Create A World FAQ

[Regina]

This is something that should have been done long ago but better late than never, right?

I'm hoping we can collect here some of the most commonly asked questions about world building. I hope everyone who reads around on various forums will feel like contributing as well. Just post a reply and as time allows I'll add it to the main post here.

Remember, there are MANY topics, tutorials and resources linked in AuntieLynd's CAW Tutorial & Resource Links thread. That thread should be the first one anyone heads to when they want to know ANYTHING about using CAW.

Probably the #1 question:

Q: I just finished my world and am play-testing it but it's lagging and freezing. What can cause that?

A: Several things can cause lags and freezes.

Things to check on the building level in Create A World:

• If the lag comes on gradually as Sims move into your town then you probably have a routing issue. If, for example, a lot is built on an island connected to the mainland via a dive well that lot needs to be set to "No Visitors Allowed" because otherwise the Sims you aren't playing try to reach it and fail causing freezing. Another example would be if a lot is accidentally cut off from the rest of the town with routing paint. I won't go into all the details of how this kind of thing happens, but make sure to re-check all the routing paint in CAW. Even one tiny pixel not covered can cause this. Make sure to rebuild routing data by clicking View>Rebuild Routing Data before reexporting your town.
• Make sure all roads are connected properly and that each road that ends within your town has an intersection at the end of it (do not put intersections on the ends of roads that go off into areas with no-routing paint). If you are using bridges make sure the roads are connected to those. Roads need to be pulled quite a way underneath the bridge before they'll attach.
• Don't over-load your map with spawners. The over-use of fish spawners will cause more trouble than seed/mineral/bug spawners. Many people recommend having no more than one spawner of each type in your world. Try this and see if it helps. If you're building your world with Pets installed you won't find spawners in CAW and you don't need to add any to lots either to get the collectible animals--they WILL spawn from seed/mineral/bug spawners in sync with the same grade of other things that spawn from that spawner (ie: common animals from common spawners, etc.
  

Things to check in-game:

• You may have a small amount of freezing as soon as you move in your Sim because the game is generating NPCs.
• If your town has several cash registers or if you're using a story progression mod to force Sims to move in quickly you will likely experiencing intermittent freezing each time a family moves into town.
• Check all fences and gates on lots to make sure Sims can get in and out of those areas.
• Look for areas around rabbit holes where Sims might be entering one way and exiting another and not be able to get out of where they exited into. For example, if a fence is built around a lot with a rabbit hole and is close to the building and the Sim happens to exit out of the back of the building they'll be stuck and their failed attempts at going somewhere can cause a freeze.
• Check long, wide staircases, the likes of which I've seen used for some library buildings. In testing worlds I've had to replace 100% of those staircases for the Sims in those worlds to be able to use them without me guiding them almost each step of the way.
• Be sure it isn't caused by countless cars being abandoned all over your town by using Twallan's Overwatch. Don't think of this as a mod, think of it as a severe bug fix. No one should not be using this in their game because those cars mean serious trouble for any town without it.
• Spiral stairs are also being reported as causing lag. One way to prevent it is to make sure there is no railing or half walls around the staircase. You may also need to move the stairs a tile away from any wall.
• Move Objects On is also causing problems, mainly when used to place objects Sims will interact with. It can also cause routing issues if it's used for placing doors and other build mode objects.
• Twallan has a feature in his Story Progression mod (found here) that will give you the ability to choose an option by which you can find any routing issues quickly and easily. Find an article with instructions here.
  

Q: My .world save is corrupted. Do I have to start over on my world?

The first thing I want to do is stress the importance of saving your creation every twenty or thirty minutes AND make regular back-ups of your world by copying and pasting THE SINGLE FOLDER AND TWO FILES to another location like an external drive just in case something goes wrong and you end up losing the files on your hard-drive.

A good rule of thumb for intervals between saving is to ask yourself "How much of my work am I willing to lose in the event of a corrupted save file?" Then "How much am I willing to redo in the event I lost all my saves? I can guarantee you those two questions will have you saving and backing up on a regular basis.

A: No. Each time you save your work a back-up of the last save is created, automatically up to five saves. You're prompted whether or not you want to delete old saves and even if you choose "Yes" you still have the last four back-ups.

Here's how to restore from the back-up.

1. Navigate to My Documents (or Documents depending on your Windows version)>Electronic Arts>The Sims 3 Create A World Tool>UserToolData/Worlds.
2. Create a new folder and name it corrupted or some such (you're just sticking the corrupt save into this temporarily, you can delete it later).
3. Move the one folder (yourworldname) plus two files (yourworldname.settings and yourworldname.world) for your world into the folder you just created.
4. Click the sort button for date or date modified. The latest back-up save if your world will now be either on the top or bottom of the list of folders. Its name will be something like yourworldnamehere_Bkp_10-29-2011_13-26-06.
5. Open the folder with the latest back-up and you will find one folder (yourworldname) and one file (yourworldname.world) and select both (hold down the shift key and click one and then the other) then right-click and choose Cut. Navigate back to the Worlds folder, set your mouse and click Paste.
6. Start Create A World and open the .world file just as you normally would and you should be good to go!
   

Q: How do I align a Distant Terrain?
A: Tricky things they are, go here for a tutorial with all the settings numbers.

[Judy Sims]

Thanks, Regina. This is going to be very helpful and I am sure others will add info. I just wrote you a pm and when I went to preview it, the website crashed, so I lost all I had written. I will write another one tomorrow, but it is bedtime now. I can say it may be good news on my world, so keep your fingers crossed.

[Regina]

You're welcome, Judy! As I think of things that go with what I already have posted I've been adding them as well. Hopefully it will help.

[Regina]

I found some information today on a feature in Story Progression that enables finding any and all routing issues quickly and easily. I've updated the FAQ with info and links.

[Judy Sims]

(11-08-2011 08:17 PM)Regina Wrote:  I found some information today on a feature in Story Progression that enables finding any and all routing issues quickly and easily. I've updated the FAQ with info and links.

Thanks, Regina. I am still having problems with lagging in the world. I might have to learn to use this. I downloaded it, but have not installed it. Mods really scare me, especially one like this.

[Regina]

I can understand that. I was totally intimidated by the thoughts of using game mods ten years ago. I used hardly any for my Sims game because they just weren't needed. I used an energy-filling coffee pot for when my Sims came back from visiting lots around town and a stove that gave my Sims cooking skills as they cooked (like EA added to TS2) and that was pretty much it.

Then after I started playing TS2 I started seeing mods that fixed game bugs and others that I knew would enhance my style of playing and that could squelch things that were totally annoying to me, like the hunched shoulders of Sims with low active points and many of the overdone activities that were added in every expansion pack, like pillow rights ALL the time. It was sort of like venturing out onto a diving board at first. By the end of TS2 I had hundreds of game mods, most of them to kill obnoxious behaviors.

My mods folder for TS3 is actually fairly small because so many of the annoyances from TS2 weren't put back in TS3. I do use Story Progression, Master Controller, and several others but it's more because they enhance the game for me (like the mod that allows my Sim to sell stuff they've collected in the consignment store, and the Relativity that gives an option to the clocks to slow down game time so Sim days don't just completely fly by without them having time to do anything.

During all these years of using mods I've yet to have one break my game. I have run into a few conflicts during TS2 but even then all it took to fix it was to track down the conflict and remove it. I could probably play TS3 without mods that affect gameplay but it would be very dull indeed because EA's coding of things like Story Progression make absolutely no sense at all. Twallan's Story Progression mod brings my towns to life.

Anyway, when you put the mod in your game then load your world and go to an active Sim you'll get a pop-up asking if you want to allow Twallan's SP to run. You can just click the X instead of the check to leave it off because you don't really need it running to see if you can locate the cause of the lag. I have used it to help me pinpoint problem locations by having it give me messages about the Sims in town (like letting me know a certain Sim isn't at work when they should be so I've been able to switch to that household and find out if there's a problem with the route or if it's just a lazy Sim) but you shouldn't need those notifications.

[Judy Sims]

I considered installing the mod and have it saved to a folder, but it has been updated for Pets and I don't have Pets installed yet. Is there one for Generations?

I had the weirdest thing happen while in EIG. I made some changes to my world (still trying to find the problem) and saved it. The save was sucessful. I closed the EIG and went back into CAW and made some changes. Then I exported this new file to see if it played better. Would you believe that EIG had not saved any changes? How weird is that? Have you had this happen? I think CAW hates me sometimes. Anyway, while playing the new file, I had a 30 second freeze a couple of times, so I went to Edit town and made the changes on some lots (deleted some seed spawners) That is what I did in EIG that didn't save. After I did that, I played the game for about an hour with no more lags. I don't know if that was the problem or not. I am going to export the file with the changes again and see how it plays. This has been a nightmare, but I am finding some mistakes, so that is a good thing.

[Regina]

Sorry I forgot you don't have the Pets update yet. Yes, there is an older version there, you'll just have to dig around for it.

I've never actually done anything much yet in EIG so that will be a whole new experience at some point.

[Builddamagix]

How the heck do I download the stuff needed to do all this anyway???

[Regina]

(03-25-2012 01:15 AM)Builddamagix Wrote:  How the heck do I download the stuff needed to do all this anyway???

You'll need to download the Create A World tool from the official site. Check in the CAW section of the official forum to make sure it's been updated for the latest patch. I haven't kept up with it over the past few weeks to know or not. CAW is the main reason I don't update my game immediately after an update is out--I can play my game a few patches behind but I can't work on worlds if the tool isn't compatible with my game yet.