Re: Create a world edit in game mode doesnt work.

@nycbigl  Hi again.  I was just about to suggest that you ask about CAW EIG in the Sims forums (I have exactly zero experience with the tool), but I see you're already all over that.  From what I've read, you're right that EIG won't work with your version of the game.  You might be able to get around it, though, by starting a new game the blank world and editing it in Edit Town, just as you would an existing world.  I'm not sure whether that would work, but it might be worth trying.

I also saw you mentioned something about your computer crashing.  This could be due to its hardware, or just because TS3 likes to be difficult.  If you want, you can run a dxdiag on your computer and attach the results to a post here using the "browse" button.  (It might be better to start a new thread, though, so that anyone else coming in for a consult doesn't get sidetracked by the CAW issue.)  Both higher- and lower-end systems need a bit of help with TS3, although of course the steps needed to run the game properly are different.  (Or you might already have it covered.)

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

Anyway, I hope things are going well for you, and I'm glad to hear that you're still enjoying TS3, now on a (hopefully) more cooperative system.

Thank you so much for your reply. You are very kind and generous.

My computer is brand new. I only just got it just a little bit over a month ago. It's a Windows 10 Dell computer with 8GB of Ram and 119GB still free of the 232 GB of hard drive room.

Last night I tried doing Edit in World again and it crashed my entire computer completely. It just turned off on it's own and shut my computer off. Then I uninstalled and reinstalled again making sure I had the right version. When I tried to go into edit in world again it crashed my computer yet again.

I have made up my mind and I am choosing to forgo making my own world. I have never had such an up to date current computer in my life. I have always used older versions due to lack of money. I got this new computer out of shear luck. No joke. I don't want to take any chances in damaging it.

As for using a world that was premade, it's not what I wanted. I wanted to recreate a world based on the Burning Man festival that is held once a year in the Black Rock desert in Nevada, USA. 70,000 people live in the desert area in a temporary grid shaped like a clock face with the streets going from 2 o'clock to 10 o'clock and the avenues labeled  from A to M. The "Man" (a giant wooden statue that the festival is named after and then later burned live and in person at the end of the event) is located in the center where the clock hands would be. And at twelve o'clock is a temple where people who wish to morn departed loved ones can leave messages to them before it is also burned on the last day of the event. The Burning Man grid is so massive that it can be seen from space when the festival is in full swing and then it disappears when the event is over as if it were never there.  

I spent days building the Black Rock mountains and I made dirt roads that lead to the desert area where the festival and campsite were to be. I laid dirt roads out in a clock formation in a grid that was from 2 o'clock to 10 o'clock but due to lack of room I only did the avenues from A to C, which was fine by me. I made lots for residential and communities, making sure they were the sizes I needed for the buildings that I hope to put on them. I filled the mountain with trees and spawners and made hiking trails for my sims to jog on. And I did all of the terrain painting I wanted for my desert city. I made sure to save my work every so often because I know how the Sims game can be if you don't do so. I put days of work into what I had already created thus far and it' was all for nothing. How saddening. If there's no way of solving the issue than I guess I am going to forget about creating something I was so looking forward to playing with. Something the Sims might not have ever thought of before like creating an art and music festival where you would have to camp like Burning Man here in the U.S. or the Glastonbury Festival in England. 💔

Again, thank you so very much for your help and your suggestions. You're very kind and generous and for that I am very grateful. ❤️

P.S. The image below is from Google and it's of the Burning Man art festival in the Black Rock Desert. One the grid is made it is refereed to as Black Rock City.

@nycbigl  Your RAM and hard drive are fine (as you know), but I was more concerned about your graphics card, and your processor to a lesser extent.  TS3 can be hard on lower-end graphics cards, especially at high settings.  On the other hand, strong graphics cards need their in-game frame rates capped, or else they can work too hard and even burn themselves out.  TS3 doesn't have any (useable) fps limiter of its own, so players need to use an outside tool.

Since you mentioned the computer is a Dell, the other question is whether it might be overheating and shutting down to protect itself.  I'm guessing it's a laptop?  Hopefully you keep it elevated or use a cooling pad while you play.  Dell computers aren't known for having good cooling.  (And an overworked graphics card can generate a lot of excess heat.)

Regardless, there's no reason you need to share a dxdiag or the rest of your specs if you're taking care of your system.  I just want you to know that you're welcome to ask, if you like.

The world you described sounds fascinating.  There are a number of world builders out there, but much of their work is tropical with lots of water; yours would be a pleasant change of pace.  It's too bad you're not comfortable running CAW in it anymore, but I totally understand the urge to protect your computer.  Even without CAW and EIG, you might have fun redesigning existing worlds in Edit Town, erasing the existing lots and rebuilding to suit your taste.  It's not the same, but it can still be fun.

Whatever you decide to do, if you ever have questions, you know where to find me.

So sorry I hadn't responded. I was at a Medieval Festival all day long today and I don't have a smart phone. I use an old fashion flip phone. LOL! What can I tell you, I'm an old fart that refuses to replace things that are not broken or causing problems. LOL! 😳

Anyway, my brand new Dell is a desktop PC, not a laptop. As for graphic, it took me a while to find out but I think I found the info on my computer;

Total Available Graphics Memory: 1695 MB

Dedicated Video Memory: 64 MB

System Video Memory: 0 MB

Shared System Memory: 16131 MB

I don't know if that info helps. I might have given the wrong info. If I did, I'm sorry about that.

I am very grateful for all of your help. Your very kind. ❤️

@nycbigl  I've been very proud of myself for keeping my iphone 5 and refusing to update its four-year-old iOS... until recently, when someone who will remain (screen)nameless mentioned having an iphone 3.  But it sounds like you have us both beat.  (And who wants to be glued to their smartphone screen at a Medieval festival, anyway?  It seems like it would defeat the entire purpose of going.)

As for your graphics card, you haven't listed the model, which does make some impact.  It would have its own section in your dxdiag, right underneath the overview listing your processor and RAM.  I'd still be curious about your setup, including your hard drive—256 GB isn't a whole lot, especially in a desktop.  Of course, whether you want to run a dxdiag and post it is entirely up to you.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

From the graphics card info you did post, though, it's clearly integrated, not dedicated, and will have a lot of trouble running Pets, Seasons, ITF, and IP (the most demanding packs in order).  You'll need to be careful not to overwork it and to keep your computer well ventilated.  And it's entirely possible that CAW was putting too much strain on your hardware, although it's difficult to tell for sure.

Unfortunately, even the systems experts can only give an estimate of how well TS3 will run on a particular system, as each computer responds a bit differently.  If you'd like some more specific advice for protecting your hardware, I can ask someone who knows more than I do to weigh in.

I had to see a video on how to find out what Graphics Card my Windows 10 uses because I was so confused as to what I was looking at. It turns out the answer was in front of my dumb face all along. LOL

My PC has;

Intel® Q45/Q43 Express Chipset (Microsoft Corporation-WDDM 1.1)

I have been reading in several different forums and many people have not been able to do Edit in World with CAW. It's an on going problem that has been happening for several years now. Some say it has to do with when they changed the way the Sims 3 is launched and got Origin involved. The program Origin uses conflicts with CAW. Others say that CAW can't handle store contents and that you have to remove your downloads file, which would be terrible since I downloaded items just to use on the world I'm trying to create. Others say you have to uninstall the Sims 3 and reinstall it and start anew. Again, terrible idea. And then some people say you have to download a program to make it work. You can imagine how baffled I am. 😕

Anyway, again, thank you for all of your advice. I am still grateful for the help. Even if no solution is ever found, at least I tried and that  there were some very kind people like you that gave it a go in assisting me in my hunt for an answer. ❤️

@nycbigl  We only ever got the beta version of CAW, so it's not surprising that the program has so many issues.  (For example, Steam users have to edit their registries to make it work at all, which is not a lot of fun.)  It's also not something I'm familiar with, so I just fall back on the troubleshooting advice of others with more experience on the subject.  Still, if I ever see a reliable solution to the EIG problem, I'll make sure to pass it along to you.

As for your graphics card, it's older and will need extra care.  One of the biggest favors you can do for it is turn down your graphics options, particularly water and high-detail lots.  I have a reasonably strong card, and I keep those at mirrors only and 2, respectively.  But you might need to lower the other options as well.

I'm also not sure that your card can handle the stress of Pets and Seasons, or even ITF and IP.  Those packs demand a lot from graphics cards, and even the lower-level dedicated ones can struggle to keep up.  Again, every computer performs a bit differently, but yours isn't really built for graphics-intensive gaming.  If you really want to play with these packs, you might need to use only one at a time to protect your system.  Hopefully it will hold up and perform well enough for you to play TS3 the way you want.

I haven't had any problems playing the Sims 3 with my new computer. I have all of the expansion packs and a few stuff packs and it's been working great. I have never been happier with the game. The CAW turns on separate from the actual game. I have been able to build the world and save it but it only crashes when I try to do Edit in World. I have yet to be able to export my new world. I was hoping to build the lots while playing the game. But it keeps telling me I need to add a picture. I just can't figure out how to add a .png image in the 200 and something x 200 and something size that they want. There is no way of taking a screen shot of the world while in CAW. I have tried. I took photo of it with my camera but I can't figure out how to lower the image size in windows 10. I knew how to do that when I use to use a Windows 7 laptop but Windows 10 seem to be lacking  in a lot of photo and videoing options that use to be in the older OS.

I guess the answer will come to me someday. I'm now too busy with other things, CAW with have to wait for at least a week. It's NY Comic Con time and I will be going 3 out of the 4 days the convention lasts. I always cosplay and go with a few people. There is much to plan and get ready. LOL!

Again, THANK YOU for all of your help. YOU ROCK! 😃❤️

@nycbiglI'm glad to hear the game is running well.  If you do ever start having trouble, there are people with much more knowledge than I have who post here too, so you'd have no trouble getting an expert opinion.  (This is also true of the Sims forums where you posted a few days ago; in addition to the CAW section, there's a New Members thread in help/technical discussions.)

There are a few ways to take a screenshot in Windows 10, but the one I use is windows key-shift-S.  The game does have to be in windowed mode for this to work.  You drag your cursor over the screen to capture the shot you want, and it's saved to the clipboard.  I usually just open Paint (you can search for it in the Start menu in the lower left corner) and then paste the shot into it (still crtl-V).  From there, you can resize or crop the image to your liking.  If you're not getting the effects you want, Paint 3D might work better.  You can also right-click on an already saved image to open it in whichever app you choose.

I hope you have a great time at Comic Con, and you know where to find me when you're back to TS3.

Thanks! I'll try that. I'm still learning my Windows 10. I'll give it a go later on. 🙂

Hi, I know it's been a while but I'm just giving an update.

I still can't use the Edit In Game option in CAW but what I did was after making sure all of my roads were thoroughly connected and after I was finished building mountains and adding terrain colors, I exported my game and have been adding lots while playing the game. It HAS been very annoying when I realized that some of my roads aren't 100% straight and that the lots won't snap on next to the road. And that I can't customize the size of the lots. I have been saving lots and businesses from the other worlds but when you need a premade game lot that is like 30x54 I have no choice but to add an empty lot that is 64x64. It wastes so much space. I could be using that spot for other venues or residential homes. OH Well! It's a good thing I made a very large world and have a lot of space. But is IS such a waste. I also can't add terrain colors after I have exported the game too. So if I want to add an asphalt color in the spaces between lots I can't. Plus certain community objects and trees are not available like there are in CAW. There are a lot less community trees. I was looking for a very certain tree that I used a lot while I was building in CAW that looked the most like cactus but when I exported and began making lots while playing the game I found that tree was not an option and I couldn't use it as a between lots fillers.

Despite all of the annoying things I am having fun building. I am thinking about creating my home town of New York City next when I am good and ready. LOL!

BTW, Comic Con was great. One of the panels my brother and I went to gave a free subscription to the DC Universe internet streaming channel. What a geekgasm I had. WOOHOO! LOL! :eahigh_file:

Again, thank you so much for all of your help. You are very kind and generous. You Rock. ❤️ 🙂