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Land-locked Base Game Town-We Need A Name!
BSIRegina
Posts: 5,110 Member
Edit: This project is now on one of the front burners again!
My main world project is one I'm just not talking about until I feel comfortable with how it's turning out. It's based on a particular subject and has strict lay-out and design. While I work on that my mind also drifts to less strict projects and yesterday I started one of those. Most of the worlds we've seen released so far were not only made with WA installed but use WA content, and honestly, who can blame the world creators for that? WA adds some fantastic objects to C-A-W! Most of them also are islands. Islands are lovely but I can't see myself playing all of my Sims for the life of TS3 on islands. Then I was reading a post by someone who would love to play with a land-locked map with a lot of trees.
I let my imagination start wandering, thinking about what I might be able to do that would be different from what most other people are doing and possibly in a more reasonable amount of time than my main project is going to take.
I got to thinking how I could take a game map and turn it into something different from what most of the worlds available are, and since Riverview is already pretty close to land-locked I decided to start there. This will mean much less sculpting (saving hours of work) and not nearly so much terrain painting as a fresh world. There are certain features about Riverview I love and some I grew to dislike a lot after playing with it for a while. So basically for this world I'm changing things up, a lot. In the end I hope to achieve a world that has more trees (I'll see how my computer reacts to that) and to set right my perceived wrongs in Riverview.
So, after that lengthy pre-amble here are some of my thoughts on how to make Riverview better. For one thing, the island needed to go. I don't expect complete reality in a game but I also have an imaginary border things can't cross. For one thing, Riverview's island was too low. The first good flood that came down that river would have wiped out all of the main town. For another thing, in this day and age in the U.S. no one buries their dead where the bodies will contaminate ground water or streams. The groundwater on that island would be no more than ten feet down. I know this because my parents lived a mile away from a river and the well driller hit water at less than twenty feet deep.
I also very much disliked the way the school was set off in the urban area. Students from across the river had a difficult time making it to school on time. Before I moved the Brokes I took to having the kids leave a half hour early on their bikes just so they could make it to school in time.
It also bugs me when I see a criminal hide-out anywhere near a small town. Around these parts, most of those kind of thugs have their headquarters miles out of town. Also, who plops a military base down right next to the industrial sector? The military base in our area is miles out from the nearest town.
Riverview was supposed to be based on a small town, and small towns often have some type of factory or research facility on the outskirts, which is how I perceive the science center in TS3. In this case, my plan for the science center is more like a seed research or fish hatchery type facility. (Of course no one knows exactly what goes on at the science center when they're not looking, and there have been rumors of some pretty strange seeds and fish coming out of that place.)
So, with all those thoughts in mind here is a basic lay-out of how I'm imagining this map. Keep in mind I don't have everything plotted just yet and am still working on the road lay-out. I'll be keeping some of the original road lay-out and changing some. Here's an overhead picture of what I got done yesterday.
Here's a screen capture of what I'm currently calling Hob Knob. I revamped the hill-top housing district so I can fancy it up a bit. I'm thinking of adding lots to the section between the roads so no one is stuck with what I decide to put there. There will definitely be more houses in my version with Beautiful Vista buffs than there were in the original.
I probably should add to this post that what I have in mind for this map is along the same style of towns EA gave us with Sunset Valley and Riverview. I am not a fan of mini lots. As such, none will be placed. Lot sizes will be standard:
Residential Lots: 20x30, 25x30, 30x30, 40x40, 40x50, etc. up to 60x60.
Community Lots: 30x30, 30x50, and 60x60 (there may be an odd sized park here or there but I will try to avoid that if I can). I will try to put in more community lots than are necessary, leaving the player some options as to placement. Unfortunately it doesn't work real well to build things like the Stadium and military base in town so they'll be on the outskirts. They could definitely be moved around if the player decided, though.
I'll also say right here that once this is finished I will be uploading the world save files as well for anyone who gets the urge to kill something I did that annoys them.
My main world project is one I'm just not talking about until I feel comfortable with how it's turning out. It's based on a particular subject and has strict lay-out and design. While I work on that my mind also drifts to less strict projects and yesterday I started one of those. Most of the worlds we've seen released so far were not only made with WA installed but use WA content, and honestly, who can blame the world creators for that? WA adds some fantastic objects to C-A-W! Most of them also are islands. Islands are lovely but I can't see myself playing all of my Sims for the life of TS3 on islands. Then I was reading a post by someone who would love to play with a land-locked map with a lot of trees.
I let my imagination start wandering, thinking about what I might be able to do that would be different from what most other people are doing and possibly in a more reasonable amount of time than my main project is going to take.
I got to thinking how I could take a game map and turn it into something different from what most of the worlds available are, and since Riverview is already pretty close to land-locked I decided to start there. This will mean much less sculpting (saving hours of work) and not nearly so much terrain painting as a fresh world. There are certain features about Riverview I love and some I grew to dislike a lot after playing with it for a while. So basically for this world I'm changing things up, a lot. In the end I hope to achieve a world that has more trees (I'll see how my computer reacts to that) and to set right my perceived wrongs in Riverview.
So, after that lengthy pre-amble here are some of my thoughts on how to make Riverview better. For one thing, the island needed to go. I don't expect complete reality in a game but I also have an imaginary border things can't cross. For one thing, Riverview's island was too low. The first good flood that came down that river would have wiped out all of the main town. For another thing, in this day and age in the U.S. no one buries their dead where the bodies will contaminate ground water or streams. The groundwater on that island would be no more than ten feet down. I know this because my parents lived a mile away from a river and the well driller hit water at less than twenty feet deep.
I also very much disliked the way the school was set off in the urban area. Students from across the river had a difficult time making it to school on time. Before I moved the Brokes I took to having the kids leave a half hour early on their bikes just so they could make it to school in time.
It also bugs me when I see a criminal hide-out anywhere near a small town. Around these parts, most of those kind of thugs have their headquarters miles out of town. Also, who plops a military base down right next to the industrial sector? The military base in our area is miles out from the nearest town.
Riverview was supposed to be based on a small town, and small towns often have some type of factory or research facility on the outskirts, which is how I perceive the science center in TS3. In this case, my plan for the science center is more like a seed research or fish hatchery type facility. (Of course no one knows exactly what goes on at the science center when they're not looking, and there have been rumors of some pretty strange seeds and fish coming out of that place.)
So, with all those thoughts in mind here is a basic lay-out of how I'm imagining this map. Keep in mind I don't have everything plotted just yet and am still working on the road lay-out. I'll be keeping some of the original road lay-out and changing some. Here's an overhead picture of what I got done yesterday.
Here's a screen capture of what I'm currently calling Hob Knob. I revamped the hill-top housing district so I can fancy it up a bit. I'm thinking of adding lots to the section between the roads so no one is stuck with what I decide to put there. There will definitely be more houses in my version with Beautiful Vista buffs than there were in the original.
I probably should add to this post that what I have in mind for this map is along the same style of towns EA gave us with Sunset Valley and Riverview. I am not a fan of mini lots. As such, none will be placed. Lot sizes will be standard:
Residential Lots: 20x30, 25x30, 30x30, 40x40, 40x50, etc. up to 60x60.
Community Lots: 30x30, 30x50, and 60x60 (there may be an odd sized park here or there but I will try to avoid that if I can). I will try to put in more community lots than are necessary, leaving the player some options as to placement. Unfortunately it doesn't work real well to build things like the Stadium and military base in town so they'll be on the outskirts. They could definitely be moved around if the player decided, though.
I'll also say right here that once this is finished I will be uploading the world save files as well for anyone who gets the urge to kill something I did that annoys them.
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Comments
You also made some good points about Riverview's island that I never even considered.
I also like how you always take into consideration anybody who will download your world's creativity and imagination, always trying to offer ways to have them change your world in case they may not like one of its features.
I wish you luck and I will probably be checking this thread periodically for progress... I love watching world progressions from other users.
Oh yeah, I absolutely adore the coast! It's my favorite place to go for vacations and if I could I would live a lot closer than I do. But scenery with a lot of hills and trees is so beautiful, too! I have seen some absolutely gorgeous mountain lake settings, like Lake Pend d'Orielle in northern Idaho as well as different ones in Washington state, and a few closer to home. Of course I do tend to be somewhat of a scenery and terrain feature lush. Just put me somewhere where my eyes can feast on rock formations, ocean views, dry lake beds, or just whatever and I'm happy.
Seriously, I want to put as much as I possibly can on buildable lots instead of having a ton of world decorations you're stuck with.
P.S. I haven't done any texture work on this, just trying to get the idea for what I want to do laid out first.
Silly me forgot the screenshot. :oops:
That doesn't rule out the possiblity however, and I ToTaLLy agree with a lot of what you said about Riverview.
I'm going to Bookmark this and keep a close eye on it.
Enjoy and Good Luck (with all your projects
I liked Riverview and played it a wee bit after becoming really bored with Sunset Valley. The thing is that playing Riverview also coincided with my game experiencing story progression issues which resulted in my having to buy a new computer :shock: so it kind of tainted the town`s reputation for me. I think you`ll stamp your personality all over this town though and we definately need more of that when it comes to worlds out there or worlds in the making. Best of luck
Thanks to you too, Johnny! I'm not sure how much of my personality will end up in it but it will definitely be heavily influenced by the area in which I live, although the scenery should be a whole lot better.
A while back I was looking at the screenshot of the first SV image ever released. A lot of us actually prefer that map to the one that was included in the game. It took me a little while to put my finger on it but I finally realized what I loved about that map was the "Main Street, USA" feel it had. It felt like the small towns I grew up in and around where the main street held all the businesses and just about anything important, and houses in neat blocks surrounded the center of town. That's something I'll be going for in this yet unnamed town. I love the feeling of a town where only a few hundred people live, and that's what to me a TS3 town should be like, not some wanna-be megatropolis urban sprawl with a bunch of modern architecture thrown in for good measure. In the end, that's what SV made me think of.
Of course that's a completely subjective opinion, nothing more. We all like different things and many people love cities. I actually enjoy them from afar. I love looking at the architecture and the lay-outs, and thinking how badly the city planners need bopped upside the head for putting so many things in completely unsound locations. New York City, for example, has some astounding architectural achievements. I love looking at pictures and seeing them in film. I don't think it's an experience I would want to have first-hand, though.
1. Planned more overall lay-out, like where to put things like the school, hospital, etc.
2. Loaded up Riverview and made note of all community lot sizes in case I can use anything from there that's already built.
3. Placed some roads and lots, then re-placed the roads and lots and might have even re-placed them again.
Screenshot:
I think I'll work on catching up on some terrain painting next.
lol you crack me up about the cemetry and the groundwater hehehe. i never played riverview like the beach too much but i might give this one a go
I love SV's beach too, but I also love all the little nooks and crannies in Riverview. Plus it always seemed like the gem spawns were better in Riverview than in SV. I've played Sims through nearly an entire life and he still has never managed a pink diamond. In Riverview my Sim would find one about once a week. I'll have to make sure I put enough spawners in to make it fun instead of the frustration I find with them in SV.
I discovered just now that I have two road tears and a lot with a raised edge. Interestingly enough, this is a lot that doesn't touch the edge of the sidewalk.
Ah well, what I'll work on today is finish the little bit of terraforming I need to do and apply some paint to areas where I've ruined what was already there. Then I'll address the roads and lots.
Oy! That's just not right. Sure, a Sim shouldn't be finding pink diamonds every other day, but they should be able to find a couple of them during their lifetime.
Hopefully you are having fun while experimenting as well as learning and being stimulated!?!
I will be lurking
I decided to take the lazy route to get the map greener and replaced the dry grass with tree grass. This gives me darker terrain in the area where most of the forests will go. There is still quite a bit of texture work to do but I'll do the rest of that from here on out as I work on adding objects in each area. It doesn't work real well to paint the forest floor without trees, for example.
Oh yes, I deleted all the lots and will probably have to re-lay a lot of the road sections once I check them in EIG. I haven't done a lot of terrain work but it's definitely enough to mess up already placed roads. There are already a couple of tears over in the street where the Riverfront Rowhouses belong.
If I was doing a true representation of the area in which I live I wouldn't be doing a forest nor would I be doing a lot of green. I also wouldn't be placing row houses down near the river. We don't have any structures like that here. The problem is, I absolutely love the look of old row houses and love building them as well. Never mind I already have three on my website plus a few I started working on last fall. So, they will have to be included!
I'll most likely end up with two museums. I was thinking the Spenster house would be a dandy structure to refurbish and open as a museum (it will most likely go on the downtown side of the Riverfront Row Houses, and then there will have to be another one just for grins and giggles. I may end up with it out on the "highway," sort of like one of those places in out of the way locations you can visit when you drive between here and there like Peterson Rock Garden near Bend or the fossil museum out near John Day, Oregon, used to be like before they built the new one (and speaking of, if anyone is ever near John Day, definitely visit the museum there--it's a treat, and DON'T miss Peterson Rock Garden either!)
Okay, I'm going to stop yammering now and post a screenshot!
Did you uninstall Riverview and try this?
Nothing works?
Dummy me, though, forgot to add a lot so I could take a walk about town so I could check the camera routing toward the end of the river. A bird's eye view isn't extremely helpful in that case. :oops:
So, if it looks right I am off to plant some more trees. After a few days of painting in the other map I need a break!
Okey-dokes! I took it into the game and there are areas on the map where the ocean is visible. I decided to do something different and exported the height map and went to work on that. I think I have the issue pretty much solved now on a basic level. Now I need to smooth the whole map because for some reason unless a world is perfectly flat it always wrinkles on importation.
In the long run will that really be easier than tweaking the hills around half the map? I don't know, but at least it was something different to do!
I just HAVE to post this picture! This is a prime example of why I LOVE height maps! C-A-W has a terrible habit of wrinkling up every map you import, but sometimes it wrinkles it in all the right places. These rocks look so much cooler now! (Yes, I'll smooth the pathway up to the cemetery.)