How did you go about planning your town?

[Shadow Star]

I'm curious to see how everyone went about their town plans. Things such as choosing the right map, plot resetting, pathing, pwp's, etc. It's mainly because this is the first time I've actually bothered to make my town look decent or pretty and try for the hard stuff like breeding hybrids. Also partly because I'm curious to see if there's a recurring pattern in how people organized their towns.

For example, my main town is purely for getting my main dreamies and for me to play. I'm probably just going to put down a basic path and leave it at that. That town's just for my enjoyment as a player.

However, for my second town, I want to make it into something stunning like the rest of the people here have. I'm starting college and I think making a nice town will help keep me at ease when I've got a spare moment. However, my only 'plan' if you can even call it that is just obtaining all my dreamies first then pathing around them and the main pwp's such as the campsite, cafe, police station, etc and so on from there. I don't think it's really a 'right' plan, so to speak, so I'm curious to what other people did when they had the idea or working towards this really pretty town that they now live in.

 

[tobi!]

You could visit some Dream Towns.
About the campsite, put it down immediately. Your dreamies could be in sooner that way. Also, haven't a perfect town doesn't mean you'll have fun. I have my town looking neat in my own image because I like the difficulty, I have fun that way, yah dig?
Anyway, the "plan" depends on how you play. If you sell allot on this forum, Re-Tail needs to be by the train station. If you like to island catch, Re-Tail is near the docks. Also keep in mind what your theme is. A Modern town won't have a Zen bridge, yah dig?

 

[Danielle]

I currently have two towns, one of them is being used to hold onto a friend's villagers currently and the other I would consider my "main" town.

In my main town when I first started planning things out I had no idea what I was doing and just sort of laid paths around and tried to get it to flow when it really didn't. Then I read THIS post and decided to work about it that way. I cleared all the paths I had, cleared all my trees, moved all my flowers to one part of town, and removed the PWPs I had. I moved a couple of my bridges in this phase as well.

I'm no where close to being done, but the little sections I have completed I'm very pleased with and I'm honestly glad I went about it the way I did because it gave me a fresh set of eyes to what I could do in my town.

Oh, also I definitely suggest getting all your dreamies placed first before you start. I personally wasn't bothered if they weren't all in a row or what not, but I did plot reset to get 8/10 (the other two were already placed before I began the process) into the bottom half of my map and it feels a lot better that way.

 

[Ettienne]

That's been my idea, but someone's blog I was reading suggested the reverse method. Build your town with the beginning PWPs. Where you want the cafe, put an extra character's house. Where you want a fancy bench, use the default bench. Continue until you have everything blocked off the way you want it to be, noting where you'd like villager's to live as you go. Now you can get your dreamies with minimal plot resetting as you have the basic PWPs preventing them from landing in those areas.

Both methods work, of course. It just depends on which kind of person you are: a plotter or a pantser. Plot everything out from Day 1 or go with the flow.

 

[moonchu]

i just went with the flow. i picked a map that felt right to me and the villagers i've slowly obtained via campsite or random move in. the path ended up being one that i just took the most (tweaking after i decided upon where to put PWP). i knew exactly where i wanted to put my cafe so i didn't wait on that, the police station i did wait on because i wasn't feeling like it felt right anywhere at the time. i guess i let my town speak to me? that sounds lame but whatever. i don't know how people wait to put their PWPs down after they have all of their 'dream' villagers. i get too excited about where to put them to wait that long, and some of my villagers aren't necessarily forever (though they've been declined to move multiple times lol).

at any rate, for landscaping i do what i think but i'm pretty awkward at it so i do like going to dream addresses to see the proper way to place bushes.

 

[Kitsuneko]

It depends how you want to play at it. If one thing stresses you out too much, then you can take a step back and try again or do something else. You can do a little planning ahead with the town map and placement of permanent PWP buildings at most, and go with the flow with everything else you come across until you feel like experimenting and adding something new like paths.

I think most of the satisfaction you get from playing this game is building up something you yourself would like and be happy to show it off once in a while. You can go along with it until you want to change some things as you see fit. It's a gradual process though, especially if you don't like time traveling, but it can make the wait for things like trees to fully sprout or PWPs to be completed feel more interesting when it's finally done.

At least for me, I sort of went in playing blind without doing much research in advance. I never restarted my town or did anything with time traveling, plot resetting, or anything like that. I still have my starting villagers which I'm quite happy with and have gotten quite attached to most of them, and don't plan to boot anyone out... Though I am waiting for a 10th from a good camper. It might be odd for me say this, but the moment I'm ready to boot and/or add a new villager into my town is the moment I'm ready to take the risk of a random house destroying something like paths and trees while obscuring another building. Paths and trees can be fixed and rerouted, but the only thing I'd be worried about is if the house was too close to a river or next to something that I'd build a PWP on.

Overall, I just make use of whatever I have and can easily get access to. I don't really have anything obscenely rare nor do I have all of my PWPs in regards to town layout building. I'm still waiting for more good PWPs to show up... But designs, paths, trees, island bushes, basic flowers with a few hybrids at most, and tools can be enough to get you started.