Testing the waters: What do you want in a 'hood?
myskaal:
I think offering a saved file version of the world in progress is a fine idea, for those that do enjoy a story in progress. Just be aware any mods (such as AM) would have to be properly uninstalled/hood reset before a final save. Doing that should null and void any conflict issues users might have.
JEthel:
Quote from: Crazetext
I've thrown out the first two worlds I made in CAW. I'm worried about distant terrain - it's pretty, but the suggestions here had caused me to experiment with small worlds. This doesn't leave a huge amount of space for rolling hills miles around while still having decent non-camera routing! What are people's thoughts on having limited distant terrain with a consolidated area like the 'hood posted by Zazazu above? (Or am I missing something?)
I have no problem with large world and distant terrain. When it comes to the level of performance of a world, I think that the amount of 'things' you put in it, and how packed they are, are factors that matter as much as the size of the world. As far as I understand it, it's a matter of balance between the overall/complete amount of said 'things' you put in world, how much of those things are in the zone of focus of your camera at one time, therefore rendered in high detail by the game, how many sims live in the world, especially if you use Awesome Story, and of course how beefy or not the computer is.
When I speak of 'things', this can be:
The amount of ground paintings used/chunk (with a limit of 8/chunk) for instance. So, large decorative zones (yellow non camera paint) on the outskirt of the world, with only a few layers of ground painting, shouldn't impact too heavily on the performance. And a distant terrain is just one large but low detail object, weighting almost peanuts I think. (BTW, you might be interested by this thread@mts, a list of extracted height maps for all the distant terrains released so far). Be aware too that the .dds come in 2 flavors, high quality ones (1024x1024 pixels), heavier but better rendered in distant view and thus suited for the larger zones (main grass texture for instance), and low quality ones (512x512 pix), looking a bit shitty in distant view, but lighter to render and better suited for highlights and detailed small zones of painting.Obviously, the objects themselves. Animated ones (spawners/effects/street lights) are -much- worst than static ones (rocks/trees/fences...). Moreover, trees get clustered (by type, by layer, by chunk) so a large crowd of the same type of vegetation in the same chunk is still one meta object in the end. (there might be a limit on how many items can be clustered, but I have no clue about this value. Does someone know?) One of the heaviest 'thingy' you can put in a world is a lot, especially the large residential mansion with an over-decorated garden, and its cousin, the very large buildable community lot. So you may want to pay attention on how you group your lots. Denser areas are very nice and have the real-looking feeling, I love them too, but they should be well thought out, balanced and tested.
Quote from: Crazetext
EDIT: I've been doing a lot of reading, and it looks like in order to create the kind of lived-in, pre-made soap opera world I'm planning on I should share this as a save file as opposed to a world file. While the mods that allow Edit-in-World to manipulate Sims are fairly powerful, I'm interested in something even deeper - possibly even letting the game play out for a while. Is this an absolutely horrible idea? Are there any technical issues I should worry about/that mean I should avoid sharing as a save completely? Does this cause you to scoff at me?
I have a preference for save file myself. I've had troubles with pre-population included in sims3pack, frozen needs and non aging sims (only the pre-made ones, not the CAS I would put in). I'm not sure what causes this, it could very well be something stupid on my computer or game installation, and thus this little experience of mine is probably irrelevant. Additionally, within a save file, you can include mummies and playable ghosts.
cwurts:
If I had a hood, I would want one that fits over my head without falling off. Actually, I'd prefer to just use a winter hat. It's easier, and when you don't need it, you can put it in your pocket.
spockblock:
Cwurts, you are a hat. Is your real name Canada? Thank you for keeping the US warm, Canada Wurts.
tryoutz:
I want a world with a complete downtown area, all the builds from Bridgeport and a nice big residential area like Pleasantville. If I knew how I would just combine the two.
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