Hi! I'm circling back to this world because I love it so much: https://tragic-pixelfinds.tumblr.co...im-done-this-is

I love it but I want to know if it's me or the world (the creator's page is inactive now so I can't even ask)

I want to make my own world (I did my own CAW a while back of it ) but because it doesn't close out properly, it was giving me issues especially when I launch TS3 though CAW. It won't save properly and I want to know if anyone else is having this issue to so I guess I can finally put it to rest if I cant use this world.

In the game once I save, and I try to exit, it freezes..forever. I mean forrrreveeerrr. I left it loading to close out over night once and it never exited out.

I tried to make my own, and it's the same issue. Is there a way to copy the world with out the issues? somehow or something? I didn't know if that's a thing or not.

Thanks!

Here's a guide for known issues with CAW : https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=441595

Editing premade worlds tutorial : https://modthesims.info/t/469942

PS: Never played in this world, but I'm sure that it freezes regularly because of bad routing system (inside lots and in the world itself), big amount of CC, big number spawners/terrain paint per chunk, or big amount of lots with solid complexity.

Even the always hailed worlds of creators like Simsrealty and such come with a ton of issues. They might run stable, but require a lot of post-prod-work, unless you want every club in town to play classical music, since they didn't bother putting the public speakers in the right way, and such issues. Or they don't run stable, but feel good.
If you want it done right, do it yourself, from scratch, is my suggestion.

What is the right way to set up the public speakers?

We are straying a bit off topic here, but since the radio station of a public speaker cannot be changed on a community lot when playing the map, the easiest way to set up your public speaker in a community lot with a certain music already playing is:
Before saving the final build to library you switch the lot type to residential, have a sim move in there, change the radio stations on the speakers, kick them out, switch back to community lot type of your choosing. Then save the build to library to later place in CAW and the speakers will be preset to the radio station of your choosing. Or simply use the cheats on the speakers before saving the lot.

If you simply build your community lot and whack the public speakers in there, they will otherwise be preset to classical music and the player has no way of changing the radio station without buying the venue, taking one of the speakers home via family inventory, change station there, and put it back in the venue, which is quite tedious, or they have to use testingcheatsenabled, which some people are vehemently against (Not sure why. I can't play without them active. I am deleting objects all day long ).

Don't get me wrong, I love the mysimrealty maps, but if you open up SimMeapolis and three out of three dance clubs play classical music on their public speakers, that is just lazy and immediately destroys the otherwise amazing atmosphere of those maps. Also I am sure the creators had certain types of music for each club in mind, so why not preset them straight away and do it right?

Yes, I know, but everything on topic has been said. Also, if there is something new for me to learn I'm always curios So I hope OP will forgive me.


You could also simply use edit town mode to edit the lot if you were strictly against testingcheatsenabled.

I haven't tried to set the lot to residential to change it, but usually the station on community lots resets on CAW export, no matter what you set it to. Did your method work in the worlds you created?

You cannot edit the radio stations in edit town mode, is the problem here. You can place the public speakers, yes, but you cannot interact with them in order to change the station.
Unless something changed (the last world I made was quite a while ago) it should work.
I haven't tried in quite some time and right now I am running Sims 3 on a dedicated win 7 machine with 8 Gigs of RAM. CAW would probably make it implode :D
Last option, if CAW really resets the stations: Provide a save along with your world. That should do the trick, albeit it isn't a perfect solution. By that you could even make it pre-populated. Or tell people how to change the stations via cheat and what to. I am sure that a lot of players have no idea.

P.S. What I can tell you 100% after testing it just now is that the radio stations do not reset in the game, even when the lot is placed in another save. CAW might by now have changed, but I don't have the opportunity to test it atm.

From edit town mode, you need to press control+shift when you click on the speaker. From there you can both change the music and set whether or not all the speakers on the lot play the same music.

I don't mind it going off topic, I agree with everything you said

It is tedious to have to change the music, I didn't know this was a problem fir other players, but then again as we all know EA has a lot of issues regarding the sims (I'm so used to doing it that it's force of habit now)

and I always use testingcheatsenabled (I can't function without either)

As for the original topic, I guess I will make my own world

It is the best option, really. Stick to some ground rules, like... do not use too many different plants, ground paints (5 or 6 different ones is absolute max before the game starts going down. like... really down), etc., keep the pathing clear and linear, and you should be golden. If you really want to, you can even add the university rabbitholes, a student union building, the proper eventlotmarker for it for the onboarding/orientation, and make it a functioning homeworld uni with NRAAS Careers mod.
And then, if any building behaves wonky or a speaker doesn't play the music it should, you can very easily fix it, since you have all the buildings in your local library already.

This game is made for 32 Bit, meaning it cannot ever utilize more than close to 4 Gigs of RAM (more realistically it is around 3.5), no matter how much your machine has. So, you are kinda restricted on how many different things you can place in your world, before everything breaks. Placing ten different items requires a ton more RAM than placing the same item ten times. Also, if you have any mod that allows you to adjust the texture size for clothing or such, keep it max on 1024. Anything higher is RAM suicide, unless everyone wears the same outfit.

Making a world from scratch is a LOT of work So, if you do not expect it to look like one of those overly detailed, very cc-heavy worlds that are only good for screenshots, you could as well try other custom worlds. While I agree that many worlds are not very optimized routing-wise, many also play decently. EA worlds are not always optimized either. The use of mods like NRAAS Overwatch will help a lot with that.

You might want to look into medium-sized worlds, those allow a bit more freedom when it comes to complexity. Or try an empty world and just fill it with your buildings, this way you have at least control over the lots.

As you already tried to edit worlds in CAW, have you tried to take Mayfield Port back into CAW and see if you can fix the worst issues? But even if improved it still will be a very heavy world performance-wise.

Yeah, it is a lot of work, indeed.
It is also very rewarding, but you have to really enjoy building in order to get into and it and stick with it.

The empty world idea is not that bad, imo. It gives you a premade landscape you can fill up as your heart desires without the need to even touch CAW, if that isn't your thing. Just make sure the map already comes with empty lots placed. Routing can become extremely wonky if you manually add lots in Edit Town (Monte Vista comes to mind, where it is nigh impossible to place routable new lots. Took me eternities to set up the movie career location and in the end I had to bulldoze an existing building to replace. A lot of the required size placed anywhere on the map was not effectively routable for the character due to the slopes everywhere. Sim ended up going to the lot but was unable to actually enter the rabbithole).

@Norn
Another solution to the public speaker problem that is so simple that I actually didn't think of it: Just place a nice stereo instead (upgraded to wire house with speakers, if possible, unless CAW resets that, too. Never tried that. Or add some regular wall speakers). Like that the player can actually change the station. Problem, of course is that the one or other random sim will randomly start working out or so, changing it to Electronica, or they will change it to their favourite music, which can be quite annoying XD

Ah, I always thought that was simply a side effect of testingcheatsenabled like during regular live play, since I have those active by default. Never stop learning new stuff about this game. Tells you how complex and ambitious it was for its time (and still is, imo). Also the main reason it's my favourite Sims iteration and why I am willing to put up with all the ridiculous bugs.
My latest favourite example of that:
A house I specifically built for a family is broken, even in the library. The family it is intended for cannot live in it. The adults cannot interact with each other when in that house, no matter if I place it with the family or without and then move them in, even on a different map and save. Both adults can interact with the kids, however. Even an older library saved iteration of that family shows the same issue when moved into that house. Do I move the family to a different house, all is normal. Something during library save or share went wrong and entirely broke the interactions in that house. I swear, you cannot make this stuff up. That was a day of my life wasted. XD