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Why We're Never Likely To See Height Sliders in The Sims
netguysteve
Posts: 470 Member
Well, at least not in the foreseeable future. The problem is that height sliders would greatly increase the number of animations required for each interaction. Even if there were only three different heights, it would mean they would need nine times as many animations to cover all possible height combinations. They may be able to cheat a little and get that down as small as five times the number, by going by height difference instead of the actual height, and then scaling the animation. This would never look as smooth though.
If they increased the number of available heights to 5, well, now you're talking a bare minimum of nine, even going the economical route, and 25 for the best results. At 10, that goes to 19 at the lowest, and 100 for the best results.
The return on investment on something like that is astronomically low. It's just not worth the time that would be added to creating new content.
If they increased the number of available heights to 5, well, now you're talking a bare minimum of nine, even going the economical route, and 25 for the best results. At 10, that goes to 19 at the lowest, and 100 for the best results.
The return on investment on something like that is astronomically low. It's just not worth the time that would be added to creating new content.
"UR" is NOT a word, it's the sound stupid people make when they try to spell "You are".
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Comments
Using your three is an example, here is how the best case scenario would look...
Petite acting on petite
Petite acting on normal
Petite acting on tall.
Normal acting on petite.
Normal acting on normal.
Normal acting on tall.
Tall acting on petite.
Tall acting on normal.
Tall acting on tall.
Petite acting on normal and normal acting on petite would not be the same thing because the two sims are usually not doing the same animation. In fact, I can't really think of a case where they actually are doing the same thing in The Sims 3.
The simplified solution would look at the height difference. There are 5 different height differences in this case. Two heights shorter, one height shorter, the same height, one height taller, and two heights taller.
If anyone ever had a look at Second Life they know that Animations and poses can get awkward when your Avatar isn't a "normal" hight (which is something around 6-7 feet)
And considering the rant that broke loose about some clipping seen in some videos different heights are practically a no go or require like @netguysteve pointed out a large amount of work.
If they restricted it to something like +/-6" from the normal height (which would have minimal impact in terms of how the animations look), it would be better than no slider at all.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
But if EA / Maxis had made those animations and there were obvious lack of "height adaptation" in animations, you woud have complained.
I don't think you know me well enough to tell me what I would do. I never complained about sims 3. No one on the forums EVER saw me complaining about sims 3.
It's ok to not be able to do that, we are all pro coders aren't we?
It's because many of the animations also involve objects or other sims. Scaling an animation to the model addresses only how the animation looks in respect to THAT model, and thus still does not look right when the animation is also interacting with another object or Sim like is so often the case in this game.
i.e. the people explaining it haven't a clue beyond what they themselves have read on the internet.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
Yah I've noticed, but it is not the same animation scaled.
They made an animation specifically for the adult->teen interaction. You couldn't use normal scaling of the animation for this situation because two different sims are involved, both of which could be of varying heights. Well, you could, but it would be more complex than making a few separate animations when you're dealing with a limited number of variables.
Like I said, I do really think they should have a height slider, at least with a small degree of variation. It wouldn't muck up the animations much, and they clearly don't seem to care about clipping in TS4. But it IS animation expense that is the reason we don't have one (and the reason we have same-height teens I imagine). There is more to it then just "scaling" the animations; it is not nearly as simple and quick as some people who complain about it would have you believe.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
ahh, yes. I get where you are coming from. But its not as simple as you seem to think it is. You can't just have the animations auto-scale in the game and auto-adjust the placement of arms, etc. relative to what they are interacting with and have things still look right.
Yes, when doing the hug animations they probably DID just scale the base adult->adult hug animation and make adjustments. But this work was done by the animators, AHEAD of time, and tweaked until it looked right to them. It takes time. Hence the limit how much of this work they have to do by limiting the number of heights they are dealing with.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
Because I understand project management requires responsible allocation of time resources and the need to complete a project within a reasonable time frame and expense.
And I understand that animation is one of the single most expensive aspects of game development.
And I understand that what people think "seems perfectly fine" for a mod would be analyzed and criticized harshly by a large portion of the player base if it was part of the actual game itself, thus what modders can get away with is greater than what the devs can get away with.
That being said, I do actually agree with you regarding the scaling of animations with the height mod for TS3. BUT, and it's a big but, if it was part of the game rather than just a mod we would have a ton of people zooming in and rotating the camera and finding every little bit of those animations that didn't look quite right. And they'd find a lot.
Which is basically my point regarding the fact they should have a height slider in TS4. The devs already are getting criticism regarding clipping, so that last point hardly matters. That doesn't mean I don't also understand the developers point of view and why they made the decisions they do.
I'm not really disagreeing with you in any of my above posts... I guess I'm just pointing out it isn't as cut and dry or as simple as some people think it is. At the end of the day, we actually do agree that the devs SHOULD have done things differently and given us more height variability. Where we disagree is on the motivation for that lack of choice and just how "lazy" it makes the devs for not giving it to us.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
3rd party modders did it for Sims2 and Sims3. They will no doubt do it for this one too.
Fix what EA messed up.
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Marcus Aurelius
Anyway, we both more or less think the same thing so we can call this a day.
I'm hoping for a mod that adds that feature and lets you automatically scale down teens by a pre-set amount.
I hated when I would have my adult sims in TS3 start to chat up a person with the goal of romantic interest only to find out it's a freaking teen. Even with some variance it was not always obvious to me when I first started playing the game.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods