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The Sims 4 Community Voted Stuff Pack Deep Dive: Unlocking Knitted Clothing!
SimGuruConor
Posts: 16 SimGuru
Hello Simmers! SimGuruConor, lead designer for The Sims 4 Community Stuff Pack here. I hope everyone is staying safe in these crazy times (Thankfully there's plenty of great videogames out right now to keep us occupied. You know what I’m talking about!).
Today, let's take a deep dive into one of our new gameplay systems, the Create-A-Sim Knitting Unlock System! Please note that this pack is still in development and things can (and will!) change between now and when the pack is released.
As many of you know, most outfits are already unlocked by default in The Sims 4. With the exception of some clothing rewards, most everything is readily available for all Sims to wear. This helps you tell the story you want to tell right out of the box, but I didn’t feel this system was ideal for a pack designed around Sims knitting their own clothing.
For knitted clothing like sweaters and beanies, Sims will have to create - and unlock - them through gameplay. Once you have finished crafting a knitted project it will be in your Sim’s inventory. Select Add to Wardrobe to unlock that clothing piece for the entire household. So if your knitter extraordinaire Sim knits a really fabulous sweater, everyone in their family can enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Makes sense right? Cool. But here’s the fun part!
We’re making the crafted clothing visible in Create-a-Sim before you have unlocked it. This way you can browse all the potential knitted items before you craft them. This will help guide you on your Sim’s knitting journey, and show you which skill levels are required to craft certain recipes. We’ve never given visibility to locked Create-A-Sim items before, and I’m really excited to get this in game for our knittables!
To help illustrate what I mean, here is a concept our UX team (more about them below!) mocked-up.
Something like this felt absolutely necessary for a pack heavily focused on crafting clothing, and it helps our knitted clothing feel special and unique.
Alternatively, you don't have to unlock any clothing for your household. Maybe you just enjoy gifting sweaters to others? Maybe you only donate socks to charity? Maybe you’d like to frog the entire thing and start again? Whatever the case, knitted clothing will stay in your Sim’s inventory until you decide what's best for it.
I plan to devote a proper forum post on the other neat things you can do with knitted items at a later date. But for now, how about an early preview for some of the knitted clothing inventory icons? Spoilers below!
Now I’d like to introduce Justin Allen, our UX Designer for this pack. I did a little Q&A with Justin to give you some additional insights into the development process.
Conor: Can you tell us what UX is, and what it means to be a UX designer?
Justin: In short, UX (User Experience) is designing the over-all experience and flow within a game and its features. We work hard to design the experiences so that many different levels and types of players can enjoy their time while in the world of The Sims. I love knowing that I am part of a passionate team that strives to create the best experience we can for our players. I try to constantly visit YouTube channels and different forums to see what players are enjoying and what may be frustrating them within The Sims 4. I try to keep that knowledge in mind when designing feature flows.
Conor: What were some challenges you faced while designing the Create-A-Sim Knitting Unlock System?
Justin: The big challenge with the Create-A-Sim Knitting Unlock System was to make it visible and interesting, without it being intrusive or overwhelming. We want players to see the locked items and feel encouraged to explore how to unlock the items. It was also important to us to create a system that can continue to evolve and be utilized with other features in future packs for The Sims 4.
Conor: What is your favorite feature you have ever worked on in The Sims 4?
Justin: I am pretty new to The Sims 4 team (I was working on some other projects within EA before joining Maxis). But, I loved working on the Tiny Living Stuff Pack. It was a fun challenge to design the UI updates to Build Mode, and a lot of fun to play. I am super excited by some things I’m working on that are coming in future packs, but I can’t talk about those right now, sorry! I am very proud to be working on a game that has such active and amazing players.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek at what’s happening on our newest Stuff Pack! I’d like to continue sharing little deep-dive posts like this in the future, so keep watching the forums.
Happy Simming,
SimGuruConor
Today, let's take a deep dive into one of our new gameplay systems, the Create-A-Sim Knitting Unlock System! Please note that this pack is still in development and things can (and will!) change between now and when the pack is released.
As many of you know, most outfits are already unlocked by default in The Sims 4. With the exception of some clothing rewards, most everything is readily available for all Sims to wear. This helps you tell the story you want to tell right out of the box, but I didn’t feel this system was ideal for a pack designed around Sims knitting their own clothing.
For knitted clothing like sweaters and beanies, Sims will have to create - and unlock - them through gameplay. Once you have finished crafting a knitted project it will be in your Sim’s inventory. Select Add to Wardrobe to unlock that clothing piece for the entire household. So if your knitter extraordinaire Sim knits a really fabulous sweater, everyone in their family can enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Makes sense right? Cool. But here’s the fun part!
We’re making the crafted clothing visible in Create-a-Sim before you have unlocked it. This way you can browse all the potential knitted items before you craft them. This will help guide you on your Sim’s knitting journey, and show you which skill levels are required to craft certain recipes. We’ve never given visibility to locked Create-A-Sim items before, and I’m really excited to get this in game for our knittables!
To help illustrate what I mean, here is a concept our UX team (more about them below!) mocked-up.
Something like this felt absolutely necessary for a pack heavily focused on crafting clothing, and it helps our knitted clothing feel special and unique.
Alternatively, you don't have to unlock any clothing for your household. Maybe you just enjoy gifting sweaters to others? Maybe you only donate socks to charity? Maybe you’d like to frog the entire thing and start again? Whatever the case, knitted clothing will stay in your Sim’s inventory until you decide what's best for it.
I plan to devote a proper forum post on the other neat things you can do with knitted items at a later date. But for now, how about an early preview for some of the knitted clothing inventory icons? Spoilers below!
Now I’d like to introduce Justin Allen, our UX Designer for this pack. I did a little Q&A with Justin to give you some additional insights into the development process.
Conor: Can you tell us what UX is, and what it means to be a UX designer?
Justin: In short, UX (User Experience) is designing the over-all experience and flow within a game and its features. We work hard to design the experiences so that many different levels and types of players can enjoy their time while in the world of The Sims. I love knowing that I am part of a passionate team that strives to create the best experience we can for our players. I try to constantly visit YouTube channels and different forums to see what players are enjoying and what may be frustrating them within The Sims 4. I try to keep that knowledge in mind when designing feature flows.
Conor: What were some challenges you faced while designing the Create-A-Sim Knitting Unlock System?
Justin: The big challenge with the Create-A-Sim Knitting Unlock System was to make it visible and interesting, without it being intrusive or overwhelming. We want players to see the locked items and feel encouraged to explore how to unlock the items. It was also important to us to create a system that can continue to evolve and be utilized with other features in future packs for The Sims 4.
Conor: What is your favorite feature you have ever worked on in The Sims 4?
Justin: I am pretty new to The Sims 4 team (I was working on some other projects within EA before joining Maxis). But, I loved working on the Tiny Living Stuff Pack. It was a fun challenge to design the UI updates to Build Mode, and a lot of fun to play. I am super excited by some things I’m working on that are coming in future packs, but I can’t talk about those right now, sorry! I am very proud to be working on a game that has such active and amazing players.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek at what’s happening on our newest Stuff Pack! I’d like to continue sharing little deep-dive posts like this in the future, so keep watching the forums.
Happy Simming,
SimGuruConor
50
Comments
(Would love more all-black swatches for kids and toddlers too!
All of these look great.
How all other objects look (3D):
@FreezerBunnyCowplant I assume the icons will be replaced with 3D later. They are half way in development, there's probably not much to make a 3D thumb of yet, so they draw to see what it should look like.
How, when children and toddlers literally only get one thing each (and toddlers got no sweaters)? Knitting one adult sweater surely isn't going to unlock the one sweater children got. That doesn't seem to be the entire family being able to use the project unless you can knit multiple things at once. Is that possible?
My only thought on CAS is if we can get a few more neutral options? For instance, is it possible to get a toddler onesie that's just a plain white swatch with no animal on it? Or the dress with the sweater to have a swatch with no pattern on the sweater?
It's probably too late in the game, but regardless the clothes look awesome and I'm very excited about this pack. Once again, thanks for being so open with communication. It's made this process very fun to follow along!
The children's sweater is my favorite but the swatches do all look pretty feminine. Back when the CAS results were announced Simgurusarah mentioned this would get gender neutral and masculine swatches. Is that sill the case?
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For example, if household A unlock the yellow knitted sweater, the household B should not have the same, unless, yellow with some patches on, or different design on the sleeves/neck/chest (like how we can customise the pets). With this feature, I'm pretty sure even the community is going to have fun by sharing their knitted wears with each others too (just like how the CC creator do) and perhaps, it's going to be a kick start feature where we can customise the other cloths in the future too.
Another question is, since the knitted wear is done by the Sims, is there any interaction where the Sims measuring the other Sims like the Style Influencer did?
Plopsy is another great feature where the Sims can start selling stuff online without having had to own a store. However, since the Sims can open a clothing store, would it be possible if the Sims can start selling the knitted wears too? If yes, do they need to drag the knitted wear to the mannequin or just click an option of gifting/selling the knitted stuffs? I think it would be interesting if the pack and even the future packs can actually integrate with the other packs too, just like the group system (this is a very good system where every pack can be integrated with this feature, as long as the activities are being added - just that, please update us with new icons & rewards, please).
Anywho, thanks for sharing this! Stay safe.
That's not the final look though FreezerBunnyCowplant, once it's all done, then you'll see it like all the other objects in the game, that picture of knitted clothing is only reference, not the final look.
I cannot wait for this stuff pack, honestly this whole process of choosing within the community is awesome, Simmers should get the opportunity to do Game Packs too, I'm sure there a vast many simmers out there can give you plenty of idea's for a Game Pack title but I'm dreaming big again. Thanks SimGuru's for doing this and look forward to this stuff pack and many more packs
My only hope is that we end up getting a more neutral additional piece for kids, because the one shown here is very feminine looking with the lace part. After the vote results I had hope there would be ar least some neutral swatches, but I know this is still an ongoing work, so I am keeping my fingers crossed!
Also would love at least one "ugly sweater"
Except once again the women version has half sleeves, making it hard to use as winter clothing.
(I get that's the item we voted for, but this problem is reoccurring so it frustruates me.)
Updated with Werewolf Diaries (1)