*EDIT: Adms, feel free to change the thread for the correct topic in case I posted it in the wrong one. I am all for correct actions.

Good night simmers (22:43pm here!), you guys safe and quarantined? I hope you all well.

So, since my city is in a lockdown, I am having more time to play Sims 2, I've created other things before, such as houses and residential buildings, but now I got an idea for a bigger project. I had a neighbourhood I've stopped developing in 2017 and it is still empty. So, as I am going to focus first on the buildings, parks, community stuff, I wonder...

Would anyone here like to help me populate the neighbourhood? The concept of this city comes from the same standard idea the original ones from the game have, I'd like all the families to have a backstory and some drama to spice it up , currently, the city only has one lot, the Feuiellites, a traditional family of 4 which I represent as the ''descendants'' of the ''founder'' of the city.
The only things you'll need are creativity and a good story.
If you're interested, feel free on this post to advise me of your contribution, I am also gonna talk to you so we can share ideas for the final concept. You'll OBVIOUSLY BE CREDITED BY YOUR AMAZING CONTRIBUTION. As I create more Sims too, I'll be updating here, I am also gonna post the Feuiellites description to detail how we can connect the other sims.

***SECOND EDIT, please read: I first asked if you guys could be making it with UC, and without CC, but at the end of the day, if we want to be creative, we will end up with CC at some point since the game is limited. Just a disclaimer: I required UC so that people could use stuff from the expansions, cause some people don't have all of them and this can interrupt the fun, but from now, it's up to people to choose downloading or not, so does it about the CC, I feel like if we use CC, some creator may be upset of the usage for a neighbourhood he probably didn't heard about, so in any case, if you have your own CC is better.
Let's keep crediting people, if you use CC from others, ask them about the usage, or just name the links so I can credit them and you. And let's create! <3

Love you all, xoxo.

Great idea. Unfortunately I don't have UC and am working from home so don't actually get any more time to play the sims (or build) than I otherwise would (unless you count the extra couple of hours not commuting!)
However, good luck!

Any style considerations, suburban, rural or urban etc.

I use a lot of CC though I can just not apply it to sims though building homes and apartments would be so easy for me since I've done my own apartment builds and might even have some older ones from before I started using hacks and CC.I also build community lots and can use career rewards though not actual CC if I'm sharing lots.

I think you will be able to contribute without having the UC if you have all the EP's and SP's - perhaps somebody can confirm about that.

I do have the UC - I can build a lot or 2 if you want me to Just keep us up to date!

I'd also be interested in contributing, though I can't promise too much unfortunately since I'm not all that good at building, but I'd still love to help

Whatever comes to your imagination is accepted, stories are something we all never know what will happen next. The city has all three parts you asked, so feel free to make a urban, rural or suburban family. Even futuristic ones, it's great!

That's wonderful, hit me up, I would love it and will be a pleasure to include credits to you in the final project.

No building required, you can help me by creating a family or sim to be part of the city, I want the city to have many dramas and gossips haha, as I said before, there is currently only one, and any contribution with new families and stories or ideas are welcomed! Thank you for commenting! <3

It'll be helpful, hit me up in case you want to contribute with lots, anything will be credited at the final project. Lots of love.

I are good at writing. Seriously, I love custom hoods, but am irritated when the various bios (for the hood, households, and individual Sims) are badly written, or conflict with each other. And the TONE, or word usage, should follow whatever the HOOD is supposed to be about. I also like to create sims (inspired by Wide Spot), although my technical knowledge leaves something to be desired (like how to get them to you).

I can build community and residential lots - let me know what you need and if you want any specific style - and I start building

If you want people to make lots and sims, having the UC isn't absolutely essential.



I think the UC and having all EPs/SPs is essentially the same thing, or at least in such a project it wouldn't be wrong to consider it as such*

* There's a small caveat on a possible problem with the Store edition on either the UC or with some of the collection packs (University Life, Fun With Pets, Best of Business, possibly Double Deluxe - I don't know which of these are the ones with the Store edition, but I'd guess the three first ones, and BoB does have a VP6 folder, whatever that is), but I'm not entirely sure if it affects lots in any way, but I wouldn't think so. Most likely not. Using the Clean Installer to install the lots is recommended either way. In theory you should be able to use your game files in the Document location between the UC and a CD game (I've had some issues, but I think that's more a general UC problem).

You can safely make lots in any combination of the game and install them in a game that has all EPs/SPs. Perfectly safe, perfectly fine, shouldn't be any problems except for any CC-related issues (make sure all the CC items are up to date if you experience any crashes or bugs, because that's the most likely problem).

The other way around, making lots in an all EPs/SPs game and installing them in a game that lacks certain EPs/SPs, ESPECIALLY AL and/or M&G, is probably not something you want to try even when installing with the Clean Installer. Sometimes it works, but in a lot of cases you can end up with problems. AL/M&G runs on a different game engine, and lots made with these installed are known to cause crashes in games without them. It's safest to assume you need the same EPs as the lot creator, and at least the *latest* SP they have if it's on a higher game engine than your highest EP (but preferably all the same SPs) so the game runs with the same game engine. And of course installed with the Clean Installer, because the default one will throw a hissy fit if you even try.

As I previously said, it's up to your creativity, okay?
Community lots such as stores, clubs or restaurants are very welcome. Or residential lots for future new families, rural, urban or suburban, you choose. If anything, contact me so we can share ideas. Thank you lovely!

I see your point here, I asked for having UC so that we have a easy way to play in the neighbourhood. I believe some nice stuff that comes from some expansions can be missing in case someone who wants to play - with a sim or lot - doesn't have the specific expansion. Plus the CC content can be very useful, I love it, but I thought some people wouldn't be able/or would like to download if it starts to be a big list of them . But I liked your point, I am going to edit my topic, thanks for stopping by and give me constructive information.

That's a cool idea, since TS2 is not multiplayer i guess this is the closest we can get to collaborative building
I'm mostly into building community lots, empty apartment buildings and townhouses lately.
I might try to dip my toes into sim creating but that's not my forte (i actually have no idea how to share sims but that would be an opportunity to learn).
What makes Maxis neighborhoods so lively though is the fact that the characters' backstories intersect, I guess that would be hard to achieve with families created independently by various people. Also I thought sharing occupied lots was not safe?

My idea is to collect all other Simmers families and create the intersect stories, using their story or changing it to combine with the plot of the neighbourhood, obviously crediting them. Also could you please explain about the occupied lots? That's interesting.

Sharing occupied lots as sims2pack files isn't safe. Never has been. The sims in those occupied lots have information attached to them like memories and relationships that most likely will corrupt the neighborhood the lot is placed down in. This happens the moment the lot is placed, so there's really no way to avoid it. Signs of corruption can happen anything from immediately, to trickling through the cracks over months to years, depending on how bad it is. Only occupied lots that are "safe" to place are the ones that came with the game (two Pets lots, I think).

Only safe way to share lots with sims in them is to share a whole neighborhood (the entire N00X neighborhood folder they're in, that is), and that's often very dependent on having the same game setup and actually wanting to have that whole neighborhood to play in, and I wouldn't recommended sharing neighborhoods unless you know what you're doing and what to avoid, such as which types of CC to not add in. It's technically not unsafe to share hoods (clean/empty neighborhood templates, or something like a properly made custom hood are fine), but you do need to know what you're doing, and those who download it need proper information about what to do with the neighborhood, because the numbering matters and they may need CC or other downloads, and various other info.

It's safest to share lots and sims separately. Lots should ideally be packaged without any sims having been at the lot (directly from building it, no sims moved in or moved out - there are exceptions to the rule, but I'm keeping it simple). Sims should ideally be made in Bodyshop, but can be extracted with SimPE and then be cloned and packaged in Bodyshop (should not be extracted and packaged without cloning first, because the cloning step is very important).

If UC is not an essential requirement, then I would be happy to contribute. I mostly build rather than create Sims or stories. I would of course list which expansions I have.

What about this? I once created a whole integrated storyline neighbourhood by making a spreadsheet with 100 slots for "sims" in it. I populated it at first by taking a list of the 100 most common first names and surnames and just using those to populate the firstname/surname fields, as temporary placeholder names but to give me a marker to identify each sim. I recommend duplicating the surname field for reasons which become clear later.

Then I simply used a random number generator to do everything else. There is one built in to most spreadsheet programs. First I rolled 1/2 for male/female. You could probably include more genders if you want to, but that's what I did. Or you could just give them the gender of the random name they have. Then I rolled 2-70, to denote age. Age 2-4 = toddler, 5-12 = child, 13-20 = teen, 21-59 = adult, 60+ = elder. I adjusted their ages when I played them, but you could literally just keep them at the age stage you roll them into, if you prefer. Now you have a spreadsheet full of 100 (or whatever number you decide to start with) sims, each with an age stage and gender.

But of course I wanted them to be connected. So I googled different family sizes - how many siblings somebody has, and I gave everyone a number denoting how many siblings they were supposed to have, making sure to include 0! There was more chance of being part of a common number of siblings, so more sets of 2, than 1 or 5. Then I matched them all up into groups, making sure that siblings were fairly similar ages (so no 5 year olds having a 40 year old sister, for example). If I got two the same age, I made twins! Some adults would have had their siblings move away or die of course IRL, I can't remember if I adjusted for this or not, probably not. I just pretended it was that kind of small town where nobody moves away. To differentiate the groups, I went through that list of surnames and I just gave everybody from a sibling group the same surname. Then in one of the fields I wrote the first name of their siblings in there. So perhaps "Amy", a 12 year old girl has brothers "Robert" age 14 and "John" age 9. Make sure to keep the capitalisation and spelling the same!

Second, parents/relationships. In TS2, teens and younger need a parental figure to look after them. I gave everyone aged teen or older a sexual preference - gay/straight/bi, again based on randomising. I tend to change the actual stats on this one and overrepresent the gay/bi/lesbian population to provide some variety and give my sims some dating options, I don't want them to literally be the only gay in the village, for example! Then I think I looked up stats about marriage and divorce. And again I gave everyone a number (single/married/divorced) and I then matched them all up, based on gender, preference and age, and obviously avoiding siblings. (For the divorced couples, I made them married at the start of the hood and then made them argue and split up, which was....unexpectedly harder than I thought it would be. Some of them ended up getting together again!) Again, add another column called "Spouse", and include the placeholder first name of whoever their assigned spouse is. For age gaps, I used the formula that the older sim could be with anyone at a minimum half their age +7. Next I counted up all teen-and-younger only children and/or sibling groups containing at least one sim aged under 18, to see how many child-groups needed a parent or parents. And this time I looked up stats about single parents and married parents, and assigned them a couple, a divorcing couple or a single adult depending on what each group rolled. My rule for adults was that the eldest child should ideally not be more than 23 years younger than the youngest parent, and absolutely no more than 15 years younger. And the father could be around 60 years older than the youngest child, but the mother only max 45 years older. And more likely cut offs were 50 / 40. If I was completely stuck with ages, then I would have explained it away with adoption, but everything worked out (which was good, because the whole point of doing this was to have genetics involved right from the "founding" generation). I made two more columns, called Children where I would list all the children of any parents assigned this way, and Parents where I would list the parent/s of each child in a sibling group. I don't think I added parental relationships to any older sims, maybe I should have!

Now you go through and expand the generic surnames, which already exist in sibling-groups to include any member of each family. At this point I had fifteen separate family groups. I think the easiest thing to do at this point is just to show you the family tree I set up on Family Echo to explain it all. I called my family groups the imaginative names of ONE, TWO, THREE and so on (rather than using surnames) and split them up based on where they lived in my hood at the time, but in hindsight, having the "Jones family" "Smith family" "Matthews Family" etc would have been easier to keep track of! https://www.familyecho.com/?p=T63FO...655211258464303

Once you have the separate families (it helps to draw out the family trees, either on paper or using an app/website like the above) - you can see in my Family One for example, I had a single father "Danny" with three kids. "Danny" has two siblings himself, one of whom (Rob) is married and has three children as well. His wife (Natasha) has three siblings of her own! Only one of them has a child, and none are married. To create a large family like this, I would use templates as the parents of Danny and Natasha. From there I created the family in three lots in CAS - Danny and his one sister using the templates as parents who are now deleted. Create a dummy "mother" for Danny's children and create them with him, then delete her. Move Danny's sister out to her own place, adjust everyone's finances using cheats. Then another separate CAS load for the rest. Use Danny's template parents for Rob, delete them. Use Natasha's template parents for Natasha, delete them, and create Rob + Natasha's three children, move the family out. Then create a third family, consisting of Natasha's other three siblings using her template parents again. Create a temporary dummy father for Natasha's nephew. Again move everyone out separately (or have them live together, if that suits the storyline!) and cheat everyone's finances correct. Use SimPE or the Sim Blender to set all of the relationships correctly. Where there are a mix of e.g. teen and adult children, create all children as teens and age them up using the Blender or other methods.

So you already have a sort of story there already, or at the very least, relationships. If you want to, you can go further and randomise the sims' aspirations, careers, dress style, level of income/money etc, but my idea for this whole system was to assign some kind of theme to each family like family "traits" if you like, which could be passed down from parent to child, so I chose those things in response to the family trait or based on what came up when in CAS. I also had several roles in the hood which I needed to fill with a specific sim, so I went through and selected somebody random of the appropriate age before creating them as well. This way I was not just starting off with a bunch of random individual sims, but "The corner shop owner with three children whose sister is a hairdresser" or "The only child who is jealous of all her cousins' big households" or "The famous twins who wish people would see them as separate people".

Oh, and once you have named the sim in game for real, use find & replace to replace every instance of their placeholder name with their real name. This should replace all the instances in any sibling/spouse/parent/child column as well. Because you'll usually have several different surnames within a family that's why I would have different columns for the sim's surname vs their Family group name. Actually maybe my ONE TWO THREE system is less confusing :P

BTW, 100 sims made about 30/31 households that I just counted. That's a lot of sims. I like my hoods to be busy, but you could probably cut this to like half or even a third and still end up with an interesting and connected neighbourhood. So maybe try it with 40 sims, or something.

Now I want to go and play this old hood again...

You can hit me up so we can share ideas, anything will be appreciated and credited as I previously mentioned

I know baby, it can be even by sharing just a Sim family and their stories on the bio, I can put them in a residential lot according to the plot they have in their descriptions, then credit the Simmer who made it.