I think that's what it's called. The hoods where all the jobs and workers and such are playables. I know that some people have made their own and I would like, if I may, is to ask them/ ya'll how you started.

Let me backtrack a second... I started marka93's Beginning Pleasantview. After placin all the families I started thinkin that I wanted to play it as a interconnected self contained hood, only I'm not sure exactly where to start. I know that for now I don't want any townies (I do have the stealth hoods). I plan on loosely following the family tree in that the sim who is supposed to born, married to so 'n so and have X kids will do so. The looseness comes in that I don't plan to stay within the confines of only those supposed children and family lines. There will be other children which could be the product of the two married spouses, an affair, or maybe even an adoption. I also started with just Pleasantview and then started to think I might want to make it an uberhood and add in the Beginnings of maybe one or two of marka's others.

Oh yeah, I also have Christianluv's All in one nanny mod. After seein the Jessa vid and somewhat understandin what it is/does, that is part of what made me want to do this sorta hood. I want to play this hood for a while and I want to get it set up from the start, well mostly set up as obviously there are gonna be some things that I might not think of till later.

Soooooo, for those of you how have made your own or even contemplated makin one ... where did you start, what are your suggestions, what did you do that now you wish you'd of done differently ... any and all advice is welcomed.


Also, while I'm askin how do you perceive each of the families, not individuals ... upper class, middle class, low class, rich, poor, somewhere in the middle, snooty, down to earth, head in the clouds, geeky/ nerdy, cons/ criminals, reliable, nationality ... or any other way you can think to describe them. For those who've not played the beginning families/ ancestors .. just go with what you perceive of the EAxis ones. I sorta have an idea of what I want for each family, but I was curious as to what others thought.

Goth/ Crumplebottom/ Bachelor Family Ancestors
o Simis and Jocasta Bachelor
o Simmon and Prudence Crumplebottom
o Victor and Gretle Goth

Newbie/ Simovitch/ Broke Family Ancestors
o Flat and Flo Broke
o Bob Sr. and Mags Newbie
o Vadim and Fatima Simovitch

Caliente/ Al Mahmoud/ Bachelor Family Ancestors
o Tariq and Benazir Al Mahmoud
o Nestor and Dulcinea Caliente
- See above for Bachelor

Lothario/Fiorello Family Ancestors
o Primo and Isabella Fiorello
o Carmelo and Mama Lothario

Oldie/ Ruggbyrne/ Pleasant/ Danders/ Burb/ Marsh Family Ancestors
o Benjamin and Susan Burb
o Marshall and Melinda Danders
o William and Anastasia Marsh
o Myron and Irma Oldie
o Les and Kynda Pleasant
o Bruno and Mamie Ruggbyrne

Dreamer/ Darong/ Matlapin Family Ancestors
o Sef and Lina Darong
o Dalmar and Dacia Dreamer
o Omar and Mariana Matlapin

Please, please make a lot of pic's and post them for all to see.

Goth/ Crumplebottom/ Bachelor Family Both the Goth and Crumplebottom families always seemed to be upper class but down to earth at the same time with a little "head in the clouds". For the Bachelor family they seemed to be middle class and also down to earth but this is just me.

For the Newbie/ Simovitch/ Broke Family have always seems to me to be from the back country and maybe farmers.

For the Oldie/ Ruggbyrne/ Pleasant/ Danders/ Burb/ Marsh Families to me seemed to be more the middle class looking to become upper class at all cost types.

Dreamer/ Darong/ Matlapin Families are middle class and very reliable to each other.

The rest I have not figured out yet.

Just my kind of topic.

I have a number of self contained also known as integrated hoods. My first one was way too large, for me at least that was a mistake. It took too long to go around to everyone's house, and I had way too many sims far too quickly. I wasn't organized enough just randomly put all the sim bin sims into the hood and not really planning out what jobs everyone needed. So my suggestion would be to start small, think of what a small town really needs and organize it on paper/document. have a vision for your town, do you want it to be urban, county etc. My first hood had none and was a real mishmash.

My second hood was smaller but still contained townies which I kept away except from the owned shops. I used them as tourist money and I don't think there anything wrong with that just depends on what you want. Only the game has too many of them and I was really getting tired of seeing the same ones. For that one I set sims up with money enough to place them into their house/business/plans I had in mind for them. I also used randomize on the simblender for skills for new CAS adults and used the motivation rules a couple of others on here and tweaked them to suit myself. Troubles with this hood stemmed from the sims having too much starting cash and too many skills and too many of the same old townies.

Hood three was different. This was more of a hippie type community on an island. This one had only 8 sims and some were related. They had no electricity save for some solar panels and everything came from the amount of trees they could chop, fish caught, items sewn and so on with a bartering system. They had no bills or newspaper and were cut off from the world, so no townies. I made numerous genetic mistakes, one being the gene pool was too small with some starting off related and I gave my alien watching guy sk4 skin which dominated over the alien skin and a pale freckled skin I gave to a brother and sister was also way too dominant. It was otherwise a really fun set up.

Hood four, Coral Bay. This is my current modern hood. (I still have the others but they are in my older sims 2 folder) This hood is in a separate sims 2 folder as is my Medieval hood. That is my fifth self contained hood. My medieval hood is similar to Coral bay, just medieval in style with medieval type jobs like a blacksmith and a taven owner and a monastery that stomp grapes.
No townies except for a few tourists. A small community does better if there is some money coming in. It does not need to be a lot, but some. Unless you are on an deserted island like my hippies towns do have money coming in from the outside world.
Coral Bay is very cohesive, it looks like a small sea side town and any new buildings fit in.
I started this with about 10 couples and added in a few more so now there are 12 founding couples, plus one pair of brothers, two YA sisters and one single sim. My first hood had something like 35-40 couples to start with, way too big. I do give different starting money, but not too much. I know for me if I set the Mayor up as Mayor in a huge house with tons of money, it's boring. I know why the couples are here and most sims have a distinct role to play in running the town. A few of the spouses didn't but they have either been hired by businesses, or found a role later. The minsters wife has taken on the role of towns baby sitter since there are no nannies. Too small for that. I still use randomize on the sim blender but I often do it a few times and then I get out the sim manipulators book of skills and set the level. One of my rules is no adult shall have over 5 skill points in any one area. So if they randomly got 8 in cooking, 7 in body and 10 in cleaning I use the set skill option to bring those back to 5. It seems unrealistic for adults to have no skills and with my slower skilling mod it takes too long for them to get them. This is a happy medium.
While they have some money it is never enough and I have them take out loans to buy their businesses or use mortgage shrubs at their house if the house is the business. The skills, money and loans give me something to work towards. I'm pretty happy with how I have balanced that and the genetics this time. I was getting a few too many freckled babies again from that same skin that my hippies have but since I added in another townified skin set it's been balancing itself out.

Instead of classes such as high and low I tend to think more on what a town needs. While the Mayor may be seen as the richest they are actually struggling quite a bit. They have a massive debt and also have to pay my two teachers at the local school since it's government run. He has to come up with $7,000 each Friday to pay to the school house. I decided on this by setting her as school principle and him as highschool teacher. I use halved wage mod as well, but that is what those two jobs would pay out together over a week if they went to work. Many of my sims I give a job with the sim blender as I like them to have a job not be 'unemployed'. If they go to work, or sometimes or never depends. Simliogical make a handy sign to stop any need to go to work.
I started off with the basics, so one police constable, one fireman, a farming couple who own the grocery store, one hair dresser/fashion shop owner, one repairman and so on.
I use numerous mods to make each sims role seem as realistic as possible. The fireman lives at the fire house and is in a custom fire fighter career. and has a drivable fire engine. His wife owns the library and is an author. The firehouse is also a home business although they only open now and then. The sell smoke alarms, toy firetrucks (buyable extracted ones) and their two books on fire safety. I use sellable novels mod.

I haven't yet tried sim surgery to make over any NPC although I may in time. I don't mind them being themselves as I don't have many and they all look unique and only one is really ugly. Most used my non default face templates. The first children are just now turning into teens. I use the same motivation rules on this hood which helps determine who will go onto uni and who might be taking a low paying NPC job. This will start to naturally make lower and middle and upper class.

There are various ways of doing this type of hood and some people make it more or less self contained. I have allowed sims to earn money from giving financial advise on the computer, writing restaurant guides, to selling paintings to the air. A few have jobs they go to like the fireman. I needed some outside money as the interest on the loans form Monique's computer is steep.

Well marka93 was kind enough to make the sims for me (ok so not just me, he did it for everyone), which means that the starting # of families is 20. I admit it is quiet a few and I would like less, but as these are the ancestors I can't leave any out, however *malicious laugh*, this is not to say that all of them will die of old age. I did ponder on agin them down to teens and sendin them off to college, but nixed that when you think of the number of sims that would need to go through college. The map and setting are also already done which I believe is a fairly modern suburn setting. For this though I did think that as these are the ancestors, I would only give the jobs outside the house to the husbands and the wives would be stay at home moms or do odd jobs from home.

I am strongly leanin towards adding subhoods/ shopping Beginning Bluewater, Beginning Belladonna, and Beginning Desiderata. What's holdin me back is the same reason I want to add them ... more sims. I'll sit on this and think a bit more... back to the important stuff.

In the past when I've played I do admit, I have never paid any attention to ownin a business, but that is about to change with this hood. The thing is, I don't know WHAT kind of businesses to set up, especially to run a cohesive integrated one that makes everyone work for each other. The mayor, police, fire, maids, restaurants, shopping, teachers ... and so on.
What jobs did you set for you town?

I'm tryin to get a grasp of where to start and how to start. I really want to start up my game and just jump in and play, but I know that if I do that I'll NEVER get it set up as intergrated. I'll play it through the same as I always have in the past - give each sim a job that seems like it fits for them, even if I already have 5 sims in that field. This time I want more outta the game.

I don't like to many families so what I do is merge households together IE: Goth/Crumplebottom and add Bachelor's in when they need to start having the kids.

I end up with I think 9 households this way.

Going down my list of sims and couples this is what i have.

Cafe owner
Police officer
B&B owner
News paper reporter
Mayor
Nurse
Dr
Banker
Teacher
Highschool teacher
Principle
House parent for new teen boarding school
Hair dresser/fashion shop owner
repairman
Fireman
Library owner
restaurant owning couple (he hosts, she cooks)
Waiter (works at above restaurant)
health Clinic receptionist
Farming couple/grocery store owner
Church minster (wife is town baby sitter)
YA one works at the coffee shop the other at the library
Two fishermen brothers. Also own fish shop

That is it so far. I would start off as small as you can and work your way up rather than start large without a clear idea. The most basic things a small town needs is food production, someone in charge and basic services like fire and police. As the kids grow up they will start to take on more roles. The eldest farmers son wants to be captain hero, so he will be my second police officer. I don't however go up to Captain hero but will keep him at whatever level seems suitable. A town does not need 3 chiefs of police, but it might need a chef of police, a Sergent and a constable. I also give most sims a custom LTW that I write into their bio.

Which mods? I know you've said before you have Inge's school system, but what other mods do you use to make your city run. Not askin 'bout what mods I need for my game, but what ones make a hood integrated and such.

Do you use CL's All in one?

@marka93 ... I did think of that, but I really want each family to have their own place. I'm also tryin to somewhat hands off approach in that I don't dictate their every move. I do have inteen and ACR2 so I want to see who interacts with whom. Which sims will form friendship or somethin deeper with someone other than their own mate and which sims almost instantly hate each other .. lol

I use the simlogical school sign a lot. That means I can give a sim a job but not have them go to a rabbit hole job unless I want them to. My police officer goes to work, but if I want him to open the home business shop I just put the sign out. I also use numerous parts of the school system but not all. I dislike the prep school book and prefer to use the homework book.

Christianlov's wallet controller and Monique's laptop I use for money transfers. The computer I also use for study and email invitations. Sims will not refuse to come over, so lets say the computer needs fixing, I can email invite the repairman over. (lol just realized what I said there, they would need a second computer) Phae's phone book is also needed in case the sim does not know them. This gets more important as the hood gets larger. if the repairman comes over my sim will give him $50. Then when you go to his house and click on the wallet controller there you will see $50 has been deposited into the controller account. Not the house hold funds. This enables you to keep things separate if you want to.

Simlogical mortgage shrubs to reduce the price of home businesses so a fresh CAS sim can buy it and then pay it off.

My clinic is a home business. The DR does go to the Maxis rabbit hole job, other times she stays home and opens the clinic. I use some buyable items there from PCsims on the graveyard plus I use their medical kit. If a sim needs to stay at the clinic I use Christianlov's transporter mirror. This temporally moves a sim in. A parent can also use the mirror to transport their toddler to the sitters before they go to work and transport them back after work.

I have CL's all in one but have not used it. You can set a playable on there to come and clean etc. I tend to just use the mirror as the sim becomes selectable.

I also have some parts of the prison system and the meeting system. The meeting system is good if you want numerous sims over at once.

The sim manipulator I use a lot to adjust personality and skills, turn on's and zodiac and other things. I only have a certain number of sims who need to match up, so if I can change someone zodiac to help a couple along I do.

Sim wardrobes Season and hobby adjuster.

Then there are things like custom careers, majors, exems desert cart for my coffee shop and tons of small mods like being able to hire ya, realistic garden crop yields and all sorts of things I am no doubt forgetting.

The day setter and inventory transfer vase from here. If you have 50 fish that you want to sell directly, it makes things a lot easier. Also for me it's important that everyone is on the same day and season. if you move house on a Wednesday I do not want it to be Monday when you arrive.

Edit: I forget about community lot time, that is important. This gives real time passing. This works with skilling on community lots. I also have toddlers visit community lots as some people take their toddlers to work. No game nannies, only friends who can baby sit or take them with you. Most people in rl do not have a handy nanny they ring up 'just for now'. Same with the food, you either grow it or go to the grocery/fish shop. The place isn't big enough for delivery. If I do at some point I will use sim surgery.

Also forgot I have a PO now. She runs the post office and he is the receptionist at the clinic. They sell the card system from here, postcards and have the electronic stand for mobile/cell phones. Outside they have PC sims post box.

I recommend checking through all posts here:
http://simlishnoir.tumblr.com/tagged/Suggestions