Difference between revisions of "Game Help:World Routing Lags/DIYinCAW"

Latest revision as of 15:50, 20 September 2012

STOP! Read before proceeding! These files are not meant to be placed in /Mods/Packages! Make a Backup of the .world files you planned to edit. Edited game files in Program Files paths will prevent the patch to update your games! So, these files need to be restored before you do any updating.

[edit] Step 1: Backup .world

• Do a backup! Please do a backup before continuing with the rest of this guide. Go to the path provided above for the location of the .world file.
• Select the .world file and Copy
• In any empty spot, right-click and Paste.
• Rename this file to have another extension so you won't get duplicates in the New Game screen. I usually put ".orig" as the extension for my backups.
• This <town-name> - Copy.world.orig is your backup file. Keep it safe! This is the file to restore when you need to update.
• Repeat the above steps for each game whose .world you want to edit.

[edit] Step 2: Backup Saves

• Next, backup your Save games. Go to /Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/, and backup the Saves folder by either
  • Copy+Paste so you have a copy of this folder and its contents to Desktop (or in another drive, preferably)
  • Archive it in a zip or rar file.
• You can also do a full backup of the whole user folder if you like, see this Backup Guide.

[edit] Step 3: Do the work

The only sustainable solution is to open up the world in CAW, and edit the non-routable areas so Sims would not go there anymore. To edit the .world file yourself, you need to do the following steps. They are not that complicated if you know CAW, but it is tedious.

STOP! Backup before proceeding! Have you made BACKUPS yet? If not, go do so Now!

These are summarized instructions. If you don't know what I mean or how I get from step A to B, read the tutorials first and learn how to use CAW separately, which is out-of-scope of this FAQ. The CAW tool is extensive and this is not meant to be a step-by-step guide, so be warned!

[edit] Step 3.1: PREP

Make a project folder for yourself, either on Desktop or however you organize your modding projects. This is just my methodology, you might have your own and don't have to follow mine. But if you don't, this is foolproof. I'd know - I'm the fool who made all the mistakes and have refined the steps to the ones below. :)

• I have 2 subfolders in here named
  • "World Orig files" containing
    • untouched copies of all the worlds I'm editing
    • subfolders named "<town-name> resources" for each world I'm editing
  • "edited resources" containing
    • copies of the world saves from CAW's path "\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Create A World Tool\UserToolData\Worlds"
    • subfolders named "edited <town-name> resources" for each world's resources I extracted

[edit] Step 3.2: In CAW

Using the original method from the "editing premade worlds" guide to

• create a new world in CAW,
• give it a name and save.

[edit] Step 3.3: In S3PE

• open this newly created world,
• import the original game world,
• I have an extra step to prepare for the next patch, extract all the 4 named resources to the "\World Orig files\<town-name> resources" folder so I can do a FileDiff with the next version, in case EA make changes to them in a patch
  • WPID 0xF609FD60 (World - World info: ID, name, desc)
  • UNKN 0x296A6258 (World - Type: city, vacation etc)
  • UNKN 0x05CD4BB3 (World - Routing info)
  • UNKN 0x05DA8AF6 (World - Routing info)
• remove the 2 resources identified, and save.
  • WPID 0xF609FD60 (World - World info: ID, name, desc)
  • UNKN 0x296A6258 (World - Type: city, vacation etc)
• close the world in S3PE and exit.

[edit] Step 3.4: Back in CAW

• open this world in CAW again, input the info like name, description and thumbnail and Save As under a different name,
• now that you've saved it, scroll around to the various spots I identified and just repaint with the blue non-routable paint. Read over Armiel's Routing tutorial as needed,
• save when you're done,
• close the world and exit CAW.

[edit] Step 3.5: Back in S3PE

Open this file back in S3PE and extract these resources, use the Filter options.

• UNKN 0x05CD4BB3 (World - Routing info)
• UNKN 0x05DA8AF6 (World - Routing info)
• UNKN 0x9063660E (World - Roads & Walkways)
• _IMG 0x00B2D882 0x00000001 (DDS Image)
• MODL 0x01661233 0x00000002 (Object Model aka Object Geometry)
• you can close this world and exit S3PE.

Proceed on with the next part of the guide, to Import Resources, except you don't need to download any "<Town>Fixed<whatever>.zip" as that is the output of the steps you've done here in this section. So, you can skip the downloading portion, and use your extracted Resources from Step 3.5.