Create a World Tips and Tricks: Best Practice to Avoid Heartache

Create a World is a fun tool to use, but if you build a world feet first without taking certain things into consideration, it can be a very heartbreaking experience. It's not uncommon to come across many issues, problems and major setbacks that will have you throwing up your hands and quitting CAW after weeks and even months of work. In fact, many simmers have done just this thing.

It doesn't have to be this way. If you learn the following tips and tricks and keep them to heart, you can avoid all the headaches that so many others have experienced when building your world.

Tip One: Export and Playtest Early 
One of the worst mistakes you can make is to spend 6 months, a year, a year and a half on a world and wait until you've completed it to finally play it. Why? Because 9 times out of 10, it'll be filled with tons of errors, glitches, and routing problems, forcing you to go back and tear up entire sections, rebuild lots and even replace roads. Next thing you know, after spending so much time on this world and thinking that it's done, you're back to spending another several weeks, months or even longer fixing everything. In my case, I spent another year fixing all the problems with my very first world, Oceanview.

There's a very easy way of avoiding this type of issue. Export and playtest your world very early and often. Don't wait until you've lovingly plunked down every little tree, street light, rabbithole, trash can, tree and flower and are ready to play your world. It's going to really, really suck when you start seeing things like unlevel lots, street signs you placed in backwards, major routing issues, or sims running up and down mountains.

When exactly do you first export and test? My rule of thumb is when your world is about 30%-40% done. This would be when you 1) have most of your roads, bridges and lots in place and 2) have placed routing paint in areas where you don't want your sims running through.

This world is far from done, but should be playtested before putting any significant details in., like terrain painting, trees, streetlights, etc.

I know that playing your world early kind of takes the excitement out of playing it for the first time when it's complete, but trust me--this doesn't compare to the crushing pain you'll feel when you realize that the world you thought was perfect is so broken that you'll have to tear up entire roads, sections and landscaping to fix it. So, I repeat, test early. Don't wait until the very end to export and play your world.

Tip Two: Always Backup and Re-backup Regularly
Right from the beginning, you should be making backup copies of any worlds that you're working on. If you don't, you're courting disaster. What'll happen is that one day, after spending 5, 6, 7 months or more on a world, you'll open CAW up and find that you can't open it, because it's become corrupted. And no amount of reopening and resaving or any of that will bring the world back. If you don't have a backup copy, guess what? You've lost your world forever and that 6 months will be down the drain.

So how and what do you backup? If all you're working on is one world, there are only three files you should be worried about. Under your Documents-->Electronic Arts-->The Sims-->Create a World-->User Data Folder, you will see a Worlds folder. Inside this folder will be the files for your world. There are three files for each world.

Let's say your world's name is Oaktown. The files you will want to copy are: Oaktown.settings, Oaktown.world and the folder called Oaktown. Make a copy of them on your desktop or better yet, a flash drive.

These are the files for the world, Oceanview. These are the only three files you need when backing up a world.

Okay, so what if you're not just working on one world--in other words, you have two, three, four or more worlds going on at once? Then backup the entire Worlds folder.

Once you've backed up your world, make a habit of re-backing it up on a regular basis. Usually, re-backup when you've made a lot of progress on your world and have tested it.

Now one word of warning: backup from time to time, but don't backup so much to where you accidentally save a corrupted world. Make sure when you back up your world that there's nothing wrong with it. Otherwise, if something goes wrong, it'll be as if you never backed up at all.

Tip Three: Don't Save Your World in EIG Just to Save Lots
When you're building lots in EIG and want to save your progress, don't save the world. Just save the lots to your library and bring them up again the next time you want to build.

Why? First of all, once you have a bunch of built up lots in your world, it'll take longer and longer to save each time. With 100 lots or more, it can take up to a half hour to finish saving in EIG. Secondly, the more you save your world in EIG, the greater potential there is for it to crash and introduce introduce glitches and other problems.

So remember--save your lots to library, then only wait until you have most of your lots completed to add them to your world.

Tip Four: Turn Off All Tasks When Saving in EIG
If you're saving a world that has a buzillion lots (okay, not a buzillion, but you get the idea), the save times will be very long (like a half hour) and resource intensive. If your computer has minimum resources to begin with, what'll happen is that your computer will run out of memory halfway and cause EIG to crash. We don't want this to happen because crashing will introduce corruption, which leads to routing and graphics glitches.

So make sure everything in the background is turned off when saving. Close all your browsers, close down your media player (don't have any music or videos playing), shut everything else off.

Tip Five: Do Not Minimize While Saving in EIG
Because saving in EIG can take so long, people often get antsy and try minimizing the window so they can browse the internet or do something else. Don't. EIG needs the window to be open when saving. Otherwise, it will crash.

Tip Six: Make Sure Alerts and Screensaver/Sleep Mode Is Off When Saving in EIG
If you have your computer set to go into sleep or screensaver mode after a few minutes, either shut them off or sit by the computer shaking the mouse every few minutes to keep the computer from falling asleep. If you let the computer go into either modes, EIG will crash.

Also, make sure any program alerts are turned off. Alerts will cause EIG to minimize, resulting in a crash. Alerts might include something reminding you that your graphics drivers need to be updated or your anti-virus telling you that your definitions have been updated for the day.

Tip Seven: Zoom in on Ground When Saving in EIG
To further minimize crashing while saving, zoom in on the ground. Never save in EIG when you're hovering over the town.

In a Nutshell
Before fully committing to a world, make sure you follow the previous seven tips to heart. Test early, back up regularly and don't do anything that could corrupt your game while saving in EIG. If you do, the road to completing your world will be a smooth one and not one filled with heartache, anger and frustration.