Create-A-World Tips, Tricks, and Annoyances

[The_Goddess]

Yellow means community lot.

The people who picked those colors have NO sense of tradition. Clearly, the community lots should be BLUE and the Residential lots should be GREEN. Everyone here should know why! The color scheme dates as far back as RCI.

I knew there was a reason I always got confused in CAW. You have made it clear- I think blue = shopping.

Blue = Residential

[Claeric]

Kinda slow on the uptake there, eh? The discussion was that EA made the colors wrong. Residential is green, Commercial is Blue, and it has been that way forever, but ea made Residential blue and Community yellow.

RCI. Residential, Commercial, Industrial. The little meter on all the SimCity games. Those colors are the colors used for the meter and for zoning areas.

[The_Goddess]

Kinda slow on the uptake there, eh? The discussion was that EA made the colors wrong. Residential is green, Commercial is Blue, and it has been that way forever, but ea made Residential blue and Community yellow.

RCI. Residential, Commercial, Industrial. The little meter on all the SimCity games. Those colors are the colors used for the meter and for zoning areas.

I'm not slow on the uptake, your joke will cause confusion to the noobs.  I'm simply doing my part to keep them from crying.

[kazebird]

RCI. Residential, Commercial, Industrial. The little meter on all the SimCity games. Those colors are the colors used for the meter and for zoning areas.

Actually, in the original simcity, residential was red, and I'm not even joking!

[Zazazu]

True, but I think every one after the original went with green-residential, yellow-rural/industrial, blue-commercial. There's one of the Sim City games that I missed, plus the suckitude that was Societies.

Kinda slow on the uptake there, eh? The discussion was that EA made the colors wrong. Residential is green, Commercial is Blue, and it has been that way forever, but ea made Residential blue and Community yellow.

RCI. Residential, Commercial, Industrial. The little meter on all the SimCity games. Those colors are the colors used for the meter and for zoning areas.

I'm not slow on the uptake, your joke will cause confusion to the noobs.  I'm simply doing my part to keep them from crying.

Far be it for me to defend the Shoaty Vole, but there was no joke. It was quite clear that Pescado and Vole were referring to how the RCI was set up in Sim City.

Also, we don't care about noob confusion. If they are too stupid to use the power of Google, then they deserve the poking they get.


You all are going to make me break out the SC4 disks again and find all my old mods.

[Claeric]

RCI. Residential, Commercial, Industrial. The little meter on all the SimCity games. Those colors are the colors used for the meter and for zoning areas.

Actually, in the original simcity, residential was red, and I'm not even joking!

Ah, you're right. I remember SimCity on the SNES, Residential were red. But I was only thinking of zoning. I know that is zoning, but I'm thinking more drag-and-drop zoning. So I didn't even think of that.

[Inge]

Sooner or later surely someone has to find out how we can use our own meshes as hood ploppables...

[Claeric]

Sooner or later surely someone has to find out how we can use our own meshes as hood ploppables...

There is no need. Make the smallest lot possible and use moveobjects.

[Zazazu]

Can't put a lot in water. Plus, sometimes you get wonky edges.

[Mekare]

Sorry to revive a dead topic, but I didn't want to make a new one and this seemed like a fitting place for it.

I've made a world with CAW.. I was basically looking just to make a hood with wide open space and room to grow with future expansions, similar to the old TS2 maps. It's just one big flat grid.  Well,.. Medium sized grid.  Anyway I exported the Sunset Valley sims, because they were always my favorite... and since CAW doesn't allow us to place npcs yet, my world is basically a bunch of empty lots to fit them into once I got ingame.  
After I started a new game and placed all the families though, I seem to get massive lag spikes.  It will run for about 5 seconds, then freeze for 10 on an endless loop, making the game unplayable.  

I'm not sure what's causing this.. I thought it might be the game not recognizing my cloned sims as population, and therefor trying to overstuff the neighborhood with NPCs when the town is already full,.. but even with only a few families placed it seemed to work for about an hour before the spikes started again.

Anyone else having this issue? Or know what might be causing it?


ETA: I also sent my map and savegame to some friends, and they had the same issue. So it's definately the map, and not my comp.

[Zazazu]

There are a couple of possible causes I know of. For one, have you checked to see if sims are getting stuck anywhere? Especially if you've placed rabbit holes close to the edges of lots, or on uneven ground, you can have sims get stuck and this will cause lag spikes and skips.

Do you have Late Night? I don't, but I'd heard that people have had issues with lag spikes as the game is trying to assign celebrity sims but not doing so successfully.

[Claeric]

Make absolutely sure that you "rebuild routing data" before testing, too. Even a tiny change can cause a big routing issue if you don't make sure to do it.

[Mekare]

All the rabbit holes are in the middle of town, and there's no slopes in the map at all except for 1 hill and the edges, it's definately slopes.  I do have late night, and the only Celebrities are the goths, so that might be it.  Does Late Night have a celebrity quota I need to fill? It doesn't make much sense though since maps like sunset valley and twinbrook still operate just fine without celebrities.  

I didn't even notice the rebuild routing data option until just now... so I'll give that a try too.

ETA: Well I went over my map with a fine tooth comb, and I may have found the culprit.  I turned on the view routing data tool and found 1 discrepancy where the sea level was a little too high and "invisible water" was blocking the way for any sims to get to the beach.  I'm hoping by squishing this I'll have a working map. 

Thank you both! ^_^

[ingeli]

After some annoying attempts to save different versions of the same world for export (for example different versions with stuff from only base game/expansions ect) I figured out how to do it. As this was not easy obtained info anywhere I am posting it here: Save a copy of the world in caw, name it anything, lets say Riverview-Redux. Close the world. Open with s3pe. Delete resource called WPID. Save, close. Open again with CAW, save again - of course with name, description and pic for the export. Close file. Export. Install. Rinse and repeat for as many copies of the world as you want.

[Rolfy]

CAW... Okay, so I finally finished building my world and saved it. But then it would not export, so I created another save with a different name and saved that, and it still would not export. I keep getting the dialog box "world failed to export" or whatever. So I copied my files to another location and re-installed CAW. Then when I restored my old files to CAW it would not work AT ALL, I get the Could Not Load File Error.... If anyone has any light to shed on this, it would be very, very appreciated.  

PS: We all know that CAW crashes constantly, even more often with Late Night, so I'm not sure if any of my saved files got corrupted, but I have several different save versions, and none of them work, so just thought I'd mention that.

PS2: I was browsing\googling around and found someone else with the exact same problem as me (hopeless carrot) none of the responses solved the problem, So that's a little more info. http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=422463

[ingeli]

Did you use things from Riverview or for example store stuff without having it installed? That can make it unable to open. I have very few problems with CAW now, compared to earlier versions, and EIG works very smooth. CAW crashes sometimes when searching for stuff, but not worse than you can save without corruption, and reopen the file.
Did you try and open an earlier backup-copy of this world? Maybe you can narrow down what you changed or added before it became corrupt.

[soozelwoozel]

CAW... Okay, so I finally finished building my world and saved it. But then it would not export, so I created another save with a different name and saved that, and it still would not export. I keep getting the dialog box "world failed to export" or whatever. So I copied my files to another location and re-installed CAW. Then when I restored my old files to CAW it would not work AT ALL, I get the Could Not Load File Error.... If anyone has any light to shed on this, it would be very, very appreciated.  

PS: We all know that CAW crashes constantly, even more often with Late Night, so I'm not sure if any of my saved files got corrupted, but I have several different save versions, and none of them work, so just thought I'd mention that.

PS2: I was browsing\googling around and found someone else with the exact same problem as me (hopeless carrot) none of the responses solved the problem, So that's a little more info. http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=422463

A PS2 is a games console. A P.P.S is a post post scriptum. Thank you, come again.

[tea_and_blues]

Sooner or later surely someone has to find out how we can use our own meshes as hood ploppables...

Isn't this already possible using the same principal as with these: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=427515

(Edit: He says replying to a post from July as if it's current... :/)

[phnxflyng]

I tried to dl the 1.6 patch for CAW, and had all sorts of problems. So I uninstalled CAW and down loaded it again, and the patch doesn't come up in the launcher. Before I invest a lot of time in building a world, would someone please clarify for me: did I down a version that is somehow already patched? And if not, what do I do now?

[JEthel]

I tried to dl the 1.6 patch for CAW, and had all sorts of problems. So I uninstalled CAW and down loaded it again, and the patch doesn't come up in the launcher. Before I invest a lot of time in building a world, would someone please clarify for me: did I down a version that is somehow already patched? And if not, what do I do now?

Tell me if I'm wrong but, if I understand you correctly, you first downloaded a '1.6 patch' for CAW? There was once a patch for CAW, released ~ between WA and Ambition. But this patch was intended for a previous release of CAW, so there is no need to use it anymore. With Ambition EP/game patches, CAW was unusable for several weeks. EA released a new version of CAW (a complete new CAW, not just a patch) to make it usable again. We had to uninstall the previous one and install the new one.

I think that's the method they have used ever since: release of new software vs patch.
So, to be able to use CAW today, you should just: 1/ check you are up to date with all the latest patches of the game+ the EP/SP you own, 2/ download the last available release of CAW and install it. CAW should work just fine then.

As a tip, world building being so long indeed, keep back up's of your saves/files in CAW, frequent saves and back up's. There is always a chance that a new patch makes CAW unusable again for a while. Moreover, there is also a chance that a new version of CAW is not compatible anymore with previous saves.

[Rubyelf]

I appreciate any help I can gain from anyone regarding the following issue I am having.

The issue I am having is that I am trying to work out a way to create a river leading off into a waterfall which lands into the ocean.
This is a screenshot of what I am aiming at:



The problem is that I cannot get water where the "River" is as CAW does not allow me to place any more water there, unless I am missing something. I tried to Edit in Game and create a lot over the "River" to be able to create the river, but it didn't like that and ended up looking too broken, or it would automatically lower the water level (stupid EA).

Any ideas or tips on how I can accomplish this would be lovely.

[rosess]

I appreciate any help I can gain from anyone regarding the following issue I am having.

The issue I am having is that I am trying to work out a way to create a river leading off into a waterfall which lands into the ocean.
This is a screenshot of what I am aiming at: [snip]

The problem is that I cannot get water where the "River" is as CAW does not allow me to place any more water there, unless I am missing something. I tried to Edit in Game and create a lot over the "River" to be able to create the river, but it didn't like that and ended up looking too broken, or it would automatically lower the water level (stupid EA).

Any ideas or tips on how I can accomplish this would be lovely.

Check out this thread at MTS.  You may be able to use the existing river pieces in the same fashion, if you place one as described in post 26.

[Rubyelf]

Yeah I found that Rosess, and tried to place them to see if it worked on my existing world, unfortunately it ruined it and made it look rather crazy. I've already done all the main sculpting/roads and buildings. It wasn't until just recently I decided I wanted a lake with a river leading into a waterfall to the sea.

Edit: I ended up giving up, as I can't add those layers after already doing so much. I used the "River" object and just moved it around to cover that spot and added in the rapid effects, looks rather nice.

[dramamine]

Would it be too much to ask you to post some pictures to show what you're talking about? I was rather curious how this would turn out.

[Rubyelf]

Would it be too much to ask you to post some pictures to show what you're talking about? I was rather curious how this would turn out.

Sure:


That there is the end result of it after I've placed everything else down, it looks pretty nice in game. The only problem I found was, that while editing, I had to move it off map so I could target anything else as it was huge, and no amount of searching found a way to decrease its size.


As you can see from the above image the target box for it is HUGE. My city is almost complete, I'm currently working on placing in all the houses. It has 2 parts, a surbia part, and a city part, the one shown is the city part.