Welcome to my second blog entry. This time I would like to talk about creating towns, and using the Create a World (CAW). So after days of setting up my new town of Chateau Valley, I think I have everything needed for the town to be fully funtcional as a normal EA town. That means it has all the EA necessary items like the Doo corporate tower, the criminal building, restaurant, school, city hall, etc. Creating the town in CAW is relatively easy. First, simply choose a map to work on, small, medium, or large, and the height, 100, 200, or 300. I chose 300, but I used the large flat map. For this time around, I chose not to do anything in the way of sculpting the land, leaving it flat so that the lots are easier to create on. I always try to make sure that the "Snap To Grid" option is chosen so that everything lines up nicer, and the roads meet the lots. It looks cleaner, and it makes it a snap for adding lots. 

My preference for worlds is grid style. This comes from Sim City, where you can build cities from the ground up as well. Anyway, the roads are boring yes, but it's effecient for adding lots placed close together. But, do yourself a favor, and DON'T put too many lots close together in a small area, because it makes water go underneath the roads, and between the lots. It makes the lots themselves look like little islands, it looks awful. Leave some green space between them, and everything will be fine. You can have hundreds of lots in a city, but just not in one small area. Make sure to include some different sized lots, small, medium, and large. I bet everyone would love to have nothing but 64x64 sized lots right? Well, sure, but, there are a lot of EA created lots that don't fit in that size category. And they also have some odd sized lots, like 64x29, or 25x50, so make sure you look through the catalog of lots you want in your town, and make sure that you include the special sizes for these odd sized lots. And they have to be a minimum of that size or larger, or they won't fit.

And of course, you have to have both Community, and Residential Lots. There are many different types of lots as well, so make sure to include a variety so that you can have a "complete" town. One thing that I have read that some people want to learn how to do, is to have the Beatuiful Vista mood factor in the game. Well, you can add those in CAW, when placing the lot is the easiest, but it can be done after the lot is made. Oh, and before I forget, add at least one layer beyond the world layer. I believe that the program says to do that, but if not, make sure that you do. This way you can keep things straight in the game, as far as lots, versus objects like trees, waterfalls, rocks, and things like that. You won't notice any difference in the game while playing it, but it's needed none the less.

When placing lots, it's helpful to name them, this will help identify them easier. Instead of having Lot 1, Lot 2, etc. I would either name each lot like EA Manor, EA Restaurant, or what ever you desire. And every now and then use the "Edit In Game" option to switch over into the game mode, and edit the lot. Here, the world you are building will be in an editing mode where you can add objects to each lot, like the Grocery Store, hospital, salon, and other houses. I recommend however, to keep the editing to a minimum, as the game sometimes can crash while editing, and it can take a while, especially on slower computers to save your progress. And save often, so that if you do experience a crash, you don't loose hours of work. One thing I have noticed that some poeple do, is just put down a ton of completely blank lots, and everything is the same color, no variation from lot to lot, and it makes it hard to tell how big the lot is. So then you have to click on each lot to find one that is the size that you are looking for. When in Edit In Game mode, I found it easy to edit each lot, and put a border around the edge of each lot, using terrain paint, and outline the lot. This give a very good idea of how large a lot is, so that you don't have to search endlessly for a specific size lot. You could probably spray the lot size into the lot too. It can always be sprayed back to the original lot color, and the nice part is, that the terrain paint option is free.

Once you have the lots placed, make sure that you go into the objects, and effects option and place some seed, rock, and various spawners, so that you can go and find different things to grow and make the various items you will need in the game. Don't forget details, like rocks, billboards, birds, trees, and insects. And there are a TON of those options, no doubt! Once you have everything you are going to need, it's then time to export it, but you aren't done just yet. You still need to add a description for your world, which is a little history, or a little bit about your town. Plus the name, and a picture of what your town looks like. That is the tricky part, because the picture needs to be a .png file, and it has to be EXACTLY 256x256, and not any larger. A photoshop program can be used, and also Paint, which is included with every version of Windows can be used as well, cause I used paint to edit mine. And when resizing it, make sure you use the save as option, and rename it, otherwise you some weird sharing violation message. Once you have that done, then you can export it.

When I exported, it didn't want to go into the game right away. I ended up having to go to dig through the CAW files, and find the world, I then Copy and Pasted the file to my desktop. Then I had to go back and go to the Downloads section under The Sims 3, where you install new content into the game, and drop it there. It then gets dropped into the game launcher- downloads, where you install it. And then it worked. It's a bit of work to get it in there, but once you get the world created, if you have spent weeks getting it done right, like I did, it can then be very rewarding, knowing that THIS world, is one that YOU created. And YOU CAN create it. It doesn't take much tech experience, just a WHOLE lot of patience. I'm happy I have done this, and I plan to do it again, only this time, I think I will try a smaller world, since I have like 120 or so lots, and I have only used about half of a large flat tiled map. There's just too much empty space left over, and it looks not so pretty. Especially when I download a premade lot from one of ya' all here, and add it. Those are the best parts about the world. Thank you for those. Till next time, Happy Simming!

mtnmouse