Hii!

I sympathize that by now most of us are sick of hearing about Barbie... But I couldn't pass up the perfect opportunity of making a world inspired by the new movie. It's a small, flat, pretty simplistic world that I thought would be good for a beginner like me to try my hand in. I don't know why it engrossed me so much, but I reeeaalllyyy wanted to play in it, so here we are.

I'm trying to make 3 versions of it: a basic, a standard, and an extra. I'm trying to make this very accessible and customizable so everyone can play with as few problems as possible; an ode to my younger self who could not afford most custom worlds and lots due to their requirements. How common of a practice is this? And, is it advised against?
For now, the basic version would only require University, Island Paradise, Seasons, and Showtime. The Standard one would further require Pets, Generations, World Adventures, and Ambitions. Only mod and store content it'd use is Rabbithole Rugs and Midnight Hollow for the Savvy Seller collection.

Some feedback I'd like has to do with limits. I don't know how much is too much when it comes to objects, lots, etc...
Again, I'm trying to make it accessible and for it to run decently. I think what I have now should be good. The lots are pretty small (residential lots are no bigger than 20x20 and the community ones are not much bigger than that.)
I understand this might be too small for a lot of users but I really want this to be a fun, inclusive world where you're compelled to have your sims out and about doing stuff most of the time instead of being home all day.
Also, I'm not sure about the mountains... I'm not the best at terrain painting and even though they're supposed to look like that I don't know if it would be immersion breaking. I suspect not, but I'd appreciate a pair of fresh eyes.

I'm very excited to share the progress of the world with you all I'm pretty much ready to start building, and I'll be doing frequent test runs throughout multiple phases. Let me know what you think!

I hope you're enjoying the experience of learning CAW!
It's looking very pretty so far, and making me a little hungry for something sakura flavoured...

I think it's very kind of you to consider making additional versions of the world. I've seen alternate world versions before, so it does happen. MySimRealty's creations are a good example, there's often many editions of a world as they added expansion content and left the lighter versions up for download.
The only thing I would note with that is to be mindful of your own time and energy, and above all focus on the version of it that you are wanting to create. It's easy to get overwhelmed once you start thinking about theoretical downloaders needs and double your workload for that. Don't burn yourself out working on the public release, is all

If it's a small/tiny world size, you can get away with a fair bit in terms of performance.
I will recommend my go-to CAW tutorial, which both has wonderful methods for working with terrain sculpting and painting but also each section also has notes about performance.
Your mountains are looking good to me, but you might find that some of those tips are useful.

Good luck with your project!

Hey @Sanguiness It's looking great! We have some tutorials that may help:
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=446039
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=443308
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?p=3412826

@CardinalSims and @simsample :

Thank you so much for the encouragement! The tutorials are very helpful.

How fun is this and I love the road layout. I might soften those two mountain points a bit, but I think this is looking very good, especially for a first effort in CAW. Carry on!

Thank you! Although I do feel the need to mention this isn't exactly my first effort, I've played around with CAW for quite a while! I love planning fantasy worlds around fictional media but I don't really flesh them out, it's mostly an outlet for my obsessions. This is the first one I'm actually committed to making and releasing.

I love the roads too, and you're right about the mountains, I'll have to dedicate some more time to fixing them

Wow! Super job with the roads! I like the pink terrain paint, too. I'm guessing you're going to use lots of cherry trees? The darker plum colored tree would be pretty as well. Are you planning to use rabbit hole rugs for commercial lots? Many of the game rabbit holes need bigger lots. I'm not sure about the ferns in the rocky texture. Maybe clumped more at the edges of the sand/grass. I've not seen the movie but, if I can get my game working, I'd be happy to help with some Barbie pink houses/lots if you like.

Nice representation, well done! While the roads are a funny idea, for routing optimization I'd recommend to connect the two words. You could use a different texture, maybe a dirt or grass texture so that the writing will still be intact. And also add another connection from the middle of the crescents to maybe the I or E. Else sims will have to take long detours.

Thanks! Yes to the cherry trees!! Definitely gonna be using the rabbit hole rugs, the in game ones are just too much and wouldn't match unfortunately. Thanks for that outlook on the ferns. I tried to match it to one of the screenshots from the trailers but I think I'll revisit it and try to find some better positioning.

And wow thanks for the offer! Building is soo tedious so I'll definitely consider that. I'll let you know once/if I've made up my mind on it. But if you have any barbie-themed ideas for lots and even sims I'll write it down. Really trying to make this as camp and fun as possible.

Routing optimization is definitely a big concern of mine!! I was kind of hoping for the long detours because it's such a compact space anyway and it's pretty fun seeing the world as the car swoops and twirls on the roads. However from my play testing it seems like sims are NOT having it and they would rather walk across than to take the car through . It's pretty funny but annoying. I made some barriers and it helped maybe 30% but the sims will still make multiple car trips . I'll take that into account and see if making some invisible roads will make things a little smoother. Thank you!

Thank you guys for the encouragement! I really appreciate it.

I've begun building some of the lots and would love to share some screenshots with everyone. So far I've made the beaches, the stairs to the beaches, a skating rink lot, a bowling alley/arcade lot, a disco lot, and the first barbie dreamhouse to house the lab rats.

I'm not 100% satisfied, will definitely revisit these again and again as I continue building and the vision becomes more cohesive. That orange/yellow building is the skating rink and it gets uglier and uglier the more I look at it but I'm far too lazy and tired to deal with it for now.

This is the hardest part because these are the "heart" and center of the world and its imperative for them to be as cohesive and pretty as I can make it. We'll get there, at least we have something.

Anyway, enjoy and let me know your thoughts and ideas! Currently struggling with color palettes, making a pretty, colorful, fun world without making it jarring and clownish is harder than I thought.

I had good luck with using grass textured roads in one of the worlds I made. They were barely visible. I agree about connecting the two words together, the a in Barbie, and maybe the ends of the straight road to the B in Barbie and d in land. Great work!

I'm so excited for this world omg

I've not seen the movie so am not an expert but what I remember when my girls were playing with Barbie dolls, etc., is that the colors were more pastel or blends like teal rather than primary colors. I remember a lot of pink, white, gold, and teal blue/green but I'm not sure I'm remembering correctly. Perhaps it will help with your color choices if you search for Barbie toys / houses / that type of thing. This search yields some results that might be helpful: Barbie Houses Throughout the Years. I see some purple/lavender, orange, and yellow but not a lot of the latter two colors.

I adore the pink tinge to the terrain, can't wait to play in this world!

Thank you! The houses I think will be turn out fine because there's so many references and renditions of them that will be easy to implement. The Barbie movie is overwhelmingly pink but the section near the beach has some big colorful buildings that I'm copying off of with lots of bright yellows and oranges, and I'm having difficulty on following suit with the interior. Perhaps it would do me good to just simplify it, and when in doubt: go pink!

Hello all!

Been working on Barbieland quite a bit. It takes me a long time to build, but as predicted, the more I do it the more cohesive the final results are looking. I still have to revisit some of the earlier buildings and fix them, however.

The sims taking shortcuts to visit lots was a real problem. It's especially painful if they are traveling with a group as they'd all disband and sometimes if they weren't in the household they'd get lost lol. So I did take the time to add some "invisible" roads (they are totally visible but I tried my best to blend it in to the terrain paint).
Yes, it might look a little weird, but it also could fit in the world. None of us had special roads to play with our little toy cars after all, so they'd be used in any surface anyway.
I've made a couple community lots bigger to fit into the world a little bit better.
Also, I'm posting more frequent world updates on my tumblr . Mostly to showcase lots as I'm done with them or share weird stuff I see in play testing, do check it out if you're interested.
Anyway, I'm going to now commence play testing with these new fixes and fingers crossed the shortcuts are eradicated! Thank you for reading, enjoy some pictures . As always let me know any suggestions!

I love playing with the color of the lights. However, I noticed that in the Barbie movie all the lights are regular color.
I'm conflicted with this because I've set all the street lights to magenta. It looks so beautiful at night, super Barbie-esque and it makes me feel enthralled in the world. I've tried to compromise by setting the street lights placed on lots as pink (it doesn't really show up pink like the magenta color, its a barely noticeable tinge.) That way, it's not all bright magenta but a good mix of both.

Please look at the attached pictures and let me know what you think. The first is a screenshot from the Barbie Movie, and the others are from my game. As you can see there's a section on the L with regular lights because I added them after the others and forgot to change the color. But this is great to show you what it'd look like normally.

So what's your opinion? Should I keep the magenta lights, change it to normal, or do the mix of both? Thank you!