More Awesome Than You!

It took a while to get my head around the controls, but most of my first custom neighborhood (outside of my Sims 2 creations) is finally taking shape. I thought I would share the WIP with you folks.

(http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/613/fernlakewip.png)

EDIT:
I've decided that since so many folks would like to mess around with this town, I'd upload the .world file. Rather than leave it as is and get all manner of complaints that so and so lot has bad placement or whatever. Well honestly I'm just tired of working on it and I'm lazy I want to give everyone the chance to tweak it a bit and learn how to use CAW yourselves you lazy peons.

http://www.mediafire.com/?fzzt2qytzln

Seems a bit puny and short on lots. Embiggen moar?

They're a lot bigger than they look, and I'm trying to keep the feeling of this being a small close knit close quarters town.

But on the subject of embiggening, is there any way while in the creator to expand the map without completely messing up the dimensions of everything I've laid down?

And has anyone figured out how to switch the vast sea with fake land? They did it in Sunset Valley.

I love the map and bigger isn't always better so I'm glad you're giving it a small town feel. The huge lots in Sunset Valley actually drive me nuts cause I have trouble filling them up. I'm like, "Okay, I built a house...now what?"

I really like the town center. I don't have the latest patch so I can't get custom worlds to install but if I did I'd love to have Fern Lake in my game. :)

I'm not talking about the physical size of the lots themselves. I actually prefer the smaller lots. I was talking more about their QUANTITY. Remember: Unlike TS2, in which you could subject your neighborhood to Terrain Surgery any time and add more lots at will, in TS3, everything you put down is FOREVER. If you don't plan accordingly, and honestly, it looks like your neighborhood is about the same size as the existing ones, you will run out of space REALLY fast. Forever.

That's a special Environment object called Distant Terrain, basically an enormous mesh placed around the edges of the world. However, it only works on the largest map size. There's some more details about using it in the CAW walkthrough (http://www.thesims3.com/content/global/downloads/caw/CaW_WalkThrough.pdf).

The endless water thing sucks. What I did was scrap my medium land-based world and start over from scratch on the largest size, obscuring the horizon around the edges with terrain and restricting the camera with non-routable paint. This still requires testing from a LOT of angles to look natural.

I love the word embiggen. It's so cromulent.

At least you're TRYING to make a mainland neighborhood. I take a peek at the exchange's neighborhoods sometimes (just for a laugh, never to download) and 98% of the crap there are islands. Nothing against Coconut Island though, it's actually a nicely built hood.

You have two options to make land that appears to go off into the distance. Use the largest map size available, surround it by hills, and make your town in the middle. Have one road go off behind a hill and be non-routable for the camera for realism. Or, just use the distant terrain over and over. They're a little bitchy to place, though.

Where is the download? I'd like to try it out.

As for the number of lots, what's a good number? I heard EA says better less than 100. But I'd really like to have like 170. Would that make the game unplayable?

Its still a WIP. Should I ever finish it I'll let you folks know. But I still have a few bugs to work out. Moving a few lots, placing decorations and stuff.

It's great so far, I understand what he means when he says he wants more lots, maybe some lakeside cabins and small cabin areas in the mountains would be cool.

I'm a fan of smaller neighborhoods, and I like this layout very much-- the only thing I would personally add is more trees in the hills, and maybe some farm decorations for the rural look of a small town surrounded by forest.

I think it's lovely.  Again, I love smaller neighborhoods.  Do you plan to landscape the other side of the map?  I notice the hills/mountains look a little jagged.

I really like it!  The distance objects might work fine with some hoods but you have to rework the edges to suit the object so it won't work with everything. I tried Egypt with my desert and it looked worse than just using the camera routing. I have to admit, I am not fond of islands either..unless I really want to play an island.

Could you upload the Fern Lake Lots/Layers files?
Fern lake can't load without them. :)

I love worlds with lots of lots. big and small, 100 residential at least, it gives you the option of using them or not! Looking forward to your world download.