The game does seem to use a lower poly count than the Sims 3. It is why the Sims in 3 are referred to as puddy because those Sims use more polys, so it brings a rounder appearance. Why curly and afro type of hairs in the Sims 4 are kind of bland looking too. More edges means a lower poly count.
Concept art:
So I am curious how the poly count will work with seasons. I hope it ends up looking nice. Snow on the hair and outfits would be cool.
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” –Helen Keller
@Scobre That hairstyle in the pic would look SO much better if it had more in depth texture, it does look like a cauliflower if you ask me
Yeah I laughed at that being the inspiration. It would. I love the look of more curly hair. A lot of Nouk's hairstyles in the Sims 2 were really nice to use. Maybe hair will look more like a cauliflower with snow on it?
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” –Helen Keller
@Scobre That hairstyle in the pic would look SO much better if it had more in depth texture, it does look like a cauliflower if you ask me
Yeah I laughed at that being the inspiration. It would. I love the look of more curly hair. A lot of Nouk's hairstyles in the Sims 2 were really nice to use. Maybe hair will look more like a cauliflower with snow on it?
I hope they will put more investment to the CAS budget in the near future, we need better looking hairstyles, especially the look of more curly hair like you said, and more hair colors to choose from and Ombre haircolors would be amazing too!
You all do realize that updated technology doesn't make object creation more difficult, right? It actually makes it less difficult and much quicker to accomplish. We're not talking about animating movies, we're talking about animating an NPC to have a couple few animations, using the logic and tools that they already built.
The thing that would make it more difficult to make a bear (lolololololol because as @Jarsie9 said above, it's a matter of sticking the bear costume on a sim and making 2-3 unique animations - which would take about an afternoon for a professional to accomplish), is lack of people. If there aren't the human resources to do spread out the work, then yes, it would become more difficult to divert resources to anything beyond what is planned out in stone.
Again, that falls into the "not my problem or concern" category. If EA doesn't feel like properly staffing their dev department, I'm not giving them my money so they can continue the pattern and I can continue getting subpar games. I'm not fond of companies trying to reprogram me into accepting their "new visions" when their "new visions" are totally based on giving the customer less in favor of making more money.
Exactly. How did animating a bear suddenly become this huge complex process pushing the envelope of technological advancement costing untold amounts of money and man hours? I mean seriously, its a frickin' bear. It shouldn't be that hard.
Now if Maxis had just said "look we had to let all our animators go due to cost cutting", at least that would make sense. As you said though, that's really their problem, not mine. All I want to see is a quality product, but at least it would have made more sense than saying "oh yeah, animating a bear is just like super hard and expensive dude, sorry".
You all do realize that updated technology doesn't make object creation more difficult, right? It actually makes it less difficult and much quicker to accomplish. We're not talking about animating movies, we're talking about animating an NPC to have a couple few animations, using the logic and tools that they already built.
The thing that would make it more difficult to make a bear (lolololololol because as @Jarsie9 said above, it's a matter of sticking the bear costume on a sim and making 2-3 unique animations - which would take about an afternoon for a professional to accomplish), is lack of people. If there aren't the human resources to do spread out the work, then yes, it would become more difficult to divert resources to anything beyond what is planned out in stone.
Again, that falls into the "not my problem or concern" category. If EA doesn't feel like properly staffing their dev department, I'm not giving them my money so they can continue the pattern and I can continue getting subpar games. I'm not fond of companies trying to reprogram me into accepting their "new visions" when their "new visions" are totally based on giving the customer less in favor of making more money.
Exactly. How did animating a bear suddenly become this huge complex process pushing the envelope of technological advancement costing untold amounts of money and man hours? I mean seriously, its a frickin' bear. It shouldn't be that hard.
Now if Maxis had just said "look we had to let all our animators go due to cost cutting", at least that would make sense. As you said though, that's really their problem, not mine. All I want to see is a quality product, but at least it would have made more sense than saying "oh yeah, animating a bear is just like super hard and expensive dude, sorry".
It's insultingly funny. If technology makes these things so much harder, then we would never ever have new technology. What would be the point? "Oh no boss lady/man, it took me a week last year to create this thing, but since they upgraded photoshop, visual studio and blender, it's now going to take me a month because of progress. And I'll be taking a long lunch today to go pick up my new iphone that promises to increase the time for text delivery between users and cap the download speeds because of progress!"
You all do realize that updated technology doesn't make object creation more difficult, right? It actually makes it less difficult and much quicker to accomplish. We're not talking about animating movies, we're talking about animating an NPC to have a couple few animations, using the logic and tools that they already built.
The thing that would make it more difficult to make a bear (lolololololol because as @Jarsie9 said above, it's a matter of sticking the bear costume on a sim and making 2-3 unique animations - which would take about an afternoon for a professional to accomplish), is lack of people. If there aren't the human resources to do spread out the work, then yes, it would become more difficult to divert resources to anything beyond what is planned out in stone.
Again, that falls into the "not my problem or concern" category. If EA doesn't feel like properly staffing their dev department, I'm not giving them my money so they can continue the pattern and I can continue getting subpar games. I'm not fond of companies trying to reprogram me into accepting their "new visions" when their "new visions" are totally based on giving the customer less in favor of making more money.
Exactly. How did animating a bear suddenly become this huge complex process pushing the envelope of technological advancement costing untold amounts of money and man hours? I mean seriously, its a frickin' bear. It shouldn't be that hard.
Now if Maxis had just said "look we had to let all our animators go due to cost cutting", at least that would make sense. As you said though, that's really their problem, not mine. All I want to see is a quality product, but at least it would have made more sense than saying "oh yeah, animating a bear is just like super hard and expensive dude, sorry".
It's insultingly funny. If technology makes these things so much harder, then we would never ever have new technology. What would be the point? "Oh no boss lady/man, it took me a week last year to create this thing, but since they upgraded photoshop, visual studio and blender, it's now going to take me a month because of progress. And I'll be taking a long lunch today to go pick up my new iphone that promises to increase the time for text delivery between users and cap the download speeds because of progress!"
Yep advanced technology is supposed to make things easier not harder. The Sims 4 developers are the only game developers who make technological advancement sound like going backwards and the sad thing that some players agree with them too, as if they are not playing other games to see what can be done!
Everything I post is an opinion here and I think every post of others is as well.
I hope they will put more investment to the CAS budget in the near future, we need better looking hairstyles, especially the look of more curly hair like you said, and more hair colors to choose from and Ombre haircolors would be amazing too!
I hope so and I'd love to have ombre hair color choices. There needs to be more color choices in general. It would be nice if color wheel were to return. Picking the color of autumn outfits would be nice to have.
On a side note, I really hope pets come out better than that silly squirrel. I mean if things like bears are hard to do and take three years, imagine how long a whole pet system could take? It could be one of the last packs to develop. I do think the Sims 4 might have to be developed in more than five years just to get everything to work right. Sadly it does seem like development of this game has become more of a burden than anything. I miss when the developers actually seemed to enjoy what they were making.
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” –Helen Keller
To be fair most of those should have been in the base game though.
I hear you. Point is, the devs made good on those 'promises' so I'm baffled as to why people "know" toddlers aren't coming and how culling will never get fixed.
The main problem with toddlers is the silence. Toddlers were said to be in the game and it has been over a year and they haven't even addressed the problem. They released two game packs, two expansion packs and several patches, but non solves the toddlers issue. One of the game packs should have been about family play and toddlers. A generations EPs would be a slap in the face cause its way too early for that and its not the idea to make EPs to replace features that should be in the base game of a game worthy of 2014.
I'm confident that they have a team working on toddlers that separate from the stuff pack / game pack team. I would bet money on it. I wouldn't let the flow of DLC worry you. Toddlers are a huge job. Its going to take some time.
As far as the silence is concerned. I don't like it either, but I know they will say something when they can.
Do you think that once they add the toddlers everything will be OK? The game lacks family play not just toddlers.
The life stages are messed up with. there is no much distinction between the sims. A simulation game is not supposed to be like that.
Toddlers alone is not the solution.
Also toddlers if are brought back would have lost many packs already. They will be left out with the minimum stuff. For example there is this Spooky Stuff pack. Toddlers if released in future have already missed this pack.
Every pack is released without toddlers is another missed opportunity here.
So those who keep saying "wait, wait, wait" they are ignoring this crucial issue that toddlers already missed a lot.
This actually bothers me too. Toddlers should be in a patch so it can work with future EPs and yes they already missed a SP that could have added new content for them.
You all do realize that updated technology doesn't make object creation more difficult, right? It actually makes it less difficult and much quicker to accomplish. We're not talking about animating movies, we're talking about animating an NPC to have a couple few animations, using the logic and tools that they already built.
The thing that would make it more difficult to make a bear (lolololololol because as @Jarsie9 said above, it's a matter of sticking the bear costume on a sim and making 2-3 unique animations - which would take about an afternoon for a professional to accomplish), is lack of people. If there aren't the human resources to do spread out the work, then yes, it would become more difficult to divert resources to anything beyond what is planned out in stone.
Again, that falls into the "not my problem or concern" category. If EA doesn't feel like properly staffing their dev department, I'm not giving them my money so they can continue the pattern and I can continue getting subpar games. I'm not fond of companies trying to reprogram me into accepting their "new visions" when their "new visions" are totally based on giving the customer less in favor of making more money.
Exactly. How did animating a bear suddenly become this huge complex process pushing the envelope of technological advancement costing untold amounts of money and man hours? I mean seriously, its a frickin' bear. It shouldn't be that hard.
Now if Maxis had just said "look we had to let all our animators go due to cost cutting", at least that would make sense. As you said though, that's really their problem, not mine. All I want to see is a quality product, but at least it would have made more sense than saying "oh yeah, animating a bear is just like super hard and expensive dude, sorry".
I agree. The sims 1 had a bear... That was 15 years ago yet for the sims 4 its too hard...
You all do realize that updated technology doesn't make object creation more difficult, right? It actually makes it less difficult and much quicker to accomplish. We're not talking about animating movies, we're talking about animating an NPC to have a couple few animations, using the logic and tools that they already built.
The thing that would make it more difficult to make a bear (lolololololol because as @Jarsie9 said above, it's a matter of sticking the bear costume on a sim and making 2-3 unique animations - which would take about an afternoon for a professional to accomplish), is lack of people. If there aren't the human resources to do spread out the work, then yes, it would become more difficult to divert resources to anything beyond what is planned out in stone.
Again, that falls into the "not my problem or concern" category. If EA doesn't feel like properly staffing their dev department, I'm not giving them my money so they can continue the pattern and I can continue getting subpar games. I'm not fond of companies trying to reprogram me into accepting their "new visions" when their "new visions" are totally based on giving the customer less in favor of making more money.
Exactly. How did animating a bear suddenly become this huge complex process pushing the envelope of technological advancement costing untold amounts of money and man hours? I mean seriously, its a frickin' bear. It shouldn't be that hard.
Now if Maxis had just said "look we had to let all our animators go due to cost cutting", at least that would make sense. As you said though, that's really their problem, not mine. All I want to see is a quality product, but at least it would have made more sense than saying "oh yeah, animating a bear is just like super hard and expensive dude, sorry".
It's insultingly funny. If technology makes these things so much harder, then we would never ever have new technology. What would be the point? "Oh no boss lady/man, it took me a week last year to create this thing, but since they upgraded photoshop, visual studio and blender, it's now going to take me a month because of progress. And I'll be taking a long lunch today to go pick up my new iphone that promises to increase the time for text delivery between users and cap the download speeds because of progress!"
Yep advanced technology is supposed to make things easier not harder. The Sims 4 developers are the only game developers who make technological advancement sound like going backwards and the sad thing that some players agree with them too, as if they are not playing other games to see what can be done!
Just throwing out a few comments made by gurus about difficulty and cost and how it relates to TS4.
June 26th, 2014
One of the really big changes with Sims 4 and something that was an early directive for the game was to put powerful tools in designer's hands so that they could focus on adding content and increasing the depth of the content in the game without needing an engineer to implement or iterate on new functionality and new interactions every time we wanted something. ~ Graham Nardone
January 30, 2015
Maxis is having us downgrade some software to a more cost effective version, which means I'm playing the Progress Bar game this morning!
@ RosiaMia_ Worried? Nope, it's just dev tools & the cheaper version is quite sufficient. Heck, it saves money so we can spend elsewhere! ~Steve Lansing
So yeah, they themselves said it would be easier and less expensive.
You all do realize that updated technology doesn't make object creation more difficult, right? It actually makes it less difficult and much quicker to accomplish. We're not talking about animating movies, we're talking about animating an NPC to have a couple few animations, using the logic and tools that they already built.
The thing that would make it more difficult to make a bear (lolololololol because as @Jarsie9 said above, it's a matter of sticking the bear costume on a sim and making 2-3 unique animations - which would take about an afternoon for a professional to accomplish), is lack of people. If there aren't the human resources to do spread out the work, then yes, it would become more difficult to divert resources to anything beyond what is planned out in stone.
Again, that falls into the "not my problem or concern" category. If EA doesn't feel like properly staffing their dev department, I'm not giving them my money so they can continue the pattern and I can continue getting subpar games. I'm not fond of companies trying to reprogram me into accepting their "new visions" when their "new visions" are totally based on giving the customer less in favor of making more money.
Exactly. How did animating a bear suddenly become this huge complex process pushing the envelope of technological advancement costing untold amounts of money and man hours? I mean seriously, its a frickin' bear. It shouldn't be that hard.
Now if Maxis had just said "look we had to let all our animators go due to cost cutting", at least that would make sense. As you said though, that's really their problem, not mine. All I want to see is a quality product, but at least it would have made more sense than saying "oh yeah, animating a bear is just like super hard and expensive dude, sorry".
It's insultingly funny. If technology makes these things so much harder, then we would never ever have new technology. What would be the point? "Oh no boss lady/man, it took me a week last year to create this thing, but since they upgraded photoshop, visual studio and blender, it's now going to take me a month because of progress. And I'll be taking a long lunch today to go pick up my new iphone that promises to increase the time for text delivery between users and cap the download speeds because of progress!"
Yep advanced technology is supposed to make things easier not harder. The Sims 4 developers are the only game developers who make technological advancement sound like going backwards and the sad thing that some players agree with them too, as if they are not playing other games to see what can be done!
Just throwing out a few comments made by gurus about difficulty and cost and how it relates to TS4.
June 26th, 2014
One of the really big changes with Sims 4 and something that was an early directive for the game was to put powerful tools in designer's hands so that they could focus on adding content and increasing the depth of the content in the game without needing an engineer to implement or iterate on new functionality and new interactions every time we wanted something. ~ Graham Nardone
January 30, 2015
Maxis is having us downgrade some software to a more cost effective version, which means I'm playing the Progress Bar game this morning!
@ RosiaMia_ Worried? Nope, it's just dev tools & the cheaper version is quite sufficient. Heck, it saves money so we can spend elsewhere! ~Steve Lansing
So yeah, they themselves said it would be easier and less expensive.
Their public statements flip from one to another. It's no wonder people worry!
Not sure what's so scary about the January tweet. If there's no need for a Premium version of whatever software they were using, what would be the point in keeping it ?
You realize they are not talking about the same software in both tweets ? The first one is an in-house tool for designers, the second one is a proprietory product used by the developpers.
Not sure what's so scary about the January tweet. If there's no need for a Premium version of whatever software they were using, what would be the point in keeping it ?
You realize they are not talking about the same software in both tweets ? The first one is an in-house tool for designers, the second one is a proprietory product used by the developpers.
Where did you get the idea that the tweet was supposed to be scary? Did anyone say that tweet was scary? haha
The point still stands. They have software that is better designed to allow the designers to more quickly and easily create content for the game.
The other software download is cheaper and saves them money.
So easier and cheaper.
Scary? Not really sure where you came up with that...
Not sure what's so scary about the January tweet. If there's no need for a Premium version of whatever software they were using, what would be the point in keeping it ?
You realize they are not talking about the same software in both tweets ? The first one is an in-house tool for designers, the second one is a proprietory product used by the developpers.
Where did you get the idea that the tweet was supposed to be scary? Did anyone say that tweet was scary? haha
The point still stands. They have software that is better designed to allow the designers to more quickly and easily create content for the game.
The other software download is cheaper and saves them money.
So easier and cheaper.
Scary? Not really sure where you came up with that...
I think it's in response to my point about the worry around the game when the devs constantly give conflicting statements in the rare times they speak.
It takes so much more time and effort to creat good and fluid/smooth animations nowadays if you want them to play out naturally (like in The Sims 4). It is much more complex (and harder) than it was for example 10 years ago because the transitions must be extremly flexible + you have much more frames to work with (this is what I meant with technology btw.). Back then games were primitive compared to those we have today. Making everyhting work right is extremly hard. Especially with a game like The Sims.
If you don't believe me you can try it out for yourselves! Since blender is a freeware tool everybody can grab it. To creat one (!) good (!) animation (with as much frames as possible) which is 5 seconds long it can take days! How do I know it? Because I myself have already created some kinky animations for The Sims 3, it took me so much time and they still sucked in the end.
However making an animation is just the beginning(the easiest part to be honest). Coding an AI (routing, logic, behavior) which at least acts authentically is much more complicated. Game companies get bigger and not smaller. That's the point guys. I think 500 people were involved in the process of creating Destiny (just one example). In the 90's you needed 5 people to creat AAA games xD
This discussion is so useless and dumb, it almost makes me angry
"[...] and everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, then it's not the end."
@Jessa_Dakkar
Would you want them to say they have made 🐸🐸🐸🐸 tools that makes everything more complicated and installed plenty of expensive and useless softwares because they like to pour money down the drain ?
That would be worrying, using money wisely is not.
From the low budget and the silence on everything it's all a big mess. I mean they said it's costly for lounge chair animations?
Yet, there are two cc lounge chairs in Mod The Sims(one clips slightly, the other doesn't). Pools they said at first couldn't be done because of terrain or the way lots were designed. Toddlers weren't done because of the additional animations that would have had to been placed into the game, then toddlers were being 'looked into'. Now RF said that not having toddlers in game was the best decision to date. I like to think that seasons will be in the game, but believe that if so, they will be in separate worlds like OR is; however I would not be surprised if 'too hard/too expensive' was used as an excuse not to have seasons in the sims 4.
Olympus was scrapped then Sims 4 was made. They say the engine was 'limited'; if it really is and they knew that why wouldn't they, as a gaming production company, fix a huge problem that would hinder further products and therefore profit? Imho, I think that the limited engine is either a lie or an exaggeration. I just feel like with everything they say, they are blowing smoke too much. I feel that they 'dumbed down' the sims 4 to appeal to their target audience(teens and young adults-though I am not calling the target audience dumb at all-just feel like the higher-ups have that view; have read that some young people do not like sims 4 for the same reasons that the older simmers don't like it as well).
I have loved playing the Sims since Sims 1 and while there was an adjustment period from Sims 1 to 2 to 3, I quickly got engaged with what could be done in each iteration. There are things I like about Sims 4 (CAS, ease of build mode, some of the sim animations and unprompted actions are cute, but lately don't feel the same connection and enjoyment that I got/felt from the other iterations.
In the Sims teams defense tho guys, they did use a lot of Sims 2 animations for Sims 3. Even sounds, etc.
Not only that, many objects got also rehashed. It may sound like an easy task but it certainly is not!
Also converting animations is really not that simple. It's almost like converting objects from one game to another (e.g.: TS2>TS3>TS4 and vice versa). Each of the games uses a different core engine and structure from managing gameplay to handle the 3D graphics. A simple decorative object needs to be extracted first from it's original game, then it's mesh and textures needs to be converted to the new game format, then there is also the sizing and slot info and the interactions info to add. And this works only for a vase or a painting, so basically in the end it's only an objects you can look at, nothing special. For animations it's a similar process - which means: old animation gets extracted, then converted and adapted to the new game's sim mesh and bone structure. Once this is done, which is not as simple as it may sound (and btw. can be very time consuming), they need to code a tool to make the result work for the new game. Syncing animations together is, as far as I know, here the trickiest part.
Sorry for my 🐸🐸🐸🐸 english but when it comes to complex explanations I have a hard time writing.
Post edited by HalloMolli on
"[...] and everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, then it's not the end."
@Jessa_Dakkar
Would you want them to say they have made 🐸🐸🐸🐸 tools that makes everything more complicated and installed plenty of expensive and useless softwares because they like to pour money down the drain ?
That would be worrying, using money wisely is not.
Why do you think I would want them to say their tools are.. uhh.. 'poopy'? I didn't even remotely allude to such a thing.
I simply copy/pasted the gurus own words that things will be easier and cheaper this time around. That is a GOOD thing, is it not?!
I've got plenty of words in my mouth, I sure don't need you trying to put yours in there, so keep them to yourself, thanks.
How my re-posting guru tweets came down to what you have posted, I don't know.
So based on a couple comments, it's all just too hard and we need to have some sympathy and understanding for the inability of the devs to create a bear.
It takes so much more time and effort to creat good and fluid/smooth animations nowadays if you want them to play out naturally (like in The Sims 4). It is much more complex (and harder) than it was for example 10 years ago because the transitions must be extremly flexible + you have much more frames to work with (this is what I meant with technology btw.). Back then games were primitive compared to those we have today. Making everyhting work right is extremly hard. Especially with a game like The Sims.
If you don't believe me you can try it out for yourselves! Since blender is a freeware tool everybody can grab it. To creat one (!) good (!) animation (with as much frames as possible) which is 5 seconds long it can take days! How do I know it? Because I myself have already created some kinky animations for The Sims 3, it took me so much time and they still sucked in the end.
However making an animation is just the beginning(the easiest part to be honest). Coding an AI (routing, logic, behavior) which at least acts authentically is much more complicated. Game companies get bigger and not smaller. That's the point guys. I think 500 people were involved in the process of creating Destiny (just one example). In the 90's you needed 5 people to creat AAA games xD
This discussion is so useless and dumb, it almost makes me angry
Then you never played Sims 2 - now they were Sims and actually acted like humans UNLIKE Sims 4. That is a lot of Hooey IN MY VIEW!!! They played together, went bird watching, Played jump rope, shoot they had way more playground equipment - seesaws, swings, hopscotch, playground merry go round, sit and spin, dug for treasure, flew kites they also created, played in water toy sprinklers that they created with the toy machine - they made things like with a sewing machine and looked like they were doing it, they made a number of different bots that did things from water plants to pick up trash to being sentry guards - was especially useful if one had their own Greek house to keep out troublemakers. LOl. But Sims 2 is an example of what the Devs could do and choose not to. But boy they can talk, play musical chairs, and talk, and dance by them selves, and talk, and eat, and talk - wait - my sims talk and eat and they go out to real restaurants and eat and talk. My sims feed each other bites of cake over dinner, while eating and talking, and they hold hands, they even toast each other - tell me how real Sims 4 is when they even remotely remind you of human behavior or even come close to all the things they can do in Sims 2 - when the devs actually cared what simmers - all simmers wanted. I also do not call heavy duty clipping as proper routing. The thing is in the AI it was told when sims hit into something to stop - find a way around the object - which I admit they were not always all that bright and did not always find a way around without pitching a fit - but in Sims 4 when they see they are going to hit something they just keep on walking or sitting right into another sims. It is all about programming, so you can't blame the Sims or the AI for not routing around the object because it was not instructed for the next step to not go through things including other sims.
It was the lesser of all evils I guess to the devs so simmers did not constantly complain of the sims foot tapping (that was to let another sims move out of their path) or the hand waving - so they just go on their merry way oblivious to anything in their path. (There were lots of other alternatives though, they just choose the simplest.) Now if the routing was any better sims would not be able to occupy the same space at the same time - the game would sense it if a space was occupied if programmed to see that and make them alter their path. I see they used this kind of routing which is very human like in a number of games - but of course many of these games have been given plenty of time to be made right with much smaller numbers of devs and engineers than Maxis has - Maxis has 1500 employees, but what can I say. Also EA itself is showing a lot of games with beautiful routing - games they gave an extra year or more - or in the case of Dragon Age IQ only a few more months - well it paid off - Take a look at star wars - same company - same darn campus - makes no sense to me. I know in Sims 2 they brought in people from the other EA studios for ep and other work - several whole EP were done By Sam Player - part of the EA Sports people - so I just don't get why none of this kind of thing was not done in Sims 4. (Probably because of EA's blockbuster games they did delay most likely).
People playing this game a long time knows this is not done as well as it should have been - and in fact does far less - so it actually should have been much better with so little to animate compared to past Sims games. Of course sometimes it is very hard for some people to find fault in their fav game - I know as it used to be my fav game too for the last 15 years. LOL.
Post edited by Writin_Reg on
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
Comments
Concept art:
So I am curious how the poly count will work with seasons. I hope it ends up looking nice. Snow on the hair and outfits would be cool.
Exactly. How did animating a bear suddenly become this huge complex process pushing the envelope of technological advancement costing untold amounts of money and man hours?
Now if Maxis had just said "look we had to let all our animators go due to cost cutting", at least that would make sense. As you said though, that's really their problem, not mine. All I want to see is a quality product, but at least it would have made more sense than saying "oh yeah, animating a bear is just like super hard and expensive dude, sorry".
It's insultingly funny. If technology makes these things so much harder, then we would never ever have new technology. What would be the point? "Oh no boss lady/man, it took me a week last year to create this thing, but since they upgraded photoshop, visual studio and blender, it's now going to take me a month because of progress. And I'll be taking a long lunch today to go pick up my new iphone that promises to increase the time for text delivery between users and cap the download speeds because of progress!"
Yep advanced technology is supposed to make things easier not harder. The Sims 4 developers are the only game developers who make technological advancement sound like going backwards and the sad thing that some players agree with them too, as if they are not playing other games to see what can be done!
On a side note, I really hope pets come out better than that silly squirrel. I mean if things like bears are hard to do and take three years, imagine how long a whole pet system could take? It could be one of the last packs to develop. I do think the Sims 4 might have to be developed in more than five years just to get everything to work right. Sadly it does seem like development of this game has become more of a burden than anything. I miss when the developers actually seemed to enjoy what they were making.
This actually bothers me too. Toddlers should be in a patch so it can work with future EPs and yes they already missed a SP that could have added new content for them.
I agree. The sims 1 had a bear... That was 15 years ago yet for the sims 4 its too hard...
Just throwing out a few comments made by gurus about difficulty and cost and how it relates to TS4.
June 26th, 2014
One of the really big changes with Sims 4 and something that was an early directive for the game was to put powerful tools in designer's hands so that they could focus on adding content and increasing the depth of the content in the game without needing an engineer to implement or iterate on new functionality and new interactions every time we wanted something. ~ Graham Nardone
January 30, 2015
Maxis is having us downgrade some software to a more cost effective version, which means I'm playing the Progress Bar game this morning!
@ RosiaMia_ Worried? Nope, it's just dev tools & the cheaper version is quite sufficient. Heck, it saves money so we can spend elsewhere! ~Steve Lansing
So yeah, they themselves said it would be easier and less expensive.
Their public statements flip from one to another. It's no wonder people worry!
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
You realize they are not talking about the same software in both tweets ? The first one is an in-house tool for designers, the second one is a proprietory product used by the developpers.
Where did you get the idea that the tweet was supposed to be scary? Did anyone say that tweet was scary? haha
The point still stands. They have software that is better designed to allow the designers to more quickly and easily create content for the game.
The other software download is cheaper and saves them money.
So easier and cheaper.
Scary? Not really sure where you came up with that...
I think it's in response to my point about the worry around the game when the devs constantly give conflicting statements in the rare times they speak.
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
If you don't believe me you can try it out for yourselves! Since blender is a freeware tool everybody can grab it. To creat one (!) good (!) animation (with as much frames as possible) which is 5 seconds long it can take days! How do I know it? Because I myself have already created some kinky animations for The Sims 3, it took me so much time and they still sucked in the end.
However making an animation is just the beginning(the easiest part to be honest). Coding an AI (routing, logic, behavior) which at least acts authentically is much more complicated. Game companies get bigger and not smaller. That's the point guys. I think 500 people were involved in the process of creating Destiny (just one example). In the 90's you needed 5 people to creat AAA games xD
This discussion is so useless and dumb, it almost makes me angry
Would you want them to say they have made 🐸🐸🐸🐸 tools that makes everything more complicated and installed plenty of expensive and useless softwares because they like to pour money down the drain ?
That would be worrying, using money wisely is not.
Yet, there are two cc lounge chairs in Mod The Sims(one clips slightly, the other doesn't). Pools they said at first couldn't be done because of terrain or the way lots were designed. Toddlers weren't done because of the additional animations that would have had to been placed into the game, then toddlers were being 'looked into'. Now RF said that not having toddlers in game was the best decision to date. I like to think that seasons will be in the game, but believe that if so, they will be in separate worlds like OR is; however I would not be surprised if 'too hard/too expensive' was used as an excuse not to have seasons in the sims 4.
Olympus was scrapped then Sims 4 was made. They say the engine was 'limited'; if it really is and they knew that why wouldn't they, as a gaming production company, fix a huge problem that would hinder further products and therefore profit? Imho, I think that the limited engine is either a lie or an exaggeration. I just feel like with everything they say, they are blowing smoke too much. I feel that they 'dumbed down' the sims 4 to appeal to their target audience(teens and young adults-though I am not calling the target audience dumb at all-just feel like the higher-ups have that view; have read that some young people do not like sims 4 for the same reasons that the older simmers don't like it as well).
I have loved playing the Sims since Sims 1 and while there was an adjustment period from Sims 1 to 2 to 3, I quickly got engaged with what could be done in each iteration. There are things I like about Sims 4 (CAS, ease of build mode, some of the sim animations and unprompted actions are cute, but lately don't feel the same connection and enjoyment that I got/felt from the other iterations.
Not only that, many objects got also rehashed. It may sound like an easy task but it certainly is not!
Also converting animations is really not that simple. It's almost like converting objects from one game to another (e.g.: TS2>TS3>TS4 and vice versa). Each of the games uses a different core engine and structure from managing gameplay to handle the 3D graphics. A simple decorative object needs to be extracted first from it's original game, then it's mesh and textures needs to be converted to the new game format, then there is also the sizing and slot info and the interactions info to add. And this works only for a vase or a painting, so basically in the end it's only an objects you can look at, nothing special. For animations it's a similar process - which means: old animation gets extracted, then converted and adapted to the new game's sim mesh and bone structure. Once this is done, which is not as simple as it may sound (and btw. can be very time consuming), they need to code a tool to make the result work for the new game. Syncing animations together is, as far as I know, here the trickiest part.
Sorry for my 🐸🐸🐸🐸 english but when it comes to complex explanations I have a hard time writing.
Why do you think I would want them to say their tools are.. uhh.. 'poopy'? I didn't even remotely allude to such a thing.
I simply copy/pasted the gurus own words that things will be easier and cheaper this time around. That is a GOOD thing, is it not?!
I've got plenty of words in my mouth, I sure don't need you trying to put yours in there, so keep them to yourself, thanks.
How my re-posting guru tweets came down to what you have posted, I don't know.
Ok.
Then you never played Sims 2 - now they were Sims and actually acted like humans UNLIKE Sims 4. That is a lot of Hooey IN MY VIEW!!! They played together, went bird watching, Played jump rope, shoot they had way more playground equipment - seesaws, swings, hopscotch, playground merry go round, sit and spin, dug for treasure, flew kites they also created, played in water toy sprinklers that they created with the toy machine - they made things like with a sewing machine and looked like they were doing it, they made a number of different bots that did things from water plants to pick up trash to being sentry guards - was especially useful if one had their own Greek house to keep out troublemakers. LOl. But Sims 2 is an example of what the Devs could do and choose not to. But boy they can talk, play musical chairs, and talk, and dance by them selves, and talk, and eat, and talk - wait - my sims talk and eat and they go out to real restaurants and eat and talk. My sims feed each other bites of cake over dinner, while eating and talking, and they hold hands, they even toast each other - tell me how real Sims 4 is when they even remotely remind you of human behavior or even come close to all the things they can do in Sims 2 - when the devs actually cared what simmers - all simmers wanted. I also do not call heavy duty clipping as proper routing. The thing is in the AI it was told when sims hit into something to stop - find a way around the object - which I admit they were not always all that bright and did not always find a way around without pitching a fit - but in Sims 4 when they see they are going to hit something they just keep on walking or sitting right into another sims. It is all about programming, so you can't blame the Sims or the AI for not routing around the object because it was not instructed for the next step to not go through things including other sims.
It was the lesser of all evils I guess to the devs so simmers did not constantly complain of the sims foot tapping (that was to let another sims move out of their path) or the hand waving - so they just go on their merry way oblivious to anything in their path. (There were lots of other alternatives though, they just choose the simplest.) Now if the routing was any better sims would not be able to occupy the same space at the same time - the game would sense it if a space was occupied if programmed to see that and make them alter their path. I see they used this kind of routing which is very human like in a number of games - but of course many of these games have been given plenty of time to be made right with much smaller numbers of devs and engineers than Maxis has - Maxis has 1500 employees, but what can I say. Also EA itself is showing a lot of games with beautiful routing - games they gave an extra year or more - or in the case of Dragon Age IQ only a few more months - well it paid off - Take a look at star wars - same company - same darn campus - makes no sense to me. I know in Sims 2 they brought in people from the other EA studios for ep and other work - several whole EP were done By Sam Player - part of the EA Sports people - so I just don't get why none of this kind of thing was not done in Sims 4. (Probably because of EA's blockbuster games they did delay most likely).
People playing this game a long time knows this is not done as well as it should have been - and in fact does far less - so it actually should have been much better with so little to animate compared to past Sims games. Of course sometimes it is very hard for some people to find fault in their fav game - I know as it used to be my fav game too for the last 15 years. LOL.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....