Tutorials in this sub-section are designed to be done in order, building upon knowledge as you go. If you are new to making Sim Settlements 2 content, this is where you should start.
⇒ 00 - Intro to Addon Creation for Sim Settlements 2
Learn about how these tutorials are laid out.
⇒ 01 - Getting Started with Addon Creation
Prepare your environment for making addons, install new software, configure files, etc.
This is a great beginner's guide to get used to how add-on packs are set up, it will walk you through creating a recolored version of a building plan. Highly recommended you go through this - regardless of what kind of addon you want to create.
⇒ 03 - Your First Building Model
Create new buildings for Sim Settlements 2 without any 3d modeling experience by kit-bashing interesting pieces together! Then learn how to stick them onto a plot using the Building Plan system.
⇒ 04 - Decorating Your Buildings
Add furniture, decorations, and other objects to your building to make it feel like more than a shell. Then learn how to use our simple import tool to instantly create building plans from your design ideas!
Create levels 2 and 3 for a building, then learn how to tie it all together using the simple import tool to make a fully functional building plan in no time!
⇒ 06 - Advanced Building Customization
In this guide I'll show you how to setup multi-person support, control the position/style of ASAM Sensor used with your building, the position of the HOLO Icons, how to randomize your clutter, decorate for the holidays, allow your Commercial building to display what it has in stock, and more!
Learn to set up your buildings so that NPCs can actually navigate inside of them. (SS1 Addon vets - this method is way simpler than what you learned back then - no more pink blocks!)
This covers a variety of topics and questions that will be useful to you as you try and make use of all of the knowledge you just acquired going through this series to create a Building/Skin add-on pack.
⇒ 00 - Preparing to Create City Plans
Set up Fallout 4 to allow you to export your settlement designs, as well as some recommendations for mods that will make your building experience more enjoyable.
Quickly turn one of your settlement designs into a shareable City Plan using a simple export system and web tool to generate a plugin. No Creation Kit or XEdit work required!
Generate a City Plan with levels that can upgrade over time in the player's game, building organically towards your final design.
⇒ 03 - Wasteland Reconstruction Kit
Guide to a special mod that will dramatically increase the number of items you have to build with, without adding a bunch of mod requirements.
This will describe some of the advanced things you can do with City Plans, such as manipulating plots, scrapping items between upgrades, or if you get really advanced, you can even add extra items to City Plans that only spawn under certain conditions - such as in response to quest completion!
This guide will go over what exactly HQ is, the sorts of things you can do with it, and what you can expect to learn in this series. It will also point you at some of the other tutorials on this site that will help you get up to speed and ready to create your own HQ content!
Jump into HQ content creation quickly by making an alternate design for one of the rooms. No 3d modeling, coding, or advanced knowledge required!
⇒ 02 - Understanding Room Configs
Learn about Room Configs - which control the "What should this room be used for?" prompts you get after cleaning a room in HQ. These allow you to transform any room in HQ into anything you like - even something never done before in Chapter 2!
⇒ 03 - Adding Room Functionality
Dive into adding more than just visuals to your room designs. Here you'll learn about setting up new functionality so your room design can impact the gameplay. We'll also cover in more detail many of the fields we glossed over during the "Your First Room Design" tutorial.
⇒ 04 - Updating Room Designs COMING SOON!
Even those of us who have been working on HQ for ages often need to make changes to our designs. In this guide we'll go over the various ways you can edit your room designs, whether it be updating the layouts, changing functionality, or fixing mistakes.
⇒ 05 - Room Upgrades COMING SOON!
Not every project needs to be an entire room design, perhaps you want to add an upgrade to change the lighting, or one to add some turrets. In this guide we'll go over how to set up upgrades that affect a portion of a room, as well as cover adding slots to your room designs so you can create layers of upgrades or even little tech trees!
⇒ 06 - Unlockable HQ Projects COMING SOON!
Unlocks and requirements with HQ work a little differently than they do with things like building plans. In this guide, we'll go over the various ways you can condition and trigger your projects to become available for HQ!
Part way into the Chapter 3 story, envoys will begin to appear at HQ and offer their allegience to the player and return to help advise the player on decisions. They can then even be a part of the finale battle of the main quest! In this guide, we'll show you how to add aditional allies into this system!
These are specific tutorials targeting one aspect of Sim Settlements 2 addon creation. They will frequently assume you have knowledge gained by going through the Guided Series (some are parts copied directly from the Guided Series).
Configure a new Addon mod to be able to register its content with Sim Settlements 2.
Design your own discoverable beer recipes, or if you're making your own buildings - how to make a functional alternate Brewery!
⇒ Character Stats and Preferences
Set up characters in the base game or any mod/DLC to prefer certain building classes, plans, or skins that match their backstory. In that same vein, we've got a system for correcting SPECIAL stats on NPCs that don't see to match their backstory, all without editing or requiring those NPCs in your addon!
Teaches you how to setup a custom worldspace mod that has settlements to work with SS2's caravan system and the VR management tool in Chapter 2!
Explains the Discovery System whereby Caravan teams sent with the Mark 1 Beacon system can discover things. This is based on the Unlock System and so can trigger virtually any content you want!
Add custom flags and banners the player can swap on the fly across their settlement all at once. This even covers taking images you find and converting them into a format Fallout 4 can use with free software, so anything can be made into a flag!
Learn how to add new decorations to the holidays, or even introduce your own holidays into the system!
Learn how to set up any unique NPC to work as a special Leader for settlements with traits to add interesting changes to the settlement they run. In addition, you can actually create your own custom traits, no programming required, to design exactly how those changes work!
⇒ Magazine Printer COMING SOON!
Inject magazines, your own designs, or existing from the game, into the Magazine Printing System that will inject magazines into SS2 Bookstores for you to purchase! Or if you're making buildings - how you can flag yours to provide this service as well.
Write your own articles for the New Bugle in-game newspaper which reacts to in-game events printing articles that reflect what's happened! Or if you're making buildings - how to ensure yours is counted as another branch of the paper!
Setup more creatures for player's to purchase as Pets through our Pet Store commercial plot type, as well as inject new names for the player to select and apply to any of them!
Shows how to register mod-created Ammo, Armor, Chems, and Weapons with SS2 so they can be recognized as Supplies when donated through the City or War Planner's desks.
Explains the Unlock System which can be used to trigger new content, with or without some exciting fanfare sounds and pop-ups. This includes new buildings, skins, characters, flags, etc, or even content NOT from SS2!
Explains the World Repopulation System which allows the various inaccessible buildings in the world to gain residents! With this system you can design the insides of the buildings, determine who lives in them, and even arrange to decorate their front doors. In addition, if you'd like to help expand the reach of the system, there are details for making patches to SS2!
These are informational guides without explicit steps to follow and are supplemental materials to help you better understand and create content for Sim Settlements 2.
⇒ Building Model Guidelines and Pitfalls
Important information about creating building models, including useful tips to ensure your models work well with Sim Settlements 2, and also how to identify models that might be problematic.
⇒ Usage Requirements Lock Explanation
Explains the recurring Usage Requirements locks found throughout SS2 addon creation, that allows for locking content behind certain in-game events or states.
⇒ Industrial Conversion and [Commercial] Production
Learn how the Industrial Conversion and Production classes work so you can better integrate your building ideas with them.
Lists and explains the various default effects SS2 supports without any coding required from the addon maker to make use of for custom Trait definitions.
Explains the Theme Tag system and how to appropriately tag Building Plans and Skins with them.
A set of guidelines we used on our design team to add some constistency to our level design and also speed up the process of creating levels for our City Plans.
Guide covering all of the fields in the online web tool for making City Plan plugins at https://www.simsettlements.com/tools/cpV2maker.php
Guide covering how Units and Loadouts are used in the SS2 War Mechanics.
If you have created your own Sim Settlements 2 Add-on, please post a message on our forums, so we know about your mods!