PrologueHi everyone! This is where I will tell the story of the creation of my third custom world in CAW - what I've done each week, what I had to do to get here, problems I run into, research I've done, that kind of thing. It might be helpful for anyone embarking on building a world, or maybe just interesting for some. I won't always have time to work on it - I have a baby due in less than a week, but I want to finish by the end of the year.
I've been busy playing challenge files all year sofar, and have not felt incredibly creative. Until playing Union Cove. After several weeks in Union Cove, I've felt inspired to once again build my own world. My first world, Summerset Isle, was incomplete in a few ways - some information didn't export correctly, and most importantly, I didn't populate it. I didn't intend to, actually, because I wasn't ready to start messing with mods again (since sims 2), as it can be a lot of work.
My main hope is that if my world is good enough, is that it will run for people on low-end computers, and that someone - whoever is in charge when it is finished - will approve it for use in challenges.
My Main Ideas- be as small as possible
- have minimal decoration whilst still being beautiful
- have at least 10 businesses (available for purchase for dynasties - there are more than enough properties to not need to worry)
- have all the requirements so sims can complete all relevant skill challenges
- contain all different necessary community lots available (there are not many unnecessary ones - though I think 'small park' is one of them)
- contain minimal spawners*
- have the exact number of houses required to house a population of minimal size without the game needing to move in extra sims at the start
- have a similar number of empty houses - both starters and above - compared with EA worlds
- have a similar type of population as Union Cove - sims will have some of the appropriate skills and traits for their LTWs and jobs (very few in EA worlds do)
- have all necessary skilling objects that are already availabe in community lots in EA worlds
- provide moodlets comparable to EA worlds and Union Cove so as to provide no additional advantage to using this world
- have enough different sized empty lots for players to build on
- have no store content (except maybe for the pet store register - I may make that available as an optional extra yet)
Spawners
The research for this project essentially started a while back when I started to create a base-game only world. At that point I had already worked out the minimal number of spawners required from the base game for all the different spawners. There is quite a lot of overlap across the base-game spawners, so rather than having one of every kind, only a few are needed to cover all spawns. *The thing that I am not sure on yet, is whether these will be enough to also spawn all the small animals that come with Pets. Special pet spawners are not available, nor needed, because the pets will spawn where the other spawners are (except for fish I suppose!). So once I get to my preliminary testing stage, that is something I will be checking on, and may need to add more.
Adding sims and using ModsMore recently, before I got to far with the project, I thought I had better find out exactly how to populate the world, and when. I've done my preliminary research, though any useful feedback about this will always be appreciated! It will be an ongoing learning process; one which I won't need to focus on too much now until my world is nearly done. Whilst I was looking into this I've also found a way to test the routing with mods (though I'm not sure exactly which one of two yet).
While I was looking up how to do some things, I found some interesting information from someone who is a world tester, and what testers will be looking for in a world. That was an interesting and useful read - it will help me to add polish to my world.
Rabbit HolesShells are a great way to hide 'ugly' rabbit holes in basements, and cram things into smaller lots, but it doesn't make for very smooth game-play. For one, it takes sims longer to go down stairs or an elevator to get to work. For another, sometimes the doors don't all fit on the lot, and sims can get stuck, causing lag - exactly what I am trying to avoid. So I decided that all of my rabbit holes will be above ground this time.
Another important thing with rabbit holes is that some of them are part of photography collections. I wrote down all the different rabbit holes that are available. I highlighted those that are part of a photography collection, and made sure to avoid using ones that don't register on the camera.
Then I marked off all the ones that are Businesses (vs Properties). I figured that for at least the purposes of our forum dynasties, there needed to be at least 10 in total. I then worked out which different rabbit holes could be combined to leave me with a total of 10 businesses for purchase.
I wrote down all the other different types of community lots that I would
need.
Initally I was going to make a minimum sized lot to fit each rabbit hole on - with minimum space between lots; after all, it needs to fit in a small world. I calculated what buildings to put where on either side of my main street, and plopped them all down to see how it would go. It was cramped. It would make gameplay difficult with all those buildings looming up directly either side of the street.
So, after recalculation, I allowed a few squares at the road-side of each lot to move the buildings back from the street and open it up more. Then I added a second footpath alongside the road, with cyprus trees placed intermittently - similar to the main street of Appaloosa Plains. That has opened up my main street and made it quite pretty. I also left more room between each lot, and a footpath between them.
LandscapeI have chosen to make it Hidden-Springs-green (I extracted the textures using S3PE), with the Hidden Springs highway road, and Hidden Springs town pavement. For the time-being I have left the world flat and unaltered. I would like the centre of town to be flat anyway, and lots can still be moved around without causing any problems. That way I can get the layout just right. I did the first couple of blocks either side of the main street on paper - but there's only so much of a town that you can sketch out on paper - and lots of room for error on paper. The grid on the map is much easier to organise things. Once the centre of town is in, I can build the landscape up around it.
LotsBecause I'm placing rabbit holes above ground this time, and using the right sized lots, I'll need to create more of my own community lots for those. For some of the others I'll be re-using and improving on lots I've already created for Summerset Isle - thus maintaining my minimalist approach.
Today - 09/06/2012Today I got my main street set up. I have created 3 lots today:
Wolfson's Hospital and Research FacilityMedical and Science (AP)
I didn't see any need to reinvent the wheel with this one - it is mostly a recolour and trim-down of it's AP counterpartAppaloosa Plains Civic Centre Police, Military, Town Hall
Steve's Business Complex and Restaurant (BP)
Business and Bistro
I may yet fill in some of the grass areas on these lots - but I'm thinking of doing that with similar paving to that of the footpath. In order to do that I'm going to try to use the IMG resource somehow in CAP.
And that's it for today. Tomorrow I'll move onto the other side of the street, where I also still need to rearrange my trees (getting them evenly spaced and NOT blocking an entryway was tricky)
