• Realism: Lots based on an actual building type or specific building should look like what it supposed to resemble (for example a castle should not just be a huge building with stone walls, but should look like an actual castle). Lots not intended to be realistic can be more fanciful, but should still have some logic to them, and be aesthetically pleasing.
• Architecture: The way the lot is built should be unique, interesting, and more than just a basic box with four walls and a roof.
• Playability: The layout of the lot should make sense and allow sims to get around easily, with access to all the items they would want to interact with.
• Roofing: The roof pieces should connect each other nicely, and not leave gaps or connect at odd angles. The roof should fit the structure, look nice, and not just be an auto-roof (or resemble one).
• Furnishing/decoration: While we strongly encourage you to give lots at least basic furnishings (bed, toilet, shower, sink, fridge, lighting, etc.), it is not absolutely required to upload to MTS. Your lot can be an empty "shell" but should have a fully built structure, wall and floor coverings, and landscaping. You may include both a furnished and an unfurnished version of your lot separately in your upload.
• Apartments: When uploading apartments for The Sims 2, they should all be at least lightly furnished - that is, all the furniture required for a Sim to live (bed, toilet, fridge etc.) without the downloader having to use cheats to keep their Sim alive.
• Landscaping: Your lot should have some landscaping - but not just randomly placed trees or plants, some thought needs to go into it.
• Flat lot: Please make sure to start your building on a flat, level lot. You can still sculpt the terrain to your liking to make hills and valleys or whatever you wish, but the edges of the lot need to be level. If, for some reason, the design of the lot that you want to build absolutely requires an unlevel lot, you must make it VERY clear in the text of your post that it is an unlevel lot and thus should not be placed adjacent to any other lots, and that it can cause your neighborhood map to become unusable or have holes where it is placed.
• Other content: If you have made content for your lot, you must also provide additional pictures and/or information for your custom content (like polygon counts if you've made a mesh). Make sure you see check the appropriate category from the Creator Guidelines to see what we require. Tip: Consider uploading content you have made separately first, to the appropriate section (buy mode, walls and floors, etc.) so people looking for that type of content can more easily find it, and so you can show it off better with its own separate pics and info. Then you can just link it as credit to yourself when uploading your lot.

1) To package the lot, simply click on the lot from Neighborhood view, and click the * button as indicated in the screen shot below. This is also the perfect time to make note of the lot size and price

2) Then select "Package lot to a file" and click the check mark

3) You'll get a confirmation screen telling you the name of the file, and where it has been saved.

Sims: Only upload lots which have never had sims on them. Lots which have had sims on them at any time before the lot was packaged (even if you have moved the family out) should not be shared, since downloading such lots may cause save corruption. If you want to play-test your lot before uploading, create a copy of the lot and play-test on the copy.

The image is demonstrating using a sim in a sims2pack but the same works for lots - uncheck the unwanted content (in our example two unwanted meshes are being removed) and then click Save As and save a new sims2pack file with a new name.

Never save over your original sims2pack file - there's a bug in Clean Installer with that and you'll just end up with a corrupt file.

• For more information on using Clean Installer, please see the guide on the Clean Installer site, here.
• If you are having trouble using Clean Installer, including errors or issues with empty packages, please see MTS2's Clean Installer Support Forums for help.

Using a Mac? On Vista and it won't run? Your options are, unfortunately, pretty limited:

• You can ask a friend who can use Clean Installer to clean the lot for you (and hope they do it right).
• You can take out your Downloads folder when building lots and make them with no custom content.
• Another option is to have two or more different Downloads folders that you swap in and out as needed -- for example, one with everything you need to play your game, another one with just a few wallpapers for building simple lots, another one with medieval items for building castles, and so on

If you are in this situation, we're sorry, but we cannot risk people's games just to allow people to freely upload randomly-CC-filled lots.

You may include items of the following types with your upload:

• Free, Redistributable Content: You must check the creator's policy to see if they allow redistribution. If the creator's policy doesn't say anything about including content in lots, or if the original site is permanently offline, you can assume that the creator is happy for their content to be redistributed. For a quick list of policies for a lot of major sites, see: Creator Policies
• Content You Have Made Yourself: If you have made content yourself that you have used, you certainly may include that item as well. If it is a new mesh you need to include all of the regular information in the text of your post (poly counts, where it shows in the catalog, etc.) you would expect for a new mesh.
• Terrain Paints: Do NOT remove any terrain paints from your sims2pack. This is the one exception to the non-redistributable policies/pay/must provide credit rules. If you remove terrain paints from a lot it can cause it to crash for downloaders. Due to this, all terrain paint creators should expect their content to be included no matter what. Please provide a link and credit for these items whenever possible, but if a terrain paint is not clearly marked with a creator's name/website, you may still include it and it will not be grounds for rejection.
• TS2 Store Content: Since the TS2 store is no longer available, TS2 store content that is required for your lot may be included with the lot upload. This does not apply to preorder content which came on discs.

Items You Cannot Credit/Link: All items included with your upload must be properly credited. If you don't know where something came from, use something else.

• If you cannot remember where you got an item, consider asking at our Where Can I Find? Forum to see if anyone knows where it is from.
• If you still cannot find where it was from, you need to remove it from your upload. However, please try to make sure that it is not an item that is fundamental to the look of your lot.
• Try replacing the missing item with something else - but remember to re-take your screenshots.
• Please see the note under "Content that CAN be Included" under "Terrain Paints" for the exception to this rule!

Hacks: A lot with a hack or multiple hacks in the Sims2pack file will not be accepted.

CEP Files: A lot with CEP files included in the Sims3pack file will not be accepted.

Careers: A lot with a career or multiple careers in the Sims2pack file will not be accepted.

Sims: A lot that contains Sims in the file will not be accepted. You must move your sims out before packaging the lot.

Redundant Recolours: If when you scan you lot with Clean Installer it contains unused recolours, please remove them from the Sims2pack file.

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.

• Lot size: The lot's size, for example 2x3
• Lot price: The price to purchase the lot
• Included custom content: List custom content that has been included within the lot file or the archive, with links to the download page. Items that should be listed as included are:
  • Package files you have manually added to the archive alongside your sims2pack lot file (usually content you yourself have made)
• Required, but not included custom content: List custom content you have used on the lot, but not included within the lot file or the archive, with links to the download page. This is a "shopping list" for your downloaders and is just the Package format content that you have used on your lot.

Every item used on your lot - included or not - must have a link and credit to the creator, and if the item is not included, your link must go directly to the place where the item can be downloaded (not just the main site or the creator's profile). This should look something like: "Wood Pattern 3 by Armiel: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=511126" - what the item is, the creator's name, and a direct link to where the item can be downloaded.

If you haven't used any CC, then obviously there is no list to make - adding a note like "No CC" is not compulsory, but nice to have.

When it comes to required Expansion Packs, all of the Packs that you have installed when building the lot will be required. For Stuff Packs, only the ones that are essential to the look of the lot (for example, you used a certain chair for a certain SP all over the house) are required. The only exceptions are that University Life is treated as a Stuff pack by the game, and Mansions and Gardens is treated as an Expansion Pack.

• 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.

If your lot is a makeover of a pre-built Maxis lot, we also need comparison pictures from the original unmodified version:

• 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.

Keep the following in mind for your screenshots, especially the required ones:

• Size: 800 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall is a good size for the smallest pic you would want to upload. Your images can be up to 2560x1440 pixels, and 800 kb, so you have lots of space to work with!
• Lighting: For most things, it's best to take pictures in an interior room with good lighting. For lots, pictures should be taken during a nice sunny day, for floorplans, take the pictures with the lights ON.
• Clarity: Neither blurry, nor pixellated/crunchy. Do not size up small pictures to make a large one as this will blur them, and make sure not to use too much compression/too low quality when saving your images.
• Distance: Take your pictures so that your creation fills the screen without anything cut off at top or bottom - neither zoomed in too close, nor zoomed out too far.
• Distortion: If you resize your images, retain the aspect ratio so they don't get stretched or squashed. Take care when zooming in and out with the camera that you do not create a fisheye effect on your pictures.
• Photoshopping: Do not apply filters like sharpen, contrast, etc. to the required pictures, as downloaders want to see what your creation will look like in their game, not your skills at using Photoshop.
• Attached: All required images must be attached directly to the MTS upload, not just inserted using the img tag, so that even if the pics get deleted from your Photobucket (or other host), the upload on MTS is still complete.
• Show all items: For most areas, if you are uploading a set, you must take all the required pics for each item in the set. If there is an exception, it will be noted.
• Picture limit: You may upload up to 100 pictures for a single upload thread, so feel free to add some additional pictures just to show off your work to its best. Of course, keep it reasonable - nobody needs 50 pics to show off one sim or hair.
• Inline pictures: Inline pictures are those that use the [img] tag to show up in with the description text. So that it doesn't take too long to load, please keep this to no more than 4 pictures done inline, unless you put them inside an [infobutton] tag. To do this, see our guide on post formatting.

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.

• No user interface on pictures: Use cameraman mode to take pictures for upload.
• Unobstructed views: If your lot has dense foliage blocking the view of the house.
• Comparison pictures: If your lot is based on a real building.
• Back picture: Showing the lot from the rear.
• Other pictures: Showing the rooms, landscaping, etc. from a sim's eye view, to give an idea of the feel of the lot.

• If your upload is rejected or marked as changes required and you're not sure why, ask in Creator Issues.

• If you're not sure whether your lots are ready for uploading, use the Creator Feedback Forum to get feedback on it.