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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 12th Dec 2016 at 5:43 AM
One Massive World: Is It Possible?
I have all the sims 3 games plus all the worlds. While I am not the best at creating a world, I am okay with it. Something I have been wanting to do for a long, long time was make one massive world where we take everyone and their lots from each world (besides the extra sub worlds like Egypt, China, France, Sims University, Oasis Landing) Plus many community lots. Do think its possible to do with without breaking the game?
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Mad Poster
#3 Old 12th Dec 2016 at 8:40 AM
Agreed with the above. Just to give a sense of scale here, most EA homeworlds have around 50-80 residents to start, or something like that. How many sims with their residences you can stuff into a world and still have the game engine function in an acceptable manner is going to differ depending on the world's layout and routing, the strength of the player's system, how far they are willing to go to maintain their world and game files, and a bunch of other variables. Some of my worlds begin to buckle at over 150 residents or so, a couple I can get over 250 with more room on the map to expand, but the game engine is already groaning and things feel really heavy especially with NRaas StoryProgression going so that's where I try to cut things off.

My computer system is adequate by TS3 standards but not the newest and strongest among players. Others can get to around 300 residents in some worlds and then know it's time to stop. This, by the way, is all through generations expanding not just dropping that many sims in to start. Without even taking EP content into account, you can see that's nowhere near "all of the sims" in EA worlds.

We have one member at NRaas, he's kind of moved on now but stops by every once in a while to say hi, who got his worlds well over 800 residents after dozens of generations passing. He spent years fine-tuning and maintaining those files and taking care of issues before they happened, possibly more time than actively playing I think, and he let his game run for days at a time nonstop with extremely long age spans. He loved every minute of it. But I don't think there are many who ever followed his lead, he may well have been the only one in the history of the game to play that way.

What you can do, though, is use NRaas Traveler to connect many different worlds within the same game and routinely travel/transfer active play between them.
Inventor
#4 Old 12th Dec 2016 at 4:02 PM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
What you can do, though, is use NRaas Traveler to connect many different worlds within the same game and routinely travel/transfer active play between them.


This. If your game and savegames folders are installed on an SSD, it'll only take you 15 seconds or so to load a medium-sized world. That means you can have multiple smaller worlds (rural, suburbs, downtown, supernatural quarter, etc) and enjoy better overall performance. It's not a good idea to have massive cities with tons of Sims, because your game will eventually crash (around 3.5 GB memory usage). I have a nice gaming PC but I can't handle worlds like Alpine County for long.
Test Subject
#5 Old 13th Dec 2016 at 12:29 AM
In addition to what igazor and Naus Allien said: it is not only about the map size and number of lots, it is about lot and town detail also. Look at many of the EA worlds: they are quite big, and many lots in them are much larger than needed (for ex. many lots in Monte Vista, as well as those houses in Aurora Skies town center, which look like apartment buildings and are "asking" to be converted into ones) - many of those lots are half-empty. Same goes for Champs les Sims, which also has some very large houses and community lots with vast unused space. Most of these lots lack detail, and actually look underdone (which is true, EA probably had very little time for decorating). So, these worlds may function well on medium to high-end computers, even with a lot of CC installed. Now, imagine a world of about the same size, but with very detailed lots, lots of neighborhood deco (like parked cars, landmarks, retaining wall, flora, signs, etc); also, a lot of stuff used is CC. Surely, these worlds would consume much more resources.
So, if you don't want to have each of your lots highly detailed, and only care about a few playable households (or even only one), it can be easier to play a huge world, but if you like to stuff up your lots, it is safer (and more convenient) to have smaller worlds.

My Simblr - Sims 3 builds and occasionally some other Sims 3 stuff
dodgy builder
#6 Old 13th Dec 2016 at 4:06 PM
It's possible to discuss smeller detailed lots vs larger detailed lots, smaller lots will be more lots, so perhaps lots ofte smaller vs fewer big ones, better with the latter? Having smaller worlds and more of those will probably save the comp though.
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