Create-A-World Tips, Tricks, and Annoyances

[nanacake]

If you don't want sidewalks, like mentioned by KawaiiMiyo, you can either use dirt_intersection_crosswalk.dds for the sidewalk opacity map to eliminate the gap, or use grass_medium_base.dds for the Sidewalk Textures - Base Texture to make it disappear.

How can we keep sims from using the sidewalk though? The road I placed on the edge of a cliff is very narrow, I don't want them to use it except by car.

Edit:
I made for the invisible sidewalk, because I could still see a darker overlay with the grass. Also one for street lines. >Check post below fixed zoom black lines, and made only one file.

[krow]

Ok something that is bothering me about CAW is after I am done playing I have to reset my pc's clock back to my time! When CAW load my pc clock goes to EA California time. I live in Pa so I am 3 hours ahead. Why would this program be messing with my pc settings, my pc clock of all things? Has this happened to anyone else or is it just me?

[Lion]

How can we keep sims from using the sidewalk though? The road I placed on the edge of a cliff is very narrow, I don't want them to use it except by car.

Maybe no lots for a long way to the cliff, so sims will only drive there?

Your transparent_opacity_texture is great, but still need to have grass_medium_base for Corner Texture for the intersection to appear right. If choose transparent_opacity_texture, they are black squares.

I like to have dirt_street_detail for the Detail Texture. See pic below. But the intersection is always solid no matter what I put in for the Intersection Textures. Is there a way to make it continue the two-tone pattern?

[nanacake]

Well in my test so far, the crosswalk texture (Sidewalk border) does not have an opacity map nor does the center of the intersection. The square center just takes the base texture set for the street. The crosswalk texture will repeat 4 times across, when a road is conjoined to the intersection. I modified a dirt texture to appear faded as the road, but you can see because of the repeating I couldn't get the desired effect.

[Augustv]

Think this is the correct link: http://www.4shared.com/file/175740710/6fb22351/Dragon_Cay.html?s=1
Downloading now, will see if I can get it to work...

Cheers! Off to give it a try.


EDIT: Installed without any problems. As expected, WA-specific decorations do not show up in the base game, so the dragon head isn't there. Another issue is with the road running along the beach near the billboard - it's both partially obscured by a lot and partially buried by land.

I've had this problem in my world as well.  What I did is flatten the terrain lower in the effected area then I smoothed it out. This corrected the cosmetic error.

[Zazazu]

You can do that, or you can go to the Roads section and choose the Grading Road Tool. You can then smooth through several options. I found that using the flatten option almost never works out if you want to maintain some natural ground sloping. My plateau is completely flat, but most of the lower area is moderately hilly, with a big hill where the cemetary is. This works well for me...I ended up putting the Science building in that huge lot I had designated as a park next to the cemetary and was able to trick it into looking like it grew out of the hillside, plus fit in a swingset and some picnic tables for the growing town. I still had issues with that one section of road (hell, it may have been that I forgot to soften it, but I thought I had everything) in the pic. There were several others that were similarly messed up, but are fixed now.

Remember, if you are going to edit the roads after placing lots in such a manner, that you need to go back to the lots, pick the tool under Lots - Conform Edges, and click on each lot that borders the road. Otherwise, it will look nasty.

[tea_and_blues]

Lion, that lack of proper intersections is probably what the EA guide means when he says

You can create custom road textures (using a paint program) and use them to create custom roads for your town. We've also provided a few textures that can be used to create a custom road and sidewalk. Please note that the custom roads don't yet play well with intersections, so you may want to avoid placing intersections pieces in this case.

(EA CAW Guide)

Surely, though, the issue lies in the textures we have, and we can find a working fix? I don't know. I'm relatively new to this sort of thing.

[perkyp]

How do you create crosswalks at intersections?  When I plop down an intersection and connect roads to it I have sidewalks where there should be crosswalk stripes.

[Tingeling]

If the roads do not connect properly, the crosswalk will not materialize. That is, when the road has connected properly to an intersection, the crosswalk will appear automatically.

[dragonarts]

I haven't gotten as far as Zazazu on this, but in reading through the topic, people seem to have been having trouble knowing when and how the road sections snap to the intersections. In fiddling with this I noticed that it doesn't really matter how straight you have to piece to the intersection. What does matter is dragging the handle for the road to the center of the side you want to attach to. It then snaps the curve of the road to the intersection, and locks it. I've brought in pieces at as much as a 30 degree angle and they snapped in place just fine.

In trying to enter Edit in Game mode, I find mine stalls about 2 out of 3 tries. I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but the times it's been successful are the times I have a lot selected (blue lines) when I hit the Edit in Game button.

I really appreciate all the stuff people are posting here as they learn things. I've already gleaned a few helpful ideas, and the list of rabbithole minimum lots will save me a bunch of time.

[ingeli]

A trick to make Edit-In-Game load fast, is to temporarily move out the DC Cache folder from Documents/EA/Sims3. Mine loads very fast now. Of course without the CC, but that can always be added in a later stage. It is handy to be able to check some stuff out and do some basic building or lot plopping. (Inge found this )

[Zazazu]

I've already gleaned a few helpful ideas, and the list of rabbithole minimum lots will save me a bunch of time.

One thing to remember with the minimum lot size for the EA rabbit holes is that it measures the building, not the entrance-only section. The reason I say that is because you can get creative with "moveobjects on". You don't necessarily need a lot as big as the building, but you do need to be mindful of how you can overlap and how you can't.


Bookstore, movie theater, grocery store, and spa on the same 29x37 lot (still need to smooth pavement), fully useable by sims.


Science building merged into the terrain a bit on a 36x32 lot (I did some more tweaking to make it natural), leaving space on a so that a good portion of the lot could still be used as a park...and evidence that the townies do use it.


Stadium smushed into the mountain a bit off of a 26x26 lot (stadium is 40x50). You can also see the criminal warehouse and hospital are overlapping lot edges but look natural.


Long view of the stadium, hospital, and criminal warehouse, showing how well it can blend.

[Lion]

Zaza, that last picture of yours shows that you do not have an intersection at the end of the road. I remember that the world tool manual says you should have an intersection at the end of every road so the cars can turn around. Or not, I'm not sure if it really matters.

[ioscream]

I've already gleaned a few helpful ideas, and the list of rabbithole minimum lots will save me a bunch of time.

One thing to remember with the minimum lot size for the EA rabbit holes is that it measures the building, not the entrance-only section. The reason I say that is because you can get creative with "moveobjects on". You don't necessarily need a lot as big as the building, but you do need to be mindful of how you can overlap and how you can't.


Bookstore, movie theater, grocery store, and spa on the same 29x37 lot (still need to smooth pavement), fully useable by sims.


Science building merged into the terrain a bit on a 36x32 lot (I did some more tweaking to make it natural), leaving space on a so that a good portion of the lot could still be used as a park...and evidence that the townies do use it.


Stadium smushed into the mountain a bit off of a 26x26 lot (stadium is 40x50). You can also see the criminal warehouse and hospital are overlapping lot edges but look natural.


Long view of the stadium, hospital, and criminal warehouse, showing how well it can blend.

Great tips. Thanks.

[Lion]

Well in my test so far, the crosswalk texture (Sidewalk border) does not have an opacity map nor does the center of the intersection. The square center just takes the base texture set for the street. The crosswalk texture will repeat 4 times across, when a road is conjoined to the intersection. I modified a dirt texture to appear faded as the road, but you can see because of the repeating I couldn't get the desired effect.

I can see you have the same problem: edited textures do no look as nice. They have a "shimmering" effect, instead of more natural matte look that Maxis textures do. For example, a paving_riverRock.dds cut out to be the corner looks ok closeup (first pic), but shimmers when you look from far away (second pic). Maybe the image file is too sharp or something.


 

[nanacake]

Anyone else having trouble placing game objects that no longer select/move after placed in painted blue non-route areas? My hood keeps having trees become stuck in these areas and delete key doesn't work, the only way I can delete them is using right click on them in the layer menu. Anything stuck also renames to Game_Object#, making it even harder to find. I tried unclustering/clustering trees with no results.

I can see you have the same problem: edited textures do no look as nice. They have a "shimmering" effect, instead of more natural matte look that Maxis textures do.

The image I used was the base dirt, not the dirt street by accident, oops! It was a 1024x1024 high detail image when I opened it. I applied a new layer in photoshop for the faded overlay and flattened it. I think if you make a smaller image like 512x512 it could be less shimmery. I'll try editing the street texture to see if it has difference in size, etc.

[Lion]

nanacake, the transparent_opacity_texture becomes black when the camera is pulled far away:


In the world tool.


In game.

I think if you make a smaller image like 512x512 it could be less shimmery. I'll try editing the street texture to see if it has difference in size, etc.

I tried to make it 512x512 or 256x256, still the same shimmery effect.

[nanacake]

Just saw that when I went to edit in game, I think it's because of volume maps are wrong size. I will try to fix it.

Edit: No, I think it's picky about format. Trying RGBA8 now, the default for gimp wasn't it. Also, I realized why it did not work on intersection corners -because they rely on .tga maps. I thought I could make an all in one, but the different street elements rely on different texture formats for rendering at a distance. They didn't really plan custom roads to be easy.

2nd Edit: Fixed street/sidewalk transparent texture. Attached. Please let me know how it goes for you, I zoomed far out and close a lot.

[Zazazu]

Zaza, that last picture of yours shows that you do not have an intersection at the end of the road. I remember that the world tool manual says you should have an intersection at the end of every road so the cars can turn around. Or not, I'm not sure if it really matters.

They work just fine. I read that, too, after I was all done. I haven't seen any public or townie vehicles get stuck up there. Granted, they spend more time on the low land at the Science building, the square, and the library I just finished. Also granted, I don't have that many townies as I only have four houses finished.

[Erry]

Does Edit-In-Game randomly crash for any of you? It does for me, at the beginning of loading the neighborhood, but it had loaded the neighborhood ages ago, at least according to ProcMon. Then I look and it's overloading FullBuildep1.package, any reason for this? Also, after it overloads the fullbuild file, it crashes.

[Lion]

Does Edit-In-Game randomly crash for any of you? It does for me, at the beginning of loading the neighborhood, but it had loaded the neighborhood ages ago, at least according to ProcMon. Then I look and it's overloading FullBuildep1.package, any reason for this? Also, after it overloads the fullbuild file, it crashes.

No, Edit-In-Game never crashed on me. But the world tool occasionally crashed a few times, not very often.

[jrcaporal]

How lovely. I'm sure we were all waiting with baited breath for jrcaporal to come along and give us their professional opinion. It's alright everyone, you can sleep at night again, jrcaporal thinks the tool is shit.

bitter much?

[girlfromverona]

Bitter much?

Much bitter better.

A trick to make Edit-In-Game load fast, is to temporarily move out the DC Cache folder from Documents/EA/Sims3.

I discovered this literally two minutes before I read your post. Great minds, huh.    Now to spread the word...

[ingeli]

I even made a special DC Cache with the necessities for building, which I put in when creating worlds (=all the time now, lol) so I can have my special things to play with. I am even thinking of making two different: one with medieval stuff and one with modern. It means a little more time to load, but still acceptable, no need to leave it on over night..
A good thing at least is that hairs (my weakness..) are not at all used for building. This means the CC-folder with packages can be very slim

[jrcaporal]

Bitter much?

Much bitter better.

No, I really ment bitter