Forum Announcement, Click Here to Read More From EA_Cade.
Can you fix your game engine?
Logisitcs
Posts: 1,156 Member
So that you're no longer limited to what you can put in the game? That would be appreciated.
Apartments are the latest example, but culling, crib babies, they all fall under your poor engine.
Apartments are the latest example, but culling, crib babies, they all fall under your poor engine.
38
Comments
Complexity is our enemy when building The Sims, so we look for any opportunity to keep it down. (c) - @SimGuruMax (LINK)
The problems at least for me are:
1. I want a bigger game which exploits the power of modern computers better. But EA wants to keep the minimum requirements low to get more casual gamers able to run the game.
2. I want a more challenging game with deeper gameplay. But EA wants to get a lot of casual gamers interested in animations instead of challenging gameplay.
3. I want gameplay. But EA seems to think that a dress-up game with a lot of animations sell better.
We can write whatever we want in the forum. But we can't win if EA can see that SPs sell better than EPs and that even EPs don't have to be big to get high sales numbers because sales numbers are everything for EA.
Culling is there because automatic aging will make everybody in the whole neighborhood old and we aren't assumed to want to play a world where everybody else are elders. There are two ways for the game to avoid this:
1. Let all the other families have babies automatically so new generations are ready to take over when somebody die. But to make this work without problems will require a lot of programming and processor power. So it would almost unavoidable raise the minimum requirements which EA doesn't want to raise at all.
2. To use culling to bring the population down so new sims and new families can be created automatically. This is much easier to program and it won't raise the minimum requirements nearly as much. Therefore this was the way EA chose.
Relationship culling is related to population culling because it is a way to easy get rid of relationships with sims who have been removed from the world. It also makes a balance with the extremely fast way relationships are created in TS4 compared to the earlier Sims games.
Crib babies and the omission of toddlers also have nothing to do with the game engine. The game was made this way because EA wanted the game to focus on emotions, multitasking and partying where babies and toddlers weren't as important. This saved work hours so the developers could focus on other things (like CAS and improved buildmode) instead of having to figure out how the new emotions and the multitasking could be used for babies and toddlers too. But detailed babies and toddlers wouldn't have needed any changes in the game engine. So this was again a misunderstanding.
From what have been written about the sims 4 development, the sims 4 was not built on any existing engines like Frostbite, Unreal etc. What is engine? A software framework. The developers said that the engine was developed just for Sims, but they can refer to the engine term differently - maybe they made everything in Unity and calling the logic of the game "the engine". So it's unclear, and it's safe to say that when people say "the engine", they mean "the game logic and the ability to implement certain features well".
Complexity is our enemy when building The Sims, so we look for any opportunity to keep it down. (c) - @SimGuruMax (LINK)
1. TS1, TS2, TS3 and TS all have their own and different game engine.
2. The Sims Life Stories, the Sims Pets Stories and the Sims Castaway Stories were all built on TS2's game engine.
3. The Sims Medieval was built on TS3's game engine.
You can read http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine if you want to know more about the game engine concept.
Thank you for the reference, but I am aware of the term "game engine".
Graham Nardone once said:
"The Sims 4 is not built on Frostbite, Glass Box, or any other previously known engine. It’s a completely new engine that was built specifically for The Sims 4. We haven’t given it a name. "Smart Sim” was how we were referring to the new tech driving the behavior of the Sims, not the engine itself.“
So, they developed everything from scratch. Ok.
When people are saying "this engine is limited", they often mention bugs or some design choices like culling. And often the engine has something to do with it. For example, routing. So, the way bodies are moving depends on the AI and collision detection - it's the engine's responsibility. What do we have in game? Sims moving through another sims, hands going through other sims' butts. Now it's clear that they did it to avoid any routing problems that existed in previous games (sims being stuck all the time). But still it makes the engine limited, unless they enhance it, which is unlikely.
And the way some players diminish other players' opinions and feelings is just rude.
Complexity is our enemy when building The Sims, so we look for any opportunity to keep it down. (c) - @SimGuruMax (LINK)
I agree that TS4 is simplified in a lot of areas compared to the earlier Sims games and that routing is one of those areas. A huge number of games use the same simplified routing where characters just move through eachother. So this kind of routing isn't at all new to me. I also am in no doubt why it was made that way in TS4 because it is quite obvious:
1. TS2 and especially TS3 was targeted at stationary computers with good video cards. They weren't supported on laptops. So good routing was possible.
2. TS4 is targeted on laptops and casual gamers. EA didn't expect everybody who loved TS3 to be interested in TS4 too. So EA instead targeted TS4 at new customers and especially casual gamers who couldn't be expected to have good gaming computers. So low minimum requirements were mandatory and small worlds and simplified routing were just necessary to achieve that.
I agree that the bitterness about the way TS4 was made have caused a lot of hard feelings between the simmers who are disappointed and the simmers who still love TS4. This is regrettable but it probably couldn't have been avoided anyway.
I completely agree with you there. But Ea knows a decent amount of its fan base has.... Not so great computers. I just wish they would give us an OPTION between meh-graphics and semi-open world and wowza-graphics and an open world.
As for the dress-up game comment, have you ever been on Tumblr for The Sims... Almost everyone says the game is like dressing up dolls and taking pictures with them. I won't lie I create stories with TS3 and I love it but.... I still love the gameplay too and just playing the game. Lots of people create with TS3 but yeah, it definitely isn't JUST a dress-up game. Maybe Ea is catering towards that scene but then again I can't even really say that because I can't really create anything with TS4. I have various stories on my computer that I never posted because TS4 pics just don't look right to me... Idk. I'm done ranting.
Well, then you fail to understand what is happening in the background of TS4 while you play the game. The engine of TS4 is way better than it was in TS2 and TS3 (every stress test would prove it).
Repose en paix mamie tu va me manquer :
1923-2016 mamie
Even if a stress test proved the engine is 'better' than it was in other games, a test by me regarding my ability to enjoy the game definitely proved it's NOT better.
Just for the record, what actually am I 'failing' to understand?
Why would I care about the background as an end user, unless I could interact with it?
Why are you not connecting to what it truly feels like as a player of this series and failing to get that?
I think I know the real answer why, but...
Because they've imposed limitations and restrictions...
And even that I still wouldn't say the engine is better than TS2 and TS3 even with all the restrictions and limitations.
The five-second rule does not apply when you have a two-second dog.
That's what I was thinking, also.
good catch.
Other things are a bit more problematic. Such as not being able to remember what things are what in not-loaded lots. So you end up not being able to direct your off-lot sims to do things because the game can't tell if, for instance, there's already a canvas on the easel so they decided to not open something like that up for an exploit. It also means your sims, if you change families, will be waiting for you on the sidewalk, certain needs unmet (always the same ones), not at their job/school, etc.
OT: they can't fix what isn't broken. The engine has been decided upon and it's working as expected. The only thing that's broken is the community.
Best hopes to what the future has to offer.
This has caused a deep rift in the community between fans who like the game as it is, and fans who wanted a different game, something with more detail and depth, something more similar to past games. Something that as actually FUN. I think the sooner the second group come to terms that they're not getting what they want, maybe EVER (and it might be good to stop buying the game anyway), the sooner the communities will stop being so argumentative.
Maybe. OTOH, maybe we'll all stop buying but we will still be here protesting this shell of a Sims game.
Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?!
Repose en paix mamie tu va me manquer :
1923-2016 mamie