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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 21st Jul 2016 at 4:45 AM
Help and Advice on Creating City Map
I am currently working on creating a large city map for the Sims 3. All is going well until ran into a problem trying to export it for my game. I had the world exported and even installed into my game, but it would not show up in the worlds list when starting a new game... I think this may be due to not having the required lots. My map has 280 lots so far, but only a gas station and a high rise's foundation were built at the time. No City Hall or any other career-related "rabbit-holes."
Since then, I have added:
1: City Hall
2: Police Station
3: Hospital
4: School/Stadium
5: Business Tower
6: Criminal Hideout
7: Science Lab
8: Military Base

Right now, I just want the absolute MINIMUM required in the world, and the rest will go in while playing the world.
So, my main question here is:
What am I missing?


Also, I would appreciate some feedback and advice here.
Below are some picture of my map so far. The city is in the middle. To the north and south are "border mountains" at the edge of the map. To the west is a large mountain area with a mid-sized lake. In these mountains will be forests and some houses, country stores, and even some Supernatural lots. At the lake will be camp grounds (provided camping is a thing in the Sims 3, similar to that of the Sims 4. I think it is with Outdoor Living Stuff...). Now, to the east is an issue... The city is on a river and uses the Late Night bridge to cross that river to achieve... A CURVE ON THE HIGHWAY!!! and nothing else... This is a rather long and thin stretch of land between the river and the maps edge... I have considered three ideas of what to do with this land:
1: The Ocean
2: Farms
3: More Forest

There are issues with these ideas though:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Idea | Issue
-----------||-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ocean | No bridge (I really like this bridge as it will play into the entire city skyline. There will also be a junkyard UNDER IT! which will look amazing)
Farms | No room to do "border mountains" before the edge of the map
Forests | The "River Market" promenade that is on this side of town I would like to have a good view of not leaves...
_______|______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Only ocean and farms would provide a good view for the River Market and surrounding high-rises.
Really, I just need some ideas going around and what is good and bad about each...

Sorry if this is technically in the wrong forum. Whoever is able, feel free to move it, or let me know if I need to move (followed by how to move it, because I have no idea...)
Also, forgive me if required lots is supposed to be common information and if this post as a whole just makes no sense... But thank you for consideration, time, and help/advice in advance!
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dodgy builder
#2 Old 22nd Jul 2016 at 11:38 AM
Feedback for a world you're working on goes here: http://modthesims.info/forumdisplay.php?f=612
You will be in good company there.

Technical questions goes here. I have seen quite a few distinguished players saying 150 lots is just about what most computers can handle. When it comes to what you want to build perhaps the people in the feedback thread can help you with that, but there is no rule saying you NEED them all. I had all the careers buildings in my Stranda, but I didn't use all the lot types. Also the numbers of lots depends on the amount of exp you will use for the world.

You couldn't make it install? What did you do to the sims3pack file you got from the export?
Top Secret Researcher
#3 Old 22nd Jul 2016 at 4:17 PM
There are no particular lots required for a world to show up. If you wanted to, you could play a completely empty world (I had to place a lot so that I could move a sim in, but I placed it in game, not in caw). So, it is very unlikely that missing certain lot types are the reason why the world doesn't show up.

Is it a world you created from scratch, or did you "re-use" an existing world?
Screenshots
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#4 Old 22nd Jul 2016 at 6:46 PM
Thank you both for the info!

Volvenom: I let the CAW tool export the world to wherever it exports, went to the launcher, downloads, and installed all of my custom worlds (one was mine, the others where from the Sims Catalog or something I think; a website full of custom worlds at least) and neither of them showed up in game despite installing being successful.
Vincent: I made this one from sratch.

I did figure out what happened though (well, not the technical part, but it works). After installing the worlds, I had to go to Documents/Electronic Arts/Sims 3/Installed Worlds and copy the .world files to Program Files (x86)/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Game Data/Shared/NonPackaged/Worlds

About the 150 lots thing: By what "most computers can handle" do you mean related to lag, or is this a core game code thing that could cause crashing and corrupted saves? If it is lag related, I haven't had any issues with either in CAW or EditInGame, so could this be due to just the fact that there aren't many buildings/Sims yet? If it is code related, is there a way to alleviate it without simply doing away with half the lots? Most of my lots are in the suburbs area where I have (too many to care to count each one) 20x27 lots side by side to give that suburban feel.
Field Researcher
#5 Old 23rd Jul 2016 at 2:30 AM
Quote: Originally posted by bobgrey1997
Thank you both for the info!

Volvenom: I let the CAW tool export the world to wherever it exports, went to the launcher, downloads, and installed all of my custom worlds (one was mine, the others where from the Sims Catalog or something I think; a website full of custom worlds at least) and neither of them showed up in game despite installing being successful.


I don't think I've ever heard of this method before. What I do to install a world is click on the file itself in the Exports folder. Maybe you should try that method instead.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#6 Old 23rd Jul 2016 at 4:51 AM
Quote: Originally posted by thesims1depot
I don't think I've ever heard of this method before. What I do to install a world is click on the file itself in the Exports folder. Maybe you should try that method instead.


That should do the same thing. When going through Launcher, it opens the same file...
Either way, by copying the InstalledWorlds file to GameData Worlds folder, I got it to work. I've heard of issues with worlds not showing up in game and this is usually the solution. How? I don't know or care, it works and that's fine by me!
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