After playing the original Maxis downtown subhood, I'm so bored of it. Has anyone ever made or hear of any alternative downtown subhoods. I'd prefer for full subhoods with new lots, not just terrain maps.

try this: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...d_Neighborhoods

Actually, I think that you mean this:
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...life_-_Downtown

That link only offers Belladonna Cove as a downtown. I wouldn't mind seeing some other downloadable downtowns.

well, i just pointed out to the whole thing :D

That sounds like an awfully tall order. I don't think you're going to find a ready made downtown. However, if you are so inclined, perhaps peruse the downloadable lots on here and build your own. Or maybe even try making entirely custom lots yourself. Personally I had tried doing the same thing for a University subhood. It was very slow going though and while I had made quite a bit of progress. I kept getting burnt out on building and then lost a lot of that progress due to hardware failure and my own stupidity. I have tried the same with newer hoods, but as I said, building the type of lots needed has been tedious work. I tend to get sleepy from building big lots and thus take a lot of breaks.

That's correct.

As far as I know, Belladonna Cove is the only downloadable downtown which is available.

Believe me, we would ALL love to see more neighborhoods and subhoods available for download.
That's right. It's a lot of work to create a shareable subhood, and even more work to create an occupied shareable subhood. Various people have created the other types of subhoods from scratch, but I don't know of anyone who has created a Downtown from scratch.

Downtowns have some restrictions which make them less interesting than suburbs (Business Districts from Open for Business). The main one is that you can only attach one occupied Downtown to a neighborhood. If you attach a second occupied Downtown, all of the sims will be removed from it before it is attached to your neighborhood.

If you are interested, I can point you at tutorials for creating a subhood template, and some additional pointers for creating shareable neighborhoods.

Last edited by Mootilda : 18th Feb 2012 at 6:55 PM.

Probably the easiest thing to do would be to download a bunch of community, apartment, and citified residences from places you trust, place them on a subhood terrain map, and then see what's missing, so that you only (for example) have to make a park, a graveyard, and one or two nightclubs, instead of all the restaurants, clubs, parks, and department stores you want to have.

Don't forget that there are existing lots in the lot bin that make perfectly good downtown destinations with a little tweaking - Doc Alan's, either of the pet stores or bark parks, the FreeTime Recreation Center, Rapid Racers Roller Rink, etc. And although the apartments that come loaded with the game all (IMHO) leave something to be desired and are hard to tweak, some of the houses in the lot bin are big enough to cut up into duplexes, so you can have one of those downtown areas that's spread out to take over former residential neighborhoods. Some of them could be remade into businesses, too. You don't have to do it all from scratch, is the point.

Come to that, you can take the existing Downtown and rearrange it. There's no problem with bulldozing lots, moving them, radically redesigning, or repurposing them, is there? This kind of thing happens in real downtowns all the time - yes, even moving entire buildings.

Personally I find that the venues I build myself work so well, most of the time, that I have to ration myself not to overuse them. I couldn't swear to you that Drama Acres Park is objectively a better park than Sim Centers North and South, and in fact it has a couple of major flaws (oh, that hillside!). But I love going there and so do my sims; ditto the Campus Swim Center at Sim State and St. Elvis's Wedding Chapel downtown. They weren't hard or time-consuming to build, but because I was building them with a purpose in mind and placed a lot of highly-attractive things on the lots they are always rewarding to play. Lots of sims show up to use them in addition to my playables and there's always something for the whole household to do. Scattering a few odd lots that are designed around your playstyle, and tweaking others to suit it better, may make your downtown a lot more tolerable.

Actually I would be interested in that information. Once my computer is back up, I was planning on building an entirely custom neighborhood including custom terrains since I do have SC4. However I was also considering heavy use of creator content such as custom lots found here.

This is the subhood-specific information:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=420196

These are tips for making a safe clean neighborhood (or subhood) to share with other people:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=455403

I would also recommend the following Wiki article:
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...Hood_Corruption

This is exactly what I do with my main and all subhoods in my game. I start out using what's there and adapt it as I need to. In my downtown some spots have received minimal makeovers and others have been bulldozed down and rebuilt.

I like some of the original nightspots, the Crypt is one that in my game stays pretty close to it's original style. However it makes no sense to have a bar all the way across the club from the dining area. Would be great if it was bar service only but making one poor server hike back and forth across the dance floor is not a good set up.

I simply altered the interior of the club so that it functioned better overall and wouldn't take hours to have dinner.

Although the suggestions for looking at some of the lots that are available here is also a very good one. There are some amazingly talented builders that offer their lots at on this site.

Just a note: I create a bar in a new cafe, but the problem was that the bar was [i/]too close[i] to the dining area so the Sims never used it. I think it makes more playable sense in a large club if the two areas are separated.

Of course, that means eating at the bar means poorer service. Unless the kitchen is moved to a more central area.

Thanks everyone for your help.

Mootilda, thanks for providing links to those great tutorials you made. I'll try making my own downtown when I have time. I knew it would be quite an undertaking, but I just thought I'd ask before going through all the trouble of making my own.

Seems to me the only advantage to having the official Downtown is the presence of vampires. Otherwise you could just build community lots in your main neighborhood.

I converted the second floor of Hans' Trap Door Corp into a nightclub to which most of my sims take their dates and outing parties. It has a music system which my sim must turn on, poker table, mah jong table, bubble blower, beer keg, coffee counter and bar. Downstairs I have loos, showers, grill and big table. (Actually, the showers are naughty ones, because sweaty dancers will opt for them rather than going home.) Anyway, the place is always jumping with life.

Yeah, Hans' Trap Door just screams for us to fill that empty space, doesn't it? I left the retail outlet on the first floor, put a restaurant on the second (with an eight-person table overlooking the atrium window), a nightclub with restroom, coffee and drinks bars, pool table, karaoke, dance sphere, and DJ booth, on the third, and on the fourth there's two hot tubs and a restroom. The only problem with it as a venue is that the elevators I installed tend to throw dates out of synch; but it's The Place to Go to meet people - night or day, always something going on and people you haven't seen in ages turning up.

I wish you guys uploaded that updated lot somewhere, I'm feeling envious just by reading your descriptions. That place must be fun now.

It is, but you'll find it's hardly any trouble to do something similar, tailored to your outing/dating tastes, without our packaging the lot. Now I think I should put some strut-your-stuff showers onto that top, "plumbing" floor. It's a good idea.