How much "bleed room/overscan" do I need to leave so that the "edges" of my map don't show water?

AlexRoz9

First, let me apologize if this question is worded awkwardly; I'm working on a rather ambitious CAW undertaking and I need some help. Basically, I want to know how much space (using size "1" square routing paint on the "grid" as a unit of measurement,) I need to leave between the edge of the world and the edge of my routing paint so that my Sims don't see the "water" around the edge of the world. Since most, or at the very least, a good deal of my world will consist of "flat plains," I need a way to hide the water that surrounds the edge of the world, and that doesn't take up a good deal of the map itself. I'm using a large flat map, with a height map of 300 for this project. I've tried the "Terrain - Distant" option under game objects, but I'm having trouble placing it without losing a good deal of space on my map. Any tips/workarounds for my problem are appreciated though.

Okay, now you may wonder why I need the edges of my map to be as flat as possible. As I mentioned, I have a rather ambitious CAW undertaking in the works, not one, not two, not three, but four worlds that will ultimately tie into one large story.

+

Basically, if you were to take a giant plus sign like the one above, put a "1" in the top-left corner, a "2" in the top-right" corner, a "3" in the bottom-left corner, and a "four" in the bottom right corner, you would have a map of what all four worlds would look like if "stitched" together as one giant world. The "+" sign represents two intersecting roads that will be visible in each of the worlds, hence the need to keep the sides "flat" to ensure that everything matches up as closely as possible. For example, in world #3, the two roads will form the shape of an "L" with a bit of a tail at the bottom to indicate that they leave town; routing paint will be used so that Sims don't travel off the edge of the world.

At present, I'm working on worlds #1 and #4, which are practically polar opposites of each other; world #1 will be quite fleshed out, while world #4 is actually going to be very empty.

Again, any help would be greatly appreciated; thank you.

drake_mccarty

i don't really understand what you are trying to say, but it is very difficult routing your world without using the distant terrain objects found in the metadata tab. Otherwise, no matter how high you make your edges, the camera will always find some little crevice in your camera routing and you'll be able to see straight over your mountains and see water. Hope this helped.

AlexRoz9

drake_mccarty wrote:

i don't really understand what you are trying to say, but it is very difficult routing your world without using the distant terrain objects found in the metadata tab. Otherwise, no matter how high you make your edges, the camera will always find some little crevice in your camera routing and you'll be able to see straight over your mountains and see water. Hope this helped.

I'm trying to create four different worlds that, when completed, should look like they "line up." There will be a road that runs north to south and another that runs east to west that will be visible in all four worlds, the "corner" that the road intersects in will be used to show where the world is in location to the other worlds. The end result should look something like this:

1|2
---
3|4

So if you were in world #1, you would see:

1|
--

Where "|" and "--" are roads; likewise, in world four, those roads would look like this:

--
|4

Thus, the east side of world #1 has to match the west side of world #2, and the south side of world #1 has to match the north side of world #3, and so on. Is this a bit clearer?

If I have to use the distant terrain object, do you have any suggestions for where it should be placed on an unsculpted grid? I can always route "around" the distant terrain metadata object; I just want those edges where the roads are to be easily recreated in each world. Likewise, I want the distant terrain metadata object to take up as little space on the portion of my world that I can sculpt and place lots on as possible. Again, any help from anyone would be appreciated. Thank you all in advance for your time.

Finally, I have a suggestion for EA on how they could improve the tool: It would be nice if there was a "no oceans" option in Create-A-World. Basically, turning such an option on would "replace" the water at the edges of the world with flat plains that would stretch into the distance; nothing could be placed on these plains, and the grid could be used to show where the world's edges are as it does now. Salt-water lakes could still be created by adding water to various locations within the world and using the salt-water spawner, but this proposed option would replace the oceans at the edges of the world with either desert or grassland plains. The distant terrain option could still be used, but it wouldn't be required to block out the water at worlds' edges. Coding such an option into future versions of CAW shouldn't be too difficult; it's just changing a visual effect, from an "infinite ocean" to "infinite plains," and since the ocean is relatively 2D, the plains would be 2D as well. (This is an effect that's been used in film/video for decades; the most famous example is from "Star Wars" in 1977 with the "infinite corridor" on the Death Star; the corridor stretches into infinity, just as the ocean in CAW does, there should be an option to replace the ocean with grassland/desert plains entirely though.)