Community lots have existed in the Sims universe since the Hot Date expansion pack was released for the original. They were not true community lots (by virtue of the fact they were off-limits to simkids) - the first true community lots came with the Unleashed expansion pack.

Said lots come as standard in Sims 2, so let's pretend I'm John Noakes for a second (despite the fact I'm far too young to remember him on BP but anyway...) so I can use the immortal (to the Brits anyway) phrase: "Here's one I made earlier and all you need is a washing-up liquid bottle and some sticky-back plastic".

A lot on a lot needs a lot of juice for a pleasant experience

You'll be pleased as punch to learn that what you read here can be transferred to building such lots in the original game + Unleashed, or in Hot Date/Vacation/Studio Town/Magic. You'll also be happy to know that this tutorial of mine explains everything over spacing, layout, planning, etc as the principles are the same.

The tutorial assumes you already know how to play this game and build stuff so we're not going to hold your hand all of the way. In fact this is more information based than tutorial, in all honesty.

You can download this community lot from my Files section but its so heavy graphics wise that most of you will find it crawls badly. Just so you know.

A dual-level layout frees up room for a basement and even more opportunities to get clever

Foundations are cool. They're so cool that if they weren't inanimate they'd be wearing shades. Basically good use of foundations just breaks the landscape up, really. And yes there is a roof, thank you very much. These are built in the same way as they are on home lots, only without the financial restraints.

Take note of the problem regarding the plants. Easy solution to this, stay tuned. We've separated the good stuff onto the foundations, the other good stuff onto the ground with stuff that looks silly on foundations and had an accident with a cement machine. Yes.

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