Hello Sims 2 community!

I haven't seen a thread relating to this topic before, so do excuse me if I'm repeating it. Recently I've been thinking about starting my own custom neighborhood. I know there's a lot of users here who've created their own neighborhoods. So, how do you plan out your neighborhoods? Do you start with a general idea and just wing it? Maybe you meticulously plan everything and put it all on paper before even touching the game. Hey, maybe you don't even plan anything! I'm curious!

Also, are there any necessities when creating your own custom neighborhood? For example, I recall some people would put in some mods that prevented townies from spawning. Not sure if that's a necessity in terms of how long your neighborhood will last, but oh well. I might as well include that.

I just "wing" it. I usually try building a pretty neighborhood, plop down some sims ready for a challenge...
...then decide that I do not like how I set it up for one reason or another and delete the whole hood. Start from scratch before I get invested in a mess!

If a hood lasts long enough for me to play the households several times in a row, the hood probably is then safe from my fingers quick to press Delete, F5. At least my Test of Time hood is; even though I kind of want to reset the whole thing, I think twice and am actually trying to resolve the issues I have with it! Go figure.

I am more of a vision and then 'play with the pieces' type of person. I'm the one grabbing pieces of the kids new toy and trying to figure how it goes together by putting it together, while my husband sits there reading the instructions then goes to find piece 1A and 1B. So same for a neigbhourhood, I have a hazy vision and I will grab and plonk houses and community lots and hood deco, then grab and move them around some more. Plans on paper would be for people like my hubby.

I would suggest you have a vision first. Are you after an urban landscape, a country town, a sea side village, a 1950's rocker feel. Having houses and community lots and deco that fit in with your vision will give you a much more cohesive neighbourhood.

My second suggestion is go with much smaller denser packed lots then perhaps you have before. It makes a neighbourhood look far more real and vibrant then when houses are far apart and lots are large.

As to townies, that depends on what you want. My seaside town is free of townies except the ones I make. It's a close knit community where everybody knows everybody else. of course that also means it's hard to keep secrets or to get away from people you dislike. It can make for very clsoe friendships but worse enemies.

I don't think preventing townies from spawning is a necessity, I think it's just a preference. I let the townies spawn, I have nothing to stop them.

I'm setting up a custom neighborhood right now. I do plan it out to some degree. I'm setting it up for a Royal Kingdom Challenge (with my own twists a bit). I have a University where I have some dorms and some community lots. I made 1 dorm but plopped the rest down, I made the community lots and I knew what I needed (Ok I need an all-purpose store...a gym....a club....etc) but I didn't plan them out before I made them, i'm not a great builder...but it works. I have a shopping district and downtown with a few community lots, again I knew what I needed in the sense of "ok i'm gonna have a shopping mall.." but didn't plan them out before making them. I know i'm going to make more community lots over time, like as Sims decide to have their own businesses or I decide I want to have a certain kind of lot I haven't made yet.

I still have to make all the families and their houses, that's all I have left before I can start. I do have them planned out, names, personalities, aspirations (but helped a lot with dice from random.org!), I don't have everything planned out about them...looks (though I do to a degree to insure diversity and stuff), clothes, one true hobbies, past times, in depth personalities, I don't have all planned out. I'm going to wait until I make them and see what happens.

It all depends on what you wanna do

I'd ask yourself some questions that will help you narrow down what kind of hood you want to play, and what mods/CC will help you achieve it. Such as:

Do I want to play lots of families, a few, or just 1?
Do I want to follow strict rules for how I play, or do I want to just do what I like?
Do I want to have lots of NPCs/townies, or as few as possible?
Do I want a hood filled with drama, or one that's more stable?
Do I want to play with supernatural sims? If so, do I want rules about how sims become supernatural, or does anything go?
Do I want to play a period/themed hood?
Is there a specific EP, like OFB or AL, that I haven't really explored yet that I want to dig into?

There may be a challenge that would help you get started. From what I can tell, build-a-city is presently the most popular of the challenges that lend themselves well to a custom hood build, but there are many out there, like apocalypse, prosperity, royal kingdom, or even the old standby legacy.

Build-a-City and Apocalypse - best for simmers who prefer to start small, and enjoy playing with strict rules
Legacy - best for simmers who prefer to only play 1 family, and want to achieve *everything* with that 1 family
Prosperity - good if you don't have much of a vision to start with, because you'll randomize your families, and the makeup of each family might help ignite your imagination.
Royal Kingdom - good if you want to go crazy with period-specific CC, you like some rules, but you don't want to go rule-crazy (if you want medieval/renaissance and LOTS of rules, check out Warwickshire)

I did some planning when I made my royal kindgom hood. I pulled the family names from a book I love. I downloaded a bunch of lots, because at the time I was a woefully inept builder (I am now only somewhat ept). I have terrain replaced that hood probably 5 times, always looking for the perfect one, and I invariably end up spending too much time arranging and rearranging lots & deco. I'm on hiatus with it, but I still play that hood. I tried prosperity once with Plasticbox's Winter Harbour hood. I played it a bit, but didn't quite connect with my sims. I tried BACC a couple times, but could never quite get past the playing-the-same-sim-for-days-and-days-and-never-making-any-progress-towards-building-my-city step. Too many rules for me, but to each her own.

You can always do what I do with challenge rules - treat them as guidelines and modify/ditch them as you see fit, and maybe make up some different ones along the way.

Wow, these are all really helpful!

Oh, here's another question that just came to me. What's the general number of lots and/or families in your neighborhoods? Obviously it'd depend on what type of neighborhood you're going for; an urban metropolis probably would not have the same population as a rural farming community. But, what is a good number for you? I don't really know that for myself... but maybe I can get an idea off of your numbers.

As you mentioned, that comes down to how you're playing the hood, specifically your townie population in the early stages. If you are planning on having a decent number of townies and plan to use them for breeding, you can start off pretty small, like 1-4 families. If no townies are available or suitable for breeding, there's a minimum number of families to start off with that someone documented... somewhere. Hopefully someone will chime in, because I can't remember exactly - perhaps 6? or maybe 8?

I started with 10, then later added in an 11th. In hindsight, I think it was too many. I'm trying to reduce the population over the next couple generations, because I can't stand the idea of deleting them or killing them off. If you're unsure, I'd say it's probably wiser to start out small and add in a family here and there, than to start big and realize you have more sims than you can handle.

I started my seaside town with 11 couples, then went to 13. I don't find that too many at all. I feel this is the best amount I have done. Other towns have had far too many and one island had too few. I also just added a single sim as the house parent to the new teenage boarding school. There is only room for 6 teens so it isn't really a school as such. Hopefully there should be no more in the founding generation. These sims are enough to run the basic services. I play an integrated hood. That means if you need groceries you go to the grocery store owned by a playable sim. If you need your TV fixed, call up the playable repairman. If you need child care you need to be friends with the playable who does baby sitting. NPC's are kept to a minimum. No ringing up and getting in an NPC gardener or maid. The second gen are now turning teen so they will be deciding on their future soon and the towns services will grow.

As you mentioned it comes down to how you're playing the hood. I plan on starting with 13 households but over time not everyone will need kids, or many kids, the occasional random death may happen (though I doubt that I don't like killing my Sims before it's their time to go by old age). By controlling how many kids happen in the households I can keep the population from getting too crazy but I love playing many Sims. Depends on preference and how you want to play the hood. Also as already said you can start out small and if you decide you need more families you can add them as you go along.

Alrightie - I got really inspired after reading all of your replies. I started a new neighborhood, and it's probably venturing towards a California, beach-y vibe, while still classy. I began building some community lots, and the first one up is a small cafe and clothing store on the same lot.



I think it's promising. I can't wait to start playing, though!

Also, to actually add on to what you were saying earlier; I agree with the "start small" idea on families. I'll start off with a few and gradually add more.

Those pictures are coming up HUGE.

You don't need everything in place before you play either, you can start small and grow.

I generally have a basic starting idea.
6-9 households forming a decent range of Sims. 3 or so shops
After that the carefully idealistic plan falls out the window.
Plans go well yet stick like sand

Build a house, a community lot or 2, move in your first family and go from there. Five households, I find, are good to start with although I normally start with the bin Sims. Hoods tend to keep growing from there.

I have changed and honed my process over the years!

In the past I always started from the position of working out the sims, but I find that leads to quite a boring looking neighbourhood, so now I tend to try and figure out the environment first. Taking the idea from minecraft biomes, I actually went and looked up different climate zones over the world so that I could match seasons, terrain, and native vegetation. This helps my hoods look different from each other and have a different kind of feel. I place natural neighbourhood deco at this point - trees, rocks, ground cover and flowers and sometimes animals (birds).

Then I think about the sims second. I love creating sims, so I often go a bit overboard at this point, my favourite hood I started with 100 sims of all ages and my most recent one, I started with 33 adults, but you could start with a small number if you prefer. Anyway, at this point I think about what kind of neighbourhood I want to create, what sort of size settlement exists in this space, village, town, city, suburb? Are they all united in some kind of purpose - is it a science hub or an artsy place or a spiritual kind of town? I try to set out rough ideas of zones - residential, community, business. Sometimes separate, sometimes mixed. Hood deco items help create a built up or busy feel, without building a lot of lots. If I'm in a hurry to get playing, then I just place enough homes for my starter sims and add community lots as and when I feel the need for them. (It's useful to begin with a place you can imagine new sims meeting, like a park or grocery store, and somewhere which is suitable for dates, even if it's very basic.) If I'm in more of a building kind of mood then I'll set out some basic structure to the town. I really liked what heimlichbourger on tumblr did (I'm sure they are on here, but I can't remember usernames, sorry!) with the undeveloped lots having vegetation and natural structures on them, so I've started doing that for some of my unbuilt lots, so that the neighbourhood can develop later, and so that my exteriors aren't so boring, as I hardly ever know how to decorate them and make them look natural.

I always start with empty templates now, and either create my own townies or temporarily take out notownieregen and let them generate.

Wow people! Clearly the planning has lead to some really cool hoods and story lines! That would be really hard for me to even try? I'm usually a little indecisive when playing, so if I decide to make my own neighbourhood, I generally just hope for the best and wing it. Reading that just makes me want to play your games :D

I have a dream, that one day, I will be able to build a great neighbourhood with a nice story line

It is important to have a clear vision first, as how you proceed will differ depending on what you're doing. If making one to share, or to meet certain criteria - for a BACC or Test of Time challenge, for example - it may be vital to start with an empty environment; while many concepts for hoods for personal use require townies. But that clear vision is a guideline, not a straitjacket. It's a tool you use, not an ideal you must conform to.

When I built Drama Acres, my first custom hood, I'd had plenty of time to think while I was playing my experimental games and waiting for my desktop to be fixed. I knew exactly what I wanted, but not exactly how to get it. If I were doing the same concept today I'd know how to make the families all related to each other to start - but I like how the blood relationships worked out when I made them ad hoc, following the lines of which sims became close friends fastest. I built in a very slapdash fashion, throwing down a lot of lot bin houses, because I just wanted to get on with playing. I had rough geographical concepts, putting all my core families in the high part of the Crystal Hills map, bin families in the low part, and all the commercial development on the street leading into the map. That street theoretically connected to the highways leading to the attached Downtown and SSU, and that was enough to start with. Since then distinct subcultures have grown up organically, I've learned to build better, and I've learned how to use tools to make theoretical relationships real. If I made Drama Acres today I'd go about it differently - but I am well-satisfied with how it's developed.

When I undertook to build Widespot, I was much more meticulous because it was a shared neighborhood and I had to be. Never having done it before, I went for simplicity. The simpler you keep the concept, the fewer mistakes you will make. That's basic. And it would be hard to overstate the pleasure of creating the maximum drama with a minimum of complexity. I gave the players a couple of knotty problems to work on, and lots of room to do their own thing in. Now I'm making an urban neighborhood which I hope will be suitable for a downtown, and it's a kind of anti-Widespot in that it has to feel big, with redundant community lots (Widespot has one store at which to buy both clothes and food; Bigg City has six, some of them specialized, which gives you a sense of the change in scale) and more characters, who will have to be created with great care in order to have a diverse and complex net of story without overwhelming the player or boxing her in. So that takes a lot of planning ahead - but the planning can only take me so far. During development, I'm going to have better ideas and the sims are going to surprise me and throw in elements that I couldn't have planned for, just as they did in Widespot, and I have to be ready to roll with them.

You must always leave room for the Better Idea that will come along, and for the curve balls your sims will throw at you.

With me I knew what I wanted right away, a neighborhood with a different ethnic and culture ( Asian ) with the idea or concept in my mind I pretty much had a plan, just how I wanted it to be.
To take steps to bring the idea into reality I did step by step of searching and planning, searching to find out will it be easy or hard for me to find the items objects lots, clothes, food, furniture and Sims for my Custom neighborhood.
Also if you want a clean template or empty template, ( there a different between the two template ) then there is Maxis that is already in the game.

I was not please with some of the lots I found or Sims, so here is where my planning began, To build my "own" lots ( neighborhood and Community lots ) To create some of my own Sims and add to those that I found from other creators.
Some other things I did and plan as follow:

1. What kind of landscapes I wanted and the size of it - that I think is important the "size" because of the amount of lots you may want to build or download, you need a good size landscape.
A. Plan how many lots ( Home and community )
B. How many Sims ( to start off with ) or add later, depend on how big or small will your neighborhood Sims citizen will be.
2. Names for - Neighborhood Streets, addresses of lot, Community lots and name of the kind of places like ( club, coffee shop, shopping etc. )
C. Also when it's come to building lots I always like to have a few extra lots that are empty in the neighborhood like you find in Maxis premade. ( that's just me, don't mean you have to. )

Sims can be added "last" to the neighborhood after you have finish building everything in it, name your Sims what you want, given then a career to work in it's no big thing ( just check out there personality )
One thing I am sure other members will agree with me on is the word "Patience" this is a must have when creating and building a custom neighborhood it will not happen over night.
But one thing for sure if you plan everything a step at a time no matter how long it will take, your custom neighborhood will become a reality you will "love" it. My hood took months but worth it, I really enjoy playing it with all the drama therein.

I decided to do a complete reinstall, and I'm currently only running Double Deluxe, Uni, and the Holiday pack in my game right now (I'll probably add in Seasons after I make the families).

Crystal Meadows, my custom hood, is in the process of being built right now. I have 3 downloaded community lots, 2 other community lots that I built (with another 2 or 3 to go) and only one house built as of right now. It's time consuming, and it really tests my creative and inspiration since I think I'm a middle-f-the-road builder.

I was thinking of getting all of the buildings placed and settled before making families. For the families, I was thinking of having the entire neighborhood's story sort of Riverblossom meets Strangetown. I was going to have it be a smaller, somewhat stable neighborhood with some "drama" in it. Also, I was gonig to get Seasons installed so I can use the SimBlender. I was thinking of making a playable Pollination Tech in game and use him as the father for the abductees (I did it it before, and it's just a pain in the butt to terminate the adbuctees pregnancy and then make him pregnant with my playable alien with the Blender).