I found the explanation why it doesn't make sense rooms take longer to load with CASt, @Schweighsr wrote it.
If she allows it I can copy-paste it here. It convinced me back then
I think you are referring to this post of mine, @astridentanja?
Please feel free to quote me/ it at any time in the future, but I will save you the effort and copy it myself for this thread.
"CASt and TS4"
"I think I have tried to explain how CASt works over a dozen times now on a whole bunch of threads. I am tired of repeating myself and it appears that no one reads me anyway. So here goes:
CASt does not cause lag in TS3. The only time that CASt causes a delay in TS3 is when it loads - it takes time to load all those patterns. CASt does not cause Create-a-Sim to lag - Create-a-Sim takes forever to load because of the way EA loads all the clothing options before you can select them. CASt does not cause lots to lag when loading patterns - it takes just as long to load a custom pattern as it takes to load a preset.
Let me repeat: CASt does not cause lag in TS3.
I will now explain (if you don't want an explanation stop reading): in TS3 every single object, outfit, hair-style, skin, cosmetic and eye has TWO layers in its texture (a texture is the 'skin' that goes over the mesh to give it color and detail). The first layer is the color layer which contains the CASt or preset color or pattern. The second layer has the details - shading, seams, wrinkles, belts, lace, logos on tee-shirts, and whatever.
It doesn't matter if you use a preset color or a CASt pattern because the game has to load both layers no matter what they are. It doesn't take the game more time to access a CASt pattern than it does a preset. To TS3 both a preset and a custom CASt are exactly the same.
If it takes some time for the game to load textures when loading a new lot, the game takes the exact same amount of time to load a custom CASt texture as it would a preset. It doesn't matter how many custom CASt patterns you use on a lot - the game has to color everything anyway. (I have noticed it takes unusually long to load textures in Midnight Hollow, but that is because of the neighborhood, not CASt.)
In TS2 and TS4 both the color and the detail are on the same layer. The game can load a single layer faster than it can load two layers, so it will cut down load times by a fraction of a second. But only by a fraction of a second. The difference will probably be unnoticeable on today's computers.
Unfortunately if EA were to give us a color-wheel option they would have to go back to a 2-layer system. One layer for the color from the color-wheel and the other layer for the details. That would require recoding the way textures are managed AND require them to remake the texture on every single object and outfit (and hair-style and cosmetic and skin and eye) in the game. And how likely is EA to do that really?
It is also important to know that basically there is no difference between a color-wheel and CASt except that a color-wheel would load faster when it is opened.
Way back in 2013 EA was considering putting CASt in TS4. They have since decided not to include CASt in TS4. We know that EA is giving us presets in TS4 because SimGuruGraham said so on Twitter.
Here are SimGuruGraham’s Statements on Twitter:
"I don’t want to mislead people; we said at Gamescom that CaST isn’t in, straight from the mouth of the dev team.” (Sep. 16th 2013)
“Hi Alicia – it’s a great tool, I agree. It’s something we’ve confirmed won’t be in Sims 4 I’m sorry to say, but I hope some of the other aspects of Build and Create a Sim that we’ll unveil will help spark your creativity!” (Dec. 22nd 2013)
“Color selection will work like it did at Gamescom (with more colors to choose from since then).” (May 22nd 2014)
And by 'color selection' he means presets.
The major problem with EA deciding to go with preset colors is that many fans will want more variation than they are providing (the long dress that Bella wears in the CAS video comes in 4 colors - black, pink, red and white, although Graham has said that there will be more) so the Community will have to make Custom Recolors. These recolors will load as Custom Content - and Custom Content takes significantly longer to load than CASt or a color-wheel option would. So the only players who will see an advantage from the elimination of CASt are those who have no Custom Content.
I hope that the above explanation was clear, but if you have any questions I would be happy to answer them."
I bolded the parts that apply to this thread. I made this post on June 4th, long before TS4 was released, which is why the quotes from Graham were in there. I didn't address things like stencils or multipliers until later in the thread, so if you are interested go to the thread and read the whole thing.
Yes, it is physically possible to add a color-wheel or CASt option to TS4, but they would have to remake every texture in the game *AND* rewrite the way the game places textures on meshes. It would take a huge amount of work - and when has EA ever been willing to do a lot of work to improve the game? We can't even get them to fix bugs half the time. Also, changing the code for the way textures work is likely to set off a cascade of bugs. So I wouldn't keep my hopes up for any sort of in-game color-wheel for TS4 - ever.
What they could do with much less work is allow a color-wheel option for something very limited, like walls or floors. If I played TS4 (which I don't), I would probably try to campaign for something like that. Again, such a thing is POSSIBLE but getting EA to actually do it is another thing entirely.
I will try to keep an eye on this thread if anyone has any additional questions about CASt that I can answer.
@schweighsr Thank you so much for explaining the mechanics of the whole "CASt makes my game lag" problem. I always suspected that there was more to that claim, but I never knew why. As sad as it is to hear the exact details of why a color wheel or CASt will be most likely never patched into TS4, it's good to at least gain some understanding of the mechanics of their system. Thank you!
> Unfortunately if EA were to give us a color-wheel option they would have to go back to a 2-layer system. One layer for the color from the color-wheel and the other layer for the details. That would require recoding the way textures are managed AND require them to remake the texture on every single object and outfit (and hair-style and cosmetic and skin and eye) in the game. And how likely is EA to do that really?
...
In TS3 if you click on some objects with the CaSt tool, a pop-up will tell you that objected cannot be redesigned. EA could incorporate that functionality into TS4 (to pop-up on single layer content) and offer CaSt in an EP. They wouldn't have to remake the texture on every single object if the code could accept either one layer or two. I wouldn't mind if only custom content had two layers while EA's remained at one.
Since designing, building, and decorating are half the fun of the Sims for me, I really miss the CaSt tool more than anything else.
So once upon a time I guessed without a color wheel my mod folder would fill up with CC that was simply recolors of hair, eyes and clothing rather then true custom content.
As I'm rebuilding my Sims 4 folders preparing for tomorrow and looking at my CC, I can't help but notice its almost ALL recolors. Nothing original or new for CC - just new colors.
Whats worse is when I spot a hair/color CC and think wow that looks really nice but find it only comes in the ONE hair style because of course the creator would need to recolor EACH hair style individually.
This is really driving me nuts, because now all this CC (that simply adds a variety of color into my game) has to is installed AND it will eventually slow my game down.
I wouldn't have ANY of this CC in my game if I could recolor it IN GAME.
I understand and completely agree that create a style/patterns taxed the Sims 3 but a basic color wheel can be programmed into a simply online cellphone game that runs one 1 core. Its 2014 guys...
According to steam stats MOST gamers have 2 cores! Actually I'm not even sure if 1 core PC's exist anymore?!
See even a guy who likes the Sims 4 sometimes needs to vent!
EA seriously - hire some top dollar programmers and do some basic programming! Sigh....although I suppose this has as much to do with Silicon Valley companies stealing away the best and brightest to work for the facebooks and googles of the world.
I predicted this would happen to many players when I first heard there'd be no color wheel or CASt. My Sims 2 game had over a gig of recolors alone (remember trying to get hair colors to match?). It might have been even more by the time I switched over to Sims 3. And the more cc you have, the longer it will take the game to open up. I figured EA wants to charge us for recolors.
The only cc my Sims 3 game had (other than mods) were new meshes I couldn't live without. I could even deal with the EA created furniture and clothing and decorations because even though I didn't like the style, I could change them up enough to make them look completely different. I really miss that ability.
I also don't see why in 2014 a game is not meant to run on 64 bit machines.
... @Schweighsr said:<br />
<br />
> Unfortunately if EA were to give us a color-wheel option they would have to go back to a 2-layer system. One layer for the color from the color-wheel and the other layer for the details. That would require recoding the way textures are managed AND require them to remake the texture on every single object and outfit (and hair-style and cosmetic and skin and eye) in the game. And how likely is EA to do that really?<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
In TS3 if you click on some objects with the CaSt tool, a pop-up will tell you that objected cannot be redesigned. EA could incorporate that functionality into TS4 (to pop-up on single layer content) and offer CaSt in an EP. They wouldn't have to remake the texture on every single object if the code could accept either one layer or two. I wouldn't mind if only custom content had two layers while EA's remained at one.<br />
<br />
Since designing, building, and decorating are half the fun of the Sims for me, I really miss the CaSt tool more than anything else.
The problem would be with re-writing the code that places the textures on objects. Right now, in TS4, the game is coded so that it can only read a single texture. Even if EA did not remake every texture, even if they had some objects with a one-layer texture and other objects with a two-layer texture, they would have to re-write that piece of code. It sounds easy, but that little bit of code is buried deep in the core of the game and changing it now would cause a cascade of bugs.
I briefly mentioned things like multipliers, speculars, overlays, etc. These are actually additional layers of texture on an object. I know that TS4 doesn't use overlays or stencils, but I don't know if they allow for speculars or multipliers (these make the texture look shiny or metallic or even reflective) - somehow I don't think they do, but they make the whole applying-a-texture-to-a-mesh thing more complicated than it would appear on the surface. This isn't "basic programming", using it may be fairly basic, but actually programming the game to *DO* it is very advanced.
That is why I suggested that they might be able to allow a color-wheel on something simple, like walls and floors. It would still be a lot of work and require some tough coding (and throw off some bad bugs), but it wouldn't be as much of a problem as recoding the textures for everything. That would allow some creativity which might be enough to carry people until TS5 is released (*IF* there is a TS5). Of course the fans will have to demand such an option - EA isn't going to do anything to improve the game unless they feel forced to do it.
I predicted this would happen to many players when I first heard there'd be no color wheel or CASt. My Sims 2 game had over a gig of recolors alone (remember trying to get hair colors to match?). It might have been even more by the time I switched over to Sims 3. And the more cc you have, the longer it will take the game to open up. I figured EA wants to charge us for recolors.
I made the same prediction. While CASt did technically take longer to load than a single-layer texture would (by a tiny fraction of a millisecond), loading Custom Content takes much, much longer to load. Here is a comparison using length instead of time: if CASt was an inch, then a single-layer texture would be 3/4 of an inch and custom content would be a yard or longer. The thing is that while CASt takes the same amount of time no matter how many textures you have, each piece of CC has to be loaded separately. Dropping CASt only benefits players who never use CC; everyone else will suffer longer loads and more lag.
The only reason that EAxis dropped CASt was because TS5 was supposed to be an online game. Allowing custom colors/ textures would have been a tremendous strain on the servers. When they changed from Olympus, they should have put CASt back into the game - there really is no excuse for them to have not included it in TS5.
I can assure you from education I've had on games development that Maxis are able to implement a colour wheel into their game within their game engine. They just need to work out how to do it.
They know how. Graham explained the problem is, they would have to edit all objects and all CAS assets.
They know how. Graham explained the problem is, they would have to edit all objects and all CAS assets.
Right and programmers are PAID to do what now??? Honestly this just sounds lazy...like "ah...thats a lot of work and I don't want to"
Put a team of programmers together, give them a month and boom its done. Put a BIGGER team of programmers together and boom its done in a week.
Yeah its work but thats what you DO at a job WORK and EA has NO lack of code monkeys! Trust me on that.
This problem WOULDN'T exist if they had built it in from the ground up, now they have to go back and do it.
Honestly they should just start with a CAS color wheel though, eyes and hair color would be a good start. Their simply to do and would probably take a few days to implement with a good team of programmers.
Sigh but you know thats apparently too much work for EA employees to do or something? Hard work scares them? Sounds like their really earning their paychecks their...
They know how. Graham explained the problem is, they would have to edit all objects and all CAS assets.
Right and programmers are PAID to do what now???
I think EA pays them to create new content that will generate revenue. Not re-do the game from scratch when it comes to objects and CAS assets. I am not saying I agree. But, business-wise, I can understand that decision.
> @DerekJohnson said: > TOLKIEN wrote: » > > DerekJohnson wrote: » > > They know how. Graham explained the problem is, they would have to edit all objects and all CAS assets. > > > Right and programmers are PAID to do what now??? > > > I think EA pays them to create new content that will generate revenue. Not re-do the game from scratch when it comes to objects and CAS assets. I am not saying I agree. But, business-wise, I can understand that decision.
Implementing CaSt in an EP for thirty or forty dollars would generate revenue. It would be interesting to know what percentage of players would buy it, or even what percentage of players consider it an important feature. Maybe those of us who want it are in a tiny minority.
> @DerekJohnson said:<br />
> TOLKIEN wrote: »<br />
> <br />
> DerekJohnson wrote: »<br />
> <br />
> They know how. Graham explained the problem is, they would have to edit all objects and all CAS assets.<br />
> <br />
> <br />
> Right and programmers are PAID to do what now???<br />
> <br />
> <br />
> I think EA pays them to create new content that will generate revenue. Not re-do the game from scratch when it comes to objects and CAS assets. I am not saying I agree. But, business-wise, I can understand that decision.<br />
<br />
Implementing CaSt in an EP for thirty or forty dollars would generate revenue. It would be interesting to know what percentage of players would buy it, or even what percentage of players consider it an important feature. Maybe those of us who want it are in a tiny minority.
I think most want it. But most want it for free.
Because of these patches, opeople expect everything to be free now.
It is a complicated matter, because I agree a colour wheel and toddlers should have been there from the get-go.
On the other hand, at some point EA needs the people working on TS4 to be generating revenue, not just working on free content.
Comments
Tell EA that.
I think you are referring to this post of mine, @astridentanja?
http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/755199.page
Please feel free to quote me/ it at any time in the future, but I will save you the effort and copy it myself for this thread.
"CASt and TS4"
"I think I have tried to explain how CASt works over a dozen times now on a whole bunch of threads. I am tired of repeating myself and it appears that no one reads me anyway. So here goes:
CASt does not cause lag in TS3. The only time that CASt causes a delay in TS3 is when it loads - it takes time to load all those patterns. CASt does not cause Create-a-Sim to lag - Create-a-Sim takes forever to load because of the way EA loads all the clothing options before you can select them. CASt does not cause lots to lag when loading patterns - it takes just as long to load a custom pattern as it takes to load a preset.
Let me repeat: CASt does not cause lag in TS3.
I will now explain (if you don't want an explanation stop reading): in TS3 every single object, outfit, hair-style, skin, cosmetic and eye has TWO layers in its texture (a texture is the 'skin' that goes over the mesh to give it color and detail). The first layer is the color layer which contains the CASt or preset color or pattern. The second layer has the details - shading, seams, wrinkles, belts, lace, logos on tee-shirts, and whatever.
It doesn't matter if you use a preset color or a CASt pattern because the game has to load both layers no matter what they are. It doesn't take the game more time to access a CASt pattern than it does a preset. To TS3 both a preset and a custom CASt are exactly the same.
If it takes some time for the game to load textures when loading a new lot, the game takes the exact same amount of time to load a custom CASt texture as it would a preset. It doesn't matter how many custom CASt patterns you use on a lot - the game has to color everything anyway. (I have noticed it takes unusually long to load textures in Midnight Hollow, but that is because of the neighborhood, not CASt.)
In TS2 and TS4 both the color and the detail are on the same layer. The game can load a single layer faster than it can load two layers, so it will cut down load times by a fraction of a second. But only by a fraction of a second. The difference will probably be unnoticeable on today's computers.
Unfortunately if EA were to give us a color-wheel option they would have to go back to a 2-layer system. One layer for the color from the color-wheel and the other layer for the details. That would require recoding the way textures are managed AND require them to remake the texture on every single object and outfit (and hair-style and cosmetic and skin and eye) in the game. And how likely is EA to do that really?
It is also important to know that basically there is no difference between a color-wheel and CASt except that a color-wheel would load faster when it is opened.
Way back in 2013 EA was considering putting CASt in TS4. They have since decided not to include CASt in TS4. We know that EA is giving us presets in TS4 because SimGuruGraham said so on Twitter.
Here are SimGuruGraham’s Statements on Twitter:
"I don’t want to mislead people; we said at Gamescom that CaST isn’t in, straight from the mouth of the dev team.” (Sep. 16th 2013)
“Hi Alicia – it’s a great tool, I agree. It’s something we’ve confirmed won’t be in Sims 4 I’m sorry to say, but I hope some of the other aspects of Build and Create a Sim that we’ll unveil will help spark your creativity!” (Dec. 22nd 2013)
“Color selection will work like it did at Gamescom (with more colors to choose from since then).” (May 22nd 2014)
And by 'color selection' he means presets.
The major problem with EA deciding to go with preset colors is that many fans will want more variation than they are providing (the long dress that Bella wears in the CAS video comes in 4 colors - black, pink, red and white, although Graham has said that there will be more) so the Community will have to make Custom Recolors. These recolors will load as Custom Content - and Custom Content takes significantly longer to load than CASt or a color-wheel option would. So the only players who will see an advantage from the elimination of CASt are those who have no Custom Content.
I hope that the above explanation was clear, but if you have any questions I would be happy to answer them."
I bolded the parts that apply to this thread. I made this post on June 4th, long before TS4 was released, which is why the quotes from Graham were in there. I didn't address things like stencils or multipliers until later in the thread, so if you are interested go to the thread and read the whole thing.
Yes, it is physically possible to add a color-wheel or CASt option to TS4, but they would have to remake every texture in the game *AND* rewrite the way the game places textures on meshes. It would take a huge amount of work - and when has EA ever been willing to do a lot of work to improve the game? We can't even get them to fix bugs half the time. Also, changing the code for the way textures work is likely to set off a cascade of bugs. So I wouldn't keep my hopes up for any sort of in-game color-wheel for TS4 - ever.
What they could do with much less work is allow a color-wheel option for something very limited, like walls or floors. If I played TS4 (which I don't), I would probably try to campaign for something like that. Again, such a thing is POSSIBLE but getting EA to actually do it is another thing entirely.
I will try to keep an eye on this thread if anyone has any additional questions about CASt that I can answer.
You can find me on the gallery at MrsTomato1018!
You can find me on Twitter @MrsTomato1018!
> Unfortunately if EA were to give us a color-wheel option they would have to go back to a 2-layer system. One layer for the color from the color-wheel and the other layer for the details. That would require recoding the way textures are managed AND require them to remake the texture on every single object and outfit (and hair-style and cosmetic and skin and eye) in the game. And how likely is EA to do that really?
...
In TS3 if you click on some objects with the CaSt tool, a pop-up will tell you that objected cannot be redesigned. EA could incorporate that functionality into TS4 (to pop-up on single layer content) and offer CaSt in an EP. They wouldn't have to remake the texture on every single object if the code could accept either one layer or two. I wouldn't mind if only custom content had two layers while EA's remained at one.
Since designing, building, and decorating are half the fun of the Sims for me, I really miss the CaSt tool more than anything else.
So:
No, it doesn't
I predicted this would happen to many players when I first heard there'd be no color wheel or CASt. My Sims 2 game had over a gig of recolors alone (remember trying to get hair colors to match?). It might have been even more by the time I switched over to Sims 3. And the more cc you have, the longer it will take the game to open up. I figured EA wants to charge us for recolors.
The only cc my Sims 3 game had (other than mods) were new meshes I couldn't live without. I could even deal with the EA created furniture and clothing and decorations because even though I didn't like the style, I could change them up enough to make them look completely different. I really miss that ability.
I also don't see why in 2014 a game is not meant to run on 64 bit machines.
The problem would be with re-writing the code that places the textures on objects. Right now, in TS4, the game is coded so that it can only read a single texture. Even if EA did not remake every texture, even if they had some objects with a one-layer texture and other objects with a two-layer texture, they would have to re-write that piece of code. It sounds easy, but that little bit of code is buried deep in the core of the game and changing it now would cause a cascade of bugs.
I briefly mentioned things like multipliers, speculars, overlays, etc. These are actually additional layers of texture on an object. I know that TS4 doesn't use overlays or stencils, but I don't know if they allow for speculars or multipliers (these make the texture look shiny or metallic or even reflective) - somehow I don't think they do, but they make the whole applying-a-texture-to-a-mesh thing more complicated than it would appear on the surface. This isn't "basic programming", using it may be fairly basic, but actually programming the game to *DO* it is very advanced.
That is why I suggested that they might be able to allow a color-wheel on something simple, like walls and floors. It would still be a lot of work and require some tough coding (and throw off some bad bugs), but it wouldn't be as much of a problem as recoding the textures for everything. That would allow some creativity which might be enough to carry people until TS5 is released (*IF* there is a TS5). Of course the fans will have to demand such an option - EA isn't going to do anything to improve the game unless they feel forced to do it.
I made the same prediction. While CASt did technically take longer to load than a single-layer texture would (by a tiny fraction of a millisecond), loading Custom Content takes much, much longer to load. Here is a comparison using length instead of time: if CASt was an inch, then a single-layer texture would be 3/4 of an inch and custom content would be a yard or longer. The thing is that while CASt takes the same amount of time no matter how many textures you have, each piece of CC has to be loaded separately. Dropping CASt only benefits players who never use CC; everyone else will suffer longer loads and more lag.
The only reason that EAxis dropped CASt was because TS5 was supposed to be an online game. Allowing custom colors/ textures would have been a tremendous strain on the servers. When they changed from Olympus, they should have put CASt back into the game - there really is no excuse for them to have not included it in TS5.
They know how. Graham explained the problem is, they would have to edit all objects and all CAS assets.
Right and programmers are PAID to do what now??? Honestly this just sounds lazy...like "ah...thats a lot of work and I don't want to"
Put a team of programmers together, give them a month and boom its done. Put a BIGGER team of programmers together and boom its done in a week.
Yeah its work but thats what you DO at a job WORK and EA has NO lack of code monkeys! Trust me on that.
This problem WOULDN'T exist if they had built it in from the ground up, now they have to go back and do it.
Honestly they should just start with a CAS color wheel though, eyes and hair color would be a good start. Their simply to do and would probably take a few days to implement with a good team of programmers.
Sigh but you know thats apparently too much work for EA employees to do or something? Hard work scares them? Sounds like their really earning their paychecks their...
I think EA pays them to create new content that will generate revenue. Not re-do the game from scratch when it comes to objects and CAS assets. I am not saying I agree. But, business-wise, I can understand that decision.
> TOLKIEN wrote: »
>
> DerekJohnson wrote: »
>
> They know how. Graham explained the problem is, they would have to edit all objects and all CAS assets.
>
>
> Right and programmers are PAID to do what now???
>
>
> I think EA pays them to create new content that will generate revenue. Not re-do the game from scratch when it comes to objects and CAS assets. I am not saying I agree. But, business-wise, I can understand that decision.
Implementing CaSt in an EP for thirty or forty dollars would generate revenue. It would be interesting to know what percentage of players would buy it, or even what percentage of players consider it an important feature. Maybe those of us who want it are in a tiny minority.
I think most want it. But most want it for free.
Because of these patches, opeople expect everything to be free now.
It is a complicated matter, because I agree a colour wheel and toddlers should have been there from the get-go.
On the other hand, at some point EA needs the people working on TS4 to be generating revenue, not just working on free content.