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  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    SimGuruMax wrote: »
    IngeJones wrote: »
    My sim died when he had just started a baby with a townie. As he was the only sim in the household, I had to go back to world management. I managed to find the townie and move her into his house. His urn was still there and we displayed it on a dresser. My concern is, she had no emotions concerning her old dead boyfriend. Is the technical reason for this that emotional state is too temporary to go across more than one instance of a sim? I am assuming that after the old sim died and I went to the managament screen, at that time all instances of sims on the actual lot were destroyed and a fresh instance of the townie was created to become the new owner. Am I close?

    Thank you for leaving the thread open. Gurus who have Q&A threads in late afternoon and evening are at risk of leaving out Europeans who are sound asleep at that time and don't get a chance to post on them at all (SimGuruSemedi please note)

    This is a really interesting question. I can't answer this right now, i'll have to ask around the pit and get back to you. Check the thread again tomorrow...

    Talked to a couple people. and here is roughly how Buff Persistence works:

    Most if not all buffs are represented under the hood by a statistic on the Sim. If your Sim's BF dies, the Sim is granted a statistic called something like "deadLovedOne" at some value, say 100. There is a buff that activates when a Sim's deadLovedOne stat is greater than some value, probably 0 in this case. The stat decays over time and when it reaches 0, the buff is removed.

    The way persistence works is that we don't save the buffs, but we do save the stats. Then, when the Sim is instantiated, buffs are derived from their stats and re-added to the Sim.

    So the short answer is, yes, buffs are effectively persisted across different instances of the same Sim. It sounds like your experience is a bug with this system, possibly some complication related to townies or the manage world system.
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    Zafireria wrote: »
    Hi!

    I was wondering how many multitasking a sims can do? So far I have seen 3, eating while watching TV and talk to another sims, I am pretty sure they can drink as well, but have not tested that yet.

    Is multitasking limited to personalities?

    If you were to add a new emotion, like fear. Would that require an overhaul of the other emotions or would it be simple to add?

    Hope I got the question correct, else I am deeply sorry.
    Have a nice day! Hope its not too stressful.

    There is no hard limit to the number of interactions that your Sims can run simultaneously. The "limit" comes from the constraints of different interactions. Every interaction has what we call Constraints, which define the requirements for running the interaction. Constraints come in the form of posture requirements for animation (sit, stand, treadmill, etc.) and geometric constraints (the cone and facing restrictions for viewing a TV or the circle constraint for interacting with other Sims in a social group).

    When the Sim's active interaction state is empty, there are no restrictions on what they can do. As you add interactions, the constraints continue to intersect until the next interaction would cause the total intersection to be invalid (nowhere). This is what causes interactions to block in the queue - they wait until enough active interactions either get canceled or become unprotected (can be canceled by queue pressure), and when they can generate a valid intersection with all required constraints, that next interaction will run.

    Getting 3 is fairly common - Eat + Chat + TV happens all the time. Getting 4 is much less common but a fairly obvious example would be Eat + Drink + Chat + Stereo. I can't think of a case that exists right now where you can get 5 going, but I imagine we'll get there eventually.

    I doubt we will ever add a hard limit, but we will continue to monitor our soft limits and we do have a model for a Sim's "attention" that discourages them from excessive multitasking (especially when doing focused tasks like painting), so getting higher degrees of multitasking often requires user intervention.

    Multitasking doesn't interact with personalities other than what interactions are available and which are automatically selected by autonomy.

    Adding a new emotion, such as Afraid, would certainly be possible. The main problem is not that it would require an overhaul of our other emotions - our emotion system is nicely encapsulated and new emotions / variants across all interactions can be added entirely without new code. The main problem with this is the legacy content cost of adding a new emotion. How many of the existing object suites need to get new emotional variations? Do we need to create a new animation for painting when your Sim is afraid? Often, the answer is we don't need to do that - have you noticed that painting actually uses the same painting animations regardless of your emotion? The way we sell the emotion in a lot of cases is with Vox variations - your Sim can mumble angrily or sob while playing the same brush animation and it changes the way we interpret that. We also mix in little emotional idle actions (see my previous explanation of how multitasking works to understand how these get inserted better).

    So basically where I would start is I would get a new set of Afraid idles that we can mix in with various activities. I would find the places where we can add new Vox variations to existing animations, like creating Afraid painting and cooking. Then I would look at the places where we really need new animations - like sleeping. Selling the Afraid animation without authoring new sleeping clips would be tough, just as one example.
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    zoeman93 wrote: »
    Hi do you know why some textures look low quality and kinda pixelated even on ultra settings? Example:<br />
    <br />
    i60.tinypic.com/2rwtk00.jpg<br />
    <br />
    oi62.tinypic.com/1218un7.jpg<br />
    <br />
    The fridge looks pixelated when recolored it happens to one couch also I don't remember which one!! I made sure it's not just on my pc you can check it on yours too!! can this be fixed in a patch or something?? It's very annoying when zoomed in <br />
    <br />
    Sorry I'm not allowed to post images directly because i'm still considered a new member

    I don't know enough about how our rendering tech works to answer this question, I am afraid. Sorry! The core simulation team and game engine teams are completely different people.
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    edited September 2014
    BigWazaa wrote: »
    Hi SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax, I have four questions:<br />
    <br />
    1. Why you put so many tutorials, with not even the possibility to dissable it? days after I start playing the game some of them are still showing, telling me how to do things I already learned to do.<br />
    <br />
    2. My sims doing "wo oh!" while some other sim was playing to the computer in the same room, completely happy. What are the concepts that make a Sim to notice other Sims interactions? To be in the same room, as sims 1, 2, 3, or be near them, as I feel it is happening?<br />
    <br />
    3. Why cannot be check the info of Sims we cannot interact with? for example, or little babies (to check their needs, or how many days are left until they grown up, or people in other lots or working.<br />
    <br />
    4. If I check the windows of a house in the same neighbor I see the furniture inside it. So, why I need a load screen to go to that home?

    1) You can disable tutorials through an arcane method that involves modifying your command-line settings in Origin. I really wish we had shipped an option in the options menu to disable. Do a search on these forums or the internet to find the exact method of doing this.

    2) I described the privacy system already in this thread. While doing WooHoo, Sims drop a privacy footprint that fills their line-of-sight. There is a limit to this distance, so if the room is large enough, they may not consider it to be a privacy violation. That said, if this is happening in a small room, then that would be an issue.

    3) These are really design/production questions. I would bring this up with SimGuruGrant or SimGuruSemedi.

    4) As IngeJones referenced, the amount of metadata required to efficiently simulate Sims in a house goes way deeper than the geometry of the objects. Unfortunately, there are physical realities of modern computers and our player base generally doesn't have sixteen-core, 8GB behemoth machines. We made some really tough choices in order to get the level of depth in the simulation that we wanted, as you all know. We also really want our neighborhoods to feel alive with Sims, and the number of Sims we can support both from a simulation and rendering/animation standpoint is limited. If we have to simulate all your neighbor's houses, regardless of all the objects, that's maybe 20+ Sims we may need to be simulating inside houses you can't see 90% of the time, which would mean your common areas like the park would be dead.
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    Valeria wrote: »
    Hey!<br />
    Awesome that you guru's are answering all of our questions :)<br />
    <br />
    I have a question myself, why do my sims keep moving seats when they're eating? I have a table with 5 chairs for my 5 sims, but sometimes they suddenly go sit on the couch, and then go back to the table.<br />
    I'm having kind of the same issue when my sim is at a bar, there they keep switching seats too. Why is that?

    I addressed this on the original thread, so I am going to paste that answer in here. Let me know if you want me to elaborate, though this is a fairly detailed response:

    I know many people have referenced the "musical chairs" bug. This bug is an illustration of how delicate of a balance the social scoring system maintains. Where Sims stand/sit is a complex integration of several factors:
    * Social positioning - this system looks at all the Sims in the social group and tries to maximize overlap between their field-of-view, which is a tunable shape (per posture) in front of the Sim. We then can assign a score, in meters, to each position the Sim could choose, and periodically we push an invisible interaction that has them re-evaluate the scoring and potentially adjust their position or sit down on an object.
    * Object scoring - Sims prefer to sit rather than stand. That said, if the chair is facing away from the other Sims, then the bonus for sitting will be attenuated by the penalty for social positioning.
    * Additional interactions - the TV has a cone and facing restrictions that must be aggregated with the scoring for socials and objects. The Sim will try to find a good middle ground between facing the TV and facing towards other Sims.

    There are other factors too, but the point is that there are a huge number of factors that influence where Sims want to be in the world while socializing. If an interaction gets added or canceled, the balance can change and result in a Sim moving to a different chair for example. Sometimes this is exactly what you want, but sometimes it looks like the Sims are moving chairs for no reason. We will continue to polish and fine-tune this system, so hopefully it will get better over time.
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    MsPhy wrote: »
    SimGuruMax wrote: »
    The washing dishes issue is one we tried to kill several times, but its hard to figure out player intent sometimes. They generally should go to the nearest sink, but I know our scoring system prefers embedded counter sinks over standalone sinks for washing dishes because we assumed most people would use the standing sinks in bathrooms and the counter sinks in kitchens. If you go against that expectation, then the scoring will work against you, unfortunately. Hopefully we come up with a more elegant solution for this in the future, but in the meantime I will file a bug for you.

    I don't know if this info will help, but in the Spencer-Kim-Lewis house, my Sims often take the dishes up to the second- or third-floor bathroom instead of washing them in the kitchen sink. All the sinks are embedded in the counter -- it was a premade house, came that way. Maybe if I change out the bathroom sinks to standalone sinks, they'll quit doing this. It still does not explain why they would choose an embedded sink on the third floor over one in the same room with them (kitchen).

    Thanks for this thread, and nice to meet you!

    Glad you like the thread! So far it has been my pleasure chatting with everyone.

    It sounds like I may have mis-characterized the issue, though the things I said regarding the scoring of sinks is still true. I have no idea why this problem would be happening with sinks since its the same system that controls everything else in the game, like where Sims go to eat. I will make sure that this issue is in our bug database, however, and is updated to include your details.

    Quick note about my "i'll enter this bug" comments: I will absolutely make sure all these get entered into our system. That doesn't guarantee when or if they will be fixed, as we have a long backlog of issues/features that we want to get into the game for you. It is ultimately up to our production team to prioritize that backlog and determine the order in which things are addressed. That said, they are actively listening to the community and your feedback will help us make that decision. The more details you can give us about your use-cases, the better.
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    Is it possible to make Sims hold hands while walking/running while on a date? I think the interaction "Go Here Together" is an example.

    Love this question. Yeah, we really wanted this sort of thing as well, but it ends up being much more complex than it seems.

    I can tell you that we experimented with Walking + Talking while building our multitasking system and the underlying tech was there. We just ran into so many edge cases even with that system - and that has no registration! As you may have gathered from some of my other answers, registration on animations - where Sims actually touch each other - creates strict restrictions on where Sims can be in the world for that to look good. Walking hand-in-hand is easy for humans IRL, because we are perfectly integrated into the most beautifully designed physics engine of all time and our bodies are flexible and adaptable. Watch video of a couple walking hand-in-hand and you will notice some things if you look closely enough - their gait and posture will actually change to account for their partner and the constraint of their hand will cascade through all the bones in their body, subtly tugging them in different ways as they walk. They will work together and give each other space when they encounter bumps or tight spaces.

    Sims, on the other hand, are much less flexible and ultimately driven entirely by the behaviors that we hand-author for them, even if we end up combining those behaviors in interesting ways to create an emergent and lifelike simulation.

    Assuming we figured out the registration problems and animated an entirely new locomotion suite for walking hand-in-hand, we would run into the most problematic issue, which is navigating the world. How do we go through doorways? Do we have to let go, go through, and then start holding hands again? What if there isn't room on the other side of the door for both Sims, like a long narrow entry hallway? Do they have to route single-file through that and then start holding hands again? What about stairs? How about avoidance, which is what dynamically causes Sims to avoid each other when their passes cross in the world? Now that system needs to know how to steer two Sims together to avoid other Sims.

    Taking a step back, this is the answer to a lot of questions you guys are asking - there is a huge amount of hidden complexity in The Sims and very rarely is something as easy as it sounds once you start diving in. The devil is in the details, as it were.
  • maccarulezmaccarulez Posts: 253 Member
    @SimGuruMax : First let me say that I am really enjoying the new Sims 4 game and coming as a old time since before the first Sims game ;)

    What I want to ask and I apologize in advanced if this has been asked multiple times in the past but are you able to say if Story Progression will be making a return to this game at all?

  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    coachjulia wrote: »
    Cool stuff so far, thanks!<br />
    I was wondering why so many Sims walk in on other Sims in the bathroom! This now causes embarrassed emotions for both, but seems like the sort of thing they should be able to avoid.<br />
    Also, love that they can read on the toilet. Awesome!<br />
    Seems to have already been answered, sorry. And I hope the reading on the can isn't a bug ;)

    NOT reading on the can WAS a bug. Once we got that, the tablet and phone and all the other stuff just worked :D
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    edited September 2014
    maccarulez wrote: »
    @SimGuruMax : First let me say that I am really enjoying the new Sims 4 game and coming as a old time since before the first Sims game ;)

    What I want to ask and I apologize in advanced if this has been asked multiple times in the past but are you able to say if Story Progression will be making a return to this game at all?

    I can't speak to this. You should direct questions like this to gurus like SimGuruGrant and SimGuruSemedi.

    Also, really glad to hear you are enjoying the game! You happy = us happy.
  • maccarulezmaccarulez Posts: 253 Member
    SimGuruMax wrote: »
    maccarulez wrote: »
    @SimGuruMax : First let me say that I am really enjoying the new Sims 4 game and coming as a old time since before the first Sims game ;)

    What I want to ask and I apologize in advanced if this has been asked multiple times in the past but are you able to say if Story Progression will be making a return to this game at all?

    I can't speak to this. You should direct questions like this to gurus like SimGuruGrant and SimGuruSemedi.

    Ahh okie. Thank you for the fast response on my question. :)
  • IngeJonesIngeJones Posts: 3,247 Member
    edited September 2014
    I was remembering the memory system in TS2, and how bad or good memories would affect their wants and fears. Now it turned out that the accumulation of memories ultimately bogged down the game and caused glitches. The memories were designed with timeout values which I would guess were supposed to make major events be remembered longer, but for some reason they don't appear to have been used and all memories lasted forever.

    I was wondering whether a mod could emulate long term memories, using the buff system, with very large initial values for persistance. Or would doing that simply give the sim such a strong emotion it would kill them straight away?
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    sounsoss wrote: »
    hey<br />
    the thing People most complain about is the disappearance of the " open world"<br />
    I suppose you removed that because of the background processes that might become overloaded due to the big and open neightborhood ( sims and their relationships & emotions & interaction)<br />
    People also do not understand why the Performance of a game for example skyrim( > open world , many interactions, """intelligent"" npcs...)<br />
    is easier to realize than the logic and Performance behind the sims. <br />
    I have some ideas but would love to hear you explain this. (if its possible at all) <br />
    <br />
    Would really like , in General, to hear a bit more about the logic behind the sims. For example... how do you realize the generics ?it has always been a Point i wonder about :)<br />
    <br />
    Think it would be wonderful if the children would not only get mixed look from their parents but also a bit of their character( Special new mixed characteristic which max. can brench 2-3 times ( so 2-3 Generations)). <br />
    <br />
    would also love to see the Family tree back in game again :)<br />
    <br />
    edit <br />
    <br />
    It would also be a nice addictional content to allow the sims to take credits from a public bank and then to choose between several repays(?) each having different "interest rates" :) That a Thing i wish for since sims 2, shouldnt be that hard to implement but would make the game a bit more realistic . ( the amount of the allowed credit would be calculated out of the regular incoming and there always would be a max. amount) :)<br />
    would be such a nice adding !!! :)

    You have lots of cool ideas that should be suggested on some of our other threads! I especially love the idea of behavioral genetics, though it might create some gameplay/storytelling issues if all your Sims in your family are too alike.

    Answering your big question is, of course, very difficult. A game like skyrim certainly has a LOT less simulation going on than the Sims. The NPCS have predetermined paths and schedules and, VERY IMPORTANTLY, the geometry of the world is entirely static. That game is still extremely-impressive, they are just solving a very different set of problems than we are. Their enemies are probably the closest thing in the game to our Sims, but their decision trees are just much simpler. They can attack you with one of a couple abilities, they can run towards you, and they can run away from you. They don't have needs, they don't have emotions, and they don't have hopes and dreams.

    A big problem with building the Sims is we cannot account for all the variations of what you will make when you dig into it. We can make a bar look good but what about a three-story bar mixed with a gym? We have to try to make sure that each individual element works together and then assume that those elements will continue to work when combined ad infinitum.

    Hopefully that clears things up a bit, but, again, this is a really complex issue and the deeper explanations are extremely technical.
  • justletmedownldjustletmedownld Posts: 63 Member
    SimGuruMax, this may have already been asked and answered but I haven't seen it. Camera controls are really a huge pain. I have option settings checked to Sims3, but the controls are still really bad. It takes the fun out. I love decorating when I play, but have actually not played the game for a couple of days now due to frustration. If you want specifics I will give them, but I believe anyone who has spent time in game knows what I'm talking about. It's bad, Is there going to be a fix.
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    IngeJones wrote: »
    I was remembering the memory system in TS2, and how bad or good memories would affect their wants and fears. Now it turned out that the accumulation of memories ultimately bogged down the game and caused glitches. The memories were designed with timeout values which I would guess were supposed to make major events be remembered longer, but for some reason they don't appear to have been used and all memories lasted forever.

    I was wondering whether a mod could emulate long term memories, using the buff system, with very large initial values for persistance. Or would doing that simply give the sim such a strong emotion it would kill them straight away?

    Our statistic system is extremely flexible and I can image a large number of ideas being implementable by attaching new stats to Sims and objects based on new interactions / systems. I think memories could potentially use stats as a foundation, but I think they are tricky and would require additional tech to really sing - you want to be able to attach screenshots, for example, and have player hooks to manage them, which probably requires new UI screens, etc. Most features end up going down this rabbit hole: "Yeah, that only costs a few days of time to build the back-end, but then it requires a month of art, UI, and integration with other systems."
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    edited September 2014
    SimGuruMax, this may have already been asked and answered but I haven't seen it. Camera controls are really a huge pain. I have option settings checked to Sims3, but the controls are still really bad. It takes the fun out. I love decorating when I play, but have actually not played the game for a couple of days now due to frustration. If you want specifics I will give them, but I believe anyone who has spent time in game knows what I'm talking about. It's bad, Is there going to be a fix.

    I am sorry you are having trouble with our camera. This is another thing for the production gurus, as I am not directly involved in the prioritization of these kinds of interface fixes / improvements (sorry!).
  • IngeJonesIngeJones Posts: 3,247 Member
    SimGuruMax wrote: »
    Our statistic system is extremely flexible and I can image a large number of ideas being implementable by attaching new stats to Sims and objects based on new interactions / systems. I think memories could potentially use stats as a foundation, but I think they are tricky and would require additional tech to really sing - you want to be able to attach screenshots, for example, and have player hooks to manage them, which probably requires new UI screens, etc. Most features end up going down this rabbit hole: "Yeah, that only costs a few days of time to build the back-end, but then it requires a month of art, UI, and integration with other systems."

    Actually no, not as far as I am concerned, not necessary. In TS2, memories were not a player-facing activity like they became in TS3 (and continued in TS4) In TS2 we could take screenshots to save to a storybook but that was in no way connected to the Sim's memories, which remained an ingame part of their psychological makeup. I see in TS4 there is a "reminisce" system using player-created memories, but that's not what I had in mind really here.

  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    edited September 2014
    Glic2003 wrote: »
    I've heard some players report that Sims don't respond to seemingly important events around them, for example, other Sims fighting, infidelity, fires, etc. How do these unusual events factor into the Sims' overall autonomy? I.e. are they always given a high[est] priority, or just a certain amount of "weight" which is factored into whatever else the Sim is experiencing?

    In the live broadcast, for example, it seemed like Sims were oblivious to the other Sim perishing in the fire, in fact, one Sim even reached for a drink right next to the burning stove! Is this considered a bug, or is the simulation running as expected? If the latter, I find it quite odd.

    We have a system called Broadcasters that alert nearby Sims of interesting events. These events include things like fire, infidelity, and streaking Sims. I am positive that this system works in most cases, but I have seen edge cases where Sims fail to respond.

    These broadcasters affect Sims by pushing interactions on them, which then add statistics to the Sim, which then trigger buffs like Jealous. If the Sim is already busy, they might miss the interaction as those interactions can time-out or get canceled by pressure (like from user-directed interactions). There may be some cases where we need to protect these interactions more to make them run more reliably, such as jealousy - it is really important that Sims acknowledge stuff like this and it looks very robotic when they are oblivious. There may be other cases where the broadcaster area-of-effect is insufficient for your particular situation or lot layout - again, we can't account for every possible house or situation you can make in our game, so there are going to be cases that never came up in our testing.

    I can say that we will probably continue to add new sources for these Broadcasters as we add content, and that will put pressure on testing the system and improving it as we continue to develop TS4. As usual, if you have a specific use-case and can provide a screenshot or very detailed description, this will help us understand the issue and make it more likely to get fixed.
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    cimten wrote: »
    My child sim is invisible.<br />
    <br />
    He was a baby when i left his household. i played another one. when i came back; his avatar is there, i can control him, i can give tasks, and in the task bar i can see that he is doing! <br />
    for example, he play chess when i tell him. the chessboard moves. but he is not there! what is this? anyone with the same problem?

    It sounds like your Sim faded out and then missed the fade-in event or something to that effect. This will almost certainly be fixed by travelling away and then coming back or exiting to the main menu and returning.
  • justletmedownldjustletmedownld Posts: 63 Member
    Hi, thanks for responding. Who are the production gurus? (People). I'd really like to pursue this as for me it's a game breaker. I own every darn thing that is Sims 1,2, and 3. I am not failing a learning curve, the controls are really not good.
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    edited September 2014
    Hi SimGuruMax,nice to meet you. May I asked how many people worked on the Animations for this game? How many people were riggers? And do they use any auto tools for rigging or rig and weigh everything by hand? Also I would love to know more about the softwares used so if there's anything at all you can share in that regard I'd really appreciate it (hoping it was just the plant software you couldn't talk about).

    Oh one more thing - fabulous job on the outdoor lighting. Everything looks so vibrant you just want to jump in the game and live there!

    Some of these answers are in the credits, so you can check there for things like staffing numbers.

    We have just a couple people involved in rigging. We use Maya for animation keyframing, but we build lots of custom tools to help automate things like rigging and skinning, porting animations to different ages, and things like that. All of these things require a decent amount of fine-tuning, but building tools to help automate the process is important to us. In general, Animation time is one of the worst bottlenecks on The Sims games so we do everything we can to improve our pipeline.

    Sorry if that answer is a bit vague.
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    agent_bev wrote: »

    Also, will it be possible for lot sizes to be bigger or are they 50x50 at the maximum because of engine limitations?

    Finally, I know one of the gurus mentioned that it is not technically possible to have CASt in the game, but would it be possible to have an external tool where you could re-color and re-texture all the objects and clothing in game, and then upload it to the game?

    I don't believe there is a hard limitation on the 50x50 maximum size, but of course I cannot promise anything. We could certainly afford to simulate many houses that could be built on a 100x100 lot, but what about the worst-case scenario? In development, we have to do crazy things like build a house that fills the entire lot with three stories of rooms packed wall-to-wall with chairs at tables. Then we tell a Sim to eat food and it takes them 5 real-time-minutes to decide which chair to sit in. To some degree, from a purely simulation standpoint (there are other limitations like rendering), we have to be able to handle these worst-case-scenarios on our lots or we can't claim to actually support that lot size.

    In regards to the loss of CAST and custom content, I believe the modding community will be able to create custom assets for our game, which could include custom textures and new presets for existing objects in addition to entirely new objects.
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    Ayradyss wrote: »
    agent_bev wrote: »
    Finally, I know one of the gurus mentioned that it is not technically possible to have CASt in the game, but would it be possible to have an external tool where you could re-color and re-texture all the objects and clothing in game, and then upload it to the game?

    I too recall a comment that made it sound that adding CASt would not be possible. I very much hope that this 'impossibility' turns out not to be quite so impossible. Of the things missing from TS4, CASt is probably the one I miss the most. If all else fails, I too would certainly be interested in an external tool that would work in much the same manner as CASt from TS3, allowing for us to recolor/texture items quickly and easily, then saving them to be accessible in-game. (Though I would very much still like some degree of capability in-game if at all possible. Even just a color wheel.)

    I'm not a digital artist, so I'm not really up to getting into the nuts and bolts of pulling files out of packages and into Photoshop, etc. What I really want is the CASt functionality of being able to pull a woodgrain (or whatever) off of one object and apply it to another to make them look like a matching set and so on. Generally using the textures already in-game and a color-wheel to customize items quickly and easily.

    Hopefully this could be a possibility?
    IngeJones wrote: »
    SimGuruMax wrote: »
    Have you tried the "Call To Meal" interaction yet? .

    Call to meal isn't working well for me. After the sim finishes cooking they grab their own plate immediately, and if I ask them to call to meal it sits in their queue until they have finished eating themselves. I'd rather like them to either automatically call to meal if I have chosen "serve" or else give me a popup asking if I'd like the family to eat at the same time. Then I would like them all to wait a reasonable time for everyone to be served before actually picking up their forks.

    I've encountered this problem too, and it's kind of frustrating. I can see how it comes about -- the cook herself is hungry, thus immediately grabs a plate when the food is ready. That comes from her own needs/motivations. But the "Call to Meal" interaction is a separate one that can't be chosen by the player until after the food is prepared and placed on a surface in-world. At that point, you have to either wait until she's eaten her own food until she calls everyone else, or you can cancel her "eat" action, causing her to leave an extra plate of food lying about.

    Personally, I would not want to have -every- instance of "Serve food" do an automatic "Call to meal," as I would think there are times when I don't want everyone coming. But maybe there could be an additional option in the initial cooking menu -- so it would have both "Serve . . ." and "Serve + Call to . . ." when you first start to cook, thus pre-determining the appropriate action to take once the food is prepared.

    (Actually, since there's also the "Cook" option that could make quantities without calling everyone to meal, perhaps just putting an automatic "Call" on the "Serve" option would be okay.)

    Thank you very much for you time and attention, and for all the work you've put into the game!

    I feel like the loss of CAST has been covered elsewhere and doesn't really have much to do with the simulation, so I will skip this question.

    The call to meal thing is interesting. We had a pie-menu on the fridge for a while with a bunch of options and it felt really cluttered. People don't often think about this, but pie-menu real estate is a big deal - look at the social system if you want to see how big it can get!

    I think there is some merit to having those additional flavors, of course. I like your suggestion to make this the default behavior for "Serve" that encapsulated the call to meal functionality and could see us making that change. The core tech is there, so this should be a pretty simple feature. I will mention it to a guy I know ;)
  • SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax Posts: 105 SimGuru (retired)
    edited September 2014
    Hi, thanks for responding. Who are the production gurus? (People). I'd really like to pursue this as for me it's a game breaker. I own every darn thing that is Sims 1,2, and 3. I am not failing a learning curve, the controls are really not good.

    SimGuruGrant and SimGuruSemedi are good options. In general, these are questions that can either just be started as a new thread (the Gurus are paying attention to your threads as well), you could make a general "Features/Bug" thread, though I think there are already a few like this, like this one:
    http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/775749/sims-4-base-game-bug-thread-please-read-the-first-post-before-posting#latest

    or this one:
    http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/776344/the-sims-4-feedback-thread-come-share-yours#latest

    and then there are some regular "Ask a SimGuru" type threads like this one:
    http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/779362/ask-a-simguru-will-return-monday-sept-15#latest

    I imagine threads like this will continue to exist/be created moving forward.

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