CAW - Part 2

PATIENCE IS YOUR BEST FRIEND

The world in the making has clearly taken alot longer than anticipated. Its been 4 - 5 months? It takes quite a fair bit of patience. I guess I "missed" reading the memo about distant terrain & now am stuck with carving out the landscape at the border.

So whats distant terrain? It is an object that needs to be placed in CAW when the world is still in its infancy. The reason for this is to make sure the height map or edges matches with the distant terrain object.

To further illustrate. Screenshot above shows the edges of the map itself. The mountain cuts off abruptly from this point. Distant Terrain objects are required to grant the illusion that it goes on forever seamlessly.

Since, I "conveniently" forgot about this step. I will have to reserve two chunks of map off the edges and manually sculpt them to hide the sea. A way to do this is to surround all edges as tall impassable mountains. Then seal it off by painting the edges with non-routing / non camera brushes. This prevents sims to go there and also prevents players from moving in-game cameras to that area.

A lighthouse. Mountain ranges in the background, which are all manually raised to this height then carved out into steep hills and valleys.

The other method is to just have coastal areas on all 4 sides of the edge.

The first method is tremendously time-consuming. The 2nd method... not quite so, which probably explains why 90% of the user created worlds are islands in the middle of the ocean.

Lighthouse can be seen again. Viewed from the other side of the map. The sea disappears off into the horizon. Looks natural. This will take only 1/100th of the time you will spend on sculpting border mountain ranges.

Create-A-World

The world I'm working on, viewed in wire-frame mode.

I've always loved miniature replicas. Not because they are so tiny and cute in an 'Awww' way. It has more to do with my unhealthy obession with all the little details that can be stuffed on it.

Oooohhh, look at that! This typical warrior is carrying his sword & shield. But wait! There is more, there is sheathed dagger strapped to his boots, a small belt pouch. A full on backpack and... GASP!!!. A small unlit torch & a cooking pan dangling from his backpack! And a waterskin attached to the right side of his belt! And... oh I'm getting carried away..

Turning off wire-frame. This is how the world looks like in its "naked" form.
The blue area being the border or rather the edge of the world.

That being said, I also loved the miniature terrains as well. Miniature landscaping can be fascinating to look at and is even more fun to create. The downside of it is that it takes up alot of physical space, something which Singapore is lacking in. Something I discovered in my younger days.

Fog on. This sets the opacity of the sea & clouds as one would see in the game

The alternative is to create a world digitally. None so much better than the Sims 3 Create-A-World toolset. Or short for CAW. Released in 2009 and this nifty software lets us do exactly what its name says.

Same as above, set to night-time.

Now we can attempt to create beautiful vistas, zoom in on the details, watch the Sims interact with their environment! And all these with a mere stroke of the mouse.
Control the sea level at our whim! At our own fancy decide if it is to be a barren desert or a lush tropical forest! Raise the earth to meet the skies! There is no greater glory than this!

Enough prattling! I must now go and sooth my 'God' complex.