World Builder

I have been playing with this thing all day. I seem to be able to figure things out when I have a certain idea in mind because I won't rest until I do!

So World Builder is awesome. Seriously awesome. Difficult and frustrating, but still really awesome.

Amazing benefits: Being able to upload your own textures. Being able to use more than one type of road in one neighborhood. Being able to upload custom road and sidewalk textures. I can see those coming in handy!

Takes a while to get used to the controls though.


Getting used to scale is difficult. What I did was plopped down a large lot so I would know how big is BIG.

On the plus side, you can put up a grid and tell things to snap to grid. Makes placing intersections and roads SO much easier!

But I can see having to spend a lot of time working on one neighborhood to get it right. I've come a long way during the day, but I haven't painted the grounds yet, and the paints I have are kinda limited. (Just shale, grass, and two kinds of sand apparently. There's probably more that came packaged with World Builder, like the extra roads.)


Overall- two little tips to make it easier that I've learned from my play:

Remember the magic of the right click, and don't forget you have layers off on the side. A lot of options can be found by right clicking on the layers (like adding and editing a description by right clicking on the first layer.)

When working with World Builder, You'll want to see the neighborhood in game. It takes forever to load UNLESS you just remove all your Custom Content.


I do have some Sim3Packs missing, but I hear there is a work around, which I'm trying. I haven't actually tried playing the game though to see if it works because I'm been trying to build all day!



Also, had a little too much fun dressing up and taking pictures of Mr. Brown Suit sim the other night while taking pics for the next two updates. He really came out well, and I cannot claim the credit. His father was a little too pretty, and his mother was a sim I created. I think I only had to touch up his eyes because they were too large and innocent for the character.

World Adventures Featuring

Henri Smith of course. Because of all the characters of Ruin, he would SO be a world adventurer.



Look, he's even sparkling with excitement.

Why is he really sparkling? I think it's because I tried out the "man candy" lifetime aspiration reward. Yeah, nice, but uh no. I'll have to wait on that one until someone (I'm going to bet HP at MTS) makes a replacement texture for that. Even if the sparkles glow red.



Some pics from the underground:


This pic in particular is awesome. Know why? Because he's soaked, and the water is dripping off him. For about an hour or so game time, he dripped water everywhere and left puddles if he stood somewhere too long. Somehow, I will find a way to use that effectively.


I didn't get a chance to play long enough last night. We just made it through one underground catacomb. Which was awesome. Until I realized that the catacombs will never change unless I change them. So after we explore all of the catacombs, I'll probably never do it again.

Oh well. I mostly got this for the extra animations. In particular the fighting animations which will probably come in handy soon.

Oh and for the basement tool. There is one tribe that was supposed to live underground, and I would love to see if with the new basement tool I can appropriately do that. I suppose I can make a structure above ground and make it look like it's underground, but that somehow didn't seem as fun a challenge.

Not cool man!

Ok, so I decided tonight to give rotation style play a chance.

I just had a back and forth recently about an issue someone was having with sims she left alone who lost EVERYTHING in their inventory. All the food she'd grown-- some of which had been stashed in the fridge, and the rewards she'd earned which were in the sim's inventory were just gone.

So I decided to test this out. I made an extra save file and went to town.

In one sim night, I touched on four houses and went back to Amberle. Amberle had nothing in her inventory. Nothing.

The only option is to create save files if you want things to be saved exactly as you left them and with everything in their inventory. The problem is that each save file is essentially another 'hood. So if in one save file Angie has twins while I'm playing another house, and then I move to the save file where Angie is the active house hold-- she will not have twins. She'll be exactly as I left her.



This is another strike against the game for me to be honest. I get bored playing the same family over and over, but if I switch families, then ones where I worked all hard to get them special things in their inventories (like fruits or seeds) they'll all be gone.

What's weird, is that Amberle has been working on upgrading her tub. It's about 80% complete. When I went back it was still at 80%. So if the game could remember that, why can't it remember what she had in her inventory?

In Sims 2, NPCs would come with stuff in their inventories. Why couldn't they keep that feature? I really can't get that.

My review and thoughts

I really like this game. It's fun, there's a lot to do, and the customizing is SO FUN. (Seriously, take that tool away from me!)

BUT there is one huge problem for me. Maybe it's more a bunch of little problems thrown together and maybe it's more my problem than the game's.

I can't bond with these sims. While I'm playing I sort of care, but I care in the way I care about my Harvest Moon farmer. I just want my Harvest Moon farmer to reawaken the goddess, plant good crops, and have that baby.

It's the same in TS3. I find that very often, playing a sim isn't about the story, but about getting tasks done. Get that promotion, pass on those genes, get that garden!

Since I can't hop around to see what is going on in the other house holds without loosing out on what another family is doing, I can't really bond to anyone other than the sim I am playing. And even then, they are only a vehicle for me to do what I want. They are cute, and there are a lot of surprises, but all in all, I don't feel my sim has a personality.

Maybe I need to play more or watch my sims closer. Amberle sim is cute, but other than her moodlets, I can't really get any feeling from her. You know how romance sims walk that walk when they're going to hit on someone? Or how shy sims look at you with the "why me" when you tell them to do something like flirt with someone? Yeah, none of that. Or how I catch Alberta looking awkward or with her eyes closed in pictures like all the time-- none of that either.


Now, I don't want to sound pessamistic or like a regular Sims 3 hater. I really like the game. It's pretty fun. But I do find myself getting bored of playing one family, and then I find myself too scared to move on from that family to play another because they'll lose inventories and wants.

Also-- no memories! As we've seen countless times, those memories can be handy. Sometimes sims surprise you when you aren't paying attention. But when I visited Angie, I have no idea what she's been up to. Has she had her first kiss? Did she date anyone in high school? Why does she dislike that one sim so much?

I'm pretty sure the answer to all of those is no, of course. But I wish there was a way to keep in contact with sims like that. Like writing letters or something! Can you imagine how fun that would be? Angie moves out and I follow her. Her parents can send her letters letting her know what's going on in their lives. Like "Dad won the eating contest over at the Bistro!" or "Mom got a promotion. She's on her way to World Leader!" That way I would care about those sims and they wouldn't just become NPCs with no personality or lives.