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TROPICA-Test Version Uploaded-Pg. 1

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  • ConorsimConorsim Posts: 5,890 Member
    edited August 2012
    Hi AHENRICH :D

    WOW! It looks fantastic :mrgreen: I love redoing stuff to get it right, building something you're not proud or happy with can be annoying. You've done a great job though, love all the curves and the fact that there's roads leading up to it - very unique!
  • scorpiophoenixscorpiophoenix Posts: 2,289 Member
    edited August 2012
    Very nice work! Can't wait to see more as you progress! :D
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited August 2012
    Great job replacing the city, I much prefer the enclosed layout of this one - it looks almost like some kind of spaceship or something...

    Anyway... I can't wait for the next update :)

    --Wibble :D

    Thanks Wibble :mrgreen: Now that you say that, it kind of does, reminds me of the Indiana Jones movie when the UFO came out of the tomb :shock:
    Conorsim wrote:
    Hi AHENRICH :D

    WOW! It looks fantastic :mrgreen: I love redoing stuff to get it right, building something you're not proud or happy with can be annoying. You've done a great job though, love all the curves and the fact that there's roads leading up to it - very unique!

    Thanks Conor! I can't tell you how many times I've redone stuff in this world, change layout here, resculpt terrain here... goes on and on. :|

    Anyways thanks for the comment! Your world is coming along great too, I keep checking on it for new updates! :mrgreen:
    Very nice work! Can't wait to see more as you progress! :D

    Thanks Scorp!
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited August 2012
    Screenshot-522.jpgScreenshot-527.jpg
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited August 2012
    Bump for update, for pictures see first post. http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/527597.page#8229974

    Testing version 1 coming tonight-August 8, 2012.

    August 8

    I got the big hills painted and trees places still have plants and rocks to place on them yet. Started work on a few builds. Got the old part of town almost laid out completely (it is going to be getting revitalized, so you'll have some fixer uppers when you download this)
    -this is mainly just a few pictures to show how much the landscape as changed now.
    -Also I took the suspension bridge out for good, I felt it made the area seem to crowded and was not necessary for the island since it is all connected.


    Gonna start doing it like this, the thread is getting to long with all the pictures,hopefully we're close to page three. lol :mrgreen:

    edit: just my luck! PAGE THREE! :D
    edit: added info
    edit: spelling
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited August 2012
    Uploading test version to media fire. It is very rough yet(please keep that in mind) The roads need smooth, some terrain painting, a lot of landscape, and the small district right by the city was thrown together to give testers a fully functional world. Oh and no spawners yet!
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited August 2012
    bump for update. See first post or link to download here Testing version 1-August 8, 2012. Tropica Test Version 1 http://www.mediafire.com/?gci8vok7vq6a6l1

    MORE INFO COMING SOON!
  • Chrisw9Chrisw9 Posts: 125
    edited August 2012
    Hey AHENRICHs,

    So I don't have a whole lot of time tonight to do major testing, because I'm shleepy, :XD:, but I did load up your world and look around some at what you've got going so far! Alright so...

    You made it clear you are aware of many of the current issues... so it was kinda hard deciding what needs to be pointed out or mentioned without sounding redundant since you already addressed many of the existing issues. From the 10 minutes that I played so far, this is what I came across:

    20psf9x.jpg

    ^^ Found a palm tree chillin in the ocean, haha^^

    xzkon.jpg

    ^^Not only does your road need to be cleaned up here, regarding the sculpting (which you've acknowledged needs to be fixed), but this side of this wall will always be see through in game. So make sure you place something in front of the wall, otherwise players will always be able to see into it from this angle!

    nczdyu.jpg

    ^^And I noticed here, you have some palm trees that are floating above the ground, they just need to be lowered :D

    That is all that I have found so far. Although I would also suggest smoothing out the road on your on-ramp... I saw it had a jagged look to it, here is a pic of mine that I have smoothed - let me know if you need some tips on how to get it to look like this:

    5bcl86.png

    But you've got a great start so far! Keep it up! Tomorrow I plan on really playing some and really looking at the areas you specified as your concerns! Hope this is somewhat helpful! Until next time - :mrgreen:
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited August 2012
    Chrisw9 wrote:
    Hey AHENRICHs,

    So I don't have a whole lot of time tonight to do major testing, because I'm shleepy, :XD:, but I did load up your world and look around some at what you've got going so far! Alright so...

    You made it clear you are aware of many of the current issues... so it was kinda hard deciding what needs to be pointed out or mentioned without sounding redundant since you already addressed many of the existing issues. From the 10 minutes that I played so far, this is what I came across:

    20psf9x.jpg

    ^^ Found a palm tree chillin in the ocean, haha^^

    xzkon.jpg

    ^^Not only does your road need to be cleaned up here, regarding the sculpting (which you've acknowledged needs to be fixed), but this side of this wall will always be see through in game. So make sure you place something in front of the wall, otherwise players will always be able to see into it from this angle!

    nczdyu.jpg

    ^^And I noticed here, you have some palm trees that are floating above the ground, they just need to be lowered :D

    That is all that I have found so far. Although I would also suggest smoothing out the road on your on-ramp... I saw it had a jagged look to it, here is a pic of mine that I have smoothed - let me know if you need some tips on how to get it to look like this:

    5bcl86.png

    But you've got a great start so far! Keep it up! Tomorrow I plan on really playing some and really looking at the areas you specified as your concerns! Hope this is somewhat helpful! Until next time - :mrgreen:

    Lol at the palm tree. Funny story is that it is stuck there, it says its a game mode objects so I'll have to figure out something.

    And I realized I had put those walls in wrong. :oops: :oops: Any suggestions on what to put there?

    I need to go back and ensure that the city terrain is all smooth, that'll be next project.

    I would really appreciate some help on those nasty ramps if your willing to offer it :mrgreen::mrgreen:

    By the way thanks alot for doing this! And don't hold back on criticism at all!
  • Chrisw9Chrisw9 Posts: 125
    edited August 2012
    AHENRICHs wrote:
    Lol at the palm tree. Funny story is that it is stuck there, it says its a game mode objects so I'll have to figure out something.

    Hahahaha! Okay well regarding the palm tree, what do you mean stuck there? Have you tried going into your World Layers and finding the tree in there? If you right click on the items in the layers in which you have your trees, you can click 'Find in Render Panel' which selects that item with a box around it, then enabling you to simply click the 'delete' key. That's what I do when I have trees that appear in the water like that!

    Rflong7 also pointed out that if you hover your mouse over an object, press the SHIFT key, and LEFT-click on your mouse, it will select that object, which will then also allow you to simply press the 'delete' key and delete it! Maybe try those to see if that palm tree will go away? haha
    ANHENRICHs wrote:
    And I realized I had put those walls in wrong. :oops: :oops: Any suggestions on what to put there?

    Maybe you could evenly place the solid side of another wall in front of the open, see through part of your ramp's wall so that players won't be able to see into it like this:

    257ozgw.png

    I know you can still see inside the ramp, but that's because the land isn't raised! You've already done that so the land and your road will cover all of that area that you can still see inside of! However, that still leaves this issue...

    2zdrggn.png

    The other side of the wall that is blocking the opening on your ramp, is now open! Ah! Hmm, You have a few option as to how to fix this (I just threw this together real quick):

    2ewjjwj.jpg

    You could lift the land up on one side of the wall and carve out rocks, and if the see through side of that wall doesn't connect to another solid wall, you can wrap the rocks around it, hiding the invisible side. Another option, if the land is high enough, is to place a thick plant, like the Shrub in front of it. I tried doing both really fast to show you. You can do whatever you want of course, just trying to help give you suggestions so might think of something creative! :D
    ANHENRICHs wrote:
    I need to go back and ensure that the city terrain is all smooth, that'll be next project.

    I would really appreciate some help on those nasty ramps if your willing to offer it :mrgreen::mrgreen:

    Haha sure! I'm not certain if this is the 'right' way to do this, but this is how I do mine.. so (cough cough):

    1.) I first raise up the land and flatten it at the top of the ramp, to where it is even with the base of the inner walls and you can no longer see inside the bottom of them

    20b0lj6.jpg

    2.) Then I make my way down the ramp creating the same flattened land, but a little bit lower than the area behind it as I make my way down the ramp. This is actually close to what your ramp looks like now! I just try to make sure all the base of the inner wall is always touching my raised land as a slowly lower it step by step until I've reached the bottom, ground level.

    Make sure you flatten out your land past your walls as I did in the pic, so when you smooth your walls it wont deform the side of the road and curve it in towards the walls! We'll go back and get rid of the excess at the end!

    33be79i.png

    3.) Now, I set my tool to Size: 5 Opacity: 40 Fall off: 20 - on Smooth - Gentle. I slowly smoothed out all the dips from level to level, working my way down my ramp. Once it looked close to what I wanted, I clicked the Smooth tool and, very gently, just clicked on areas that might be a tad bit high or low, to make it look nice and smooth.

    The best way to judge is to see how the land looks as against the inner wall of the ramp! See how, for the most part, it curves fairly evenly with the ramp wall! Good - but notice where my tool is circled, there is a significant dip in the ramp! You can't see it in the pic on here, but the dip is low enough that you can still see inside of the wall! In areas like this, simply click Hill - Gentle or Valley - Gentle on LOW settings - say Opacity 10 Falloff 5, and ever so slightly raise the land where it is too low or lower it where it might be a little high, and then Gentle - Smooth that area back over to blend in with the rest of your ramp!

    2ilg092.png

    4.) Clean up. Once you get your ramp the way you want it to look, it is time to clean up that excess land on each side. This is very meticulous work and time consuming, but very worth it! Now using Size 5, Opacity 10, and Fall off 5, on Flatten Terrain, we need to slowly flatten the outer sides of the ramp back to ground level!

    Very gently start flattening the terrain on the outside of the ramp walls, your circle should never go more than half way into the wall, less if possible, because then you will be flattening the inside of your ramp! Which would be bad, haha.

    1znwl61.png

    Be sure to check inside your ramp often! Only flatten a little bit a time, then check the inside of your ramp. If you see this:

    2cda4vk.png

    You have gone too far inside of your ramp, click UNDO and try that section again. Your Opacity and Falloff might even need to be lower or you might need to move much slower and steady if you are constantly going too far into your ramp! This part isn't as fun, but worth it in the end! And once you are done, you get this, which one of my ramps in my world!

    351uz3a.png
    ANHENRICHs wrote:
    By the way thanks alot for doing this! And don't hold back on criticism at all!

    I'm very glad to help, and it is def. all constructive criticism! You just seem really nice, and have great potential, so I don't mind helping out at all! :mrgreen: But I hope all of this was somewhat helpful! Hahaha :XD:
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited August 2012
    Hahahaha! Okay well regarding the palm tree, what do you mean stuck there? Have you tried going into your World Layers and finding the tree in there? If you right click on the items in the layers in which you have your trees, you can click 'Find in Render Panel' which selects that item with a box around it, then enabling you to simply click the 'delete' key. That's what I do when I have trees that appear in the water like that!

    Rflong7 also pointed out that if you hover your mouse over an object, press the SHIFT key, and LEFT-click on your mouse, it will select that object, which will then also allow you to simply press the 'delete' key and delete it! Maybe try those to see if that palm tree will go away? haha

    Well it says it can not be deleted because it is a game mode objects, from EIG. I have tried removing it in the game, but that too does not seem to work. I am puzzled. haha :?
    Maybe you could evenly place the solid side of another wall in front of the open, see through part of your ramp's wall so that players won't be able to see into it like this:



    I know you can still see inside the ramp, but that's because the land isn't raised! You've already done that so the land and your road will cover all of that area that you can still see inside of! However, that still leaves this issue...



    The other side of the wall that is blocking the opening on your ramp, is now open! Ah! Hmm, You have a few option as to how to fix this (I just threw this together real quick):



    You could lift the land up on one side of the wall and carve out rocks, and if the see through side of that wall doesn't connect to another solid wall, you can wrap the rocks around it, hiding the invisible side. Another option, if the land is high enough, is to place a thick plant, like the Shrub in front of it. I tried doing both really fast to show you. You can do whatever you want of course, just trying to help give you suggestions so might think of something creative!

    Oohh :shock: Those are some good ideas. I will have to mess around with all of them.
    Haha sure! I'm not certain if this is the 'right' way to do this, but this is how I do mine.. so (cough cough):

    1.) I first raise up the land and flatten it at the top of the ramp, to where it is even with the base of the inner walls and you can no longer see inside the bottom of them



    2.) Then I make my way down the ramp creating the same flattened land, but a little bit lower than the area behind it as I make my way down the ramp. This is actually close to what your ramp looks like now! I just try to make sure all the base of the inner wall is always touching my raised land as a slowly lower it step by step until I've reached the bottom, ground level.

    Make sure you flatten out your land past your walls as I did in the pic, so when you smooth your walls it wont deform the side of the road and curve it in towards the walls! We'll go back and get rid of the excess at the end!



    3.) Now, I set my tool to Size: 5 Opacity: 40 Fall off: 20 - on Smooth - Gentle. I slowly smoothed out all the dips from level to level, working my way down my ramp. Once it looked close to what I wanted, I clicked the Smooth tool and, very gently, just clicked on areas that might be a tad bit high or low, to make it look nice and smooth.

    The best way to judge is to see how the land looks as against the inner wall of the ramp! See how, for the most part, it curves fairly evenly with the ramp wall! Good - but notice where my tool is circled, there is a significant dip in the ramp! You can't see it in the pic on here, but the dip is low enough that you can still see inside of the wall! In areas like this, simply click Hill - Gentle or Valley - Gentle on LOW settings - say Opacity 10 Falloff 5, and ever so slightly raise the land where it is too low or lower it where it might be a little high, and then Gentle - Smooth that area back over to blend in with the rest of your ramp!



    4.) Clean up. Once you get your ramp the way you want it to look, it is time to clean up that excess land on each side. This is very meticulous work and time consuming, but very worth it! Now using Size 5, Opacity 10, and Fall off 5, on Flatten Terrain, we need to slowly flatten the outer sides of the ramp back to ground level!

    Very gently start flattening the terrain on the outside of the ramp walls, your circle should never go more than half way into the wall, less if possible, because then you will be flattening the inside of your ramp! Which would be bad, haha.



    Be sure to check inside your ramp often! Only flatten a little bit a time, then check the inside of your ramp. If you see this:



    You have gone too far inside of your ramp, click UNDO and try that section again. Your Opacity and Falloff might even need to be lower or you might need to move much slower and steady if you are constantly going too far into your ramp! This part isn't as fun, but worth it in the end! And once you are done, you get this, which one of my ramps in my world!

    :shock: WOW! Thanks for the detailed instructions! Maybe you should copy and paste that into a tutorial for the reference for the whole community! It is really detailed and I understand what you are saying. I will fix all this and hopefully you'll have time in the future when I get the next test version out to review those areas again.
    I'm very glad to help, and it is def. all constructive criticism! You just seem really nice, and have great potential, so I don't mind helping out at all! But I hope all of this was somewhat helpful! Hahaha

    Thanks! :mrgreen: It is very helpful! I owe you big time!
  • Chrisw9Chrisw9 Posts: 125
    edited August 2012
    Haha no problamo, amigo! The fall semester doesn't start for another week and a half so, I've got a lot of down time... and had looots of free time this morning, so I made that mini tutorial. I doubt it's good enough to be its own thread or whatever though, but thanks :XD:

    I'll def be around to try out your next version, whenever that may be :-)

    :thumbup: And I really like the new signature by the way!
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited August 2012
    Chrisw9 wrote:
    Haha no problamo, amigo! The fall semester doesn't start for another week and a half so, I've got a lot of down time... and had looots of free time this morning, so I made that mini tutorial. I doubt it's good enough to be its own thread or whatever though, but thanks :XD:

    I'll def be around to try out your next version, whenever that may be :-)

    :thumbup: And I really like the new signature by the way!

    You got a week? I only have 4 days. :( I would think it's good enough, I'm sure Auntie would add it to the the CAW FAQ section! And awesome, I'll keep you updated on here then. Thanks :mrgreen:
  • SLAHP4SLAHP4 Posts: 7,890 New Member
    edited August 2012
    When are you putting this on the exchange? I love it!
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited August 2012
    SLAHP4 wrote:
    When are you putting this on the exchange? I love it!

    Well thanks! :mrgreen: I'm hoping to get it out before October!
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited August 2012
    Let's get it finished!
    Join the team and help me get this world done! (Click on picture to apply)
    <a href="http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/576447.page#9280125&quot;
    Screenshot-576-1.jpg</a>
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited August 2012
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited September 2012
    tropicahelp-1.jpg

    Any ideas what to place here?
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited December 2012
    Hopefully return to this tonight! Got a lot of new builds to add as well as some new ideas!
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited December 2012
    December 28, 2012 UPDATE: Redid one area and made it made for seasons and really ritzy houses! Also placing some trees and plants around the world to make it complete. :mrgreen:

    Screenshot-110.jpgScreenshot-109.jpgScreenshot-107.jpgScreenshot-105.jpgScreenshot-100.jpgScreenshot-95.jpgScreenshot-94.jpgScreenshot-93.jpgScreenshot-92.jpgScreenshot-91.jpgScreenshot-90.jpgScreenshot-89.jpgScreenshot-88-1.jpg

  • shideh357shideh357 Posts: 866 New Member
    edited December 2012
    Hi! :)

    You obviously put an enormous amount of work into this! And it's paid off - it looks fantastic.

    I was just wondering what EPs were required to run it?
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited December 2012
    shideh357 wrote:
    Hi! :)

    You obviously put an enormous amount of work into this! And it's paid off - it looks fantastic.

    I was just wondering what EPs were required to run it?

    Gee thanks! :mrgreen: :oops:

    It's been about a year and a half of on and off working lol

    But I have all the ep's that I am using, but I would to download this world you would need Late Night, World Adventures, probably Ambitions, and showtime, seasons, pets because they all include rabbitholes (but maybe that doesn't matter> hmmm :shock: )

    Thanks again. :mrgreen::mrgreen:
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited December 2012
    December 30, 2012: The city is really coming together! I placed more houses in the rich district, and it is complete besides the unfurnished homes. I began work on the new stadium area. I placed three tropical beach houses in front of the city. The city is getting landscaped finally, and I have placed all the parks in the city except for one, and I only need one more house in the city. The only thing left after all that is a little more terrain paintings, spawners, and the countryside.


    Screenshot-164.jpgScreenshot-149-1.jpgScreenshot-163.jpgScreenshot-150-1.jpgScreenshot-162.jpgScreenshot-161.jpgScreenshot-160.jpgScreenshot-158-1.jpgScreenshot-153-1.jpgScreenshot-152.jpgScreenshot-151-1.jpgScreenshot-144.jpgScreenshot-147-1.jpgScreenshot-146-1.jpgScreenshot-142.jpgScreenshot-134.jpgScreenshot-125.jpgScreenshot-121.jpg
    Post edited by Unknown User on
  • AHENRICHsAHENRICHs Posts: 1,678 Member
    edited December 2012
    Updated main post. :mrgreen:
  • PrahkeetPrahkeet Posts: 3
    edited December 2012
    The kiddy park is so cute! I've never really been into downloading user created worlds but I happened across this thread and I'm SO EXCITED! I'm downloading it for sure whenever its available!
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