I just want to make minor changes to the default neighborhood, but unless I am missing something (which is entirely possible) it looks like the neighborhoods that come with CAW are "lite" ones that don't have the lots already defined, etc. I'm not looking to make an entire new world, just add a few extra lots, delete some trees I don't like that don't happen to be on a lot, etc.

I dug through the sims folder looking for a non-lite version of the world files, and I did find them but when I try to open a copy in CAW it complains about not supporting "compressed" files or something like that. So... has anyone else managed to edit the full versions of the default worlds? Perhaps there is a way to uncompress it?

Also, any chance you can edit a game already in place, or do you have to create a new game and import the stuff you want once you have what you want? If the later, it makes play testing difficult.

Basically, as far as I understand it, movement from CAW to the game is one-way at the moment -- you can export a world to the format that's used in-game, but you can't go the other direction.

Play-testing a world involves exporting, testing, and then making whatever changes are needed to the original source file. No round trips.

It's probably not just a matter of compression; crucially, worlds used in-game have sims in them. My guess is that the export process may add quite a bit of other data as well that's used in gameplay, that would have to be stripped out for CAW to be able to load the file.

It's probably possible to write a tool that would reverse the process, but it would require a better understanding of the structure of the world files than anybody has at the moment, as far as I know :/ TigerM knew quite a lot about it, but he left the community, alas.

Anyway, that's as far as my understanding of the issue goes Possibly somebody else can correct me or clarify further.