SC4 to TS2 neighborhoods Last night I was having a blast experimenting with the TS2 neighborhoods I'd made with SC4. I learned quite a bit (and will be continuing to experiment more!) What I've learned so far is that if the elevation is too high you get either just blue sky or your view of the landscape is like having a tree shoved in your face (so we can't use terrains that are way up in the stratosphere.) I've also learned that lot placement can be tricky. If the road has a little bobble from the terrain not being flat at that spot, a lot can't be places. And it won't put a lot on a sharp slope. (Gentle slope is ok, however.) While the 16 square deep border is relative (as it's very strict about it at the corners but more waffly at the midpoint). It's a good idea not to put too many trees onto the lot with the God Mode or you end up having to delete a lot of trees from the roads. It puts different trees in sort of on a random basis rather than the trees you'd see in SC4. For example, I had one forested area which ended up having palm trees where there had been evergreens and regular hardwoods. And on another one I ended up with a forest of Joshua trees. On yet another I had a lot of scrub oak (which generally are upper elevation trees in real life) mixed in with my regular trees. But the nice thing is that the prop placement thing (which doesn't lay roads) can put in some pretty dense forests if you choose to do so. Or individual trees or trees in a line of about 6. Speaking of roads, if you have a culdesac or a road end, it won't let you put the lot all the way to that end. It only places lots on stretches of roads which have the white line down the center. The stop signs in SC4 transfer over to TS2 and can be removed if you don't want them at that particular intersection. And the prop placement tool has the same stop signs (one for a 4 way stop sign area and the other for a T intersection) which you can place. Well, more later. I want to make a real tutorial that shows this sort of thing in detail. (People have been asking for something a little more in depth than what Maxis has provided. Shoot, you could almost have a standalone book on this if you put your mind to it. I don't plan to have mine *that* detailed!) So, now it's time for me to go back to the drawing board on most of my lots.
Hi Kat! Lovin' the game! Good observations there. I just wanted to add somethin'. I am having to completely rework some of my cities - i don't mind though as I didn't realize the difference in lot size compared with SC4 was so different. I like this fact as We can add scores of new roads thus allowing many more lots than I ever imagined! The 16 squares rule IS pretty strict. And it's sad that we don't see the entire neighborhood we originally created. But the lot size mentioned above will make up for that - I just need to miniaturize everything even more to scale! I'm not going to bother adding trees in SC4 anymore as It's much more fun to place them with the game. Have had some issues with bridges truly connecting with the roads they are supposed to connect to. One question for you: Even though I have the strategy guide, I don't understand how to make/copy this 400x300 .png file for the neighborhood image they are talking about. I badly want to get images in there but I don't even know where to start with this. Do you get it? Could ya help? Thanks! I know it's hard to leave the game! Jonas
A lot was cut off when I put Shady Acres into the game. But the thing that matters is that the middle island is all there, still.
I found that the "16 squares" rule only worked partially. There seems to be a circular area which works the best which is 18-20 squares on the N, S, E and W, but at the corners is more like 12-14. Also, it reverses the layout when you go from SC4 terrain to TS2 neighborhood. In my SC4 terrains I'd been estimating that the lots would be 5x5 at most. This has worked out as I expected. However, I was really surprised when I counted up my lots. In the neighborhood where I first played with lot placement, it was very hilly. But I still managed to find spaces for about 80 lots, most of them 5x5. Frankly, I don't believe I really want to have that many lots in the neighborhood I want to play, but it was interesting how many I *could* put in! As to making the .png, you take a screenshot of your neighborhood and put it into Adobe Photoshop (or any other paint program which can do .png files. My Corel Painter 8 can't do that, so I had to use my Photoshop 5.5) and "save as" a png file. (Make sure that you drop the layer as it will be separate from the paper until you do, so you'd only be able to make a .pdf which won't work.) When you put it into the neighborhood file it has to be named like your neighborhood such as NO19_Neighborhood.png. Otherwise it doesn't read. Also, it seems to cut off a lot of that 400x300 because you basically only see the center bit. I hope to spend more time today making more neighborhoods. I have about 12 set up that I want to eventually work with. The only problem I've seen with making so many is that there is no ingame way to get rid of a neighborhood. Fortunately, going into the neighborhood file you can remove the ones that you don't want to use. The only problem is that you have to know which "number" it is. (It's N0XX number.) And I found that it will add the number to the last used one, but it won't fill in gaps in numbers. (I suppose I could do that manually though. But I don't believe it is worth it at this point.)
I haven't seen a bin on the Neighborhood screen. (I was looking for one because I was used to doing that with BodyShop. Couldn't find one.)
I get rid of the neighborhoods by deleting them in the game - there's trashcan/delete option by the neighborhood when you select it. (can't do this to a loaded city) and THEN I also delete it from the my documents file as well. Thanks for the advice on the Png file - will hafta mess with that once I perfect these 3 cities. Sutton Place is nearly finished but I'm haiving a terrible time with the bridges - they just don't seem to wanna connect to the roads seamlessly. I had one work I think before - have you had this problem and do you know any rules regarding it? Otherwise - I think I might just go with the stone bridge option in the game - they look nice anyway. I love how many lots we can fit into these spots! My Curlique Mt. turned out really cool - while you don't see the entire mountain - it has this really sweet plateaued effect - gotta add/fix a coupla roads though.
I have to say it again - Curlique Mt. turned out awesome - You can actually fit lots at the very top of the mountain!!! You kinda have to mess with the way you turn it - but I just built a house up there! I'm so gonna push for folks to download this neighborhood as it just turned out unbelievably cool! There are so many levels and places lots can go!
I really liked that first one I did which was a mountain island. I don't think I'd use all the lots I have made in my neighborhoods. (I ended up accidently deleting the first one but I wasn't going to use it right away anyway.) I like the neighborhood I have now (Ramses Atoll) but I may end up deleting some of the lots. But on the other hand I don't have to fill them. They can be the "vacant lots" that seem to exist in so many small towns. I realized last night that I'd had the game for 4 days and I still hadn't played it even once! I'd been having so much fun "creating" that I hadn't gotten around to playing. So, I played for about an hour, but it was late, so I stopped after their first "day" since I also need to make a community lot so that they can go shopping.
Kat, I did the same thing! It was probably day 2 or 3 before I actually even played with the Sims themselves. I get pretty methodical when it comes to my Sims game. Especially this one, because I'm now making neighborhoods and clothes and Sims and such, where in the first one, I didn't really pick up on the design aspect of things. So... I had to create the perfect neighborhood FIRST, before I could play, which as you've mentioned can be VERY hard since TS2 changes a lot of things when importing in the SC4 neighborhoods. (And Jonas, I had a terrible time with the bridges too, I finally gave up saying "It's close enough" when the end of the bridge looks to be about 3 feet off the ground. lol). Then, I have to build all my Sim's houses. I don't like using pre-made houses, because building is one of my favorite things to do (probably more than even playing the game). Last night I spent 7 hours building a house for old Mr. Wrigglesworth. The mean old man that lives on the block. =) It turned out great, and even got the dormers to work. I'm at work right now, or I'd post a picture, maybe I'll remember to come back in and edit it. But, being my first house in TS2, I think I did a pretty good job. Being able to fully customize our neighborhoods down to the land that they are on is great, and I can tell we'll get some really creative things from the community!
Its funny how we're all different isn't it. I've been playing it for 4 days now in the same sort of way I played TS1 ... make a family, build them em a house play them for 3 or 4 days then start a new family ... it all builds up a nice neighborhood mix where you start to have some idea -- as you go on building up the hood -- what some of the various scenarios might achieve and what the neighbors already living there are like. For example ... I made a family with a single mother plus her parents and when they ordered a maid who should turn up but a "maid" called Remington. Huullllllll-O! Is there a six-pack under that shirt? Flirty mom is just gonna have to find out! Who would have thought that a man in Marigold's could be sexy! I haven't really tried any of the SC4 terrains that I had lined up but after playing for a bit I won't bother. Most of my terrains are too hilly. The camera view is tied to ground level and the amount you can tilt it up and down is limited. This can make getting a good angle for a snapshot/movie clip a bit tricky if you want to take a hoprizontal view from a point that is higher than than the object (In real life you would just lay down in the grass, or change the camera lens for one with a shorter focal length (wide angle lens). In general I think that flattish neighborhoods would work best (maybe some landscaping features to make the neighborhood views look good, but the area with the roads and lots will work better all round if is mostly flat. Also lots that slope very gently away from the road, either up or down offer good opportunities for split level designs. But a word of caution on split level. Rooms in basement levels cannot have "working" windows. I succeeded in building a split-level house. It had two storeys up from the street and one storey down to a living room, study a garden room leading out to a deck and a pool. The problem was that as a basement level the windows won't let in light ... even tho the walls emerge from below ground level. It's a bit frustrating but no game can possibly cover every possibility (I remember trying to "borrow" some light to brighten up a dark hallway by putting in a big picture window in the internal wall. Needless to say it didn't work ... but worth trying anyway ... you never know what a Maxoid has slipped in into the software to see if we're paying attention.
It depends on how hilly. You can always go back and cut down the height of the hills/cliffs. Once you are actually playing a house, the camera view thing doesn't seem to affect it as much. And I believe that the snapshot problem you may be having may have more to do with elevation than strictly hills. I found that if the elevation was too high, you got a face full of trees rather than being able to look down at the lot, yet my houses which were on similar hills but at a lower elevation seemed to not have that problem. One of the nice things about a hilly terrain is that it really makes for more interesting view when you are playing a house. Instead of the endless flat ground, you actually get to see a "view" of grassy hills. My current house is set at the top of a hill and the "view" is beautiful. It pretty enough that I didn't care that there weren't the trees and houses that should be there. My community lot is on the bottom of that hill. And it really has a lovely view of the rising hill. I feel that it's much nicer than flat vistas. (And it's not like you need more lots in a neighborhood. Even with tons of hills and a big lagoon in the middle, I still managed to put in 80 lots. That's far more than I'd really ever play.)
