Several wonderful neighborhoods come with your game and are picturesque, but possibly none of them fit what you truly want or need for your Sims’ city life -- or maybe you, like me,have filled them up and don’t want to delete your existing homes. Here you will learn to make your own neighborhood.

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Several wonderful neighborhoods come with your game andare picturesque, but possibly none of them fit what you truly want or need foryour Sims’ city life -- or maybe your like me and have filled them up and don’twant to delete your existing homes. I’m going to walk you through making yourvery own neighborhood to the specifications you desire in your TheSims™2 (TS2)game.

 

What you will need:

1)    Maxis’ SimCity4™ (SC4) and some kind of picture editing software. I am going to assumeyou didn’t just purchase this game to make neighborhoods for TS2, but haveactually played it and know how to navigate inside the game.

2)    Anyediting software that allows you to resize images and change them to .png willdo very nicely.

Importable from SC4 to TS2

1)    4-waystops.

2)    Cul-de-sacs

3)    Flora (alltrees except palm trees)

4)    Rightangle bends

5)    SC4 roadbridges

6)    Steel archbridges

7)    StraightRoads

8)    T-intersections

Not-Importable from SC4 to TS2

1)    Airports

2)    Fauna(animals)

3)    Buildings& facilities

4)    Elevatedroads, freeways & highways

5)    Landmarks

6)    Zones

Lets get started.

Note: I am referring to the same thing whenI use the names Neighborhood, City & ‘Hood.

Start SimCity 4 and click Play.

Part 1: step 1.  

There are three (3) neighborhood sized to choose from inSC4 – small, medium and large.  Only the small one will load into yourTS2 game, so choose one of those. Click on the small city and then the arrow to“Start New City”.  Your new neighborhood (in TS2) will be a mirror of this one.

Step 2.  

Now you can make the landscape. Have fun with yourterra-forming tools by adding mountains, hills, lakes, rivers -- whatever youlike. This looks good to me.

Click on the Mayor Mode (hat & scroll) to establishyour city. You will want to make up a City Name, but the Mayor Name and Difficulty Level are optional unless you want to play this city inyour SC4 game, which you can. J Then click Establish City. Mine will be called Elemental throughout this tutorial.

Step3.  

Add roads, bridges, trees (see the list of importable& non-importable items).  You can, as I did here, make roads to the edges,but you will only be able to use approximately the center half (1/2) ofthe city, so keep that in mind when laying out the roads.

Step 4.  

Click on the camera icon. Once you have your neighborhoodlined up so that is shows the best view, press the space bar to take the picture. This is the one you will need for your new neighborhood choice.

The snapshot has been made.

Step 5.  

Save your new neighborhood and close out your SC4 game.

 

Part 2: step 1.  

Find your SC4 file here: C:\ Documents andSettings\[User]\My Documents\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Regions\[City Name], copy thefile then paste it into C:\ Documents and Settings\[User]\My Documents\EAGames\The Sims 2\SC4Terrains.

Find the SC4 picture here: C:\ Documents andSettings\[User]\My Documents\SimCity 4\Albums\[City Name] and copy the pictureyou made to the same folder as above: C:\Documents and Settings\[User]\MyDocuments\EA Games\The Sims 2\SC4Terrains.

Step 2.  

Here they both are in the C:\Documentsand Settings\[User]\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\SC4Terrains file. We willnow rename them. 

1)    Rightclick on your picture file and scroll to rename. For the picture you will needto eliminate everything after the name, leaving “Elemental” as the name.

2)    Rightclick on your .sc4 file and scroll to rename. You will eliminate the “City - “,from the SC4 File leaving “Elemental.sc4” as the name.

3)    They nowlook like this:

Part 3: step 1.  

Open your TheSims™2 game -- arrow over and clickon the “Create Custom Neighborhood” icon. Click yes in the popup.

Step 2.  

Note: If you want your city .png picture to fit in thescreen you will need to open your editing software and change the picture size to300x225 pixels. This is not necessary since you can take a picture in yourgame. I’ve done it here so that you can better see the city.

 There it is – if you didn’t change the .png picture’ssize you will only see a small corner of the overall ‘hood.  Click on your SC4created city.

You will get this screen where you need to type in yournew Neighborhood’s name. It does not have to be the same as your originalname. 

Take a picture from a nice angle:

Bring up the dialogue box with Ctrl/Shift & C thentype in terraintype desert and press enter. This should change your viewto desert and you will take a picture (try to keep them similar):

If you have TheSims™2 Night Life you are supposedto be able to make concrete and dirt, but I’ve never gotten it to work in mygame. Those codes would be terraintype dirt and terraintype concrete.I should also say that if you were starting with a desert view from your SC4you would want to type in terraintype temperate.

Exit your game and open your photo editing software andload the snapshots you took from C:\Documents and Settings\[User]\MyDocuments\EA Games\The Sims 2\Storytelling. I find sorting by date helps mefind those elusive snapshots. You will need to do two very important things atthis point.

1)    Resizeeach picture to 300x225 pixels.

2)    You willthen save each snapshot.  Name each file as below with the individual ‘Hoodname, an underscore and the terrain type and change the image to an .png filein your C:\Documents and Settings\[User]\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims2\SC4Terrains file.

Elemental_lush

Elemental_desert

Elemental_dirt

Elemental_concrete

Reopen the game and you will find your lush lot snapshotin the appropriate box. Here I’ve also loaded the desert view so that you cansee them both.

You will find Elemental to be downloadable here on TSR inthe ‘Hoods section. I hope you and your Sims enjoy all their newneighborhoods!!