• Tuning Mods - Versions: Whenever possible, tuning mods should be done in different flavours. For example, don't just double a value, but offer it half, tripled, and none. This is both due to the ease of making multiple flavours, and to make it easier for downloaders to find a flavour they want to use in their games. If you have a good reason for doing one specific tuning value rather than flavours, make sure you state it in the text of your post.

• Usefulness: Your mod should be useful to the player and do not repeat functions available through game cheats. For example, buy pricing mods or mods that unlock items available in buydebug add no value as they are already available or the player can use motherlode.

You will need to include certain information. Some of these are only applicable for certain types of mods:

• Mod Function: State clearly what your mod does. What is it for? What does it change in game? Where should they expect to see the changes? You need a good description of exactly what it's for and what it does.

• Mod Type: State clearly what kinda mod your mod is. Is it a resource override (aka default replacement), recategorizer or hider, slider, XML tuning, or a full script mod?

• Tuning Mods - List values: List the default values and what you changed them to. Example: "The default chance of this is set to 1.0 - I have with this value set to 2.0, 1.5, 0.5, and 0.1."

• Trait Mods - Whims and Buffs: All traits modify a Sim's tendency for certain whims. Please list all changes to whim rolls and frequency for each whim effected by this trait We also need to know what category the trait can be found under in CAS. Please clearly describe any added buffs and buff duration, and any effects to skills, careers, and relationship scores.

• Special instructions: If your mod needs something extra to install/use, please add an instruction on how to install/use your mod. This is especially important for .ini file mods!

• Post formatting: Please format your description in a readable format. Lists, headings, and proper use of bold text where appropriate is a lot easier to read and follow than a giant block of text.

• Conflicts: Please list out any known conflicts and state with what kind of other mods your mod may conflict.

• Overrides - Overriden Resources: If you have overriden (default replaced) an item, make sure to clearly state what you've overriden.

• Built with Game Version: Please state the related base game version you built your mod with in your upload post! People need to know if they can run your mod in their game. If you made sure that your mod is compatible with other game versions as well, you can, of course, list those too.

• Updates and Remixes - Credits: If you have uploaded a remix or update of someone else's mod, you need to credit the original creator and link to the original upload. Please add the creator's name, and a clickable link to the page where the original mod can be found, or (if the original page is down) the creator's profile or website.

If your mod adds new sim animations please also refer to the guidelines for poses and animations, specifically the paragraph under Screenshots regarding "pose animation".

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.

• Right files: Mod files must be in .package format. Do not upload a simple xml, obj, or other game format.

• Essential Files only: Your upload should not be cluttered with extra files that it doesn't need to work, such as resource.cfg, a full subfolder structure, or a complete cloned object for one resource override. Please just stick to the essential files, as simply as possible.

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.