And now for something completely different : Altensimmen in Sims 3 - Update 17

[catty]

Ok just wow, I'm going to have to come back later and do a proper post as I think I need to go thru the pictures a couple more times before saying anything more

Good intentions, etc, its been a weird old week what with one thing and another, including resigning from the site staff ... the why's and wherefores aren't important anymore.

So on to your last post ... first of all I agree with Dantes it does take some getting used to not seeing "But I miss cars, trains and pedestrians." but and I think I have said this more than once you have a fine eye for those little details that are easy to miss but make the difference I think from just showing us a painting and what you post which is a series of snapshots from a city.

Case in point the washing line and kids swing you have in pictures 7 and 8, the car parked on an angle in picture 10 and the hand mower in picture 17.

And as for the flowers and trees you have they are in a word stunning.

Thanks for the latest update it was great and I look forward to the next one   

-catty

[noahclem]

You keep dazzling us with these lovely details :O   I really like the railroad and the green spaces, as well as the more technical pictures. Keep up the great work 

[Vizoria]

Amazing work!

[c.p.]

Wow, I didn't know you could create such beautiful landscapes in the Sims.

[vortext]

Village is starting to take shape very nicely. Also I was wondering (and sorry if I missed it): what's the village name?

As for the gif trouble: the issue probably lies with the image host. Though the site says it supports .gif, that's no guarantee is supports animated gifs. That's what I found out years ago when I tried my hand at gifs for the first time, I remember it took me a while to find a suitable host. Nowadays I use both imgur and dropbox to embed gifs on site.

[carlfatal]

Heya!

First replies!

@catty,
thank you! There is no need to run, I mostly can do one update a month... 
And yes, working for a forums can become a time consuming job sometimes, and there are lots of reasons for it.
And to the lifeless scenes: Today it will not look very crowded, but I found someone freezing... 
And the plants indeed are stunning. The flora was the reason for me to make the step from Sims 2 to 3.

@deora,
thank you, Chris! Sims 3 indeed is a fantastic sandbox, and I know no other program to realize something like I do here.
The house series with the pyramid roofs: It was a must for me, built from the 30´s to the 50´s, they are so common here around. I wasn´t allowed to ignore them. 

@Dantes,
thank you!

@noahclem,
thank you very much!

@Vizoria,
thank you too!

@c.p.,
thank you! The CAW for Sims 3 is not the easiest tool (at least it´s made by Maxis/EA ), but indeed for me it is the best program to build a realistic looking old town. But like in SC4 I needed a lot of custom content to leave Maxis behind.

@vortext,
thank you, Eric!
The name of the town? I see, the title was too long, as "Altensimmen" seems to hide behind the "and now to...". But yeah, the people here know their village as Altensimmen. 
And a second thanks for the help with the gif problem. Seems, that my hoster doesn´t allow gifs. Dropbox is a good idea, as I am registered there, and sooner or later I will try to make another one. 


I was´nt really active over the last month, but this is reasonable. I am not connected to any conventional power system, all I use is solar power, and during the winter a small netbook is my only computer.

BUT, there is a very good reason for a teaser: wintertime, isn´t it? I was visiting a friend, who owns a normal apartment, and there we played a few days over Anno 1404. In this time I made a first attempt to export my town. This step is always the one I fear. Will it work?.

And yeah, the fear was reasonable. All time I tried to export, the CAW came up with an error message. After two hours searching in the www I eventually found the solution. Luckily everything is fine on my side, only I had to manipulate the memory of the game, as it doesn´t accept an export with custom content. This was an easy step after knowing the problem.
And then I installed the finished file and started the game. First it did not look different, but now I was able to leave the pause mode. And so can show you some nice winterpictures.

Here, where I live, we have not much snow in the winter, mostly rain, Frankfurt is the most northern point on the European continent, where palms can grow outside, and we have one small park with a lot of mediterranean plants here, called "Nizza". But Altensimmen has snow, and although I am no snow fan, here I like it...   

After loading the town I placed a young Maxis-premade couple in "my" house:


Then I changed game speed and did wait for snow. And when winter started, I made these pictures.

Early winter near the river:


Heavy snowfall:


A view over the town:


View to the town hall:


I think, someone is freezing here...



This was all today. I am no Christian, but it´s midwinter, and I wish you all a few happy and peaceful days with your loved ones, lots of cookies or whatever you want! 

[catty]

Well I don't visit SC4D as much as I used to, but an Altensimmen update will bring me back every-time   

I want Sims 3, seriously those winter shots are     magic, the lights with just a hint of something happening inside the houses, the snow on the ground and houses, the icicles on the roof eves and the falling snow, most of the tree's and shrubs, etc obviously in winter mode and yes the people.

but it´s midwinter, and I wish you all a few happy and peaceful days with your loved ones, lots of cookies or whatever you want!

Hope your midwinter is just as nice   

[vortext]

Export trouble was well worth it, absolutely gorgeous winter pics!!

[deora]

Wow,those winter pics are really breathtaking beautiful,the weather effects in Sims 3 are really superb.
I finally want to have snow here in my area,too.
For everyone else (because Carl lives sort of in the same area):Last year there was now snow,even days with temperatures below 0 Degrees Celsius were rare.We only had rain,rain and even more rain.
And it seems that this will again happen this winter.Last friday we had 10 to 12 Degrees Celsius,it feels more like October than December.
Also some weeds like dandelion are sprouting again here and there.
Well,at least our Simswill have a white christmas.
I also wish you all happy holidays and a great new year.

[romualdillo]

I really looks as the perfect Germa town!!!! At least it's as perfect as the idea we have here in Spain of a German town!! 

Sadly we all are having less wintry days. (Or having them out of date)  (Sorry for the off-topic comment)

[Earwhyckque]

Wow, your work is outstanding!

My favourites are the pictures showing the heavy snowfall (although I would expect a few more trees in the middle, behind the houses) and the view over town. It is too bad that you show us what is still not possible in SimCity: freely cluttering buildings to create an organic looking town. Well made!

Which brings me to a side note: I wonder why still no connection has been made between the two games; planning a small village/neighbourhood, for example on the smallest SC4 city tile and then letting Sims inhabit the place. As well as the other way around: if the Sims in their game can't get to work, mayor Defacto may construct a railway to Simcity or place a bus stop in town (this would tackle your railway frustrations ).

Silly thoughts Until the game codes become open source I will visit Altensimmen regularly and envy your skills!

EDIT: by freeware I meant open source

[Dantes]

Amazing snow pictures! Fantastic work !

[c.p.]

Wow, wow, wow   Those snowy pictures are fantastic.

[art128]

On behalf of the SC4Devotion Of Special Interest This Month Committee, congratulations on being selected as the first OSITM MD of 2015!

[Fasan]

Congratulations!  

[catty]

Congrats ... Its very well deserved   

[romualdillo]

Congratulations!!! 

[vortext]

Congratulations, curious to see what you have in store for us! 

[carlfatal]

Happy new year! 

At the first place I want to thank the site staff for choosing my MD for the OSITM. I lost it one time, I won´t do it again! 

Replies, shorter than usually:

@catty, vortext, deora, romualdillo, Earwhyckque, Dantes, c.p., art128, Fasan,
thank you all for your comments! Your enthusiasm in following my MD did bring it into this OSITM. 

@Earwhyckque,
indeed, I can do things here, we currently aren´t able to do in SC4. But I strike a new path here, Sims 3 never was made for something like this.
The most EA worlds are laggy cause the creators didn´t spend enough attention into routing. Fixed versions can be found on some community sites. I found this very interesting and started reading about, what causes routing problems. And now I am playing with exactly these things, cause I am sure, that I can prevent the game from lagging later on. At least I hope so... 

Merging Sims and SimCity - this was part of the Sims 2. Here we can create Sims 2 neighborhoods with SC4 terrain and streets on the smallest SC4 tile, - still some of the trees I use in SC4 will appear on a Sims 2 world. The source code is partly identical, thanks to thoughtful programmers like Will Wright.



OKAY, but now to my first OSITM special:

More than ever I will show work in progress. I hope I can finish the three areas I am working on during the OSITM, cause in the meantime I reached a point, where small changes aren´t easy to recognize, although some of them needed a lot of thoughts about, how to realize them. A new texture for a wall - well now it HAS to match all the others, and also it still should be different from the neighboring areas. No easy task sometimes, CC here also can be a dependency.
At the moment I am using 1.2Gb community made CC and 1.3Gb EA-DLCs. All this will be needed to see the town ingame like I did it. And sadly I am always finding new things like gutters and matching downpipes...  . Maybe also interesting: To save the file needs 10 minutes now. 

First is the cloister. Here I finished the inner parts, walls, doors, floors, and also I did the first steps in the garden.
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There is a heavy slope to the river, but I tried to make as much space usable as I could. The first floor here is the cellar, and still it needs a lot of stairs to reach the shore.


The next part is the main street. I want to fill all the lots there slowly, and some of the former dummies now have a facade. The obviously abandoned building is a perfect example for not really matching textures. I tried a lot but later I looked to that house and thought, that the style of the windows needs other "wallpapers" here. This will be changed, but I am waiting for the right moment and idea.

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And at least there is the supermarket, I am playing with. This building is very special, cause it looks like an alien. In the first place I wanted to create an old building here, but then - hey, it is the perfect place for something really ugly, I thought. It has three floors, and two of them only are used for shaping the roof. Sadly I didn´t found any signs of companies like EDEKA, but I am still searching. The most parts of the interieur come from the same french creator, who´s Paris set I am using for bus stops, phone cells, and other street furniture.
As you can see, they still are cleaning up, freezers and place to store fresh vegetables will come as soon as I find some.

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I hope, you like it! 

[romualdillo]

Great work again!! 

When you start using CC you just can't stop searching and downloading items!!  (only aroundthesims has a lot) The new supermarket looks horrible!! It's fantastic!!  I have a question, How do you make the floors to look so thin? I thought the minimal height was a fourth of the normal height...