I have a gameplay idea that would involve a Sim living permanently in Oasis Landing but regularly traveling to the EA vacation worlds and one custom world that I have because beach vacations are life. My questions:

1) Is it possible/safe to make Oasis Landing a regular old homeworld using the standard Traveler method, or is there something special about OL that would make doing so impossible/ill-advised since it's kinda like a blend of a homeworld and vacation world? I'm hoping it's possible because I have no intention of ever playing in the "real" homeworld, which will probably be a tiny, empty custom world.

1a) If I can do the above, can I then get rid of the "real" homeworld? Like, just delete it outta the save folder? Because it'll just be extra file size, since I have no use for it once my Sim is moved to the future,)

2) Assuming that I CAN'T make OL a regular homeworld: With Traveler installed, can I travel directly from Oasis Landing to other worlds without having to go to the present first? Or must I go back to the present first?

3) In either case...Well, I read the FAQ, but I'm a little unclear and want to clarify just to be sure, since I'm here bugging y'all, anyway. Say I wanted to go from OL to Egypt and then to France and back to OL. If I'm understanding right, when going back home to OL, I can't just go from France directly back to OL without an intermediate return trip to Egypt, yes? So the "chain" would be OL --> (Present time?) --> Egypt --> France --> Egypt --> (Present time?) --> OL. Right? Wrong? Or, "No, don't do any of this, you loony old bat?"

I don't have enough ITF experience to be the only one responding here, hopefully others can fill in the gaps. But from what I've observed, treating Oasis Landing as a homeworld is only reported to lead to misery and heartache. It just doesn't work well that way. You may find a much happier experience playing a custom futuristic homeworld that is more or less loosely based on Oasis. Would that work for you or are the concepts of descendants and other truly future timeline elements too important to let go?

igazor wrote: ↑

June 19th, 2019, 5:07 am

...But from what I've observed, treating Oasis Landing as a homeworld is only reported to lead to misery and heartache. It just doesn't work well that way.

I slept on the whole idea and...Yeeeeeeah, that's kinda what I thought. It seems to me that OL might've been originally conceived as its own standalone world -- it has world-specific careers and all that -- but then somewhere along the line the whole stay-cation concept became the thing, so it ended up as a sort of mish-mash that would likely confuse the hell out of the game if you tried to make it a homeworld. So, I figured that even if you added in some of the more necessary missing rabbitholes -- like a school -- and whatnot, there'd be issues.

I do want to do the future things, though. I've owned ITF for a number of years but have never played it until I've been doing some experimenting recently. So, I kinda want to do all the things (tho I don't really get the point of the whole descendants thing), the careers, and the alternate timelines and all that. So yeah, I'm thinking I'd be best off just doing a futuristic homeworld. Thing is, most of the future-y ones I've seen have also been space-y, which I don't necessarily want, or cyberpunk like Cronor, which I definitely don't want. And they've mostly all been huge, too, which I don't really like. I did find a playable OL that someone made, but I'm kinda thinking Lunar Lakes, which I have....um, somewhere but have never played. It's spacey, but now I'm thinking I can annihilate all the premades (No likey!) and do a small sort of future(ish)-hippie, artsy-craftsy sort of colony. The travelling Sim I had envisioned as a sort of museum curator; they'd travel and tomb-raid, and then I'd use buydebug to furnish a community-lot museum, mirroring the relics and stuff that he/she collects. That'd still fit in with a revamped concept.

Of course, this will no longer require Traveler, aside from the fact that Traveler seems to make traveling in general less buggy.

iCad post_id=66995 time=1560967262 user_id=20243 wrote: Of course, this will no longer require Traveler, aside from the fact that Traveler seems to make traveling in general less buggy.

Sorry, was following along with your ideas and gameplan quite well until we got to this part.

If any kind of world travel is to be involved, then Traveler only helps the process be more playable. If any kind of world travel to worlds that are not WA, Uni, or Oasis are involved, or moves to and from such worlds where the original world and its sims are meant to still be in play, then Traveler is required.

I can make this point another way if you like. This thread will be locked, you will be banned from NRaas for a period of 99 years, and your Internet access will be reduced to 1980s style dialup. Is that how we should proceed? (okay, I'm kidding and only have the power to carry out 2 of those 3 things, but the mod in question happens to be one of my favorites....)

No worries, no disparagement of Traveler was meant! I actually came up with this concept because I was trying to think of ways to incorporate Traveling into the generalized play style that I'm trying to come up with. To this point, I've just been setting up experimental worlds to figure out how to play rotationally and what all the EPs do and what I like and don't like about each of them. The goal is to mash together the things I like and ignore the things I don't so to create a general play style now that I have a Simming machine that can handle running all EPs at once, plus NRaas SP, so long as I don't shove gigantic, heavily populated worlds down its throat. (Its CPU is the bottleneck; it's a 3.0GHz Core2Duo, which TS2 loves but I think a fully-kitted TS3 likes multicores better.) None of these experiments have been meant to be long term saves. So far, I like the WA adventuring, the Ambitions professions and self-employed careers (including those added by the Careers mod), horses/cats/dogs, farm-y and crafty stuff from a couple of the Store sets (Canning, whee!), inventing and sculpting and SCIENCE! stuff, all the water-related stuff from IP, and from what I've seen of it so far, the future stuff. Especially that dream bed thingy. *laugh* So, I'm trying to mash all that together in some style that makes some sort of sense. *laugh*

Overall, I dig the idea of different Sims living in different worlds in one save, so that I can flit around amongst them without having to shut down the game in between. And so that I can, for instance, send Sims who live in a waterless world on a vacation to one of the linked ones that has dive spots and that can offer snorkeling and speedboats and windsurfing and all that. Basically, making it TS2-like with a "main" world and a number of linked "frozen" satellite worlds. And for that, yeah, Traveler will definitely be needed.

And actually, it would be just for this little idea, too, because I do want to have that beach Traveler world. I forgot that. Perhaps some people might end up living there, although I don't think that world -- Nilxis's Suva Diva -- is meant for or set up to be a homeworld, either.

TS3 can only utilize 2 cores itself as per its programming. A system with more available than that will run the game more efficiently though as system processes and of course other programs being run like a web browser alongside of the game will have more resources to use and things will be less likely to trip over themselves, at least as I understand it. TS2 only uses 1 core and "likes" to have a single core all to itself.

It's easy for many of us to take Traveler for granted as we've had it in play for such a long time. Right now in my single ongoing game the sims I am playing in Bridgeport have no connection whatsoever to the legacy family that started all of this, centered in Riverview, although other sims in the city do. The city and country mice will meet each other some day. But right now a few of my sims (and I) are more than ready for a break from city life and while a WA world would work, there's some sims in Isla Paradiso I know they will become very good friends with and there is so much to do there that is lacking in my other worlds so a vacation is imminent. Even without the content being all spread out though, I can't begin to imagine how difficult it is for players without Traveler to get storylines to cross over without getting all confused among the various saves they are managing. You know, so and so is ready to date, this doesn't seem to be going well, but there's a sim in (fill in the world) who would be just perfect for them, etc. Or perhaps I could see they would become the very best of lifelong friends, even if they remain long distance.

What worked for me with the mod was not really planning any of this in advance but just letting my legacy household breed like crazy and sort of spread themselves out among the connected worlds what seemed like naturally to me over time. But of course not everyone has eight years to devote to letting a storyline and system of worlds come about quite so organically. I guess if I ever started my game over (not likely to happen) it would still start in one world, everything unplanned, and then that first vacation and hey, I wouldn't mind living here even though my four siblings and their families are happier back where we came from, and it would all happen all over again.

TS2 does like a core all to itself and doesn't know what to do with multicores, but it's not really a CPU hog by itself, at least not with anything newer than a Pentium 4. When it's running, even when loading/saving, it's not taking up much of the processor. (I run HWMonitor all the time because I just think it's interesting to see what happens under various programs.) But fully dolled up with the current brand of high-res CC, especially for neighborhood view so that it looks almost as pretty as TS3 (with prettier skies, even, IMO), TS2 will eat texture memory alive since the game has texture memory processing issues. On my machine, it's kind of the opposite with TS3. It makes the processor get off its lazy butt and work, even sweat a little at times, but the GPU's pretty much just chillin' with a glass of lemonade. The other day, it used a whole 12% of its 4GB of texture memory and its temperature rose by 2 degrees, wooooo!

Anyway, yeah, I'm not really looking to plan anything. They way you play is pretty much what I want to do. (And yes, I go long. Very long. I have a TS2 neighborhood that I've been playing for ~8 years.) I don't really like playing legacy-style, though. (By that I mean sticking to a single family line through the generations.) What I generally do in TS2 is to take an empty neighborhood and then use a randomizer to choose the characteristics of however many households I want to start with. I have the game make the Sims because I don't really care about looks so I just default everything and let the game have at it, I give them the characteristics the generator spat out, I build houses for 'em (or just recycle from my frighteningly massive lot catalog *laugh*), plop 'em down, let 'em breed or not as they want, and play each of them in rotation and according to their wants/lifetime wants. Then when the founders croak (which takes a while because I age-mod TS2), I'm still playing all their offspring, and when those croak, I'm playing their offspring, etc. I play entire neighborhoods, basically. But there's no planning. No "story." Stuff just happens organically, directed by the pixels rather than me, and I expand the neighborhood and/or add subhoods when needed and build up community lots when one of the residents "needs" one. (Like if one of them is "destined" to own a business or if another has the lifetime want to max out the Law Enforcement career; they then "need" a police station/jail, so one gets built/placed, even though it's mostly decorative.)

This won't translate directly to TS3 because starting with a completely empty neighborhood isn't really what the game is designed for. And that's perfectly OK; I'm not looking for a clone because I can just play TS2 when I want that sort of thing. But I've learned from 11 years of playing TS2 that what keeps me interested in a neighborhood long-term is variety. Lots of variety. So I want to do the same sort of thing, but in a TS3 context, highlighting the stuff I like about the various EPs and Store content. Like, again, start with a clump of randomly-generated households in an otherwise unpopulated world, either a custom one or an EA one that I nuke all the premades out of (because I hate EA premades with their built-in stories, regardless of the game in question *laugh*). I let the game make the service Sims it wants but don't let anyone else in, at least at first, and I play them my initial group in rotation and according to whatever lifetime wishes they get, which may or may not require multiple Traveler-linked worlds from the start but will almost certainly require them eventually. It'll just depend on what lifetime wishes I've got to work with. Like if there's one with one of the adventuring LTWs, then obviously they'll be adventuring and if they end up preferring a given WA world, they might end up living there. I mean, I'd like to have a vintner who lives permanently (or more or less so, at least) in Champs Les Sims because I like the whole gardening and wine-making thing. Sure, I can do that in any world, but I just think it'd be fun to have them living in France to do it, on a little cottage-farm, homeschooling the kids, blah blah. Or if there's one who wants to find all the uncharted islands, then (a fixed and premade-nuked) Isla Paradiso will probably be added to the mix since I'm not sure that custom worlds can be used to fulfill that LTW. So that's the general idea.

For me, the flexibility that Traveler offers will be key to the variety I need to keep myself interested in my save. I know that I will get bored quickly if I'm confined to one world, even with side trips to WA worlds and/or the future. Especially since only one Sim can really do tomb-raiding, anyway, without having to go to the effort of resetting the tombs. But basically randomness plus variety is what I like, and Traveler will provide a chunk of the variety part of that. I think. I hope. I'm pretty sure it can do what I'll want it to do, anyway.

iCad wrote: ↑

June 19th, 2019, 5:40 pm

This won't translate directly to TS3 because starting with a completely empty neighborhood isn't really what the game is designed for. And that's perfectly OK; I'm not looking for a clone because I can just play TS2 when I want that sort of thing. But I've learned from 11 years of playing TS2 that what keeps me interested in a neighborhood long-term is variety. Lots of variety. So I want to do the same sort of thing, but in a TS3 context, highlighting the stuff I like about the various EPs and Store content. Like, again, start with a clump of randomly-generated households in an otherwise unpopulated world, either a custom one or an EA one that I nuke all the premades out of (because I hate EA premades with their built-in stories, regardless of the game in question *laugh*). I let the game make the service Sims it wants but don't let anyone else in, at least at first, and I play them my initial group in rotation and according to whatever lifetime wishes they get, which may or may not require multiple Traveler-linked worlds from the start but will almost certainly require them eventually. It'll just depend on what lifetime wishes I've got to work with. Like if there's one with one of the adventuring LTWs, then obviously they'll be adventuring and if they end up preferring a given WA world, they might end up living there. I mean, I'd like to have a vintner who lives permanently (or more or less so, at least) in Champs Les Sims because I like the whole gardening and wine-making thing. Sure, I can do that in any world, but I just think it'd be fun to have them living in France to do it, on a little cottage-farm, homeschooling the kids, blah blah. Or if there's one who wants to find all the uncharted islands, then (a fixed and premade-nuked) Isla Paradiso will probably be added to the mix since I'm not sure that custom worlds can be used to fulfill that LTW. So that's the general idea.

This sounds very similar to what I have been toying with in my head, but I'm afraid the files will start to corrupt when they get too many worlds linked with the original. Have you had any issues with this? I also hate losing things like completed challenges and such when I switch from house to house. I know there is a way to save dreams and opportunities between households (at least I think there is), but I'm afraid that file bloat will be a problem with my saves. Any idea how much of an issue this could possibly be? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

dreamsong1968 wrote: ↑

June 20th, 2019, 9:22 pm

This sounds very similar to what I have been toying with in my head, but I'm afraid the files will start to corrupt when they get too many worlds linked with the original. Have you had any issues with this? I also hate losing things like completed challenges and such when I switch from house to house. I know there is a way to save dreams and opportunities between households (at least I think there is), but I'm afraid that file bloat will be a problem with my saves. Any idea how much of an issue this could possibly be? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Don't quote me on any of the following because I'm by no means an expert and I'm still hammering all this out myself. But as I understand it, linked Traveler worlds are completely dormant when you're playing your homeworld, whichever your current homeworld is, and have no fingers in your homeworld so they can't affect performance of the homeworld. This is because, however many worlds you have linked, the game can only load and process and play one at a time. That's why there's a loading screen when you travel between, say, Sunset Valley and China. Sunset Valley's being dumped and its data stored in a little database file and China's loading up, its data being pulled from a database file. (It's reminiscent of TS2 that way. ) So, you can have lots of linked worlds without issues. At least, that's what I've read. I've not yet experimented too much yet beyond traveling to the WA vacation worlds plus Oasis Landing, so my knowledge is theoretical more than practical. And that's not to say that errors and corruption can't happen because that's always a possibility with computers in general, not just this game. But I don't think having a lot of worlds necessarily means guaranteed corruption.

Retaining wishes and opportunities is a different thing, though, and is set in Master Controller. Doing that will bloat the file if you switch between a lot of households. There's even a little warning to that effect that pops up when you toggle that option in MC. But it's only your rotation households that count, not all the other ones. Retaining these things is important to me, though, so I will tailor my playing accordingly and prune households from the rotation list if I find that I have to. (So you better keep me entertained, pixels, or it's permanent inactive-ness for you! *laugh* ) I'm guessing that the number of rotation households you can have will depend on your computer. In my test-playing in various scenarios and various worlds, I've rotated between up to 12 households with wished and opportunities retained and have not noticed any issues and the game saves quickly. But if I had 100 rotation households, then I imagine it might be a different story. But I doubt that I'll ever have that many households.

And now I'm sure igazor will be along to point out everything I got wrong.

iCad post_id=67039 time=1561085286 user_id=20243 wrote: And now I'm sure igazor will be along to point out everything I got wrong

Don't be too hard on yourself, you spelled a couple of words right.

Just kidding, you did fine. I have 16 Traveler mod connected worlds in my long-running ongoing game and yes, the 15 not being actively played at any given moment are all in states of suspended animation while the one active world is being simulated. If anything, I find that gameplay quality is better preserved this way because so much intensity is all spread out. If something were to go dreadfully wrong with one of the worlds (which for me it almost never does), the entire rest of the game can survive that and I begin to consider "Operation Get My Sims Out of There!" while never even considering that the ongoing game in totality is in any kind of serious trouble.

There must be a point where too many worlds so connected might cause the TravelDB, the glue that holds them all together, to begin to fall apart though that would be difficult to define. I probably wouldn't set out with the intention of connecting and traveling like mad between 50 of them or so, but then most players wouldn't want that anyway because it would be far too many storylines and vacation destinations to keep straight in one's head (or spreadsheets). I don't really play all 16 world either, at least not in the same way as each other, as currently "my" sims live in 5 of them. The others are the WA worlds, Uni, Oasis, some custom vacation destinations, and a couple of places where my sims used to live long ago but are only being kept in the game because some of my living elders still have friends and very distant relations back there.

On keeping those Dream Managers going on inactive rotational households, I could usually "feel" when three or more households were running those but this was on my older system and it also depended on the size of the inactive households. I have yet to do much in the way of rotational switches on my now more modern system but expect the same thing will happen if around 6 or 8 of them are running DMs. Perhaps I'm underestimating my system's power though, we're still kind of trying to get to know each other.