It's vacation time again which means I can spend time in CAW working on my new world. I became inspired again after playing Showtime. I'm looking forward to using the new venue lot types for my new downtown.
I'm reluctant to go back into CAW because it's been three months and I'm going to have to re-learn how to finesse these damn stupid CAW tools. I only have a short break this time and I really want to make the best of it.
For my new world, I finished the downtown and hill villa area and I need to develop the marina, the coastline, the opposite shore, and the hills and farmlands. It's a lot of work!
On top of that, I have to find my old design files. I can't quite remember what's what.
On another note: I was finally able to fix my corrupt save game crashes from back in December. It was caused by a set of corrupt skins. I still get them occasionally while using certain content (some of which is store content) so the problem isn't absolutely resolved, but it's about 90%.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Past the Deadline
I was not able to meet my CAW deadline. I got caught up with trying to fix my game, because I have not been able to solve the problem of my constant game crashes since Pets came out. TS3 Crash Log Analyzer diagnosed it as a problem of corrupt save game, however, it occurs continually no matter how many new games I start. I've become very discouraged about simming in general. Yesterday I removed all CC save for store items (simpacks), hacks, and default replacement skin and eyes. I played for a few hours last night without getting another save game crash. If this continues then I can only conclude that some corrupt CC is causing my crashes. I don't know how I will figure out which item is the culprit. It seems that many people have encountered this problem since Pets and yet I haven't found one solution that works.
Also, I've decided to rethink the lot sizes/house types for my new world. I had originally intended for the homes in the city center and historic district to be narrow multi-story town houses or apartments. However, while attempting to play my legacy family I've discovered a lot of routing issues that I usually shrugged away, most particularly pertaining to toddlers, play toys, and stairs. Essentially, it's a pain to have toddlers in multi-story homes when the nursery is on the upper floor unless there is a lot of unobstructed space. This likely explains why EA-made houses are all ridiculously large. I, however, like more realistic, compact rooms. It leaves me a lot to think about.
More than anything, I want to fix my game crashes. I hope I can. I did promise screenshots of the house I built three weeks ago. I intend to get around to those later.
Also, I've decided to rethink the lot sizes/house types for my new world. I had originally intended for the homes in the city center and historic district to be narrow multi-story town houses or apartments. However, while attempting to play my legacy family I've discovered a lot of routing issues that I usually shrugged away, most particularly pertaining to toddlers, play toys, and stairs. Essentially, it's a pain to have toddlers in multi-story homes when the nursery is on the upper floor unless there is a lot of unobstructed space. This likely explains why EA-made houses are all ridiculously large. I, however, like more realistic, compact rooms. It leaves me a lot to think about.
More than anything, I want to fix my game crashes. I hope I can. I did promise screenshots of the house I built three weeks ago. I intend to get around to those later.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Broken Game
After spending a lot of time in CAW, I was pretty burnt out. I absolutely will continue to develop my new world over the course of my vacation, but I finally wanted to take some time to play Pets so I could get an idea of what they need, spatially (both on a small and large scale).
I'm disheartened because my legacy family isn't doing so well. Rather, the game files seem to be corrupted. My game crashes very inconsistently. Sometimes I can go days without crashing, other times, just minutes. Because of this inconsistency, diagnosing the problem is nearly impossible. I don't think it's a custom content problem, but there is actually no way to tell.
I save very often - at least once a sim day (and sometimes more if there's a birthday or special occurrence I wouldn't want to lose). Every real life day of playing I copy the save files into a backup. Unfortunately, I can't quite pin down when the crashing started, so I'm not sure which game files to restore.
So, I'm restarting the Gregory family legacy. I'm using the same founders. I don't know if I will start them off in the Hidden Springs, but I eventually want them to end up there. I don't mind it too much since the founders had just had their first grandchild age into a child (the legacy was in its earlier stages).
It is sad to lose them though, but this time, I hope they have less children. I tend to love the founder's children too much and then I can't decide on the heir, so as with the Gregorys of old, I end up with the founders, their children, the children's spouses, and all of their grandchildren crammed into the same house. By "less" I really mean just one. Ridiculous that I can't decide between two. I wonder how other gaming playing legacies deal with attachment issues?
The restart has another purpose. I reckon that I can figure out the root of my game crashes. If the game continues to crash in this fresh restart then I think I'm going to manually reinstall all of my custom content. This would be really tedious because most of my content is merged, but it would be worth it.
I'm also hoping to become re-inspired so I can continue my CAW work. I know what I have to do next, I just haven't been able to muster the creativity and patience to do it - terrain-sculpting the rolling hills. And, while I play, I usually build houses for my families. In the past couple days I already built one - a simulated version of a lovely house by architectsAlliance. Screenshots forthcoming...
I'm disheartened because my legacy family isn't doing so well. Rather, the game files seem to be corrupted. My game crashes very inconsistently. Sometimes I can go days without crashing, other times, just minutes. Because of this inconsistency, diagnosing the problem is nearly impossible. I don't think it's a custom content problem, but there is actually no way to tell.
I save very often - at least once a sim day (and sometimes more if there's a birthday or special occurrence I wouldn't want to lose). Every real life day of playing I copy the save files into a backup. Unfortunately, I can't quite pin down when the crashing started, so I'm not sure which game files to restore.
So, I'm restarting the Gregory family legacy. I'm using the same founders. I don't know if I will start them off in the Hidden Springs, but I eventually want them to end up there. I don't mind it too much since the founders had just had their first grandchild age into a child (the legacy was in its earlier stages).
It is sad to lose them though, but this time, I hope they have less children. I tend to love the founder's children too much and then I can't decide on the heir, so as with the Gregorys of old, I end up with the founders, their children, the children's spouses, and all of their grandchildren crammed into the same house. By "less" I really mean just one. Ridiculous that I can't decide between two. I wonder how other gaming playing legacies deal with attachment issues?
The restart has another purpose. I reckon that I can figure out the root of my game crashes. If the game continues to crash in this fresh restart then I think I'm going to manually reinstall all of my custom content. This would be really tedious because most of my content is merged, but it would be worth it.
I'm also hoping to become re-inspired so I can continue my CAW work. I know what I have to do next, I just haven't been able to muster the creativity and patience to do it - terrain-sculpting the rolling hills. And, while I play, I usually build houses for my families. In the past couple days I already built one - a simulated version of a lovely house by architectsAlliance. Screenshots forthcoming...
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Step Three: Terrain-Sculpting
PART ONE:
Terrain-Sculpting. There is no other more hated word in my vocabulary right now. Terrain Sculpting is really a pain-in-the-arse. I've found that the CAW tools are miserably imprecise and much too small for sculpting large worlds. I would prefer to edit the height maps in Photoshop, but I haven't quite gotten the hang of it. As with roads, it seems that the only advice other designers can offer is to try it out yourself.
Right now, I am most perplexed by the gradients of grayscale in the height maps. I wish there was some comprehensive list of what all the values of gray equate to in terms of elevation. However, I recognize that this is likely an outrageous request. I do know, however, that the blackest black #000000 represents the sea floor and white #ffffff is used for the highest elevation.
I am currently in the process of using deathoflight's marvelous mountain brushes in photoshop to help form the hills to the north. More to come later...
Update: I've found some inspiration after looking at images of landscapes. Now, the battle to translate it into terrain-sculpting...
Update: 19 December: Finally, I was able to terraform something that I actually like. I looked at dozens of photographs but what was really useful to me was a hand sketch.
From that, I was able to form the mountain and plateau on which the villas will sit, overlooking the city. I'm not entirely satisfied with the mountain. I think it looks too busy. However, I'm planning to sculpt the rolling hills for the vineyards and I'll go back and tweak and paint everything.
Terrain-sculpting is really tiring. I sculpted, imported into photoshop, exported, tweaked, and leveled hours of work continually until I could make heads or tails of the CAW terrain. I also got my head around the grayscale in photoshop. Will post more details after I've sculpted the rest of the world (hopefully sometime this year - really, so tiring).
Terrain-Sculpting. There is no other more hated word in my vocabulary right now. Terrain Sculpting is really a pain-in-the-arse. I've found that the CAW tools are miserably imprecise and much too small for sculpting large worlds. I would prefer to edit the height maps in Photoshop, but I haven't quite gotten the hang of it. As with roads, it seems that the only advice other designers can offer is to try it out yourself.
Right now, I am most perplexed by the gradients of grayscale in the height maps. I wish there was some comprehensive list of what all the values of gray equate to in terms of elevation. However, I recognize that this is likely an outrageous request. I do know, however, that the blackest black #000000 represents the sea floor and white #ffffff is used for the highest elevation.
I am currently in the process of using deathoflight's marvelous mountain brushes in photoshop to help form the hills to the north. More to come later...
Update: I've found some inspiration after looking at images of landscapes. Now, the battle to translate it into terrain-sculpting...
Update: 19 December: Finally, I was able to terraform something that I actually like. I looked at dozens of photographs but what was really useful to me was a hand sketch.
From that, I was able to form the mountain and plateau on which the villas will sit, overlooking the city. I'm not entirely satisfied with the mountain. I think it looks too busy. However, I'm planning to sculpt the rolling hills for the vineyards and I'll go back and tweak and paint everything.
Terrain-sculpting is really tiring. I sculpted, imported into photoshop, exported, tweaked, and leveled hours of work continually until I could make heads or tails of the CAW terrain. I also got my head around the grayscale in photoshop. Will post more details after I've sculpted the rest of the world (hopefully sometime this year - really, so tiring).
Step Two: Setting up CAW & Laying Out Roadwork
After drawing up a design concept, I'm ready to work in CAW. I consulted two very helpful blogs before beginning: Sims in Testing and How to Create a World. I advise new CAW users to read the CAW tutorials on these blogs carefully and thoroughly. I can't stress this enough because I only gave them a brief read-through and came to regret it. I learned some lessons the hard way.
LESSON 1: Never build your world using the default roads. The default road is the only one that cannot be customized. If you use the default road and later decide that you want to change the road design, you have to delete the roads and replace them with a new one.
After deciding on the direction of the sun, and doing all the preliminary set-up work in CAW (as outlined in the linked blogs), make a new custom road. In retrospect, it's a good idea to download custom road textures before starting the whole CAW process. ModTheSims has many uploaded terrains, roads, and objects that can be found in the CAW resources section.
After downloading your custom content and installing them properly, you can create a custom road.
Click on the 'Create Custom Road' button. 'Custom Road Settings' box will pop up, allowing you to upload each element of a custom road.
Browse to the SourceTextures folder where you installed your custom textures and find each of the textures required.
All sections must be filled except for the Opacity Map, which can be left blank. Name your custom road. Remember that you can change these textures at any time after you lay the road down, so long as you create your roads using a custom road.
Once the road is created, right click on its name in the Road Tool window and choose 'Set Road as Active' from the scroll down menu.
All of the roads made from this custom road will automatically change.
LAYING OUT ROADWORK:
Using three different types of roads, I lay out my city. The hills and the farmlands are still a work in progress because I have not set down the lots and I'm not exactly sure how those will change once I start terrain sculpting. The city proper area will remain the same as most of the lots are already placed. I tried to be generous about the space between the roads. This is a world I don't necessarily intend to upload and so I'm not too terribly worried that other people will think the lot sizes are strange. However, I want to leave myself leeway to make changes for later expansions and what-not.
Some preliminary sketches:
I didn't want to arbitrarily place roads. Nor did I want to simply create a gridiron street system. In cities like Paris, streets branch out around important buildings or monuments. I did think about that a lot when planning my city.
The result:
I used a road to outline where I wanted to the river to meet the land, after terrain-sculpting the road will be removed. I plan to put in sidewalks for waterfront walking trails.
A few more words on roads: I'm sorry to say that I can't offer a step-by-step guide to making roads, even though, when I first began CAW I desperately needed one. I, too, was frustrated by the lack of information other designers had given about roads in CAW. Everyone kept saying "you really just need to play with it yourself to get a hang of it". In actuality, this is the truth. If you are familiar with the pen tool from Photoshop or Illustrator, then you already know a lot about roads. When you lay out a road, it comes with green colored nodes that you can drag to change the shape of the road. The blue nodes will allow you to change the length of the road segment. When a road is no longer straight, the nodes change in color from green to cyan.
LESSON 2: The grid is your best friend. The grid will allow you to easily align roads and create angled lots. You simply change the number in the 'rotation (degrees)' box to the angle of your choice. Then any roads or lots drawn will snap to the angle. In my opinion, this is much easier than making lots and roads at 0 degrees and then using the rotation tool to align them.
Note on the size of the world: the large map is 2048 x 2048. This is the number of grid squares in the world. A tiny world is 256 x 256. If you select 'Show Chunk Boundaries' under the View tab of CAW, you will see additional white lines. They outline one Chunk, which is equivalent to 256 x 256 grid squares or one tiny world. Each Chunk holds 16 64 x 64 lots. These are the largest lot you can have in game. I think that this information is helpful in deciding where your road are placed. I've found, when working in a large world that it's easy to lose track of how sprawling you're making your world. Keep in mind your sim's commute time. One thing that frustrated me about Bridgeport is that it felt like it took forever for sims to get to work if they lived in one of the mansions across the bridge.
Next Steps: Terrain-sculpting!
LESSON 1: Never build your world using the default roads. The default road is the only one that cannot be customized. If you use the default road and later decide that you want to change the road design, you have to delete the roads and replace them with a new one.
After deciding on the direction of the sun, and doing all the preliminary set-up work in CAW (as outlined in the linked blogs), make a new custom road. In retrospect, it's a good idea to download custom road textures before starting the whole CAW process. ModTheSims has many uploaded terrains, roads, and objects that can be found in the CAW resources section.
After downloading your custom content and installing them properly, you can create a custom road.
Click on the 'Create Custom Road' button. 'Custom Road Settings' box will pop up, allowing you to upload each element of a custom road.
The road is active when its name is in bold. Now you can lay down your roads. You will have to set the road as active every time you click out of the road too.
If you want to change how your custom road looks after you've drawn the roads in, you right click on the name of the road and choose 'Edit' from the scroll down menu. This will pop up the 'Custom Road Settings' box where you can edit all the road elements, including the name.
LAYING OUT ROADWORK:
Using three different types of roads, I lay out my city. The hills and the farmlands are still a work in progress because I have not set down the lots and I'm not exactly sure how those will change once I start terrain sculpting. The city proper area will remain the same as most of the lots are already placed. I tried to be generous about the space between the roads. This is a world I don't necessarily intend to upload and so I'm not too terribly worried that other people will think the lot sizes are strange. However, I want to leave myself leeway to make changes for later expansions and what-not.
Some preliminary sketches:
The result:
A few more words on roads: I'm sorry to say that I can't offer a step-by-step guide to making roads, even though, when I first began CAW I desperately needed one. I, too, was frustrated by the lack of information other designers had given about roads in CAW. Everyone kept saying "you really just need to play with it yourself to get a hang of it". In actuality, this is the truth. If you are familiar with the pen tool from Photoshop or Illustrator, then you already know a lot about roads. When you lay out a road, it comes with green colored nodes that you can drag to change the shape of the road. The blue nodes will allow you to change the length of the road segment. When a road is no longer straight, the nodes change in color from green to cyan.
LESSON 2: The grid is your best friend. The grid will allow you to easily align roads and create angled lots. You simply change the number in the 'rotation (degrees)' box to the angle of your choice. Then any roads or lots drawn will snap to the angle. In my opinion, this is much easier than making lots and roads at 0 degrees and then using the rotation tool to align them.
Note on the size of the world: the large map is 2048 x 2048. This is the number of grid squares in the world. A tiny world is 256 x 256. If you select 'Show Chunk Boundaries' under the View tab of CAW, you will see additional white lines. They outline one Chunk, which is equivalent to 256 x 256 grid squares or one tiny world. Each Chunk holds 16 64 x 64 lots. These are the largest lot you can have in game. I think that this information is helpful in deciding where your road are placed. I've found, when working in a large world that it's easy to lose track of how sprawling you're making your world. Keep in mind your sim's commute time. One thing that frustrated me about Bridgeport is that it felt like it took forever for sims to get to work if they lived in one of the mansions across the bridge.
Next Steps: Terrain-sculpting!
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Step One: Generating a Design Concept!
For me, the design concept is very important. Not only do I intend to create a new world, but I plan to play it extensively (and either move my legacy family there or start a new legacy). Not all parts of the concept will be as important to others, particularly if they are building a world for someone else.
My design concept includes considerations of the following:
First, I do two major things simultaneously. I think up a history for my world and I decide on the major geological elements. The reason I do these at the same time is because I won't know what I want the world to look like until I have some idea of what will occur there and what has occurred in the past. I also want to give the various places in my world a depth and richness that a history can offer them. I do a lot of sketches as I think up these ideas (some of which will be scanned and posted).
Also, Google Earth is incredibly helpful.
The cities I looked at for precedent studies:
This world is imagined to be part of a larger country/kingdom. In
the past, it was an oligarchic (probably monarchical) society. The
majority of the buildings in the civic center belonged to the former
royal compound. The city used to be a important home for the royal
family. In present day, the royals vacated the city, moving their
headquarters elsewhere and the town gained some autonomy. It is led by
its own popular leader (TS3 isn't really democratic, is it? - this
reminds me, how cool would it be if sims on the political track could be
voted out of power?). The civic center is a "square" and most of the
original royal buildings are there. The former royal palace has been
converted into the National Gallery (art gallery/museum). The original
National Opera (entertainment venue) forms another corner of the square,
the third side of the square houses a new modern city hall. The
buildings face a public park/plaza. Around these three major buildings
are historically preserved and modern buildings that include a hospital,
fire & police station, library, hotel, and the residence of the
Leader of the Free World.
Around the civic center, there is a residential area. This predominantly be a mixture of old and new townhouses and low/mid rise apartments. There may be one or two detached homes, but because of the urban context, most homes within the city proper are "attached". The historic district is an area near the civic center with both residential and commercial properties. It is considered the historic district because the buildings are all old and there are no cars allowed within the district. This will be a colorful and vibrant place (I'm imagining a bit of the French Quarter, with some of the architectural character of San Francisco, etc) with narrow pedestrian streets and charming shopfronts.
The city flows into the riverfront. Along the edge, there are narrow green parks and more residential homes. The river will branch into the land and create a smaller waterway which will house a marina and divide the city proper from the rural area.
With these inspirations and images in mind and my rough sketches, I'm ready to open CAW.
My design concept includes considerations of the following:
- The history of the world (including its current era)
- The climate and major geological factors (mountains, bodies of water, etc)
- Overall zoning of the world: urban (city or town), suburban, rural (villages and hamlets), etc.
- Planning: breakdown of zones (uptown, downtown, waterfront, etc.); uses (where certain things occur); location of monuments and things of interest
- The character of the world, including:
- Demographics: Who lives in this world? Is it homogeneous or diverse (ethnically, financially, etc)
- Architecture: style of the public buildings and homes
- Ecology: flora and fauna
CONCEPTUALIZING:
First, I do two major things simultaneously. I think up a history for my world and I decide on the major geological elements. The reason I do these at the same time is because I won't know what I want the world to look like until I have some idea of what will occur there and what has occurred in the past. I also want to give the various places in my world a depth and richness that a history can offer them. I do a lot of sketches as I think up these ideas (some of which will be scanned and posted).
- Location: Mainland facing west
- Era: present day
- Age of the world: Old - with architectural evidence of the past 200-300 years and some suggestion that the world is much older.
- Demographics: Heterogenous ethnically, financially (housing ranging from 16,000 - over 100,000)
- Zoning:
- A city with adjacency to flat farmlands: a civic center, a residential quarter, an entertainment district, a historical quarter, and the waterfront/marina.
- Luxurious homes in the hills overlooking the city with a large vineyard property (or two) nearby.
- Rural farmlands outside of the city with widely spaced ranches/farms.
- Geological factors & climate:
- A river to the west - where the coast meets the water may be craggy or abrupt (not particularly smooth, which means, no sandy beaches)
- Rolling hills to the south
- Tall hills or a small mountain range extending in the north from east, to the western waterfront.
- Across the river, a flattened waterfront that flows into hills/mountains.
- Terrain: lush
Also, Google Earth is incredibly helpful.
The cities I looked at for precedent studies:
- London
- Paris
- Edinburgh
- Stockholm
- Copenhagen
- Naples
- Barcelona
A BIT O' HISTORY & WHAT NOT
Around the civic center, there is a residential area. This predominantly be a mixture of old and new townhouses and low/mid rise apartments. There may be one or two detached homes, but because of the urban context, most homes within the city proper are "attached". The historic district is an area near the civic center with both residential and commercial properties. It is considered the historic district because the buildings are all old and there are no cars allowed within the district. This will be a colorful and vibrant place (I'm imagining a bit of the French Quarter, with some of the architectural character of San Francisco, etc) with narrow pedestrian streets and charming shopfronts.
The city flows into the riverfront. Along the edge, there are narrow green parks and more residential homes. The river will branch into the land and create a smaller waterway which will house a marina and divide the city proper from the rural area.
With these inspirations and images in mind and my rough sketches, I'm ready to open CAW.
Project Impossible: CAW in Three Weeks!
I'm not too sure about my ability to keep up a blog. I've failed a couple of times before. Still, I do love my Sims and when I have the time to play (which truly isn't that often), I like to keep track of what I've been doing.
My latest endeavor has been tackling Create-A-World (CAW). I purchased The Sims 3 Pets last month and I finally played it for a few hours last week. My newest legacy family, the Gregorys, is in Hidden Springs and I've been struggling to fit all the Pets lots into the neighborhood. Furthermore, although I want the Gregory family to have pets, their house is a bit too snug for it.
Somehow, this led me to creating my own world. I've been wanting to for some time. My first attempt was when CAW was new and not many people knew exactly how to use it successfully. Now, with the help of various wise bloggers and world-building pioneers, I'm slowly creating a new world. EA has announced their next expansion pack, promising entertainment venues galore and I want this new world to be able to accommodate the new expansion.
Most important, I'm on vacation for another three weeks and after that, it's doubtful that I'll be able to do much simming. So, my goal, to complete the world (the roads, terrains, CAW environment, and spawners) before my vacation ends. After that, I will build lots, create families, and do testing at my leisure.
For now, I plan to post on the various steps to creating this world. I'm hoping that, by doing so, I can prevent myself from abandoning both this project and this blog. This may not be helpful as a How-To. Rather, it will be more of a journal of how I've chosen to do it, with many obstacles, re-designs, failures, and successes along the way. However, I hope that it will offer some insight into world-making. Or at least that it will be useful to someone.
On to Step One: Generating a Design Concept!
My latest endeavor has been tackling Create-A-World (CAW). I purchased The Sims 3 Pets last month and I finally played it for a few hours last week. My newest legacy family, the Gregorys, is in Hidden Springs and I've been struggling to fit all the Pets lots into the neighborhood. Furthermore, although I want the Gregory family to have pets, their house is a bit too snug for it.
Somehow, this led me to creating my own world. I've been wanting to for some time. My first attempt was when CAW was new and not many people knew exactly how to use it successfully. Now, with the help of various wise bloggers and world-building pioneers, I'm slowly creating a new world. EA has announced their next expansion pack, promising entertainment venues galore and I want this new world to be able to accommodate the new expansion.
Most important, I'm on vacation for another three weeks and after that, it's doubtful that I'll be able to do much simming. So, my goal, to complete the world (the roads, terrains, CAW environment, and spawners) before my vacation ends. After that, I will build lots, create families, and do testing at my leisure.
For now, I plan to post on the various steps to creating this world. I'm hoping that, by doing so, I can prevent myself from abandoning both this project and this blog. This may not be helpful as a How-To. Rather, it will be more of a journal of how I've chosen to do it, with many obstacles, re-designs, failures, and successes along the way. However, I hope that it will offer some insight into world-making. Or at least that it will be useful to someone.
On to Step One: Generating a Design Concept!
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