I'm creating this thread with the sole intent of gathering feedback, ideas, and for showcasing the development of Anywhere City. So what is "Anywhere City"? Long story is it's a mainhood neighborhood which I am also creating unique content specifically for - all inspired by the Grand Theft Auto 2 video game released in 1999. But in short, it's a passion project which I eventually want to expand further to become it's own alternate Simlish-fied version of its universe and lore. I ask for your ideas and feedback to help as I progress deeper into this creation. You don't need to have played GTA2 to offer your ideas, though it helps. So let me get right into it now and show you what's what



So that in a nutshell is my interpretation of Anywhere City thus far. This thread will be updated as I progress and as we share ideas and feedback. Thanks for looking!

I took some renders online and edited them to fit the billboards and lore. They both depict the Zaibatsu Corp.

The top-down one says in Simlish "Rule the Road! Join Zaibatsu Today!" and the one other one says "Fun for the good times".

It looks incredible, and as always, your lots look perfectly constructed with great geometry and layout, plus great facades. I love it. The decorative buildings also look really good. I've never played GTA, although it's always appealed to me; however, I did play Saints Row, which is a slightly less serious and more mischievous copy. XD Even so, I think that regardless of whether some people download it because of GTA, the neighborhood looks great enough to play and experience the story through The Sims. Importing textures is great because it gives a unique touch, and textures really change how a building looks. They're also useful for people who want to use them for other things.

Thanks for your kind words.

All my textures are free to use as people like. Like how my creator policy is, all I ask is basic credits and a name drop. Unfortunately a lot (and I do mean a lot - over 200 textures) of the GTA2 textures are window and doors. These I likely won't port over since they have little use in TS2.

Yeah, I've yet to have a set-in-stone storyline, but that's alright. I have a rough guide of what I want to do and achieve with this neighborhood. Eventually the content I create for it will be more than just textures overrides. But for now, I use the skills I have.

This neighborhoods lots are bit funky, but yet again the buildings in GTA2 are blocky and odd to begin with. A public beta can be expected once the downtown district is done, though there is no timeline for that!

I just got done making more content. This time it's new floors and walls plus a retexture of a nhood deco building which I upscaled and replaced the signage on. Prior to this change the building had a exclamation mark sign, so I changed it to the logo used by GTA2's Scientist gang.




Lastly, I made three Sims in bodyshop which are all mentioned on the "Head Radio" music station. There's Phanny Joe Styles, Johnny Ricaro, and Flamel Cortez. See the attached images for them. they've also been added to the OP under a new Sims spoiler.

I laughed so hard at some of the texture descriptions. XD The apartments look great too, the layout is quite practical.

Unfortunately I've been getting the dreaded pink soup like crazy playing this 'hood so unfortunately some neighborhood deco things were on the chopping block. What've had to do in this area is remove a lot of the faux traffic as many of the meshes I used prior were 3k~ vertices each with 1k textures each. It was causing a small big of lag as the camera panned. I also remove a couple trees here and there, mainly around the cathedral cemetery as it too was performance heavy. The cathedral itself might eventually be on the chopping block too as I seek to make a proper church lot in that area:



In this area I removed two tall buildings and one small building, and all the plaza things related to them (park benches, light posts, shop facades, etc). I've also removed most of the faux traffic. However, the positive here is that by having done so I made plenty of more room for more actual lots in this area:


Also small thing related to cc, I brightened up the terrain textures to fit better visually. They were a bit too dark before.

The Funabashi district is a small area east of the cathedral that mixes Japanese style with the 1950s-era Brutalist architecture. Square and bulky like most lots of Anywhere City, these lots are in a Yakuza gang controlled area. The Grey and Black neighborhood deco buildings seen in the 'hood image will eventually be demolished to make room for more Funabashi lots. That's why I consider this the "beginning" as this area as it is far from done, but I've enough to show off the general style now.

I've decided to make it fit best into a Simlish version of the GTA2 universe it would be best to make some custom careers for it. Insofar I've gotten the Yakuza career done using Bidou's editor within SimPE. All it needs now is a unique icon and to be play tested. Once I get the icon done, I will upload the career here so it can get a proper playtest from someone else. Maybe @simsample or @Sokisims can do a playtest for of it too so I know it works in different game configurations?

I plan on making one career for each one of the 8 major gangs (starting with downtown gangs first) as well as 11 part-time careers for the Sims that are based off GTA2 radio DJs, such as the ones in the OP.

For each of the careers, the chance cards will mostly be based off events that happen during the missions/story of GTA2 or references to the stuff that can happen during normal non-mission gameplay. There's actually a lot of gruesome things (Hotdog Homicide anyone?) that happen in the storyline so not everything will be referenced for sake of keeping it Simlish and more PG-13.



Edit: There's a couple typos here and there in those images that I've since corrected.