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Is my world too big?
jae12kae
Posts: 42
I have read some people saying having 200 lots is too much for Sims 3 to handle and other people saying they play fine without lag with 500 lots. I'm working on a large map and plan to have about 250 lots. Some people also say it depends on my computer so here is my specs
Processor: 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 3210M
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7670M
1TB HDD, 8GB ram
So is a world with 250 lots too much? Thanks!
Processor: 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 3210M
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7670M
1TB HDD, 8GB ram
So is a world with 250 lots too much? Thanks!
0
Comments
I don't know about that but you can always test if it is by downloading and playing a world that does have that many lots. See how it plays.
Good luck
My rule of thumb is to look at what EA does. EA knows its game and its limits. If EA does not do something, or if it does do something, it probably is for a reason.
Most EA worlds do not have more than 100 lots. The more you deviate from this standard, the more likely it is that you will cause problems for others.
Of course, if you just keep your world to yourself, you can pretty much do as you please. But once you start uploading your world, you have a duty to make sure that it does not wreck someone else's game.
People on this forum worry a lot about custom content. Well, worlds are custom content. Unlike most other custom content, it is real easy to make a defective world. The threads here are repleat with posts about defective worlds with lag and routing problems. You certainly don't want to get a reputation for uploading defective custom content.
I think the best way to tell if your world is too big is to playtest it on your own specs to see how well it runs.
Sims can get stuck on empty lots. I don't know why. But when I track down my sims at 3:00 a.m., when they should be in their beds, I will find a half dozen or more hanging around on an empty lot.
Then the next question is why one needs 150 to 200 empty lots? An empty lot serves no purpose. At best, it is a placeholder. But more likely it is a pain in the backside for the player.
Say I have this nifty house on a 40 x 40 lot. I want to place it in your world. There is an ideal place for it, but the problem is there is already a 30 x 20 empty lot on that spot. I have to remove your empty lot to make room for my larger lot. Sometimes the way the game works, the land under your 30 x 20 lot becomes unroutable after I remove your lot, so I am unable to place my 40 x 40 lot.
This is particularly a problem with really large lots like 60 x 60 or 64 x 64.
Instead of placing a lot of empty lots, it seems that it would behoove a world builder to make it easy for other players to place the lots of their choosing using the in game tools. This means straight roads along right angles. The land next to roads should be flat to allow for easy lot placement.
As a player, if I find myself becoming a contortion artist to place a lot of my choosing, I will quickly dump that world.
As far as playtesting, a lot of people claim they do it. But it is usually fairly apparent that the play testing is minimal and incomplete. I have downloaded many worlds where it becomes quite obvious within an hour or so that the world has not had any meaningful play testing.
I ran a 10 generation game starting from 1 resident in Narvik. (My largest world).
I used Story Progression to add residents for the first 3 weeks, then let the game progress as it would.
At its peak, Narvik had 128 sims occupying 41 lots. This was a LOT of sims running around town.
Narvik has over 120 lots, of which 80 or so are residential. While my game kept running smooth, I could tell there was no practical way to squeeze more sims in.
Sure, one could just pack more into vacant homes, but there was an over-employment problem. There were so many sims in certain jobs, that it took hours for everyone to get into work/school. Adding more rabbitholes/schools may have helped this situation, but you can see where this is going....
So, in conclusion, if you model the CAPACITY of your world along the lines of EA created worlds, you will have a much more smoothly operating game. (Smooth as in gameplay/glitches, not neccesarily processing power).
Thank you.
I have played Sunset Valley with over 200 sims. It was a complete disaster. (I got there by adding more homes. The game tends to fill available homes.)
The over employment issue is most profound at schools, especially if you only have one school in town.
Plus, the game engine tends to steer the NPCs to wherever your active sim is located. This can be a very bad thing, especially when tens of NPCs converge on the lot where your active sim is located.
At some point, the game starts limiting the population. Grimmy shows up and takes maybe ten sims at a time. This can take a while as he goes throught the whole reaping routine for every sim taken.
This is why I am very wary of any world which has too many lots.
If you need to fill up the empty spaces in your world, you need to find another way to do it.
If you have 100 res lots, you could easily have hundreds of sims. Unplayable.