#sims 4 ramblings

[sims-half-crazy]

Apologies for the Gosnoll story hiatus, but I've gotten distracted with building again. Just a sneak peek of what's in store for the next Gosnoll heir.

[eljeebee]

Kijiko Update:

Kijiko is still at the process of going through their CC lashes.

Source: Kijiko's twitter

So to anyone who uses their lashes and their lash remover, it might get updated!

[sadraccoon061]

Y'all ever use a hair for one of your Sims and then can't use it on other Sims because it's "their hair"?

xD

[j3lly-fish]

Welp. After endless hours of trying to fix this....

Lots of weight painting pain...

Ladies and gentlefucks...

We got em.

[decafdoodlez]

Spent my evening recreating Fox’s livestream setup in the sims. ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡ 🦊🔪🧡

[lemon-russ]

I'm downloading Titus onto my steam deck, I will stop dragging my feet and try and actually play SM and not just watch bf play it before SM 2 comes out

Titus is a polite 10gb, games used to be normal sizes

Like why is Dark Tide 66gb, optimize your gameeesss

[dykesevika]

WIP

Cowgirl Sevika??? Cowgirl Sevika.

Men DNI

[moonferry]

things that happened to my h.e.s (harvey, elliott, shane) trio sims in the span of a few hours:

* elliott published 2 children's books

* shane became a bartender ?

* harvey wanted to be a good friend & make them breakfast. he promptly CAUGHT ON FIRE. (don't worry he was saved)

* shane & harvey are now BOTH afraid of fire, elliott was literally drunk at 9 in the morning and was unaffected by the fire ???

* harvey didn't even get to eat his breakfast bc he caught on fire & had to work with his hunger in the red...

* elliott has been flirting nonstop with shane, then he flirted with harvey, and shane got a "very sad" moodlet.

* they all became a polyamorous triad

* harvey got a "want" that said "be friendly to shane" right next to one that said "get engaged to shane" very mixed signals here buddy.

* elliott keeps waking up at 4 am for some reason and LITERALLY WILL NOT GO BACK TO SLEEP??

* shane wanted to make an enemy so he started talking shit to the neighbor and promptly got his ass beat.

y'all really liked this omg. so here's some more stuff that's happened to them -> linky

[xx-j4nu5-c4t5-xx]

"An ideal Sims game would have Sims 2's gameplay mechanics, Sims 3's open world, and Sims 4's graphics!"

I absolutely despise this take, and I want to explain why. This is a very long rant and it is full of piss and vinegar directed at everything in the Sims 4. I'm gonna try to keep everything kinda professional as much as I can but I can't guarantee an unbiased opinion.

If you'll let me talk your ears off for a moment, I'd like to explain, from my own experience as an artist and a casual player, my issues with the art style and direction of The Sims 4 compared to The Sims 2. (I'm not really going to comment on 3 because I've never played it.)

I want to start off by explaining the difference between better graphics and higher resolution. The Sims 4 absolutely blows Sims 2 out of the water when it comes to textures and polygon counts on sims, no contest. But I'd argue that the graphics themselves... aren't better. They're worse, even, so much fucking worse. The biggest problems come from the stylization and the animations, in my opinion, so I'll explain what I mean.

Have you ever felt like the Sims in 4 just look... weird? Not quirky, not kinda strange, but off. Distressing. Uncanny. Whatever the fuck the kids call it nowadays. When you strip away the packs and the CC and the shaders, the sims in the base game look bad. They're very close to being human; they walk like us, talk like us, have families like us, but they don't look like us, not exactly. There's always something off about them, no matter how close you try to get. Proportions will be a bit off, or your eyelashes will be like three polygons for some fucking reason, and the jig is up. The illusion is gone.

This is one of the instances where a higher resolution and more detailed models and meshes work against you. You aren't making believe. You are beyond the point of pretending that the pixelated shapes are real clothes and bodies and faces, because at this point, they're close enough that you don't need to. There's no gap to bridge. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're lifelike, at least, not enough to be completely human. In some ways, they're still tethered to being cartoony and plasticky and fake. Just enough to frighten you. Enough to put you off. They're not using it to their advantage anymore, and instead, it's holding them back.

When the Sims 2 came out in 2004, the developers knew that they weren't going to make a perfectly accurate life simulator. They physically couldn't render every wrinkle in the face or fold in the clothing. In some animations, things clip strangely or the facial expressions are sort of janky or there's just some form of roughness around the edges. But that's okay; your brain doesn't need a perfectly accurate representation this time. That's not what you're here for, anyway.

The Sims 4 is basically Icarus-ing itself into disaster. The entire game sacrifices style for complete realism, a goal that was unachievable ten years ago, and is unachievable now.

The Sims 2 never thought of itself as a completely realistic life sim, though. It has cartoony, low poly meshes and exaggerated proportions and wild, raunchy storylines that would never occur in real life. BECAUSE IT ISN'T REAL LIFE. And it isn't like real life, not because it's failing to be, but because it doesn't want to be!

The Sims 4 is not ever going to completely replicate human looks or interactions or dynamics. And if it's trying to, it's doing a shit job of it. That shouldn't be the goal in the first place. If I wanted to watch a lonely college student talk to himself in the mirror to try and get better at interacting with people, I'd close the computer and go look at myself. It somehow highlights the most mundane parts of life without any of the whimsy and goofiness that the earlier installments had. It takes itself too fucking seriously for its own good, and it's killing both the gameplay and the art style.

The other point I'd like to bring up is the animation. The Sims 4 allows for much more customization of both sim and environments, but at the cost of dynamic animations. How many times is that grab animation reused? How many times is the same set of animations used for sims with wildly different personalities? Your sims barely feel alive with how little they express themselves.

Now, look, I'm a digital artist. I've dabbled in animation, but only briefly, and only in 2D. I've got no clue how 3D animation works, much less how it worked 20 years ago, but I can see the passion in every single animation in the Sims 2. The more niche interactions allowed for more expressive animations than in 4. They could afford to have a distinct animation for mean sims throwing the football extra hard to be assholes, rather than every sim using the same generic football-throwing animation to save time and money. I get where they're coming from. I get the idea. But in one move, you've both made the art style stiffer and less expressive, and you've made the personalities of the sims seem meaningless. Everyone acts the same, regardless of what their moodlets or their traits say. It's hollow. It's stifled. It's a waste of potential.

But for what Sims 2 lacks in polygons, it makes up for in smaller animated details. Quality over quantity. The sims have hair physics, they open the door before they get in the car, they take utensils out of the counters when they cook, they jump on the couch and the cushions smush under their weight. When they dance, the weight is realistic, and when they smile, it tugs at every one of the few dozen shapes that make up their faces. The sims are lively. They dance and sing and love and hate just like humans, and rather than being some strange attempt at mimicry, it's almost a tribute. They were made with love. You can tell that they were drawn up and rigged and animated by a bunch of people working together, studying each other and making faces in the mirror for reference and watching their kids and neighbors and dogs and hands for reference. The sims are not human, and not trying to be, but they're taking the most human parts of us and making them their own.

You could never have a game with the Sims 4's graphics and the Sims 2's gameplay. The gameplay and graphics are inexorably connected, and the Sims 2 just has so much glorious detail baked into it, that you could never really make it work underneath the limitations of the later games. The developers of 2 knew what their limits were, and they worked tirelessly to make the game as full and complex as they could within those limits. The developers for the Sims 4 just did not have those guidelines, and thus, the drive to bend the rules was no longer there. They didn't go wild in rebellion because they were never told they couldn't in the first place. They spent the entire time chasing a goal they couldn't meet, and lost sight of what made the series fun to begin with.

It wasn't the realism you came for; you had realism already surrounding you. It was the caricature of it that made it interesting.

[colormeberry]

Made this work of art earlier

[oatberrytea]

Ok, I didn't give up on my Sunflower save and instead did make a brand new save and plopped the house down; it seems ok so far! Despite the 200+ missing items message, not too much CC was actually missing, mostly rugs and paintings so I was able to have it back to normal pretty quickly. I played 10 sim days and there were only a few very minor glitches (mostly some sims taking a little long to move onto their next action) so we are good to go!

Since I did play 10 sim days though all the sims in the household (all 10 of them and 1 horse) got to know each other and a lot of friendships and 1 enemyship were formed, and even a little bit of romance!

My original plan was to play 5 sim days and then eliminate the sim with the lowest relationship score with Ofelia but since I played 10 sim days there is actually (and sadly) 2 sims with absolutely NO romance bar with Ofelia. These 2 sims will be going home but I want to post some gameplay pictures with all of them first because I had a really fun time with them all.

I didn't control anyone except Ofelia and only to tell her to repair the sinks and toilets that each broke 300 times. Every sim was pretty good about doing household chores and keeping themselves from dying all the while forming relationships so I was pleased.

I probably won't be doing any of the more "story" styled posts until after the 2 sims leave the house because it is just too hard to pose and control that many sims. I can't even get them in to CAS since I'm using MCC to have more than 8 sims in the house right now. I haven't been able to fix missing clothing or make up because I just got defeated with the idea of moving sims out of the house, editing them, then moving them back in (I already did it once just to quickly change incorrect eye colors and missing hairs for 10 sims).

Once I'm down to 8 sims (going to have Bebita, the horse, go stay with Chance until I get down to 7 sims and then she can return hehe) I will focus more on having "story" posts and more attention paid to special interactions and "events" with Ofelia and everyone else.

Ok, this is so long, but I'm finished explaining my plans! Thank you if you read this and see you in the next post 💙

[sims-half-crazy]

I am so excited for the new pack! Multi-unit builds are my favorite, but I hope that EA makes it so that entire families can live in them. The roommate system is great and all, but I want families to be able to rent!! Back to looking at multi-unit plans that I haven't built yet! :)

[eljeebee]

Why is my grim reaper cringe hjksdakjdjk

😭😭😭

[budgie2budgie]

in my cleaning cc-serie, i'm now at safes : 6 😅

[adelarsims]

ok listen

new cas challenge

try to create a sim who isn't gay

that's it, that's the challenge

[geniusphilester]

phil getting excited about the money tree is the most predictable thing ever