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…