• Use Blank Templates: All neighbourhoods must be built using blank templates. Before you start building your neighborhood, you need to install clean and empty neighborhood templates. If you choose to include sims, you may do so after, but the blank templates are a requirement. Most of the templates are available for download on MATY, so do a google search for them.

• Uniqueness: Your neighborhood should be unique and different.

• Playable:. Make sure you have some flat buildable areas and a practical road grid.

• Realistic: Getting creative with your terrain sculpting is fine, but remember to strive for realism.

• Decorations: Your decorating should add to the overall beauty and theme of your neighborhood, with good choices and placement of items - neither too many nor too few. Try to keep your decorations to a particular style - use trees and flowers that make sense for the type of region you're building. Giving your neighborhood a particular unique flavour and style makes it more charming and realistic than just using one of everything, or a random pyramid because it'd look cool.

• Sims: It is a good idea to first make a backup of your neighborhood without any of the families in it in case the sims themselves are the reason why your neighborhood is not being accepted. This will give you the chance to create new families and try again, or simply upload without them. After a sim has been added to a neighborhood, it is impossible to remove all it's data from the neighborhood, so if your sims are the only problem with your neighborhood, you can't just delete the characters and try again. It will mess up the neighborhood, and we will not accept it. So PLEASE BACK UP YOUR WORK!

• Main Image: We need a main image for your hood - it should not show map edges, but it should also not be too low to show the whole map. Please remember to show all of the roads - don't cut any off!

• Detail Pictures: Show at least THREE other pictures of some of the views people will see in your world. This should be nice scenic views, taken from a lower angle (a sim's eye view, or a low player's eye view). You can of course take more pictures to show off all the pretty sights.

• Individual Lot Pictures:. If you have built on the included lots, you will need to give a full set of info and pictures for at least 10 lots - 5 residential and 5 community. You may choose which 10 lots you show, but we suggest you choose lots that are representative of the overall style of the world.

The pictures you must include for individual lots are:

• Front view: A picture of the front of your lot with all levels showing, from a low enough angle that it shows the structure well.
• Floorplans: An overhead picture of each floor.

Please remember, for your required pictures:

• No photoshopping: Do not apply filters like sharpen, contrast, etc. to the required pictures, as downloaders want to see what your lot will look like in their game, not your skills at using Photoshop.
• As packaged: Your pictures should show your lot as you have packaged it, so that what downloaders see is what they'll actually get, or need to download, for the lot to look the same in their game.

• Comparison Picture: If your lot is based on a real-life or fictional lot (for example, a replica of the Falling Water house or the Disney Castle), you will need to include at least one comparison picture of the lot it is based on.

• Sim Pictures: If you are including sims with a save file, you will need to give a full set of info and pictures for at least 5 sims. You may choose which 5 sims, but as with lots, we suggest you choose ones that are representative of your creator style and quality.

The pictures you must include for individual sims are:

• Neutral Face: One picture of the sim from straight-on (not a profile or 3/4 view) with the sim wearing a neutral expression (no big smiles, wide open mouth, etc.)

• Full Body: One picture of the sim from head to toe, preferably in a neutral pose (just standing there or walking), not animating wildly.

• Comparison Picture: If your sim is based on a real-life or fictional person (a celebrity, character from a movie, tv show, anime, comic, etc.) and not made up out of your own imagination, then you will need to include at least one picture of that person. They must have a neutral facial expression, and be shown as front-on as possible.

A new change has been implemented here. Instead of requiring full images of every lot included in your neighborhood, we are loosening back to what we require of TS3 Worlds. You are only required to show 10 of your lots now. Please remember though, that they are still subject to all of the TS2 Lots Guidelines. Your moderator also will be looking at the images from your neighborhood to make sure you aren't just doing 10 good lots and all the rest sub par. It is within their right to ask for images of any additional lots to check on quality.

• Number: Total number of lots, and lot sizes and quantity of each (example: 50 total lots - 25 of 20x20, 15 of 40x40, 10 60x60)

• Community Lots: None / All / Some (list)

• Residential: Number of residential lots, and lot sizes and quantity of each (as above).

• (Full Map Only): For the 10 representative lots (5 residential, 5 community) you've chosen to include pictures for, you need to also include the standard required info for them. That means you need a description of the lot in text, describing its purpose, features, style, etc. You will also need the lot size (25x30, 64x64, etc.) and the lot price (the price of the lot, both furnished and unfurnished). For more on where to find and how to provide this info, please see: Lots and Houses Upload Guidelines.

• Sims: If you are including a save file with sims, please include some basic information for the 5 representative sims you have chosen to take pictures of:

• Description: A basic text description of their personality, history, hopes and dreams, whatever. Again, you don't have to write a novel, but at least give us an idea of who the sim is meant to be.

• Age, Career, Location, Etc.: Toddler/Child/Teen/Young Adult/Adult/Elder? If they have a job, what is it? What lot do they live at? Are they married? Since sims included in a world are already living their lives, give some basic info on who they are and what they're doing.

Custom Content. If you have used any custom items in your world, you MUST provide full links and credit for ALL items used in the world. This means any custom build items, objects, patterns, or content used on any included sims must be linked and credited.

Make sure to state whether or not the content is included or not (as downloaders need to know if they need to download it all separately or not). If you do include content, it must be okay with that content's creator. Please check their policies.

For instructions on compressing your files into an archive, please see: Creator Guidelines: Creating Archive Files.

• Do not include multiple archives with the same contents - that is, please don't put your files in both a .zip as well as a .rar because some people only want .zip files. Choose one format.

• Do not double-compress your files... a .rar file inside another .rar file (or any other archive inside another) doesn't compress it anymore, and it makes it so we can't see the contents without downloading, and also just makes an extra step for the people downloading.

• The file size limit on MTS is 50 mb. If you exceed this limit you will need to split your archives. This should probably never come up except for large worlds for The Sims 3, or huge sets of smaller items.

Make sure you only mark the EPs/SPs required that your upload actually needs! Don't just mark them all! For specifics, please read: MTS2:Creator_Guidelines/Compatibility