Hi, I'm sorry if this has been asked before. I've been wanting to create my own university from an empty map I downloaded (i.e. no assigned lots).

From what I understand, there are many things to consider, for example, it seems like I have to assign NPCs as professors, correct?
And apparently there are special lots from university, and they depend on each other for all the features to work correctly, such as lectures.

But how do I make sure that everything works right without problems? Can someone tell me?
Has anybody successfully played on a custom university world before? I found several online, but I didn't test them.

Are there are any major issues? Do I need to use the Traveler mod?

Thanks.

I have played this one without problems. It's been a while, though.

https://modthesims.info/d/520269/pi...eplacement.html

NRAAS provides a mod for that functionality called "Careers".
The Traveller mod is only required if teens are attending university as well.
I think they also have a short rundown on what is required for building a homeworld university on their web page.

Unless I misunderstood you and you want to make a detached world university similar to the vanilla one?

In that case, still follow their tips on how to build a uni, then simply back up your "Sims University.world" file and rename your world accordingly and place it in the folder instead. That is the world that is loaded when attending university and in theory you can rename and whack any world in there. They just won't work right, if not set up as uni.
You should find the world in your game installation folder under \EP9\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds

Yes, there are several rabbitholes that are essential for a uni to work, like the school of science, administration center, etc. But you can use the rabbithole rug mod for those. You also need a student union and dorms/houses. There are eventlotmarkers, as well, like for the Meet & Greet and stuff. You will need the buydebug cheat for this.
So, if you are unfamiliar with setting those up, now is the time to learn.

You could download one of the already existing custom unis, or simply open up the vanilla one in Edit Town and have a look what is all required. Vanilla might make more sense, since you already know the locations there, aka the class room in the student union, open air class locations, etc. Makes it easier to find what you are looking for. Out of the blue, I am not sure anymore how the open class locations were handled, like Keith's comics for the tech class and such.

As for the professors... I don't think that is a hard requirement. In lieu of Professors your sim will still attend class. There just won't be anyone standing at the podium babbling. Your sim will still follow the scripted routines of falling asleep, taking notes, etc. For all else your sim is in rabbitholes anyway. But obviously it makes sense to do it, if you want to give it a nice and realistic feel. Then things might get a little bit more complicated, though. Might help to take a thorough look at the Professor Sims in vanilla uni via MasterController to see what roles/jobs they have.

Yes, I want to download an empty world online and build my own university as if it's the default one.
I wanted to make a realistic university to go with some of my ideas. I've never used rabbithole rugs, so I'd have to figure out how they work, but actually I wouldn't mind using the normal rabbitholes as I genuinely think they're fun (even if you can't see what's happening inside them).
Ideally I would like to have lectures with a professor just like in normal gameplay.
I didn't know about the event markers, so thanks for telling me about those.
I might have to investigate how the default university is lol. I don't know the lots in detail, there are some things I probably never noticed.
I think I'll download Pinewood Academy as the user above linked, and check out how the creator did things as well.

Thanks for the tips!

So yeah, the thing with the professors is absolutely doable. I believe, they only need to have a certain job level in education, but I might be mistaken there. Just check out some of the vanilla professors in Master Controller, like Ms. Noetal, Mr. Dean and Deborah whatever her name is. If they have identical jobs and levels, then you know what to do. What I have no idea about anymore is how to set their specializations. I assume it might have to do with what they have their degree in themselves, like Fine arts degree holding teacher will hold fine arts degree classes, etc.

Afaik only one eventlotmarker is needed for the Student Union building. It will determine THAT the meet & greet is held and also what items need to spawn during that event, like extra tables with giveaways and such. You might want to google how to set that one up, as I haven't done any uni in a very long time.
How to set up what locations the special classes are held at, I have no idea anymore. Totally possible that you absolutely need to have a Keith's comics.

I wish you good luck. If you gain any insights about the above mentioned items, let me know. I am now curious again myself.

Just be aware: If you set up a uni with NPC professors and such already, it can only be played by you in form of a savegame, or rather with the NPCs in your library. There is no way of sharing a fully populated uni online, outside of providing your prebuilt university as a world and then also providing a save game file with the population (which is rather useless, since it is a time limited uni world) or the exported Sims as extra download. EA/Maxis, in their infinite wisdom, did not allow us to make prepopulated worlds. Only buildings, no people.
So, any custom uni you download online, will not come with professors or any other NPCs. Instead it will be populated by the built-in story progression engine, which will NOT provide professors in my experience.
So, if your wish is to have a persistent custom uni you can go to in each of your games, you might be disappointed. You will manually have to readd the NPCs (like the professors) via Edit Town with each playthrough. The characters the engine populated the world with and that you added should stay persistent throughout the same save, however, since the uni and all holiday locations are saved extra for each savegame with all the inhabitants and relationships. You can tell, because they also show up top left in Edit Town mode and changes you make to those worlds are persistent inside the same playthrough.

Essentially here is what you need to do:
Load up the empty map in game, pre-build the buildings you want to use in the game (including all the required markers, lot types, and whatnot) in Edit Town in the game and save them to your library. Then open the empty world you want to use in CAW (Create A World, which you need to download extra), which, additionally to the terrain creation, lets you add buildings from your library and lots to maps and then save them again in the required .world format. Add the required buildings from your library, save it as "Sims University.world". You might have to change lot types of empty lots in CAW in order to be able to place your buildings, as the game can be very picky about placing for example a dance club community building on a big park community lot. It might not allow and auto change lot type for that. The lot will simply not show up as an option for placement.

Once you figured out what NPCs you need, you can create them at any point in the game and add them to your library.
Replace the original "Sims University.world" file with your own (make a backup first or rename it!). Then, once your Sim goes to uni in the game, it will load your map up (it will fire up any map that is called Sims University.world in that specific folder, when the regular enroll in univeristy action is triggered). Go to Edit town and place the required NPCs made by you as households on the map (Streamline it by adding multiple professors to the same household and have them share a building or so. Same for students you want to be persistent). Minor required NPCs, like coffee house and sales staff, etc., will be auto-populated by the game engine, so don't bother with those (also don't bother about housing for those. They will count as "homeless"). You have zero control over those, unless you want to go through a lot of useless hassle with MasterController and such every single time. Only precreate professors and the like, which the engine does not cover.
I need to say it once again: This will not enable you to share your uni WITH your NPCs with anyone. Only the world itself can be shared. You would also have to export all your Sims for share and tell people where to put them.

P.S.: The rabbithole rugs also don't let you see what's happening. They just allow you to use rabbitholes in your own buildings and not just the premade ones. They are preferably placed in basements, if the building is generally accessible.

Thanks for the instructions! That's exactly what I needed. I figured that I'd need to replace the SimsUniversity.world file but I wasn't sure how to go about the rest.
And yeah I noticed that there are a lot of custom worlds that use rabbithole rugs and place them in the basement. I always wanted to go with the original rabbitholes though, because they're interesting and add flavour to the world. But custom rabbithole rugs could be useful for me in case I choose a smaller layout or something.
I didn't know that about the NPCs and professors! I figured that the custom uni worlds already came populated.

By the way, if I wanted the university town to be populated by NPCs with a specific appearance, I'd have to configure of the Nraas mods, right? Would it be StoryProgression itself?
I want to replicate certain countries/cultures and it would be better if the townies matched those cultures. The original townies end up being random.
I have some ideas for saves, and I even thought about something inspired by the Pacific Islands :P

I cannot tell you that, since I don't use NRAAS Story Progression mod, nor have I ever, but I'd wager a yes.
It bites itself with other mods I use and I am perfectly content with using the game included SP.
I wish Oniki was still around to explain things. She implemented a whole ton of the university routines into her KW mod for the High School feature (few people know about it and that single checkbox alone offers gameplay features that would span an entire mod nowadays), like the professors. The KW High School has professors holding lectures at set hours and students attending them, and so on, just as in the university expansion, with taking notes, falling asleep, etc. It basically is a non rabbithole school (with adult content, so I cannot go into too much detail here), including a prom and everything.

But I am nearly 50, autistic with ADHD, and have been out of modding for too long.
Given the dopamine incentive, I might get looking into it again. Right now I don't have it, I am afraid.
Also, NRAAS reminds me a bit off TOT in Conan Exiles, grabbing up and unifying all mods under one name and banner. Not entirely wrong, but also not great. I use the 2 or 3 NRAAS mods I have to and don't bother with the rest (MC with some addons and Relativity being the only ones I really need). I am not even using Overwatch or Errortrap, as they destroy functionality of my other mods.

They removed the ability to add (functional) population to maps before CAW got out there. Not sure what the reason was. Might be stability or them just wanting to make people share their sims extra, outside of the worlds. Or the functionality was never there and Maxis just winged it by bending the system too hard. It can be done, but it is tedious. Vanilla university is a bugridden and laggy hellscape, due to the sheer amount of inhabitants, just like many other EA worlds. God damn you, Bridgeport and La Isla whatthefuckever with your hideous oversea routing XD. Playing those maps is like watching a slideshow. You want to play a well-running EA map? Look no further than Aurora skies. It runs like butter from a hot knife.
I keep mentioning this in various threads, but: This game is built on 32 Bit, meaning it cannot ever use more than 4 GB of RAM, no matter how much your machine has. All the extra RAM does, is allow you to watch youtube while also playing Sims 3. S3 will die hideously once its 4 GB use is up.
Keep that in mind when building your uni. Rather place the same stereo ten times in all the houses, than ten different stereos in every house, or the RAM usage will spike. Don't use more than 3 or 4 different landscape paints (grass, dirt and the like). Keep the amount of different plants you use at a minimum. Rather reuse the same plant on different lots.
Don't go too fancy on the amount of shops and venues that require NPC staff. It all adds up to the population amount, causing lag and routing issues. Always use two sets of double doors on regularly frequented public venues, so people do not stand on each other's toes half the day. Add two fridges in each dorm. They share their content and it will speed up the routing for everyone to eat. All that kind of fun stuff. A ton of thought needs to go into map planning.
Same goes for high rise buildings. Instead of just one, place two or better four elevator shafts. Otherwise people attending a party on one of the floors will spend half their day waiting for a lift.
All lessons we learned from watching EA fail. Hell, Sims 3 university still, to this day says: "One more hour before it is time to go home." when in fact it is two hours, or "Tomorrow is your graduation party", when in fact it is the same day. And no... do not invite friends and family to attend! They will all clog up the entrances to the Annex or make it bug out entirely. XD

Oh, I've heard of KW but I never really used it, when I tested the mod, I had errors, so I had to take it out.

I always used the game's story progression as well, but a lot of players complain about it, so I wondered whether it was worthwhile to use Nraas SP, especially since it seems like you can change demographics settings in detail. However, my PC is not very good, and apparently the mod uses a lot of processing power. That's one of the main reasons why I haven't tried it yet.
I use very few Nraas mods too. I tried Error Trap but didn't like it and Overwatch didn't seem to make much of a difference.

And I'm autistic as well so I understand, sometimes you just want to get fixated on a specific thing. But not always :D

I never considered the things you mentioned about building lots and things like that, so thanks again
It's true that Isla Paradiso is super laggy - I never managed to play on that world. For me, Bridgeport is semi-playable with LazyDuchess' Smooth Patch and ellacharmed's routing fixes. I like Bridgeport, but it has so many problems...
I have to try Aurora Skies again.
One of the reasons why I wanted to make a custom world, is because sometimes I don't want to deal with the premade townies, and I just want to make my own storylines. But it also takes a lot of effort even if you are using an empty layout from the 'net, as you have to make the Sims, build the lots, etc. I used to download lots online when I played TS1, but not anymore.

PS: you mentioned RAM usage and multitasking - I actually try to play on windowed mode but I hate how the game forces specific resolutions, so even if I change the window size, the resolution gets 'reversed'.

So, here is the eventlotmarker you need for orientation. You need to enable buydebug to find it in the extended buy menu.

Once you place it, you ctrl-shift-click on it in build/buy mode to open its interface. You can place it anywhere on the lot in question, best somewhere out of the way, although it will be invisible in live mode. I am just not sure about collisions, routing issues it might cause, so best to whack it somewhere out of the way, like they did in the picture.
In the interface you can change between layouts: normal, orientation and layout 2. Only things of interest here are normal layout and orientation for a uni.
Once you toggle it to orientation layout, any items you place will appear only during the orientation (Meet & Greet) event.
You can toggle back and forth to see the differences, and don't forget to change back to normal layout if you place items that are meant to be persistent.

If you dig deeper into the game files with S3PE or the like there is also scripting available for it, which allows you to use the eventlotmarker for a lot of fancy shit. (see https://modthesims.info/showthread....ad.php?t=684616)

I also checked Keith's comics, if there is any specific marker set for the open air class, but alas no, so I assume that behaviour is engrained into the university framework itself and unfixable without scripting, aka making your own package mod, unless I missed something.

You will probably have to go through a lot of trial and error, before the world will work as intended by you. A mod that might be helpful, imo, could be NRAAS Retuner, which allows you to fine-tune all the behavioural scripts without the need to dig into the game files. You might even find the open air classes in there, but I have never looked for them, so I cannot say for sure.

After re-reading my previous comments, I came to realize that I might have expressed something in a misleading way:
CAW does allow you to make pre-populated worlds, but the population will not work as you expect, aka keep jobs, relationships and whatnot, unless you want to go through some gruesome hassle with MasterController. I don't think anybody really uses it and instead relies more on NRAAS Porter or save games for sharing populated worlds. But since you are only building the uni for your own use, you should stick to the library method. They will keep their career and everything, but relationships between the NPC households will likely need to be fixed via MC, if necessary.