any reason to have 4 copies of the exact same picture.

[Update:]

Jeffersons: Barbara has a "headstanding" daughter? There's no such adjective, but a headstand is "an acrobatic feat in which a person balances on the head". Was this meant to be "headstrong", which means "determined to do what you want even if other people warn you not to do it"? That makes a lot more sense to me.

I may have uploaded the wrong hood.
I will go down load the last one and see.

I got your changes and merged them with my own. However, I don't want us both to be working on making changes, because it may not be so easy to merge the changes next time. My understanding is that I have taken this over and I am the only one making required changes. If that doesn't match your understanding, please let me know.

The great thing about English is that coinage is easy and understandable. I read "headstanding" to mean she was always showing off.

Ok if you have already made the changes then forget about the last PM I sent you and yes Mootilda I will let you take over from here.

Its just that I thought I uploaded the right one but it seems like I did not.

I could not get the pics good for the upload is what was hanging this up.

I'm glad to share the copy of the neighborhood which merges the changes that I've made with your changes. I hate to take pictures if we're still changing things. Pictures are the last thing that you do, once everything is finalized. Otherwise, I risk having to take the pictures over and over again.

- Spelling errors and typos in neighborhood story and family stories fixed. It looks like you typed things in again and made even more errors. I extracted the text from the various locations (including the website) and diffed them (used the computer to find all differences between the files), then copied and pasted Peni's text directly into the correct locations in the XML files. In situations like this, I honestly believe that copy and paste can help to prevent headaches; I believe that I found typos in most families.

- Changed "headstanding" to "headstrong". Could be changed back if you both agree on "headstanding", but I honestly believe that this was an error.

- There were 4 copies of each picture. Edited the XML files to have them all point to one picture and removed all of the duplicates. However, I was thinking that it would be much nicer if the neighborhood story, family story, and family description were different, it seems somewhat silly to have the exact same text 3 times. As well, perhaps we could use some of the original pictures from EA to enhance the family stories. We'd have to sort the pictures by family and renumber them, then add some explanatory text for each picture.

- Bios had been (incorrectly) added to the family descriptions, sometimes replacing the family description. I added the bios to the correct location in the second line of the Catalog Description in the individual character files, but have not yet removed the bios from the family descriptions and restored the original family descriptions. That was the next thing that I was going to do, and I can make those changes before sharing the newest version of the neighborhood, if you'd prefer.

- Added a nicer description for the Thompson family. I believe that talking about the process of making the neighborhood distracts from the flow of the story. It would be nice if we could do that for Dina Ross as well. It's unclear why she was included in the neighborhood if she has no real story.

- Removed all of the excess pictures in the neighborhood folder. Changed final neighborhood picture from BMP to PNG to reduce the space taken by the hood.

I think that's it. Would you prefer to get the hood back now, or would you prefer that I fix the family descriptions first?

Funny. I believe that I tend to "speed-read" and therefore always read "headstanding" as "headstrong". Imagine my surprise to find out that it said "headstanding". The other problems with English usage make me believe that this was a mistake.

I will wait for it when you have uploaded it here.

Any thing you can think of to make this hood better is great.

If there is any thing you need from me just let me know.


ADD: It looks like I may have deleted the one for uploading and uploaded the one I was working on for my self to play.
If Brandi's Bar is in you may want to get rid of it plus the car lot on the hill.

OK, I'll continue to make the changes that I believe are needed, then I'll share it with you both. We were lucky that we were working in different areas, so it was relatively simple to merge the two sets of changes.

I'm glad that you caught that. It would be a shame to lose all of the fixes to those lots.

Just so that we're all on the same page, I've attached pictures of the neighborhood story, family description, family story (a.k.a. family album), and sim bio.

Mootilda you will have to upload yours when you get it done and replace the ones I have uploaded.

And please do what every you need to, and make this hood one of the great ones out there.


If I don't make since at times it may be my meds that I am having to take.

I understand. Please take care of yourself; that's the most important thing. I'm really happy to help you get this out, since you've done some great work here. I always wanted to try playing Riverside, but was concerned about the corruption.

I believe that there's no problem having multiple people working on the hood, so long as we are all clear on who's got the hood at the moment.

Yes, this copy had Brandi's Bar and the Car Lot. I have deleted those two lots from the neighborhood. I gather that you still believe that this copy is better than the one that you uploaded in Creator Issues?

I finished the family descriptions and also cleared out unnecessary Text List (STR#) records from the neighborhood package. Wherever possible, I've been trying to reduce the amount of space taken up by the neighborhood and these excess text lists aren't useful.

Perhaps I should test and then upload what I have now. I believe that the next step is to look over all of the pictures from EA and try to sort them by family. Of course, if a picture includes multiple families, there's no harm in adding those pictures to multiple family albums.

Are you attached to the townie names? I've noticed that many townies have the same first name as a playable, and it might be nice to give them another name.

For the townie's name that is the one's Thsms204 gave them I just remove the same last name they all had. No I am not attached to any of there names.

Great. I changed several of the townies to other names, so that they can't be confused with playables. That just leaves the two Gina's.

I think they all had something like Partygoers as a last name and that is what I removed.

I see that some of the parks and community lots say "Build something here that everyone can enjoy". I'm going to give them a better description.

I also notice that one house is named "Old Hollow Drive", while the rest are "Old Hollow Street". I changed it to match.

I changed the park named "Colonial Crest Drive" to "Colonial Crest Lake". It seems too confusing to have a park with the name of the road.

I'd like to change "40 Clifton Springs Road" to something more obviously commercial, like "Clifton Springs Mall".

Neither of the clothing stores have a change booth, so I'm going to add some.

All sounds great.

Dina Ross has a story - she's the woman Don Baxter cheated on his wife with! Her sister saw them together. If we can get Dina and Sarah's sister (Virginia?) to know each other and Virginia to be furious with her,and with Don, the Thompsons and Dina get hooked right in to the story in a meaningful way. I was very important when I was playtesting the game and Dina showed up in the Thompsons' welcome wagon with no poking or anything.

The only problem with that is the Base Game status of the hood. Furiousness wasn't added until Nightlife. Its been so long since I played a base game version, I don't know how the relationships work anymore. Probably best you can do is have them know each other and make their relationship as low as possible.

I do remember the Pleasant Twins in the base game are cued to start arguing with each other and Lilith P will argue with anyone in the family, almost as soon as you open the lot... maybe you can copy the status they are at for this situation.

I know about Dina's story, but it isn't at all obvious from the neighborhood / Ross family story. Right now, her "story" is that she was lost in the original Riverside remake but marka93 rescued her. To me, that breaks the story and makes me aware that this is fiction. I want to see something that is story-driven, not hood-making driven. I was thinking something along the lines of "Dina finds Riverside a bit dull, but expects things to liven up now that she's moved into town".

Speaking of the neighborhood story, I wonder whether it would be better to have a real story for the neighborhood, rather than having the first page be an explanation of why the neighborhood was remade. That explanation seems to belong in the download thread, not in the neighborhood story. "Nestled near the river between the hills, Riverside looks serene and quiet. But is this just a facade? What secrets can be found inside of the houses?" (OK Peni, I know that it's bad, but I just wanted to give an example... I was hoping that you'd work on it. )

What happens if a sim has a negative relationship with someone in the base game, and then you install Nightlife? Will the negative relationship translate to furiousness? What if Sarah has a memory of Don cheating? Would that spark furiousness once NL was installed? Is there any way that we can ensure that the furious flags will be set once NL is installed? It makes sense to try to mimic the Pleasants.

Most of the negative relationships in the game seem a bit off. -4 or -7 just doesn't seem low enough. And Sarah should probably still have a higher long-term relationship with Don, since they've been married for some time.

The other thing that I find odd is that Virginia has the memory of Don cheating on her: "I found my love in the arms...". I wonder whether there's a better choice of memories for Virginia? Perhaps the best option is gossip about Don cheating on Sarah?

I also notice that some of the problems (that Peni found with the houses) still haven't been addressed. No sink in the kitchen, missing smoke detectors and security alarms, etc. Assuming that this is the most recent version, I should probably go through and make sure that every house has the full complement (unless there's a specific reason to have some of the houses missing some elements?)