Hey, peeps. Since so many of you are asking about custom neighborhoods, here and at SimScribes, I feel compelled to say a few things which I hope you’ll find helpful.
First off, as many of you know, Jade’s site Isle of Thyme started the hood-building trend with her wonderful creation of Thyme and her generous sharing of tips and tutorials. Unfortunately, her site has closed, and, as far as I know, her tutorials were never posted anywhere else. I do remember some things here and there which I am willing to share (with credit to Jade for finding them/coming up with them in the first place), but my thoughts and info aren’t nearly as organized as her site was. I’m also working about about 12 different projects right now, so stuff might be sparse for a bit.
Also: I am no expert in building a custom hood. Not at all. I am figuring it out as I go with help from the community and my recollection of Jade’s site. What you might want to do is join SimScribes, since I’ve started a sub-forum there for hood building. That way we can all share information as we come across it or learn from our experimentation. If a forum is just not your cup of tea, no problem. I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can.
Another thing about hood-building — I’ve posted this on SimScribes, and I’ll reiterate it here: give your hood some serious thought before you begin. As Jade mentioned on her site, everyone has a different playing style, and you don’t want to build a huge, intricate hood only to find you don’t enjoy the mechanics of playing it. Figure out what YOU enjoy most about the game, and build that into the design of your hood. An integrated economy might be really cool to play with in theory, but you have to build it first, and that takes a lot of patience, thought, and experimentation. And truth be told, the pondering and testing is half the fun, in my opinion. So mull that over before you embark on a huge project of this kind. That’s the best advice I can give you right now.
Elsewhere in the news…
I’ll be posting my revised Bluewater terrain soon — I just have to take pics so it won’t look like a sad grid in your neighborhood chooser. Also, I’ll be posting a story soon (non-Fran). As for Fran herself, I have most of the pics taken for her update, but it may be awhile before I get the rest taken. Too much going on!
Happy Simming!
Yay. Thanks for all the help Jen :]
Just joined the forum as ‘winkling’ awaiting approval. Should be good fun, it’s hard not to want to start some great blogging adventure after reading this one!
I know Jade’s site had a pretty much step-by-step guide to creating your own economically functioning hood, but sadly it is gone and I only kept some vague notes on the steps. But I would like to say that you can visit a website called Simmerville that started the whole “realistic hood” trend way back in the days of The Sims 1. The of course moved to the Sims 2 and have been going strong ever since. You’ll be blown away by what all they have. There’s not a step-by-step process, but you can really get some great ideas and get inspired with all the cool and creative stuff they have over there. Here’s the link: http://hinsides.no/simmerville. It’s what actually inspired me to make Harper’s Cove! Hope that helps somewhat!
Oops, that link is actually:
http://www.hinsides.no/simmerville
=)
Jen, do you have to pay to use wordpress or is it free?
Hi Jen, well I think your pretty good at creating custom hoods so I definitely take your advice since all the custom hoods I’ve seen you create are oober cool. I’ve had to learn about hood building the hard way with my custom legacy hood. Trial and error has helped me prevail, but I think I’ve rebuilt it about 3 times already. I’m currently on attempt number 4, this time however I’m building everything myself and not downloading most of it.
Anyway, can’t wait for your story update/s. Thanx for all the advice you always give us.
PS by the way, I recall registering on the forum you spoke of. But I never received an activation e-mail.
Anonymus- I’m not Jen but i have my own wordpress site and its free if you want it to be.
Hey guys! Sorry if I sounded grumpy in my post. I was having a bad day. I’m better now. ;P
Lindsimmy – No prob, I haven’t helped much yet! But hopefully we can all help each other. Your town looks nice so far!
winkling – Hey, I saw you over on SimScribes. Welcome, and enjoy!
Mandie – I think it’s so cool you’re part of Simmerville now. I am going to check out Harper’s Cove!
Anonymus – WordPress is free, but you need to install it somewhere; I make a monthly payment to A Small Orange for my webspace. Or you could try a free blog on WordPress.com. I haven’t tried that, though, so I can’t say much about it. Another option is something like Blogsome, which is also free. You’d have to use something like Photobucket for storing your pics.
Taryn – Woopsies, sorry about that. If you don’t mind, try registering at SimScribes again. It’s hard to tell who the spammers are sometimes! So I get delete-happy. This time maybe put something in your Interests about the Sims so I’ll know you’re not an evil spammer person!
Sanna – Oh cool, looks like you’re using WordPress.com. How do you like it? And your site looks nice so far! I’ll add it to my sidebar.
Thanks Jen, i love wordpress its really useful, thanks for the comment but i haven’t really started updating it yet because im waiting for my uni, seasons and pets games to arrive.
Wheee, I just registered for the SimScribes forum :) Hopefully I will be able to find more time to make a nice and pretty neighborhood.