#I’m considering looking into disability aid. But idk if I’m that severe of a case

[kagrenacs]

Look at this sweetie!!

[toothyblowjob]

hi! i’m anon from mamoru (asking here cus asks aren’t on on ur sims blog) i’m really interested in your thoughts about incorporating disabilities into the sims, i’m trying to develop my own sims game cus fuck ea lol, and i’d really like to be as incorporating of disability as possible. thanks!

damn, my asks weren’t on? that sucks. i think i fixed it now, but i swear i already had them on...

anyway!!!

i’m looking at this more from a perspective of “how to make the sims 4 better” than like “how to make my own video game” and i don’t know much about coding or game development so idk how helpful some of this will be but hopefully some will?? infodump incoming!!! sorry if it’s not that coherent. i’ve bolded some keywords in case you want to only read sections pertaining to certain disabilities.

starting with canes, bc i use one and i wish my simself did: sims 3 had canes, but for some reason they were coded weird so only elders could use them (iirc modders weren’t even able to fix it?? wtf ea). plus ts4 has custom walkstyles, and your sim can hold things like umbrellas while walking, so it’s almost definitely possible to add canes and crutches.

adding walkers would probably be a very similar process, tho i can imagine there might be some issues w clipping? not that ea has ever given a single fuck about that lmao

i’m a little bit less sure how wheelchairs would work, but the best reference i can think of is the strollers from ts3, or maaaybe some of the smaller vehicles. i have a vague memory of like a bike or a hoverpad or something that you could ride everywhere and not just on the road, but idk. the main issue i can see is that certain animations and interactions would need to be a lot more flexible--eg, sims would need to be able to do things like cook or paint or give hugs while sitting down. i can also see it being a little tricky to animate “transfers” from like, a wheelchair to a desk chair or w/e. honestly i think this would be easier to implement in sims 4 than it would have been in sims 3, because ts4 at least allows you to multitask some things. idk, it would probably be on the harder side, but holy shit it would be so worth it.

and then for some reason when i think about wheelchair users in the sims i start to wonder how feasible it would be to include little people (i hope that’s the right term?). simmers have been wanting height sliders since at least ts3, but any time a modder tries to add one the animations start getting kinda wonky, and i don’t think anyone’s really considered a height slider that goes low enough to make sims with dwarfism. i KNOW there are non-sim games out there that use height sliders, but idk how tf they do it without giving everyone telekinesis.

there was a mod in sims 3 that added sliders for amputated limbs, but it was a purely cosmetic thing, so like, sims would still walk like they had two legs or write with their “missing” hand or w/e. ideally i’d love to see a way to give sims limb differences that actually affected how they went about their lives + gave them the option to use prosthetics. i found a set of running blades in the “shoe” category for sims 4, but like... if you give them to a sim they’ll still magically grow legs in the shower lol.

deafness i think ties into my desire for sims to be able to speak multiple languages. not all deaf people use sign language, of course, but it would be great if sims had the option. i guess languages would function like any other skills, and if two sims don’t have any languages in common, they won’t be able to communicate beyond very basic things. maybe if you wanted a deaf sim to be able to speak, you could hire a speech therapist, or purchase some sort of object for them to practice with. also, dyou remember the earbuds in ts3 that made it so like, you’d only hear the music when you selected the sim using earbuds? i think you could probably make it so that when a deaf sim is active the game volume is either much lower or completely off. then for things like hearing aids, you could equip them and the volume would get a little bit higher.

blindness could use a similar mechanic, but instead of everything being silent, everything would be very dark and low-contrast. maybe objects that were making noise or places your sim had been before would have more detail. blind sims could also use navigation canes that would like... light up the area immediately in front of them.

invisible disabilities, allergies, and neuropsychiatric conditions would probably be a bit easier to add. sims 4 has a “quirk” system for celebrities where certain actions can trigger your famous sims to develop new traits. 

i think the best example of how you could use this to make, for example, mental illnesses is the “emotion bomb” quirk. famous sims develop it after experiencing intense anger or sadness, and it basically makes them experience that emotion much more intensely. that’s already a symptom of a mental illness called bpd! so what if something like repeatedly being mean to a child sim had a 0.1% chance of causing them to develop bpd? or if having a powerful sad or tense moodlet had a 0.1% chance of causing them to develop depression? 

(side note: i can really easily picture something similar to the “dark form” for ts4 vampires being used for dissociative identity disorder. genetics would be consistent across all personality states, but they could have different traits and voices and clothing,)

certain conditions could also be present at birth, like autism or adhd. i actually have custom traits for these; they’re not perfect, but if you want to google them they might be a good reference. one little thing that i think would be neat is if autistic sims had idle “stimming” animations, like flapping their hands or spinning in a circle. the biggest problem, though, is that autism and adhd are highly variable and i’m not sure how to make it so that not all autistic sims have the same behaviors.

allergies i guess would have to have some sort of severity scale, and be triggered by a sim eating a certain food or petting a certain animal. i’d want the likelihood of a sim developing a particular allergy to be pretty low, but that’s just me lol. maybe sims with allergies could keep meds on hand to deal with the worst of their attacks?

actually, the allergies thing reminds me--diabetic sims! depending on which type, a sim could either be born with it or contract it later in life. i’m not totally familiar with how insulin works, but a sim could have a pump equipped to mitigate their symptoms, or take regular injections.

i have a custom trait in my game for chronically ill sims, which basically makes their energy deplete faster and sometimes gives them moodlets with little blurbs about their illness. this seems like a pretty good system for chronic illnesses, but obv it would vary a lot by which illness your sim has--eg, would you actually animate a sim with ehlers-dahnlos popping a joint out of their socket, or would you just give them an uncomfortable moodlet? in particular, though, i think the mechanic that makes elder sims unable to do most exercise would be great for sims with dysautonomia. 

also, i’ve mentioned some assistive devices already, but i think figuring out how treatment works would be a big deal. do sims have single-payer healthcare, or do they have to pay for everything themselves? can sims crowdfund their medicine? what kind of treatments/cures are available? are their side effects? some conditions don’t have cures irl, but maybe a sim can pay like $30k to a witch to make their fibromyalgia go away!

this is almost definitely more info than you wanted and i’m kinda embarrassed i wrote this much, but uh... here you go, a mostly stream-of-consciousness essay on disabilities in the sims! god i hope it’s readable