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Mad Poster
#26 Old 30th Oct 2017 at 9:02 PM
For my neighbourhoods, I tend to start with finding a terrain I like. It has to be just right or the neighbourhood just doesn't come together for me.

I'm secretly a Bulbasaur. | Formerly known as ihatemandatoryregister

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Lab Assistant
#27 Old 1st Nov 2017 at 10:24 AM
I start with a terrain I like too, and 3 or 4 households. Unless I have a plan I play them and see how they interact. Sometimes one family grabs me and I tend to just play them and bring in the others as and when they get involved. The current 'hood started with a an idea about one sim, created as a toddler, so with his family and a couple of others, plus some more as time went on. As he ended up as one of 8 siblings, 4 full, 4 half, the neighbourhood is full of his close, and not so close, relatives!
Lab Assistant
#28 Old 2nd Nov 2017 at 2:39 PM
Sometimes I start with a single sim and his gas station.
As a home business or an owned business with a trailer home next to it. He sells beverages, sandwiches and newspapers.
Then I make some families and single sims for the sim bin, so they can stop at his gas station (I imagine them living in a nearby city). If he becomes best friend with one of them, or simply likes one very much, he offers them a job in his business and they build a little house near him. Or if he falls in love, he builds one for his future family.
As the neighborhood grows, his little gas station grows also. He may be open a bistro or selling cars.

Or I start with a family of farmers. As a home business with a little market stand next to the street.
When the family grows they buy some land next to their farm and make a farm field or orchard of it. I make everything harvestable, set it no visitors allowed and sell the lot back. So they can harvest every weekend. Depending on their hobbies and how many new settlers have arrived, they open a bakery and selling homemade cakes, or a little soup kitchen with grandma's supersoup, or they convert a barn into a party barn where also wedding parties can be happen, or just a farmers market where they sell all their fresh fruits and vegetables.

Once I started a space colony on a strange planet. With a citizenship department near a starship base.
Every month the starship brought new sims from all over the world. Only couples were allowed to apply for this project (no matter if gay or hetero) and they had to live and learn in the department until every skill was at least up to 6 points. No chess tables there, but a lot of telescopes on the science section...
When they were ready for the new planet, they moved into their starterhome under a glas dome.Depending on their LTW/Job wishes new community lots were build.
Lab Assistant
#29 Old 3rd Nov 2017 at 6:33 PM
I have an idea for a household but they don't suit the theme of the other neighborhoods.
I create a new one that only has a family.
And then, someday, I have a new family and think "hey, they would really fit into this and this". So i put them there.
Also, I get bored by the townies or pre made community lots so I just make many households/lots to fill it
Test Subject
#30 Old 4th Nov 2017 at 11:40 AM
I like building neighborhoods from scratch so I'll usually start with an empty neighborhood. I take one that's not too big, since when I'll eventually start adding on the associated sub-hoods there'll be more than enough space to house the max amount of sims I'll ever want to play. I'll think up the kind of setting I want to be playing: for example, the last few months I've been working on a neighborhood that's a pretty isolated village in a mountain valley, so most of the houses will have a farm or ranch style, and the community lots have a rustic or a bit dilapidated look to them, and I set the seasons to get the climate I want to simulate. At first I won't associate any of the sub-hoods, the first gen of sims just gets to start with 20k and a general store, maybe a restaurant and a small night-club-in-a-former-factory kind of thing for entertainment/meeting people. I'll usually build my first family/house before starting on those community lots, but the first few community lots show up pretty quick.

Anyway, as for sims, I usually start with a Main Family that'll be the main line for the neighborhood. In this case, I started with a brother and sister. They lived together for a while to build some skills and get some job promotions, then I moved the brother out so they could build separate families. I was ready to start a family for the sister so I made her a Russian boyfriend, moved him in, and got them romancing. (Later on, I'll build new sims their own houses even if they'll be moving in with other sims soon, but when I was starting I wanted to save some time so I could start populating the neighborhood.) They were very happy and started having kids pretty fast, the woman had reached the top of the athletics career so I could rebuild their house with the bigger family in mind, etc.) At this point I'll start creating some new families and building them houses so the Main Kids will have friends (I try to have most of the kids be born in-game though) and later, love interests. Then the brother got a husband and a daughter, and I start playing the other families to age everyone along about equally. Usually when the second generation are teens I'll start building some more community lots so they'll have stuff to do and the neighborhood starts to get filled up a little more. I'll associate a University neighborhood so some of the kids can go to college (I don't really like playing the University EP that much tho so I won't build that sub-hood from scratch. I usually pick Fiesta La Tech 'cause it's smaller and looks remote, which fits with the neighborhood theme. For the next generation I'll start building some custom dorms and revamp some of the community lots, add a nice little café etc.) Oh, and I'll make an adult + seven different-looking kids household and kill off the adult to fill the adoption queue.

From that point on the neighborhood will organically start to grow as kids move out, go to uni and come back, get married and have kids etc. I try to keep one kid from every family in the Family Home to keep the advantage of the money, friends, and rewards, so those also start to expand and change to accommodate the different generations' needs and personalities. I don't do that much planning, tbh. If I start up the game and feel like building a skating rink, I build a skating rink, and though I often try to plan out which kids are gonna end up with which kids from the other families, once I'm playing they might meet and hit it off with other sims and I'll roll with it. I'm on the fourth generation now for the main families in my neighborhood and I've finally associated a Downtown hood that I am rebuilding more extensively to create the look and accommodations I want.

My main "rules" are that I try not to use money or relationship cheats (there's an exception for clothes because I don't like how much it costs to give sims a realistically sized wardrobe) and the goal I guess is to organically create a comprehensive, cohesive neighborhood with its own matching sub-hoods and make it as many generations down as I can. I've recently started creating some new singles to populate the Downtown apartments I've built and also because my Main Family Line's first gen had 4 kids + 3 kids, so I'm starting to get to the place where a lot of the original neighborhood sim families are related by marriage or blood so I need to provide some unrelated love interests for their kids. I try to age the neighborhood one generation at a time, so I'm doing a lot of hopping from house to house to get babies->kids, kids ->teens, kill off some grandparents.
Test Subject
#31 Old 4th Nov 2017 at 11:45 AM
Quote: Originally posted by BinahLaGoaty
Once I started a space colony on a strange planet. With a citizenship department near a starship base.
Every month the starship brought new sims from all over the world. Only couples were allowed to apply for this project (no matter if gay or hetero) and they had to live and learn in the department until every skill was at least up to 6 points. No chess tables there, but a lot of telescopes on the science section...
When they were ready for the new planet, they moved into their starterhome under a glas dome.Depending on their LTW/Job wishes new community lots were build.


That neighborhood sounds awesome as hell!
Mad Poster
#32 Old 4th Nov 2017 at 4:19 PM Last edited by gazania : 4th Nov 2017 at 4:32 PM.
I don't play themes or anything like that ... for the most part. Sometimes, I'll have an idea in place, such as the historic attraction vacation hood, and build something around that, but I don't make a medieval hood per se, for instance. I just may incorporate elements in certain areas.

Suburban stuff is my thing. I grew up in the suburbs. I've spent lots of time in urban areas. Our family sometimes vacations in urban areas, and for a long while, my husband's job was in a large city, and I'd spend some time with him when I could. There are many advantages to living in urban areas, and I enjoy visiting them, but they don't interest me in the game. I like rural areas as well, and occasionally make those. I still lean toward the suburbs.

The first thing is terrain. I like terrains with beaches, but after having enough experiences with flooded basement lots, I think the next hood I start (which would, I hope, not be for a long while), will have plenty of elevated areas to play with as well. Bluesoup's terrain here might very well be next for my next suburb. http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=325601 . I grew up in an area with lots of beaches and harbors. Gee ... can you tell?

Speaking of terrains, I don't like really large or really small ones. I might make an exception in the latter size because one day, I might do a small fishing town vacation area, but am not chomping at the bit to try that ... yet.

Anyway, once I find the terrain that I like for that particular hood, I make a town center, thinking of just what I want to be there. You'd need municipal services, no matter where you are. Police and fire stations, etc. Also, stores would be a must. Even if it's a rural area, Sims still need groceries! I use some hood deco buildings and lots I've either made or downloaded. I love making community lots, so most of the ones in the town center are mine. I use one or two Maxis lots. Oh, and don't forget the Zarathustra parking lots! Where are your Sims or those zipping Maxis cars parking? Even if we're talking about Middle of Nowhere Town, you need to find a place to park! http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=558543 . I try to fit those lots as closely-together as possible, but don't get particularly perturbed if there is a small gap. Just stick trees in there or something! (Oh, THAT sounds so planned ...)

I know I might want to try the Mog Hudson car park one day, and I know people really like them, but I admit to preferring deco cars when I make a parking lot on a community lot. That's just me.

Terrain picked, town center made, some scattered community lots here and there, such as a town beach ... time for the houses! I try to make some houses and apartments close to the town center, slowly spreading them out as I move farther away from it.

Then I figure out what kind of Sims I want there. Nothing particularly special in that regard. You'd want at least a teacher or two, since even a tiny schoolhouse has a teacher. I enjoy having a celeb or two live there. They start small, often in an apartment, and as they get more money and fame, they move up. Artists, farmers in the outlying areas (I have the agricultural career mod, which is one of the few career mods I have, and really like it ... http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=266267) . That sort of thing. When I make a Sim, I'll sometimes keep those occupations in mind. Other times, I just make them and see where their life paths take them.

This is kind of boring, but it works for me.

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RIP Sunni ... truly a ray of light.
Scholar
#33 Old 5th Nov 2017 at 8:45 PM
i have a neighborhood on my old computer which was a test hood to test a downloaded sim called gretchen then i created the hart family who all died apart from the daughter natasha who was the foster child of the next family called the toths henry (heir to the toths)and natasha had 3 children and henry had 2 alien kids i deleted gretchen (didn't havea clue about corruption) added a few families and now i feel like the toths are a mix between the goths roths aspirs capps etc nowadays they are almost gen 5 and the town consists of them and other minor families so yeah the longest hood i had started as a test hood...which is severely corrupted now i think...

I May Be Life Dumb But I'm Sim Smart(mostly).
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Forum Resident
#34 Old 6th Nov 2017 at 4:27 PM
I usually start with a downloaded neighborhood that just has houses and community lots. Then I make about 4-6 families with different, interesting stories. For example, I just had to restart ((yet AGAIN) because I needed to wipe the PC half of my computer and buy sims for mac... goodbye EP's) and I'm playing with a neighborhood called Baskerville, which I think is available on this site. I have an alien family, who I've recreated from a past neighborhood, that has a lot of kids and the excitement that comes with that. I was inspired by one of the lots in Baskerville to create a female sim and her son who live in the "yard sale" property and only make money by selling the junk out of the yard and digging up treasure. I have an adult sim, Tia, who adopted three kids and is making money by writing books. I recreated another sim I loved dearly, a plantsim, and had her have a plant-baby. Finally, I have a slightly more "cookie-cutter" family that is just a young married couple; but I got bored and the girl rolled the want to ask people out on dates so... here we are now.

I usually try for a variety of lifestyles and lots of drama, offset by a few more "average" families. Personally I get a little bored playing small or non-dramatic households (especially now that i don't have Free Time), but that's just me. I also try to balance the aspirations of the sims every generation, so that not all the households end up with large families/family sims.

As for the sub-hoods, I usually wait a while to add them but I just added Bluewater Village and Downtown yesterday. I'm not sure I'll play with the Bluewater sims, but I like those community lots and having the extra sims around gives more opportunity for my sims to meet new people. If I don't play with my own neighborhood, I usually play Pleasantview and mess up the story lines.
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