Hi SimGuruMax,<br />
<br />
The thing that I dislike the most in the game actually is the Teens... Why are they exactly the same height and look exactly the same as young adults ?<br />
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My question is : Do you consider, and would it be possible technically to modify the teens at this stage of the game (after release) to make them shorter and possibly a bit different than the young adults ?<br />
<br />
Thanks
Animation time is our enemy and we take our animation quality very seriously. Having a third height would have required a *huge* number of new animations. To save some time, we could probably have ported some of our existing adult animations onto the smaller skeleton. We have partially-automated processes to port animations in various ways already, so we could cut some time there too. Problem is, someone still needs to touch all of them by hand and some are going to require considerable rework to get right. And this is prior to getting into the animations that just don't make any sense at all on the smaller frame and must be done for the Teen from scratch, of which there would be many.
Much of what I end up talking about is tradeoffs. Its the brutal reality of building games, or really anything honestly. So we have on the right teens of adult height but substantially more animation time to devote to both teens AND adults, and on the left we have shorter teens and far fewer animations for both teens and adults. We made the right call.
I wouldn't hold my breath on teens getting shorter.
This is really depressing to read.
I hope you do something to make them different because right now it's just yet another young adult, and creating uncomfortable moment where you dont know if you are wanting to hit up someone that's a teen
Please do re-think and consider adjusting teens, there's a huge group of people enjoying playing with families and such and this is just yet another thing over object babies and no toddlers to just .. It's not great
I understand that this comes down to preference. The team decided having the animation content necessary for multitasking and authoring more interesting social animations was more important than Teens being shorter. I hope the additional behavior for both teens and adults, both in the base game and in the future, is some comfort to you even if you disagree with our choice.
I think someone already mentioned changing the outline color for "selected" on different age groups. Or at least add an interaction where our sim can enquire about another's age. At the moment it really *is* impossible to tell who you're trying to hit on until you have married them and they've moved into your household! (obviously you know with teens cos the romance section of the menu is missing)
Next, as in the previous Sims series, do Sims 4 Sims have that "telepathy" ability and know if another Sim is already married or has a lover, and who that lover is? Or are they completely oblivious (if not having seen anything to the contrary)? Can Sims have a secret lover on the side which is unknown to anyone, or do Sims just "know" anyhow, and not care as long as they don't see anything actually happen? And then, how close in vicinity does the partner have to be to "catch" hanky panky going on? I ask, because in Sims 3, your Sim and lover could meet on a completely different lot, but upon returning home, your Sim would be confronted (slapped) by the cheated-on spouse --telepathy, you know.
Sims need to discover each other's info by conversing. This is the purpose of interactions like "Ask If Single." Other Sims' traits and relationships get revealed as you get to know them.
Also, some Sims just don't care. Evil Sims are hollowed out inside and will happily homewreck that significant other right on out.
Thanks for your replies to my questions, SGMax! Interesting, I didn't know there was such a drastic variance in the percentages in how a social is scored. I'm always trying to figure out why a Sim did something, especially when they did not react as I anticipated. Good stuff here - glad you are sharing with us!
Hello SimGuruMax. I know this has been talked about before, the time it takes to eat and drink. And while I understand it taking longer if multitasking, I do beliebe it takes too long even if not doing anything else, especially drinking. Again, I even understand drinking an alcoholic beverage to take some time, but it takes like 1 hour for a sim to drink a glass of milk!!! It's just not reallistic at all! btw, loving the game, minus the crashes I've had... hope you guys fix that too, soon. I have a suggestion to make, but maybe thats more for the other gurus, but still... I think that when you open the fridge, the cooked meals should be at the top, and then fruits, vegetables, etc... Or at least there should be a way to sort or filter. Thanks for making a very fun game and here's hoping it does get better and better with time.
What software is used to model the plants and objects in nature? This might just be me but I absolutely adore the way the plants and nature objects (the ducks in the pond, the fish, even the pebbles on the ground) are designed, colored, the way they move, etc etc.
@Desirai We use Maya for creating our 3d assets. We sometimes use Zbrush for high polygon sculpting which we then bake down into normal maps for additional detail. And thank you!
Hi do you know why some textures look low quality and kinda pixelated even on ultra settings? Example:<br />
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i60.tinypic.com/2rwtk00.jpg<br />
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oi62.tinypic.com/1218un7.jpg<br />
<br />
The fridge looks pixelated when recolored it happens to one couch also I don't remember which one!! I made sure it's not just on my pc you can check it on yours too!! can this be fixed in a patch or something?? It's very annoying when zoomed in <br />
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Sorry I'm not allowed to post images directly because i'm still considered a new member
@zoeman93 That looks like compression artifacts. Sadly that is fairly common when working with smooth gradients like that in textures, only way to to really avoid it is using uncompressed textures.
> @SimGuruMax said: > BigWazaa wrote: » > > Hi SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax, I have four questions:
>
> 1. Why you put so many tutorials, with not even the possibility to dissable it? days after I start playing the game some of them are still showing, telling me how to do things I already learned to do.
>
> 2. My sims doing "wo oh!" while some other sim was playing to the computer in the same room, completely happy. What are the concepts that make a Sim to notice other Sims interactions? To be in the same room, as sims 1, 2, 3, or be near them, as I feel it is happening?
>
> 3. Why cannot be check the info of Sims we cannot interact with? for example, or little babies (to check their needs, or how many days are left until they grown up, or people in other lots or working.
>
> 4. If I check the windows of a house in the same neighbor I see the furniture inside it. So, why I need a load screen to go to that home? > > > > > 1) You can disable tutorials through an arcane method that involves modifying your command-line settings in Origin. I really wish we had shipped an option in the options menu to disable. Do a search on these forums or the internet to find the exact method of doing this. > > 2) I described the privacy system already in this thread. While doing WooHoo, Sims drop a privacy footprint that fills their line-of-sight. There is a limit to this distance, so if the room is large enough, they may not consider it to be a privacy violation. That said, if this is happening in a small room, then that would be an issue. > > 3) These are really design/production questions. I would bring this up with SimGuruGrant or SimGuruSemedi. > > 4) As IngeJones referenced, the amount of metadata required to efficiently simulate Sims in a house goes way deeper than the geometry of the objects. Unfortunately, there are physical realities of modern computers and our player base generally doesn't have sixteen-core, 8GB behemoth machines. We made some really tough choices in order to get the level of depth in the simulation that we wanted, as you all know. We also really want our neighborhoods to feel alive with Sims, and the number of Sims we can support both from a simulation and rendering/animation standpoint is limited. If we have to simulate all your neighbor's houses, regardless of all the objects, that's maybe 20+ Sims we may need to be simulating inside houses you can't see 90% of the time, which would mean your common areas like the park would be dead.
Thanks for your answers, but your answers gave me extra doubts.
1. Unfortunatelly for me I wanted to review the game in my blog so I did not do it. It is good to see you think as me. Lucky me I finished it today :) 2. It was near enough, a Sim sitting in the bed was able to talk to with a Sim sitting in the computer. 3. Ok! I will wait. 4. I don't get this point. There are several points that contradicts these. The first one is that in Sims 3 it was done, with no lag (and it was a big small city). I know the code has changed, but it is only 5 houses. And I already saw similar solutions in Sims 2 University extension, the Sims 2 and 3 "city life" kind extensions, with no problems.
At the same time the load screen shows with or with not sims, on the neighbourgh house, when you visit them.
So, if you already did the effort to have the graphics loaded, why didn't you use some of the solutions you already found, in past games, to solve similar issues?
Hi - are the loading screens really helpful? I ask as with a big Lot say 50-x50 and a full household screens are about 20-30 seconds without CC and on a computer with higher specs than recommended - its also stuttering a lot
Next, as in the previous Sims series, do Sims 4 Sims have that "telepathy" ability and know if another Sim is already married or has a lover, and who that lover is? Or are they completely oblivious (if not having seen anything to the contrary)? Can Sims have a secret lover on the side which is unknown to anyone, or do Sims just "know" anyhow, and not care as long as they don't see anything actually happen? And then, how close in vicinity does the partner have to be to "catch" hanky panky going on? I ask, because in Sims 3, your Sim and lover could meet on a completely different lot, but upon returning home, your Sim would be confronted (slapped) by the cheated-on spouse --telepathy, you know.
Sims need to discover each other's info by conversing. This is the purpose of interactions like "Ask If Single." Other Sims' traits and relationships get revealed as you get to know them.
Also, some Sims just don't care. Evil Sims are hollowed out inside and will happily homewreck that significant other right on out.
P.S. Secret Lovers is a great idea!
I'd like to suggest adding an interaction to "ask age" that would give some kind of meaningful response, like, "I'm 3 days older than you are" or "I'm 23 days older than you are" etc. I have no problem with May-December romances, but if a young adult marries and the person they marry ages to an elder the very next day, it cuts down on time spent together. If the elder is female, it also eliminates having a family other than by adoption.
I'm 12 years older than the mister, and kids have not been an option for me for almost 20 years. However, he knew that when he married me, so there were no surprises and no disappointments. I'd like to have the same for my Sims. It takes time to properly woo a Sim; it can be very disappointing (for me, at least) if the match turns out to be one that will be short-lived with no possibility of passing on genetics.
I just wanted to say a huge thank you for this thread. I just caught up on four pages of it, and I love the passion and careful thought and attention to detail that's going into this game even more, and it leaves with a lot of respect for the decision making being done. If I wasn't thousands of miles away, I'd come in and hug you all. Maybe bring apple pie.
EA CREATOR NETWORK MEMBER — Want to be notified of patches, new Broken Mods threads, and urgent Sims 4 news? Follow me at https://www.patreon.com/luthienrising.
I just wanted to say a huge thank you for this thread. I just caught up on four pages of it, and I love the passion and careful thought and attention to detail that's going into this game even more, and it leaves with a lot of respect for the decision making being done. If I wasn't thousands of miles away, I'd come in and hug you all. Maybe bring apple pie.
It's certainly nice to see the developers visibly taking an interest in their own forums, anyway. Before now it was the last place to think of going to catch the attention of a Maxoid. (Yeah I liked that name "Maxoid")
Next, as in the previous Sims series, do Sims 4 Sims have that "telepathy" ability and know if another Sim is already married or has a lover, and who that lover is? Or are they completely oblivious (if not having seen anything to the contrary)? Can Sims have a secret lover on the side which is unknown to anyone, or do Sims just "know" anyhow, and not care as long as they don't see anything actually happen? And then, how close in vicinity does the partner have to be to "catch" hanky panky going on? I ask, because in Sims 3, your Sim and lover could meet on a completely different lot, but upon returning home, your Sim would be confronted (slapped) by the cheated-on spouse --telepathy, you know.
Sims need to discover each other's info by conversing. This is the purpose of interactions like "Ask If Single." Other Sims' traits and relationships get revealed as you get to know them.
Also, some Sims just don't care. Evil Sims are hollowed out inside and will happily homewreck that significant other right on out.
P.S. Secret Lovers is a great idea!
I'd like to ask for a bit more elaboration on that, if I may. When you bring interactions into it, it gives the impression that you're focusing on played Sims in your answer. (An impression which may or may not be accurate -- thus the request for elaboration.)
While I know that I, the player, don't magically get to know all about other Sims' relationships, traits and such, the crux of the question (for me) is more about Sims that are controlled by the AI, and whether or not the AI has a level of 'omniscience' about these things. I've often felt in previous versions of The Sims that there was a divide there. While I have to work my way through interactions to learn more (which is as it should be), it seems like the AI gets a free pass -- essentially being omniscient (all-knowing) in most all cases.
An example: Start with married couple Alys and Ben. Alys goes out to another lot while Ben stays home. Alys meets Charlie and flirting ensues. Alys comes home (without Charlie) to rejoin Ben. Does Ben magically know that Alys flirted with Charlie, allowing for jealousy, and/or generally tagging Alys as a 'cheater?' (Assume that the flirting went far enough to be considered 'cheating' -- the issue is whether or not Ben or anyone else (who weren't there to see it) automatically knows -- thus omniscience.)
I assume that a certain amount of what you do gets spread by some kind of behind the scenes 'gossip' algorithm. Is this the case? If so, perhaps it's just that I feel (at least in previous games) that a bit too much was being made 'common knowledge' too quickly/easily to the AI Sims. So I'm interested to know if such a system exists in TS4 and how much it 'shares.' I know this could probably get really complicated really fast, but any overview you could share would be great.
Thanks for your replies to my questions, SGMax! Interesting, I didn't know there was such a drastic variance in the percentages in how a social is scored. I'm always trying to figure out why a Sim did something, especially when they did not react as I anticipated. Good stuff here - glad you are sharing with us!
To be clear, those numbers were completely made up but yes, success chance can vary widely depending on your Sims and the context.
One of the hardest things I have time getting used and wonder if I ever will get used to is the monochrome world map. While its not because its not an "open world" enviornment similar to The Sims 3; it feels as though my creations even though as detailed they might be feel out of place compared to the creations that are pre-existing simply because it is all in monochrome (maybe its the architecture of Oasis Springs and Willow Creek as well). It would be really cool to go back to the same format, only using all colors similar to The Original Sims since it will bring back the spark of "Looking down on a living neighborhood". The Sims 4 definitely is a great game though; no doubt about that. Thats my only gripe hahah. Good work Maxis!!
P.S: Maybe even add some car animations and some small sim animations walking the street to capture the life?
Eschie you do realise that the map does not represent the world geography don't you? It would be misleading and weird to have it look like the actual neighborhoods seen from above as you'd have disjointed roads and rivers and desert rocks suddenly stopping on a sharp edge and over the edge would be lush greenery etc. The reason the map doesn't look detailed is it's just a prettier way to pick your nhood than selecting from a list.
@IingeJones; I very much do sadly; since the non-playable houses that would appear would actually outnumber the playable houses and with all the terrain the houses would appear very small from the world map. But a colorful "Simple" detailed overview like we have to show the playable houses and neighborhoods would represent each world in a realistic manner than have them be "two shaded" so to speak. LIke when you hover around the neighborhood you select; if all the houses were colored like that and you could see the roads that are represented in lines; it would be nostalgic from the Sims 1 but also be modern enough for the Sims 4. Just a thought
Max, one more thing I'm curious about: the NPCs (e.g. maids, mailmen, firemen, social workers, policemen etc).
It has been noted that TS4 is lacking many of these characters. As far as the simulation and tech goes, are NPCs fundamentally that different from regular Sims? Is their AI just a regular Sim plus a few exceptions and/or additions, or is it much more complicated than that? How difficult is it to add new NPCs to the game? Can you add an NPC with just some modding/scripting, or do you have to write some totally new code?
Thanks again, I love reading your posts.
"We've been attributing the state of The Sims 4 to greed but I think it's time to give sheer incompetence another look."
-Honeywell
Hello, and my question is how are actions supposed to be prioritized? is it supposed to be needs over other 'non-need' actions or is multitasking above all of that? I have had it where my Sim needs to use the toilet and I select to have them read a book (intending for them to use the toilet first then go read) but they will get to the bathroom then stop go to the bookcase to go get the book then go back to the toilet to do their business while reading. It is mildly annoying when they REALLY need to use the toilet.<br />
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Also my Sims do not go to the closest sink to wash dishes, instead they will go to the bathroom instead of the kitchen or will go up stairs just to wash them even if there are no dirty dishes up there.<br />
<br />
Thank you
Unfortunately, it sounds like you are running into some bugs.
Quick summary of how multitasking / the queue works: The temporal order of actions in the queue is respected. If something is incompatible with your current interaction state, we do not let other interactions leap-frog it. If the next interaction is incompatible, the rest of the queue blocks behind it until the active interaction making it incompatible is no longer protected (interactions have conditions - like an amount of motive gain or a timer - after which they can be canceled by other interactions). Now that it can run, it will enter the active state and cancel the old, incompatible interaction.
The Multitasking system sometimes does let Sims take a "break" as long as the interaction they are running doesn't want to stick around and permanently require them to be absent from their other activities. This is what allows Sims to go grab a plate of food while watching TV and then go back to the sofa without interrupting the show. It should probably be disabled from doing that sort of thing while your Sims are on the can (i'll file a bug).
I will mention a really cool system that some of you may have noticed that can sometimes preempt your toilet then book then toilet issue. If your Sim already planned a path to run an interaction, such as eating food, and are heading to sit down on the chair we selected for them, and then you click "Sit" on a different chair or tell them to "Go Here" somewhere, they will cancel their current plan to go to the original chair and include the next interaction in their solution for the interaction they were already running. This manifests in Sims stopping their route and then smoothly resuming to route to the new chair you chose for them without sitting down and standing back up. Neat, right?
The washing dishes issue is one we tried to kill several times, but its hard to figure out player intent sometimes. They generally should go to the nearest sink, but I know our scoring system prefers embedded counter sinks over standalone sinks for washing dishes because we assumed most people would use the standing sinks in bathrooms and the counter sinks in kitchens. If you go against that expectation, then the scoring will work against you, unfortunately. Hopefully we come up with a more elegant solution for this in the future, but in the meantime I will file a bug for you.
Thanks for the feedback!
Hi Max,
Maybe we could have something like the doors where we can set the sink as the kitchen sink? Then could you change the simulation to wash the dishes in the kitchen sink?
> @SimGuruMax said: > Flight0fFancy wrote: » > > This is off the subject but I noticed your reference to, what I'm guessing is Destiny. What I would like to know is do you and any of the other developers ever play The Sims 4 on your own time for your own enjoyment? I'm guessing not but I'm just curious if you or any of the other devs were or still are fans before you ever worked on the game. If that's too intrusive a question I apologize. > > > > > We make games, we love games - the two really go hand-in-hand. I wouldn't hazard a guess at the percentage of people on the dev team that play TS4 on their own time but there are a fair number of people that do, though probably not as many as would normally for the following reason: > > It is really hard to play a game that you have worked on. Keep in mind, I "played" TS4 for many hours a day for several years. You guys have a lot of catching up to do if you want to pass the playtime of most members of the dev team. "Played" is not really the correct term for what we were doing, though, since mainly it was forcing Sims to eat infinite slices of apple pie over and over again. > > Through this process of trying the same silly thing a million times to perfect it, you get too close to the features and the bugs and everything about the game gets colored through a lens of knowing way too much about how it works and saturating yourself with playtime. And some of us STILL have stamina and are playing the game now that its launched. > > One thing I will say that nobody will dispute - we all love The Sims! Even when I can't stand to look at them anymore, I love their guts out.
Thanks for answering my question. What you said is very understandable.
I was wondering why do Sims almost always choose nap when their dead tried or when I click on the needs bar instead of sleep. I am always canceling the nap action and choosing sleep. I wish it was the other way around, it gets old after while canceling the nap interaction.
Also I have a jump bug whenever Sims are sitting down eating and chatting, and I select invite in. If I don't cancel the invite in action after the neighbor steps inside, all Sims in chat jump out of their chairs.
I know you can't answer any questions about future developments in the sims 4. But I would love to be a fly on the wall in a discussion about the theoretical/hypothetical far flung future of animation as it relates to simulation games like the sims. Of course it would have to be put into laymans terms for me. For instance, I really enjoy hearing TED Talks about the future in robotics/ nano tech and things along those lines. Even Ray Kurzweil has some interesting ideas. I was thinking while trying to create some sims in ts4 that it would be so cool if in the future we could have something IRL as part of our game hardware, like a mannequin head looking object except probably only 1/3 that size, with a thick layer of some moldable plastic or clay-like substance that we could switch from our mouse, or in my case, trackball, to while creating the face of our sims so we could really get as creative as we want with the facial features. Maybe the moldable-plastic-clay stuff would be full of nanobots that would snap the substance back into place in a fairly short period of time after you save the feature you were working on. I know it sounds ridiculous but appearantly they are already using nano bots in at least one surgery I've heard of. What do you think? Do you guys ever enjoy speculating on things like that?
Hi SimGuruMax,nice to meet you. May I asked how many people worked on the Animations for this game? How many people were riggers? And do they use any auto tools for rigging or rig and weigh everything by hand? Also I would love to know more about the softwares used so if there's anything at all you can share in that regard I'd really appreciate it (hoping it was just the plant software you couldn't talk about).
Oh one more thing - fabulous job on the outdoor lighting. Everything looks so vibrant you just want to jump in the game and live there!
Hey, I can jump in here. Our animation team varied in size over time, so it's hard to give a number As Max said, you can look in the credits to see the size of the team at ship, which is pretty representative of what it was during most of production.
We have one sim rig that can be resized for the different sim sizes. That rig was built at the beginning of the project, by hand, by one person. The rigs for objects that can animate, such as the Cupcake Machine and the Observatory, are usually built by the modeller who is making the object, but for complex rigs such as the cowplant rig or the bed we have technical artists and technical animators who take care of the rigging. We do not have a full time rigger who does nothing else, as there really isn't enough work to keep one busy.
We do not use autorigging tools, and all of the weighting for objects is done by hand. There are some in-house weighting tools we use for the CAS meshes.
We use Autodesk Maya(TM) for animation, modified by a very extensive set of custom tools which were written in house by the technical artists. The aim of most of those tools is to automate repetitive and predictable tasks, to speed up production and allow the artists to concentrate on the creative part of their job as much as possible.
Hello SimGuruMax.<br />
I know this has been talked about before, the time it takes to eat and drink. And while I understand it taking longer if multitasking, I do beliebe it takes too long even if not doing anything else, especially drinking. Again, I even understand drinking an alcoholic beverage to take some time, but it takes like 1 hour for a sim to drink a glass of milk!!! It's just not reallistic at all! btw, loving the game, minus the crashes I've had... hope you guys fix that too, soon.<br />
I have a suggestion to make, but maybe thats more for the other gurus, but still... I think that when you open the fridge, the cooked meals should be at the top, and then fruits, vegetables, etc... Or at least there should be a way to sort or filter.<br />
Thanks for making a very fun game and here's hoping it does get better and better with time.
We made it take longer for Sims to eat and drink intentionally in order to encourage more situations where the Sims would be multitasking realistically. A great example is the bar - it looks a lot better if Sims get a drink and then sit down and drink it for a while while chatting. This prolongs the amount of time that the Sim is in this perfect "being at the bar" context without having to break up the experience by, say, getting another drink.
We abstract time a lot in the Sims. Translation from real-time to game-time is hard - there are lots of boring parts IRL and you probably don't want to translate those parts but you want the interesting things to take longer than they normally would because what gamer wouldn't want to prolong a great activity? For example, having the Sim arrive at the bar, grab a drink, sit down and chat for an hour and then using the restroom is an abstraction for the Sim getting a drink, chatting, using the restroom, chatting, getting a drink, chatting, using the restroom, then chatting again, which would feel frustrating and weird in the game world.
Sometimes this leads to hour-long showers and three-hour long meals, but a Sim's day is naturally much shorter than a real day and we need to reduce the number of activities that happen to a representative set. Sometimes fun trumps realism and its hard to take The Sims 4 clock too seriously - its really just a rough marker of the passage of time.
Comments
I understand that this comes down to preference. The team decided having the animation content necessary for multitasking and authoring more interesting social animations was more important than Teens being shorter. I hope the additional behavior for both teens and adults, both in the base game and in the future, is some comfort to you even if you disagree with our choice.
Sims need to discover each other's info by conversing. This is the purpose of interactions like "Ask If Single." Other Sims' traits and relationships get revealed as you get to know them.
Also, some Sims just don't care. Evil Sims are hollowed out inside and will happily homewreck that significant other right on out.
P.S. Secret Lovers is a great idea!
I know this has been talked about before, the time it takes to eat and drink. And while I understand it taking longer if multitasking, I do beliebe it takes too long even if not doing anything else, especially drinking. Again, I even understand drinking an alcoholic beverage to take some time, but it takes like 1 hour for a sim to drink a glass of milk!!! It's just not reallistic at all! btw, loving the game, minus the crashes I've had... hope you guys fix that too, soon.
I have a suggestion to make, but maybe thats more for the other gurus, but still... I think that when you open the fridge, the cooked meals should be at the top, and then fruits, vegetables, etc... Or at least there should be a way to sort or filter.
Thanks for making a very fun game and here's hoping it does get better and better with time.
@Desirai We use Maya for creating our 3d assets. We sometimes use Zbrush for high polygon sculpting which we then bake down into normal maps for additional detail. And thank you!
@SimGuruMeatball
@zoeman93 That looks like compression artifacts. Sadly that is fairly common when working with smooth gradients like that in textures, only way to to really avoid it is using uncompressed textures.
@SimGuruMeatball
> BigWazaa wrote: »
>
> Hi SimGuruMaxSimGuruMax, I have four questions:
>
> 1. Why you put so many tutorials, with not even the possibility to dissable it? days after I start playing the game some of them are still showing, telling me how to do things I already learned to do.
>
> 2. My sims doing "wo oh!" while some other sim was playing to the computer in the same room, completely happy. What are the concepts that make a Sim to notice other Sims interactions? To be in the same room, as sims 1, 2, 3, or be near them, as I feel it is happening?
>
> 3. Why cannot be check the info of Sims we cannot interact with? for example, or little babies (to check their needs, or how many days are left until they grown up, or people in other lots or working.
>
> 4. If I check the windows of a house in the same neighbor I see the furniture inside it. So, why I need a load screen to go to that home?
>
>
>
>
> 1) You can disable tutorials through an arcane method that involves modifying your command-line settings in Origin. I really wish we had shipped an option in the options menu to disable. Do a search on these forums or the internet to find the exact method of doing this.
>
> 2) I described the privacy system already in this thread. While doing WooHoo, Sims drop a privacy footprint that fills their line-of-sight. There is a limit to this distance, so if the room is large enough, they may not consider it to be a privacy violation. That said, if this is happening in a small room, then that would be an issue.
>
> 3) These are really design/production questions. I would bring this up with SimGuruGrant or SimGuruSemedi.
>
> 4) As IngeJones referenced, the amount of metadata required to efficiently simulate Sims in a house goes way deeper than the geometry of the objects. Unfortunately, there are physical realities of modern computers and our player base generally doesn't have sixteen-core, 8GB behemoth machines. We made some really tough choices in order to get the level of depth in the simulation that we wanted, as you all know. We also really want our neighborhoods to feel alive with Sims, and the number of Sims we can support both from a simulation and rendering/animation standpoint is limited. If we have to simulate all your neighbor's houses, regardless of all the objects, that's maybe 20+ Sims we may need to be simulating inside houses you can't see 90% of the time, which would mean your common areas like the park would be dead.
Thanks for your answers, but your answers gave me extra doubts.
1. Unfortunatelly for me I wanted to review the game in my blog so I did not do it. It is good to see you think as me. Lucky me I finished it today :)
2. It was near enough, a Sim sitting in the bed was able to talk to with a Sim sitting in the computer.
3. Ok! I will wait.
4. I don't get this point. There are several points that contradicts these. The first one is that in Sims 3 it was done, with no lag (and it was a big small city). I know the code has changed, but it is only 5 houses. And I already saw similar solutions in Sims 2 University extension, the Sims 2 and 3 "city life" kind extensions, with no problems.
At the same time the load screen shows with or with not sims, on the neighbourgh house, when you visit them.
So, if you already did the effort to have the graphics loaded, why didn't you use some of the solutions you already found, in past games, to solve similar issues?
I'd like to suggest adding an interaction to "ask age" that would give some kind of meaningful response, like, "I'm 3 days older than you are" or "I'm 23 days older than you are" etc. I have no problem with May-December romances, but if a young adult marries and the person they marry ages to an elder the very next day, it cuts down on time spent together. If the elder is female, it also eliminates having a family other than by adoption.
I'm 12 years older than the mister, and kids have not been an option for me for almost 20 years. However, he knew that when he married me, so there were no surprises and no disappointments. I'd like to have the same for my Sims. It takes time to properly woo a Sim; it can be very disappointing (for me, at least) if the match turns out to be one that will be short-lived with no possibility of passing on genetics.
Mmmm... pie. Maybe you can FedEx it
@SimGuruMeatball
I'd like to ask for a bit more elaboration on that, if I may. When you bring interactions into it, it gives the impression that you're focusing on played Sims in your answer. (An impression which may or may not be accurate -- thus the request for elaboration.)
While I know that I, the player, don't magically get to know all about other Sims' relationships, traits and such, the crux of the question (for me) is more about Sims that are controlled by the AI, and whether or not the AI has a level of 'omniscience' about these things. I've often felt in previous versions of The Sims that there was a divide there. While I have to work my way through interactions to learn more (which is as it should be), it seems like the AI gets a free pass -- essentially being omniscient (all-knowing) in most all cases.
An example: Start with married couple Alys and Ben. Alys goes out to another lot while Ben stays home. Alys meets Charlie and flirting ensues. Alys comes home (without Charlie) to rejoin Ben. Does Ben magically know that Alys flirted with Charlie, allowing for jealousy, and/or generally tagging Alys as a 'cheater?' (Assume that the flirting went far enough to be considered 'cheating' -- the issue is whether or not Ben or anyone else (who weren't there to see it) automatically knows -- thus omniscience.)
I assume that a certain amount of what you do gets spread by some kind of behind the scenes 'gossip' algorithm. Is this the case? If so, perhaps it's just that I feel (at least in previous games) that a bit too much was being made 'common knowledge' too quickly/easily to the AI Sims. So I'm interested to know if such a system exists in TS4 and how much it 'shares.' I know this could probably get really complicated really fast, but any overview you could share would be great.
Thanks much!
To be clear, those numbers were completely made up but yes, success chance can vary widely depending on your Sims and the context.
P.S: Maybe even add some car animations and some small sim animations walking the street to capture the life?
It has been noted that TS4 is lacking many of these characters. As far as the simulation and tech goes, are NPCs fundamentally that different from regular Sims? Is their AI just a regular Sim plus a few exceptions and/or additions, or is it much more complicated than that? How difficult is it to add new NPCs to the game? Can you add an NPC with just some modding/scripting, or do you have to write some totally new code?
Thanks again, I love reading your posts.
"We've been attributing the state of The Sims 4 to greed but I think it's time to give sheer incompetence another look."
-Honeywell
Hi Max,
Maybe we could have something like the doors where we can set the sink as the kitchen sink? Then could you change the simulation to wash the dishes in the kitchen sink?
> Flight0fFancy wrote: »
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> This is off the subject but I noticed your reference to, what I'm guessing is Destiny. What I would like to know is do you and any of the other developers ever play The Sims 4 on your own time for your own enjoyment? I'm guessing not but I'm just curious if you or any of the other devs were or still are fans before you ever worked on the game. If that's too intrusive a question I apologize.
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> We make games, we love games - the two really go hand-in-hand. I wouldn't hazard a guess at the percentage of people on the dev team that play TS4 on their own time but there are a fair number of people that do, though probably not as many as would normally for the following reason:
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> It is really hard to play a game that you have worked on. Keep in mind, I "played" TS4 for many hours a day for several years. You guys have a lot of catching up to do if you want to pass the playtime of most members of the dev team. "Played" is not really the correct term for what we were doing, though, since mainly it was forcing Sims to eat infinite slices of apple pie over and over again.
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> Through this process of trying the same silly thing a million times to perfect it, you get too close to the features and the bugs and everything about the game gets colored through a lens of knowing way too much about how it works and saturating yourself with playtime. And some of us STILL have stamina and are playing the game now that its launched.
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> One thing I will say that nobody will dispute - we all love The Sims! Even when I can't stand to look at them anymore, I love their guts out.
Thanks for answering my question. What you said is very understandable.
Also I have a jump bug whenever Sims are sitting down eating and chatting, and I select invite in. If I don't cancel the invite in action after the neighbor steps inside, all Sims in chat jump out of their chairs.
Hey, I can jump in here. Our animation team varied in size over time, so it's hard to give a number
We have one sim rig that can be resized for the different sim sizes. That rig was built at the beginning of the project, by hand, by one person. The rigs for objects that can animate, such as the Cupcake Machine and the Observatory, are usually built by the modeller who is making the object, but for complex rigs such as the cowplant rig or the bed we have technical artists and technical animators who take care of the rigging. We do not have a full time rigger who does nothing else, as there really isn't enough work to keep one busy.
We do not use autorigging tools, and all of the weighting for objects is done by hand. There are some in-house weighting tools we use for the CAS meshes.
We use Autodesk Maya(TM) for animation, modified by a very extensive set of custom tools which were written in house by the technical artists. The aim of most of those tools is to automate repetitive and predictable tasks, to speed up production and allow the artists to concentrate on the creative part of their job as much as possible.
We made it take longer for Sims to eat and drink intentionally in order to encourage more situations where the Sims would be multitasking realistically. A great example is the bar - it looks a lot better if Sims get a drink and then sit down and drink it for a while while chatting. This prolongs the amount of time that the Sim is in this perfect "being at the bar" context without having to break up the experience by, say, getting another drink.
We abstract time a lot in the Sims. Translation from real-time to game-time is hard - there are lots of boring parts IRL and you probably don't want to translate those parts but you want the interesting things to take longer than they normally would because what gamer wouldn't want to prolong a great activity? For example, having the Sim arrive at the bar, grab a drink, sit down and chat for an hour and then using the restroom is an abstraction for the Sim getting a drink, chatting, using the restroom, chatting, getting a drink, chatting, using the restroom, then chatting again, which would feel frustrating and weird in the game world.
Sometimes this leads to hour-long showers and three-hour long meals, but a Sim's day is naturally much shorter than a real day and we need to reduce the number of activities that happen to a representative set. Sometimes fun trumps realism and its hard to take The Sims 4 clock too seriously - its really just a rough marker of the passage of time.