CHAPTER SIX: ROUTING

Routing is so important (I Still can not believe I forgot to put it in) Anyway, Routing is what tells your Sims where they can and cannot go. It also determines where the in-game camera can reach, that is why you can not see the edge of the world in game and why you cannot touch the light house in sunset valley. Without routing your Sims can walk up a cliff and even walk on air to get where they need to the fastest.

1. So you are ready to test your world in-game. Below I have Port Jones ready for testing with the Fog turned Off.

 2. Routing is found under Terrain Editing Tools. There are 3 route types. (a) Erase - which is to erase errors (b) Sims Non-routable - To paint areas your Sims CANNOT touch. (c) Camera Non-routable - To paint areas the camera CANNOT go. (d) Include Steepness - Which allows you to see areas that are too steep. The Routing tool has only Brush size to adjust which makes it very easy to use.

3. Here is a cut-out ready to be routed. But first...go to next step...

4. Under the VIEW tab, click SHOW ROUTING DATA

5. Your map should look like this. The White lines show all the places your sims can go. As you can see that is everywhere except the water. Under View tab click Show Routing Data again to turn it off.

6. Now a common area to start is a Hill or Mountain like below

7. Select the Sims Non-Routable brush, adjust the size to fit the area you want to paint, and just click to paint. Perfection is not needed here. Just paint the areas you do NOT want your sims to be able to walk on. It shows as a blue paint.

8. You can also check the Include Steepness box so that you can see areas that are really steep. It shows as a red paint.

9. You do not have to paint every steep area. Only paint the areas that would be silly for your sims to be walking on. And also areas you just do not want players to be able to reach. Like the decorative outskirts on your world.

or to create a path up a hill. Otherwise your sims will just run straight up the cliff.

10. So here I am done painting all the areas I do NOT want my sims to be able to go.

11. Back to the VIEW tab, click REBUILD ROUTING DATA. Wait a few seconds for it to reset. There is no real indication that anything is happening except that your mouse might show the timer icon which tells you to wait.

12. When that is done, click Show Routing Data again and now you can see that the areas you painted no longer have the white lines. Therefore your sims can NOT go there.

13. This is optional. But if you drag the Routing Opacity slider all the way to the end, it makes the blue routing paint invisible. See next step

 14. And you can clearly see that the areas you painted no longer have white lines.

7. Next switch to Camera Non-Routable brush. It shows as a yellow paint. Include Steepness is on in the Picture below which is why it is red. Anyway, try to start from the edge of the world and work you way inwards.

8. Try not to leave any spaces.

9. Depending on the size and shape of your world, paint until you get to where you want the camera to stop. Port jones in the example below is a rather big world and I had little room for camera movement. So the camera limit was just at the edge of the world.

10. I used photoshop for the Picture below. But the idea to to use the Camera brush all around the edges of the map, stopping where you need it. When you test your world in game, If you do not like the camera limits you have set, you can simply, erase and adjust the areas you want in CAW.

NOTE:

SHOW ROUTING DATA and REBUILD ROUTING DATA are also useful for checking that your roads are all connected. Correctly connected roads have a blue line running down the middle. Wrongly connected roads have a red line showing the break in connections.
Always use Rebuild Routing Data after making changes to roads and routing to make sure all changes are reset.