It's funny, I think the EA roads and sidewalks look more realistic color-wise (because asphalt doesn't stay beautiful black very long, at least where I'm from) But yours are much more pleasing to the eye. I am torn between realism and beauty...

Misty, I would have checked myself, but I am away from my game comp for a couple of more days. If so it would be absolutely fantastic, and a big step on the way to customizing hoods, while we cant get that hood designer they promised us..

Here it depends completely on the amount of traffic a road gets. Heavily trafficked roads like the major highways start gray with a thick layer of gravel that eventually gets worked down into the asphalt (the gravel roughens the surface which helps with the roads being less slick in rain or snow) and only for a short while are they ever as dark as these, but they're usually not as light as the default, either. Side streets that don't get so much traffic stay close to black for a very long time, usually lasting until they have to resurface the road. Considering the amount of "traffic" a TS3 road actually gets, the darker roads seem much more realistic to me. Even so, when it comes to deciding between beauty and realism in my game I'll go for looks nearly every time. I try to make my Sims towns places that are more ideal than realistic so that while I play I can pretend I live there because where I really live is anything but beautiful.

Ingeli, I understand completely. I was gone for a good part of the day yesterday, then after I got home watched a movie with the kids, then did a few things online because I was just too tired to start my game, and I didn't even think about checking the footpaths. I will TRY to remember to check later today.

And yes, here in the U.S. we still drive on the right side of the road.

Ingeli, I remembered to check, and the sidewalk replacement seems to have the same effect on the footpaths.

That is absolutely wonderful - I am soo looking forward to rural-looking replacements.

Most of Europe drives on the right too. Only British a a few others. In fact, I only know of Japan, UK and Australia that drive on the left, but I guess there's more.

Would you mind if I used your files to create my own replacement? I have no idea where to start looking for the right files.

Shoot, no! You go right ahead and do that! I want to see them when you're finished, though! We have TOS on our website but I really do need to get some terms added for my stuff here. Basically, anyone can do pretty much anything they want with anything I create with a couple of exceptions. Those exceptions are taking direct credit for the original work and/or uploading it to pay sites. I create things for people to enjoy (as long as that enjoyment isn't illegal or immoral in some way). If their enjoyment is tearing those files apart to create something else, then so be it.

As for finding the original files, I use one program which lets me find things, but doesn't do such a great job at exporting the images because it leaves out parts of the file name (I think that program was originally intended for editing XMLs). That is Okeanos' Package Viewer. It has a view where you can filter by adding a word, so after one of the package files is opened, type in a word like sidewalk and see what it brings you to. Once I find the file in Okeanos' program, I know what to look for and do the actual exporting in Peter Jones' S3PE.

BTW, for further advancement of customizing our towns, I uploaded some clean town maps WITH the Beautiful Vista buffs intact to our website last night. There are two versions of each town: one with all community lots, and one completely wiped. I also wrote a small tutorial-type piece with info on how to get fish and plants onto custom lots.

That's great, thank you! I'll let you know when I'm done ; ) It may take a while though, I'm lucky if I get an hour on my pc these day's......

Sounds great, Missy! Even with as much time as I do spend at my computer, there are never enough hours to do everything I want to do.

:lovestruc

Would you be willing to tell me how you edited the roads? I really want a town with all dirt roads.

Thank you for your time.

Winterhart, that's actually one of the projects on my to-do list, but I'd be happy to tell you how to do it yourself as well. I learned from a tutorial (which I can't find at the moment) in the Modding Discussion Forum right here at MTS. Also, tutorials are being added to the Wiki as fast as they possibly can be.

To put it in a nutshell, though, you need a program like S3PE first. There are some files within the game that hold all of these images that are located in the Program Files part of your Sims 3 game, to wit: The Sims 3>Game Data>Shared>FullBuild0, FullBuild1, FullBuild2 (all .package files). You track down the file you're after, which will be a DDS file then extract that and open it in an image editing program, do your thing, save a copy with your work and import that back into S3PE (or whichever package editor you're using) and save it, which automatically saves it as a .package file. Then you drop it into the folder (or one of the sub-folders) where your CC is kept, delete your cache files, start the game (remembering to let the movie run all the way through) and go into play or Edit Town view and check the result. If you like what you see, no further editing is necessary, but if things don't look quite right you exit the game, edit your images, re-import and save, delete cache files again, start game letting movie run again, and test and tweak as necessary until you get the finished product.

There is a plug-in for DDS support for PhotoShop that also works with Paint Shop Pro, and I believe Gimp supports DDS files as it stands but am not 100% sure on that. If you're using PSP, you'll most likely need to save a copy of the image you exported that you can give a shorter name to use for editing since PSP has a length-limit on files it will open. Once the image is edited, it absolutely has to be renamed to the original name before importing into the package editor--if it's missing even one letter or symbol from the name it won't work, so it's best to copy and paste file names. I don't know if the other programs support the longer file names as I've never seen any reason to spend $600+ on PhotoShop when I can buy Paint Shop Pro for under 10% of that price, and Gimp is freeware but since I have PSP I've never used it.

Stupid question, but I'm new at this whole Mod thing, and I'm only 14 years old, where are those cache files i need to delete?

Sorry and thanks...

Aha, love it. Now all I need is some Euro roads signs and maybe some traffic lights.

But thank you!

This is really great. I miss the British roads like crazy now I'm in the US.
I don't suppose you'd be up for making a more British road set? No? I had to ask
Thankyou anyway for this

I love it Europa!! :D €

Hi! I was wondering if this works on other Worlds like store worlds? I would like to replace Auroa Skies road.

Thank you!

Awesome mod. Thanks.