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Was Open world really that bad?? Could it be made to work?
AlexSimmerman
Posts: 80 Member
SIMS 3 / SIMS 4 - MAP & LAG COMPARISON
I see a lot of comments around TS3 having lagging & performance issues because of the open world. Whilst I can identify with some of these complaints such as community lots often being empty; the Sims 3 game mostly ran completely fine for me on my laptop which was around 10 years old. Travelling between lots could take time but for me that sacrifice was definitely worth it for the Open World aspect.
I understand the The Sims 4 is not going to be an open world at this point but I’m just curious, I fully appreciate TS4 looks amazing, so much better visually but I actually experience a lot more lag and performance issues with this game than I ever did with TS3 due to the ‘multitasking feature’ of TS4. Does anyone else find this or am I alone?
My laptop is new and fairly decent, I don’t use mods yet I find that my Sims just freeze constantly (not the game Itself) like my Sims take forever to switch between tasks or complete them because they’re too focused trying to do multiple things at once.
If it’s a trade-off between themes and performance; I’d definitely prefer open world instead of multitasking. I’m really curious about this open world decision by EA but am not very computer/ technically savvy. Could someone maybe explain in what ways it affects the game please?
What do you guys think about the open world trade-off? It’s a shame they couldn’t have met somewhere in the middle and allowed larger neighbourhoods which were open and then used loading screens to travel outside of your neighbourhood. It’s a tricky One... 🤷🏽♂️
I see a lot of comments around TS3 having lagging & performance issues because of the open world. Whilst I can identify with some of these complaints such as community lots often being empty; the Sims 3 game mostly ran completely fine for me on my laptop which was around 10 years old. Travelling between lots could take time but for me that sacrifice was definitely worth it for the Open World aspect.
I understand the The Sims 4 is not going to be an open world at this point but I’m just curious, I fully appreciate TS4 looks amazing, so much better visually but I actually experience a lot more lag and performance issues with this game than I ever did with TS3 due to the ‘multitasking feature’ of TS4. Does anyone else find this or am I alone?
My laptop is new and fairly decent, I don’t use mods yet I find that my Sims just freeze constantly (not the game Itself) like my Sims take forever to switch between tasks or complete them because they’re too focused trying to do multiple things at once.
If it’s a trade-off between themes and performance; I’d definitely prefer open world instead of multitasking. I’m really curious about this open world decision by EA but am not very computer/ technically savvy. Could someone maybe explain in what ways it affects the game please?
What do you guys think about the open world trade-off? It’s a shame they couldn’t have met somewhere in the middle and allowed larger neighbourhoods which were open and then used loading screens to travel outside of your neighbourhood. It’s a tricky One... 🤷🏽♂️
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Comments
When it comes to open world, I am by no means an expert, but it basically comes down to freeing memory so the game can load other assets. When you load an area in the sims4, the game loads all textures, assets etc. if you have an open world like in the sims3, then the game needs to free assets when you are not in that area. That's why you are noticing textures loading and lagging if you switch from one sim in one place to another sim in another place. That's because the game needs to load those assets again.
GTA5 is a good example on how it works, that game only loads what the player sees around them. So when you switch to another character, the camera zooms out so it can load the assets around the character that you switched to, before zooming in again.
I think it could be possible to have open world in a sims game without lag, but that will require some good programming. The game needs to be good at freeing memory and loading assets without affecting game performance too much.
"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.....
Edit: Oh...and there was also the fact that if I failed to save my game every 20 minutes or so I would get a memory error making saving impossible. This is what caused me to ultimately quit.
My ts3 lagged a lot in the end, but I played a many years old save with tons of graves that I didn't delete even if there were no relatives. So, there must have been way too many sims in my ts3 game, and too much memories etc to store. When starting a new game I think it was running much smoother, even if my computer was not top notch.
i don't really know if there is truth to that or not.
I think having a semi-open world would work though:
The worlds could still be as they are, with Sims being able to travel between them (via loading screens) and show up as they do now. The same with the travel and movement between neighborhoods within one world. But the neighborhoods themselves, I think, could be open - no loading screens between, say, the three houses in the Pinnacles in Del Sol Valley or the houses around the Goth one. And smaller worlds like Glimmerbrook or Selvadorada could be fully open.
@Simmerville I agree about the info on neighborhood lots. It's even strange that sometimes you have the option to move in a household from the library, despite the fact that a family is already living on that lot.
@AlexSimmerman The simulation lag is unfortunately unconnected to the memory issues that would possibly cause a lag and problems with the open world. It's a bug within the code that seems to come and go and can happen even in small lots and households.
EA/Maxis decides to cut everything as if starting from scratch for various reasons such as use of properties from an project that was cancelled. The program was the last program that could scale up or down to what the end user was using and Imho it was EA/Maxis handling and also some users trying to use an program beyond what it was not built to do. The way I come to this conclusion and I was fortuate to have over 4 systems with variuos configurations that I played Sims 3 off and I would get various levels of gameplay but not the problems most players was complaining about with the expection again from problems on the developer side such as the lag in China, the release of an erronous patch released prior to Ambition release, and IP which was all EA/Maxis problem and could be solved by modders and was not properly resolved by EA/Maxis but all in all even with these problems I was able to play. Sims 4 is what it is due to poor handling of it's own program.
An open world would work with no issue in 64 bit. It was the 32 bit it was a problem.
"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.....
I tried in on other computers and Sims 3 still had problems. They aren't bad computers either.
Lets make this a reality!
For sims 5, I'd love it if they could open up the neighbourhoods, but keep the worlds closed. If I have to go with one though, I very much prefer sims 4 worlds. The loadingscreens don't bother me, as they're always less than a minute for me.
So they should probably avoid it.
A number of games on this list use procedural generated worlds which I do play and enjoy quite a lot:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_using_procedural_generation
Spore was the last procedural generated game Maxis made. Personally I much rather have a procedural generated world for the Sims than open world because in comparison procedural generated worlds are limitless while open worlds have their limits and performance on computers is much more solid on procedural generated worlds.
I can't imagine any development team would be incapable of building such a feat, but Maxis is a division of EA, so there is no distinction between them. It would be great if EA didn't rush it all out on a deadline though, show some committment to their work and their customers every so often.
I can't see it coming for TS4 in our lifetimes, it would mean getting into the coding, rebuilding it and then building a whole world. It's very possible it could come in TS5 instead where extra resources don't need to be added when it can be built directly into that game during its development.
I can ... not that I’m naming names or anything.
As a Mac player, I’m happy they take macs into account and It runs on my computer but I completely understand the frustration of people with better gaming computers.
I’d like open neighborhood though, as it makes no sense to me that we can walk around the neighborhood but then if we want to visit the house next door there’s a loading screen. And I’ve always wanted cars in TS4.
In TS4, if I have one sim writing a book and another sim gets invited out, I wish that writer would just keep writing until done and then see to their own needs while the other sim is away from the lot. But no. All home activities stop and you can direct them in some ways from the outside, but it’s frustrating when you had already set up their tasks and the same ones aren’t available.
I like TS4 neighborhoods with common areas, it would just be nice to have editing capabilities for these areas, or one community lot (that could be edited) opened up within that neighborhood in addition to whichever household you have loaded.
I'm not in the least bit vexed about the loading screens in Sims4. In fact I stopped playing Sims3 and returned to playing Sims2 whilst I awaited the release of Sims4, just to get myself 'ready' for the change.
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This is basically where I'm at. I'm not anti-open world but I like some of the elements of TS4.
TS3 really toasted my computer at the time. I had a lot of fun with it but the open world glitched in the end for me so that none of the NPCs were free-moving, they all pooled up on one lot in a way that was creepy. Then, my laptop melted down and I didn't come back until well into TS4. I decided to give TS4 a try and decided that I was ok with the short loading screens on my better computer.
I do like the large neighborhoods with minimal loading screens in the open air like the Windenburg countryside, Brindleton Bay and the Sulani islands. It's not illogical to me to have a short loading screen to travel to a different neighborhood.
Editing this to add: When I say my laptop melted, I mean that it literally overheated and the various pieces fell off while the fans ran too fast at a high heat. No issues like that now, but I'm playing on a better computer.
It's funny to me that people complain about rabbit holes when most of their sim careers don't even get a destination.
Instead their sims teleport in front of the house and they don't even get a car to pick them up.
I hope we do get a grocery store and a bookstore in TS4. Too much stuff is automatic or done over the computer.
Great job on the Spa, and the restaurant, when it works properly.
It's the way the game has been designed - changing that won't be a quick patch, and they have better things to spend developer's time on.
That being sad I'm a huge fan of open world in TS3. Even with lag and any other consequences. Yet the way TS4 is designed there's no way it can be done. Subhoods are instanced, there's nothing to open between them. Still it would be amazing to have these subhoods opened and keep loading screens only when moving from one to another.
I'm curious how new Uni world will function to allow biking... I guess it'll have to be at lest somewhat open for it. But knowing how things are done these days I guess this feature won't be applied to older worlds. Just like swimable water.