Building

First of all, I’m going to teach you guys how to create a Custom Neighborhood. It’s easy, too easy. Look at the picture below:

Press the arrow on the right side of the screen. There should be a button that says “Create Custom Neighborhood.” Click it.

Next, this should come up. You then have to choose a terrain file to use for your custom neighborhood. There should be fourteen or so - three of them are used for the three premade neighborhoods (Pleasantview, Strangetown, and Veronaville).

Once you’ve chosen your Neighborhood - this should come up or something like this.

You can start decorating, now! Make a few families, lots and other things. Gordonville is an example of a neighborhood.

Okay, now you’re ready. Let me tell you about building Residential Lots:

When designing a layout, think about how the Sims move about their daily lives: from the bedroom to bathroom, to the kitchen. Make those rooms close together so not to waste time walking, and make 2 or 3 tiled hallways to avoid “traffic” problems. Simple layouts are usually more playable, yes it’s neat to add closets, pantries, but they serve no real point and just make the house bigger than it needs to be. Use diagonal walls when possible, eliminates boxed feeling and adds point to room score. Make a large room for kitchen/living/dining rooms. This is great for sims with low income and improves the room score. You could also leave spaces (no walls) where you would place doors to create the feeling of rooms. Cramped houses leave no room to move, while in large houses Sims take many Sim hours moving from one side of the house to the another. It’s important to strike a balance. To improve traffic flow (especially with dining and kitchen areas) use place two doors next to each other. There will still be some confusion, but it does help alleviate the problem. The video below will show you HOW to build it:

WARNING: This is NOT my video.

Now, how about Community Lots:

Lots built in the Neighborhood are done so from city funds, and apparently the city has an infinite amount of money. In other words, you don’t need to worry about scrimping and saving, so build them exactly how you envision them. There are not too many choices for Community Lots. Right now, they pretty much break down to three categories: public pool, park, or shop. Note that these are informal categories; you don’t actually categorize your lots. However, there are no tools for hotels and so forth that you could make on the expansion packs of The Sims 1. Shown below are examples of lots. The first picture shows a grocery store; the next picture shows a park; the next picture shows a public pool and the final picture shows an arcade:

Now, you can build these yourself. First of all - you have to build a blank lot, like you do for houses. Simply choose a size you deem appropriate for the lot. Being only a small bookstore and game store, a 4×4 lot seems right. Name the store, and be sure to select Community Lot and not Residential Lot as the lot type. Then click your empty blue lot, and you can even enter a store description before entering the empty lot. Now, go into that Community Lot and start building like you do with the house. Cool, eh?