#Sims 3 Camayao Project

[sansimeonsims]

Introduction: The Camayao Project

Hey everyone. The year has been a crazy and often frustrating ride. As of that last update, I can confirm that I am still working on Filipino-themed Sims world: Camayao. Unlike San Simeon, which was a colonial-era world built on a pre-existing base, Camayao is being built on an entirely new foundation and is based on the modern day. There are other differences as well, mostly in terms of construction and theme.

Moreover, I’ve come to the decision to make Camayao a collaborative project, the details of which will be hammered out over the course of a few weeks due to life concerns. 

Where have I been?

Stuck in quarantine, for starters. The need to stay indoors because of Covid-19 is in fact a major factor in the project, both positive and negative. During the extended community quarantine, I was left with very little to do at home and began working on both the Manila Project and Camayao. However, being stuck indoors and left with few options meant that I had to scour the Internet for resources, which are often not as satisfactory as going out there and taking pictures myself.

At the time of writing, I’ve also undergone wisdom tooth removal surgery (and will be due for another one in a month). The pain I experienced before the surgery (and the surgery itself) hindered my ability to work, let alone do leisure activities. Thus, my ability to plan and build is limited until late in November when the last scheduled surgery is done.

About Camayao

An early test shot of Carmilla Homes Camayao

As currently imagined, Camayao is a fictional component city of the National Capital Region (i.e. what people usually think when they say “Manila”, rather than the capital itself) and is heavily based on various neighborhoods I’ve encountered across Metropolitan Manila. In general, the world draws heavy inspiration from Pasig and Taguig, with heavy admixtures from Muntinlupa, Las Piñas, and Manila itself. 

The playable area of Camayao is planned across nine ten eleven different districts, each based on specific neighborhoods in Manila.

Poblacion: A traditional town center similar to the plaza area of San Simeon, dotted with colonial-era buildings in various states of conservation.

The Midtown  (Actual name TBD): A medium-density commercial area dotted with buildings that have seen better days.

Parian: An extension of the town center with a Chinese Filipino flavor. Many buildings are in states of disrepair.

Tabinglaua: An actually rural area located close to the lake inhabited by farmers

Bacbacan: An industrial area with squatter colony built up around the remains of a burned down former factory compound.

Esteros: A riverside industrial area, also dotted with slums.

Villareal: A community of contrasts, one a gated community for the city’s elite and the spartan accommodations for the soldiers near the airbase.

The Village: An upper- to middle-middle class gated community filled with various suburban homes 

Jacinto: An upscale high rise urban development, mostly populated by office dwellers and the nouveau riche.

Carmilla Homes: A cookie-cutter low-cost suburban residential development located in an out of the way area far from the city center.

The Port: A third industrial area, a seedy locale filled with dive bars, underground clubs, and more slums.

Among the things I’ll need to hammer out are the map details and the placement of the lots. 

Rather than representing a real place, it acts as a microcosm of various places within Metropolitan Manila and its suburbs. Besides being built on an original map, Camayao is planned to be a turnkey world. Unlike with San Simeon, I plan to fully furnish almost all of the buildings available in Camayao. This meant, of course, that I had to keep track of the content I used. If all goes well, you will not need Monte Vista like you would with San Simeon.

I also intend to create a populated save file with a storyline. A world just seems more alive that way. Besides call backs to history and popular culture, Camayao also has elements of socio-political satire, one that’s inescapable when constructing a world based on a place with such disparate populations and social classes. That said, I do hope to avoid the egregious cliches such as poverty porn in the process.

Camayao and its updates will have its own Tumblelog.

An older version featuring some of the slums. This is a scene I hope to capture throughout Camayao.

Community Involvement

I’m taking a gamble and am opening up Camayao to community involvement to those interested. As soon as I am able, I will call upon interested simmers to work on some of the other buildings with me. 

While I’m technically sending the invitation out to anyone willing to give it a go, I’m especially encouraging (the rather small remnant) Filipino TS3 community or anyone who has been to the Philippines for an extended period. Locals can provide the needed feedback and awareness to give the world a sense of authenticity. If possible, I’d also like feedback and contributions from minority populations (Muslims, Taoist Chinese, etc.) to lend authenticity to some of the representative families.

I’ll be preparing a Discord server for this purpose. Stay tuned to see if and when it’s up.

Plaza Rizal, one of the completed lots

What of Colonial Manila?

I’ve been meaning to create a version of Manila in the Sims for some time now but the limits of what I can do in CAW have limited my ability to do so. My original plan was to create a condensed version of the Manila Bay area with the  I finally mustered up some of the courage to build Manila in the months leading to the quarantine. 

My Colonial Manila project aimed to create a realistic facsimile of the IRL districts of Intramuros and Binondo a few decades before the end of Spanish rule. I pegged the world at approximately 1879, a year before the great earthquake that destroyed the belfry of the Manila Cathedral. However, I immediately faced a lot of problems on that end. Quarantine limited my ability to research since I was stuck at home. Thus did I quickly realize how out of depth I was. I was able to create the exteriors of several buildings, of course, but could never finish the interiors since I’ve very little idea on what they looked like.

Due to the scale of the project and the amount of research and custom content it needs, I had to put the project on hold in the meantime. Nonetheless, I did back up my project and will gladly resume them in the future, though the map itself will need a complete overhaul.

[sansimeonsims]

So, this blog has been rather inactive for months since I started working on a few other projects. This being one of them. Consider it a general preview of what I’m working on. Unlike San Simeon, this new town, tentatively named Camayao, is built largely from scratch.

I took a short break for this project to work on other Sims 3 builds, but will resume this one momentarily (just as soon as IRL stuff gets sorted out). I have big plans for this one, among others it being collaborative. I’ll be setting up a separate blog for this one, too.

[sansimeonsims]

An Announcement

Magandang araw po, mga kaibigan.

These past few months, I haven't done a lot of updates to San Simeon and my other Filipino-themed worlds. I've been going  through a few things in real life and current events aren't helping at all. Thus, I had to focus on my mental health and professional commitments. What little time I had for simming, I reserved for low commitment projects like the Praaven Cathedral.

To put it in the  most delicate possible words, shit happened. And the build up to it sucked the joy out of many of my projects. Our current social climate isn't exactly friendly to faithful depictions of history. This goes double for contemporary history past the Second World War. And this atmosphere is likely to get even more hostile moving forward.

What Now? 

While these events have made it rather stressful to make my content, it didn't dent my love for it. I would like nothing more than to share my country's history and culture with others. I am honored to share my work to both to my fellow Filipinos and to the international Sims 3 community. The work and goodwill I've earned from making San Simeon and its sister projects makes it all worth it.

I've already made 2 commitments that I plan to see through to the end. One is the a remade  San Simeon and the other is a precolonial version set before Spanish rule. Although I couldn't muster the mental energy to work on them, I can commit to at least finish them for everyone’s sake.

What I cannot promise is if I can continue my other world building project, Camayao. This is set in a more contemporaneous Philippines and had elements of social satire. At present, I live in a cultural zeitgeist where I could get a lot of grief for doing so. And that is putting it lightly.

This, coupled with the difficulty involved in its creation, makes Camayao a tall order on its own.  Events in the past few months was the final nail in the coffin for this project and others like it. I will not make any more contemporary Filipino-themed builds in the Sims 3 set in a time past 1945.

What Next?

That said, I've already done a lot of the individual buildings. It would be a crying shame to see them languish in some folder. Maybe they can find a good home with someone else.

What am I to do with the content already created?

Some will be released as individual lot files, depending on their level of completion.

Others will be released alongside San Simeon to fill in some of the newer lots I've added to the much larger world. This has the added benefit of making that other project less of a pain to finish.

If nothing else, my past efforts will hopefully not be consigned to obscurity.

Will I ever come back to Camayao as a full world building project? I can't say. Maybe someday, but then again maybe not. I’ve a lot on my plate personality-wise. I also have other things that interest me that won’t give me as much grief. After I finish, I will resume work on the Roman world and a few others I've had planned. 

Would I allow someone else to pick up where I left off? I'm not sure, but I am open to the idea. Feel free to contact me if you’re interested in adopting it yourself. As for my other, still active projects, that is a subject for another day.

On the Matter of Facebook

My projects first became truly popular on Facebook, where I enjoyed a brief moment of Internet fame as “the guy who made a Filipino-themed Sims 3 world.” Since then, I’ve created a page to have the Facebook people see some of my newer builds and appreciate Filipino history and culture.

In the past few months, however, I found it better for my mental health to ignore Facebook. Indeed, I find interacting on that site a mentally taxing chore. As pleasant as my success there was, I am not overly attached to my following there at all. In any case, the majority of any meaningful engagement I’ve had had been on Tumblr anyway. However, since part of my real-world jobs involve managing a Facebook page, I cannot disengage completely, even if I can ignore it for health purposes.

In the interest of my followers there, I will set things up so that they get alerted for my Tumblr uploads moving forward. I should have it done in a few days after this is published.

Closing Thoughts

I’d like to thank you all for being part of this journey of discovery with me. What began as a simple set of builds for a Filipino-themed legacy challenge eventually became an obsession that lasted nearly a decade. I enjoyed learning new things about my country’s history, and it felt nice knowing that it had an impact on not just myself but the Sims 3 community and my fellow Filipinos who stumbled upon it. The appreciation you all gave certainly helped keep me going.

We live in a time where knowing the truth of our past is in jeopardy. As the old Tagalog proverb goes, whoever can’t look back can never truly move forward. I’d like to close this statement with a line from Doc J. himself:

“But the generation that deciphers these characters will be an intelligent generation, it will understand and say, ‘Not all were asleep in the night of our ancestors!’“