MTS2:Creator Guidelines/Careers

This page was last edited on the 3rd August 2011, 13:47.

Creator Guidelines - Careers

Creating a custom career involves a lot of writing and a fair amount of creativity. As such it's a shame to let all that effort go to waste - so it's important that you ensure your upload meets the following criteria for approval; otherwise you'll just end up depriving downloaders of what may be a brilliantly written career due to mere technical details.

Quality

Time and effort

Most good creators spend hours upon hours on even simple creations. We understand that not everything has to be that difficult, but we do expect you to not just slap together something in 15 minutes and upload it and expect it to get accepted. Really try to put some serious effort into what you create, and it will show through in the quality. This is probably the hardest one to quantify, but it's something that is obvious whenever upload moderators look at an upload: have you really expended some serious time and effort on a creation? You can't just crank out a bunch of stuff in a short amount of time and expect it to be good. Nor can you spend a while just fiddling with something but not really trying and expect a good result either.

Duplication

Search MTS and see just how many texture edits or meshes have already been done for the particular type of item you're creating - do not duplicate existing edits/mesh edits (i.e. if someone's already edited that particular couch or whatever you're making, do you really need to do it again?). We would, however, accept the same kind of thing if your version had significantly improved features (better textures, uv mapping, etc.) than an existing item.

EP Compatibility (*)
Being graced now with a full 7 EPs, there's really no excuse for careers not being EP compatible. If you're not sure, there is a tutorial for making careers EP compatible here.

Overwriting (*)
Custom careers must not overwrite Maxis ones (unless they are specifically intended to be default replacements of an EA career). It's a simple rule, but may not always be obvious to beginning creators. Instructions on ensuring this are in the same tutorial as linked above.

Quality of Writing (*)
Text is the main part of a career, as such it needs to be as close to perfect as possible. All text - job levels, job descriptions, and chance cards - must be triple checked for spelling and grammar; and must make general logical sense. Make sure you change the pronouns in male and female versions, and be careful in your use of $Me.

Job Pay (*)
Unless your career is specifically meant to be unrealistic, make pay levels roughly congruent with the pay of Maxian careers. A table of the basegame career wages is available here for comparison.

Custom Icons (*)

Custom icons: Are required, unless you have a good reason for exception. They should meet the standards laid out in this mini-tutorial - that is; be the roughly right colour (if it's a single-colour silhouette), NOT be a random photo, and have a transparent background. You may use an EA icon if it is appropriate; the main purpose of this requirement is to ensure that the UI looks neat when your career is in use.

Screenshots

Required Images (*)
You must attach your career's icon, even if it is for whatever reason not custom - the icon is usually the best choice for default thumbnail, too. You may also include ingame pictures such as the carpool, uniform, a particular chance card/job description/promotion bubble: however these are not required.

Uploading

Zip, Rar, or 7z

To upload your file(s) to MTS, you will need to compress them into an archive file, which makes them smaller and allows you to include many files in one download. The archive file formats we currently accept are .zip, .rar, and .7z. 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.

Good title
You'll need a good title for your upload which describes what it is, and interests people in downloading it. Good titles: Mission-Style Living-Room Set 10 Simmer Way (Large family home) Fluffy Party Dresses Bad titles: My First Upload! Lipstick

Required Information (*)

Information: Your upload post must tell us the following: How many chance cards are complete. All job titles. All job descriptions. All wages. All work days. The easiest way to present the last of these is something like this: Talking Example - §200 - M, W, Th, F, Sa Your job is simple. You sit in a wiki article, reading yourself to passers-by. This description would include brief mention of your promotion prospects; but really, from here, where can you go but up?

Additional Stuff

• 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 career is ready for uploading, use the Creator Feedback Forum to get feedback on it.