How make playing fun in a new world?

Every new world I have ever played or moved my sims into has been a chore. But it's meant to be a pleasant one. There are those who insist that everything has to be just right (or close enough) with a world before they will start playing it "for real," but that sounds way too much like work rather than fun to me. I usually jump right in with the household(s) I am playing and then slowly, a bit each sim night as they are sleeping or doing whatever it is they do at night, work on quadrants of the world's community lots, and take stock of the local population working again in batches make sure they have what they need and will progress/are progressing properly. At the beginning I would be most concerned that there is adequate schooling without routing issues, that sims aren't all clustering up in the same small number of careers, and that those with babies, toddlers, children, or who are pregnant have the cribs and other kiddie-related stuff they require so StoryProgression doesn't start pushing them to move houses for no other reason than they lack some furniture.

Beyond that though, it can take weeks or months of play before I ever get a world just the way I want it. On some of them I never do, they are always works in progress in some major way or another.

If at any point I am dreading loading up the game because I know that I have to "fix" a whole bunch of lots or other stuff this time and I really don't feel like it, then I have stop and re-examine my approach to whatever world it is. Again, the chore part is still meant to be fun and each phase something to look forward to.

I just went through this some weeks ago, and I'm doing something similar at the moment. I don't like redoing houses, so I usually just add beds and bring the kitchens and bathrooms to the point I need for whoever I move there (I'm talking of lots of moving households). It's okay though. I always have a different save to play if it gets boring. I leave some stuff for after the move.

For my current tie-in project, I actually have to populate an empty world, but as it's a really small one (just 14 residential lots total), the amount of effort needed is manageable. I know my limitations. As an aside, I noticed that I enjoy editing sims more than I anticipated, so that's what keeps me going.

As we like to say where I live: The way is the goal :smile: .

@Cororon - I don't start new worlds all that often, but when I do I don't have any special fixed and set ways of going about it. I just do whatever I feel like at the moment.

I sometimes rebuild community lot buildings, or replace them with my own buildings from the bin at the bottom of the screen, and/or do the same with residential homes, rearrange gardens, community and/or residential, play a premade family for a while, and then go to Edit Town, create a new household, move them into a nice house and switch to them etc. etc.

As I see it the only reason to, and purpose with, playing computer games is that it's amusing and entertaining. If/when it ever starts feeling like work or a chore, I think you should stop immediately, and do something else in the game. Or play another game. Or leave the computer and do something entirely different. There is absolutely no point or gain in forcing yourself to keep playing if it's not fun.

Tox is So cute! :mrgreen:

I like to start with the map and then add roads and trees and little bits of things and work my way up to each new lot. Then, since I know all the little secrets, I never play in them long. :( But I have fun making the worlds. :heart:

When I was moving a lot of households around different worlds using porter mod i was saving their houses to the library. Then when i got to the new world I'd place the houses and move the sims back into their own houses with all their stuff. I'd include their name into the house name to make if easier to match households up with houses.

"Karritz;c-17423329" wrote:
When I was moving a lot of households around different worlds using porter mod i was saving their houses to the library. Then when i got to the new world I'd place the houses and move the sims back into their own houses with all their stuff.

While I do this with simpler houses, I noticed that the larger lots often bring the problems of the old world with them, which is a rather sobering effect, given it has the potential to sabotage the reason for the move.

"Turjan;c-17423477" wrote:
@Karritz I actually keep up with your stuff and watched several of your videos, even if I don't directly comment on them very often, so I have a general idea about your main setup. I've also seen your last video, and one of the like is from me :smile: .

I should probably give an example of what I meant. I had a version of the Landgraab villa in SV where I had modified the house slightly with some general changes to the front gate with a greenhouse. I had removed the plants from the greenhouse prior to putting the lot into the library. I had moved to a new version of SV, which ran great (my old one had constant error 12's and save times of more than half an hour). The new SV now started out around 2 GB and loaded and saved quickly, even though I had portered all residents from old SV over. When I placed the modified Landgraab villa into the new town, the lot ran at nearly 3.1 GB out of the box. This means the lag was somehow baked into the lot, no idea how.

I can only guess that you shouldn't transfer lots that have been played for a long time. Relatively fresh ones seem to be okay.

Thank you for the like.

I have now started on the Perfect Genetics Challenge. Haven't looked at it for a really long time. About 6 months.

It was a bit laggy to start and I lost one of my sims. Got him back as I noticed him drop out of my household. So I reset the lot and he returned minus his inventory.

I then decided to shut down and start again because I wanted/needed some of his inventory items. Particularly the Imaginary Friend that is in the process of being made real and features in the previous episodes.

After reloading I emptied all of their inventories. I just let them keep a few items depending on what they had. I also made sure each one had a camera and a multi tab because they all had them at one point.

Then I saved and set to work on the garden. Gardens always cause me grief as I generally end up with huge gardens. This one is so far not too bad. It all fits under 2 of those watering frame things that came with the greenhouse lot. I use it for them to get the gardening skill mostly.

Once I'd fixed their inventories I reset the lot using Master Controller. Then saved with a new name and the game is now humming and very smooth and saves quickly. I don't need to walk away from the computer and I am very impatient. Have been known to walk away for 5 or more hours without realising I've left OBS recording nothing and return to several GB of video to get rid of. If I've got a game that saves slowly I try to remember to pause before saving and to check that OBS isn't recording before I go and do something else while it saves.

I have 9 sims and two pets in the household at the moment. I got them to tidy up the garden too but that wasn't very big to start with.

I find inventories and gardens are the biggest causes of lag for me. When you said you have a greenhouse in the lot you moved I wondered how big it is and how many plants it's got in it - but you said none so that shouldn't be an issue. Also how much stuff your sims have in their inventories? Did you try resetting the lot. I found that helped with my example above. Even after emptying the inventories it was not really lagging but it wasn't running smoothly and I was afraid of an impending crash. Once I'd reset the lot it was totally smooth as well as no lag. But placing a lot from your library should have made it appear to be a new lot so reset shouldn't be necessary.

I know when Master Controller resets a sim it rebuilds them from scratch so you get a clean copy of the original. I'm not sure if that's what it does with a lot. My lot is 64x64 and I've got a lot of objects in it now. It felt terrible to move around in before I reset it.

As for the houses I saved to my inventory previously, well they are all still in my Big Game.

For example, this house was originally built in Twin Towns back in 2016. Here it is in Legacy Island III.
https://i.postimg.cc/G2XxT1bQ/B001.jpg

If you've been watching my Oscar's Childhood videos you will have seen it in Lucky Palms. I had to add a hill to the lot it is on now as Lucky Palms has flat lots. I originally built it for Haley, and she's still living in it.

The house across the street from it in Lucky Palms is where Mike lives with his family and I built that one in Sunset Valley Second Edition Final in 2015. It is still working. I have similar houses scattered around my various worlds. All from years ago now. It's just easier for me to move the whole house as they get to keep all of their things.

The only household I'm having issues with is the Isla Paradiso Bunch.
https://i.postimg.cc/15ZnVR9w/The-Isla-Paradiso-Bunch002.jpg
They live in Isla Paradiso. That's a problem all by itself. And they've been living there since 2015. And they've now got so many children and other household members plus they've almost done all of the tombs and collected the parts of the tomb collection from each world. Only 2 to go and they are in France. I haven't sold much of what they've collected and as a result their house is on the verge of explosion. I want to age up two of the toddlers to child. But I can't in Isla Paradiso due to issues with the stability of the lot. And it seems I can't when I took them with the household to visit France. I may have to change something in the mod's settings to see if I can make it happen. Or just sell a lot of what they've collected since the start of 2016. I haven't tried resetting the lot but I don't know if the computer would cope with doing that.

@Cororon Here's a screenshot that should please a spider enthusiast like you... :)

https://i.imgur.com/Zf0lpFb.jpg

@Cororon Yeah, Tox does actually look a bit mutated, but at least he seems to have retained his good sense of humor, telling the tomato joke in Barneys Comedy Club and all that. :)

Compared to most insects spiders seem smarter and more resourceful. I have in fact had a small black spider living half way up on the wall in the stair case down to the basement for quite some time now. Whenever there's a fly coming inside the house I swat it and drop it on the middle of the thin little greyish-white net. That's definitely one of the best things with spiders, that they catch disgusting flies.

In case anyone's interested in the recolorable spiders in the picture above, they're here at the Store, as a free download. :)

Thanks, @igazor and @Turjan :smile:

I'm thinking that maybe I should work on one lot at a time, first so that they have enough beds and stuff, and then decorate more when I want to take screenshots. Oh yeah, I should export and import my Retuner settings. Maybe take breaks from the chores to let the sims explore the surroundings. :smile: