I spend a lot of time detailing the houses, because right now all the build tools are not available that I had in Sims 2. I like Circular stairs and multi level stairs to build with and they havent been released yet. I am still a dork with some of the tools, so I tweak already built ones. I have tried to build on a bare lot and the ground goes corrugated, and all the levels mess up so I have sort of backed off though I do love to make floor plans come to life. That sounds like a whole lot of whineing for not building things, but you all do a better job than I do. I play or detail, IE add clocks, TP makeup and cologne. So much clutter, so little time

Typically I play more. However for january up untill two weeks ago I ONLY created. I downloaded an island town deleted nearly all bulidings/Lots built a HUGE castle plus six small to medium houses. placed several houses others made. created the required community lots. tried and kinda succeeded in fixing routing issue than created five house holds totaling 21 sims. moved them in and gave 9 of the one additional outfit. I wanted to kill things after that, but it was worth it the town is beautiful the houses perfect and the sims are the best i've made yet! But I will never do a full overhaul of a town ever again. I've relized I like playing best.

Keep right on creating those worlds, cause enjoy the heck out of them. They also send me on a building spell, wanting to add to the style your worlds present. Thank you.

I tend to get obsessive about playing when I get my hands on a new exp pack, but that hasn't lasted more than a few weeks for any of them so far. After that I start tweaking pre-made houses and sims, revamping a world (over and over and over since I tend to get done and then realize something I forgot to do), and building houses. Now I'm building from real house plans which is proving harder than I anticipated, but half the fun is getting them done just right so that they're actually playable One of these days I'll start paying attention to what I'm using when I build and decorate them so that I can attempt to share them...I have a ton of store items and CC.

I've started up CAW once and shut it down when I realized that it would take a lot to learn and work with. Not that I think I can't do it, I just know myself - I'd get completely caught up in getting something done "right" and no one would see me for weeks I really don't need another addiction!

I don't think I've played in live mode since I thoroughly explored LN. I've been working on making a neo-victorian town in CAW, and decided to make almost all my own lots including custom rabbit holes. I'm not one of those fast people that whips up a building in 4 hours, so it's taking forever.

I love how in the sims community 4 hours is considered speedy timing.

I've actually been building my own world for awhile now and am just getting around to placing lots. I've been using rabbit holes for the most part, but finally decided to try building my own hospital and such, but it's taking forever! I spent 4 or so hours last night building up this huge hospital, only for it to crash when I was editing the last bit of it.

It's safe to say I'm going to be taking a break from building for a while and instead just plop down already built structures.

You lost all that work? I'm sorry. But it can happen to all of us. So far I've been lucky in that CAW and TS3 have yet to crash on me.

As far as custom rabbit holes, those really do take a long time. As long as building any other lot. So far, I've built six. They are the Science facility, Bistro Restaurant, Diner Restaurant, City Hall, the School, and the Hospital. Of these six, only the City Hall, Bistro, and School are completely furnished and accessible, possibly making it suitable for machinima use. The School isn't even all that great, though it's hard when you're trying to keep CC use down, and none of the EPs really have any school oriented objects. The diner I can probably fix by using a rug instead of a door. Then to make it worse, I'll probably have to review them to see if they will require further revision, which they probably will.

I may need to start using more CC, but I will have to be careful what I choose, since every piece of CC I use is another thing players need to download, and I don't want them to have to download 100+ things. Oop! I'm starting to digress again.

I just know that since starting on my third CAW project, I have a new respect for people who have produced CAW projects to completion, because of the sheer amount of effort required. I suspect that creators often ask others to produce many of the lots.

True dat.

Thanks. I actually had today off from classes, so I decided to stay in and be a hermit, and give another go at the hospital. It took a bit longer this time, close to 6 hours, but it's finally completed. I rarely build anything because of all the time and effort it takes, but I'm pretty happy with what I've completed.

Are you using all of the rooms in these buildings though? With the hospital I just furnished and thoroughly decorated the area around the hospital (including a parking garage), reception area, waiting lobby, nursing station and two bathrooms. I was going to work on the E.R. in the back but decided to use that area for the rabbit hole object. I hid all the other rooms with the 'Hidden Room' marker, which saved me another good 4 hours of decorating every single room.

I completely agree. Idk how they keep the drive to continue creating the world and not go completely mad.

Usually I will either use the rabbit hole door as the main door, or I will place the rug just past the front door (but still enough room around it to use the rug). I use the rugs if the doors don't fit the style of building. I also ensure that there's enough room around the rug for Sims to walk around it to access the other buildings.

To answer your question, I consider a rabbit hole recreation to be fully completed, instead of merely functional, if every room is furnished. Each building features elements appropriate to the type of building it's supposed to be. Needless to say, I haven't re-created every single rabbit hole yet.

I haven't even decided what effect I want for some of the rabbit holes. Using the grocery store as an example, I haven't decided whether it will be a corner store like the original rabbit hole, or a super market.

Wow, only four hours for a hospital? That's amazing, I spent 16 hours on my school building and I'm sure my hospital will take even longer. >.>

Sorry about the crash. I usually call TS3 the Patience Game. Between loading and crashing, it's a lesson on Taoism.

16 hours? What did you do, build the school on a 60x60 lot, furnish every room, try to make each room look "used," and build a track/football field with bleachers?

The school I built didn't have a track, field, or bleachers, but the one I built is modeled after an old two story rural school house built around 1907 or so.

Although lots that take that long are typically the ones that look the nicest, so more power to you.

All this talk is making me want to go back and re-edit the hospital and add more rooms.

After I finished it I went on and started placing down some rabbit holes and found myself very unhappy with the way they look in the town. The only rabbit holes I'll probably keep are the business buildings, town hall and the movieplex. I don't know where to start on everything else though.


Here's a picture of the hospital. I'm not entirely sure about it though. I like the shape of it, but I think I might keep messing around with the outside of it more - change the smaller windows, repaint it, work on the landscaping etc.

Heh, it's on a 40x60 lot, and takes it all up. I only finished the bathrooms, the halls, and all the walls/ceilings/floors/lights. It's supposed to look like a little schoolhouse that got added onto. It's 6 classrooms, a library, an assembly room, a cafeteria, an office, a teacher's lounge, a courtyard with a garden and a playground. It took me a long time to make it look cute even though it's so big, and the clock and bell tower took forever because of bugs and not being able to recolor the bell. Fixing all the hedges so they didn't stick through the walls probably took another hour. I'm a little obsessive.

Here's are some pics I can't place inline:

http://i.imgur.com/GVOEl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/iAXL0.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/BKHYG.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/IaPRF.png

Edit: that's a gorgeous hospital jay_envy!

Jay, that hospital looks quite nice. I know you said that you didn't complete the patient rooms and some other things, but I suppose you have to draw the line somewhere.

FoxPaw, that school building also looks very nice. So I'm glad you took the time to make it.

I am of the view that creating and playing go hand in hand. You have to know how the game plays and how sims will act under certain circumstances in order to create for them. Someone who creates without actually playing the game most likely is making crap, and it will become apparent to someone who downloads the item, lot or world within five minutes of playing.

Case in point: the original poster said that worlds with flat lots and straight roads are boring. Perhaps this is true if you are interested in pretty screenshots which help you get your world hosted. But a world full of sloped lots and curvy roads detracts from the fun that other gamers will have with it. Many gamers get their fun by building lots or adding really cool lots that they have downloaded from sites like this one. If a world builder has sloped lots and curvy roads, placing new lots becomes a real chore. Any lot built on these worlds can be used in that world and that world alone -- unless the gamer spends a lot of time making the lot fit in some other world.

A corollary of this seems to be that the worlds with sloping lots and curving roads also tend to be filled with EA buildings -- buildings from Sunset Valley, Riverview, Twinbrook and Bridgeport which everyone is bored with. In some cases, the world builder may have made a few lots of his own, but it is apparent they are rushed and not well done. In many cases there really are not many starter homes. In other words, these worlds are not much fun or very interesting to play. The creator would know this if he actually played with his creation. Someone who plays a lot and has spent time editing other worlds and other lots can appreciate the value of being able to pop in a new house or lot with few headaches.

There seem to be a lot of worlds which have cool screenshots but are utterly unplayable. They suffer from lag and missing essentials. There are lots of lots which look cool until you actually try to play with them, only to find things like plants in the toilets, and furniture floating in midair, rooms without doors, and bedrooms which do not allow the sims to access the beds. If the creators actually played with these items, the flaws would have been immediately apparent. (One of my tests is whether there is a fire alarm in the kitchen. Anyone who has actually played in a house will have a fire alarm in the kitchen. However, it is something easily overlooked.)

The camera is terrible, because you can't paint or place windows when having the whole house visible, the camera will be either too high (focusing on the roof) or too low.

Placing windows is a nightmare.

Some features involving constrainfloorelevation are filled with bugs

To mention some. It's the controls which bother me the most.

You'd be surprised how long it can take. I am a bit of a daydreamer, and my hospital is unfinished since June 09.
I did come back and install elevators and place some privacy curtains last July though. Then I spend the next few weeks just twirling the camera round it and gawping. When will I return to it? Could be days, or years. Who knows.

Nice hospital Jay.

You do make good points. That's why I would play test anything before I upload it to a place where people have an expectation to download it and start using it right away.

I may not necessarily play a Sim up to level 10 in his career, max any of his skills, or play a family to generation 7, but I would play it enough to see if there are routing issues in a world, and I wouldn't upload a house unless I was certain that every object that isn't decor was accessible by Sims.

In any world I build, I avoid using sloped lots. Right now, it's just the beaches and a few residential lots (out of an expected 90+ total). Otherwise, each individual lot is flat to make it easier for people to place lots they downloaded from somewhere else. In fact, I believe it's considered to be in bad taste not to have most lots to be flat. So any sloping and curved terrain would be in areas that aren't covered by lots.

I probably will have straight roads in places where one could place additional lots, although instead I plan to just have empty lots in places. For example, a small number of residential lots are completely empty in most worlds I've seen.

As far as your point about starter houses, you wouldn't have to worry about me making that mistake. I intend to have a few choices, instead of one or worse, none at all. Granted, in the world I'm working on, the starters will all be mobile homes and condos (they're apartments, except TS3 doesn't implement rent), but there will be plenty of starters.

I agree with you on the roads, that it's more versatile for the players if the roads are straight so you can add your own lots ,but the quoted part. That sounds like you just didn't download the CC required. If it would have been only a missing door, then I wouldn't have suspected missing CC because I don't always remember to add doors into the buildings until I try to enter a room. But floating furniture, or odd items in odd romms, that sound very much like you are missing CC and then the game replaced the item with a base-game item.

No, not everybody buys fire alarms, from the five households I currently have in my game, none have fire-alarms. Again, at least for me, this is something I don't remember to add until the first fire, even thou I might have played the house for several sim weeks.

I completely agree with you about the camera, yesterday I was trying to take a picture of a few buildings I was making and it was such a pain. But other than that, I do think building in TS3 is a much nicer experience than in TS2, just because of the possibility to drag the walls. I'm now basing my opinion solely on the point of a casual builder who doesn't use all the fancy cheats. So, those, I can't compare which was easier.

I take forever to build lots. One lot can easily take a week or more of work, which might explain why I've built so few. I'm one of those people who has to get everything just right, and decorate each room as if it were a project in its own. Overall, I prefer quality over quantity, and the end result is always worth it.

So yes, between building, decorating, cc-making, and organizing/maintaining my neighborhoods, you could say that I spend more time creating for the game than I do actually playing it, although the two definitely go hand-in-hand.

Not playing as much lately and everytime I've recently loaded the game it was to build or create something.

I prefer worlds with sloped roads, curves etc as they are much more realistic for me ( I live in the UK so we don't build on a grid system like in other places anyway) BUT if you look at Sunset Valley for example it is possible to have flat landscaped lots on hills, in valleys it just takes a little time to flatten areas and blend them in. In a world like that however I do leave plenty of lots free for those who want to build.
Funnily enough I also built a hospital a few days ago - this one took about 6hrs but is still unfurnished - I spent most of the time planning the room layouts.
Still unhappy with the windows and needs lots more work.
This shows the main town area of my latest project - it's certainly not flat:-) BUT all the lots are (a bit like the terracing effect in Twinbrook). How it should be in my opinion. This world is still only half done (note the lack of 'colouring in' everywhere) but has taken about 4-5 months so far. I don't know if I'll ever be happy enough with it to upload it but I enjoy playing it which is the main thing, though after all this time I am starting to lose interest as I get new ideas.

Note - One reason why playtesting is important - I thought it would be cool to add a birthing suite on the ground floor and in one of the rooms I added a 'birthing pool' - a 4 tile pool. Looks great BUT when I came to play it the game automatically set the whole lot as a 'pool' lot type and 5 or so sims would try and squeeze into the pool leading to some funny glitches, several drownings and sims swimming under the floor of the building. I have kept the pool but reset the lot to 'no visitors allowed' to give the grim reaper a bit of a break.

Oh yes. This goes for me too, except that I have a need and obsession for realistic details, details and more details... and that combined with the fact that my PC simply isn't made for games = crashing every 40-70 minutes in build mode. But that doesn't stop me from starting CAW projects like elwen-world, New York-like megacity, a goddamn full-on japanese world, space world... Aaaaand the result is, that I got a bunch of world-projects that I'll never finish. Nor PLAY.

Actually, this was in a world I downloaded. Things like the library, a tattoo parlor were missing front doors. It was pretty obvious that the world's creator had not played his own world.

I guess my point is: if a creator does not want to play his own world, why should anyone else?

I have one world as a work in progress. I may never "finish" it. But I already am playing in it. It's the world I wanted for myself. Since no one else made the world I wanted to play in, I made it myself for myself. One of my goals was to make it playable as quickly as possible, with the ideas of adding the pretty bits later.



My point exactly. Most creators forget the fire alarms until they have played their house for a while. It's why it's a fairly good test as to whether the house has been playtested by its creator. Just about every house I have uploaded has been lived in for at least one generation, and often two or three. They have been through many fires.



Realism may depend on where you live. In the United States, everything west of Pennsylvania and north and east of California is built on a grid. There are historical reasons for this dealing with the Northwest Ordinances, etc. In particular, just about eveything west of the Mississippi and east of the high Sierras was laid out either by the railroads or the military. They both like to build on grids. Most American cities are built on pretty flat ground, and where it is not flat, developers spend a lot of money and use a lot of heavy equipment to make it flat. Most towns in the U.K., in contrast, were not designed, they just sort of grew over the course of centuries.

That being said, it really comes down to a game which is pretty versus a game which is playable. A playable game will have lots which snap to the roads easily; a pretty game won't. Someone who plays the game a lot, probably will opt to build a playable world; someone who does not play the game will go for the pretty world. But anyone who plays the world will curse the creator who opted for pretty over playable, and probably delete the world in pretty short order.

There have a number of threads, here and elsewhere, about what people want in a world. The answer seems to be something which is playable. The biggest complaint about Bridgeport seems to be, not that it isn't pretty enough, but that there are not enough large flat lots to build on and that it cannot be expanded.