Oh man, I am pumped up for the Create-A-World tool!  In fact, I am actually more interested in getting my hands on the tool than World Adventures if I had to be honest.  But then again, I run a fansite dedicated to programs…so I love to tinker with what is out there 😀

GameSpot has a short article with details on the upcoming tool.  EA is giving us the same tool that they used to create Riverview with – so I would assume it to be an advanced tool (although simple enough to learn)!  It will be released as a beta this December at the official Sims 3 site – FOR FREE – and will clock in about 130MB.  Yippee!!!

Like with the build mode of The Sims 3, users can manipulate terrain by raising it to create mountains or lowering it to create valleys, then “paint” the terrain using either the textures and terrain types available in the editing tools, or, if they’re ambitious enough, by using image-editing tools such as Photoshop to create their own JPEG and PNG textures to map onto their custom neighborhoods. Once built, these areas can be exported from the tool, then either imported into your own game install (you can have as many custom neighborhoods in your game as your computer’s hard drive space allows), or uploaded to the Exchange community site to share with other users. It’s not yet clear what the average filesize of a custom neighborhood will be, but EA community representatives assured GameSpot regardless of how big they are, custom neighborhoods will be subject to the same sort of community-plus-EA-oversight content moderation process used for other custom content.

GameSpot’s exclusive preview with The Sims 3 Create-A-World Tool