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Tri-City Bay - A desertic urban-themed neighbourhood

SCREENSHOTS
9,293 Downloads 85 Thanks  Thanks 43 Favourited 24,169 Views
Uploaded: 16th Aug 2015 at 9:21 PM
Updated: 7th Jan 2016 at 9:38 PM
INTRODUCTION

Maxis clearly isn't too knowledgeable on cities, as we can see. The Sims 2' vanilla neighbourhoods are all rural-themed, with the exception of Belladonna Cove, which is as close as you can get to a city in this game. Of course, it's not a bad fact - they're merely staying in their area of expertice, but then they released the mess that is Downtown.

Seriously, who the hell would pave everything from the "city"'s heart all the way to the coast? Not only that, the residential area is a pathetic excuse for such - El Cheapo houses left and right(except for one), whose only redeeming trait is the presence of garages. Little buildings to be actually seen. I tried to live in there for a while, but later on I just gave up. It's... ugh.

Sick of that, I decided to take the matter into my own hands, and create a proper city. Using the Murana terrain template from stellmaria(used with permission), and taking inspiration on Bridgeport of TS3 fame, behold: The Tri-City Bay!



WHAT TO EXPECT

"Located in the shoreline of the great Murana Sea, the Tri-City Bay is an oasis both literally and figuratively to many travellers of the grand desert it's located at. A lot of Sims flock over to it due to its great career and educational opportunities, resulting in it being a haven for well-suceeded Sims. Meanwhile, it still manages to attract the youth with its fancy restaurants and nightclubs, making it the perfect place to live in... provided you can pay the sky-high bills, of course."

While SimCity is (presumably)inspired by New York of East Coast fame, the Bay Area is inspired by San Francisco and parts of its neighbours Marin Ridge and Oakland, while also having some Arab cities(specifically those from the United Arab Emirates) as an idea. Of course, it is not a 100% accurate replica, I just had these cities in mind when making this. As you can see from the picture above, the city is pretty much in an oasis, getting greener and greener as you approach the sea. Normally, the city's government would've chopped the trees away to have more space to build stuff on, but with many factories in the eastern zone, they serve as a nice air purifier as ecologists say. Besides, it looks beautiful and helps remove the "cities are too gray" stereotype.

On the other hand, as you move away from the sea, you'll go from green forests to yellow savannahs, to beige arid regions, and eventually to a dead orange desert. The outer reaches of the city have little vegetation besides shrubs and the occasional dead tree. Typically, the worst buildings are located in the desert area, as nobody normally wants to deal with it, but hey, it's a nice place to start on since, as the city's description says, this is a really, really, really expensive city.

The bay's seasonal rotation is Spring, Summer, Summer, Fall, but if you want to have less of an Arab feel and more of a California feel, you could change it to Spring, Summer, Summer, Winter or something like that. It's your choice, really.

THE THREE CITIES

This isn't called "Tri-City Bay" for no reason; unlike most other neighbourhoods, this one consists of three different cities close to each other. Each has a different theme to it and at least two families residing within it. Let's see each of them, shall we?

SEASHIRE - North region



The luxury life region. The most popular city of the Bay Area. Seashire is where all the luxurious residential skyscrapers are located at. Most of the bay's upper-middle class citizens thrive here, though some of the less fortunate can still find a home if they are quick enough. Seashire is relatively free from slums due to it catering to a life of luxury, but that's not to say it has no slums, either. Nevertheless, you're safe from crimegoers here, as the police's wage is high enough to convince them not to go rogue.

Seashire also has a train station of its own, and though you can't really acess it(just a neighbourhood prop), it's been lauded as one of the fanciest stations in SimNation this side of the SimCity Train Terminal, and is cited as one of the reasons the next region's train station has been deactivated and left to rot.

OAK HARBOUR - East region



The closest you can get to a low-class city in the Bay Area. Oak Harbour, while not really being a slum or shantytown, is less fortunate than its two neighbours, but nevertheless it is still quite important - and fun, too! Serving as the business district, you'll find plenty of places to spend your money on or the night with your date of choice - ranging from the classiest cinema to the largest mall. It has its share of apartments too, and while they're nowhere as numerous or luxurious as Seashire's, they're very handy to the outsider who needs a stepping-stone to reach the life of luxury.

Wander too far east, and you'll go from the business district to the industrial area. If the rest of the Harbour was filthy enough for you, then don't even head here. The ammount of fabrics and unkempt alleys is overwhelming. Fortunately, in most cases you won't need to head here... unless you happen to live by the abandoned train station. The monorail used to stop by here, but the combined effects of Seashire getting a much better station and the start of a project to make the monorail travel on top of bridges took its toll on the Oak Harbour station, which led it to be discontinued and later on bought out as a warehouse. Nowadays it's a gathering place for the poor who can't afford living anywhere else.

TWIN ISLANDS - West region



Want to live and thrive near all the bay can give you, but don't want to restrict yourself to the tight space that plagues city life? This is exactly the place you're looking for. The Twin Islands have no apartments whatsoever - only luxurious houses and mansions are permitted to live here. The wealthy elite has a penchant for this place, as not only they can stay away from apartment life, but it is incredibly hard to reach their level. Being so close to two heavily-urbanized cities, it is natural that a corrupt corporate CEO would want to buy the islands out to transform them into his own MegaCorp™, so they are protected by law from the city's senator herself.

Of course, the mayor would need heavy thinking and perfect word choices to prevent any CEO from trying to go around the law and buy the islands out regardless, which can be a very tiresome job. Due to that, residents of the island need to pay even higher bills than average as a compensation. Still, for the life the islands can bring to the residents, it's very much worth it.

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

This neighbourhood requires every single expansion pack and stuff pack there is, sadly, not only Apartment Life. On the other hand, pretty much only two CCs are required for it - and you don't even need to use one of them if you want.

As you may have seen me saying during this neighbourhood's development, it was planned to be a Downtown-attachable subhood. Alas, I never heard that you need to prevent any and all sub-hoods from being attached to it(I didn't use AGS because it doesn't work in my game), so it automatically got the automatic "Pets", "Weather", "Hobbies" and "Magic" sub-hoods. And since, from what I heard, it is impossible to remove sub-hoods, this one is permanently tainted as "NON-DOWNTOWN ATTACHABLE", and I can't be bothered to make another one. Sorry.

Plus, as you may have noticed by the titanic ammount of character files on the Characters folder, this neighbourhood ships with Pleasantview's townies(which means your custom townie faces, names and what-have-you will not work) and the several Family Bin families. Since this was made with the highly-patched Ultimate Collection, it is perfectly safe to play as the Ottomas Family(if you don't mind atrocious-looking babies). I'm not sure about the Crittur Family, so if you ever decide to play with them, terminate Sarah's pregnancy with the Sim Manipulator just in case.

On another note, this neighbourhood is extremely CPU-intensive even when on neighbourhood view due to so many scenery props being clustered together, and it's even worse when rendering most of Seashire's apartments. May the heavens help your soul if you rent a penthouse. You've been warned.

All families start with Free Will on off. So, if you're a fan of Free Will and is wondering why nobody does anything by themselves, that's why. Lastly, its neighbourhood file code is "O025". Since most 'hood creators use N***, I figured O*** would be a safe bet.

CUSTOM CONTENT :cylon:

Required
• A neighbourhood camera hack. Any, really! Without one, your camera will be confined to the sea between the three cities.
Lucia's Multi PT Set - Note that you only need the character files. If you don't want them to actually pollinate Sims, then don't install the controller package. If you don't want them to be generated for all neighbourhoods, then just put them into the neighbourhood's Characters folder. They will reside on the city but won't carry out any pollinations and will never appear in other neighbourhoods.

Optional
• Phaenoh's Downtown Highrise Apartments - Her policy does not allow other creators to include her lots in neighbourhoods, so you'll have to download it and place it in the world yourself. There's an empty lot in Seashire marking where it is supposed to be placed.
Apartments and Shopping on the same lot - Not needed, but with it, Phaenoh's apartment will have handy NPCs which will work as DJs, bartenders, etc.
SimLogical's ShinyTyme NPC Everywhere hack(you'll need to scroll down a bit to find it) - Not needed, but with it, joandsarah77's apartment will have an Uni Chef which will make food for free, which is very useful if you're that badly off to live there.

DOWNLOAD

There are two versions of this neighbourhood available. Pick your choice:

Type 1 - The city has no playable families in it. While there are still townies around, all houses are empty allowing you to go nuts with your own families.
Type 2 - The city has six playable families, each thriving in their houses and with memories, relationships and love webs(which are more like crush webs - there is only one situation which is comparable to a love triangle)

These downloads are split into three parts each, so you'll need to download all three and then combine them to play with the neighbourhood. Complicated, I know, but the whole 'hood exceeds the MTS file size limit three times(144mb, maximum is 50mb), so I had no choice. If you don't want to deal with multiple parts, I've put both Type 1 and Type 2 available on Dropbox as one file.

NOTE: While you can overwrite Type 1 downloads with Type 2 downloads with no real harm(unless there is already a family living there), doing the other way around is not recommended!

CREDITS

Since I'm an awful builder, I think it's quite obvious that none of the lots in this city were made by me. Here is a list of all lots I have used in this neighbourhood, links back to them, and their respective creators. Enjoy!

ElDorado Court by ScaryRob
ConcreteApts #02 by ScaryRob
Highrise Apartments by Phaenoh
Purple Lining Tower by d_dgjdhh
BluKompressor Heights by blukompressor
42 Road to Nowhere by getaris
Family Fun Center by hoffmansc
"Down on your luck" hostel by joandsarah77
Modern-Minimalism Condos by josheo360
Stockton Apartments by novemberlove
Modesty Apartments by Liv
City Center Lofts Refurbished by AndraNaberrie
Buckingham Apartments by LERSIM
Classic Apartments with General Store by Slartibartcat
Permissive Apartment by meriel
Vetrio Farms by cord11
Meg A. Byte's Residence by Klemens
Ocean View Apartments Refurbished by CatherineTCJD
Tower Of Power by hellmonja
86 9th Street Apartment by TonyMontana87
Tredegar Tower by itas84
Mainstreet by Ekevdb
Eco-Logical Apartments by Amura
George's Corner by Batanau
Midland Park Townhouses by Snufflepaws
Oceanview Terrace Condos by robkingsbury
Bouleau Boulevard 1-3 by stoffelsim
BR Mansion by iSandor

These three lots belong to triciamanly:
Desert Palm Apartments
Urban Heights
Water's Edge Condos

These two lots belong to stellmaria:
Ibaieder Suites
Abando Lofts

These three lots belong to TheDeadSim:
Redwood Units
New Southern Villa
Country Charm

All of these "Downtown Series" lots belong to vwsr2cool:
Cinema
Mall
Dealership
Public Library

I also added in ten screenshots of how they look in the world at the first post in the Comments section.

Also HUUUUGE thanks to SimPE, the Sim Blender, the Sim Manipulator and the Weather Controller for letting me edit Sims' memories and other things without having to start the hood with ol' Gene Crystal as a young toddler just so I could get the memories, career levels, weather and relationships.