Hello, and thank you for your interest!
After many weeks of creating, testing, and some bad errors, Arcadia ia now up on the exchange for the experience of Simmers everywhere. No custom content nor stuff packs have been used, but I did use each Expansion Pack. This is my first world, so some errors or problems may have slipped through to the final version, is you do find something, please let me know and I'll try to fix it. Thank you.
Here is the link to the download!http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=6260381#
LOAD THE WORLD IN GAME, SAVE THE WORLD, QUIT TO MENU, RELOAD WORLD. This is because a certain special effect cannot work on initial play, and will render as fog. You will need riverview downloaded for the effect to work, and I used the first six expansion packs in the making. I don't own any stuff packs, They don't interest me. I also don't own Lunar Lakes, (but I do think the world is very cool), so the objects sold with the world are not in Arcadia.
ADDITIONALLY!!! THIS WORLD USES THE FOLLOWING EXPANSION PACKS: WORLD ADVENTURES, AMBITIONS, LATE NIGHT, GENERATIONS, PETS, SHOWTIME. I'VE RECEIVED PLENTY OF REPORTS ALONG THE LINES OF "99% loading but then stops." THIS IS BECAUSE THE WORLD USES THESE SIX EXPANSION PACKS. I'm truly sorry to say this world will not work without them. I plan to update the world for supernatural, seasons, and university life over the coming springbreak (March24-29), but release it as a second version so people who don't own the nine ep's can still enjoy this.
Here are some mods which will improve the post-apocalyptic experience. These are by no means required, but recommended.http://www.modthesims.info/d/466990 - Removes the ability to buy food from the fridge. It only affects the active family, every lot has a garden, so get your green thumbs up.
http://www.modthesims.info/d/414788 - Forces sims to walk, not run. Truly looks weird in a small village with everyone running like there's going to be a post-apocalyptic apocalypse.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Register+Phase+Seven - Gives the option to control who works at the registers in towns, Why would the Mayor be working in saloon anyways?
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Consigner - Allows you to sell anything at a consignment store. I'm not entirely sure if this also means you can buy anything, but it would be very interesting if so. The consignment shop is one of the most important buildings for Arcadia, and this greatly improves it's usefulness.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Careers+Phase+Ten - Base mod needed for following
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Careers+SelfEmployed+Phase+Ten - This mod gives your sims more self employed options to choose from. Some are interesting, like trainer or being a hacker. Since there are no rabbitholes, this will give the town more variety.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/StoryProgression - Although this gives you a LOT of options to choose from, I reccomend using it to turn off immigration and emmigration. As far as Arcadia knows, no other surviving Vault exists, and new neighbors would be a little, well, suspicious.
Welcome to the Crash Course tour of Arcadia, We here hope you find your experience enjoyable!
Let's start this tour with the golden rays of sunlight only a desert heat could produce.
This is Vault 102, the former home of all Arcadians for the past two centuries. It may not look like much, but inside if the technology beyond comprehension, and the homes to a number of residents.
Why, just look at house clean the Vault is! Some folk like to say that back in the day, people used to prefer cleanliness over this "Squalor" we live in. Maybe it's because the pristine Vault has so many haunting memories, but I certainly prefer the lovely grime of the outside.
A large creek was created by a A-bomb mishap, the detonation rattled the walls of the Vault, but time healed and plant life grew in the watery radiation. Fish have even found their way here, but mutations have turned them into salt-water breathers. They seem almost identical to the sea-life before.
Ahh yes, isn't the village beautiful in the orange bliss of the morning sun? Don't worry, the sand is not as hot as it looks.
Here's some of the homes of Arcadia, they're just waking up right now, and ready to craft a world of tomorrow.
School above ground may have been discontinued, but kids still need to report in for their Vault G.O.A.T. I wonder where all the school supplies went...
Even in the world of post-apocalypsia, fashion finds it's way to ruin all of our lives with drama and snickery. So get your body and happiness covered in a the latest trends and sense here at the Choppe Shoppe!
Have a lot of junk? Well, by junk I mean junk that junk would think was junk. Sell it here at the Arcadian Bazaar!
Hmm, something doesn't seem right here. Why is Harry the Hoarder, and YK-8019 in the Fontain house messing with his cats and dogs? Whose to blame now.
I tell you, this graveyard just feels spooky at night. Stories of odd happenings and such. Probably the youth making up rubbish.
When your fire station burns to the ground from fires and nukes, behold the Back-up fire station! Just don't burn this one too....
Such a beautiful blue hue of sky. Who would have though the radiation would also nuke the damages put upon the atmosphere?
Oh, look what we have here! It's the town Geminoid (that is, a robot who looks like a human girl). What, you didn't think everyone had rocket boots, did you?
Aren't the 8020's such a lovely couple? Being more sleek and stylish then the 8019's, they certainly let their appearance go to their cpu's.
If you are feeling up for a little lesson in history, visit the Museum of History! Ol' Kylve spent hours making all the animations work, building the sets, and even writing description plaques for the unlearned! Surely more fun than most museums back then.
Visit the Academy for some whole-hearty whoop-butt Sim-fu! Even XJ-8019 is eager to learn the arts. At least she's not forgetting she's afraid of water right now.
Most of the town's water comes from a healthy spring not far off. They named it Good Springs. Honestly, when deciding the name of the town, they debated wether or not to base it off of those classic Resident Evil movies, or the Vintage games of Fallout New: Vegas. They voted 6-5.
Sure has been a hot day today, why not cool off in the town's landfill-errr pool.. Cess pool. don't worry, the water is safe, maybe you'll find something cool underneath the water.
Not far away are the Mojave Geysers, spewing steam and fish twenty-four hours a day! Feel free to fish!
Why not tip off the evening with a trip to the Totally Radical Radscorpian Diner? Buy some food and a drink for great prices.
Meet the staff, feel free to sit indoors or outdoors. restrooms in the back.
What a day! Maybe you should plop by the laundromat for a some clean sheets. No doubt the sweltering hot air and fallout have left you smelly
Just look how the city lights up in the night sky. Too bad some magical features prevent light from leaving the lots as much as they should. Don't get lost, Arcadian nights are DARK.
Oh look what you just did. Didn't I just say not to get lost? Well, if you can see, this is Nuka-Creek. The waters always glow brighter in the night.
Oh, oh dear. Oh what have we here? Oh has the time come undone? Oh has life become more fun? Oh the merryment, Oh the excitement. See what nukes have brounght hinder. The land covered not in flames, but a Nuclear Winter.
What a great tour! I hope you have enjoyed the sights of Arcadia, but one last thing before you go, take a look up at the sky. Make a wish on one of the hundreds of meteors. Shooting meteors may be only 1/8th a wish of a shooting star, but it's still a wish! Now, since you are obviously a resident of the settlement since no other surviving Vaults have yet to be found, can you grab me a chilling bottle of some Nuka-Cola as we sift through all the puns and references?
Thank you for your patronage, watch out for super mutants, don't listen to Black Mountain Radio, shoot the zombie dogs whose heads split open, make regular trips to the hospital to fight off infections, and DIE ZOMBIES!!!
Thank Yous go out to
Writin_Reg Helped me with a lot of stuff and made this world possible
natchnatch Was apart of the testing experience
Matpeng Helped me with the Vault
MoriGelopi Was apart of the testing experience
Katluckie Was apart of the testing experience
xSorcier Was apart of the testing experience, offered pictures to help, too.
Simsample Many useful tutorials over on ModtheSims
Arcadia WishlistThe following are things I would like to add to Arcadia, but cannot for certain reasons
1. Casino as a downloadable lot - A small shack with silly lights, slots, and blackjack. Reason why can't: Don't own items b/c not enough Simpoints
2. Underground Subway - Would have trouble with placement and lot size. Ideas for this would be gladly appreciated
3. Method to change currency to bottle caps - Why not? Drink a soda, get a little payment back.
4. Sandstorm weather patterns - Petition anyone?
5. SUPERMUTANTS - OH come on! how cool would this be? not the supermutants you'd shoot, but the kinda supermutants like Fawkes, or even those Nightkin at the lodge as household characters. (wouldn't mind the banter from Black Mountain Radio in all the homes, though.)
6. Radiation and Rad-away / Rad-X - Possibly a mod? I'm not versed in the methods of mod creation, but I'd hugely appreciate the help
Comments
There actually is a few here - there is one called Rattlesnake Ridge that is desert and then Rflong has a ice scape kind of apocalypse called Ice Station. There were a few others around early on but i guess it was hard to play the actual challenge with several of them without zombies. But I know there was one out the first year we had caw that was Sunset Valley way into the future after near total anniliation and the creator took and delapidated a lot of the world and made it grey and barren. it was a good job, but all the grey after a while was sort of depressing - otherwise I think it may have been more popular than it ended up. I don't exactly recall the name exactly but it did have Sunset Vallen in the name or who the creator was. It's too bad they did not do more with the dessert or even a frozen looking scene, as neither of those seem quite so depressing. But both of the worlds I mentioned are both real nice. Mikitta spent over a year making here Rattlesnake Ridge, and Rflong as usual produced another wonderful world that even offer a numer of variations to it that went according to the Apocalypse challenge rules. So users can have just what they want from it.
But yes, with Zombies coming I am sure you will find plenty of souls looking for a place for the challenges for sure.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
SCROLL DOWN TO SEE PROGRESS, GOES ON TO PAGE FOUR
A background story - I've always wanted to play a fallout-eqsue like world, but since I could not find any desert themed ones, nor since my old laptop could handle CAW, I was in no luck. Now that I am able to actually play and create with very little to no lag, I decided to retry this project. I should let you know this is my first CAW creation, so expect issues and be ready to test A LOT.
Some quick notes about Arcadia
1. This is not an island, the edges with form a bowl-like shape, and the camera restrictions won't allow you to see the ocean.
2. There are not going to be above-ground rabbit holes. Everything in the world will have a similar hooverville style of architecture, whereas a pristine hospital would destroy this.
3. I won't be using custom content, stuff packs, nor store items which require money. However, I will use all of the expansion packs.
4. I will be making sims fit for this world. Some of them may have rather unique family members such as simbots, and others *MAY* be a greenish tinge from radiation.
5. Although it is beyond my ability, I will attempt to create a flow-in camera, and a custom image when loading this world. Hopefully it doesn't replace every world, and hoping I won't have to make a major Mod to do this.
If you have any comments or concerns, please let me know, and thank you for your time. Also, if you would like to see anything added to this world, please ask. I will attempt my best shot. This is my first world, after all.
Notes for Testers
Please let me know of anything wrong with this world, such as sims not being able to get around, tomb errors, (possibly how laggy it is and how good your computer is), and anything else that could fix or even improve performance and gameplay fun! I don't care if the details are for even the smallest, not-important thing, I want to know your problems with Arcadia. But PLEASE, let me know in a civilized way. List the lot it happens on, or the location on the map. Explain what happened and why it went wrong. If you post something like "This world is broken." then I will be completely unable to help you. Thank you!
Progress of Arcadia Starts Here, and Continues Throughout Thread.
This is How Arcadia started.
First Image of the interior of a house.
A few hours brought me to this.
ORIGINAL POST
I was not aware of Rattlesnake Ridge, but I have seen Rflong's World, and I remember watching a youtube video of the totally barren sunset valley. From what I picked up on Rattlesnake Ridge was that the town was large, and had rabbit holes and such. The other two didn't really have a desert feel to them like Fallout New Vegas. My goal here is to create a small - med sized world where the buildings actually look believable. Buildings all pushed together, and a few outliers. I remember seeing a remake of France, but couldn't bare to play it due to the cozy looking homes and orange shingled roofs being blotched up with modern looking rabbitholes. One world I really enjoyed was one called Coconut Island, and it was since all the buildings were perfectly fit and designed for the small world. I guess you could call me a picky architect, but I love working with themes.
But anyway - I think you are picking a great time to be making such a world though, as having even better zombie types I just know is going to make it popular.
If you ever want the updated versions of Coconut Island, Prof. Plumbob hosts it over on the forums at Snootysims. I never played any version of it, but I know plenty of folks who do and they love it too.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
Anyways, here are some updates on Arcadia
The all important consignment store
Update on the town
A different Angle
Added a small spring (fishin spot) a short walk from the town
Loving this tiny shack
But anyways, here's some more updates. And this is it for the night.
Get your body styled at the Choppe Shoppe
Here's another front view of the growing settlement
And here is a night version!
And of course, the overview of Arcadia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBX3F9UpkQg&feature=related
http://the-wastelands.org/
I don't play second life, but i've heard parts of it. I'll look into some inspiration later on, most of it is coming from the Fallout games. I'm loving those telephone wires though, if only those existed as non Custom Contect or store content.
Had a small mishap with the market place. Spent over an hour designing the buildings and even added a platform to climb on... and then my game crashed. So i had to spend another hour rebuilding it all. I'll have a picture of it soon, next thing to work on is the diner.
I'll have some pictures up soon
Get your food on at the Radscorpian Diner
Buy and Sell at the Arcadian Bazaar
And as always, an overview of the growing settlement
Decided to add an Academy, somehow it just felt right. I will also be adding a gym and pool later on, giving them a post apocalyptic theme, too. (Heh heh, a cess pool)
This one gave me a MAJOR headache. i started with the idea of a large steel tower, but after many attempted tries, the result looked truly terrible. Figured i'd just go board and wood and make the usual.
So i finally updated the old mine by giving it more rocks surrounding it, i'm not very acustomed to world editing yet, opinions?
And of course, the overview of the settlement. I have a few residential lots to build wrapping around the mine, and some other community lots.
I think i have decided against a pet store, but will create a sort of ampitheatre for a big park venue, similar to Twinbrook's ampitheatre. Pretty clueless on how to create a beach in a desert, unless i add a dried up river with a thin stream. then there is the vault i'll be making which will have the town hall, hospital, and science facility.
A question for everyone though, I was thinking of putting an abandoned school house somewhere, giving it collectable objects, and a few potion makingsets with a playground. Should i add the rabbithole for a school there? I ask this since whenever i play with kids or teens, they literally never have any time outside of school and homework.
Added a gym, simple stuff. Treadmill, strength gym, pull-up bar, and a radio.
Added a library to the town, feels more like a community center though. maybe i'll add a chessboard later.
This one I have questions whether or not swimming will actually work. Once the world is up for testing, let me know!
Here's the growing city, starting to wrap itself up!
so, here are the updates.
Added a venue to the world. It has a sort of pre-apocalyptic historic feel to it.
I was inspired by fallout 3 when making this, but the city hall, hospital, and science facility are within. I attempted to hide them by placing them in rooms with hiddenroom markers, hopefully that should do the trick!
Decided agaisnt making a school for the youth, i never enjoyed playing with a school. besides, who wants to sit in class and think, "I can't wait till school is over to go and play in school." But I did create a custom school for some other reasons...
Here's a beach, set with a small overlook. Part of the lot is underwater, and i ran into a problem where the water transperancy dramatically shifted. Figured out i had to lessen the slope of the beach.
A short distance from the town is another fishing spot, I added waterfall splash effects to make it look like a hotsprings or geyser. All non-travel fish are now available to be caught.
And the usual, an overview of Arcadia. That valley of rocks is a river formed from a nuke-mishap. You can also see that I varied the ground of the desert so it's not a solid tone. I'm not sure if you are able to see this, but I also added the dunes closing in the world. Don't worry, it still feels like a settlement in the middle of nowhere.
EDIT
well now that it is up for testing, i've been messing around town. A few things i noticed was that the pool does work to an extent, i forgot to put tomb markers in the "tomb" (BUT THE TRIGGERS WORK!), the rabbitholes i used are multi purposeful, therefore having two science centres.. And the rabbitholes can't be accessed because those sci-fi archs from showtime... aren't walkthoughable. The general store in the bazaar seems to be more for show. i'll think about adding a garden. The bazaar bookstore functions like a regular bookstore. some benches at the venue don't seem to act properly. will consider adding digsites besides generic. Couldn't seem to find a relic worth selling to the relic store. might tone down the spawners. the beach seems to function awkwardly. i'm unable to fish in the part that is underwater, but mysim can go knee deep in water to fish in the part that isn't on the lot (might mean that some fish aren't able to be caught). a sim was stuck at the Radscorpian diner, but managed to free herself. buying food there seems to work fine. That's all i noticed as of yet
Would it be possible to perhaps leave a space underground for those who would like a school? It could be an optional rabbithole (sorry I like schools )
Edit: Didn't have much time tonight but I've found the same issues as you. I guess if you want to be picky the chair outside the Laundromat can't be used (is this a real issue though XD?). I did try to adopt a pet via phone but it never arrived, I wondered if this was due to the lack or roads or was it my PC/game/my problem as I don't understand much about that sort of stuff.
Otherwise it looks really good, I really like it. Is it possible for the camera to be more zoomed in via map view?
Edit
And the problem with the adoption service, being a roadless town could present some major problems. not sure how to by pass that while still keeping it roadless. maybe a mod?
Ehaught western world is real big, so I suggest if you have any question on how he gets the households he's not playing to do for themselves, you might want to ask in his Western world thread. He's good about answering questions fairly fast. He is a computer teacher so he may not see the questions during the day, but he generally will get to them at night.
I am puzzled by what you say about your beach. I have never seen problems fishing on a beach unless a sim is running around with seeds in their inventory. Then they won't fish sometimes - the only other possibility is them not being skilled in fishing which also requires a grocery store to get that skill. Rflong puts fishing beaches in all her worlds as well as lakes and I have never seen a problem again as long as the sime has at least one skill in fishing and no seeds in their inventory. So perhaps she might have an idea on what you are doing wrong as I do know if a beach isn't designed properly it may not let your sim fish as well. I saw another simmer with that problem post to Rflong about it, and right off the bat she was able to give that simmer the right solution. If anyone knows about world building - no one is better than Rflong. Right now I am testing a new world for her - other wise I would give yours a run through - but I will tell you that you need to get the kinks out of the world before you go porting sims in =as once those sims are in there, you can't put the world back in CAW.
Anyway, good luck.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
I guess I could expand the vault size to include a school and grocery store. However, all this talk of sim suicide does befuddle me after having played Prof. plumbob's Coconut Island 2.0. there where zero rabbitholes and not a single road, yet everyone seemed to survive just fine. He did have a community garden though. Then again, I only had the base game and WA installed at the time. If some patch happened to change that, then darn.
http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/156125.page
From what I can see he provided the sims which may help solve the problem of such a world without sims as he probably gave all the sims lifetime wishes for a non-rabbithole type career and traits that would help them be self sufficient - he does mention rabbithole doors and rugs, so that indicates he has rabbitholes, using that CC - a lot of simmer won't use that stuff if it is in the world itself because updates are liable to break the world and users can't fix it if it's in the world -he also apparently uses the subway system and a mod so all sims use them to get around - as the problem I saw with worlds with no roads and rabbit holes and unskilled sims was the sims would run out of money and food, as the fridge will run out of food and if they don't have skills for fishing and gardening cannot feed themselves - if they don't have money for their bills the game generally moves the sims out of the hood period if they don't starve to death first. But giving them some skills, probably helped. It suggests the sims are gardeners, fishermen, writers, artist etc so they would make money and could possible get their own food - but I had no luck in three different apocalypse worlds I tried to play in keeping sims I was not playing in the towns - like I said they either died or the game moved them out. In the apocalypse challenge sims did not have necessities availiable - nor were they skilled in survival and they could not even have certain traits like angler or Green thumb or anything like that which would give them advantages. So I suppose you might be able to get them to survive if they have a way to pay their bills and some way to get food. But I don't know if all will make it.
As for the fly over I believe Pyronium made a fly over and such for his Dessert world Sentra - maybe he can direct you - You could also look for that kind of info over at modthesims and Simprograms. STW and Tea and Blues might also have ideas how to do it as well as Simsample.
Anyway, it might work - but my own experience with the actual Apocalypse challenge was massive fail and I know many sims starved to death as they had no food access.
I cannot say whether this was all changed with eps or patches along the way - but it does seem like Sims took much better care of their selves in the beginning of this series than they seem to do now. I see people complaining about Showtime that sims are all passing out from hunger - some dying because they stay at the shows without going and getting anything to eat even though they claim to have a fridge on the lot and in the case of the coffee shop a whole restaurant is there. I have not had that problem, but I see a lot of complaints about it.
Like I said though a school is going to be useless without the school bus in household you are not playing, as you have to tell the kids to go to school when there is no buses - they will not do it automatically. The same with jobs, if there is no carpool, no one will use the science building or hospital that you mentioned except the household you are playing and only if you tell them to - at least that has been my experience.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....