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Pondering How Time Works in the Sims
K_Plays
Posts: 102 Member
In the comments on the poll about Paralives and Sims 5, the subject of characters taking off shoes came up and it made me think about time in Sims 4 (and I guess any other life simulation game).
In real life, when I get home from work, I immediately take my shoes off. I wear Chelsea boots to work, so this takes, maybe, 30 seconds. The shoes that take me the longest to take off would be my hiking boots, but even those are off in under two minutes.
So far as I know, a minute in Sims is a second or so in real life. I figure this is why there are animations like taking off shoes that get left out. In order to animate taking off shoes in a realistic time span, the animation would be too quick for players to watch. What would likely happen is that Sims would take 10-15 minutes to take off their shoes, taking valuable time away from activities like getting water that nobody told them to get or knitting on the toilet.
I'm curious how other players feel about the inherently distorted timing of things (seriously, how long does it take you to walk from your living room to your kitchen compared to how long it takes your Sim to do the same thing?) and would you like the ratio of real life time to game time to be changed. If one minute of Sims time took 5 seconds of real life time at the slowest speed, more animations could be added and things like getting endless glasses of water wouldn't waste so much of a Sims' day. That being said, playing a day of a Sims life would take five times as long.
I'm not 100% sure where I'm going with this train of thought or what I'd prefer. Mostly, I'm just curious to hear what others think about how time works in Sims.
In real life, when I get home from work, I immediately take my shoes off. I wear Chelsea boots to work, so this takes, maybe, 30 seconds. The shoes that take me the longest to take off would be my hiking boots, but even those are off in under two minutes.
So far as I know, a minute in Sims is a second or so in real life. I figure this is why there are animations like taking off shoes that get left out. In order to animate taking off shoes in a realistic time span, the animation would be too quick for players to watch. What would likely happen is that Sims would take 10-15 minutes to take off their shoes, taking valuable time away from activities like getting water that nobody told them to get or knitting on the toilet.
I'm curious how other players feel about the inherently distorted timing of things (seriously, how long does it take you to walk from your living room to your kitchen compared to how long it takes your Sim to do the same thing?) and would you like the ratio of real life time to game time to be changed. If one minute of Sims time took 5 seconds of real life time at the slowest speed, more animations could be added and things like getting endless glasses of water wouldn't waste so much of a Sims' day. That being said, playing a day of a Sims life would take five times as long.
I'm not 100% sure where I'm going with this train of thought or what I'd prefer. Mostly, I'm just curious to hear what others think about how time works in Sims.
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Comments
But I would also like the fast-forward button to work better. My fast-forward button often slows down so I have to check my email while I wait for my Sims to finish sleeping.
I like the idea of a slower pace with more detailed animations.
I would like a slower pace for the day to fit more in. I would also have liked a longer option for seasons too, say 56 days long, to suit those who play long rotations.
When it comes to what you do in the sims, I feel that some animations are way too slow for that time conversion, like sims using the bathroom or showering for example, that takes way too slow if you consider that 1 minute is 1 hour in the game. I like to take a shower when I wake up every morning but if you want to restore your sims hygiene to full then they are standing in that shower for quite a while.
I have to turn aging off for university with rotational play or everyone's friends age up without them. I would like to see time done differently but not sure how. I play rotational and find often that older brother will be young adult while the younger sibling is now an adult. Maybe I play the rotation wrong.
So, when you think about it, sims appear to walk, talk etc. in real time and yet their day lasts 24 minutes. How do you make a game that has 24 hours of actions and reduce it to 24 minutes? Make everything go at 24X speed? Have sims move at normal speed but have cooking, dressing, gardening take up a fraction of the time? Drop daily activities like toenail clipping, making the bed and taking off shoes?
Of course, the game could be changed so that putting on pyjamas "early" gave a comfort buff.
yep, that's it right there. It has to be balanced out somehow. (or if you like, inaccurate somehow)