Create-A-World Tips, Tricks, and Annoyances

[Mootilda]

Bitter much?

Much bitter better.

No, I really ment bitter  

girlfromverona was correcting your capitalization, not your choice of words.

[jrcaporal]

Bitter much?

Much bitter better.

No, I really ment bitter  

girlfromverona was correcting your capitalization, not your choice of words.

Fair enough 

[Rockermonkey]

How do I fix this?

[nanacake]

How do I fix this?

Did you hit the flat lot button? If you edit the land terrain in CAW after placing the lot and then adjust the edge of a lot in-game with the level tool, some graphical glitches occur. So work on terrain first, then place lots. Turn the grid on it's very helpful to make flat land. After placing a lot use conform edges on it (double-click). If it looks bad to you after editing in-game, delete the lot and edit the terrain again. Also, It's possible to save lots when using in-game mode to the lot bin. They can be replaced on any lot that's the same dimensions or larger, but the terrain levels will still apply. So only really useful for flat lots.

[Rockermonkey]

Oh okay, thanks. I did the lot flattening and everything but it only got a little bit better. I'll try moving the lot and re-editing the terrain, it only happened on two lots that were next to the hills.

[Zazazu]

You could also try editing in game, specifically using the soften terrain tool. Put it at about 1/4 strength, medium brush, and soften away.

[girlfromverona]

girlfromverona was correcting your capitalization, not your choice of words.

I'll try to be less obscure next time. 

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.

Good idea, although I'm not sure if CC will automatically get packaged with worlds or not (only matters if you're planning on sharing them). Anyone know?

[Lion]

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.

Transparent sidewalks are great. But intersection corners are still a problem. I tried different combinations. Do you get it to work?

[nanacake]

The problem with the intersection is the corners are not cut out. The sidewalk corner texture just covers the base street texture. Provided, the nice texture and map for dirt corners that was included does not work. You can see in this picture. It was made to look faded but if a dirt street texture was used for the base, the corner would stay a solid square. If I try to change the .tga map to be transparent (no overlay) the corner becomes dark. It's beyond my control for now. I need to do more experimenting with the .tga mapping.

[Lion]

I thought I could do it yesterday. Guess I'm imagining things.

Question: Can you connect/snap two bridges together?

[J. M. Pescado]

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Also, It's possible to save lots when using in-game mode to the lot bin. They can be replaced on any lot that's the same dimensions or larger, but the terrain levels will still apply. So only really useful for flat lots.

It is not recommended that you place a binned lot in a location with larger dimensions than the original, because there are no options to adjust the alignment of the lot, so everything will be placed smack in the center and the paths will no longer be connected to the street, etc. Plus, it's irreversible: Once you do it, the lot is permanently embiggened, and there is no way to move the house onto a smaller lot, even if the edges are unused.

[Zazazu]

Best off working from a floorplan or making your own floorplan, then. For my terrain, most of the lots are so small that I've been building exactly to the constraints of the lot. For my 9x9 three-bedroom, two-bathroom model, I did a floorplan so that I can use it as a base on other lots. Especially since it seems that somebody's hack is intent on giving me a new family each time I build a lot, so I'm always stuck with one homeless townie family.

[nanacake]

Question: Can you connect/snap two bridges together?

I would like to know that too, if I could even find them. I found ones from WA, but I can't find the one I think ingelli used in a screenshot from this thread, was that a bridge from Riverview?

[girlfromverona]

Question: Can you connect/snap two bridges together?

I would like to know that too, if I could even find them. I found ones from WA, but I can't find the one I think ingelli used in a screenshot from this thread, was that a bridge from Riverview?

Is this the one you mean? Looks like it might be the bridge from China. The Riverview bridge is reddish brick, IIRC.

I still haven't even been able to get a bridge to connect to a road, let alone connect two bridges together.

[Lion]

So no, two bridges can't be joined.


Sims can't go through.

I had to build a road section in between to connect them all. Then sims can go through. But it doesn't look pretty, and the terrain forming is a huge pain:


nanacake, this is "large chinese bridge". Type "bridge" in the filter in "Matadata", and you get all the bridges. For the life of me, I can't get Riverview in the tool/game. It will be nice to have one more bridge.

I still haven't even been able to get a bridge to connect to a road, let alone connect two bridges together.

Use advice from this thread. Pull the dark blue square close, sometimes touching sometimes not touching, it depends. when they snap together/connect, dark blue squares turn to light blue or green ones.

Medieval town builders out there, have you used the "Ruined Wall"? The "Short" and "Tower" can be used to make castle walls. I have a question. If you have used them, do you need to paint sim-non routable (blue) under them? The same question for other large world objects, such as the mines, Asian city wall,  pyramid stuffs, etc.

[ingeli]

Yeah, I used the Chinese bridge. Someone said the Riverview bridges are not real ones, just roads with some special meshed sidepiece, not yet found in game. I will have a look at those walls, thanks for the tip

[dragonarts]

Big thanks, Zazazu, for the reminder about the moveobjects cheat, though the first world I worked on the issue was more a matter of making the lots way huge, and then having tons of wasted space. I tried again with a tiny world, and I like the results much better. I did encounter one rather strange thing when I put it into the game. I don't know if this happened to any of the rest of you, but when I put the second world I built into the game, the first one I built disappeared. It wasn't a loss this time, as I wasn't very pleased with the results, and hadn't actually started playing it as a neighborhood, but it seems weird to me that the older custom hood would vanish when I added another. Also, I'd reinstalled Riverview before I put my custom hood in, though I hadn't checked to make sure it showed up. But Riverview also was not there.  So, we're only allowed 2 worlds at a time?

Another thing I'm having a small issue with is saving the image for the town as a 24-bit png. Gimp apparently isn't capable. I did manage in Photoshop Elements, but the second time I tried to do it, I couldn't find the website I'd used as a guide the first time, and I couldn't quite remember what I did the first time. Anyone have a reliable link to a guide for this? I managed this time, after more than an hour of frustration.

[Zazazu]

I use Photoshop (an old version) not Photoshop Elements, but the main idea should be the same. Construct your 256x256 image, then to to File and Save As. Pick .png on the pull-down menu at the bottom. Hit Save/OK. It should bring up a supplimentary window asking if you want to save it as interlaced or non-interlaced. Go ahead and pick non. Should be a 24-bit image. To check, go to open the new file, but right-click and pick Properties. On the second tab, look towards the middle. It should say Bit....24.

[J. M. Pescado]

Best off working from a floorplan or making your own floorplan, then. For my terrain, most of the lots are so small that I've been building exactly to the constraints of the lot. For my 9x9 three-bedroom, two-bathroom model, I did a floorplan so that I can use it as a base on other lots. Especially since it seems that somebody's hack is intent on giving me a new family each time I build a lot, so I'm always stuck with one homeless townie family.

Well, it ain't MINE. AwesomeStory never creates new famblies. Ever. There is simply no event that does this. The only reason new famblies would come into being is if a sim requires workmates for some reason, and I've tried to minimize the occurence of even that. You know I hate townie-bloat as much as you do: it detracts from the Puddingland experience to have random characters no one knows clogging the view.

[girlfromverona]

Someone said the Riverview bridges are not real ones, just roads with some special meshed sidepiece, not yet found in game.

I've just opened Riverview Lite to see if the bridge showed up. And no, it's not there. It looks like you're right about the road and sidepiece. But why the hell couldn't they include that in CAW?

[Lion]

Did anybody set community lot type such as market, Chinese garden, nectary, or tombs in the main hood? Do sims exhibit the corresponding behaviors on those?

[J. M. Pescado]

Did anybody set community lot type such as market, Chinese garden, nectary, or tombs in the main hood? Do sims exhibit the corresponding behaviors on those?

In the sense that they exhibit correct behavior on anything, sure. Setting something to "market" is of no real use, since there's no market to in the game. Chinese Garden will grant the appropriate bonus moodlets, and soforth, but aside from Chinese Garden, they don't do much else.

[dragonarts]

I use Photoshop (an old version) not Photoshop Elements, but the main idea should be the same. Construct your 256x256 image, then to to File and Save As. Pick .png on the pull-down menu at the bottom. Hit Save/OK. It should bring up a supplimentary window asking if you want to save it as interlaced or non-interlaced. Go ahead and pick non. Should be a 24-bit image. To check, go to open the new file, but right-click and pick Properties. On the second tab, look towards the middle. It should say Bit....24.

Using this method it saves as a 32 bit image. I tried setting it as an indexed image and saving as .png and it saves as an 8 bit image.

[ariffrazalin]

My test neighborhood. Kinda almost done with it.

[Process Denied]

Anyone working on making a Pleasantview?  Reading through this confirms my original thoughts.  Too hard for me.  I'll still try, but Sims 4 will probably be out before I get it to work.