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Instructor
Original Poster
#1 Old 15th Aug 2011 at 9:26 AM
Default Possible to replace placed roads with different design, quick and dirty?
Hiyas!

Okay, this might sound a little confusing but here's the deal:

I created several road networks for my current projects, then decided I wanted to have different looking streets in a certain part of town that currently uses the base game roads. Now, since I've spent a considerable amount of time to get the angles just right I dread deleting those roads. However, I also don't want to replace the base game road preset itself, I just want to update the streets in a certain part of town.

Possible? *sigh* Why is CAW so stupid? It really should allow you to pick a new preset for existing roads. But I guess that's why it's in beta stage forever .... because no one really improves anything. :P
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Instructor
#2 Old 15th Aug 2011 at 10:14 AM
I don't think you can edit the base game road. And no, as far as I know, there is no way to replace the sections you want to change that you've already laid down. You'll have to delete, and put them down again.

I don't use the base game road style anymore. First thing I do is add a custom made road when I start a world. Sometimes, I've made more than one, so I can quickly change out the road texture if I want to use something else. I keep the sidewalks the same for continuity.

Actually that's not completely true. Making a new world, I place a 64x64 lot as reference of scale, and without the grid on plop down temporary default roads to work out the network. I delete the 64x64 lot then and do my scuplting accordingly. I turn the grid on, and add the roads I want to use, sometimes adding lots when I need an exact size. I almost always keep my angles at increments of 15 [0, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75], so when I put in all the lots, I only have to go through six options to line things up with the road. Since that makes my new roads not completely where the planning roads were, I delete the lots and re-sculpt a bit if necessary.

I realize that is not useful for you now, but maybe it provides an idea or two for the future. And others reading this thread might take something away as well.

I've included a picture of me halfway through the placing of final roads with the grid, in case I wasn't completely clear.

:D
Screenshots
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retired moderator
#3 Old 17th Aug 2011 at 1:42 PM
You could possibly make a default replacement for the basegame road textures, and then import them to your world file. I've not tried this myself, but this is the method for making an override for object textures for in CAW (for example, making a rabbithole a different colour) and that does work.

However there are a lot of resources involved in defining the roads in CAW, so I'm not sure it would work. It would be worth testing, though.
Instructor
#4 Old 28th Aug 2011 at 9:36 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Rockerduck
Hiyas!

Okay, this might sound a little confusing but here's the deal:

I created several road networks for my current projects, then decided I wanted to have different looking streets in a certain part of town that currently uses the base game roads. Now, since I've spent a considerable amount of time to get the angles just right I dread deleting those roads. However, I also don't want to replace the base game road preset itself, I just want to update the streets in a certain part of town.

Possible? *sigh* Why is CAW so stupid? It really should allow you to pick a new preset for existing roads. But I guess that's why it's in beta stage forever .... because no one really improves anything. :P


This reply has been almost two weeks since you originally posted your inquiry. But hopefully, you will find this suggestion useful.

As roads will "snap" to pre-existing road pieces, here's a thought. For a section of road, try deleting every other piece of road, say every second piece of road or so. Then place the custom road pieces (not the regular base game road).

After that, delete the remaining base game road pieces, replacing those with more bits of custom road. I hope this is of help to you. That's what I did, when I once decided I wanted a certain area to have a different type or style of road.
Lab Assistant
#5 Old 28th Aug 2011 at 1:45 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simsample
However there are a lot of resources involved in defining the roads in CAW


Do we have any detail/list of the involved files yet as I am looking into this soon and it would save me some time if something is already known. Searching for any info only seems to lead to info on textures.

On topic, if it was me I would have done what BenCo suggested.

C'est la vie, they say, because they can't change their world, but, we can! That's why we have CAW! :rolleyes:
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retired moderator
#6 Old 29th Aug 2011 at 3:04 AM
I tested this today, to see if it would work. This is what I found, copied from my notes:
Note- this is experimental, please backup any files before you change anything and please report back to let me know whether this works for you, or not.

Quote:
If you have used the default road in a world, and now wish to have a different road texture, you have two choices.

Either you can replace each road in your world with a custom road, or you can make a default override and import it to the world file.

If you want to do this, first backup your world. Make a safe copy of it somewhere.

To make the default override, you need to export the following resources:

S3_00B2D882_00000000_1A13BEF88A9FC51B_streetTile_stripes%%+_IMG.dds
S3_00B2D882_00000000_12FDC40E2798C4A9_sidewalkTile_crosswalk%%+_IMG.dds
S3_00B2D882_00000000_78A5C93FC007FCD8_streetTile_asphalt%%+_IMG.dds
S3_00B2D882_00000000_737DFF3DA3ADFE19_sidewalkTile_concrete_basic_D%%+_IMG.dds
S3_00B2D882_00000000_C7F0F2E7BA6C9FA8_sidewalkTile_concrete_corner_D%%+_IMG.dds

As you can see these are the road texture, sidewalk texture, sidewalk corner texture, crosswalk texture and road detail texture.

Those are all found in the basegame FullBuild0.package ([Game Install Location] \Electronic Arts \The Sims 3 \GameData \Shared \Packages)

You can then recolour these, and then import those to your CAW World file (to be found in Documents \Electronic Arts \The Sims 3 Create A World Tool \UserToolData \Worlds).

Alternatively, if you already have a set of CAW road textures that you want to use, just make a copy of the textures and rename them to the same names as the basegame textures, as listed above. Then import those files to your world. I chose to do this, I just copied some textures from my CAW source textures folder, and renamed them.

That is enough to replace the textures for your world, and if you are replacing the road for a very similar coloured texture, that may be all you want to do. However, if you are using textures that are very different from the default road texture, you will notice that the low-detail textures (the textures you see when you zoom right out) are incorrect, and still show the basegame road, even though you see the new road when you zoom in. If you want to correct this, you have to delete all of the low LOD road textures from the world file (using S3Pe), and then have the game refresh them.

To delete the textures, look at your world in S3PE for any textures labelled _IMG of instance 0x00B2D882. Trouble is, there are a LOT of these, so the easiest thing to do is to scroll through these with DDS preview on, and look for any with the road visible.

In a small world with just a few roads, I had to delete 16 resources. If you have a large world with roads on every chunk, you will need to delete many more than this.

I also deleted the _KEY resource at this stage, to refresh the texture database.

Save the world in S3Pe, then delete your CAW caches. .

Now, you need to make CAW refresh those deleted textures, so open the world in CAW. Change a road- delete one, add one, move one. Then save the world.

Now, when you export your world, the override textures will show up at all levels of detail.


If anyone is brave enough to test this, I'd be interested to know if it works. I only had time to test on a few small worlds, so I'd like to know if it is effective on more complex worlds.

I'm especially curious about regeneration the Low detail textures- do they all regenerate correctly if you just alter one little piece of road? Or, do you have to change a road on each chunk to regenerate them all? If they don't regenerate you'll get a flat brown texture smeared all over your terrain, so you'll soon know!
Test Subject
#7 Old 20th Sep 2011 at 3:16 AM
I tried it on a medium world with lots of roads (Fargo by Goddess at MATY), and it worked like a charm! It was a bit tedious scrolling through the IMG files for the distant views of roads, but it was far easier and less time consuming than replacing the roads would be. There is no comparison. Thanks so much Simsample!!!!
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retired moderator
#8 Old 21st Sep 2011 at 12:21 AM
Thanks for the feedback, trystiane- and well done for making this work!

I'm glad it was useful to you.
Destroyer of Worlds
retired moderator
#9 Old 26th Oct 2011 at 10:12 PM
I am attempting to do this and, for some reason, I cannot find those dern dds files. I know where they are in the source data folder but cannot find them, for the life of me in that fullbuild0.package. I just want to replace the textures with some from Appaloosa Plains. Silly me used default roads a long time ago (and of course didn't use the grid) so it would take longer to try to replace them one by one.

Heaven Sims | Avendale Legacy
"On the internet, you can be anything you want. It's strange that so many people choose to be stupid."
world renowned whogivesafuckologist
retired moderator
#10 Old 26th Oct 2011 at 10:21 PM
Try opening the Appaloosa Plains .world file in S3PE and looking in there?

my simblr (sometimes nsfw)

“Dude, suckin’ at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.”
Panquecas, panquecas e mais panquecas.
Test Subject
#11 Old 26th Oct 2011 at 10:34 PM
You can Download them here: http://www.mediafire.com/?y90e9u8ju225xmp
Destroyer of Worlds
retired moderator
#12 Old 26th Oct 2011 at 10:51 PM Last edited by heaven : 26th Oct 2011 at 11:05 PM.
Nah, I found them. Apparently, my brain was having a der moment. Now I am just checking to make sure I followed the rest of the steps correctly. Thanks for the help.

EDIT: OMG. It worked, it worked, it worked! Persistence once again pays off!

Heaven Sims | Avendale Legacy
"On the internet, you can be anything you want. It's strange that so many people choose to be stupid."
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retired moderator
#13 Old 26th Oct 2011 at 11:14 PM
Well done heaven, I'm glad it worked!
Destroyer of Worlds
retired moderator
#14 Old 27th Oct 2011 at 12:16 AM
Yes, my brain finally cooperated. Anyway, I did this on my large, Riverview remake and it worked just fine. Even zoomed out, everything looked correct so I didn't have to confuzzle myself more, today at least.

Heaven Sims | Avendale Legacy
"On the internet, you can be anything you want. It's strange that so many people choose to be stupid."
Field Researcher
#15 Old 14th Dec 2011 at 5:12 PM Last edited by kathascha2 : 15th Dec 2011 at 11:05 PM.
I started to build my world with non-default roads (after reading a tutorial which basically said "always costumize your roads") - how will it affect the steps mentioned above?

Found some nice roads made by Kolipoki, would be lovely to use them in future and replace the already existing ones. Can I just copy and past Kolis files somewhere and it'll work - or is it more complicated? I do not own SimPE atm, do I need it to replace them - or is there an else solution?

I ask, because I don't think I understood the above mentioned tutorial a 100%. Guess that's due to being a foreign speaker. Anyone able to explain this in a bullet-proof way? ^^

Edit: Found some costum .dds, will use these instead. Cba messing with SimPE atm.

Still struggling with CAW :x
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retired moderator
#16 Old 24th Dec 2011 at 1:14 AM
Hey kathascha2, if you already started out with custom roads then you do not need to use this method, as you can easily edit the custom road you are using to change the textures.

However, Kolipoki's road appears to be a default replacement (which will override the standard basegame road) so you will need to open those files and extract the textures, so that you can replace your custom road textures with them.
Test Subject
#17 Old 3rd Feb 2012 at 12:00 AM
I just found this today and this was really helpful. You guys are life-savers. Thanks, this still works well with latest CAW and Patch .
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retired moderator
#18 Old 3rd Feb 2012 at 9:57 PM
Thank you Demoness, well done for getting it to work, and thanks for the info!
Lab Assistant
#19 Old 4th Feb 2012 at 1:44 AM
I don't bother with the default road. What I do is make my own roads, then if I don't like them I go into edit road and change the textures to what I want. When you do this though you have to be aware that all your roads of that texture will change. The thing is you don't have to delete and relay roads this way.

For example say I want a base road, a blacktop road, and a dirt road in my world. Then after I lay them down if I don't like how the blacktop road looks I just edit the blacktop road and change the texture, and all the blacktop roads change into the new texture.

For the world I'm making I have planned a trail that leads to a campground. At present the trail is a sidewalk, however, after my world is nearly complete I'm going to change the sidewalk and make it invisible so that all you see is the dirt path I've already laid under it. It will still be a sidewalk to the sims, but it will look like a dirt path.
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retired moderator
#20 Old 4th Feb 2012 at 10:32 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Will Galen
I don't bother with the default road. What I do is make my own roads, then if I don't like them I go into edit road and change the textures to what I want.

Yes, we know you can change custom road textures. But this solution was devised by me specifically for someone who used the default texture and then wished that they had not.
Test Subject
#21 Old 24th Nov 2013 at 3:56 AM
Okay, so I'm wishing to replace the default roads in Isla Paradiso and have it open in S3PE. I'm seeing images with roads on them, but how do I change the textures to something like the base game roads?
dodgy builder
#22 Old 24th Nov 2013 at 9:05 AM
It's easier to do in caw. You just make or pick different textures and replace the textures on the road selection in caw. Nevermind I didn't read the thread only the date 2011 :p
Test Subject
#23 Old 17th May 2014 at 8:22 AM
I managed to change the default roads as described but as my custom road is a sand road that needs fading sidewalk I need to change opacity as well. Is it possible to change normal map and opacity? If it is, anybody knows how to do it?
Lab Assistant
#24 Old 18th May 2014 at 12:30 AM
Quote: Originally posted by acorbe2001
I managed to change the default roads as described but as my custom road is a sand road that needs fading sidewalk I need to change opacity as well. Is it possible to change normal map and opacity? If it is, anybody knows how to do it?
You'll need to locate those images in s3pe, probably close in name to the ones you already changed. Once you have the image resource name, you can replace it with the same method as the others. You should be able to grab normal and opacity images from a dirt road in the Resources subforum.
Test Subject
#25 Old 31st Dec 2017 at 5:22 PM
Hi there, I know this post hasn't had a reply in 3.5 years, but I am trying really hard to turn Sunset Valley's roads into dirt roads in an attempt to make a Native American themed world. I attempted to follow simsample's instructions in post #6, but the instructions are not specific enough. Does someone know specifically how/where I do the importing/exporting of the different textured street portions? Thanks so much.
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