Ok so I’ve jumped to another ‘hood lol. I was so hyped about some of my neighborhoods that I made little mood boards for them. Quayside is one of them! It’s supposed to be a mash up of like Santa Monica, Venice Beach, New England, and splash of brightly coloured Canadian Maritimes! I cannot wait to knock this out especially the builds and the beaches and aaaaah! There’s ONE problem though. I wanted to make like a Santa Monica Pier type dealy and after spending hours upon hours upon hours excruciatingly piecing together these retaining walls and fences in CAW, I plopped down a quick amusement park lot only to realize that the draw distance is non-existent! So you can’t get a view of the pier from the city or Swansea or ANYWHERE! You have to be right on top of the lot or the roller coaster disappears. I’m so upset about that lol. Ruined my whole idea. I tried researching it but found nothing so I’ll try asking around but I don’t have high hopes sigh. Pics!
This is funny I forgot to connect the road/bridge leading to the lot... well TO THE LOT. So this gal kept riding her boat in circles around the lot trying to get to the park! Also there’s a lighthouse island that will have a mooring post lot and a camp ground!
I guess this is the only angle we can get the city and the pier in shot :/
My track is legit whoop! I like this feature that you can check if you fucked it up or not. I’ve been obsessed with the boardwalk and carnival set ever since they were released eons ago and vowed to use them in like every world haha.
Beatrix having fun at the fair. It started pouring around halfway through the roller coaster ride! This is not how the park will look obviously I just wanted to plonk something down to test.
Devonhall - Swansea - The Old Fishin Hole (with waterfall!)
First house in Swansea! Ok so that’s not the fishin’ hole but I decided to sneak it in. I’m going for a mash up of craftsman and ranch style for Swansea very quaint and cute family homes <3. The second shot shows this fishing pond/paddle boat lot idea that I had in my head. At first I was going to put this on the main strip between Swansea and Summerhill along the river, but I’m really glad I decided to use this big blank area between houses instead. Space filler FTW! More after the cut...
Gotta fish, gotta fish, gotta fish!! I think it’s so hilarious how they run for their lives when you tell them to go to a lot.
Just a neat little shot of the front. I think I rushed through the landscaping a bit will fix the terrain paint and add a little around the tree roots. I love this lot!!!
Testing fishing off the dock. It’s pretty high up. I could have tried messing with the sea levels in CAW but meh. I lowered the terrain quite a bit but it’s still high AF lol Whatever good enough for government.
So after buying a swan boat (I always forget in TS3 you can’t just use what you place on the lot but have to buy a separate one by clicking the mooring post?), she waded in to have a bit of a boat around.
And how fucking cute is this lot! This is actually beyond the lot boundary but it’s still quite a tiny little pond just for funsies.
Another post to come later this was a screenshot heavy play test haha.
Landscaping around Swansea today. I’ve got all the roads/lots placed and now there is a helluva lot of scuplting, painting, trees, rocks, and general splash to pepper about. This was supposed to be a quick, 2 shot post that of course turned into maps and shots around the neighborhood so more pics after cut hoo hoo..
This is the main strip that separates Swansea from Summerhill which is the super richest hood. It very charmingly runs along the river and it’s the most developed area so far where I put my Royal Heron pub and grocery store. There will be a greasy spoon diner, a salon, a fishing/paddle boat tourist spot, and some low rise apartments. Still using Moonlight Falls lighting and feeling very gloomy so these were taken at dusk and I’m loving it.
Here’s what the map looks like. I have to take it the ugly way with fog off or you’d just see a blue/grey blob. Devonhall has actually come a long way since I first started!
Back and off for the holidays! Whatever that means during covid :/. I got a looot of personal work ahead like cleaning and making a reel I’ll try and squeeze in some sims where I can. Since I last posted I’ve made a house and a gym in the Old York area, and I’ve started fleshing out the area on the east side called Swansea which is the sort of middle class family hood. Anyway this post is about the house. It’s based off of what are called “Toronto Victorian” houses you can google it and find a bunch of examples. I’m not super thrilled with it it was hard to translate to the sims but I think it fits with the downtown old vibe. Lots of pics after the cut!
Main floor entrance and laundry room at the back. Toronto style victorians are VERY narrow but I’ve play tested and everything works. Even had a robber/cop fight at the top of the stairs that eventually moved outside lol!
Kitchen and living room with fireplace! I had to remove the typical chimney and create a custom one for this to match the exterior brick. I prefer doing it that way though.
The second floor landing, bedroom/living area, bathroom, and front balcony. I love seeing the views through the windows and from the balconies! This house has some good ones being on the river obviously.
The third floor is kind of confusing because I wanted to wall off the spiral stair case but I tried to post the images in a way that makes sense lol. There’s another bathroom up here and a cute little balcony off the back of the house facing the bridge/town square.
And that’s that. More pictures than I’d like to cram into one post but it’s 3 stories lol. I really don’t have much capacity for super decorating/cluttering these places so most residences are going to be pretty blank slate unless it’s a household with story/lore. More to come!
Updated map. I’m going to put everything under a cut because I take so many flipping pictures it’s actually disgusting. And then I can’t narrow it down to make a reasonable post lol. I sincerely apologize in case anyone still watches this space :P Anyway I’ve made a lot of progress on the downtown core and have for now moved on to Rosedale because I really wanted to start that area. This is all in a state of flux and could change later. I can’t just sit in CAW and terraform and paint the whole world before going to EIG. If I don’t see some sort of progress and play test I’ll just end up quitting lol. Plus this isn’t a tiny island it’s a massive land locked map with districts and I need to see it groooow. Lastly I took most of these at sunset/sunrise but there’s no lighting mods or Reshade. It’s just straight Moonlight Falls <3 I will be tweaking the lighting towards the end to desaturate a scosh. So here’s 50,000 progress shots. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The East Bridge coming from Swansea.
The main town square with Bookstore/Spa, Offices, Library, Hospital, Central Park, City Hall etc... etc...
The Movie Theatre and some apartments.
Some shots of the Central Park which has no name. I have to watch a tutorial on how to build beyond 4 levels for that church tower and am living to procrastinate.
The view from Rosedale Valley on the west side of Old York. I guess Old York is an island lol.
Another view from East Bridge. More sunsets because ....
Randos. The second shot shows the building my epic supernatural family are living in. It’s just four YAs that are going to start families etc. But that low rise brown building with the awning is theirs to start off. I love those buildings I think I used all of them!
Some aerial shots to show the actual progress. And you can see Rosedale Valley in the making on the left in the last one. It’s all pine forest-y with modern cliff lots. Obvs more shots of that later. Again sorry for the length. Kudos to anyone who actually read through all my rambles <3
Here’s a first look at a pair of apartments I plopped in across from the central park. They’re meant to be swanky but the lots are 20x15 so they’re wee lil’ one bedroom (single bed couldn’t even fit a double!) penthouses. Tested them out today and they work perfect! NPCs gallore from the second floor hidden unit, and the routing is good despite the weeness of it. It’s really hard to get shots though. A nice challenge I love building small! More after cut.
They face each other. I’d love to have had a courtyard between them but I just had no room here lol. Will have to experiment with that elsewhere.
It’s so small haha. I tried stairs but they took up all the space I dunno. So elevator straight up to ya room.
Super girly bedroom <3 <3 <3
The rest of the place is pretty neutral/contemporary. Blank slate to build on.
My girl Beatrix in the tuuuuub. This is the backyard of the west facing building has a lil’ hot tub and, miraculously, multiple people can hang out in it.
The east facing building has an adorable little fire pit for roasting fun. Works well. Haven’t tried the barbecues yet.
Shot from the alley between the twins and the movie theatre.
I took a picture of the park and put it in a digital frame for shits. I’ve never used this it’s pretty neat! Of course Beatrix sucks at photography at the mo so it looks like an impressionist painting. Kinda cool. I’m going to use this thing everywhere by god.
Bless ATS and Arsil for these lovely food stand tables, umbrellas, and registers. I’m having a blast with them all over town and I’m probably going to break something.
So I did a massive play test a while back. The bookstore and hospital lots have routing issues and you have to click twice to get the sims inside for some reason lol. I don’t look forward to fixing routing. That is NOT the sexy part of CAW in my humble opinion. Anyway I of course took my obligatory 37,000 screenshots. Things look a bit different in town over the weekend I did some street light and billboard detailing and I rejigged some of the lots on the more bare side of town (near the stadium) to allow for more lot detail like parking lots, food stalls etc. And I added two new skyscrapers! A celeb lounge and sports bar. Sharing these anyway because they were all taken during this bad ass winter sunrise. Enjoy my ramblings and million pics.
The business building. Further down this tree lined street is a low rise apartment building (one of those big fat low rectangular shells lol)
The west siiiiiide. View from Rosedale Valley. I just love taking shots of the downtown core.
The kids (my epic supernatural legacy starters) taking the east bridge over to the pub I plopped down just for the play test. It will certainly not be placed there legit haha.
This is the Royal Herring Inn. It’s probably my best TS3 build to date. I’ll show more of it later but I spent like an hour scouring through the misc deco category dragging out sports pub-y stuff. It was a fun build!
The stadium. I’ve added more decor and landscaping around here now but I thought it looked neat :)
So I made a soccer field at the back of the stadium. I found these frickin’ AMAZING stadium SEATS that actually work like SEATS from this TS3 equestrian blog I’ll have to dig up the link it’s a pretty epic download site if you’re into horses. I plan on playing that aspect of the game way more when I get to my supernatural legacy. Anyway rambling aside I thought it was funny that sims built two snowmen to keep each other company while this lady sat and read like a nerd on the soccer field. lol
East siiiide at night with snow.
West siiiiide at night with snow.
And that’s it! Thanks for looking in I’m having so much fun with this! Rosedale Valley to come! Also is anyone else’s xkit quick tags not working? I k now they’re updating/working with tumblr but they’re not much on specific updates so I don’t know if mine is just broken or if it’s everyone. I don’t think I can post anymore without that. Like you can’t even copy paste tags from a text post like oh... I don’t know... every other social media site lol. It’s like the only fucking thing I use in that gigantic add on and posting without it is beyond tedious. I would love to just move this whole party to wordpress but then I would completely cease to have any sort of following. I super love and appreciate the 7 or 8 of you that still watch here now that I’ve switched back to TS3 lol <3 <3 <3
