Create-A-World Tips, Tricks, and Annoyances

[Zazazu]

That's been my experience. Especially since my worlds are almost always on the tiny maps, the river bits are too large to be practical. They also just don't look right, somehow. Perhaps it's just how CAW renders the object.

[Rubyelf]

Well I'm now officially pissed. I spent the last 3 weeks working on my neighbourhood, I finally completed it last night. Well I installed it, it took about 1 hour or so for it to actually LOAD into the neighbourhood when it was generating everything. The biggest issue though, is that the game is incredibly laggy, it takes about 5 minutes or more for it to load items in the catalog. Scrolling and general movement is incredibly laggy too. I read somewhere that it had to do with using lots in EIG, but I am not entirely convinced. Any ideas?

[JEthel]

Welcome to the happy CAW-users fellowship!

There might be several reasons to such huge lags. My usual bet is routing, although in your case, the slowness seems to be more general.
A few ideas to check:

• Your computer specs. Is it 'beefy' enough to handle your world, depending on how large and how crowded (= how many objects/lots)  this one is?
• Any potentially borked piece of CC?
• Potentially conflicting mods?

Besides this, I come back to my little personal obsession, routing. Be sure you ask CAW to regenerate routing before you save and export your world. Well, sorry to point to the obvious, but I know that I can be a bit absent-minded sometimes and forget to do it :-)

What do you mean by 'using lots in EIG'?
Is it adding new lots in game, with the feature that came with Ambitions? If it is, then yes, I believe too that this can cause lagginess. I haven't made any extensive test, so it's just a mere belief so far. But I don't think the routing is properly updated in game, at least not in the same way that what the 'regenerate routing' command does in CAW. So, it's better to place all the lots in CAW, not in game.
If it relates to the use of the EIG feature in CAW, then it depends what you did. Just plopping buildings on lots or building there *shouldn't* cause any trouble. Again, when you come back in CAW, regenerate routing before saving & exporting. Did you try to pre-populate? I think you have to reset your sims before exiting EIG, to send them all home. Otherwise they can generate some mess. Pre-populating is not something I have tried myself, so it's just based on my readings.

[rosess]

Well I'm now officially pissed. I spent the last 3 weeks working on my neighbourhood, I finally completed it last night. Well I installed it, it took about 1 hour or so for it to actually LOAD into the neighbourhood when it was generating everything. The biggest issue though, is that the game is incredibly laggy, it takes about 5 minutes or more for it to load items in the catalog. Scrolling and general movement is incredibly laggy too. I read somewhere that it had to do with using lots in EIG, but I am not entirely convinced. Any ideas?

What have you already done to try to resolve the problem?  You've probably already taken these steps, but maybe something will spark a solution.

The long loading time suggests it may be a CC issue, not a CAW issue.  Is there any CC in this world that hasn't been checked by running Process Monitor during startup?  I've yet to have an problem with loading times that wasn't a bad package spinning its wheels.  Also, if you had CC in the CAW framework, make sure those items are available to the game when it loads the completed world.

To check for a routing issue, I'd look for holes in the unroutable areas (huge cause of lag), view and check routing around the cliffs and trees, and mark the whole forest off-limits (for testing, if not permanently).  Make sure trees are clustered, and that the narrow region between road and unroutable cliff is well defined with no overlap.  If you route-painted the cliffs after adding the roads, it might be worth moving the road segments to make sure no routing paint snuck under there, and make sure the bridges are clear.  Be sure to rebuild routing right before exporting the world.

For what it's worth, I've added, deleted and moved lots in both CAW and EIG with no issues.  The city I'm working on now is huge and offers plenty of opportunity for problems to surface.  I export the world a few times along the way and play it, making and changing lots in a game save and then inserting them into the next CAW-EIG session.  Adding lots in the actual game might be an issue post-export, but pre-export, rebuilding routing in CAW should do the trick.

By the way, are you making a pre-populated world, or starting empty?  It could be relevant to the lag issues, but mainly I'm curious.

[Rubyelf]

Thanks for the tips, I'll look into this when I get home from Uni this evening. My world isn't pre-populated, I was planning on using AM's "spawnmoreoverlords" cheat to gain that, bad idea I suppose? I needed to finish things in game first, I have removed a number of CC items that I no longer use, plus one that I noticed wasn't even showing up in game which could have been the problem. Re-routing I did yes, however I did not block the forest area, thank you for pointing that out. My PC is actually very high end, i7 etc, its a custom built gamers PC. Hopefully I can figure out the problem here, thanks again for all the tips.

I noticed I am having an issue with duplicate copies of some of the Riverview custom content, which I know would not help. The biggest issue though is that I am unable to delete them in game (the bin is greyed out and disabled for all my custom content), and I am unsure which ones are which in the launcher.

[Zazazu]

Thanks for the tips, I'll look into this when I get home from Uni this evening. My world isn't pre-populated, I was planning on using AM's "spawnmoreoverlords" cheat to gain that, bad idea I suppose?

That's how I generally do it and I've never had a problem. Of course, I build gradually so when I spawn I'm usually getting no more than 50 sims.

My PC is actually very high end, i7 etc, its a custom built gamers PC. Hopefully I can figure out the problem here, thanks again for all the tips.

From what I've heard, the game will simply not utilize over a certain amount of RAM, regardless of how high end your PC is. Your hood is quite large with an astronomical number of trees and deco. Make sure basics are covered like Rosess suggested, and further make sure all those trees are on the same layer before clustering. I know that sometimes, especially at the end stages of creation, I get a bit sloppy and don't change layers as I should, or completely forget fishing spawners like I did in my current 'hood (not a big deal as I just designated a fishery in one of my caste parks).

[Skadi]

Has anyone been able to narrow down why some saves just spontaneously corrupt? The most recent two saves are both not loading; basically if I go back to the last working save I've lost about 15 hours of work. I get the corrupted memory error. Last time it happened it ate every save in the folder. I make new saves each day to try an avoid this but I would like to work out a way to protect my progress should I restart this hood.
Any suggestions?
 

[Rubyelf]

Huzzah!  It was a CC issue, apparently something I had downloaded recently did not approve of the game, so I removed pretty much all CC I no longer used, and went through removing CC bit by bit until I found the cause (some mirror floor rugs from ModTheSims). I took Rosess advice and played around with my routing. As soon as I have finished play testing this hood, I am going to upload it. Yes it has a lot of trees, I am maybe thinking I went a little overboard with the trees around the suburbs, the forest doesn't count!

Anyway I have to head to Uni now, knowing me I'll be pondering this and wont be able to concentrate (always the way, damn addicting game). Hopefully I can play test it more tonight.

Update:

Okay so the game is running perfectly now no lag, no issues, took less then 5minutes to load the hood initially, and less than 2 after that. No routing problems it seems too, my test sim was able to run/drive around everywhere without any hassle.

Question:

Can anyone tell me how a suburb or city "world" is determined? Also how about the cars that randomly drive about, for some reason I don't have any, and on top of that my sims...walk everywhere (the random sims that is).

[JEthel]

Nice to see you solved your problem.

Can anyone tell me how a suburb or city "world" is determined? Also how about the cars that randomly drive about, for some reason I don't have any, and on top of that my sims...walk everywhere (the random sims that is).

Simsample sarted a thread on this topic at MTS: link here. The whole thing is still in testing, so no easy way to easily flag your world a city yet, but full of promises.

[Rubyelf]

Nice to see you solved your problem.

Can anyone tell me how a suburb or city "world" is determined? Also how about the cars that randomly drive about, for some reason I don't have any, and on top of that my sims...walk everywhere (the random sims that is).

Simsample sarted a thread on this topic at MTS: link here. The whole thing is still in testing, so no easy way to easily flag your world a city yet, but full of promises.

Gah thanks, issue though is that all the pictures that actually show you where to look, have exceeded bandwidth usage. One other problem I've ran into is that I have no mixologists or bartenders turning up to my clubs etc.

[Madame Mim]

I'm told that the answer to that one is to delete the bar and replace it (unless you created the bars yourself and are as blond as I am - in which case, make sure you used one of the two professional bars or you'll never get mixologists).

[Rubyelf]

I'm told that the answer to that one is to delete the bar and replace it (unless you created the bars yourself and are as blond as I am - in which case, make sure you used one of the two professional bars or you'll never get mixologists).

Yup, all my bars are custom made, and I have used the professional bars only, however whenever my sims go there it says "No bartender on duty".

[Madame Mim]

In which case try the delete and replace method. It is the one widely recommended for this bug. Some people say to do it while your Sim is at the lot and then leave and return for the mixologist to appear, others say that you can just do it from edithood.

[Rubyelf]

Ahhh!! It's still not working Only one of my places is spawning a bartender and bouncer, and that's the upstairs part of one of the nightclubs I built (it has 2 parts, downstairs entry which is set to regular etc so then anyone can get in, and an upstairs private lounge part).

[Phoebe]

Something that I found out, if your layers in CAW have special characters in the names it will result in an error when saving.

[Teofilatto]

I have a problem with CAW's latest version. When I try to save a world in the edit in game mode, I get this error message:



I get a similar message even if I try to save a world without lots.
Any idea what the problem could be?

Edit: problem solved!

[Witches]

There is a new version of Create-A-World (CAW) out presumably for the new 1.22 patch:

http://llnw.thesims3.com/content/global/downloads/caw/worldtool.exe

Hi,

Will installing this overwrite my saved files? Or is it a patch?

Thanks.

[Witches]

Never mind. Figured it out on my ownsome.

Thanks for the link.

[jezzer]

Now see if your "ownsome" can figure out how to edit posts instead of double posting.

[MistyBlue]

I have a quick question. I know people have made a few items that can be placed using the in-game world editor, a few of which are the rabbitholes that came with Ambitions. Does anyone have any idea or know if anyone ever made the rest of the rabbitholes available in the world editor? They can be used without having to be on a lot and I am so, so lazy that I'd just like to place them strategically around town.

[Skadi]

Yes, I remember seeing them on MTS. Have a hunt around their CAW section. I can't remember if it was a download or an override.

[Solmyr]

My CAW (latest version) likes to crash with an "attempted to read or write protected memory" error. This usually happens either when I use terrain sculpting for longer than ten seconds, or when I've just returned from EIG. Anyone experienced this?

[Skadi]

Have you tried making it Large Address Aware? I had that problem often until I updated the exe. That is providing you have more than 2gb ram in your system to start with.

[Solmyr]

Thanks, will try that.

I have another question about building in CAW. I want to make a sort of beach ballustrade in my world, to go with the old-fashioned-looking city center. There is an example in Twinbrook next to the "Twinbrook Esplanade" community lot, a stone fence that goes along the river. I haven't found anything like that in CAW game objects though (there are stone post/fence objects but they look too modern and it's hard to line them up properly). Does anyone know of an object I could download that would fit? I'm looking for something similar to this: http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_407/12442661132mnHBX.jpg

[Skadi]

I found lining it up was much easier when I remembered to turn off snap-to-grid mode.

Meanwhile: