City Living

The Sims 4 City Living: SimGuruEugi Explains Apartments and their Limitations

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The Sims 4 City Living Official Apartments Trailer 046

SimGuruEugi, one of the developers working on The Sims 4, explained some of the apartment functions and their creativity limitations in City Living, such as not being able to play with apartments outside San Myshuno or build an apartment from scratch.

You can think of an apartment building as a neighborhood. They are authored by our world creation team as part of the world we ship for the EP. (We actually can’t patch worlds without invalidating saves).

If we had allowed the creation of apartment buildings from Build/Buy, we would not have been able to achieve the look we were going for. For instance, B/B limits construction to five floors, but you want buildings to look like they have many more than that, so you can look over the city skyline.

There are also performance implications. You might want a building to look like it has, say, hundreds of windows and small items of decor. If those were actual B/B objects, they would all count against our performance metrics.

We also allow multiple households to inhabit the same building. So we’d have to add some element that would have allowed players to define the boundaries of an apartment. If it wasn’t properly authored (e.g. lacking front doors), some game functionality might not work.

So we reached what we think is a good compromise. We modeled “shells,” which are apartment buildings that look great but are technically one object, and then we allowed B/B operations inside it.

  • There are up to four apartments per building. All those apartments are playable. You can move in/move out of them, and they can be inhabited by NPCs. You can interact with your neighbors by knocking on their door and whatnot.
  • For each apartment building, the playable space is one floor in that building. The elevator takes your Sims from street level to their floor.
  • Penthouse are not a lot type. You can change the penthouse’s venue type to any type, and it’s really cool. The premade lots in San Myshuno are gorgeous. Can’t wait for you guys to play with it. I didn’t work on EP03 and when I saw the final world I was really impressed with what the team pulled off!
  • The population cap will be increased by roughly 25% for EP03 (regardless of whether or not you buy the pack. It’s patched in).
  • I think the shells are objects, so I’m sure modders will find ways to “liberate” them and do crazy things. It’s just not something we support in worlds other than San Myshuno.
  • You can think of apartment buildings like neighborhoods. We don’t go back to shipped worlds and change the lot/neighborhood configuration, because that might negatively impact your existing lots.
  • Question: Do you know if the new careers will have any major impact on the way careers work at the moment? Will the apartments traits be moddable?
  • SimGuruEugi: There may or may not be 😉 some added career functionality, but I can’t talk about that, and I don’t know how/if it will invalidate mods. Apartment traits should be fully moddable.
  • Apartment buildings have between two to four apartments. All of the playable apartments for a building are on a single floor.
  • The area around lots can be accessed without loading screens. It exists in other worlds as well, but it is especially large in San Myshuno.
  • We did not change the way households are managed. If you move your Sims in with a rommate, in the same household, they’ll become playable.
  • The festivals are specific to San Myshuno, so I don’t think they’d work in other worlds.
  • There are no new editing tools, but you can do everything you can do in other worlds. So you can freely build on any lot, including apartments and penthouses, from Manage Worlds.
  • The elevators require an apartment shell to work properly. I do not believe they are available in the catalog.
the-sims-4-city-living-official-apartments-trailer-046

About the author

Jovan

Reticulating splines as a webmaster for Sims Community over the last 11 years. You can find me here writing articles and doing reports on your favorite life sim games, among other things!

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Marti Stern
Marti Stern
8 years ago

So, no seasons for the existing worlds… If they can’t patch existing worlds without invalidating the save…

benji_br
benji_br
8 years ago
Reply to  Marti Stern

Hmmmmmmmmm good point… I wonder how they’re going to work that in

SiREN7171
SiREN7171
8 years ago
Reply to  Marti Stern

I wouldn’t worry to much, the coding is a bit different for things like weather, lighting, small game play changes, and cosmetics. Those with time can be adding in with no problems (for the most part). Now things that conflict with home lot game play are another beast altogether, it gets a bit complicated. Hopeful that seasons will follow behind this EP, would love me some winter in the city! Happy Siming!

Tonin
Tonin
8 years ago
Reply to  SiREN7171

YEEEP I would love to see the rain time, I don’t no, but I buy Seasons because the rain. .-.

KC
KC
8 years ago
Reply to  Marti Stern

Seasons will be vacations spots, like in TS1.

Tonin
Tonin
8 years ago
Reply to  Marti Stern

Maybe, sometimes, small changes like Lighting and other stuff, like new textures isn’t necessary to mess is the Save to work.

Wired
Wired
8 years ago

I’m glad they took the time to explain. Always helps

Sims4ever
Sims4ever
8 years ago

Well, ok BUT they could give us our creativity back, if they would just make it possible for us afterwards to be able to have more than 1 Family per lot…can’t they?

Not2BKnown
Not2BKnown
8 years ago

I’m reading this but I’m seeing a few things not quite in line with the other stuff I read. The first, originally they said only one apartment has 4 available spaces to live while the others have 2-3 spaces. Now they all have 4? The second issue I see, originally it was said we can knock on an npc door to complain about the noise but other than that, we’d be greeted with a loading screen before entering the npc’s home. Now, they’re saying we can knock on the door and interact with an npc? So is there now no loading screen? They’re a little bit tippy toeing around on the details, no? I would really love to know what exactly it is. So which is the truth, honestly.

SimDoughnut
SimDoughnut
8 years ago

Sorry, but the excuse that B/B mode only allows for 4 floors above and 2 below comes off as a cop out. Not everyone who lives in a city lives in a high rise apartment building. How many Brownstone, Row House, or Town House style Apartment buildings do you see in major cities that are over four stories tall?

Ana Isa
Ana Isa
8 years ago

Soooo, the reason why we can’t build apartments is because they wanted the buildings to look nice? Okay……..

Tonin
Tonin
8 years ago
Reply to  Ana Isa

It isn’t, it’s because they can have 100% of sure if all gonna work if you build your own Apartment, it’s very similar if Dine Out, if you don’t put some Itens, like 4 chairs, the game brake and don’t work as intend.
This is the reason.

SiREN7171
SiREN7171
8 years ago

I’m really excited for this! From what I’ve been reading, it sounds like the team has done an awesome job. The slow Wi-Fi in crappy apartments, bugs, and bad plumping are going to be a lot of fun.

KC
KC
8 years ago

He lied above. They can patch in worlds and have: Newcrest.

Tonin
Tonin
8 years ago

My guess they do that because of the small bug’s of Dine Out, like people don’t sit, don’t eat, don’t pay when you do your own Restaurant, and they limit that for those little bugs don’t appear.

SiREN7171
SiREN7171
4 years ago

I’m really excited for this! From what I’ve been reading, it sounds like the team has done an awesome job. The slow Wi-Fi in crappy apartments, bugs, and bad plumping are going to be a lot of fun.

Marti Stern
Marti Stern
4 years ago

So, no seasons for the existing worlds… If they can’t patch existing worlds without invalidating the save…

KC
KC
4 years ago
Reply to  Marti Stern

Seasons will be vacations spots, like in TS1.

Tonin
Tonin
4 years ago
Reply to  Marti Stern

Maybe, sometimes, small changes like Lighting and other stuff, like new textures isn’t necessary to mess is the Save to work.

SiREN7171
SiREN7171
4 years ago
Reply to  Marti Stern

I wouldn’t worry to much, the coding is a bit different for things like weather, lighting, small game play changes, and cosmetics. Those with time can be adding in with no problems (for the most part). Now things that conflict with home lot game play are another beast altogether, it gets a bit complicated. Hopeful that seasons will follow behind this EP, would love me some winter in the city! Happy Siming!

Tonin
Tonin
4 years ago
Reply to  SiREN7171

YEEEP I would love to see the rain time, I don’t no, but I buy Seasons because the rain. .-.

benji_br
benji_br
4 years ago
Reply to  Marti Stern

Hmmmmmmmmm good point… I wonder how they’re going to work that in

Tonin
Tonin
4 years ago

My guess they do that because of the small bug’s of Dine Out, like people don’t sit, don’t eat, don’t pay when you do your own Restaurant, and they limit that for those little bugs don’t appear.

SimDoughnut
SimDoughnut
4 years ago

Sorry, but the excuse that B/B mode only allows for 4 floors above and 2 below comes off as a cop out. Not everyone who lives in a city lives in a high rise apartment building. How many Brownstone, Row House, or Town House style Apartment buildings do you see in major cities that are over four stories tall?

Not2BKnown
Not2BKnown
4 years ago

I’m reading this but I’m seeing a few things not quite in line with the other stuff I read. The first, originally they said only one apartment has 4 available spaces to live while the others have 2-3 spaces. Now they all have 4? The second issue I see, originally it was said we can knock on an npc door to complain about the noise but other than that, we’d be greeted with a loading screen before entering the npc’s home. Now, they’re saying we can knock on the door and interact with an npc? So is there now no loading screen? They’re a little bit tippy toeing around on the details, no? I would really love to know what exactly it is. So which is the truth, honestly.

KC
KC
4 years ago

He lied above. They can patch in worlds and have: Newcrest.

Ana Isa
Ana Isa
4 years ago

Soooo, the reason why we can’t build apartments is because they wanted the buildings to look nice? Okay……..

Tonin
Tonin
4 years ago
Reply to  Ana Isa

It isn’t, it’s because they can have 100% of sure if all gonna work if you build your own Apartment, it’s very similar if Dine Out, if you don’t put some Itens, like 4 chairs, the game brake and don’t work as intend.
This is the reason.

Wired
Wired
4 years ago

I’m glad they took the time to explain. Always helps

Sims4ever
Sims4ever
4 years ago

Well, ok BUT they could give us our creativity back, if they would just make it possible for us afterwards to be able to have more than 1 Family per lot…can’t they?