#caw challenge

[silvakristiina]

Sims 3 CAW Challenge Mystery Island

Feeling uninspired and in need of a friendly push to get started with a new world? Never tried CAW before and could use a little community help? Or just plain bored being quarantined?

Suffer no longer, for I have just come up with a new challenge for ya!

The Challenge:

Build a world based on this height map during May 2020. There’s small and medium height maps available in here.  (Just flat islands, nothing too fancy). It’s a short time, so throw away perfectionism and just play!

Choose your style, alter the heights and ad or demolish smaller islands, just keep the overall look about the same.

You can post your progress on Tumblr using the tags #CAW challenge and #mystery island.

You can also join our shiny new channel on Creators Cave Discord to discuss more!

Most importantly, don’t stress over it, have fun, and bend the rules if you need to. Also feel free to use the height map for other purposes than the challenge. It’d be awesome if there would be some ready worlds at the end of May! (Or June, or July...)

For CAW beginners: download the height map (I’d recommend the smaller) and put it in your Electronic Arts -> The Sims 3 Create a World Tool -> UserToolData -> HeightMaps folder so that it’s easier to find when you open a new world. The map is ugly, so don’t worry! I will continue my island by smoothing the edges and adding height to the centers. I’m a n00b myself but don’t hesitate to contact if you need any help.

So there’s the, umm, highly detailed and ultra realistic height map, done in Paint. Although I have to say it is based on a real island. I won’t say more so that I wouldn’t influence your vision too much.

So who’s with me? :P

[silvakristiina]

Spoiler alert

Under the cut is a little sneak a peak to my Mystery Island. If you’re participating in the CAW Challenge and don’t wan to see other island before the end of May, or for some other reason rather be surprised, don’t look! :D

The sculpting is practically done and the terrain painting if about half way done. I think I need one darker toned paint for a more realistic contrast. As you see, this is no tropical island...

I tested all the rocks in CAW. There’s many of them, with names that has nothing to do with how the rocks look. I’d want much smaller stones too, but I guess I should be happy, because placing them would take a year.

This is a pain in the donkey to do, but I came up a way to build a (non-usable) walking bridge. I turned the railway upside down and now trying to position the railings. I just tried to place a lot on it, and it worked, so I can build an invisible floor on the bridge. Sims won’t use it to go to the other island unless they’re already on the lot, and the floor won’t match the bridge at all, but I don’t mind. Sims can take selfies on the bridge! Just don’t let children walk on it unsupervised...

[silvakristiina]

Spoiler alert

More progress and not-so-progress pics of my mystery island under the cut.

So the bridge... It’s huge. And I’d need different railings because these are supposed to go underground a bit and now there’s a black line showing on them. It just doesn’t look good in game, no one would build so huge railings. These pics are form my yesterday evenings test version, and I’ve redone the bridge today because it was too skew, but I tested the invisible floor on it anyway. The darn side of the floor is not invisible! Argh and asdasdasd. Any ideas?

I was first shocked how dark and grey the world was in game, but luckily I realized I should wait till mid day. And tada, it’s so bright in the picture below! That made me really love the grey and dull atmosphere in the morning, it’s so realistic.

This view really is no more, I decided I won’t use shell buildings like I was supposed to, because the island is so small and most of the buildings are very low in detail. Might keep the darker grey building if I can come up with a reason for it. Despite demolishing everything in this pic I liked it so much that it encouraged me to continue. The sea is too bright blue to my taste, but that’s not today’s task.

I tweaked the whole terrain painting and realized I have put one too many on two chunks. But that won’t’ crash the world? I’m getting closer to the point where I should start placing plants and lots and it scares me... What I would actually wanna do is lower everything, because I feel the islands are too high, but that would take more time and I want to get building! :D I’m so bad at things that require taking one step at a time... I want to jump a few and do the rest at the same time.