Hey all, things have been quiet on the blogfront, but I’ve been plotting and planning behind the scenes, figuring out what kind of Sims 3 town I want to build and how I’m going to build it.
Two things currently stand in my way. One is the Create-A-World tool itself. It’s still incredibly frustrating to use and still makes me want to kick a hole through my computer screen most of the time. But…it’s getting better. I’m learning more about it every day, and I’m finally to the point where I think I can muddle through making a basic world. It’s going to be a long and sometimes painful process, but I’m determined to figure it out.
Last night I was able to place a couple of roads and lots without going into some kind of Hulk-rage, so that’s a start. I’m doing it somewhat backwards — placing my roads and lots before doing the terrain sculpting — but I needed to get an idea for just how big the town can be before it hits the boundaries of the camera-non-routable area. I’m going to attempt something like Riverview, that is, a landlocked area that doesn’t use the distant terrain objects. We’ll see how that goes. Maybe next time I’ll be able to post some actual pictures!
The second thing with which I struggle, as always, is the theme of my town. There are bazillions of options — how can I pin it down? I love so many things. Victorian, midcentury modern, Tudor, rural, suburban…and that’s just the architecture. What about plants and trees? Should it be tropical? Or something like the Pacific Northwest? How about an autumnal New England feel? Should it be a river town? Lake town? Hilly? Flat? Gah. Seriously, I’ve had this churning around in my brain for a month. I eventually settled for: whatever is easiest to build. Sounds like the slacker route, but this is my first world, and I want to play it at some point, not spend a year agonizing over lot placement.
So it’s going to be flat, surrounded by hills to block the ocean (because trying to use the distant terrain is maddening, and I don’t want to make an island). It’s going to have the kind of flora I might find in my own backyard. It’ll essentially be a small midwestern town, the kind that looks like it might be stuck in the 1950s. A bridge going over a river, a main street, a range of homes from trailers to ranches to Victorians, the town surrounded by fields and farmland. I know, sounds a lot like Riverview. Again. But it’ll be MY Riverview. And I’m going to use Jynx’s rabbithole rugs, so I can build completely different schools, police stations, etc. Hopefully in the end it’ll look nothing like EA’s version of Smalltown, USA.
“I’m doing it somewhat backwards — placing my roads and lots before doing the terrain sculpting…” Ack! Don’t do that!
There is an issue with lot tearing that will make you definitely pull your hair out and quit! Read about it here. Lot tears look like this in case you’re wondering. I’ve just finished my town, and so I’m just going to go along with it and cover up the tears the best I can for now. My world is small after all, so I figure it’s not that big a deal.
I do suggest putting lots down to get an idea of scale, but with the intent on deleting those. I would suggest mostly doing the sculpting first and then lay the roads and do the lots at the very end.
I’ve been discussing my CAW experiences over at my testing blog. I’ve also got a couple of basic tutorials there from my first few run throughs that may or may not help you.
Creating a world is very rewarding. I know it can be frustrating and difficult, but in the end the world you get is truly a customized world. Everything down to the terrain paints and the noises they make! I love my little world, and now I’m playing it and exploring it and plopping down lots. It has actually made me very dissatisfied with my TS2 neighborhood, lol.
Anyway, if you have any questions, I’m willing to help if I can.
Gah, I figured that if I built my roads/lots on completely flat terrain and then sculpted hills around them (in the distance), I would avoid any road/lot tearing, but if making a hill over here can mess up a road over there, then that won’t work at all. Yikes! I had read some stuff about the tearing issues with CAW but I didn’t realize it was that bad. Thank you for pointing me to that thread! I think what I will do is, like you suggested, build my roads and lots just to get an idea of my layout, take notes, then start over with a new world and do the terrain-sculpting first.
I really do want to figure this out, for the reasons you mentioned — having a truly customized world with those lovely TS3 graphics — well, it’s what I’ve been wanting since they first announced the game. I just wish they would have made it easier to do! CAW is a nasty, evil beast, but I’m going to tame it, by golly. Thanks for your comments, btw — I’ve visited your blog and left one there, too!
Whatever you end up doing, I’m looking forward to seeing some pictures of it! I’m in awe of anyone who can do anything in CAW. I still find it too daunting and have been content to just watch my sister play around with it!
Hi Carla! Thanks for the encouraging words. And I agree, CAW is very daunting. I hope the beta version isn’t all we get — I’d love to see them release a more user-friendly version of it so people would have an easier time of creating worlds. Even so, I’m amazed by what some people have done. They have far more patience than I do!
Wow, for a minute there I thought *I* had actually written this blog entry. I so wanted to do my own Riverview too! But I wanted to expand it with roads looping over the hills along the edges and with more neighborhoods and more lots and a university. And, for the most part, I just finalized it yesterday. The only thing I just can’t figure out is the Distant Terrain thing. I want to have an open body of water on the one side (definitely not an ocean — I’ve decided to pretend that it’s a lake) and I want everything else nestled within a valley. But the distant terrain is such a persnickety bugger that makes me tear my hair out. Gah! It drives me crazy! It’s actually not that big of a deal because I finally got a chance to play it (after 12 hours of fiddling around and trying to install it) and you can’t really tell that I’m actually surrounded by water and not distant terrain. If I scroll too far to the edges, then, yeah, I can see a bit of the water, but I just have to pretend it’s not there.
Oh, one bit of anecdotal advice about my difficulties with installing my world:
Like I mentioned, I messed around wasting a perfectly good half-day trying to get my world to install so I could use it in a game. I based it off of the “Riverview_Lite” that they provided for us (I called mine Lakeview Valley). I spent hours and hours modifying it in CAW to my desires and then gave it a description and thumbnail and save it. Then I chose to export it, like the directions say. Great, right? Wrong. After I moved it to my downloads, it kept showing that I had already installed it. I was like, “WTF? I never installed that!” I tried it over and over and messed around with the actual files in addition to the Sim launcher. I kept renaming it and re-describing it and re-saving it. It never showed up in my “installed worlds” section on the launcher. I then tried a completely different world (not Riverview_Lite), gave it a description, and then saved it. I exported it and sent it to my downloads. Lo and behold, it actually worked. I clicked on it to install it, and I finally had a CAW world to play with. Problem was, I didn’t want that world because it was just a crap test world. I wanted my Riverview-esque world, but it said I had already installed it. Finally, I made the realization that the launcher must think that my Lakeview Valley (based on Riverview_Lite) was basically the same file as the Riverview world that I had downloaded from the Sims3 website. I had used the Riverview world for my games; it was in my downloads and in my installed worlds. I decided to take a leap and uninstall it. With the Riverview world gone, I decided to try Lakeview Valley again. It worked! I moved it to the downloads section and it actually gave me the option to install it. I am not quite sure why I had to remove the original Riverview from the installed worlds in order to put up my version of Riverview. It’s not like I called mine “Riverview” too, which would have created a conflict of file names. It must have been something in the metadata that I couldn’t see. Anyway, I just figured I would tell you this to save you any hassle when it finally comes time to install your CAW world. Hopefully you don’t have as much trouble as I did! And I hope that this blabbering made any sense at all to you.
Good luck with your Riverview world! I love the valley and the green-ness, it reminds me a lot of where I grew up in central Pennsylvania, so that’s probably why I like it so much.
:)
Hi DeeDee! Thanks for your comment. I’m glad you got your Lakeview Valley to work! I’ve heard about that Riverview_Lite problem, which is doubly annoying if you’ve been playing Riverview and don’t really want to delete it! Sounds like that wasn’t an issue for you, though. It’s really messed up that EA would give people Riverview_Lite, however, and then have it conflict with the regular Riverview upon install. D’OH! Nice one, EA. :-p
I grew up in rural Minnesota, which is probably much like central PA! I’ve always been drawn to rolling hills and rivers; if I could live in The Shire, I would. ;-) Regina from Bog Sims Institute is actually building a Sims 3 world based on the Shire, incidentally, which I will have to check out when she’s done — it’ll be great for those of us who like green hills and river valleys. Anyway, best of luck with your world! I’ve love to hear more about how it goes for you. :-)