News: Seasons Patch and Broken CAW
A lot of users started reporting some odd behaviour in CAW following the Supernatural update - more save errors, EIG crashing, etc. As the game has gone through updates, and store content collections have grown (increasing the amount of info the application loads), CAW has become noticeably less stable - and it wasn't particularly stable to begin with. The Seasons update has expanded these problems to the point of breaking CAW entirely. If you are coming here looking for information about the latest problems your best bet is to head to this thread on the official forums: Save Issues with Supernatural and Seasons CAW: Discussion and research thread.
- Specific world files (that worked on previous CAW versions) no longer open.
- Specific world fil…
Review: Sunlit Tides by EA Store
- 1 Sunlit Tides
- 1.1 Specs
- 1.2 Overview
- 1.3 Features Showcase
- 1.4 Ratings
- 1.5 Download & Links
- c.185mb (gold version)
- 86 lots (Res 45, Com 41, 7 completely empty)
- Pre-populated with 55 Sims (not counting service/homeless).
- For: The Sims 3 Store
- Price: c.US$24.50 for the world itself. c.US$37 for the world with venue on sale.
Sunlit Tides. It's a bit cheesy, but in a good way. It's not trying to be a beautiful South Pacific island nearly as much as it's trying to be a dramatically photoshopped picture in a tourist brochure, but it does this very well. If I hadn't spent so much time in the Pacific personally, I suspect this is the sort of place I would imagine, and it also resembles what I've heard about the tourist-y regions of Hawaii and American Samoa. It's…
News: Seasons & Sunlit Tides
We've had so much news and I don't make enough time to keep updating, but here's another round up of what we've heard that really impacts the world-building community.
Recently EA announced that they are releasing a Seasons expansion pack in November, so let's discuss some of the details and how these might affect world builders.
Firstly: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter will work just fine in our custom worlds. Seasons and weather are already customisable in-game, so there shouldn't be any need for complicated tunings like there is for the general lighting and climate.
Secondly: Swimmable oceans are coming in the related patch. Sims will be able to enter any water with a gentle slope into it, and swim anywhere in the water they like, right…
News: Friday the 13th Catch Up!
There has been so much news recently, and I've been so busy between projects and real life I haven't had a chance to post it. So here are some of the exciting things we've seen.
There were persistent rumours after the French official site leaked 1.36 patch notes suggesting EA planned to update Late Night and Showtime lots so that builders could merge their functions. This would lower the enormous number of entertainment lots that players had to include in their worlds. Nobody quite believed that EA would make such fundamental and positive changes to a previous title, but thankfully EA rose to the occasion and the patch came out confirming the leaked notes. Even though we have the patch, the notes that came with it are a little vague. Salien…
Review: Lucky Palms by EA Store
- 1 Lucky Palms
- 1.1 Specs
- 1.2 Overview
- 1.3 Features Showcase
- 1.4 Ratings
- 1.5 Download & Links
- c.140mb
- 96 lots (Res 56, Com 40, 18 completely empty)
- Pre-populated with 58 Sims (not counting service/homeless).
- For: The Sims 3 Store
- Price: c.US$21 for the world itself, on sale. c.US$35 for the world with Lucky Simoleon venue, on sale.
Lucky Palms is a lovely world, evoking the desert really well, and giving players some fantastic new assets. It does not introduce a heap of new build/buy objects, but what it does introduce has not appeared before in this iteration of The Sims - cacti are a good example, as are the triangular windows that fit neatly beneath a roof, or the cheap slanted pole that acts as a one or two storey column. Lucky Palms puts more sand in our…
News: New Supernatural Screen Reveals A New Mausoleum Rabbithole
EA Australia/NZ today issued a press release with a brand new screenshot showing a werewolf transforming. In the background is a new rabbithole object, a slightly creepier mausoleum. To the right there also appears to be a new spooky tree.
Here's the text of the press release:
Stalk the Night as a Werewolf in The Sims 3 Supernatural
In today’s update, we reveal a whole new set of screenshots as we take a deep look into the fearless life of The Sims 3 Supernatural werewolf.
In this game, werewolves embody strength, passion and unbridled emotion, combining human tenderness with beastly power and a heavy dash of unpredictability. In The Sims 3 Supernatural, you can live as werewolf Sims, striving to balance a life of relative normality with the d…
News: Lucky Palms From The The Sims 3 Store
As teased yesterday, The Sims 3 Store has announced its upcoming world Lucky Palms, including promotional screenshots on their The Sims 3 CZ/SK official FB page. No doubt a wider official announcement will roll out very soon.
Here are the four promotional pics so far, with analysis of some of the details. Credit to 5050Sims and TheSimsHub:
Quite a brilliant idea building that platform in the foreground, and it looks like a new rabbit hole is on it, but what really grabs my attention are the apparently unique palm trees. Could we get these in a patch, like the fantasy trees, or are they going to be unique to Lucky Palms?
An interesting road layout. I can't say I like the overall world composition in this picture, but despite that it looks very…
News: SimGurus Tease A New Store World
Recently The Sims 3 Store released a new DLC venue, The Lucky Simoleon, which went so far as to introduce a whole new Gambling skill. Unfortunately, this seems to be the direction the game is going, slicing up the game so that sharing is increasingly challenging due to the enormous expense of owning a similar configuration of DLC as someone else. That aside, the screenshot for this venue featured an oddly orange-looking world.
SimGurus have confirmed on Facebook that the world is not Lunar Lakes, and an official announcement is expected Monday US-time for a new store world.
There are already some clues floating around as to what it might be, including survey descriptions of potential worlds EA might like to build.
Gothic Forest - Overgrown pa…
Comment: Granular June 15th 2012
Sandbox games harness one of the most unique and powerful aspects that games have over other media: interactivity.
Sandbox games are usually interactive environments - toolsets - within which a community of players can create their own gameplay elements. The limits of the genre are diffuse: Would an evolution simulator where the player's creative input is severely limited, such as BoxCar 2D, fit into the genre? Arguably yes, but only in the sense that the player has creative input at all.
Often games that do not fit into the genre itself have sandbox elements within their linear structure - customisable avatars, room decorations, or just a selection of weaponry. The advantage of sandbox gameplay in this context is that it draws players into …
Comment: Our First Glimpses Of Moonlight Falls
As noted in our earlier news item, there's a new EP announced for The Sims 3, and it's bringing a new world - Moonlight Falls, as well as some fantastic customisations that will suit the CAW community. Let's dive in and see what we know so far about the place.
In a recent blog post Sims 3 producer Kari St. John (aka SimGuruHydra) describes Moonlight Falls as "Inspired by the misty valleys of the Pacific Northwest". As a New Zealander that means nothing to me, and seeing as the Sims community is so international I am sure I'm not alone. The only solution, it seemed, was to quickly google image search "Pacific Northwest". Based on that I'm expecting heavily pine-forested valleys over what looks to be sun-baked grass. Obviously, given the pack…
News: The Sims 3 Supernatural Announced
I'm going to start providing a bare-bones run down of news on this site, seeing as none of the fansites provide the kind of service I'd like to see any more. I don't expect this to be a big thing, it's more a comfort for myself to collect what comes out, pass comment, etc. As that's the case, no point in advertising. Supernatural seems as good a place to start as any.
This week has seen a sneaky late night (in the US) announcement for The Sims 3 Supernatural, which, as you might guess from the name, is an occult-themed expansion pack. We're getting a lot of interesting stuff, and considering the release is not until early September, we know a heap about this EP already.
It features werewolves, fairies, witches, and enhanced vampires. You can …
Review: Crystalline Cove by geminiagre
- 1 Crystalline Cove
- 1.1 Specs
- 1.2 Overview
- 1.3 Features Showcase
- 1.4 Ratings
- 1.5 Links
- c.93.7mb
- 168 lots (Res 104, Com 65, 9 completely empty)
- Unpopulated, but with a save file.
- For: WA/AMB/LN/GEN/PETS/SHT
Crystalline Cove is a lovely, bright, impressionistic world that mixes many features one might might not think would combine well - particular EA lots spanning a wide range of EP and SP, but also some very confident and bright textures. However, creator geminiagre combines all these features successfully, and with such simplicity and competence that her world has come out quite beautiful. As you wheel your camera around the the cove for the first time, you will find lots of interesting features - train tunnels, bright white beaches, and winding streams -…
Review: Lunar Lakes by EA Store
- 1 Lunar Lakes
- 1.1 Specs
- 1.2 Overview
- 1.3 Features Showcase
- 1.4 Ratings
- 1.5 Download & Links
- c.84mb
- 87 lots (Res 44, Com 43, 8 completely empty)
- Pre-populated with 52 Sims (not counting service/homeless).
- For: The Sims 3 Store
- Price: c.US$24 Heaps more than is sensible to spend unless on sale.
Lunar Lakes is the first world built by The Sims 3 Store that is worth owning. This a landmark achievement for the store. Mind you, it's still not worth owning at the price they want for it, wait for a massively discounted sale. Personally, I would not have bought this for the price that I did except for multiple requests that I review it. (Sorry it's such a late review, incidentally, but I just didn't have the money until recently.) This a beautifully unique world ma…
Review: Bridgeport by EA
- 1 Bridgeport
- 1.1 Specs
- 1.2 Overview
- 1.3 Features Showcase
- 1.4 Ratings
- 1.5 Links
- c.83mb
- 82 lots (Res 45, Com 37, 2 completely empty)
- Pre-populated with 67 Sims (not counting service/homeless).
- For: The Sims 3 Late Night
- Price: The Sims 3 Late Night expansion pack
Bridgeport is one of EA's ambitious, beautiful failures. In terms of its design - it's custom climate - it's a marvel. Unfortunately, beautiful worlds aren't worth very much if they're not very playable. Bridgeport combines terrible routing flubs and lots of elevators, making it not only horrible to navigate (on a busy lot an elevator can take in the region of two Sim hours to go between floors), but prone to bouts of crippling lag. Without some quite indepth technical fixes, this world is not wort…
Review: Jericho by simsample
- 1 Jericho
- 1.1 Specs
- 1.2 Overview
- 1.3 Features Showcase
- 1.4 Ratings
- 1.5 Links
- c.105mb
- 162 lots (Res 82, Com 80, 8 completely empty)
- Unpopulated.
- For: WA/AMB/LN/GEN/PETS
The first thing anyone will notice when they play Jericho is the extremely cinematic opening flyover, which showcases simsample's beautiful terrain painting, smooth water effects, and carefully selected recoloured objects. However, this overview does not begin to catalogue the richness of the world - because Jericho stands out among custom worlds as both deeply detailed and extremely economic.
Jericho is a port town that sprawls along beside the Kaen-Garen River. Technically it is two towns that have merged into one following the construction of a big red bridge (simsample has done an excell…
The Sims 3 Franchise: A Critical Appraisal - Part Three, Create-A-World
In this series of posts I hope to chronicle my love affair with The Sims 3 franchise, which I believe has come to an end. I guess I'm doing this for closure, but also because I've been really active in the community, I'm abandoning some heavily anticipated projects, and I don't want to leave without expressing the journey that I've had with the community, a community that I still love, and will still interact with. I may return, but certainly not for Showtime, and probably not until The Sims 4.
- Part One, The Base Game
- Part Two, World Adventures
- Part Three, Create-A-World
- Part Four, Ambitions
- Part Five, Late Night
- Part Six, Generations & The Store
- Part Seven, Pets
- Part Eight, The Future & Thanks to The Community
Create-A-World
This is the entry I hav…
The Sims 3 Franchise: A Critical Appraisal - Part Two, World Adventures
In this series of posts I hope to chronicle my love affair with The Sims 3 franchise, which I believe has come to an end. I guess I'm doing this for closure, but also because I've been really active in the community, I'm abandoning some heavily anticipated projects, and I don't want to leave without expressing the journey that I've had with the community, a community that I still love, and will still interact with. I may return, but certainly not for Showtime, and probably not until The Sims 4.
- Part One, The Base Game
- Part Two, World Adventures
- Part Three, Create-A-World
- Part Four, Ambitions
- Part Five, Late Night
- Part Six, Generations & The Store
- Part Seven, Pets
- Part Eight, The Future & Thanks to The Community
World Adventures
Elvira Slayer, an Evi…
The Sims 3 Franchise: A Critical Appraisal - Part One, The Base Game
In this series of posts I hope to chronicle my love affair with The Sims 3 franchise, which I believe has come to an end. I guess I'm doing this for closure, but also because I've been really active in the community, I'm abandoning some heavily anticipated projects, and I don't want to leave without expressing the journey that I've had with the community, a community that I still love, and will still interact with. I may return, but certainly not for Showtime, and probably not until The Sims 4.
- Part One, The Base Game
- Part Two, World Adventures
- Part Three, Create-A-World
- Part Four, Ambitions
- Part Five, Late Night
- Part Six, Generations & The Store
- Part Seven, Pets
- Part Eight, The Future & Thanks to The Community
The Base Game
I still remember the fir…
Review: Appaloosa Plains by EA
- 1 Appaloosa Plains
- 1.1 Specs
- 1.2 Overview
- 1.3 Features Showcase
- 1.4 Ratings
- 1.5 Links
- c.80mb
- 69 lots (Res 42, Com 27, 5 completely empty)
- Pre-populated with 82 Sims (not counting service/homeless).
- For: The Sims 3 Pets
- Price: The Sims 3 Pets expansion pack
Appaloosa Plains is one of the most perfectly designed worlds for The Sims 3 to date. It has a specific theme - rural ranches - and it sticks to it. It has a simple charm, with an excellent economy of objects and colours. There are no excesses in Appaloosa's design, but you most likely won't feel it lacks anything either.
Appaloosa Plains sits upon the hills and sprawls out across the lower flood plains. It is girt by flat, rocky outcrops that look appropriately eroded, with their pastel orange rocks bearin…
Review: Hidden Springs by EA Store
- 1 Hidden Springs
- 1.1 Specs
- 1.2 Overview
- 1.3 Features Showcase
- 1.4 Download
- 128mb
- 85 lots (Res 39, Com 46, 14 completely empty)
- Pre-populated with 50 Sims (not counting service/homeless).
- For: Base game
- Price: A gazillion simoleons.
Hidden Springs is an interesting - if comically overpriced - world now available in The Sims 3 Store. Like previous store offerings, it is a mixed bag. In some ways, it's very good. In other ways, it is drastically surpassed by what you can get for free from the CAW community. I'll start with the good, because that's a nice place to start:
Hidden Springs is an affluent alpine town, under a mountain and beside a lake. It features all the base game rabbit holes, including a beautiful new spa rabbit hole. It features a fountain of…
Review: Los Aniegos by Coasterboi
- 1 Los Aniegos
- 1.1 Specs
- 1.2 Overview
- 1.3 Features Showcase
- 1.4 Ratings
- 1.5 Download
- 108.23mb
- 164 lots
- Pre-populated with 125 Sims.
- For: WA/Amb/LN
Los Aniegos is by far the most detailed, complete, and technically impressive world for The Sims 3 that I've seen to date. It is huge, with lots of different boroughs, and it features 125 premade Sims. It was clearly an enormous amount of work for its creator Coasterboi, who only began the world in September 2010! The short creation time might go some way to explaining the lack of flavour texts throughout the world, but they are really the only thing lacking if you have a high end machine and want to play an amazing world. If you don't have a great computer you may be able to run this world with lowered settings,…
Review: Winter Wonderland by Rflong7 and co.
- 1 Winter Wonderland
- 1.1 Specs
- 1.2 Overview
- 1.3 Features Showcase
- 1.4 Ratings
- 1.5 Download
- 74.7mb
- 75 lots
- For: WA/Amb/LN
- Store: Renault Pack, Holiday Pack 2009, Holiday Pack 2010, Riverview
- Sims and additional house available here
- Notes: Contains recoloured objects. Must restart game between switching neighbourhoods.
In many cases world builders are similar to directors, they create the bones of a project and work together with their crew - testers and/or other builders - to flesh out something really beautiful. Rflong7 and the many other creators on the official Create-a-World forums are like this, they work together and there is a strong sense of community. Brilliant creations come out of it, like Winter Wonderland.
With Winter Wonderland Rflong7 has manage…
Review: Format Help by kiwi tea
Contributors are encouraged to write positive reviews of finished worlds. Constructive criticism is welcome in these reviews. Attacks are not. Reviewers are encouraged to contact world creators and interview them on their design process for specific worlds, or even generally - reviewers might want to review a collection of worlds by prolific creators such as Rflong7 from The Sims 3 website forums.
Reviews should be created as blog posts, have titles of simply: "Review:World Name by author". All reviews should be added to the "Reviews" category so that they show up properly.
(Kiwi tea 18:53, November 21, 2010 (UTC))
Sandcastles!
I really, really love making sandcastles, for really similar reasons to why I love making worlds from The Sims 3.
The Beginning
So Pasimfic Wiki is chugging along quite nicely today, with lots of new pages and new categories solidifying. The modus operandi is still cloudy - whether this will be a wiki for my worlds specifically, or for a wider range of world builders - but I'm pleased to have it up and running. The basic idea is build up a solid infrastructure for recording properties of a world, especially around the lore and stories associated with a world. We'll see how this goes, everything is currently in the early stages. The focus for now is entirely on getting the Riverblossom Hills portion of the wiki up and complete, and then I'll work retrospectively on Niua Simoa. I'll also get the first previews up of my next project: Port Piston
I also want to build up…