Editing Monte Vista, Setting up Custom/MV Roads

When you first open your new "Monte Vista" the only road configured is the base road. All of the Monte Vista roads and sidewalks are listed, but empty. When you downloaded your MV Textures, the Road files were included. 

Each subfolder in the MV Roads folder includes a guide for setting up the road. I usually print those out, but whatever works for you is fine. 

Under the Road Tool, click Create Custom Road.

Fill in the road name and then using the guides, browse to your source texture folder and select the appropriate files for each item. For the Cobblestone Road, leave the opacity Map under the Sidewalk Textures empty. Continue until you've created a custom road for each of the MV roads. 

Roads can be locked and unlocked. Click on the section of road you wish to lock/unlock and then hit your spacebar. Locked roads will have red lines instead of the usual cyan. Useful if you are placing roads in tricky terrain, I came across it while trying to edit Twinbrook. At one point, having no idea what the red lines meant, I was deleting and replacing every road in Twinbrook. Finding out it was unnecessary was a relief.

Create a World has been around for a while so there will be many tutorials out there on how to use it. There isn't much reason for me to reinvent the wheel when those tutorials are laid out in a logical way. I started with >this one< and there is a very good section on placing roads & intersections. 

The original Monte Vista has a number of roads that do not end with an intersection and most of the instructions I've read stress this causes routing errors so placing intersections on the ends of those roads is usually one of the first things I do. The road beside Mucho Expresso Cafe is wonky and since making better use of that space is one of the changes I made, fixing that happens early. 

Community Lots

If you're like me, and think that a 40x64 lot for Dr. Simano's Sanatorium is an insane waste of space, the building will fit on a lot as small as 35x35. I opened a game in Monte Vista and in edit town, used a 40x40 lot to create my own Dr. Simano's. That left enough room for a sidewalk and a 40x22 lot for the firehall. 

Mucho Espresso gone, I divvied up that space in the same proportions to make room for the bowling alley from University and the coffee house from Showtime. I also saved the General Store from WA's France and set that up as my consignment shop. With just a bit of redecorating it fits the character of Monte Vista much better than the Ambitions Consignment shop.

The massive public pool that rarely gets used became 2 lots, one for Performance park and a spare to make either a kids park or a more realistic sized public pool. Performance Park draws more NPC's than that ridiculous pool ever did. 

I also like to put  6x9 lots for subways everywhere. With a mod that allows kids to ride the subway it makes them getting around a lot easier. NPC's never use it of course. 

Residential Lots

For residential lots I favor adding more smaller lots. I prefer to play one main family rather than an entire town so a surplus of large luxury lots isn't much benefit. I need plenty of 20x30's, 30x30's, and because Monte Vista style houses favor them, 20x20 lots. 

Monte Vista the original doesn't have a single lot with the beautiful vista moodlet, so I add that to at least the 2 Bard Boulevard properties. 

If you've played the Monte Vista world, you've got a few ideas of your own. Now you can use them.

That Monte Vista Grass

Eventually, I will add a tutorial on making in-game terrain paints but not just yet. So if I've done this right, you should be able to download the light grass using this link.  Once you've downloaded it just drop it in your Sims 3 mods folder and it should show up in your terrain paints (as bluegrass since for the life of me I can't figure out how to rename it.). Fingers crossed.