Incline The Sims 4

[Turisas]

Must be some error there, surely EA wouldn't just give out those supernatural species shekel-free?

 

[Delterius]

I think the lie must be how Sims cities just got larger than those of Sim City 5.

 

[Caim]

Couldn't you populate one of the earlier SimCity games with the sims from one of the Sims games?

And oh lawdy, is dat sum C&C in that stuff about jobs?

 

[Spectacle]

The toddler lifestage is gone, something that's causing untold amounts of butthurt over on the sims 3 forums.

 

[Angthoron]

Hey look, Always Online is still a thing, good thing EA learned so much from their Sim Shitty failures. I bet it does all the important processing with the INFINITE POWER OF CLOUD!!! again, too, and that it's absolutely impossible to run it offline, just as some modder team will prove in a week or two from (or before) launch.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Sims 4 isn't always online, what are you derping about?

 

[Angthoron]

Sims 4 isn't always online, what are you derping about?

Hm, the "The addition of online gameplay in Sims 4 has become the necessary step..." thing sounds suspiciously like apologism of "always online" to me, to be honest, "It's so awesome, why would you even want solo?"

Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy to be incorrect on it, but it's EA, they'll always find a way.

 

[Spectacle]

Sims 4 isn't always online, what are you derping about?

Hm, the "The addition of online gameplay in Sims 4 has become the necessary step..." thing sounds suspiciously like apologism of "always online" to me, to be honest, "It's so awesome, why would you even want solo?"

Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy to be incorrect on it, but it's EA, they'll always find a way.

After the Sim City fiasco they'll be crucified if they go back on the promise to make Sims 4 an offline game. Not going to happen, even with EA.

 

[Caim]

That cow-plant thing really unsettles me...

Also, I read that this game will not have swimming pools like the previous ones: anyone else read this as well?

 

[Astral Rag]

Also, I read that this game will not have swimming pools like the previous ones: anyone else read this as well?

Don't worry I'm sure our friends at EA will release a $40 swimming pool DLC.

“Build Mode truly is the most powerful, and fun, Build Mode we’ve ever created. While it’s not possible for us to include every single feature and piece of content we added to The Sims 3 over the last 5 years, we’ve added features that you’ve asked for and that offer a whole new intuitive and fun way to build. These are features like Wall Height Adjustment, Dynamic Foundation Sizing, and Smart Windows! And though pool building won’t be available in September, we do have a new Fountain Tool so you can create sophisticated landscapes. Whether you were a novice builder in The Sims 3, or an experienced pro, I really think you’re going to love The Sims 4’s build mode.”

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/06/28/sims-4-no-pools/

 

[Turisas]

I asked about this recently. We won’t have a 64 bit exe; it’s fairly uncommon for games. Our lead ENG explained to me why Sims 4 wouldn’t particularly benefit from it and it sounded quite reasonable, but I’m not comfortable enough discussing tech to try and repeat his explanation.

 

[Spectacle]

That's true in most cases though. If the game has been designed with the constraints of a 32 bit architecture in mind, you won't gain much simply from recompiling it as a 64 bit binary.

 

[Keshik]

What’s Out and What’s In
July 07 by Rachel Franklin Comment
Hello Simmers,

We’re less than 60 days out from the launch of The Sims™ 4, and I have so much I want to talk about. But let me start with a bit more about the decision we made not to include pools and toddlers in The Sims 4, as we’ve seen some of you have concerns about this.

The fact is, we owe you a clearer explanation for why pools and toddlers will not be in The Sims 4 at launch, so here goes. It begins with new technology and systems that we built for this new base game for The Sims – a new AI system, new animation system, new audio positioning tools, new locomotion logic, new routing intelligence and much more are all entirely new in this game. The vision for The Sims 4 is a new experience that brings your Sims to life in deeper and uniquely personal ways – through emotions, personality traits, behaviors and interactions. To do that, our technology base needed a major upgrade.

So the bottom line is that when we sat down and looked at everything we wanted to do for this game, all the new tech we wanted to build into it, the fact was that there would be trade-offs, and these would disappoint some of our fans. Hard pill to swallow, believe me, but delivering on the vision set out for The Sims 4 required focus. Focus on revolutionizing the Sims themselves. So, rather than include toddlers, we chose to go deeper on the features that make Sims come alive: meaningful and often amusing emotions; more believable motion and interactions; more tools in Create A Sim, and more realistic (and sometimes weird!) Sim behavior. Instead of pools, we chose to develop key new features in Build Mode: direct manipulation, building a house room-by-room and being able to exchange your custom rooms easily, to make the immediate environment even more relatable and interactive for your Sim.


But now the upshot: The Sims 4 is a completely new game, and it feels different to play. You’ll notice the new technology base the first time you play.

I’ll give you one example that continually jumps out at me as we talk about how to make The Sims 4 feel uniquely personal to you, our players. I mentioned Create A Sim – which, to me, is still one of the single most impactful features of the entire game. Not only is it hilariously entertaining, now you’re building in real personality. In The Sims 4, there are seven unique walk styles that you can choose from to help your Sims express themselves. To make those walk styles come to life, we had to create around 75 distinct animations. And it doesn’t stop there. Every emotion in The Sims 4 comes with a visible reaction or even another special walk style. No more looking at the UI to figure out how your Sims are feeling – just look at their faces, posture, movements. That’s where you’ll see about 320 new emotion-based animations, as well as over 600 reactions to objects.

There’s so much more depth in The Sims 4. For the first time, the Sims act like real people. They can interact with groups, not just one-to-one. A standing Sim can talk with a sitting Sim. They can multi-task (eating, watching TV and talking? Sounds like my typical evening!). You can even put a hat on any hairstyle or pair boots with any pants… well, maybe that’s just me that cares about that.


That’s the thing about The Sims 4, though – you do care about things like that. Because you can now. Emotions touch every single system in our game, and every single experience you have inside it. Multi-tasking completely changes how your Sims go through their day and interact with the world around them. The new Create A Sim and Build Mode tools completely changed the way we think about creating Sims and homes.

But let us show you this instead of just talking about it: The Sims 4 Create A Sim Demo will be available later this summer for absolutely everyone to play. We are currently rolling out an early trial experience and invitations are going out very soon to a limited number of fans to help us test it. After that, you’ll all get your hands on it and see firsthand the depth, personality and emotion that are part of your new Sims.

And another thing - we were thrilled that more than 1200 people came through our E3 demo room last month to see The Sims 4 in action, but we want all of you to see it as well. We’ll be releasing over 15 minutes of in-game Live Mode footage (with complete UI) in the next two weeks. We can’t wait to hear what you think.

So from the entire development team here at The Sims Studio, thank you for your feedback and support. Our hearts are being poured into every line of code, every single piece of art, and every single Sim that is created. We’re building a brand new Sims experience with a foundation we can build on and evolve based on your feedback. We think you’re going to love playing with life all over again.

- Rachel

http://www.thesims.com/news/whats-out-and-whats-in


So apparently the new technology can't support pools.

 

[Delterius]

Maybe if they harnessed the Cloud they'd be able to bring pools into the game. There's nothing some server side calculations can't do.

 

[Drax]

I like how she offers no actual explanation for anything, she should get into politics.

 

[Spectacle]

I like how she offers no actual explanation for anything, she should get into politics.

The unstated premise is that they have a set budget for the game and can't do everything. The unhappy fans should ask why the budget for a game that's sure to sell tons and tons isn't higher.

 

[markec]

The unstated premise is that they have a set budget for the game and can't do everything. The unhappy fans should ask why the budget for a game that's sure to sell tons and tons isn't higher.

I doubt EA would try to save money on their biggest cash cow, the game was already postponed once, I think they just want to release it as soon as possible in order to appease their stock holders with influx of shitload of money.

 

[Irenaeus]

Pool expansion

 

[TheEntitledOne]

This Pool&Toodlers thing must be the most obvious cashgrab ever.
It's too much even for EA.

 

[Metro]

This shit has been in development how many years and they couldn't get around to programming toddlers or swimming? Guess it'll come as a $20 DLC.

 

[Delterius]

"Our hearts are being poured into every line of code, every single piece of art, and every single Sim that is created."

Aztecs' style? Please, say yes.

 

[Angthoron]

This shit has been in development how many years and they couldn't get around to programming toddlers or swimming? Guess it'll come as a $20 DLC.

It'll take months to perfect the toddler AI, Metro. You know, how it'll be lying around in that crib 99% of the time, and thinking if it wants the boob, or a number 1, or a number 2. It'll actually think about those things now, and feel, like, emotions and you will notice.

For pool, they need to create perfect water physics, so when a sim enters the pool, the system will calculate his weight and raise the water level precisely by this amount.

 

[WalkinDude]

It'll take months to perfect the toddler AI, Metro. You know, how it'll be lying around in that crib 99% of the time, and thinking if it wants the boob, or a number 1, or a number 2. It'll actually think about those things now, and feel, like, emotions and you will notice.

Ehh, you must be unfamiliar with the recent sims games if you think that toddlers spend most of their timem lying around in a crib. There'll still be infants, but now they'll go right from that (lying around in a crib, shitting themselves every so often and requiring social attention) to children with nothing in between; in the sims 3 toddlers were a crucial development stage that required actual parenting, unlike infants which was just keep-them-alive mode. So yeah I see why people are upset. Seeing as how the sims community is disgustingly apologetic to the developers it's good that they're finally bitching about something collectively, even if they brought it upon themselves - I don't think EA released a single Sims 3 expansion that wasn't horribly broken and unfinished, and people still paid $40 and waited patiently for modders to somehow make things work.

 

[Angthoron]

It'll take months to perfect the toddler AI, Metro. You know, how it'll be lying around in that crib 99% of the time, and thinking if it wants the boob, or a number 1, or a number 2. It'll actually think about those things now, and feel, like, emotions and you will notice.

Ehh, you must be unfamiliar with the recent sims games if you think that toddlers spend most of their timem lying around in a crib.

Well, sure, I've not really played any babby-centric families in Sims series like ever, to be honest. Just don't see the appeal in it. Wouldn't it basically be like an in-game Tamagochi minigame? What sort of meaningful stuff is there?

 

[WalkinDude]

Well, sure, I've not really played any babby-centric families in Sims series like ever, to be honest. Just don't see the appeal in it. Wouldn't it basically be like an in-game Tamagochi minigame? What sort of meaningful stuff is there?

Parenting in the form of teaching them to walk, talk, and shit properly, which then meant that they aged-up 'properly' and could have a trait selected instead of a random one being assigned. Also could play with skill toys that allowed them to start with a higher proficiency when they age up with other skills which is useful since there's less time wasted. I assume for most sims players it was just 'ooo i wanna play with my baby' but there was a practical side as well, but perhaps they'll just spill that over to the infant stage. Or not, gotta get people to purchase the toddler DLC somehow.