Building your own world for The Sims 3 can be time-consuming and sometimes very tedious work, but I have to say I’m enjoying the crap out of it. I’m feeling more and more comfortable with Create-A-World (though I still think it could be a LOT more intuitive and user-friendly) and getting a huge kick out of experiencing my world in-game. The silliest little things can thrill me, like running my test Sim around the lighthouse and hearing the clamor of the seagulls, or watching the mailwoman race down the pathway to deliver his mail. It’s weird how creating my own world has gone from being completely infuriating to totally exhilarating. And thank goodness it did, because I’m having some serious fun.

It took me a couple of nights of solid work, but I’m pretty much done with terraforming and laying down the roads in the “southern” half of the island. (I think it’s actually the northwestern half considering where the sun sets, but because of how I’m orienting my map I think of it as “southern”). The road layout isn’t particularly exciting but I wanted to have a good number of straight edges to make lot placement/gameplay easier.

I’ve made a list of all the community/rabbithole lots I want to put on the island, and there are at least 35. I’m thinking I’ll want 30-40 residential lots as well, and since this is going to be a fully completed town with custom rabbitholes, well…let’s just say I have a ton of building to do. But I like building and am really looking forward to that part. They’ll all be fairly small lots, for the most part, and clustered mainly around the southern end of the island, along the the road that runs from the Plumbridge Inn to the lighthouse.

Here’s my test Sim, Chester Tester, or “Chet” for short. Chet’s a Loner, so he doesn’t mind being the only inhabitant of the island (aside from the occasional NPC). I snapped this shot because he looks silly standing on this steep edge of rock on his heels. I think I’m going to have to move my fish spawners slightly and make these edges non-routable so my islanders don’t look dumb like this when they’re fishing.

Chet doesn’t need people, but he would like more trees. (OK, that’s just his thought bubble indicating he “Loves the Outdoors”, but it amused me to think otherwise.) I’m eager for trees, too, but I’m not going to place those until after I place my lots, and I’m not doing that until I have all my roads and terraforming finished, in order to minimize lot tears and other nastiness. Well, with a few exceptions — I keep the lighthouse lot so I can plop Chet in there and test stuff when I export (haven’t tried Lunar Fox’s suggestion for getting Edit-in-Game to work yet — does EIG let you run a Sim around? Or is it strictly for lot-building?). And I wanted to work on some other lots in-game, so I placed them, too. I’ll likely delete and the redo them later (and probably delete and redo everything else, ad infinitum, because you’re never truly done with a Sims ‘hood, are you??).

This is Running Rock. I was going to have an Arch Rock like the one on Mackinac but the arch rock deco is 1) enormous, even after sinking it into the ground a great deal, and 2) the wrong color for the kind of rock on my island. I’m using all Egyptian rocks for no reason other than I like the rosy hue they take on in the setting sun. And they match the rocky terrain paint I’m using. I guess that’s two reasons.

Speaking of rocks, I added some to the area around the lighthouse, along with some scrubby foliage and a pathway. And no, I promise not to post a picture every time I place a few shrubs on my world. (“Hey look, I put a shrub on this hill! And here’s another ROCK!”) I’m just excited because it’s still novel. I’m sure I’ll be good and sick of rocks and trees by the time I’ve placed hundreds of ’em. (And LOOK! SEAGULLS!!!)

I liked Regina’s idea of making a museum of natural history (from her great tutorial on Town Customization) and putting fish, bugs, and rocks in it, so that’s Chet’s project. Right now he’s just working on fish.

Well, that’s it for now. I have a four-day weekend (WOOT) so I hope to get some serious work done on my world! I’d especially like to do some building. Yay. :-)