Progress, Progress, Progress!

Hello everyone, I’m back to update you on our progress.

As you know, I’m working on a project aligned with the expectations of our community. Through a survey, you told me what kind of world you’d like to experience, what restrictions you’d be willing to support, and how these would contribute to your immersion.

It’s very common to find a wide variety of “older” or even medieval maps for The Sims. However, most of the time when we play in these worlds, many of us end up having the same experience as in a small American neighborhood. In other words, we use traditional methods to eat, have fun, and live. But when a map is built to reflect a different period or time, shouldn’t our gameplay adapt to that? Well, in theory, yes.

Many players align their gameplay simply by choosing not to include certain objects. However, that’s a very easy path to subvert during those moments when you don’t want to overthink or reflect on how to solve problems.

To develop my own game, I’m using The Sims 3 as a platform to build skills I consider important in this new process. One of them is immersion. I want to understand what makes a game feel more immersive so I can replicate that in my own game. So, I created the survey to get out of my own head and understand how other players would like to play. After all, even though this is the game of my dreams, it's being built for people like you who, luckily, I’ve discovered are people like us — who crave something different, something more challenging, and sometimes even a bit strategic.

So, I’ll be sharing a bit of what I’ve been doing behind the scenes, and what visions I’m setting for this project based on your responses.

More than a world, an experience:
Remember: Everything you're seeing is a work in progress and subject to change.

We could say there was a technical tie between the world styles you’re interested in: a rural colony at the dawn of civilization, a scout camp deep in the forest, and the Victorian Era were the most voted. As a game designer, it’s my role to interpret this data. What I understood is that you’re looking for challenging gameplay in a time when resources and functionalities are limited, therefore presenting new obstacles. It’s not necessarily about the setting, but about the context. And as a player myself, I get it — because that’s exactly the kind of environment I seek too.

Something that has frustrated me in modern games is how dependent our characters are on phones, for example. And how almost every problem can be solved by a phone or a computer instantly. This removes paths and resources that, as a player, I’d truly like to explore!

So to honor your ideas, as I mentioned in the previous post, we’re building a village. Divided into four islands, each with its own value proposition. We’ll have residential, commercial, industrial, and gathering areas.

Since I started creating maps for The Sims 3, it’s been my goal to make them look beautiful both from afar and up close. And well, that’s a bit of a challenge. The more micro details you add, the higher the chances it looks messy from a macro perspective. So I try to make every plant and object feel like it's exactly where it belongs, and when possible, reduce or eliminate the appearance of them overlapping. Challenging, but at the same time, meditative.

The idea is that from afar, you feel the DENSITY of the city. And up close, the VARIETY of details. This is part of building an immersive experience. More than just looking like a city, it needs to be a city.

For this particular world, I’ll be using some of the knowledge I developed in Pleasantview to build streets that look like nothing you’ve seen before. They need to be less straight, more curved, with organic shapes and older materials. One small example I like to use to illustrate this vision is that street on the left near the two houses with orange (or red) roofs. Even though it currently has placeholder textures for intersections and sidewalks, it already shows the kind of shape I envision for that area — and this will be expanded to other regions. The idea is that the roads eventually integrate into the surrounding environment.

It’s important for this project that the city is not just horizontal but also vertical. So we’re building on multiple elevation levels, many of them close to each other to evoke that sense of density we’re aiming for.

Now let’s talk about the real challenge.

Because what you’ve seen so far is how I’m building a city as a character, with identity, attire, personality, and elements that make it — in a way — the protagonist of our story.

For the experience, based on your responses, I’m starting to create mods that remove objects from Buy Mode that don’t belong to that era. For example: No radios. Possibly no refrigerators? I’m still thinking about that! Maybe all lighting will be based on non-electric sources?

According to the survey, 44% of you would like the city’s content to be limited by its context. So we’d need to think about what kind of objects the citizens of this world could produce access to. That might include removing beds made of overly modern materials?
You tell me! xD

Meanwhile, 38.5% said you’d like to break the rules sometimes. And I imagine that in the perfect scenario, those players could use a resource often overlooked by most traditional players — as a form of "manipulation." Yes, I’m talking about Lifetime Rewards!

What if, by helping a genius inventor, you earned enough points to buy a floating bed? Well, technically, you deserve a little pampering in the middle of an old world, don’t you think? Because your character worked hard and developed themselves to earn it. That’s just one example, of course.

So, while 52.7% said that limiting objects would help maintain the world’s coherence, I truly believe that could be a great idea! I’m not sure yet if I can create new lifetime rewards, but I do know that many of them tend to make life easier and are often ignored.

I’m also planning to limit the type of clothing available in CAS soon. Maybe (no promises) even hairstyles. However, something needs to be clear. This project will require players to temporarily replace their entire mods folder. And I know many of you are very attached to it. But the reason is that, to create a unique experience, we need a unique combination of assets and mods. And in some cases, certain mods may conflict with one another. Let me know if that’s an issue for you.

My intention is to share my complete Mods folder with you (including all mods I created), and if third-party mods (from other creators) are necessary to contribute to this experience, I’ll link them separately so that players can download them. I understand this might make the process of experiencing this world a bit more complex, but at the same time, it’s my way of avoiding misunderstandings or setbacks with other creators — and respecting their time and work.

Now tell me what you think about everything you’ve seen here and what your thoughts are.
Would you like to discover new ways to eat without a fridge? Would you enjoy storing food in chests for future meals? In a world without fridges, does it even make sense to have stoves? xD
Don’t worry — I’ll consult more references to be sure!