Create-A-World Tips, Tricks, and Annoyances

[Daimon]

I've finally found the courage / gotten bored enough with regular play to try to create my own world. I keep bumping head first into one particular problem, though: After a while the world file refuses to open in Game Edit. The green bar goes all the way to the right except a last millimeter, and then the load screen simply halts there forever. As far as I can tell, the issue is related to having placed houses on empty lots in Game Edit previously, but even if I make sure that there are no such 'clones', it stalls on me eventually. Surely there must be a work-around or fix for this, or at least some sort of indication of what I am doing wrong.

I am using no CC in building my lots, so I highly doubt that this is a case of tight pants. All patches are up to date, and all EPs are installed.

[rosess]

I've finally found the courage / gotten bored enough with regular play to try to create my own world. I keep bumping head first into one particular problem, though: After a while the world file refuses to open in Game Edit. The green bar goes all the way to the right except a last millimeter, and then the load screen simply halts there forever. As far as I can tell, the issue is related to having placed houses on empty lots in Game Edit previously, but even if I make sure that there are no such 'clones', it stalls on me eventually. Surely there must be a work-around or fix for this, or at least some sort of indication of what I am doing wrong.

I am using no CC in building my lots, so I highly doubt that this is a case of tight pants. All patches are up to date, and all EPs are installed.

Check the MTS help section for DEP and LAA information, and make sure DEP settings are applied to both the current game executable and CAW.  Saving the CAW file under another name every so often also seems to help things run smoothly.

[Daimon]

Check the MTS help section for DEP and LAA information, and make sure DEP settings are applied to both the current game executable and CAW.  Saving the CAW file under another name every so often also seems to help things run smoothly.

I'm running Windows 7 64-bit so LAA shouldn't mean anything for me (feel free to correct me if mistaken). DEP does not seem to be the issue but I turned it on just case anyhows. I also checked every bit of road and sidewalk and finally reverted to an older save that did load in EIG. Considering that my world currently consists of four lots and a lot of flat terrain with large amounts of nothing, I am baffled.  Anyhow, thanks for the tip -- it certainly can't -hurt-.

[Skadi]

Even with 7x64 you still need to make CAW LAA. I had an issue with the game crashing until I patched CAW.exe. I second the advice to save under a new name every few saves, I number my saves and tend to make a new save number before using Edit In Game mode.

There is definitely something strange happening in your world, placing the same copy of a house shouldn't impact the world at all. I have placed 5 copies of several houses to start filling out the place without issue. However I am only using EPs, no CC or store stuff. Perhaps check you CC folders?

The only other thing I can think of is to use Process Monitor so you can see where it is getting stuck.

[Skadi]

Double posting to add:

Over on MTS Kiritra discovered playing with the default.ini will make CAW work instead of giving you a version mismatch warning for no reason.
Thread: http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=450303

This just helped me since CAW refused to open despite my game being properly patched and having the latest version of CAW installed. Don't forget to backup your default.ini otherwise you might get a file error next patch.

[Zazazu]

Awesome, I've been complaining of this very thing. Have tried a few small 'hoods out there but two have horrible routing issues and one is so full of rocks and trees it Error12's on saving.

[Mekare]

I'm having some major crashing issues with generations and EIG now. 

Every time I try to save, it will begin saving, and 30-40 minutes later I will get that lovely "Sims 3 has encountered a problem and must close" error report screen.   What confuses me most is my last world I made pre-generations was over twice the size of the one I'm working on, and very rarely crashed.  Now out of the 5 hours straight I've been redo-ing and attempting to save, it has only actually completed saving one time.

I've tried using task manager to give the exe more memory access, but that doesn't seem to work either.  It also doesn't seem to matter if I add 1 or 20 sims, it's always the same result.  I've followed every MTS post about clearing caches, removing cc, closing CAW in the background while I work.. still no luck. I'm guessing its a new generations memory leak, because it's a windows error screen and not a sims one, although I never alt-tab or defocus the EIG window while working on it.   

Anyone know of any way to fix this?  My world is so close to finished, I'm just on the final steps of using EIG to add the townies.  Would hate to give up now. :/

[rosess]

I've tried using task manager to give the exe more memory access, but that doesn't seem to work either.

Did you follow the LAA instructions for the CAW executable?  I have a feeling you may have thought setting priority would do it; not so much.

Also, try leaving EIG open and in focus when saving, if you aren't already.  Alt-tabbing to a browser or such inevitably makes my saves fail.  

[Mekare]

Hmm, yea I just set priority... I always keep the window focused, but I didn't do the LAA stuff. I'll try that and see ^^;

ETA:
Well...  I followed all the steps, including the one for 32bit OS (I'm on XP, but have 4 gigs of ram installed).
Using LAA seems to cause CAW to crash before even loading up my world. It gives me this error: "Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt."
Moments later I got a blue screen crash.  Now even though I've reinstalled CAW I'm getting that error, though the blue screen hasn't re-appeared.

My boot.ini looks like this:
[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /3GB

[Monty]

I was busy planning my New York/Los Angeles/New Jersey/San Diego/Brooklyn/Beverly Hills uber-city, and I got to a stage where I had to EIG to add some parks, apartments and subways.

I added a few apartments, saved successfully, exited, then when I tried opening the world in CAW, I kept getting "Unable to load file" errors. Then I tried opening the backups. Unable to load file. Then I tried opening my manual backups. Unable to load file. Unable to load file. Unable to load file. Unable to load file. Lost a SHITLOAD of urban planning. I've got the latest version of the game, and I have the Generations version of CAW (It's the only version that doesn't constantly tell me that my game needs to be updated, when it is, whenever I try starting it)

I have a feeling that as soon as I solve this problem somehow it'll come back again because of the sodding shovelware expansions and shitty updates every 5 minutes.

[stylngit]

In response to this comment:

Yes, roads are a bit of a bitch until you figure them out. First of all, you have to use the crosswalk section if you want them to split at all, and you can't just slap it in the middle of an already made road. Most of your road manipulating is going to be done by pressing that move objects button in the upper left; roads count as objects, and you can delete them by selecting them first with the pointer. Also using the object mover, you can manipulate laid roads, making them longer or shorter, curving them, and snapping them into place into crosswalks (the game will snap them in when you get close enough).

Basically, just use the move objects tool to mess with roads, and you'll figure it out pretty fast.

In order to get the roads and sidewalks to work well during play of game with lots and letting your Sims get from place to place, first turn on the "Grid" by clicking on the grid icon at the top of CAW. Make sure you place road or sidewalk intersections along the way (more is better, you can always delete them and connect the roads sections later if the intersection is not needed. Doing the opposite way can take more time later). You will need an intersection at every corner, but not on curves where there is no street coming off of it, the road will curve around.

It is important to place the intersections and roads along the grid lines. This way when you place lots you can put them right against the edge so that Sim players can build sidewalks right up to the edge of the road. Failure to do this makes the neighborhood look unrealistic during game play. (If you have to place a lots away from the grid then make sure you put a sidewalk up to the lot so the player can connect to it when they build)

In routing it is very important to make sure all sections of road and sidewalk are connected. Roads will create a double white line crosswalk when connected to an intersection so these are easy to tell. To check sections of road or sidewalk, click the move tool in CAW (it's the crisscross arrow icon at the top left) Click on a section of road you will see light blue lines and a dark square at the end of each section of road or sidewalk. (Intersections have a square in the middle). The light blue line allow you to maneuver the road to curve into another section or intersection. When the DARK blue squares are light blue then they are connected. FAILURE TO DO THIS WILL NOT ALLOW CARS OR SIMS TO ROUTE THROUGH YOUR WORLD!

Hope this spread some light on the subject. Have fun!

[Simsample]

Post #222 here:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?p=3672727#post3672727

The method we had to use was the second method, this post:
http://www.modthesims.info/showpost.php?p=3572593&postcount=3

[Claeric]

Post #222 here:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?p=3672727#post3672727

The method we had to use was the second method, this post:
http://www.modthesims.info/showpost.php?p=3572593&postcount=3

This worked! I can successfully open the world in CAW.

But when I try to save it, I get an error saying CAW has crashed because it "attempted to read or write protected memory". :\

[J. M. Pescado]

Create-A-Crap does that a lot, yes. Apparently nobody has thought of the brilliant anti-crash measure of simply pretending the write went through and just ignoring the bad attempts, as Create-A-Crap is horribly buggy.

[Claeric]

That's the thing, too. It does create a file before it crashes. But the file says that CAW can't open a packed file! It's the same file I just opened, so it's not protected or packed. So there's no reason for it to return a "packed file" error.

If anyone can get it to work I would really appreciate a functioning, loadable, saveable Appaloosa Plains.

[Rolfy]

Sorry for the necromancy, but I think this is the most logical place to post this, I'd rather not start a new thread for the same subject. I have searched and read through this thread, and I don't think I saw an answer to this question (but correct me if I'm wrong), so here it goes:

I've made this island, and it looks nice, like this...


But when I zoom out for a bird's eye view, it looks like this...


What is the cause of this problem, and how can I fix it? I did try and flatten out the sea board surrounding the island, but otherwise to that I'm stumped, and also, it gets worse and more deformed as I soften the edges of the land.

[J. M. Pescado]

Nothing. It's purely an artifact of Create-A-Crap's rendering cutoff points. This behavior is probably not visible in the actual game since you can never pull that far out.

[Rolfy]

Nothing. It's purely an artifact of Create-A-Crap's rendering cutoff points. This behavior is probably not visible in the actual game since you can never pull that far out.

Okay, well I tested what you said, and uploaded the world to my game. So I went into edit town mode and this is what it looks like...


Now, this world is very unfinished so there's no camera barriers or anything like that on yet, everything is just open, would that have anything to do with it?

[Skadi]

What happens when you zoom in?

[jezzer]

What happens when you zoom in?

[Rolfy]

What happens when you zoom in?

Well I went into the world editor mode and zoomed in one notch, and it snapped back to normal (like below), and if I go down to Sim view it stays good, but as soon as you zoom out it deforms......
(closer)

(Sim view)

[rosess]

You might have better luck exporting the terrain to a graphics editor and making changes there.  If you copy a slice of the circle that works, you can rotate/paste until the whole circle is uniform and then import the terrain (making a new save first).  Gradients made in Photoshop don't transfer as smooth terrain, but copying a part that you have already smoothed should work better.

[Rolfy]

You might have better luck exporting the terrain to a graphics editor and making changes there.  If you copy a slice of the circle that works, you can rotate/paste until the whole circle is uniform and then import the terrain (making a new save first).  Gradients made in Photoshop don't transfer as smooth terrain, but copying a part that you have already smoothed should work better.

I would love to utilize your suggestion, but unfortunately I'm a noob in that department. I don't really understand how to import terrains to a graphic editor, and that whole process you explained. If you can maybe explain it in a bit more detail, I might be able to understand and try that. But anyway, I have uploaded the world for anyone to test out and see if they can get it to work.

http://www.mediafire.com/?7p8464c2cj9z9p9

[kissing_toast]

You might want to consider taking this over to MTS, there's plenty of tutorials and threads there to help you. They also love to hold hands and walk people through each and every step. Not that you've met the MATY welcoming committee yet, but it's bound to happen sooner or later.

[rosess]

You might have better luck exporting the terrain to a graphics editor and making changes there.  If you copy a slice of the circle that works, you can rotate/paste until the whole circle is uniform and then import the terrain (making a new save first).  Gradients made in Photoshop don't transfer as smooth terrain, but copying a part that you have already smoothed should work better.

I would love to utilize your suggestion, but unfortunately I'm a noob in that department. I don't really understand how to import terrains to a graphic editor, and that whole process you explained. If you can maybe explain it in a bit more detail, I might be able to understand and try that. But anyway, I have uploaded the world for anyone to test out and see if they can get it to work.

http://www.mediafire.com/?7p8464c2cj9z9p9

In CAW, look under the Terrain menu tab and choose Export Height Map.  You can edit the height map in the graphics editor and then import it back into the game, preferably into a fresh save in case the new map knocks around items you have already placed.  Bridges may need to be clicked to reconnect them to roads after a new map is imported.

If you're not experienced with a graphics editor, it's worth learning.  Lifehacker has a great Night School series on Photoshop.  For the time being, if you want to post your exported height map, I'll give it a whirl and see if my suggestion actually works.

Hand-holding may not be encouraged here, but it's nice to see signs of life in this thread.  It's disappointing that MATY hasn't shown much interest in CAW as we have a shortage of creatively nefarious worlds.  Not that it matters much for the time being, because Skyrim.