A basic map is one that does not include any buildings, but has all the rest of the neighborhood in place. Everything that needs Create a World to do has already been done, and what's left is to build the houses in-game. Some players really just want a blank canvas upon which to build (like SC4 maps for TS2) so this is the most basic type of neighborhood/world map you can upload here to MTS. But even for a basic map there's still quite a bit that needs doing. Below are the minimum requirements for a world upload:

• Terrain sculpting: Your terrain should look plausible – not just flat and boring, or overly jagged.

• Terrain painting: Terrain paints should blend in a logical way from one to another - a smooth blend from grass to sand, for example. Mountains should be dark and mountainy, grassy areas green and grassy. If you're building a non-realistic world (like an alien or fantasy environment), it needs to still look plausible and nice. Please do not use the option to auto-paint your world in CAW - or if you do, don't just stop there. Auto-paint creates a very blotchy grass-and-stone look which may be a decent start for certain areas, but auto-paint alone is not enough.

• Optimized: You should not use more than 8 different terrain paints per chunk, for improved performance, and you should organize your lots and world objects into logical layers for better performance.

• Custom textures (optional): If you make your own terrains, road, or sidewalk textures, they should be seamless without repeating too much visually, have the right scale, and look good in-game.

• Road network: Place intersections where your roads meet, and at the end of any dead end road. Cars/vehicles will not be able to turn around otherwise. Use the road tools to give your roads and sidewalks a smooth grade (i.e. if you were driving down it, your car wouldn't tilt dramatically from side to side but would stay mostly level). If you have a very steep cliff or hill, you may need to make your roads wind back and forth instead of going up near-vertically.

• Good amount of lots: Even a small world should have enough lots for several residential homes, rabbit holes, and community lots. Extra lots in various sizes allow players to add their own buildings. Too many lots is better than not enough.

• Standard sizes: Lot sizes should usually be a multiple of 5: 10x25, 20x20, 30x50, 40x40, 50x60, etc. (the exception being the 64x64 lots the game uses as its largest size), so that players can easily move buildings around. Look at the bottom right corner in CAW when dragging out a lot to see the size - no guesswork. You -can- have other lot sizes for things like community lots or to fill in gaps, but try to keep to multiples of 5 whenever possible.

• Flat lots: Use the Flatten Terrain tool before placing a lot, so that you are always putting lots on a completely flat patch of ground (unless you have a very good reason to not have a flat lot, like a beach lot or one built into a hillside). This makes it easier to place and share lots.

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  Lot edges: Ensure that all your lot edges match the surrounding terrain. You will to carefully check each of the four edges of every lot, and ensure there aren't odd vertical lines like ||||| at the seam between lot and world (click on the image to the right for an extreme example). You may need to flatten edges or re-place the lot to fix this.

• Near roads: Lots should be placed next to a road in most cases, unless you have a very good reason not to do so. Make sure you use the grid tool so your lots are aligned right up against the roads too, without a gap.

• Proper Routing: Routing for both the camera and sims should make sense - areas that look like they'd be off-limits should actually be non-routable, and areas that look accessible should be easy to reach, with no random non-routable spots. You can find more information on routing in the CAW Help Document.

• 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.

• Spawners: You should have a good variety of spawners for gems, beetles, butterflies, etc., with some sort of logical placement.

Everything required for a Basic Map is also required for a Full Map, plus the following:

Lots:

A full set of lots (all the rabbit holes, all the community lots, wide range of residential lots) is often preferred by downloaders. But as building a full world with everything is a BIG job, we just ask that the lots which you have included are complete, whether that's 10 lots or 100.

• Rabbit holes - Decorated: Rabbit hole lots require decoration to make them look part of their neighborhood - benches, trees, terrain paint, etc., not just the rabbit hole building placed on an empty lot.

• Lots - Quality: The quality standards for the houses you build in a full map are the same as if you were uploading them separately to MTS. Please review our Lots and Houses Upload Guidelines quality section fully!. For lots screenshots in world uploads please see the screenshots section further down this page.

Sims:

• Sims - Quality: If you are doing a full map and including sims for a populated world (including sims is completely optional!), please make sure that your sims meet the MTS Creator Guidelines for Sims. This means unique faces for random "other" sims, and good likenesses if you're trying to make them look like real people. The standards for sims uploaded with a world are the same as if you uploaded them separately, so make sure they're good!

When you are finished creating your world, you can package it to a sims3pack file in Create a World. A sims3pack file with your world's name will then be created in the Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Exports\ folder. This is the file that you must share when uploading to MTS.

• You may also share your .world file as a "DIY" version of your world, but please put it in its own separate archive. Make sure to also include the associated folder for that .world as it will not work without the folder.

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.

Most worlds will be under our 50 mb file limit. If your archive file is larger than 50 mb, you will need to split it, to upload it in multiple parts. To do this, you will need an archive program like WinRAR that can compress a file but split it into multiple pieces. Click "more info" below for details.

It's important that you include certain information so that players know what to expect when they use your creation! Part of this is also so the MTS moderation staff knows your world has been made right.

You may want to copy-paste the headings here to use as a template. This information should be in the text description for your upload.

• Map Size: Tiny / Small / Medium / Large
• Spawn Points: What spawn points are there? Are EP spawn points or relic dig sites included?
• Routing Info: Where can sims not go? Where can the camera not go?
• Layering: How many layers do you have?
• Textures: How many textures have you used total? Do you have more than 8 textures per chunk anywhere in the world?
• Lots:
  • Number: Total number of lots, and lot sizes and quantity of each (example: 50 total lots - 25 of 20x20, 15 of 40x40, 10 60x60)
  • Rabbitholes: None / All / Some (list)
  • Community Lots: None / All / Some (list)
  • Residential: Number of residential lots, and lot sizes and quantity of each (as above).

You must provide full links and credit (for example: "Modern Fencing by Simmer123 at (link)" - what the thing is, who made it, and a link) for all items used in your world. This means all custom build items, objects, plants, patterns, required mods, or custom content on sims. If you do include content, it needs to be okay with the content's creators, so you will need to check their policies. You must indicate whether the content is included or not (so downloaders know if they need to get it separately). We suggest you do this with large, bold headings of "Included" and "Required but not included" so it's clear.

Included content:

• Items installed as sims3packs that are included with your world's sims3pack.
• Package files you manually added to the archive alongside the sims3pack (usually content you've made yourself for your world.

Required but not included content:

• Items installed as sims3packs that were included with your world's sims3packs, but that you cleaned out of the world file. You can remove unwanted content from the sims3pack using CUSTARD.
• Package file custom content made by others which downloaders will need to get separately.

If you made your world without CC, you of course don't need to list any. A note: "No CC" or "Made without CC" is nice to have, but not mandatory.

For all worlds, you must have:

• at least ONE picture from high above your world, showing the whole thing. If you can't fit it all in one shot, you can take several different shots as long as it's obvious you've shown everything. You can label the overview pictures with text if you want - just make sure it doesn't cover up too much.
• at least FOUR 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.

If you have built lots for your world as part of a full map, you will also need to have:

• A front picture showing the whole lot for at least 5 residential and 5 community lots (if you have less than 5 of either type, you can just show however many you have). You may choose which lots you show, but we suggest you choose lots that are representative of the overall style of the world. We have this requirement so both MTS staff and people who may download your world can see that your lots are good quality. You may also include additional pictures like floorplans, backside picture, comparison picture if a lot is based on a real life building. But those are completely optional!

If you have made sims for your world, you will also need to have:

• A close-up picture of the sim's face, from the front, with the sim wearing a neutral face expression (like a mugshot) - not smiling, laughing, etc., for at least 5 different 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. This is so MTS staff and downloaders can see that your sims are good quality. You may, of course, include other pictures like a full-body picture, posing pictures, whatever, to show off your sim how you like, but please make sure to include at least the above. For sims based on a person or character, you can include a comparison picture of the real person, ideally similar to the close-up picture of your sim.

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.

You may wish to take optional extra pictures to show off your world. Additional pictures are good! Show people all kinds of interesting stuff, all the little details you've put in.

Because worlds are so complex, it may be easier for you to compose your upload in MTS's Creator Feedback Forum first, where you can start collecting your pictures, information, etc., work on your text formatting, and make sure you've got it all together. Then it's just a matter of copy-pasting when you go to upload! You can also ask for testers there, if you want some folks to take a look at your world in-game and let you know that everything works right.