A while ago I started up this little project purely for my own amusement. I'd always wondered if there was some larger simworld out there in which the seperate hoods were situated, rather than them being floating squares in the middle of nothing. How do you get from Pleasantview to Bluewater Village? Where is the elusive Sim City located? The Road to Nowhere might go nowhere, but where does it come from?

So I popped open SC4 and decided I'd try and figure it out. The map that was created in the process isn't based on anything except my imagination, and the 'climates' different hoods seem to have. With regards to the Megahood, I still think it's an interesting idea, even though I'm not sure anymore if the layout I created back then corresponds with how I now think about the layout of SimNation.

Here's a preview of how it looks in SC4:






This would be an 'actual map' that I skewed in Photoshop in an attempt to reconstruct how it would all look in a top-down view. I tried to let the terrains of the premade hoods determine the layout of the rest of the terrain, and create a believable geography. Note that I'm not an expert on mapmaking, mountainformation or any other fancy geographical thingiebobs, so it's fully possible some inconsistency or inaccuracy got into it.  I'll at least pride myself on the fact that my rivers don't run uphill :p

The different coloured bands are the 'climates' that I associate with the neighbourhoods. From top to bottom:

• Blue: Very cold mountain climate, near-permanent winters.
• Teal: Cold mountain-ish climate, but with seasons, even if summers are mostly wet and chilly. Spring-fall-fall-winter or similar.
• Green: Temperate climate, spring-summer-fall-winter.
• Yellow: Warm, mediterranean climate, humid, possibly with rain seasons. Spring-summer-summer-fall or similar. My decision to rebuild Desiderata Valley into what it is in my game now was mainly based on its location on this map :)
• Orange: Desert, sort of micro-climates as they're very localised. I'm really not sure anymore about the placement of Sedona/Oasis Valley/Viper Canyon anymore, it feels forced. Strangetown is on the complete edge of the map, which makes sense in that it is remote, but not really if you consider that the Megahood hoods should be within eachothers reach somehow. I'm not sure how to solve this problem, suggestions are always welcome :)
• Red: Hot, tropical climates. Twiikki Island is supposed to be in there somewhere as well, but apparently it got a bit lost in the process.

I might rework this map, as I'm not completely satisfied with it anymore. There's various problems with it that I've mentioned (though I'm rather fond of the relation between Pleasantview, Bluewater Village and Belladonna Cove I created). Especially the locations of the desert towns bothers me, Strangetown in particular. I'd really appreciate any and all ideas you guys might have about it, as I'm a bit stuck :) I'd also be interested to hear about how you envision the wider world of TS2 and how the hoods are interconnected.
General comments are welcome as well, of course, and if anyone spots a bit of land on the map they would really like to have a hood made out of, let me know. I quite enjoy messing around in SC4 and making terrains.

The next Megahood update is in the pipeline as well, so no worries, I haven't forgotten about it.