Introduction
Hello there, I am starting creation of a new The Sims 3 world or map of a city which will contain all lot categories and activities available in full game plus all Expansion Packs (basically including base game up to Into The Future). EA worlds and worlds from other creators, to me are kind of unfulfilled when playing, not because they are terrible or poorly created, many of them are actually overwhelmingly beautiful and well-crafted, but because of they are tied to a curtain theme or lack of some specific lot types for related activities. I find it quite annoying that most custom made worlds are focused on tropical climate or Californian style weather which are not looking well in winter and look really odd for having snow with palm trees, as my preference playing TS3 is to include all seasons and I really like having snow in winter.

From the beginning, I did scrapped my previous attempts to modify EA made world of Bridgeport (twice), as it was too small and too hilly to put everything together aesthetically. Another reason is Bridgeport has geographical set as a West Coast city (it has sunset on the ocean side) when I actually looking for an East Coast city setting. (**NO ISLAND, please**) It might be time consuming, but it might be easier to build from scratch to fit my need. Recently, I have been looking through other creator's works for some ideas and inspirations and I came across very impressive creations by jje1000 i.e. Sao Paten and Boroughsburg. For Sao Paten, despite its setting as a South America tropical city, I am impressed with the custom hi-rises building technique and the amount of details put in the city. The drawback is its unpopulated and need mods to generate and fill in NPCs. For Boroughsburg, even though it has exactly setting I dreamed for, it is reduced to a small neighborhood which makes sense for theme in greater area of NYC. With the using of Rabbit Hole Rugs disguised as a subway station, it needs players imagination as some of the game activities are happening elsewhere outside the neighborhood. The drawbacks for this world are it's not a complete build and empty lots need to be built similarly to those custom shells to blended in with the theme.

Although I would use Boroughsburg as a guide example, I would like to put hi-rises, full scaled stadium, and show performing stages into one single world and differentiate between districts/areas such as downtown, industrial zone and suburbs. However, I aim to minimizing item use as less as possible to capture more players who own less or don't own Stuff Packs. I reduced my game to Base Game plus all EPs and a few SPs. I also plan to make it less CCs and store contents dependence, though I might use some or put them as optional. From experience, I created lots with fancy CCs/STCs before and I realized they might not working well to other players. The less use of CCs/STCs, the better it would be, but I would not cut off CCs/STCs entirely as some of them I find them are quite useful.

EPs and SPs I planned to include
- Base game (Of course, it is needed)
Expansion Packs (EP)
- World Adventures (useful for museum, custom tombs and Chinatown)
- Ambitions (more careers, i.e. fire fighters)
- Late Night (needed for skyscraper shells and night club function)
- Generations (needed for some of the game functionalities)
- Pets (who doesn't love fluffy, furry friends)
- Showtime (needed for concert venues)
- Supernatural (the city hall clock tower looks really cool, I am not sure about bugs of combined RH, is there any mod to fix it?)
- Seasons (of course, needed for snowy winter)
- University Life (I am considering build the home world campus from tutorials, but not sure there is enough space, will figure out later)
- Island Paradise (good for port/harbor and diving spot creations)
- Into the Future (I plan not to use any item from this EP in base world, but would be great to have it installed.)

Stuff Packs (SP)
Actually planned to avoid using items from SPs, but some of them are quite considerable.
- Fast Lane Stuff (considered useful for creating fake gas stations)
- 70s, 80s, & 90s Stuff (would be cool to have a disco dance floor)

Store Contents
Worlds
- Monte Vista (forgot to mentioned earlier, the streetlights from this pack is used)
- Roaring Heights (RHs and some build items are considered fit-in really well to the city theme)

Store Items and Sets
- Skylight Studio (Skylight roofs needed)
- Le Cinema Plumbob (required for theatre items)

For venues and store items, I might consider each one later, especially the Boardwalk Roller Coaster and the Carnival Carousel. (might put them separately as optional)

Now creating on patch 1.69, may require testers later.

Mods
I would try my best to avoid using Rabbit Hole Rugs(even though I have them in my game), despite its usefulness and space efficiency.
Some of NRaas mods may be required.

*The current process is still in the very beginning, terrain sculpting and painting, overall terrain would be more of a plain shore-side land, not steep hills like EA's Bridgeport. I did layout the theme for this CAW project as a city base world with an East Coast setting, inspired from Northeastern American port cities, such as NYC, Boston, and Baltimore. Imagine a city situated on Atlantic shore with a suspension bridge crossing over a river or a bay to low-rise commercial neighborhood on the other side. Downtown area would be mixing of building techniques from EA made hi-rise shells and custom built skyscrapers, items from Late Night are expected to be used extensively.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to reply and giveaway your ideas and/or some cool examples.

Sorry for some typo and grammar mistakes, English is not my first language.

For a Baltimore feel, check out Undercity Ghetto. There's a lot of discussion of it in the Favorite Custom Worlds thread.

It's important to remember the scale when you're building these cities. Boston and Baltimore are mostly low rise buildings with just a few high rises. The streets are narrow and the buildings are close together. Multi-use buildings are really normal, so it's never just a store, it's a store with apartments or offices above it. Creating a city feel is going to be hard because the Sims doesn't really allow for a family living above their restaurant, for instance. NYC is really cramped and the boroughs are distinct. One of the reasons why Bridgeport leaves everyone wanting is because it's trying to be everything. Boroughsburg succeeds because the focus is narrow.

I'd encourage you to think about what attracts you to these places and how to get that feel in the game. Next, look for a smaller city to emulate like Trenton, NJ; Annapolis, MD; Portland, Me; or Providence, RI. These will leave you feeling less dissatisfied with the size and scope. The nature of the Sim neighborhood is to be small and the economy dysfunctional. Cities are made by functioning economies with lots of competition. Your job is to create the illusion of a functioning economy and a city teeming with life.

You're gonna need some lighting mods and also environmental mods. The sunsets and sunrises get more intense the further north you get and the light during the day is bright and clear. City nights aren't very dark. Cloudy nights make the skies yellow or sometimes raspberry. The closer in to a big city you are, the brighter white the night sky on a cloudy night and the fewer details you see in the sky on a clear night. The trees you see in NY and NJ tend to be maples, sycamore, sweet gum, and oak trees. People will grow pines, spruces, and junipers ornamentally. Further south in MD there's fewer maples and more beech, walnut, tulip poplar, and oak trees. Conifers are still sparse, but more likely to see them than you are in NY. In the north people are more likely to grow roses and in the south people are more likely to grow hydrangeas. In wetlands, you see a lot of cattails and what the game calls pampas grass. NJ will have vast swampy areas of just these grasses usually next to highways with grisly surprises inside. You can have a lot of fun with moveobjects on placing rusted out cars with grasses growing up through them.

@tunafishfish Thank you for your suggestions. The ghetto seems to be really cool to add for making a(looking like) run-down poor neighborhood area, may figure out later which part of the map to build on but definitely going to add it. For create a really vibrant neighborhood, although TS3 doesn't really allow creators/players to create a true mixed-used lot without the help of mods, I can only think of fake shells and custom building technique with only some part of them playable/occupy-able by hidden room and public room markers, like how the creator has used in Sao Paten. i.e. a store lot with fake apartments above and/or an apartment building with fake stores below. And I try to keep this creation less dependence on mods as possible, leaving it up to other player's choice to play with them or not.

For the weather and the sun rotation, I would leave them to the later stage as there is still a long way to go.

Awesome. I have had trouble finding all in one neighbourhood that isn't tropical themed. Having all the EPs in one is important for my gameplay so I tend to play in ugly worlds because I have just slapped in some ea lots to get the functionality. While there are absolutely stunning worlds with themes I just don't find myself playing them for long because I can't fit the stuff I need. So to have all in one world, you will have over 100 different community lots alone, even if you put multiple rabbit holes on one lot. Of course, you don't need all of the different club types that come with LN for example so there are ways to reduce that number. So my point is trying to be, don't have just decorative lots e.g gas station, unless you can also put rabbit holes or use one of the community types as well, otherwise, you just will end up way too many lots and that will impact game performance. There also needs to be enough residential lots.

You're probably trying to avoid using rabbit hole rugs because of the less CC the better? I think the rugs vastly outperform EA rabbit hole buildings.

@Giga, sometimes I place EA lots, switch out the plants and pretend it's a chain.

@Giga I do acknowledge the abilities of the rabbit hole rugs, I don't avoid this mods because of performance reason but more of to keep aesthetic looks of some EA's rabbit hole buildings. Many of their exterior look lovely which I find some of them too difficult to replicated by build mode, otherwise I would rebuild them in completely different architectural style. Therefore, if other players prefer the rugs, I would not restrict them from replacing it themselves later on.

Avoiding CCs actually not for the better performance, but to make it easier to download and install for many reasons. I have seen that many successful CAW mostly keep it low for the number of CCs used, especially CCs from different creators which may require permission and references. The more CCs are used, the longer list for others to download, unless I can create my own CCS and easily include them in the files.

The number of lots in the final stage may reach 100 but many threads suggested that it is better to keep the limit at 150, the lower the better. Obviously, not the first 100 lot would be dedicated for community use, I will try to arrange the good proportion of residential lots and community lots along the process.

You could look at this NYC world for ideas http://sims3newyork.blogspot.com/ but it doesn't use all expansions. You might also look at Fairhaven City https://monsooncreations.blogspot.c...y-download.html for ideas. A problem with building a large city type world without cc means you would have to create all the high rises. Most of the creators who make these city worlds use cc building shells as most don't have time for building that many high rises (I doubt anybody does).

I've been doing something very similar, though I probably won't release the world because of all the custom content that I have. I would say to just be wise when you're picking the lot size similar to what I briefly read about the scale. Don't feel like every building has to be grand. What I also do to keep a balance between community lots and residential lots is to combine lots which works okay from a gameplay standpoint. I would echo the advice given by others here as I am taking some of it myself.

I commend you on wanting to attempt to create a world in CaW. It's fickle and very much a challenge to work with. There is a learning curve for sure! But once you get it figured out it's kind of fun! Be warned tho...it takes ages to make a large world. (Nilxis first post from Uranesia is from 2015! Not that you are doing something that fantastic... or you might? Greymont Bay, same, 2015. Northeney somewhere back in 2016.) I'm not trying to discourage you but just fair warning on the scale of the undertaking. I'm sure you already know this tho ; ) I wish you much luck with your creation!

These are not your style, I think, but for inspiration only:
http://www.simforum.de/showthread.php?t=188619
http://www.simforum.de/showthread.php?t=186271
http://www.simforum.de/showthread.php?t=190142

@fascisthater Thank you for the suggestions, those works are incredibly enormous with the amount of creator's own CCs used which I can only wish to create. I am not sure if those shells are interactable or not, that I presume most of them are decorative only. However, some creators did build custom build mode shells that would allow other players to redecorate the interior and make those lots playable.


@Lbillusion That is sound really great, I wish I could see some of your work sometimes. I did choose the largest map CAW can create just to be sure the map can hold everything, so I can add more stuff without worrying the map will be full too soon. Some lots I will use EA made building shells so this might help me save some time. Also I have tried putting rabbit holes within apartment lot which help safe some space in the map.


@KatyFernlily Thank you for the tips, I do realized that this would be a long long journey. Those first three creations you mentioned are breathtaking beautiful, their previous releases also seem to be their strong credits. Tho, their personal life could be one of the reasons for the project to progress slowly, besides the amount of details their tried to put in. Although I might facing similar situation in the future but I will try to keep this CAW progress. Laying out roads by one zone at a time and add some key feature for each areas help me see the clear picture more quickly than sculpting the entire map at once and plan the road layout in another process completely.

Just be cautious that the bigger the project and the more ambitious the more and more likely it will never be completed. Seen this countless times. And some are done or almost and then after years of work are unplayable. I wish you luck but keep this in mind.

Fair warning tho, I keep in mind that the routing error could be the main issue. Some CAW releases have this problem which cause lagging and then crash, many of them have ever mention testing on different computers. Before releasing the CAW world, I would ask some people to test play it first, I wish that could be really helpful.

Here is some of a small update of my work, I put a overall street layout of CBD district or downtown area. It may looks familiar because I use EA's Bridgeport as a main reference for this one, adjusting a little bit here and there. The position of a few identical buildings also base on Bridgeport. However, these buildings aren't finished yet, only exterior shells put up to have more clear pictures.




Surprisingly, I found this thread on In-Game community lot objects for CAW use http://modthesims.info/t/441902 , the standalone subway station without creating specific lot seems very useful. Now I can fill up some irregular shape area that difficult to put rectangle lot, cut down unnecessary lot by this approach and prevent me from putting too many lots in CAW. As the fountain plaza in the picture below, plus the subway RH are CAW objects. The other item I need to put standalone outside lots is food truck parking space, but I can't find CAW version of it anywhere so I guess I need to make it myself. Can anybody please suggest me some tutorial for this?


Just this public square in front of the city hall is an in-game lot.


I forgot to mention item from Monte Vista using in this project, the street lamp from the pack looks nicely along the main avenue and streets in civic center area.



I do manage the routing along side adding lot an items, so I have less things to worry when expanding to the new area. But test run is concern to be done before release anyway.

I have tried several attempt creating the bridge ramp resembling the one in Bridgeport. It would need more patient afford to be done, unless there is some approach to make it quick. Making slope ramp perfectly fit in curvy retaining wall object isn't an easy task.

Better than Bridgeport, calling it now.

Looks good so far.

I would not worry about doing a small lot for the food truck. I have lots in some of my worlds that are just fenced trees scattered about. They are so tiny they do not add much to the file size and it was easy to do something once to be able to use multiple times.

Sorry for being so late.
I finally got some free time from busy real life to continue on this CAW so I would like to updating a small progress I have made.

After several attempts, I finally get the position point for the Late Night's suspension bridge to locate on the right angle like in Bridgeport map. It was so difficult to replicate to bridge ramp to be at an exact height.



Earlier , I got some issues for store contents to show up on CAW metadata list, which required for Monte Vista's streetlights on the map, now has been solved. I also add some a few more lots into a new district, such as the recreated version of Bridgeport Library and a school rabbit hole from Roaring Heights.





And some small touch of planting some trees and street objects to the square lot in front of the city hall.





I hope everybody here are fine and safe during this tough time, great to be back.
I will try to post more update soon.

More update! before back to busy real life.

Just finish added more roads reaching lower land under the bridge plus the retaining walls. I feel a little rusty getting the position of the walls right, but I did. Maybe this area could use some inspirations from DUMBO + NYC Chinatown



At the back of the museum, I added more lots for a stadium and hi-rise shells resembling the position from Bridgeport. After finished forming terrain for downtown zone and setting up all the roadways, other areas might take less time to make. So much details.





I planned to add more stadium lots with the Late Night stadium and Shell version for the indoor stage show (considering place them in other areas), I hope they won't cause issues to the game. I use this basic Sunset Valley first to fit-in with the railway terminal so it looks quite good in my view.

Looks like this is going very well.

This is coming along really nicely. You kind of makes me wanna dive back into CAW and try building a city again.