“In a way, it’s sort of like building three or four games at the same time,” says The Sims 4 lead producer Lyndsay Pearson, who’s been with the franchise since the beginning. “There’s always things that we want to do with The Sims that we are never able to realize at various points or things we couldn’t yet figure out what to do… Making The Sims to continue to be more believable, more dimensional, and to have more nuance to their behaviors is something we always strive for.”
One step forward is tweaking the routing system, or the way Sims navigate. “Ever since The Sims 1people have complained about the behavior of Sims,” says Peter Ingrebreston, a software engineer on The Sims 4. After researching human social behavior, the developers made Sims less awkward and more believable. “It’s that subtle polish,” Pearson says. “Now we can say ‘Sims can now walk through doors without getting stuck,’ but it’s actually extremely difficult to make that happen. “This image visualizes the potential routing outcomes for a Sim changing posture in The Sims 4
The Sims 4 Preview by Popular Mechanics!
