Revision as of 14:59, 20 December 2009

(Note from HP: Work in progress. Srsly. No touching - I'm still working on it.)

Sims 3 Worlds/Neighborhoods

The Create a World (CAW) tool allows you to create your own unique vision of the perfect neighborhood/world, and share your creation with other Sims 3 players. MTS hosts neighborhood uploads that meet our upload criteria, as outlined below:

Quality

Time and Effort

Creating a World is a VERY time consuming process. Creating a fully decorated neighborhood from scratch including all the lots can easily take a month or more of regular hard work. There's a lot of tedious parts to it that aren't very fun, and it can be tempting to skip over the technical parts like routing and layering, but it's important to go ahead and do it right so it will work well in the game, since you are sharing your neighborhood with other people for them to play with. Players don't want to download neighborhoods only to find out that some essential parts of the play experience are missing or done poorly.

Unique and Interesting

Let your imagination run wild when creating your world, but remember that it will take a lot of effort for your vision to come to life. Any concept can be done well, or done poorly, and your result depends on you.

Even the wildest alien world should still look good and make sense - weird for weirdness sake as a gimmick really doesn't work well for something that will be used as much in the game as a neighborhood/world. Use your imagination, but put enough work into the expression of your idea to allow for a suspension of disbelief, so even though it may be imaginary, it still seems like it could be real.

Aesthetically Pleasing

Does your world/neighborhood look nice, with a good flow to it? Is the layout attractive, interesting, and enjoyable to look at? Do you have a cohesive style or theme that works well and shows throughout the neighborhood? This is hard to quantify, so you may want to get several other opinions (from people who aren't your mom).

Playability

The prettiest neighborhood ever made is useless if it's not playable, so it's very important that you've planned and thought out your neighborhood. Consider some of the following:

• Is there enough room for all the rabbit holes, community lots, and plenty of homes?
• Do townies have somewhere to live?
• Is it going to be easy to get around the neighborhood? Are there enough roads and sidewalks, and are they connected up properly?
• Is the routing done right so the sims and player camera don't get stuck?
• Can sims collect bugs and rocks?
• Is your world optimized for good performance?

There's a lot more to it - some covered down below, but put yourself in the player's shoes and imagine what you would want in the perfect downloaded neighborhood and build accordingly.

Basic Map

A basic map is one that does not include fully built lots, but has all the rest of the neighborhood in place. Everything that needs Create a World to do has already been done, and what's left is to build the lots in-game. Some players really just want a blank canvas upon which to build (like SC4 maps for TS2) so this is the most basic type of neighborhood/world map you can upload here to MTS.

But even for a basic map there's still quite a bit that needs doing. This is the absolute minimum you need to do to upload your world to MTS:

Terrain Sculpting

• Natural: Your terrain should look similar to real life terrain and is not just flat and boring or jagged for no reason.

Terrain Painting

• Realistic: Terrains should blend in a logical way from one to another - a smooth blend from grass to sand, for example. Mountains should be dark and mountainy, grassy areas green and grassy - no grassy mountains.

• Optimized: You have not used more than 8 different terrain paints per chunk, for improved performance.

• Custom Terrain Textures (Optional): Should be seamless without repeating too much visually, the right scale, and look good in-game.

Roads and Sidewalks

A good transportation network means sims can get around your world/neighborhood with ease; a poorly done one means routing issues and a lot of stomping and complaining. Even for a rustic neighborhood, you should still have some roads for playability's sake - you can always use custom textures to make them seem like wide dirt paths.

• Intersections: Place intersections where your roads meet, and at the end of any dead end road.

• Smooth Grade: Use the road tools to give your roads and sidewalks a smooth grade (i.e. if you were driving down it, your car wouldn't tilt dramatically left or right but would stay mostly level).

• Sidewalks: Place additional sidewalks where needed, and connect them to your road system.

• Custom Roads/Sidewalk Textures (Optional): Should be seamless without repeating too much visually, the right scale, and look good in-game.

Lots

Well-thought-out placement of lots is essential to a useful and well-functioning neighborhood.

• Plenty of Lots: Place at least enough lots for several residential homes, all the rabbit holes (make sure they're big enough to fit even the largest rabbit holes!), and some community lots. Add a few extra in various sizes so players can add their own lots. Too many lots is better than not enough.

• Standard Sizes: Lots should be a round number in the game's standard sizes: 20x20, 30x50, 40x40, 50x60, etc. (the exception being the 64x64 lots the game uses as its largest size). Look at the bottom right corner in CAW when dragging out a lot to see the size - no guesswork.

• Flat Lots: Use the Flatten Terrain tool before placing the lot, so you are always putting lots on a completely flat patch of ground unless you have a very good reason to not have a flat lot - like a beach lot or one built into a hillside. This makes it easier to place and share lots.

• Near Roads: Lots should be placed next to a road in most cases, unless you have a very good reason not to do so.

Camera & Sim Routing

• Proper Routing: Routing for both the camera and sims makes sense - areas that should be off-limits are, and all areas that should be accessible work too, with no random unroutable spots. You can find more information on routing in the CAW Help Document.

• Smooth Edges: Make sure the edges of your non-routable areas are smooth, not jagged or blotchy, so the camera doesn't bump around.

Layering

Correctly done, layering increases world performance. Don't just dump everything on one layer!

• Grouped: Items you have placed in your world (lots, decorations, effects, etc.) are layered and grouped in a logical way.

Spawn Points

Beetles, butterflies, fish, gems, ores, and space rocks all appear in the game because the neighborhood/world creator has placed spawn points for them. The CAW Help Document contains a list of all of the Spawners and what they produce.

• Full Set: You don't need to place one of each Spawner, but you probably want to place enough that sims living there can collect all of the base game collectible spawns.

• Logical Placement: Place spawn points in areas that make sense - near landmarks on the map or in an area you've decorated specially for them - not just randomly, or stuck all together in one place.

• Balanced Rarity: Vary the type of spawn points you use so it's not too "cheaty" - a mixture of common, uncommon, and rare spawns (not just all rare ones).

Decoration

Additional items added such as rocks, landscaping, and effects can really give your neighborhood character and a unique and interesting feel.

• Aesthetically Pleasing:

• Thematic: Try to keep your decorations to a particular style - use trees and flowers that make sense for the type of region you're building. Giving your neighborhood a particular unique flavour and style makes it more charming and realistic than just using one of everything, or a random pyramid because it'd look cool.

Full Map

A full map is a complete and decorated map - not just a blank slate but similar to Sunset Valley or Riverview: a complete neighborhood except the sims. Creating a full map is a really, REALLY big job.

Rabbit Holes

Full Set: There are 16 different rabbit holes - make sure you include them all for sims to have a nicely functioning neighborhood and able to get all jobs. If you don't include specific ones, it should make sense for the theme of the neighborhood, and you should leave room for players to place their own if they choose.

Decorated: Rabbit hole lots require decoration to make them look part of their neighborhood - benches, trees, terrain paint, etc. - if you're going to tell people where the Rabbit holes should be, you should make an effort to decorate the lot so it's integrated into the rest of the neighborhood's style.

Community Lots

• Full Set: You should build all or most of the various community lots (art gallery, gym, etc.) which are not rabbit holes. If you don't build them all, you should leave empty lots for the player to build or place their own.

Residential Lots

Information to Include

It's important that you include certain information so that players know what to expect when they use your creation! You may want to copy-paste the headings here to use as a template!

• Map Size: Tiny / Small / Medium / Large

• Spawn Points: What spawn points are there? Are EP spawn points or relic dig sites included?

• Routing Info: Where can sims not go? Where can the camera not go?

Lots

• Number: Total number of lots, and lot sizes and quantity of each (example: 50 total lots - 25 of 20x20, 15 of 40x40, 10 60x60)

• Rabbitholes: None / All / Some (list)

• Community Lots: None / All / Some (list)

• Residential:

Putting Together Your Upload

Split RARs

Screenshots

Screenshot Basics

You need to make sure you have nice big, clear pictures that show off what you've made. They can't be too blurry or pixellated, and you need to know how to use the game's camera controls properly, so make sure you review the information on that link thoroughly before continuing.

• Tip:

For instructions on:

• Taking large, clear pictures
• Changing your in-game settings for best graphics quality
• Camera controls

See: Screenshot Basics

Big Enough

Your pics should be large enough to see the detail of what you've made.

Tips:

MTS allows images up to 1280x1024 pixels and 195 kilobytes so you should be able to upload nice big pictures. See the information above under "Screenshot Basics" for info on taking larger pics than the game will normally allow.

Don't take small pics and just make them larger in your graphics program - this just gives you a blurry pic that's bigger in dimensions with no additional detail.