Information from this thread is now on the wiki ; please post all further discussion in this thread.

Please see this tutorial for details about enabling world type flagging within the CAW tool.

Note: This thread is largely discussion and discovery about the code needed to flag a world as a city; for ease of use I have amended this initial post to summarise the information found so far. Thank you to all who contribute to this thread!

The resource responsible for determining the characteristics of a world is UNKN 0x296A6258.

Here is a comparison of how this resource appears in each of the the EA Worlds:



The relevant byte for determining the world type is byte 06, which defaults to 00 (suburb) but could also be 02 (City) or 01 (Vacation world).



It is byte 06 that you will need to change if you wish to flag your world as a city- you will need to import UNKN 0x296A6258 and set it to 01 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00. If you wish to try this yourself you can obtain a copy of UNKN 0x296A6258 from any of the EA worlds except Sunset/ Riverview, and modify it yourself. Alternatively, I have made a copy of this resource set to 01 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00, download it HERE. .
Note: Twallan has made a mod to enable the traffic manager in non city worlds, you can get it HERE, if you would rather not mod your world. However, Sims MX points out that there may be more to a city than just the traffic manager, so it may be worth while modding your world!

The other bytes in the resource appear to identify specifics about the world, and so will identify a specific world. If you import UNKN 0x296A6258 from one of the EA worlds into a custom world it will have the side effect of obliterating the world description, possibly due to the EA worlds having a referenced description.

If you copy the information in bytes 02, 03, 04 and 05 from the vacation worlds to a custom world, it has the effect of flagging that world as a foreign locale, and hence changing the name database, clothing, transport, music, nationality etc., of the world.



You cannot mix and match- you either have an Egyptian world, or a Chinese world, or a French world- you can't have a combination (as a nonstandard combination breaks the resource).

The locales are set by the following in UNKN 0x296A6258:


Please note that the following adverse effects have been noted:


So, it is possible to flag your world as a chinese, French or Egyptian suburb, and of course you could also have a chinese, French, or Egyptian City too. However, it is not possible to have a City vacation destination, since byte 06 has to be set to EITHER 02 (City) or 01 (vacation), and cannot be both.

Further information:
https://sites.google.com/site/hugelunatic/ts3-misc

This information was discovered by the many contributors to this thread, and by Tamlo31here:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...ighlight=france
Thank you to everyone, and please continue to add information, research and discuss!

Thanks alot! I've tried doing this myself, but with no luck. Glad you managed to find it. I noticed the neighborhood description was dropped, too. But, save files of the older version of the neighborhood do register as a Late Night town after the world file is changed.

Great work simsample, thanks. Looking forward to seeing how this develops, it would be great to apply the LN features to more custom worlds.

thanks a lot!that was fundamental....traffic will be much needed for NY World

Well, I'm not sure whether that flag is the only thing marking a world as a city. As mentioned, I haven't had any luck making the food trucks work in Sunset or a custom world, it seems that I must be missing some kind of spawner or perhaps another flag/ resource for that. Shame, as the food trucks were what I was trying to fix!

Also, as Jasumi said, the WDDT string doesn't display correctly in a custom world with this resource added. You can see that on my first image above- the 'Jericho' world has a descripton which doesn't display, although it is there in the WDDT:


The WDDT for Sunset does display correctly though, even if I add the 'city' resource. The WDDT however takes a different form to that of a custom world, referencing something in the game files, or perhaps elsewhere in the World file, instead:


Bridgeport is similar to Sunset, having a reference instead of a text string:


All I know at this time is that the resource I isolated adds city traffic (those fake taxis with no driver), adds the city icon in the world selection screen (as well as the 'this is a late night city' tooltip) and breaks a custom world WDDT. More research is needed, as I'm not sure what else is different in a city to a suburb!

So, if any of you would like to add this file to Sunset, Twinbrook or a custom world and see what happens, or if you can get food trucks to work, please do! I could use some help!

(Food truck and parking space available here. )

great discovery!

well after adding the resource to my already installed custom world, first 5 few minutes of game play I see this baby rolling the the street.







the same truck I placed at the bridgeport sports bar parking lot a few days ago. I never noticed it driving around before, but I cant say for sure it had anything to do with the resource being added

(sorry for the big pictures)

I too have seen the food truck driving around on one occasion, but I've never seen one parked :/

Where do we put the file?

x.Tone.Def- if I place foodtruck parking spaces with a foodtruck on them, the trucks will drive off eventually, but not come back. Are the trucks driving around and then re-parking in your game? Perhaps I didn't wait long enough!

Yuffi3- you need to import the resource into the .world file using S3Pe. You can import either to your CAW raw world file, or into a packed world file (for example, in your Installed Worlds folder). Be sure to backup any files before you alter them- if you were to do as I did and edit Sunset or Twinbrook, I can guarantee that the patch installer will complain next time, so you'll need to keep an unedited backup.

Thank you for reply simsample.

I have S3PE installed but have not got round to using it yet so i am compleatly new to S3Pe.

I have started a city world i am building with CAW and its coming along realy well, so i would realy love to set this world to a city.

Can you please explain how to do this with S3PE to set the world in to my CAW world or point me to a tutorial, i realy would appreciate the help.

well one thing I noticed after playing a little while last night, a parked truck will eventually drive off then show up on an empty truck shop parking space I placed on another lot like in actual Bridgeport. I'll definitely check if it comes back next time I'm in game

It's ok i worked it out how to do it (Yay for me ).

I instaled the world and tested it out and the taxis are moving around the streets.

i noticed the same as X. Tone that the food truck moved off from a parking bay on a lot and drove off up the street, then it got to a junction and disapeared, but i only have the one lot with a food truck parking bay.

Thanks a lot for sharing your info and the file, you have made my day.

a couple of questions: how do you get the pidgeonsto show up on the lots i couldent see them in caw or buydebug.
Also i built my own apartmen building from scratch, not using a higrise shell, i put the call box and mall box and made several empty room using the room markers but no other sims moved in to the building, any idea on this?

x.Tone.Def- thanks for the info, I tried it again in my 'city' Sunset Valley and it works! What I had to do was to place more food truck parking spaces- I placed one on most of the community lots (around 15 in all I guess) and then after a few hours I had trucks parking. I kept seeing them driving around but it took a long time for one to arrive at the two spaces I was watching, but when I paused the game and checked I found several other places where they were parked too. So, place lots of food truck parking spaces with food trucks on them, and it will soon work!

Yuffi3- well done for figuring that out! Perhaps this little bit of data is all that's needed for a city, after all. For your apartment question- leave it for a few days, I've heard people say that it can take a while for neighbours to move in to an apartment.
For the pigeon question- you can easily place pigeons on a lot, they are effects from the 'fog generator' as outlined here:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=424256
If you want pigeons outside of a lot in the actual world file, then that's a little more complicated- I couldn't find them in the game data files (although I did find the Twinbrook swamp mist effect), so I had to import them from Bridgeport into my world. I obtained the lighthouse beam effect the same way- that's easy to get on a lot but I wanted it in the world, dammit! It involves a bit of hex editing and a bit of searching, but it is possible- you just have to add a layer from another world to your own.

Hey simsample thanks a lot for your help buddy.

i can now carry on with my city world and have it work as a proper city world with all functions.
with a hell of a lot of searching, i found out how to get custom built apartments working, you have to set the doors to npc doors so npc's can move in.

thanks for your pigeon link

sorry but maybe i'm doing something wrong...i download your source file, i open my .world and choose "import"...then i import your file, say ok to the window that pops up then save and exit.
but the world is still a suburb....help please

manustyle90, is this a packed world one you are using in CAW? As you can see from my screenshots, I didn't compress the resource when I imported it, so try importing with the 'compressed' box unticked. Also be sure to delete your caches (including world caches) in case something there is affecting it. If you are amending the EA worlds (Sunset or Twinbrook) you need to remove the original before placing your copy.

Ok, thanks to everyone for the info.
On my custom hood I've got the city flag with taxis and food trucks zooming around, and slowing down at truck spots, but not parking back in them. I have placed 6 truck stops, all with trucks (Sim2Kid405_carTruckFood) and no joy, I've fast forwarded like 4 days but nothing.
I'll keep testing though.

Very cool!! Thank you. What changes do you see in the world when you change this? I have a custom world that is a small town and I wouldn't mind having the food truck and maybe a bit more traffic in town. But I don't want subways and all that. Would it still be worth making this change even if the world is not a big city? Even small towns have more foot traffic than I am currently seeing in my world.

Thanks for this, Simsample!

Tizerist- I had to place around 15 before I could get it to work, and even then I had to wait for around 8 sim hours before the trucks began parking. So try placing more! The food truck you are using states that it is a clone, so therefore the game may see it as a different object. Try using my food truck and parking space instead- download here - as they are just a modified OBJD and not a clone.

rian90, I think subways will function in any world- it's not dependent on the world being a city. As far as I can tell, changing the world to a city causes 'fake traffic' (i.e, the taxis with no-one in them) and allows food trucks to function correctly. There are a whole bunch of xmls to do with how the subways are routed, so it's possible also that there are differences in the way sims choose to travel in a city. Not sure if there is any impact regarding opportunities, lot types or population though. So this modification would definitely give you the impression that your world was busier. Bear in mind though that this is still experimental, so backup your files before you change them.

Still nothing.
I replaced my files with yours and started all over, placed 16 of both objects, removed all my hacks once I found out one of them moved your truckstop from buydebug to vehicle misc, and camped a camera next to a 'hotspot' for 4 days. But they don't appear on the slot. They pull over and pull away often enough, but not on the lots.

I'll keep my savegame this way in the meantime anyhow.

Do you have the 'fake' taxis appearing as they do in Bridgeport, Tizerist? I just tested this again in another of my custom worlds which is large sized, and it worked fine. I placed 16 parking spaces with trucks and then watched in a place where there were two truck parking spaces (both community lots, zoned to visitors allowed). In three sim days one of the spaces got visited seven times (I noticed that it would stay longer if there were sims on the lot), but the second space did not get a truck visit at all. I wondered if this was due to the fact that the second lot had a rabbithole (spa) on it, but of course it could just be random. So perhaps try on different lots, with different zoning?

Haha, it works now.
Awesomemod cleans the town of the food trucks as part of its housekeeping it seems. I started again and the first few have appeared.
I haven't noticed any patterns yet, and the process needs to be simplified somewhat but it works. Nice one.

Edit : so far Hangout, Visitors allowed and big park are working . And now gym.

Ahh, glad it's working now! So- if we have a mod that cleans up these vehicles, it looks like we need to manually replace them as they don't respawn?

Hi all,

Thank you all VERY MUCH for this GREAT JOB!... I was really waiting for something like this about editing a city game in CAW...

But I've questions to simsample or anybody who masters this subject. On your first screenshot, it's easy to see that the ressouce you've edited in SPE is a 0x296A6258.
I've tried to locate this resource in *.world whithout succes...

So my followings 2 questions:

1 - Where can I find this resource ? Is it in a EA made world like SV or RiverView or else or is it to find in a self custom World ?
2 - the resource S3_296A6258_00000000_0000000000000001%%+UNKN.bnry you give us to download is it to add to a clone of SV (for example) I should like to modify ?

Is it some important information I missed in your post ?

Thanks a lot for answers.

zano972- sorry to not make myself clearer! The resource 0x296A6258 was extracted from Bridgeport World, which as you know is the first EA world we have which is marked 'city'. The others, Twinbrook, Sunset and Riverview, all show as Suburbs, which seems to be the default setting for any neighbourhood. It is only by adding 0x296A6258 that the world becomes flagged as a city.

So if you want to find this resource for yourself, look in Bridgeport World file which is located in Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3 Late night\ Game Data\ Shared\ NonPackaged\ Worlds.

To flag a world as a city, import 0x296A6258 into the world file. You can either do this to a completed, packed world (for example, one from your Installed Worlds folder) or you can add it to a World file you are working on in Create-a-world.

I tried it on a custom worlds I have made, and I also made Sunset Valley into a city. If you do this please remember to backup your files, because the game checks your files each time a patch is installed. Also, we don't fully know the implications of making a world into a city, so it's best not to share any cities yet. If you can test your cities and let us know if there are any problems, it will be very helpful!