Create-A-World Tips, Tricks, and Annoyances

[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.

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.

It's early on, so I'm sure that is exactly what I'm seeing - work buddies. I only have five townie families. It just always seems to happen that I see a family has spawned, I check "listhomeless" to see how many are in the family and how much money they have, and I build digs for them. The moment Awesomemod places them in their new home (pretty quickly and predictably), a new family is spawned. Soon I'll be getting some spinoffs as one family already was made of romancers from existing households, and I have another couple that Awesomemod keeps sending for nookie in the mausoleum.

[Beehoosis]

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've been doing mine in GIMP 2.6.  You can either type the .png bit in manually or scroll down to it in the extensions drop down.  You'll then get a box asking about the interlacing and stuff.  Just choose the default options and it should work. 

[MistyBlue]

Does anyone know where the save file is after you install it? I wanted to see what my town looked like in game and then edit all the mistakes. I saved it under 2 different names, but apparently that didn't matter. It still says that the world is already installed even though I erased everything I could find that had anything to do with it. Also, even though it says it is already installed, it isn't in the list of worlds on the Main Screen.

[Lion]

Does anyone know where the save file is after you install it? I wanted to see what my town looked like in game and then edit all the mistakes. I saved it under 2 different names, but apparently that didn't matter. It still says that the world is already installed even though I erased everything I could find that had anything to do with it. Also, even though it says it is already installed, it isn't in the list of worlds on the Main Screen.

To delete installed worlds without going through the launcher, delete the files in the following folders in your My Documents (XP):
- InstalledWorlds
- WorldCaches
- DCCache (Edit: Have to delete even if there is no CC)

To save a new version of your world, you have to change the name in the "Add/Edit Description".

[Freezerburn]

Is there other way to quickly zoom in and out rather than rolling my mousewheel for thousands of time?

[nanacake]

The +/- keys also zoom.

[Phoebe]

Is anyone else having a problem with putting rocks in their worlds? Every time I select different types of rocks they appear in the middle of the ocean instead of where my mouse is. I don't understand why. At first I thought they weren't appearing but they appeared as placed in my layer panel, so I clicked one and clicked "Find in Rendering Pane", and there were about 10 rocks. =/

[Lion]

I randomly placed a few rocks, they work fine for me, appearing where the mouse is.

You have to press Esc to prevent objects on your mouse tip from being added to the world.



Why doesn't water/river appear? The elevation of the bridge (to indicate how high the land is) PositionY is 43.

Is there other way to quickly zoom in and out rather than rolling my mousewheel for thousands of time?

Also, if you press Shift when you zoom/move, it goes faster.

[dragonarts]

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've been doing mine in GIMP 2.6.  You can either type the .png bit in manually or scroll down to it in the extensions drop down.  You'll then get a box asking about the interlacing and stuff.  Just choose the default options and it should work. 

I've been using 2.6 for a considerable time. No, it doesn't save it in 24 bit format. It saves as 32 bit. After considerable search on Google, I reluctantly concluded that Gimp won't save as 24 bit png. Yes, I know how to type . p n g manually, or to choose it from the dropdown menu.

No one else has commented on the "only two worlds" issue I'm having. Thanks for the tip about renaming instead of trying to overwrite files I've made changes to, and the locations for deleting references to worlds I don't want installed any more. I was finding it frustrating to figure out where all to look. It seems I need to be moar 'puter savvy. <- dumdum dum...

[seanzol]

Why doesn't water/river appear? The elevation of the bridge (to indicate how high the land is) PositionY is 43.

Go to Terrain > Change Sea Level, then click a spot on a valley where you want the water level to snap to.

[Rockermonkey]

Gimp can make 24-bit .png's from deleting its alpha channel.

I had that issue to, and I just kept messing with it until I found a solution.

[viddy]

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

Actually, it's not even a meshed sidepiece, and those bridges are easy to create.

Build a road that goes directly through your river to the other side.  Then, click the Grading Road Tool button, click the Flatten Road button on the right side, then click on the road that runs through your river.  Be sure to click on a part of the road that is on the bank of the river and not underwater, as it will flatten the piece of road to the elevation you clicked on.

Then, you'll have a stretch of land that connects both sides of the river, with the road on it.  Use the terrain paint tool to paint that stretch of land rocky or dark sand or whatever to provide the texture of the "bridge."

The good thing about these bridges is that they don't require any snapping or precise terraforming.  Just build a road, flatten it, and paint under it.  These "bridges" can be as long or as short as you need them to be, with no pieces or game objects required.

You can also use this technique to build curved bridges (just remember to lay out your road underwater exactly how you want it before you flatten it to avoid unnecessary terraform detailing later).

[J. M. Pescado]

No, there's definitely a meshed sidepiece.

[viddy]

No, there's definitely a meshed sidepiece.

I spoke before I looked.  I stand corrected.

But, it's still a good way to build semi-realistic looking bridges with ease and flexibility.

[chann]

More of a causeway than a bridge. Though I suppose they would have their place.

[Fourteenfingeredfiddler]

I've been playing around with bridges to see how they fare when it's not just a gap of water our puddings must cross.



Of course, something with this much potential to be awesome can't possibly work out well under EA, although I had suspicions for what comes next as soon as I came up with the initial idea.



Sims and Cars drive OVER bridges just fine, but like the in-game camera, there is no concept of going UNDER or THROUGH something.



It doesn't seem to impede travel to a Sim's destination in anyway, but unless you're fine with flying cars and floating pudding, bridges must remain as routes over the impassible only. I don't expect that messing with passability or routing data will change this because the means to do so seems very limited, but regardless I doubt it's in the game's capacity to allow for different altitude layered pathways.

[jmtmom]

For 24-bit png conversions, you can use paint.net, it's free: http://www.getpaint.net/

It's less intimidating than gimp IMO.

[Lion]

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?

No. I'm able to install three worlds at the same time at least. They show up in the drop-down menu in addition to Sunset Valley.

[ingeli]

I like the copy-lot function i CAW, but you have to beware that not everything copies - stuff in basements seems to be deleted, and some doors/windows and special edits like windows on pool walls. What I do is that I copy the lot - its handy to see how it looks in new location. Then I replace it with a proper copy of the lot in EIG. Its also good that you can move the lots around when placed, rotate them and what not.

[nanacake]

On my last EIG save something strange happened. It just said "Error" and that the save didn't complete. Tried to save again, took a very long time. The map fades to black as it saves each lot continuously -Is that normal behavior? This second time follow up message stated it saved successfully.  Then, I noticed a hole appeared in the center of a mountain, but quitting back to CAW it's nowhere to be seen. I smoothed out the terrain just in case.  I wonder if it's only graphical glitches in raised terrain. Hood is about done, so I will export it and test now.

Edit/Update: Another question: Did anyone who exported their world use the launcher successfully to install it? I tried to use the launcher but then it still wasn't showing up in the menu. So, I moved the .world file the launcher placed in Installed Worlds to the same place I had to put Riverview in C:/Program Files/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Gamedata/Shared/NonPackaged/Worlds and it worked. The mountain still has a hole in it. I think I can't fix it unless I remove the lots on top of the mountain then redo.

[Zazazu]

Yes, I used the Launcher to install mine. I didn't have any problems.

I didn't truly use Edit-in-Game, since I was leaving the lots blank. I was just using it to be able to scan the terrain in ways that the CAW editor doesn't allow. I have another terrain I've been screwing around with at off-moments and will be pre-building it for my established town option (in TS2, I always liked having one town that I built slowly and one that started off heavily populated). So we'll see if Edit-in-Game wants to be a bitch here as well.

[ingeli]

The more lots, the longer the saving in EIG takes. I have had errors, because of corrupted lots. In some cases it was just a question of replacing the errored lot with a fresh copy - I always save a copy of all new built lots to library, just to be safe. But in one case that didnt help, and I deleted the lot and rebuilt it. Then the world saved ok.

[nanacake]

The more lots, the longer the saving in EIG takes.

Yes, it had taken a long time for saving EIG when I had finally completed adding buildings to all but two of the around 25+ lots on the map.  I don't understand why in CAW it shows one thing for terrain and in game another, still. When I flattened the top terrain of the mountain (To make a plateau for lots) a side effect occurs with jagged lines forming on the slope edges below. I used decorative rocks (Beach/Landscaping) to cover up some other mountain cliffs to mask the edges I couldn't smooth because the terrain was too steep- also too close to the world map's edge which might have also been why.

A note for anyone who is also making urban areas/small lots-

Sidewalks: They're detrimental to proper routing. Found placing half of a sidewalk on the edge of two lots without using proper grid spacing is a bad idea. I did not place an entire tile of sidewalk space away from the adjacent lot. Sims will run half on the sidewalk, half their body on the lot edge with head bobbing through any lot edge's fencing. It's better to use a pavement terrain paint to give a merged pavement effect for such closely placed lots. A properly spaced sidewalk alleyway works well though Sims will take this route more than road transportation if there is alleyways all the way from start point to destination. If you want sims to drive or bike to work place your residential farthest as possible from the commercial district farther and place no *real* alleyway leading there for a few hundred squares in each direction.

I don't personally mind them walking to the neighboring homes, but no one is using the road at all to get around because they really like sidewalks more.

[Zazazu]

I only have sidewalks in the community lot areas, which are three distinctive sections. However, I find that townies generally walk or run around town except when going home in the evening...then they cab it. I'm not following exactly what you did, though, Nanacake. Are you saying you only placed a sidewalk 1 tile wide? I didn't think that was possible. All of mine are the default 2 tile sidewalks with sidewalk intersections wherever they made sense. No weird half-on-half-off issues here.

[nanacake]

Are you saying you only placed a sidewalk 1 tile wide?

The limit for making lots this close is about half of a square using the CAW grid for a precise guideline. I placed the sidewalks after the lots to fill in the grass gaps. This turned out to be a bad idea. The reason I did this is because I wanted the pavement to continue seamlessly between the lots. I was hoping sims would walk back there but not all the time to get everywhere. They prefer the sidewalk to the road if you add single pathways. If you've made a custom ground paint texture, you'll notice it's enlarged, so I couldn't get the sidewalk texture to match up if it's ground paint.  I will have to use plain asphalt texture from the street.


Ideally, I want the sims to use the properly placed sidewalk at the top of the image to get to the park and walk around the front of the houses. After I remove some of the fence around the playground, hopefully if sims do decide to route through this short open space it won't look so bad.