Hi anon! I’m going to be completely honest and say that I’ve really only used terrains by voleste and nimitwinklesims. 😛 I’m sure there are tons of other great hood terrains out there, though! Have you already searched Mod the Sims and the neighborhood tag on trappingcrushes? I tend to stick to smaller terrains, since I’m rather slow at playing and building and I prefer the look of dense, crowded hoods. (Of course, filling them with absurd amounts of hood deco helps!)

As for my university hood, I’m using the Plockton terrain by voleste. 🙂 

Aw, thanks! I’m afraid I can’t take any credit for the terrains except for plunking down random neighborhood deco – the real wizard behind the terrains is the lovely voleste! I use this custom hood for my main hood, and the Plockton terrain for Windham University. 🙂

And, slightly unrelated, but I suppose it will help – I also use CuriousB’s lush terrain replacement to make everything extra green. 😛

Hey anon! There are a lot of great resources that spell out exactly how to do this – better than I can. So I’ll try to be as informative as possible, but I will be linking you to other references!

There are a few different ways to get non-fugly townies. One way – which is what I did for my Windham University dormies – is to make them yourself in Bodyshop or CAS. Once you’ve created the Sims to your liking, move them to an empty residential lot and then, using a teleporter from Simlogical, select the option to make that Sim a townie. (If you perform this action in a University subhood, those Sims will become dormies!)

Too time-consuming to make each individual townie? Then you can batch-create them! To avoid weird Maxis faces, first install default face templates. I use these by Joedy. ❤ Then, create a single Sim (or family, if you wish) and move them to a residential lot. Pause the game immediately, bring up the cheat window, and type in “boolprop testingcheatsenabled true”. Shift-click on the mailbox on the lot, select the option that says *DBG – FORCE Create Townies, then click the option that says “townies.” You will see a window pop up in the top right corner – your game is now spawning townies. 

However, be warned – if you batch-create townies in an already townie-populated neighborhood, you run the risk of creating a lot of character files that could bloat and potentially corrupt your neighborhood (perhaps not right away, but in the future). If you would like to create a completely customized neighborhood – meaning no Maxis face templates, Maxis townies, or Maxis NPCs – and control exactly how many townies/NPCs are spawned, I would recommend following this excellent tutorial. Be sure to install the mods mentioned early on in the tutorial – this greatly reduces the number of unnecessary character files the game creates and reduces your risk of hood corruption.

Always remember to BACK UP your game before making any changes to the program files and/or your neighborhood files!

If you already have a neighborhood that you’re quite attached to, but it’s unfortunately overrun with weird-looking townies, you can always use an item like the Sim Blender to change just about anything you want about that Sim – from their clothes, to their face structure, even their wants! Some options will only work on the active Sim, but never fear – the Sim Blender has an option to teleport any Sim to the lot and make them selectable, so you can perform all the edits you want before sending them back out into Townieville again. 🙂 

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask – don’t be afraid to come off anon, either! It might be easier for us to go back and forth that way if you have more specific questions. 🙂

I own most of the physical disks for TS2! I got the game when it first came out, which was way before I had Internet even capable of downloading anything (*cough* dial-up *cough*). However, when Origin offered the Ultimate Collection as a free download over the summer, I decided to do a complete reinstall using that. I was missing one stuff pack, so now I finally have them all. 🙂

Hi anon! I’m afraid I’ve never downloaded any custom universities (I’ve been creating Windham University from scratch in an empty subhood), so I don’t really know what’s out there. I did a quick search on MTS and found this one by Mootilda, but I’ve never tried it myself. I don’t use any custom neighborhoods either, but MTS has a pretty extensive selection if you want to give any of those a try.

Unless you mean empty neighborhood terrains? In which case I could give you more info…

No? I’ve installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled the game numerous times, and I’ve never had to do anything special. 🙂

I’ve heard stories from Windows 8 users having to do extra things in order to get the game to work, but I’ve only ever used Windows 7 so I’m honestly not familiar with what to do in that situation. If you’re using a Windows 7 operating system though, anon, you should be good to go!

Hi anon friend! I’m glad you enjoy my simblr! *_* ❤ Unfortunately, uploading my whole downloads folder is something I won’t be doing. 😦 For starters, it’s absolutely massive – 17+ GB – which is way more than the average Simmer (most Simmers?) would ever use. It’s messy and disorganized, I’m sure there are tons of duplicate files from when I started bulk-renaming things, and it’s in desperate need of a clean out. Also, I wouldn’t feel right about uploading and redistributing the content of so many creators. I know most TS2 creators are pretty liberal with their policies these days, but it’s not quite the same as including objects in a lot package or meshes with a recolor, ya know? 

And forgive me if you don’t want to hear this, but it’s true – hunting down and downloading new CC is half the fun! I can’t tell you how much satisfaction I get from finding new things to use in my game. And in doing so, you create a downloads folder and a game that is inherently you – all the content choices have been handpicked by you to customize your own game! Building your downloads folder is tons of fun, trust me, anon. 🙂 

That being said, if you ever see anything specific in my pictures – objects, clothing, hair, etc. – and want to know where to find it, I’d be more than happy to locate it for you! I know I should probably build a resource page and add a link to my WCIF tag to my theme, but in the meantime you can browse through past WCIFs and also check these links to get started. 🙂

Sorry again!