More Awesome Than You!

Welcome to Hatchet Falls, a new neighborhood for your sims based on the default hood, but with a rural, mountain theme instead. While it still isn't possible to completely change the neighborhood terrain or the neighborhood objects, I think you'll find a lot can be done by altering what can be edited to give the neighborhood a completely different feel. The neighborhood now has a forested look, the community lots are more interesting, and all the parks and public spaces are much less formal. No more "lifestyles of the rich and famous!"

Screenshots HERE:
http://s5.photobucket.com/albums/y179/Ellatrue/Hatchet%20Falls/

Features:

• The Church of the Golden Gnome
• Hatchet Falls Historical Society (art gallery)
• Hatchet Falls Library (much smaller than the default and very cozy)
• a "river" running through the center of town
• Haunted Lighthouse
• Wanda's Yard Wonderland (art gallery)
• Motel Sleezopolis
• Completely redecorated beach lot
• Hidden, underground science facility
• Whalemart (shopping center)
• Blight Hill Spring park
• Numerous farms and orchards
• Abandoned Quarry
• Floating Pine Pool Center
• Tiny Tony's Gym
• lots of forested lots, tons of new fishing locations
• MOAR!

Most residential lots are taken from various creators on MTS2, then butchered by me. I believe I remembered to ask for permission from all of them--to everyone who contributed (and to those who helped with playtesting), thank you!

This version is empty of all inhabitants, and I deleted almost all the beds in the neighborhood after asking Pes, so I don't expect more than maybe 4 or 5 townies to spawn. If you want to prevent that, delete the beds from the residential lots that have them. To the best of my knowledge, I believe the save is clean and shouldn't contain errors. If you want the game to generate townies, add more beds. I plan on uploading a second version with some default families + playable ghost in the haunted house soonish.


This neighborhood save REQUIRES Riverview and Awesomemod in order to work. Also, brains. Please see the store stuff thread if you don't have them yet. I currently have all store stuff installed (most importantly the hewnsman set).

You should also download these STAIRS AND FENCES for everything to show up properly, especially the lighthouse:
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=362401

PATTERNS needed for the houses:
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=353357

Put the file in your My Documents/Electronic Arts/Saves folder.
GET IT HERE:
http://ellatorture.moreawesomethanyou.com:8080/other/HatchetFalls/HatchetFalls.sims3

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y179/Ellatrue/Hatchet%20Falls/Screenshot.jpg?t=1250921176)

ETA: Added link to the custom patterns I used. Oops. The neighborhood should work fine without the custom patterns and stairs, but some of the buildings might look ugly.

ETA: Inhabited version now available. See below. The requirements are the same, except for the custom hair.

Inhabited version now available!

Link:
http://ellatorture.moreawesomethanyou.com:8080/other/HatchetFalls/HatchetFallsAndSims.sims3

Requires:
*Riverview & Awesomemod

Recommended:
*This hair for one of the non-playable ghosts: Short Mop Hair by HystericalParoxysm @ MTS
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=357769

*Everything from the TS3 Store. I got mine from a torrent of everything in the store thread. While I tried to keep the things I used from the store to a minimum, the store stuff is not marked in the game as being custom, so I have no way to distinguish between what came with the base game and what didn't. Nothing will break if you don't have this stuff, but some of the furniture might be missing and some of the sims might look odd with different hairstyles.

*These STAIRS AND FENCES for everything to show up properly, especially the lighthouse:
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=362401

*PATTERNS needed for the houses:
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=353357

Put the file in your My Documents/Electronic Arts/Saves folder.

What an excellent idea, I like the way you have created the town to have a unique feel (within the constraints of what is currently available).  I appreciate this and look forward to downloading your updated version with the playable ghost, whenever that is ready.

First: THANKS, THIS IS GREAT!
Next: Do you plan to make more of these interesting neighborhoods? I've been reading your custom neighborhood tutorials/ stuff and there's a lot of potential things you can do/mess with, such as Montague vs. Captulets feuds (of course, this is more focused on the Sims themselves rather than the buildings, though the families can own the buildings...) so I'm wondering if you can make more... I'll definitely have fun playing them!
BTW: I love your Motel and Church.
EDIT: Just making sure the Grammar Police won't arrest me.

Out of curiosity, are there any beautiful vista lots?

How do you know when a lot is a beautiful vista? I thought all the ones near the beach and on the hill were. Does that vary?

Nice, but it REALLY needs at least the school and the store.

Edit: Found the store, Duh! But it still needs the school.

I only know of one way to determine whether a lot has a beautiful vista: move a sim into the lot and see whether they have the moodlet.

Beautiful vistas are easy to destroy and impossible (at this time) to get back.  The easiest way to remove a beautiful vista is to destroy the lot from the neighborhood view.  You can also destroy them by packaging a lot, and by installing a lot from the lot bin.

Since this neighborhood was created with downloaded lots, I'm going to guess that the beautiful vistas are all gone.

Ah, I was not aware of that. Thank you for informing me. I'll try to avoid destroying them.

More info on beautiful vistas:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15279.0.html
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=347927

Look HARDER, or put your spectacles on.

PS: Do you know that you're a HAMTARD?

Sweet, I'm trying it out right now. It feels as if something is missing when I'm hovering at the neighbourhood view, but meh.


The goggles, they do nothing!

The school is near the beach, and in one of the screenshots. The only things missing are the theater and the spa, because I think they're pointless and I couldn't find a good way to make them work in a rural hood, but they are easy enough to add back in. The bookstore and grocery are hidden inside the whalemart on "Blight Hill" above town, by the fish farm. The science center is in the usual location, but buried underground (it's the same lot I uploaded before).

There are 3 beautiful vista lots, one with a house on it--the others are empty lots. I'm not sure if there were originally more of them, because I may have accidentally killed the beautiful vista buff on a couple that seem like they should have it before I knew the buff existed. However, since someone has already been able to clone the fish and bug spawners, I'm hoping we'll be able to add the beautiful vista back soon.

When asked, Pescado said that once you put fish in a community pond they will automatically respawn, and I did stock all the community ponds with fish. Don't place a new building on the two empty beautiful vista lots (on the cliffs above the ocean) or they will lose the buff--you have to build something from the ground up. As for seeds and bugs and rocks, I think there should be enough spawn points in the off-lot locations that couldn't be modified for your collector sims. I did not use the buyable fish, seed, and bug spawners from MTS2 because I had a few misgivings about including them, but you can download them and place them yourself if you want.

I would argue that both of these could be made to work in a rural community.

Many small towns & hamlets in the rural area I grew up in had a civic hall, a building near the council chambers that was basically a hall that could be hired.  The hall was a focal point of the local community, and was often used for movies, for dances, for wedding receptions, for meetings of various local clubs/societies (and for functions these groups may stage), and for gigs by local bands.

As for the spa - what about a beauty parlour or hairdressing salon?  What small town doesn't have hairdressers who also double as beauticians?

That does sound like it could work. My main concern is that I can't actually rename the community object to have it called something else. I thought about hiding them underground or in a larger building, but I couldn't think of a better look for them that would actually be an improvement. Both buildings would probably be fine as they are, but I don't plan on making any more changes to the neighborhood at this point, building-wise (otherwise I won't be able to stop for another 2 months). They'd probably look nice next to the library if you bulldoze the trees, or next to the town hall.

@old_dude: the school building is the one from Riverview. Do you have Riverview installed?

Can you please have a little install list example do this first then this do get this to work I try to load it and still keeps on kicking me out of the game thanks

Punctuation and grammar fail.

Je ne comprends pas qu'est-ce vous dit.

Besides the beauty parlor, which is a staple of small towns, I've also come across a number of sort of retreat, get away from it all, be one with nature sort of spas, but the problem is that rabbithole building definitely looks like a high falutin big city spa, so it would have to be disguised or something.

The town is very nice. Strange to see something so different, yet so similar to my own Sunset Valley.
I've no need for two Sunset Valleys however, its hard enough maintaining my own.
I cant wait till this gets done with Riverview though, as my one is very unfinished.
Very nice.

As stated in the original post, you should install Riverview and Awesomemod first.

List! You must install these first!
Riverview!
Awesomemod!
Brains!

Optional: Stairs & fences recolors, patterns linked in the original post.


@Motoki: yes, that's the main problem with the beauty parlor. The one from Riverview doesn't look significantly different,  although Riverview is meant to be a more rural town... it's barely even a a recolor. I felt I was able to compensate with the stadium and school at least somewhat by partially burying them to make them look smaller, but I'm not sure I can get that to work for the spa. Customizing neighborhoods will probably get much easier once people start to remesh the rabbitholes, but for now we are stuck with the non-recolorable defaults.

I spent several hours working on the game today trying to get the school and hospital to show up.  I uninstalled the game, edited the registry of every mention of sims 3 and re-installed the whole thing, twice, all to no avail. Re-downloaded the save game as well. The only way I was able to get those buildings in the game was to export them from Riverview, buldoze a couple of lots the correct size in Hatchet Falls, and then place them.

I've lost some of the feel you achieved with Hatchet Falls, but now at least my Sim kids can go to school.

its really nice how just changing the style and designs of lots can give a neighborhood a completly diffrent feel.

(i have been lurking for a long time now because i forgot my username...finaly i realized to hit "forgot password" and it'll send me an email with my username in it. also... is it 'desighn' or 'design'?)

http://www.onelook.com/?w=desighn&ls=a

@Old_douche:

Did you have Riverview installed at the time you installed my neighborhood? I suspect that once you've run the hood once already, the game remembers those lots as being empty, so it doesn't help if you install Riverview afterwards.

Also, community objects from Riverview and the base game are in the catalog with other buyable objects, so you didn't have to do it the crazy way, and you certainly shouldn't have to fuck with your registry or reinstall the entire game so the sims could go to school. You could have gone into buy/build mode for those community lots and placed the regular school and the regular hospital--it's under build mode, "community objects." Hell, you could place 15 schools in your neighborhood this way. It's completely unnecessary to export ANYTHING for any reason, because it's already in the catalog. If you didn't already know this, I suggest you either follow the advice of more experienced players, or play the game enough to get familiar with it before you attempt to install ANY third party content at all. Now, please answer my questions, because I need more information so I can know if anything actually needs to be fixed, or if the problem is limited to you and/or potential difficulties with installing Riverview, which I do not intend to support here since it is covered elsewhere.

Has anyone else had this problem that can actually be useful here? Is it working properly for anyone who had both Riverview and Awesomemod previously installed?

I have to ask, do any of the pre-built houses contain cribs?

I havn't downloaded yet because I currently have my game running, but this looks fantastic.  I'm excited to try it out for myself now that I've seen the screenshots.   ;D

Just thought I'd let you know I played Hatchet Falls all day today. The kids went to school, the parents went to work, Mom stopped and bought books on the way home. Both Mom and Dad completed several opportunities in various building. All is working as it should and it is a wonderful neighborhood. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Most are minimally furnished, so I don't think so. There are suitable places for nurseries, though.

I'm collecting empty hoods for a new start and this thread was really a pain to read. The question is that what was important to read simply gets lost in the middle of so much assholits attacks - you said that you used custom lots and houses from MTS2 and suggests some ccs to download. As you just suggested and not required, can I skip downloading ccs and be sure that nothing will be borked by reason of missing elements? I have already enough with Riverview that included things that I cannot use in other hoods and specific clothing that my sims from other hoods are using even as bathing suit (one of my sims dived on a swimming-pool using an overall suit). Thanks.

Did he have the Insane or Innapropriate traits?  If so, this is normal behavour and has absolutely nothing to do with the outfit in question.

Bingo. My Hans Gruber has insane, and he regularly dons a tuxedo to go swimming and sleeps in a ski jacket.

But has he been dropped from the Doo Peas tower yet?

I'm with you on the "isolating the troubleshooting problem" thing. Either "isolating the problem" OR "troubleshooting the problem" would be clear. However, a user isn't likely to isolate a troubleshooting problem without help, since if they realized what the problem was with their troubleshooting, they (theoretically) wouldn't keep doing it that way.

Very true, although if the users at my job even tried to troubleshoot, I'd be happy to help them with the isolation part. Preferably by locking them in an empty room.

As for Hans, I'd give anything to drop him from SimNakatomi Plaza. Do you really think you have what it takes to take me on, Mr. Cowboy?

She said that it should be okay without the patterns and stairs but that some of walls and stairs then might look ugly. The game will always backup to an existing material or object if one is missing. So no it won't bork your game though it might make the houses look like shit. The fact that she said it "should" be okay means she hasn't tried it so basically you are on your own but the worse than can really happen is some hideously clashing wallpaper and stairs.

I'm not sure why this is so hard to figure out or exactly how much more you need spelled out. Either try it or don't.

As I said in the original post, Riverview and Awesomemod are considered required; the rest (CC) is optional. If I were you I'd download them, though. There are only two items of CC, and I'd recommend them to anybody.

Could someone please move the sporkage of old douche to a separate thread in RL? He certainly acted like an ass, but at this point it's getting spammy.

Inhabited version now available!

Link:
http://ellatorture.moreawesomethanyou.com:8080/other/HatchetFalls/HatchetFallsAndSims.sims3

Requires:
*This hair for one of the non-playable ghosts: Short Mop Hair by HystericalParoxysm @ MTS
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=357769

*Riverview & Awesomemod


Recommended: Everything from the TS3 Store. I got mine from a torrent of everything in the store thread. While I tried to keep the things I used from the store to a minimum, the store stuff is not marked in the game as being custom, so I have no way to distinguish between what came with the base game and what didn't. Nothing will break if you don't have this stuff, but some of the furniture might be missing and some of the sims might look odd with different hairstyles.

Six Households have been added to the neighborhood, including mean old Zeckram Silver, who haunts the spooky mansion & lighthouse at the top of the hill, an Emailer couple (I recommend you don't actually play them, since there's no way to do this challenge in TS3 as far as I can tell), the Calendar family at Sunnyside Farms, and the Westley family--a single mother raising 5 toddlers. I've mostly been playing with the Calendars in my game.

I've also added the spa and the theater to the neighborhood, after all, and fixed a few random things around town (nothing major, mostly fixing the missing lights and terlets at the gym). The theater is behind the town hall, and the spa has been swallowed by the Whalemart. I tried messing with it to make it look like some sort of country resort, but couldn't get it to work. Additionally, I've edited the lot descriptions to include credits to different builders whose work is incorporated into my neighborhood. I will upload a nuked version shortly without the new characters as well, for those who want the lot descriptions and the theater/spa.

I started playing the Calendar family yesterday and I must say I like Hatchet Falls a lot.  I did notice, though, that the Leftover Autumn Salad in thier fridge spoils while they are eating it (causing mom Calendar to run to the bathroom to throw up a while later).  Not that I need that "fixed" or anything, just a head's up to others so they'll know to simply delete it and prepare fresh food if they're playing that family.

Eta: I've been continuing with the Calendar family, and I've noticed some oddities.  I'm wondering if it's just me.

1. Some "wild" plants are unharvestable, though they are displaying "Harvest" as their growth state.  The only option I get on them is "view".  I have noticed this in 240 Sunnyside Blvd (I wanted those peppers!) and the apple trees at the school.  Other wild plants are functioning normally, such as the tomatoes and potatoes at 260 Sunnyside Blvd and the trees in the park.

2. The Westley todlers somehow aged to teens though the Calendar boy is still a child and the girl is still a todler.

Is it intentional that the watermelon plants growing on 270 Sunnyside Blvd are Foul and Putrid quality?

Are the download links down? I'm getting this error message.

1. This is normal. I've been having the same thing happen in my game. They seem to alternate being harvestable every other day, so you could try that (IIRC). It's annoying, but right now there is no fix for it. It's also possible that another sim got there first.

2. Update Awesomemod, and enable the option that prevents unplayed households from aging faster with the aweconfig tool.

3. Yes. Beggars can't be choosers.

Just thought I'd let you know I've been playing the Empty of all Sims version myself for several days now - I actually added the Theater and Spa in myself around the corner from the Town hall and grouping them together on one lot like in the small town I live in - here in NH which actually has a small 32 seat theater (mainly used for kiddie matinees all summer in my town) with a beautyshop next door - I guess so moms can drop off their kids and then go get their hair and nails done - I don't know as I've never been inside of either place. But I found the theater very necessary as it seems every Sim I put in this hood instantly roll the wants to take a guitar class and see a movie. Figures. Seems they wouldn't get the want if the buildings didn't exist, but they did and it was annoying. That aside, I have - so far - had absolutely no problem with the hood. I have moved in 14 households, a few with their own farms and I did convert several of the community woodsy lots to residential. My fish are jumping in the several fishing spots I've sent Sims to fish in and so far they seem to be finding enough bugs, metals, and gems. Not sure if all are represented yet, but so far - so good.

That's about it for now.