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.<br />
<br />
At the same time the load screen shows with or with not sims, on the neighbourgh house, when you visit them.<br />
<br />
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 think the assumption you are making here is that the same solutions that have worked in the past games will work on this one. We rebuilt the simulation from scratch to solve many fundamental issues that we had with TS3 - virtually everyone had horrible lag and the open world felt like a ghost town, for examples. We redesigned our interaction system and our posture system to create a data-driven engine where Sims could multitask many interactions at the same time and we could unify a lot of code that we used to have to hand-author to make new interactions.
We really tried to focus on the Sims themselves and bring them to life. We were willing to make sacrifices to realize this dream, one of which was constraining the space that they could occupy. A single lot has thousands of nodes in our Posture Graph, which is the data structure that holds all connections between objects on the lot, and we are often processing several interactions per second for each Sim in the world. This is mainly due to Autonomy, which has to basically solve for where the Sim would perform each interaction it considers before knowing if it could be added to the Sim's active interaction state successfully.
This is another case of a judgment call that we made. Neither choice is strictly better than the other, and there are pros and cons to each. I think the ultimate deciding factor was that we had already done the open world with the previous game and we wanted to try something new and different for TS4. We believe strongly in innovation and we tried to push the envelope with single-lot simulation as we never have before.
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.
Great question!
We build service NPCs using our core simulation element - interactions. A service NPC is a Sim who has an extra layer of tests over their normal autonomy that constrains what interactions they can choose dramatically and often affects the scores for running those interactions so that these Sims will do their job even if their needs aren't met (up to a point).
It is fairly easy to add new NPCs from a strictly scripting standpoint, depending on how complex it needs to be (Maid is easy, Death is very hard). It is slightly harder to add them when you consider the content ramifications. Often, service NPCs come with new content - maybe a new animation for the Gardner, a rake prop, and a new gardner outfit. These take time from our key contributors of content. This means that we are, as usual, left in a position where we have to choose between making a weak service NPC that doesn't have any new assets or making a cool service NPC supported by a special content at the cost of some other feature that we also care about.
So, I would say your instinct is right - NPCs are really just normal Sims like your Sims who have a job and they are doing it for you. I think this is pretty cool because it humanizes these Sims for me - notice they have traits and emotions of their own. Also, we almost always make new content we create for custom service NPCs available to the player, which keeps the line fuzzy.
Next up for service NPCs - Everlasting Apple Pie Salesperson!
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?
This is an interesting idea - I don't think this occurred to us at any point. What happens if you have two kitchens? I guess we could let you toggle sinks as "kitchen sinks" vs. "bathroom sinks." This sounds like a heavy-weight solution to this problem to me, however.
Here is a fun fact - we don't really have the notion of Rooms anymore on TS4. We had this on TS3 and we felt that it ultimately added a lot of complexity without giving much in return because we would often mischaracterize larger rooms or rooms with weird mixtures of objects. In our quest to reduce unnecessary complexity, we decided to avoid implementing Rooms until we had a compelling reason to do so. One never really came up, so we never did.
I think we will end up implementing Rooms on TS4 eventually (as usual, no promises). We can use some marquee objects like the Fridge, Stove, and Toilet to tag certain spaces with room identity. It would not be too hard to discourage Sims from using sinks that are in a "bathroom," meaning ones within line-of-sight of a toilet. We could also use this tech for many other uses, such as to discourage Sims from socializing in bathrooms. We would avoid creating some kind of room assignment UI because it would be awkward and we really have the data we need to figure this out in almost all cases, even if the answer is "multi-purpose room."
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. <br />
<br />
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.
Nap vs. sleep is based on time-of-day, relative to the Sim's working hours. If it is "night" for your Sim, they will autonomously sleep. If it is "day" for your Sim, they will autonomously nap. You can tell them to do either at all times.
That second one sounds like a bug. I will add this to our tracker, and thanks for the nice detail about how it occurs!
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.
Thanks, Marion!
Marion and I worked closely together on the multitasking system and our general animation system to make it what you see today. She knows way more than me about the nitty-gritty details behind the animations, creating them, and how they work together, and I am sure she would be happy to answer some questions if you have any!
Can you add an NPC with just some modding/scripting, or do you have to write some totally new code?
Missed this part and I really want to answer it. We built a data-driven interaction system for TS4. In general, the gameplay engineers don't script content anymore - we script new features and then integrate them into our data driven architecture, making them available to our tuning system. New buffs and traits can be added entirely through tuning, for example. Thats pretty cool, but obvious. We took it further. New objects and interactions can be added entirely through tuning (assuming the model and animation content is available). New NPCs can be added if they are simple like the Maid or Bartender. New situations can be added if they conform to one of our situation templates, which have to be scripted but then can be reused across multiple very different situations (situations control everything from parties and weddings to how Sims in your neighborhood behave and even venues).
This has contributed substantially to our ability to add new content to the game quickly and also is one of the chief reasons, I believe, why TS4 is so stable - all interactions are going through a shared, generic pipeline and so fixing any bug fixes it in all interactions. This is not with out its costs, though, as it does make it much harder to make the first of something because you have to design it within the constraints of the system. Ad-hoc implementations are not only discouraged, they are rendered virtually impossible in our architecture. This further feeds into why we have a system-based approach to fleshing out the game.
Bug or feature? I notice in the My Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/Custom Music there is a folder called Blues. I tried adding a couple mp3's to it then playing the game and trying to switch to that station, but that station didn't come up in the menu. So I exited the game, removed the Mp3's I'd added, restarted my game and the station still doesn't come up in the menu. Does my Sim have to be in a Sad mood to listen to Blues? Or is there a reason that station doesn't come up when my Sim is Fine, Happy, Confident or Energized?
I have been playing The Sims since 2001, when Livin Large came out. My avatar deliberately looks like Chris Roomies from TS1.
I think the stations you can listen to depend of the stereo you have. I'm not sure though, as I didn't try to buy a better one yet, and have the basics stations choice, Alternative, Pop and Classical.
Households are randomly disappearing from the world in my game. I want to know if it is a bug or it is because of the game engine.
More details would help.
I play with 2 households in the game and one of them randomly disappeared while I was playing with another. I do notice that townies are replaced time to time but this time, it happened to a household I played. I hope it makes sense.
Households are randomly disappearing from the world in my game. I want to know if it is a bug or it is because of the game engine.
More details would help.
I play with 2 households in the game and one of them randomly disappeared while I was playing with another. I do notice that townies are replaced time to time but this time, it happened to a household I played. I hope it makes sense.
Well first of all, I am sorry you lost your Sims. My initial reaction is that they aged and died while you were playing with the other family, but that would have required you to play for a long time before trying to switch back.
I honestly don't know whether player households are protected in some way from being replaced - I would very much assume that they are. I also haven't heard an uproar about this on the forums, which I would have expected if there was a consistent bug like this due to our stable of rotational gameplay players.
I am going to take a stab and label this one as a bug.
I think we will end up implementing Rooms on TS4 eventually (as usual, no promises). We can use some marquee objects like the Fridge, Stove, and Toilet to tag certain spaces with room identity. It would not be too hard to discourage Sims from using sinks that are in a "bathroom," meaning ones within line-of-sight of a toilet. We could also use this tech for many other uses, such as to discourage Sims from socializing in bathrooms. We would avoid creating some kind of room assignment UI because it would be awkward and we really have the data we need to figure this out in almost all cases, even if the answer is "multi-purpose room."
My solution to this would be similar, but to give each sink two boolean attributes "kitchen" and "bathroom", which may both be set if appropriate. The kitchen flag would be set (automatically) if there is either a fridge or a cooking appliance in the room. The bathroom attribute would be set if there was any of tub, shower, or toilet in room. If the kitchen flag is set, sim can wash dishes. If bathroom flag, sim may wash hands, clean teeth etc. If during clearing plates interaction, the correct sink type is not found on the lot, the sim will look first for unflagged sink, then for bathroom sink. Flagging would occur each time on exit from build/buy mode. I did something similar with my TS3 prison mod, to detect the function of prison doors.
But if you do it the way you suggested please include shower and tub as marquee objects not just toilet, as I often separate toilets from other wash objects, specially on community lots or lots pretending to be institutions such as schools or prisons.
> @SimGuruMax said: > sholtx wrote: » > > SimGuruMax wrote: » > > sholtx wrote: » > > Households are randomly disappearing from the world in my game. I want to know if it is a bug or it is because of the game engine. > > > > > More details would help. > > > > > I play with 2 households in the game and one of them randomly disappeared while I was playing with another. I do notice that townies are replaced time to time but this time, it happened to a household I played. I hope it makes sense. > > > > > Well first of all, I am sorry you lost your Sims. My initial reaction is that they aged and died while you were playing with the other family, but that would have required you to play for a long time before trying to switch back. > > I honestly don't know whether player households are protected in some way from being replaced - I would very much assume that they are. I also haven't heard an uproar about this on the forums, which I would have expected if there was a consistent bug like this due to our stable of rotational gameplay players. > > I am going to take a stab and label this one as a bug. I play rotationally and I found out through trial and error that if you just hit SAVE GAME it tends to overwrite files without warning. But if you use SAVE AS you can pick the save slot in which to save so that you don't accidentally overwrite a saved household.
I have been playing The Sims since 2001, when Livin Large came out. My avatar deliberately looks like Chris Roomies from TS1.
Households are randomly disappearing from the world in my game. I want to know if it is a bug or it is because of the game engine.
More details would help.
I play with 2 households in the game and one of them randomly disappeared while I was playing with another. I do notice that townies are replaced time to time but this time, it happened to a household I played. I hope it makes sense.
Well first of all, I am sorry you lost your Sims. My initial reaction is that they aged and died while you were playing with the other family, but that would have required you to play for a long time before trying to switch back.
I honestly don't know whether player households are protected in some way from being replaced - I would very much assume that they are. I also haven't heard an uproar about this on the forums, which I would have expected if there was a consistent bug like this due to our stable of rotational gameplay players.
I am going to take a stab and label this one as a bug.
Thank you. It's not possible that they aged and died because I turn off the aging system the whole time.
I think the stations you can listen to depend of the stereo you have. I'm not sure though, as I didn't try to buy a better one yet, and have the basics stations choice, Alternative, Pop and Classical.
I think @Tarô is right its something about what stereo you have although I don't know if you can upgrade it and if that makes a difference.
People, please stay on topic. It's a very valuable thread for discussing the simulation details and there is already a feedback thread for general complaints.
Ah brilliant, the posts have been moved now, thanks
> @IngeJones said: > SimsILikeSims wrote: » > > But if you use SAVE AS you can pick the save slot in which to save so that you don't accidentally overwrite a saved household. > > > > > Just a moment.... are you saying each lot is saved seperately? How can that make sense in the context of a shared clock? > > itzVeronicax3, wrong thread :) What do you mean by a shared clock? All I know is that when making three separate households I ended up having to use three different save slots so that households wouldn't disappear on me or lose skills. I also know if I go back to the main menu without saving and go to a different household, the household I had just created disappears. The first save slot is an autosave slot. So the second slot is used by default when you hit save game. For two separate households this can work ok with just save game. But for three households you need to use SAVE AS so that your third household won't overwrite the second household when switching to your new sim that you made for your third household, and your second household won't overwrite your third household when switching back to the second household. Not sure why it works this way, but that's how it worked for me.
I have been playing The Sims since 2001, when Livin Large came out. My avatar deliberately looks like Chris Roomies from TS1.
> @IngeJones said:<br />
> SimsILikeSims wrote: »<br />
> <br />
> But if you use SAVE AS you can pick the save slot in which to save so that you don't accidentally overwrite a saved household.<br />
> <br />
> <br />
> <br />
> <br />
> Just a moment.... are you saying each lot is saved seperately? How can that make sense in the context of a shared clock?<br />
> <br />
> itzVeronicax3, wrong thread <br />
What do you mean by a shared clock? All I know is that when making three separate households I ended up having to use three different save slots so that households wouldn't disappear on me or lose skills. I also know if I go back to the main menu without saving and go to a different household, the household I had just created disappears. The first save slot is an autosave slot. So the second slot is used by default when you hit save game. For two separate households this can work ok with just save game. But for three households you need to use SAVE AS so that your third household won't overwrite the second household when switching to your new sim that you made for your third household, and your second household won't overwrite your third household when switching back to the second household. Not sure why it works this way, but that's how it worked for me.
This is all interesting stuff, you guys. I can try to pass a note along about this.
Households are randomly disappearing from the world in my game. I want to know if it is a bug or it is because of the game engine.
More details would help.
I play with 2 households in the game and one of them randomly disappeared while I was playing with another. I do notice that townies are replaced time to time but this time, it happened to a household I played. I hope it makes sense.
Well first of all, I am sorry you lost your Sims. My initial reaction is that they aged and died while you were playing with the other family, but that would have required you to play for a long time before trying to switch back.
I honestly don't know whether player households are protected in some way from being replaced - I would very much assume that they are. I also haven't heard an uproar about this on the forums, which I would have expected if there was a consistent bug like this due to our stable of rotational gameplay players.
I am going to take a stab and label this one as a bug.
There's been a mild uproar. Lots of documented cases here.
Sorry, @IngeJones, I know it's OT but I didn't want @SimGuruMax or anyone else to have the impression that this was an isolated problem. (I have not experienced it myself, knock wood).
Sorry, @IngeJones, I know it's OT but I didn't want @SimGuruMax or anyone else to have the impression that this was an isolated problem. (I have not experienced it myself, knock wood).
Nono, yours isn't OT, it's to do with the simulation. My comment was about a post which has subsequently been moved to a more suitable place
Also, will it be possible for lot sizes to be bigger or are they 50x50 at the maximum because of engine limitations?
I don't believe there is a hard limitation on the 50x50 maximum size, but of course I cannot promise anything. We could certainly afford to simulate many houses that could be built on a 100x100 lot, but what about the worst-case scenario? In development, we have to do crazy things like build a house that fills the entire lot with three stories of rooms packed wall-to-wall with chairs at tables. Then we tell a Sim to eat food and it takes them 5 real-time-minutes to decide which chair to sit in. To some degree, from a purely simulation standpoint (there are other limitations like rendering), we have to be able to handle these worst-case-scenarios on our lots or we can't claim to actually support that lot size.
I´m a forever lasting simmer, I love this series and I am trying to get into the new iteration to the same level of the previous ones
I´m sorry but you have not convinced me with your answer this time... I have in TS2 a story line around Pride&Prejudice novel, I have made Pemberly, Rossing Park and Netherfield, four stories buildings in the maximun size (I have also some huge buildings in TS3, as Greenbrier Sports&Resort recreation p.e. in a 64x64 lot working as a resort IP way) perfectly funcioning, Pemberly has four dinning rooms two parlors and two drawing rooms and a library, and twenty bedrooms and many (and I mean many) bathrooms and a huge full of flowers garden, my six sims living there know always where to eat, sleep or watch TV, the butler the gardener and the maid make their work cleanning and fixing everything all around on their own without any problem, and every time I threw a party there, all the outcomer sims enjoy the ammenities on their own and go back home at the right time without issues, will this not be possible this time? are the smarter TS4 sims not able to manage a really big scenary? Is this what you are saying or have I misunderstood you? I´m not trying to be mean, I want to know it before I take the huge task of creating this kind of buildings for TS4 if my sims will not be able to live there, in TS1 I had a great house and the sims were always lost and it was unplayable so I know it can be the same this time though I cross my fingers it is not so.
Edited to say Thankyou very much for answering so many of our questions!
I can play at last TS2 TS3 and TS4 So great that toddlers are here!!!
> 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. > > > > > 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.
Max, I get it and I understand your reasoning, but I think you should make an exception, for milk and orange juice from the fridge, since they are not made by a mixologist and certainly not drank at the bar.
(btw, how can you show the quotes of other post like you do?)
Comments
I think the assumption you are making here is that the same solutions that have worked in the past games will work on this one. We rebuilt the simulation from scratch to solve many fundamental issues that we had with TS3 - virtually everyone had horrible lag and the open world felt like a ghost town, for examples. We redesigned our interaction system and our posture system to create a data-driven engine where Sims could multitask many interactions at the same time and we could unify a lot of code that we used to have to hand-author to make new interactions.
We really tried to focus on the Sims themselves and bring them to life. We were willing to make sacrifices to realize this dream, one of which was constraining the space that they could occupy. A single lot has thousands of nodes in our Posture Graph, which is the data structure that holds all connections between objects on the lot, and we are often processing several interactions per second for each Sim in the world. This is mainly due to Autonomy, which has to basically solve for where the Sim would perform each interaction it considers before knowing if it could be added to the Sim's active interaction state successfully.
This is another case of a judgment call that we made. Neither choice is strictly better than the other, and there are pros and cons to each. I think the ultimate deciding factor was that we had already done the open world with the previous game and we wanted to try something new and different for TS4. We believe strongly in innovation and we tried to push the envelope with single-lot simulation as we never have before.
Great question!
We build service NPCs using our core simulation element - interactions. A service NPC is a Sim who has an extra layer of tests over their normal autonomy that constrains what interactions they can choose dramatically and often affects the scores for running those interactions so that these Sims will do their job even if their needs aren't met (up to a point).
It is fairly easy to add new NPCs from a strictly scripting standpoint, depending on how complex it needs to be (Maid is easy, Death is very hard). It is slightly harder to add them when you consider the content ramifications. Often, service NPCs come with new content - maybe a new animation for the Gardner, a rake prop, and a new gardner outfit. These take time from our key contributors of content. This means that we are, as usual, left in a position where we have to choose between making a weak service NPC that doesn't have any new assets or making a cool service NPC supported by a special content at the cost of some other feature that we also care about.
So, I would say your instinct is right - NPCs are really just normal Sims like your Sims who have a job and they are doing it for you. I think this is pretty cool because it humanizes these Sims for me - notice they have traits and emotions of their own. Also, we almost always make new content we create for custom service NPCs available to the player, which keeps the line fuzzy.
Next up for service NPCs - Everlasting Apple Pie Salesperson!
This is an interesting idea - I don't think this occurred to us at any point. What happens if you have two kitchens? I guess we could let you toggle sinks as "kitchen sinks" vs. "bathroom sinks." This sounds like a heavy-weight solution to this problem to me, however.
Here is a fun fact - we don't really have the notion of Rooms anymore on TS4. We had this on TS3 and we felt that it ultimately added a lot of complexity without giving much in return because we would often mischaracterize larger rooms or rooms with weird mixtures of objects. In our quest to reduce unnecessary complexity, we decided to avoid implementing Rooms until we had a compelling reason to do so. One never really came up, so we never did.
I think we will end up implementing Rooms on TS4 eventually (as usual, no promises). We can use some marquee objects like the Fridge, Stove, and Toilet to tag certain spaces with room identity. It would not be too hard to discourage Sims from using sinks that are in a "bathroom," meaning ones within line-of-sight of a toilet. We could also use this tech for many other uses, such as to discourage Sims from socializing in bathrooms. We would avoid creating some kind of room assignment UI because it would be awkward and we really have the data we need to figure this out in almost all cases, even if the answer is "multi-purpose room."
Nap vs. sleep is based on time-of-day, relative to the Sim's working hours. If it is "night" for your Sim, they will autonomously sleep. If it is "day" for your Sim, they will autonomously nap. You can tell them to do either at all times.
That second one sounds like a bug. I will add this to our tracker, and thanks for the nice detail about how it occurs!
Thanks, Marion!
Marion and I worked closely together on the multitasking system and our general animation system to make it what you see today. She knows way more than me about the nitty-gritty details behind the animations, creating them, and how they work together, and I am sure she would be happy to answer some questions if you have any!
Missed this part and I really want to answer it. We built a data-driven interaction system for TS4. In general, the gameplay engineers don't script content anymore - we script new features and then integrate them into our data driven architecture, making them available to our tuning system. New buffs and traits can be added entirely through tuning, for example. Thats pretty cool, but obvious. We took it further. New objects and interactions can be added entirely through tuning (assuming the model and animation content is available). New NPCs can be added if they are simple like the Maid or Bartender. New situations can be added if they conform to one of our situation templates, which have to be scripted but then can be reused across multiple very different situations (situations control everything from parties and weddings to how Sims in your neighborhood behave and even venues).
This has contributed substantially to our ability to add new content to the game quickly and also is one of the chief reasons, I believe, why TS4 is so stable - all interactions are going through a shared, generic pipeline and so fixing any bug fixes it in all interactions. This is not with out its costs, though, as it does make it much harder to make the first of something because you have to design it within the constraints of the system. Ad-hoc implementations are not only discouraged, they are rendered virtually impossible in our architecture. This further feeds into why we have a system-based approach to fleshing out the game.
More details would help.
I play with 2 households in the game and one of them randomly disappeared while I was playing with another. I do notice that townies are replaced time to time but this time, it happened to a household I played. I hope it makes sense.
Well first of all, I am sorry you lost your Sims. My initial reaction is that they aged and died while you were playing with the other family, but that would have required you to play for a long time before trying to switch back.
I honestly don't know whether player households are protected in some way from being replaced - I would very much assume that they are. I also haven't heard an uproar about this on the forums, which I would have expected if there was a consistent bug like this due to our stable of rotational gameplay players.
I am going to take a stab and label this one as a bug.
My solution to this would be similar, but to give each sink two boolean attributes "kitchen" and "bathroom", which may both be set if appropriate. The kitchen flag would be set (automatically) if there is either a fridge or a cooking appliance in the room. The bathroom attribute would be set if there was any of tub, shower, or toilet in room. If the kitchen flag is set, sim can wash dishes. If bathroom flag, sim may wash hands, clean teeth etc. If during clearing plates interaction, the correct sink type is not found on the lot, the sim will look first for unflagged sink, then for bathroom sink. Flagging would occur each time on exit from build/buy mode. I did something similar with my TS3 prison mod, to detect the function of prison doors.
But if you do it the way you suggested please include shower and tub as marquee objects not just toilet, as I often separate toilets from other wash objects, specially on community lots or lots pretending to be institutions such as schools or prisons.
> sholtx wrote: »
>
> SimGuruMax wrote: »
>
> sholtx wrote: »
>
> Households are randomly disappearing from the world in my game. I want to know if it is a bug or it is because of the game engine.
>
>
>
>
> More details would help.
>
>
>
>
> I play with 2 households in the game and one of them randomly disappeared while I was playing with another. I do notice that townies are replaced time to time but this time, it happened to a household I played. I hope it makes sense.
>
>
>
>
> Well first of all, I am sorry you lost your Sims. My initial reaction is that they aged and died while you were playing with the other family, but that would have required you to play for a long time before trying to switch back.
>
> I honestly don't know whether player households are protected in some way from being replaced - I would very much assume that they are. I also haven't heard an uproar about this on the forums, which I would have expected if there was a consistent bug like this due to our stable of rotational gameplay players.
>
> I am going to take a stab and label this one as a bug.
I play rotationally and I found out through trial and error that if you just hit SAVE GAME it tends to overwrite files without warning. But if you use SAVE AS you can pick the save slot in which to save so that you don't accidentally overwrite a saved household.
Thank you. It's not possible that they aged and died because I turn off the aging system the whole time.
Just a moment.... are you saying each lot is saved seperately? How can that make sense in the context of a shared clock?
@itzVeronicax3, wrong thread
I think @Tarô is right its something about what stereo you have although I don't know if you can upgrade it and if that makes a difference.
Ah brilliant, the posts have been moved now, thanks
> SimsILikeSims wrote: »
>
> But if you use SAVE AS you can pick the save slot in which to save so that you don't accidentally overwrite a saved household.
>
>
>
>
> Just a moment.... are you saying each lot is saved seperately? How can that make sense in the context of a shared clock?
>
> itzVeronicax3, wrong thread :)
What do you mean by a shared clock? All I know is that when making three separate households I ended up having to use three different save slots so that households wouldn't disappear on me or lose skills. I also know if I go back to the main menu without saving and go to a different household, the household I had just created disappears. The first save slot is an autosave slot. So the second slot is used by default when you hit save game. For two separate households this can work ok with just save game. But for three households you need to use SAVE AS so that your third household won't overwrite the second household when switching to your new sim that you made for your third household, and your second household won't overwrite your third household when switching back to the second household. Not sure why it works this way, but that's how it worked for me.
This is all interesting stuff, you guys. I can try to pass a note along about this.
There's been a mild uproar. Lots of documented cases here.
http://answers.ea.com/t5/The-Sims-4-Bug-Reports/My-sims-disappeared/m-p/3459543#U3459543
Sorry, @IngeJones, I know it's OT but I didn't want @SimGuruMax or anyone else to have the impression that this was an isolated problem. (I have not experienced it myself, knock wood).
Nono, yours isn't OT, it's to do with the simulation. My comment was about a post which has subsequently been moved to a more suitable place
I´m a forever lasting simmer, I love this series and I am trying to get into the new iteration to the same level of the previous ones
I´m sorry but you have not convinced me with your answer this time... I have in TS2 a story line around Pride&Prejudice novel, I have made Pemberly, Rossing Park and Netherfield, four stories buildings in the maximun size (I have also some huge buildings in TS3, as Greenbrier Sports&Resort recreation p.e. in a 64x64 lot working as a resort IP way) perfectly funcioning, Pemberly has four dinning rooms two parlors and two drawing rooms and a library, and twenty bedrooms and many (and I mean many) bathrooms and a huge full of flowers garden, my six sims living there know always where to eat, sleep or watch TV, the butler the gardener and the maid make their work cleanning and fixing everything all around on their own without any problem, and every time I threw a party there, all the outcomer sims enjoy the ammenities on their own and go back home at the right time without issues, will this not be possible this time? are the smarter TS4 sims not able to manage a really big scenary? Is this what you are saying or have I misunderstood you? I´m not trying to be mean, I want to know it before I take the huge task of creating this kind of buildings for TS4 if my sims will not be able to live there, in TS1 I had a great house and the sims were always lost and it was unplayable so I know it can be the same this time though I cross my fingers it is not so.
Edited to say Thankyou very much for answering so many of our questions!
I can play at last TS2 TS3 and TS4 So great that toddlers are here!!!
> Raiden74 wrote: »
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
> 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.
Max, I get it and I understand your reasoning, but I think you should make an exception, for milk and orange juice from the fridge, since they are not made by a mixologist and certainly not drank at the bar.
(btw, how can you show the quotes of other post like you do?)