Hi! This is my very first "tutorial" if you will, so please be gentle!

After days and days of inquiries to Numenor and CardiganAnjel, trial and error, and simply accidental findings, I have found the solution to making those infamous beach lots...THAT ACTUALLY WORK!

In the past few days, I made several terrains in SC4 that I wanted to import into my game for more choices for vacation destinations or a more ocean-side neighborhood with PLENTY of streets to do everything I want to do. (I am mainly a builder and storyteller...don't know how to mesh and object, clothes, hair, etc. make, but can make a darn good looking sim with others creations! ) I found that as I imported each SC4 file to my SC$ terrains folder and loaded the game, lots would place just fine...EXCEPT for my beach lots! I was so frustrated and about ready to just uninstall the darn game and use what Maxis gave me, begrudgingly. But alas, I had an idea. Now, as I said, I am not up to par with most tutorialists on here, or anywhere, for that matter, but I will give you a step by step on what I did so that you may have my success!

Once you load SC4, go ahead and pick a random patch of land. Keep in mind it has to be small, as the medium and large ones will not import. Also, quick reminder that has been mentioned in other tutorials, only the original road bridge or small steel bridge will import. No buildings or fancy bridges, or anything that is not usable in TS2

Now place your water where desired, but be sure to leave some extra land at the waters edge, as this land will be used and unless you want your actual workable neighborhood small, (which is fine, too, I suppose) then this is important.

Now, you have your nice chunk of land. Go ahead and throw some trees on it if desired. DO NOT GO INTO MAYOR MODE YET AND PLACE ROADS, OR ELSE THE NEXT STEP WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE UNLESS YOU EXIT WITHOUT SAVE AND START FRESH

Alright, so trees, land, and water. Looking good! Now, go ahead and select the "level" button, which looks flat with two small triangles, or peices at the end. Should be the third down, right underneath the down terrain button.

In those options, select "soften, for beaches and coastlines"

Great, you are doing good! Now, the hardest part...well, not really Using your mouse, of course, use this tool on the waters edge until it is nice and low. You will notice the water rising more into the land. That is okay. This is why I recommended that you have extra "scrap" land, as it were. That way, once the beach is realatively, almost to where it is not moving anymore, you still have lots of space to place roads. Unless, of course, you prefer a small deserted island for that castaway sim who prefers to live in complete solitude

Now, go ahead and make sure everything you want to do is done before going into Mayor mode, as this is what I will have you clikc on next

Great! Now click on mayor mode. Name your city something you can remember or even the name you intend for TS2. You do not have to change the Mayor name, but you can if you would like. It will have nothing to do with the neighborhood. I promise!

Go ahead and place all your roads, BUT note that the ones where you intend to have beach lots, must be 4 or less squares from the water's edge! Any higher up inland, and they may not place. Man was I mad to find this out!

Once you have place all desired roads at desired intervals and designs, go ahead and save your creation. Then, quit the game.

Open your My Documents/SC4/Regions/(your region name, i.e Berlin, London, New York)/then carefully look for a document titled City. (your city name) . That will be the one you want.

Right click on the file and copy. Just copy right now, don't paste it to the desktop or anything. Just click on copy.

Now open your My Documents/EA/The Sims 2/SC4 Terrain . Paste this into this folder, which may be empty if this is the first custom neighborhood you are using.

Once this is pasted, go ahead and exit back to desktop. Make sure everything you have been in is closed and nothing is running but what should be. Start up the Sims 2!

Once loaded, select to create a neighborhood from the menu. You should now see the neighborhood City. (name) SC4 there. DO NOT GO BACK INTO THE SC4 Terrain FILE AND CHANGE THE NAME, AS THIS WILL CAUSE THE NEIGHBORHOOD TO NO LONGER APPEAR IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD CHOICES! TRUST ME! I learned this the hard way, trying to be all technical.

Let the chosen created neighborhood load up. Once it does, go ahead and (if you have Bon Voyage, of course, as this is the main game needed for real beach lots), select a beach lot and place it on the edge of the water. It should place if the beach was lowered enough and/or the roads close enough. I usually put the road as close to the waters edge as it will let me, just for safety. On the other hand, if this does not place, don't worry! Just go back into SC4, bach to that land, and before entering it, select the option in the land info window to delete and use it again to try again. Yes, I know that redoing it is very time consuming and irritating, especially after the third or fourth try. Been there, done that!

There, now you have the "secret" to creating custom vacation beach neighborhoods with ease! It really is not that bad, guys. The more you try it and succeed, the better you get at it and the faster your 'hoods are created and you will also have your eyes trained on what to look for when placing roads and lowering the coasts!

For those who may not want to attempt this, but find it quite a novel idea, there are many beach 'hoods available for DL in the DL section of this page.

As for the distance... it is hard to explain, so I will try my best here. The very beginning of the showeline should be nearly flat, and ever so slightly slant upwards for what looks like (if it were a real map) about 150 feet or less. There, at that mark, you will place the roads. Pretty much, what I do, in SC4, of course, is place the roads as close to the shore as it will allow me to. When I have hit the closest range, I place them and continue that for all of the shoreline. I hope you know what I mean...LOL If you have more trouble, let me know. Thanks to Numenor for this great question! PM me if anything else seems to not be so clear! Sorry about that, guys!

FROM CardiganAnjel

Using the "Obliterate City" TNT icon in the Mayor god mode panel. This works well to switch from the big area god tools to the more pin point mayor terrain (raise/lower/level) tools. The only draw back is that it will destroy your roads, but if you want to work on one section of your map to do a little detail work then go back to the God tools to do a revision elsewhere you won't have to start from scratch.

For distances, especially for beach lots, use a fair zoom in on your coast line in SC4 and go by the grid, I usually count in 2-4 "hexes" from the water to place my road like W[.][.][.]R . W being water, R being road. More then 4 hexes in and you're just going to have a water front view generally but no beach turf. A solid 3 hexes is preferable for best results.





If your water drops off too sharply from your land you cannot place beach lots.

And water that just meets the max height limit for beach lots it will really give your lot a headache when you go to build from beach line to sidewalk in Sims2.

For the best results try to have your water front 2-4 squares out from your shoreline to be at a height that's "just below sea level if possible or a shade below that (light blue or semi sandy looking water).


Thanks CardiganAnjel


Hope you enjoyed this and hope it made sense! It should have, anyway!

Feedback welcome! Enjoy and happy simming!!

Reissa (Tinkerbell1124) & CardiganAnjel

Please do not repost this tutorial on any other sites or take credit as your own! Thanks!

Looks good, and glad I could help

I haven't tried this yet, as I don't actually own SC4. My daughter does though, and she said I could borrow her 'puter to try making a few custom SC4 terrains, so I'm going to. So, thanks in advance. This looks fairly easy to follow.

" Now, you have your nice chunk of land. Go ahead and throw some trees on it if desired. DO NOT GO INTO MAYOR MODE YET AND PLACE ROADS, OR ELSE THE NEXT STEP WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE UNLESS YOU EXIT WITHOUT SAVE AND START FRESH "

You can however return to God Mode using a cheat : Control-Alt-Shift + click the God icon then you can build/buldoze roads in god mode using 'r'/'b' keys