If you haven’t noticed yet, The Sims 4’s art style relies on a lower amount of polygons. This means that objects often have less curves and edges in order to both add to the game’s performance and also fit with The Sims 4’s art style.
Still, The Sims Team manages to create layered and detailed objects even with this low polygon count rule. We have these objects as a small example:
Fountain from The Sims 4 Get Together
Telescope from The Sims 4 Base Game
Literally almost anything from The Sims 4 Romantic Garden Stuff..
This rule of low polygon count never represented an obstacle in The Sims 4. Well, not until now…
The Sims Team thought it was a good idea to add a ball pit to The Sims 4 Toddler Stuff Pack. I was generally excited for this object until I saw how it was executed…
Believe it or not, this object is made out of nothing but stairs, a flat surface and 10 balls popping out.
This wouldn’t be such a problem if the flat surface of the ball pit had a higher resolution illusion of a ball pit. It’s really upsetting when you want to take a screenshot of your Sim having fun in a ball pit and you see all those low-resolution balls in the background…
This ball pit illusion is so low-res that you’d have to be 5 meters away from your computer screen in order for it to look like something.
Toddlers will dive into the ball pit and throw random VFX (visual effects) balls around them as you can see in the video below.
These all look normal and cute but that low resolution texture? :/
We tried to track down the original source of this ball pit texture and found out it’s only 440×360 resolution…
Its filesize isn’t even that big and there are plenty of objects, even wallpapers that weigh a lot more than this texture.
34 Comments
Oh that’s… bad. Should’ve been a 4×4 with meshed balls (insert laughter here), not a flat texture. They clearly had the means to do it so I don’t know why they didn’t, it’s pretty lazy.
Can kids even use it? Or is it only for toddlers like I assume?
Reply to Jake
It’s just toddlers
Reply to Jake
What you don’t seem to get is that it takes a lot of effort for a computer to process something with high polygons. If the Sims team put in all the necessary polygons to make each ball round and to interact with other round balls.. your computer would basically burst into flames each time you would try to have a toddler play with the ball pit. But in all seriousness… unless you have a top of the line computer your computer would either lag or just crash each time the ball pit was in use. This has nothing to do with laziness. Most computers are just not good enough to process that well.
if they took the time to just place balls on top of the flat surface i wouldn’t be mad. but that’s just ugly… why are they so slack?????
Oh god i laughed so hard that just weird
But i dont agree with your last word. If they took a picture from Google they will have a problem with copy right, right? :/
I wonder if the ball pit was produced very late into the dev cycle of Toddler Stuff or if it was originally something else entirely (like a kiddie pool or something).
Reply to Nuclearxpotato
Oh god, you’re right. The whole thing behaves almost exactly like water. Kiddie pool seems like an excellent guess. This actually makes me dislike it less – I’d rather have a ball pit than a kiddie pool, so someone had a good idea!
That texture you posed looks nothing like the one in the video. Not only is the shading different but also it has green balls.
While I do not believe it was reworked for the object, even if it were that would be counter to the point that just lifted it from google.
Reply to Damon
However, they still used it heavily as a reference. It’s not in the game files for nothing…
Reply to Damon
The texture is exactly the same… If you took the time to look over it, you would find that it is an exact match. Use the heavy yellow cluster under the play button as a reference point and you’ll see everything from there matches up with the texture.
That texture you posed looks nothing like the one in the video. Not only is the shading different but also it has green balls.
While I do not believe it was reworked for the object, even if it were that would be counter to the point that just lifted it from google.
I noticed the low-quality texture on the ball pit when I first watched the trailer and was frankly surprised. I could understand it looking like this on the lowest quality settings but not with high graphics on. It’s bad.
probably going to install an alternative mod for it to look better… if it ever will exist in the internet.
I get how bad it is and how lazy it looks for the sims teams but I dont get why everyone is so angry… like really….calm down.
Reply to Ellah
Well, its reasonable to be critical of the things you pay money for; and especially be critical of a multi-billion dollar company who basically releases these packs, that just barely add anything more to the game, just to rake in more money. You have a whole team of developers and the best you could come up with is a ball pit that looks like it was developed in the early 1990s? Come on now.
Reply to Ellah
It’s not a free item. You paid money for it, and when you pay money for something that’s so blatantly phoned in, it’s natural to be upset about it. Have you tried placing it in the game? It looks horribly out of place. It’s the one object I can’t use, because it’s just so awful that it sticks out and distracts you the whole time. I paid money for something useless. Shouldn’t I be upset? They could have taken the time to add some texturing to the top of it. Didn’t have to render every ball or anything, just the top layer. Instead we get this lazy mess. So yeah… upset makes sense.
Reply to Ellah
People are mad because they just don’t get how much work goes into creating something like the ball pit and how hard a large polygon count is on most computers.
I get how bad it is and how lazy it looks for the sims teams but I dont get why everyone is so angry… like really….calm down.
Reply to Ellah
People are mad because they just don’t get how much work goes into creating something like the ball pit and how hard a large polygon count is on most computers.
Reply to Ellah
Well, its reasonable to be critical of the things you pay money for; and especially be critical of a multi-billion dollar company who basically releases these packs, that just barely add anything more to the game, just to rake in more money. You have a whole team of developers and the best you could come up with is a ball pit that looks like it was developed in the early 1990s? Come on now.
Reply to Ellah
It’s not a free item. You paid money for it, and when you pay money for something that’s so blatantly phoned in, it’s natural to be upset about it. Have you tried placing it in the game? It looks horribly out of place. It’s the one object I can’t use, because it’s just so awful that it sticks out and distracts you the whole time. I paid money for something useless. Shouldn’t I be upset? They could have taken the time to add some texturing to the top of it. Didn’t have to render every ball or anything, just the top layer. Instead we get this lazy mess. So yeah… upset makes sense.
That texture you posed looks nothing like the one in the video. Not only is the shading different but also it has green balls.
While I do not believe it was reworked for the object, even if it were that would be counter to the point that just lifted it from google.
I wonder if the ball pit was produced very late into the dev cycle of Toddler Stuff or if it was originally something else entirely (like a kiddie pool or something).
Reply to Nuclearxpotato
Oh god, you’re right. The whole thing behaves almost exactly like water. Kiddie pool seems like an excellent guess. This actually makes me dislike it less – I’d rather have a ball pit than a kiddie pool, so someone had a good idea!
That texture you posed looks nothing like the one in the video. Not only is the shading different but also it has green balls.
While I do not believe it was reworked for the object, even if it were that would be counter to the point that just lifted it from google.
Reply to Damon
The texture is exactly the same… If you took the time to look over it, you would find that it is an exact match. Use the heavy yellow cluster under the play button as a reference point and you’ll see everything from there matches up with the texture.
Reply to Damon
However, they still used it heavily as a reference. It’s not in the game files for nothing…
Oh that’s… bad. Should’ve been a 4×4 with meshed balls (insert laughter here), not a flat texture. They clearly had the means to do it so I don’t know why they didn’t, it’s pretty lazy.
Can kids even use it? Or is it only for toddlers like I assume?
Reply to Jake
What you don’t seem to get is that it takes a lot of effort for a computer to process something with high polygons. If the Sims team put in all the necessary polygons to make each ball round and to interact with other round balls.. your computer would basically burst into flames each time you would try to have a toddler play with the ball pit. But in all seriousness… unless you have a top of the line computer your computer would either lag or just crash each time the ball pit was in use. This has nothing to do with laziness. Most computers are just not good enough to process that well.
Reply to Jake
It’s just toddlers
probably going to install an alternative mod for it to look better… if it ever will exist in the internet.
if they took the time to just place balls on top of the flat surface i wouldn’t be mad. but that’s just ugly… why are they so slack?????
I noticed the low-quality texture on the ball pit when I first watched the trailer and was frankly surprised. I could understand it looking like this on the lowest quality settings but not with high graphics on. It’s bad.
Oh god i laughed so hard that just weird
But i dont agree with your last word. If they took a picture from Google they will have a problem with copy right, right? :/
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