Redemption Island is the location of "The Long Way Home" in my signature. The first couple of chapters play on a different map, which I build right before the story and kept adding to in CAW while I played. I believe that may just be the reason the world broke after a while. I thought it was just a little matter of a road I had forgotten to smooth out... but it turned out to be something worse. In the end, I had to remake the map. This first version won't feature in this thread though.
The second version was exported with all lots prepared for building and everything I thought I needed and kept the same throughout the rest of the story. The main problem was that I'd forgotten to add most of the spawners, so the household was rather limited in things they could fine around the world. At this point I didn't dare export the world again, so they made do with what they had (They're actually still doing so at this moment). I also didn't really decorate this second attempt as much as I had the first one... because I wanted it faster, so the story didn't have to wait for it, and because I was afraid to repeat the previous problem.
The reason I started to do the building as part of a story: I'd tried CAW before, but always got stuck in Edit In Game. I love building in Sims 3 (and spend most of my time actually in build/buy mode), but building this many right after another? And mostly community buildings at that? On top of that, the Edit In World building really isn't the same as building in the actual game.
This thread, however, isn't about Gabriel's story. It's about Redemption Island and its buildings (Mostly the buildings... as the island itself is pretty basic really. that's why I didn't put it in the CAW part of the forum. There won't be that much about the world itself.) The community buildings in here are actually my very first, as I've always stuck to residential lots so far. Really big residential lots mostly.
The custom content list with the buildings are there for me, so I can change those bits around before trying to upload them to the swap-shop.
For those who would love to download this once it's finished:
Redemption Island was made for the story and has been quite a learning experience for me (It still is, actually, as it's not even halfway done). It's my first working world, but there are some issues which make it so I won't use this map myself after Gabriel finishes his challenge.
The lack of spawners is one, of course. So far, it's the only functional problem I've encountered.
Terrain painting was done rather quickly, as I wanted the map ready for use and... Gabriel wasn't going to go too close to the mountains anyway. Some of the lots got cliffs on one of the sides when I smoothed out the road prior to the final export. I wasn't going to replace every lot just for Gabriel's story... and so all buildings are build on the lots the way they were. This makes for some odd height differences which I try not to show in the pictures.
I am going to add spawners on the map before uploading it, of course. I'll see about correcting some of the other issues as well.