Well, I think I just died...

Ok, so pardon the dramatic headline, but seriously.

I just found a way to make Edit in Game work again!

It was a method I have seen before, but was skeptical of using, since it involved a piece of code with some.. inappropriate language in it, however.. after landing on this youtube video in portuguese (but with english subtitles), which was linked to from this Reddit post, I decided to give it a try... after all, I had nothing to lose... (and I already had a back up of my work on an external SSD, so if anything should go wrong...)

Proof that it worked. This is my unfinished city of Wad Nahadau.. as you see on this picture, there are many lots missing. I have finished building all the lots though, saved them to the library and put them in a save file for playtesting, but never actually saved them to the word file itself. Only the lots that I made while still using Origin.. before the EA app came along and ruined it...

So yeah, now it's time to start the lot placement. It's gonna take a long time though, as there are many, many lots to place.. and I hope I can make it work. Of course, it did crash while saving after this screenshot, so I'll have to see.. Maybe if I try it with smaller batches, though it's kind of not recommended.

What I did:

1) Downloading and installing Origin from this link. https://taskinoz.com/origin/
2) Turn off the EA App if it's running. Opening Origin without logging in.
3) Locating the local.xml file in My Computer/Program Data/Origin (turn on hidden files to see the folder).
4) Opening local.xml in Notepad to insert the following code (without the vulgar url as suggested in the portuguese youtube video):

  <Setting value="true" key="MigrationDisable" type="1"/>
  <Setting key="UpdateURL" value="http://someadress.com" type="10"/>
  <Setting key="AutoPatchGlobal" value="false" type="1"/>
  <Setting key="AutoUpdate" value="false" type="1"/>

I inserted the code near the bottom of the file, but before the line that read

</Settings>


5) Then I logged in to Origin and waited for a while for a notification telling me Sims 3 was added to the library.

6) Clicked Origin in the top left corner and disconnected to go offline.

7) Created a new directory called 'Worlds' in my Documents folder outside the regular Electronic Arts/CAW directory.

8) Opened CAW and the world file I want to edit, and chose Save As to save it in the newly created Worlds folder. Remember to delete the file path and leave only the world name before saving, or you'll just be saving in your regular folder again...

9) Closed CAW and reoponed it again to open the newly saved .world file.

10) Opened it in 'Edit in Game' and was happy that it worked.

Wad Nahadau, The Bushweeds and stuff..

So.. it's definately time for an update here now. In the town of Bewickton the local folk punk band The Bushweeds had since we last saw them at Palash and Sofias wedding gone into town to try and get a record deal.. to, unfortunately, no success at all..

Meeting up with a representative of Orange Music Records it had to go as it went..

The meeting ended with an argument, and they got no deal.. Blast these capitalist major labels and companies! It's the same story as it always is.. so the band was no a little down and desperate, but by next summer they had managed to pull things together enough to record and release their debut album, completely self funded..

An important milestone in the bands history, no doubt, but they couldn't rest on their laurels now, as they had ambitions of course. This was just the beginning of their journey, since of course, they wanted after all to spread their music far and wide.. so they had to know do their best to make arrangements to get live shows to go on their first little tour to gain followers.... all of which is easier said then done without a record label and a marketing apparatus having your back, but they still scraped together a few tour dates the following autumn...

 

..and this of course, is where the city of Wad Nahadau comes into the picture. It's their fourth tour date, and their set to play at a venue called "The Cave", which is a former bomb shelter, now turned into a concert venue run voluntarily by students in the city..

The only issue here was that the city of Wad Nahadau, which is a project I started sometime in 2022 (I think, I don't actually remember when I started it.) This was a time when we were on Origin and not he EA App, and everyone could use 'Edit in Game' from the 'Create a World' tool without any problem..

 

At one point I realized that I had made the terrain of the town a little to hilly and thought I should perhaps find a way to flatten it a little, as it made building on the lots in the downtown area a little difficult, and it probably didn't look it's best.. I also needed to take a break from town building as it it really is a lot of work.. and of course, in the meantime here came the EA App to mess everything up...

Since I couldn't use Edit in Game I could no longer save whatever I built on the lots to the town itself, and if since I had already started on the downtown area, redoing it's terrain would also mean deleting the lots and everything on them, which would now leave me with a downtown area of empty lots.. that didn't feel like a good option and I wasn't to motivated to work on this project for a while and it was left alone for a good while until.. The Bushweeds was set to play their for their upcoming tour, which meant that I had to resume work and try to finish it as soon as possible, since I really don't want any delays to my story telling..

So it was back to work on the downtown area and the town itself. It doesn't look so hilly when seen from above, but it is a quite the hill in the centre of the picture above the highway tunnel that goes under the downtown area..

It was quite a lot of work in such a short amount of time, since late December of last year and until now, but I will count the major parts of the town finished for now, and what is left is "only" to fix a self illumination problem with some of the buildings and to keep refinig the distant terrain I just made.. but for now, my perfectionist self will just need to accept some of these shortcomings and continue with my game and story telling.. so yeah, coming soon.. the Bushweeds on tour! Finally...