Holloway (In Progress)

[MoonsAreBlue]

Holloway

I've had this idea in the back of my mind for a while now. I've already come up with a background story and families. Yes, this will be populated once I figure out how, haha. This is my first time using CAW to do more than experiment with the tools. I'm actually trying to make beaches looks like beaches and mountains look like mountains. I'm not really sure what to do with the mountains as they are. I thought about snowcaps, but this area is more of a tropical climate, even though I haven't placed any foliage yet. I'm taking any input appearance-wise. I know what I want to do with the world, but I am a beginner so I'm not sure what I could do to make things look better.

Pictures below.

[MoonsAreBlue]

Here is an overview. The lot placement is temporary. I'm just trying to see how everything will fit.


This is where the sunrise will be, right in between the two of the largest peaks.


Sunset will be behind Late night buildings here.


This is the area with which I'm most concerned. My main issue at this point is that I don't know what to do with the area on water that is not specifically beach. I tried dirt and sand, but they don't look quite right either. Also, the empty green area here will be filled with lots

[pallyndrome]

It looks interesting. I love the sunrise/sunset locations. I don't know much about CAW, but an idea for the land near the water that is not beach, could be rock? Like a rocky cliff, kind thing? Or look at what a place like Barnacle Bay has for example (if you have that place).

[samoht04]

Where there is no beach the sea erodes the earth away to reveal rock underneath the soil. That would be the best bet I think. The World looks great, I'm jealous of your terrain painting on your mountains! 

[ZapKid]

Ooh I like it! Maybe you could add just a touch of snow on the two highest ones. Perhaps trees, also? Although I bet you are already getting to that.

[MoonsAreBlue]

It looks interesting. I love the sunrise/sunset locations. I don't know much about CAW, but an idea for the land near the water that is not beach, could be rock? Like a rocky cliff, kind thing? Or look at what a place like Barnacle Bay has for example (if you have that place).

I have BB, but I haven't really looked at it too closely. I'll definately look at it. Thanks for the suggestion! The only thing is that I hate to use the provided rock terrain, and the rock terrain package that I downloaded won't install correctly. The funny thing about the sunrise sunset is that I didn't really plan it to happen like it did, but it just happened to turn out better than expected!

Where there is no beach the sea erodes the earth away to reveal rock underneath the soil. That would be the best bet I think. The World looks great, I'm jealous of your terrain painting on your mountains! 

I just hate to use the ugly shale paint, though. And like I said, the terrain paint I downloaded won't work so I'm stuck with what EA has. And thanks for the compliment on the mountains! I spent all last night working on them. There was a lot of very pale dirt and shale and grass to mix them into something decent looking. Shale works! But not by itself, haha.

Ooh I like it! Maybe you could add just a touch of snow on the two highest ones. Perhaps trees, also? Although I bet you are already getting to that.

I don't know about snow. I said in the first post that this is more of a tropical climate, but I'll give it a shot and see how it looks. And no, I'm not going to have any trees, Zap! Naw, I'm just kidding. I'm trying to do all (or most) of my terrain painting first. One step at a time. I'll definitely post pictures once I get some trees going, though.

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!

[samoht04]

I just hate to use the ugly shale paint, though. And like I said, the terrain paint I downloaded won't work so I'm stuck with what EA has. And thanks for the compliment on the mountains! I spent all last night working on them. There was a lot of very pale dirt and shale and grass to mix them into something decent looking. Shale works! But not by itself, haha.

Where did you download it to? You've got to put it in Source Textures.

[MoonsAreBlue]

Where did you download it to? You've got to put it in Source Textures.

They didn't unzip right. It kept saying there was nothing in the compressed folder, so I just gave up. I'll just have to look elsewhere for new paints. It upset me because they were very nice! But thanks for letting me know where to put it when I find a file that works. 

[MoonsAreBlue]

Ok, I've made a little progress tonight. I downloaded a few terrain paints so now I have plenty to choose from. I tried snow caps on the tallest mountain tops, but it just doesn't look right, so I'm going to leave the mountains generally as is, but I'll mix in some of the new paints I got. Here's what I decided to do with the edges that aren't beach. It's a combination of light dirt and a custom paint that looks like reddish brown rock.


Here's what I have done to the beach area for trees. I've only ever built a couple of beach lots, so I'm a bit out of my comfort zone with how to correctly paint the terrain. Also, I don't really know what else to do foliage-wise other than the big and small palm trees. There's a lot of different trees and I don't know specific names of the trees and what they look like. Any suggestions?

[samoht04]

The terrain painting on the edges looks fine now.  If you just use the erach bar and type Palm there are four different types - with varying sizes not included. There is the Fan Leaf, the Sagao (?) and the two Palms - Al Simhara and the Basic Palm. The Al Simhara one has a thicker trunk and more robust look, whilst the Basic looks more like it would be one grown in a garden. I think you may have done a little bit too much sand there, not sure though, try it without and if you don't like it with less sand you can just revert back.

I'm using a Custom Grass I edited - I took the default image into Photoshop, lifted the levels/contrast to make it more of a vibrant green.

[MoonsAreBlue]

Thanks for the feedback, Samo. I'm really not sure about the sand if you can't tell, haha. I placed the LN buildings earlier this morning so I'll post pictures of the buildings as is and one with the buildings with less sand. I think I'll cut the sand back to about midway through the lots right near the water. I also just realized the big criss-cross of the roads there, so I'll straighten those out too. You say the edges look good now? Do you have any ideas on how I could improve it? Or maybe I should lay down trees in that area to see how it'll all look.

[samoht04]

Maybe you should make it more of a cliff, it looks a little slopey there. Also I suggest maybe adding a Wall - I think the one I use is River Wall, something like that. Or add some foliage to the top of the bank/cliff. Just remember that the view you've got there probably won't be the one that is seen that often and that people are more likely to see the view from the top of the bank, looking out over the sea. Maybe add some rocks at the base of it, like they've fallen off or something. The egyptian rocks might work with that terrain paint? Or maybe the Pets ones with the mottled browns and greens.

[MoonsAreBlue]

Ok, I see what you mean about the slope now. I'll see how using a wall looks too. There's not a whole lot of room for rocks on that side (right on the edge of the world), but I'll see what I can do. Thanks for the suggestions!

[wednesday21]

I like this world. It reminds me of Pleasantview so much. I loved that town in sims2. Have you made any progress on it since February? It really has potential.

[MoonsAreBlue]

Unfortunately, no. My CAW crashing is wayyy worse than my sims crashing. I can only use it for about 5 minutes before it crashes.