cats-n-witchcraft

[cats-n-witchcraft]

How to simulate a populated world with none of the lag in the Sims 3.

In The Sims 3, non-playable characters, or NPCs, are Sims you typically don't plan to control or play in your game. This approach is ideal for players who may not enjoy rotational gameplay or for those who use it but don't intend to control every Sim in the world.

These NPCs serve the purpose of enriching your virtual world, enhancing its vibrancy, and contributing to a more dynamic and immersive gameplay experience.

By implementing these methods, you can expand your Sims 3 world, infusing it with life and stories, all while minimizing any significant impact on performance.

For a while, I grappled with a conundrum: my Sims 3 world was empty yet performed smoothly, thanks to a small number of households. I then attempted to address the emptiness by transitioning to larger worlds with more households, hoping for both a lively environment and reasonable performance. Unfortunately, neither option yielded the results I desired.

In this dilemma, I found a middle ground. I realized that I didn't have a deep attachment to all the households in my world, except for the ones I was actively playing with. What truly mattered to me was how realistic these Sims looked. The thought of spending hours creating a new family from scratch for every game didn't appeal to me.

So, I decided to take a different approach. Instead of managing numerous families, I opted to curate a select group of households, giving them my undivided attention and enhancing their homes with detailed decorations. This allowed me to avoid the performance lag associated with a high number of highly embellished households.

The only remaining challenge was simulating a vibrant and bustling world around these chosen households. To achieve this, I needed to employ some clever techniques to make the game believe the population was manageable even as I introduced more Sims to the world.

This system establishes a hierarchy of NPC households, Official Households, and custom role-generated Sims. Custom role-generated Sims are meticulously detailed NPCs without residential lots. They serve to enrich gameplay and storytelling and are exclusively found on the lots you've designated for them. They can be assigned to specific days and hours throughout the week. While they are less of a priority in terms of management, they play a crucial role in breathing life into your world. Moreover, they are less resource-intensive in your save file, a key element in tricking the game's engine into maintaining a manageable SP level. These Sims can still grow in significance to your household. For instance, I role-played a Sim winning a free daycare in Shang Simla. They left everything behind to start a new life there and frequently visited a neighborhood coffee shop, where they befriended a "regular" who needed housing. In exchange for rent, this regular helped my Sim run the daycare.

NPC households, on the other hand, are detailed NPCs with less detailed residential homes. They primarily exist to propel gameplay and storytelling throughout the world, with the potential to become more pivotal as your storytelling evolves. These Sims fall into the second-tier priority category for management.

Official Households are highly detailed NPCs with intricately designed homes. You're more likely to visit these homes and interact with these Sims. They represent the highest tier of management priority since the game simultaneously dictates their actions while you decide what your household is doing. This arrangement allows for the official household tier to be smaller and more manageable, leading to a smoother and more seamless gameplay experience.

Each of my Sims needs to harmonize with the overall aesthetic I desire for them. It's quite jarring to have a group of 5-6 Sims in my game with realistic proportions in terms of head size, hand size, body proportions, and other details, only to encounter the rest of the Sims who appear with cartoonish features, disproportionate heads, and peculiar body shapes. However, if you're like me, and you prioritize realistic and distinctive features for your Sims, the number of Sims you're either modifying or creating must be manageable.

NPC Households:

The core of constructing NPCs in your world should exclusively cater to your storytelling and gameplay themes, adhering to the overarching aesthetic. In this case, the homes of these Sims need not be fully developed. You should aim to place 8 Sims in each household. As long as the house contains 8 beds, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room with a TV for them to unwind, all the Sims can satisfy their needs and remain alive in the world. If necessary, you could expand this concept by creating an empty or beautifully decorated lot with flora that seamlessly fits the world's theme and add a basement leading to the NPC's houses. This way, they would simply disappear from the lot, serving as an option when you're unable to construct a convincing home that matches the world's theme. For example, in my cyberpunk world, I established a trailer park comprised of small crate trailer homes, which provided all the essentials for my NPC Sims while blending seamlessly into the world's ambiance. I also decorated the area with various "low-income" objects and street constructions to enhance its realism. If you can integrate the NPC houses into your world, that's ideal, but if not, there are creative ways to manipulate their housing to create a rabbithole-like experience.

A residence for 8 teenage boys.

A residence for 8 teenage girls.

Teenagers will populate your high schools and various community lots that they naturally visit, such as cafes, arcades, parks, pools, libraries, and more. These Sims are crucial if your active household includes teens; you'll require a diverse array of teen NPCs for your Sims to engage with.

A residence for 8 children, either in a Nanny home or Adoption home, serves the dual purpose of expanding your household with children and contributing to the overall realism of your world. Children and toddlers can be relatively scarce, so you can choose to create 4 girls and 4 boys or, alternatively, have 8 children of each gender distributed across two different Nanny/Adoption homes.

Additionally, you may want to have:

A residence for 8 single men.

A residence for 8 single women.

These additional households are crucial for creating a more diverse and substantial pool of potential friends, enemies, lovers, ex-lovers, and various other relationships outside of the official households you've established in your world, especially if you follow my system for official households.

You should also consider adding:

A group of 8 cashiers for the Savvier Seller/Merchant mod to manage modded registers that NRAAS Register does not recognize, which you will have to manually assign.

Occult sims can also be custom role-generated to effectively manage resource space in your world.

Celebrities, also generated through custom roles, can be placed in upscale clubs, fancy restaurants, city hall, the film studio, the radio station (for interviews), and other relevant locations to provide a more immersive experience of potentially encountering a 5-star celebrity in your world, rather than randomly finding them anywhere. You can also use disguises like hats and scarves to interact with these sims.

Include at least 1 landlord in your world to simulate your money overhaul system, creating a monthly rent system in the game. This landlord can be the wealthiest person in your world or any well off sim.

Employ 8 food staff to manage your establishments, providing both regular and quirky staff for a fun, multiple young adult roommate scenario.

Offical Households:

Official Households can encompass sims you're more inclined to rotate and play with, households you've revamped to better fit your narrative, or sims you intend to interact with in your story. While you might have a general idea of how you want these sims to relate to your household, be prepared to adapt if, for example, two sims meant to fall in love aren't compatible. You can then explore interactions with other established sims or NPCs in the world. In most cases, these sims will occupy the remaining vacant households in the world.

I choose to fill all the empty households because when I move my household, it's typically to a new world. In my role-play style, moving to a bigger house also implies moving to a "better" world. If my sim's generation doesn't move, their children or grandchildren will. As they transition to young adults (YAs), they often move in with another established YA sim, sharing a house as roommates. By that point, they've built enough relationships in the world to facilitate such arrangements.

This approach also circumvents the EA StoryProgression system, which might otherwise introduce randomly generated sims throughout your playthrough because all the houses are already occupied. Register-modified sims with NRAAS Register do not have traditional homes; they return to either an NPC door or back to the bin when not at work. This not only enhances performance but also extends the longevity of your savefile.

I find that having 10-12 official households strikes the right balance for me, considering the number of objects I use on my lots in my world. It's worth noting that the total number of objects matters less for game performance than the number of households the game engine has to manage in a world.

In a larger world with over 20 households and heavily decorated residential lots, you might experience lag, potentially a substantial amount. While this could be more manageable in smaller to medium-sized worlds, I still prefer to stick to 10-12 households, regardless of the world's size.

It's important to remember that the goal isn't just to have a certain number of households to create a livable world. The number of sims within those households and the level of detail you put into those sims are far more critical for your role-play style in the long run. This ensures an enjoyable gameplay experience with smooth performance, even as your save file progresses through many generations.

Personally, I prefer encountering sims I've spent time on, considered their basic personalities, and developed attachments to. This is more engaging and enriches the storytelling experience compared to random sims I haven't personally tweaked and have no connection with in my story. In that case, they might as well be deco sims, which do serve a purpose. If deco sims are more useful than randomly generated townies, it might signal an issue in that scenario.

This approach also opens up more lot sizes that might have been designated for residential lots to become community lots. This, in turn, allows me to create a more expansive and unique world. I can focus on providing a wide range of activities for all these Sims instead of just having numerous filled houses with featureless Sims and townies. Now, I can design more functional shops, eateries, and other unconventional yet practical lots for which I would have struggled to find space on the map. These lots might include a sprawling camping and hiking area surrounded by dense forests, a cozy yoga studio situated atop a bustling bodega in the heart of the city, a mini golf course, a hip-hop dance studio for TikTok enthusiasts, and even a PC gaming cafe.

A note about toddlers:

I aim to have at least four toddlers in four of these households. To avoid potential routing lag associated with toddlers, I utilize the NRAAS GoHere method to create a functional daycare. With this setup, toddlers from out of town will automatically populate the daycare lot, eliminating the need to create numerous toddlers in the world.

Toddlers, much like horses, can introduce routing lag into the game. To simulate a high toddler population without causing this issue, I rely on the NRAAS GoHere Daycare method. It treats the assigned daycare worker as if the household is actively played. Just as when you play a career, this method generates and sends random toddlers from outside your town to your daycare lot. As a result, even with four active toddlers in the world, I can befriend up to 12 toddlers to invite to birthday parties, all without the long-term routing lag.

To maintain a fully populated world with minimal lag and crashes, you might consider adopting my general play style, which involves having 10-12 official households. However, you might wonder how to keep your world lively under these conditions, especially when using the Ultimate Careers mod. In a world with 10-12 households, it's unlikely they can fill all the available jobs created by the mod.

This part of the process can be either enjoyable or a bit tedious. Before I start playing my chosen household, I go through each and every official household I've created and assign them their respective jobs. I've already decorated their homes and crafted their personalities with their career paths in mind, so I have a good idea of who is going to do what.

While this method ensures consistency in your storytelling and gameplay, it may not fill every possible Rabbithole job provided by the Ultimate Careers mod. Let's explore the various custom roles you can simulate to address this issue:

City Hall: If you haven't already appointed a mayor, now is the time to do so. By using MC, you can assign them the role of a level 7 career within the City Hall RH. This Sim will still frequent the lot but will now use the designated objects to enhance their job performance. Please follow this method for all other job roles within the City Hall, such as the Coffee Runner, City Council Member, and any related careers, Local Representative, Co-worker (a random employee who sits in the cubicle offices with your Sim, working to boost their performance).

Mausoleum: Consider converting this lot into a funeral home, separate from the actual graveyard. You can host events on this lot to attend funerals for Sims who have recently passed away, and whom you got to know during your gameplay. Alternatively, you can transform it into a morgue using the RH rug. In either case, here are some role options: Undertaker, Morgue Doctor, Morgue Assistant, Funeral Home Director, Admin Assistant.

Abandoned Warehouse: For trap houses or crack houses, think about adding drug dealers and drug users. For sketchy nightclubs and bars, consider adding "Bodyguards." To keep the kingpin's identity mysterious for roleplay purposes, you can simply give them the title of "The Boss."

Bistros: Most of the roles within bistros will be occupied by the Food Staff NPC household you've created. However, for a more vibrant dining experience, consider adding regular customers at varying days and hours, creating a bustling atmosphere. Combine this with deco Sims for added immersion.

Diners: Similar to bistros, many of these roles will be filled by the Food Staff NPC household. If you've created eight Sims in this category, you can place two Sims in each dining lot, potentially offering four dining spots in your world. You can also generate more servers, busboys, managers, and coworkers for these lots. Alternatively, you can use deco Sims, which are less resource-intensive and require minimal role assignment.

As a pro tip, you may have noticed that when your Sim gets a new job, a random Sim is automatically assigned as their boss. If there are no unemployed Sims in your world, the game generates a Sim to take on this role. These Sims are created to give players the feeling that their world is more populated than it actually is. You can use a similar approach. If your Sim lands a job at one of these open careers, a random Sim will be generated. You can then avoid creating a manager role for these lots or using a deco Sim, which can enhance performance. Simply delete the manager deco Sim if your Sim secures a job at one of these lots.

Bookstore:

Floor Staff/Coworker

Manager

Customer

Film Studio:

Producer

Stagehand

Staff

Celebrities

Reporters

Grocery:

Floor Staff/Coworker

Stocker

Manager

Customer

Hospital:

Coworkers

Doctors

Nurses

Janitor

Military Base:

Soldiers

Sergeants

General

Police:

Officers

Chief

Criminals

School:

Principal

Teachers

Students (YA, scaled down to appear as teens)

Janitor

Science Lab:

Scientists

Coworkers

Spa:

Masseuse

Floor Staff/Coworkers

Stadium:

Athletes with celebrity stars

Coaches

Reporters

Groupies

Subway:

Subway Technicians

Townie (consider Deco Sims for better performance)

Theater:

Dancers

Opera Singers

Coaches

Stagehand

The actual movie theater lot doesn't need the RH rug on it. With mods and store content, you can create an authentic movie theater experience. For the viewing shows options that come with the RH, you can role-play that these are Broadway shows or musicals.

Here are some more role-generated ideas for your Sims 3 world:

Homeless Sims: Simulate a transient homeless population that visits certain lots at random days and times. You can also create a makeshift homeless camp or tent area in your world.

Movie Theater Staff: Role-play employees of movie theaters, including ticket sellers, ushers, and concession stand workers.

Fashion Retail Staff: Create roles for sales associates, store managers, and fashion consultants in your retail stores.

Museum Guides and Curators: Populate your museums with knowledgeable guides and curators to enhance the museum experience.

Regular Townies: Add random townies to bars, clubs, and other hangout spots to create a lively atmosphere.

Townies for Libraries and Gyms: Populate libraries and gyms with townies to make these community lots feel more active.

Librarian: Appoint a librarian to manage the library lot and assist visitors.

Hotel and Motel Staff: Role-play roles like receptionists, bellhops, and housekeeping staff at hotels and motels.

Camp Counselors and Staff: Create camp counselors and staff for summer camps and outdoor recreational lots.

Hikers and Campers: Add hikers and campers to nature lots, hiking trails, and campgrounds.

Park Ranger: Role-play park rangers in natural parks to ensure a safe and well-maintained environment.

Seasonal Characters: Include Santa Claus and elves for holiday-themed events and the Easter Bunny for seasonal festivities and photo opportunities.

Activists: Environmental activists can be located outside lots under construction or in nature reserves to advocate for environmental causes.

Surfers and Beachgoers: Populate beach lots with surfers, beach bums, and tourists to create a vibrant beach atmosphere.

Tourists and Sightseers: Place tourists and sightseers in resort, hotel, and motel community lots to give your world a tourist-friendly vibe.

These additional roles can add depth and realism to your Sims 3 world and enhance your gameplay experience.

You can maintain a smaller town size by utilizing the custom role generator, deco sims, and crowd cheats to create a more populated and vibrant sim world without overloading your save file or affecting story progression.

Efficiently simulating "placeholder" sims gives the illusion of a bustling world without causing performance issues. During gameplay, you might find yourself forming relationships with these assigned sims and even incorporating them into your household when it suits your storyline. They can seamlessly become integral to your gameplay.

This approach allows you to create elaborately decorated worlds with high-quality sims while avoiding lag and ensuring your world doesn't feel empty.

Keep in mind the scheduling of these sims' arrivals on lots. Just like in real life, sims should have different shifts and visit places at different times to prevent simultaneous gatherings that might lead to a freeze lag in the morning.

Feel free to adapt this system to your preferences and enjoy your Simming experience!

[cats-n-witchcraft]

And brush your teeth whenever. There is no set time to brush your teeth! Do not fall into the trap that its like past 8 pm and now its too late. Brush your teeth at least twice a day. Your teeth will thank you I promise.

It's a lot healthier to go for a daily walk than to sign up for a gym membership you won't be using because you hate that kind of exercise. It's a lot healthier to eat a frozen meal than to skip a meal because you were too tired to cook something healthy. It's a lot healthier to take a quick shower than to procrastinate an elaborate routine for days. Don't aim so high that you won't be hitting anything!

[cats-n-witchcraft]

i do think im better than people that use ai for their “art” btw. i also think im hotter and funnier.

[cats-n-witchcraft]

someone asked if they could put my characters into character AI & I had to resist the urge to tell them i would self immolate and then haunt them

[cats-n-witchcraft]

What I say: Oh I make custom meshes for sims 3 What I do: Cry over the designing process

[cats-n-witchcraft]

its the closet to shadow i got-

Tagged by @deniisu-sims , link to the picrew: https://picrew.me/share?cd=PRLhVM3b55 #Picrew #little_guy_maker Tagging: @syninplays @crowri @honeyfizzly :3

Tagged by @bartoszsims3, link to the picrew: https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/2069970

Tagging: @suteflower, @annabellesims3, @cats-n-witchcraft, @qertyv

[cats-n-witchcraft]

this website’s easy watch. *dangles a bunch of greek gods like keys*

[cats-n-witchcraft]

Absolutely chomping at the bit to get play around with these in my game

i didn't forget about this project babes! just got busy thats all:)

[cats-n-witchcraft]

CIRI CIRI CIRI CIRI

POLAND AND TRUE WITCHER FANS, WE WON!!!!!!!

she looks so freaking beautiful in the trailer

[cats-n-witchcraft]

Honestly the English after Germanic English is super duper interesting but also hell to study or grasp. But very fun if you have the right resources!

NO ONE knows how to use thou/thee/thy/thine and i need to see that change if ur going to keep making “talking like a medieval peasant” jokes. /lh

They play the same roles as I/me/my/mine. In modern english, we use “you” for both the subject and the direct object/object of preposition/etc, so it’s difficult to compare “thou” to “you”.

So the trick is this: if you are trying to turn something Olde, first turn every “you” into first-person and then replace it like so:

“I” →  “thou”

“Me” →  “thee”

“My” →  “thy”

“Mine” →  “thine”

Let’s suppose we had the sentences “You have a cow. He gave it to you. It is your cow. The cow is yours”.

We could first imagine it in the first person-

“I have a cow. He gave it to me. It is my cow. The cow is mine”.

And then replace it-

“Thou hast a cow. He gave it to thee. It is thy cow. The cow is thine.”

[cats-n-witchcraft]

It really helps show how references are important!

Arcane animators self referencing!

This animator got to use his son for young Ekko's reference and it's so damn sweet!!

Imagine acting up this incredibly heart-wrenching scene in your lounge to a rolled up sock on a bag... They gave it their all too!

This scene's acting fidelity is incredible! Especially the shakiness of Ekko's movement to punch Jinx...

[cats-n-witchcraft]

I- Goodness. Holy shit. I never thought Id be in one of these especially as such a frankly newbie and bit of a lurker. My tagging, goodness. So many! Like. So so many blogs that have helped to make my game what it is now. @syninplays for helping me with so much, including but not limited to how best to tag my posts and listening to me rant about the process of making cc @deniisu-sims For their amazing batch conversions. Seriously, they make it look so easy @quailhogs Even though they arent as active anymore, I still think they should be more well known especially for their intricate worlds and storytelling you can find in them. Ive lost hours to their worlds and beautifully dark sims. @murfeelee Niche cc, niche cc I thoroughly and utterly appreciate @twinsimming Boatload of conversions and cool as heck game mods that add even more depth to the game @omedapixel Decorator mod? Lifechanging. Taking on the challenge of making a new medieval world is also something I really appreciate. Praaven, even remade isnt always a fan on my laptop. @crowkeeperthesimmer Amazing builder, amazing worlds and helpful build tutorials. My first taste of what could be done in sims 3 with enough patience and finagling @bioniczombie I forgot the tag name but I didnt forget you. Absolutely driven to chip away at converting sims 4 to sims 3 Rapidfire lets gooo @aroundthesims @thesweetsimmer111 @puddingface1902 @ohrudi @bellakonbi @nightospheresims @greenplumbboblover @aisquaredchoco @lumenniveus (I know they make stuff for sims 4, but Im working on converting their stuff and theyre just damn good at what they do) And many many more on modthesims who I dunno if they are on tumblr. Some specifics I cannot play without. Xantak for expanding the ever loving hell out of the supernaturals, Rainbowlack for a much needed override mod and Arro for cleaning up the ui a bit more. Here is to surviving another year and may the next one be fruitful!

Starting a simblr love train 💚

With the holidays here and the year ending, I think its rather appropriate to start a love train! Tag your favorite people so show your love and appreciation to them 💚

[cats-n-witchcraft]

Editing occlusion shadows on objects

This is a tutorial aimed at creators and converters who want to understand, at least a little, how to improve the appearance of their objects in the game. Yes, it’s a bit exhausting, just like creating an object from scratch, mapping it and texturing it, but the result is worth it. The shadow dynamics of TS3 are different from TS4. In TS4, the game itself creates these shadows when the object approaches a wall. In TS3 it is necessary for these shadows to be created using “lights” in TSRW. Of course, the occlusion is not perfect, but it gives the game a more realistic aspect by creating this idea of depth.

The icing on the cake: keep these shadows if they are large objects, like cabinets, sofas, beds, tables, chairs… Small decorative objects, like clutter, you can just delete these shadows. But if you are crazy about perfection and details, and really want even an ant to create its shadow when approaching a wall, my tip is that you clone using a small object as a base as this will make editing the shadows easier.

I will use as an example this armoire that I edited a while ago. The shadows have been edited and look like this when you open them in TSRW:

In the game, this is how the shadows appear when we position the object close to a wall:

To edit the shadows, you must click on the "MISC" tab in TSRW. These shadows are right below, where "LIGHTS" is written. Note that there is a + sign next to it and when you click it, a drop-down list appears with all the shadows separated. In this example there are 3 of these shadows. The names are the same, but let's say we have shadow 1 (front), shadow 2 (top) and shadow 3 (side). Edits must be made in the order they appear.

Click on the three dots to the right of lights. A window as shown in the image below will appear:

The lights that must be edited are found in the part where it says "OCCLUDERS". In this case, "Entry 1" corresponds to our "SHADOW 1" (front)...

For the front shadow, we will start by changing these two parameters that correspond to the width and position of the shadow. My tip is that you copy the original value, change this value to 1 and then click on "OK" to see what happens (that is, to see what changes when changing the value, so you will know if you need to change it to a higher value or smaller...). If it's not what you need, just paste the original value copied previously into the corresponding field and change it little by little until you reach the correct size of the object.

Front shadow height:

For the distance the shadow is from the object, this field must be edited - remembering that we are still editing the front shadow (which corresponds to the shadow that will replicate the width of the object on the wall):

For the other shadows, you must follow the same path: changing the values until it is proportional to the size of the object.

Bonus tip: Open various base game objects in TSRW and see how shadows are created. For example, select a chair and study each shade individually. With practice, you will realize that all you have to do is create a shadow on all sides of the object. For example: on a bed, you should have a shade for the headboard, another for the footboard, another for the side and another for the top, which would be the mattress. Therefore, it is important to study each type of object separately.

Now you might be asking yourself: Oh, yes, thank you very much... But where do I start? How will I know how to create a shadow from scratch? OMG! Help me!

Don't worry, it's very simple: when cloning an object, like a bed for example, it's obvious that you will use a bed from the game as a clone... So just edit the original shadows that correspond to the clone, so that they are the size of the bed you are creating for the game. Only that.

I say again: each object is a specific case. This tutorial is just a simple way to show you the way to understand how these shadows work and how they are generated for the game.

Yes, creating a beautiful object is hard work and requires dedication, time and effort. Therefore, value the creators who strive to deliver you a quality object ♥.

If you feel like helping me, here is a link for donations. Thank you very much ♥.

Tutorial inspired by: @bioniczombie and @sideshowsnob

[cats-n-witchcraft]

Gather around. This is how I edited and added slots for TS3.

Create a new object in TSRW with the object you want to change.

To see the assigned slots Click the slots button at the top and top right.

Open your Container Entries. Right Click the entry and Duplicate. Click NO for renaming the container slot. You will have a new entry. Click on the 3 little dots for the Slot Editor.

Give New Bone Name as eight zeros 00000000. This will allow your objects to function. (trust me if you don’t do this things will be buggy). Not necessary but you can also give them names.

Change the Placement Flags. For this I checked small, medium, large, decorative and full rotation. (you can also flag for other things or objects. Functional flag would be for phones and similar objects) 

And the positions. At the bottom are the placement numbers for your x,y,z values. You can change the position here. And click ok button. Or you click turn the slot showing option at the top off. Click on your slot at the right and manually move it with your mouse cursor. 

And that’s it. Export your object and check it in game.

You can also do this in Blender or s3pe. I just found this way much easier. Pocci has a tutorial if you need your slots to tilt. 

Still learning things so if I missed anything I will update this as I go along.

[cats-n-witchcraft]

[Blender Finds] Mio3UV add-on

coming out of my unannounced break to share this cool new free UV tool for blender🤩 (may require v4.2) (gifs are taken from the documentation site)

full documentation here:

[cats-n-witchcraft]

It came out better than expected! Im rather proud of how the tiling came out!

[cats-n-witchcraft]

thoughts?