Week Two: Castles in the Ayre

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First major task of the week, was to find a world that worked from lot view, had enough space but not too much gridded area, and worked with the skyline.  As you can see in the screenshot below, I went with Anvil City by Tulipfera, which was my fourth major trial with a different terrain map.

I liked Aman by Heimskur a lot but I felt like it did not have enough buildable area.  Here’s a shot from Aman.  I might use it as a subhood for a rural area.

After settling on the Anvil City map, I spent several hours modifying the terrain, including losing everything in several crashes from trying to modify the edge of the map.   The first picture in this post was taken before modifying the terrain.  I lowered the hills in all directions near the main grid of roads.

Next, I changed back to Sunni’s terrain and road replacement because I like the color and texture of the terrain best, and the roads are perfectly fine.  It might be too much trouble to use the invisible roads anyway.  After finding iCad’s Simblr Thingy Invisible Road Default I think I would like the look but am not sure if I want to use it because once I remove them, they may be difficult to put back and at any rate, building or moving lots will be more difficult.

 For future reference, iCad’s Invisible Road default must be used with iCad’s Lush Default Replacement Terrain, which borrows textures from Sunni’s but is not as deep of a greenish blue color.  (Also just in case, here’s the link to Taylor’s Invisible Roads, which work with CuriousB’s terrains, here).

Finally, with the terrain’s hills lowered and smoothed, and being content with the terrain’s hue and texture, I got to move on to the part I’d been anxiously awaiting – to get the settlement laid out.  Here’s the layout, and I am so excited about it!

The map also has three other areas in addition to the castle where gentry and their associated families can spread out as the challenge progresses.

Here are some pictures from lot view.  It seems to have a lot of potential, since it doesn’t make me cringe without buildings and with minimal deco.  It’s actually quite promising, since I could snap a shot from any angle without being too choosy and it looked ok.

So it’s settled!  Here is the beginning of Ayre, a medieval land in the early dark ages, reminiscent of Scotland.

For the community well, I used the 1 x 1 lot from Aelflaed’s mini community lots here at MTS.

The palisade around the settlement is from Sunni’s Village Walls, here, from PBK.

The next three days of the week were consumed with methodically following Mortia’s steps 6, 7, and 8, which is downloading medieval default replacements for everything, then downloading various sets and mods to create a medieval game.

And finally, I methodically worked through the Carpenter’s Workshop at Plumbob Keep, item by item, adding build pieces to my game.  I am almost finished with that.

The next downloading step will be to start downloading Sun & Moon’s Modded Sets and Objects, which are kind of the fun aspects of an integrated Medieval economy, like auto hogs, the giving tree, and beekeeping.  I’m so excited about that aspect of playing a medieval game.

But the first step I plan to take today (the weekend) is, after backing up my game, attempt to use Mootilda’s Hood Replace with my Sims 2 Ultimate Collection to create an extra game save that will be my “Build World” but will identically match Ayre with Sims.