Simfans.de shared with us these gorgeous Willow Creek concepts in High Quality!  🙂

Honeywell put together a list of new and interesting info from PC Games‘ Preview of The Sims 4. This preview was not made during E3, but after PC Games’ visit to Electronic Arts in Redwood Shores.

Please note that the text below was translated from Deutsch to English using Google Translate, so there may be a few grammar errors.

CONVERSATION

• Large number of topics; compared to a graphic adventure.

VENUES/NEIGHBORHOOD ACTIVITIES

• Park, playground (with a pirate ship), library, gym (where an elder Sim died of a heart attack), museum and bar are all mentioned.
• You can tend the Community Garden, pick fruit trees, and fish in the canal and then use those fresh ingredients to cook meals.

SOCIAL EVENTS

• Party, Dates and Weddings
• Unlock optional goals and rewards
• In addition to guests you have the option to invite an entertainer, a catering service and a bartender.

ANIMATIONS

• 10,000 animation clips
• “There is no maximum number of concurrent actions.  Your Sims, for example, can now be in the gym running on a treadmill while talking at the same time and watch TV” —Marion Gothier

MUSIC

• 65 hours of music in 8 variants
• Aproximately 3 dozen songs
• Radio stations include:  alternative, blues, electronic and pop.

Via PC Games!

Via PCGames

Source: SimCookie

Jeux Video visited Electronic Arts in Redwood Shores to learn more about The Sims 4. Some info they mentioned are the stuff we already know, but they did include 2 new informations about in-game music of TS4:

• There are 25 music composed in Simlish.
• Music will be softer in character creation and more rhythmic when choosing clothing.

They also included this new CAS image!

Thanks SimCookie for the find!

SimGuruGraham decided to answer some questions about The Sims 4 on Twitter. We summarized all of his tweets into a bullet list:

• You can delete all the Sims living in the world. The game will continue to randomly generate other Sims that come visit though.
•  For visitors (townies), the game will first attempt to pull Sims from an editable list of Sims that don’t live in any world before it randomly generates additional Sims. Theoretically you could populate that list with a bunch of your Sims and it would never need to pull in any random Sims as visitors.
• There’s a little trick you can do in Sims 4 that lets you lock your camera to follow a NPC. It’s fun to do on occasion.
• Yup the censor grid is making a return. Just small enough to watch your Sim poop while reading their tablet if you’re into that.
• You can change between multiple outfits at any time, or take your Sim back into CAS to plan new outfits.
• There isn’t a stylist career in the base game. When you go back into CAS it’s just for changing things like clothes, makeup, etc.
• Moodlets are back – they help you understand why your Sim is in a particular emotion. They aren’t strictly positive/negative now.
• Wishes are gone. They’ve been replaced with Whims (similar concept, but a bit more fleeting and moment to moment than a wish).
•  There are no “neutral” moodlets; every moodlet contributes to an emotion. When Sims have their needs get low for example, they get moodlets that push them into the uncomfortable emotion. The traditional need bars are there as well.
• The main difference is you don’t promise a whim to a Sim. They naturally come and go based on what you’re currently doing, so they help provide some direction and give you more ideas about what additional possibilities there are for your Sim.
• And for longer term life direction, there are now aspirations instead of lifetime wishes. Aspirations provide more steps along the way rather than one ultimate goal, and you can change your aspiration to something else anytime you like.
• You can’t lock a whim.

A Sims fan asked EA Brazil on Twitter why does Battlefild Beta exists and not The Sims 4 Beta.  They replied with ”Demo is enough? Soon, soon”.

This isn’t the first time EA Brazil ”leaked” a certain Sims information. Each of their leak was confirmed several days/weeks later, so let’s hope this one will be confirmed soon as well.

This tweet by EA Brazil can be related to our The Sims 4 CAS Demo find.

Source: @TheSims4Info

Mica Burton revealed her and her husband’s Simself that was created during E3.

Memina11 posted scans of PC Gamer’s new issue that includes The Sims 4 Preview. Make sure you take a look at all the screens and read the text!

Click on the pictures below to see them in higher resolution!

Why we love gaming’s reality playground (and you should too) by Chris Thursten

CAS
“The only strict limitation is character height—every Sim in any given age bracket is approximately the same size, a restriction imposed by the animation system.” 

“You can “lock” particular parts of your appearance and randomize the rest, in which case the game will do its best to pick complementary body shapes and coherent fashions.” 

“The only sliders you’ll need to adjust affect your Sims weight and musculature, variables that will also be affected by the activities you choose to pursue in the game itself.  

These don’t just change the dimensions of your character, but the textures they’re actually drawn with—a fitness—crazed Sim will look more muscular than an otherwise-healthy Sim of the same shape who does not work out.” 

SEARCH FEATURE
“I appreciated the new sorting filters; you can filter the catalog by style and color. “Pick “red” for example, and the game will display every piece of clothing with red in it—from dinner jackets to argyle sweaters.  

This system is also used when you are picking wallpaper and flooring options. Across the board it’s much easier to pull together a look that you’re happy with.” 

GENETICS
“Once you’ve created a single Sim in a household, it’s now possible to genetically derive their relatives. You can do this up or down the family tree.

Unlike the Sims 3, where you could only derive children from their parents, you can now derive parents from children and brothers from sisters and so on.” 

THE GALLERY
“Online sharing of Sims house and rooms is now integrated into the game proper, enabling players with an internet connection to upload their own designs and download ideas from other people. You can also store local copies of anything you’ve made for later use, which is both a handy convenience feature and a sign that Maxis has learned an important lesson regarding players who want to play without an internet connection.” 

GAMEPLAY/TRAITS
“I was worried that despite the variety of emotional responses on offer, Sims would be essentially similar in their preferences—that the world would be built of absolute emotional correlations. Traits upset that.

Despite having performed the same action, each character’s underlying traits fundamentally changed the nature of the action that followed.” 

“I like the idea that I will be able to create Sims that clash with one another, that don’t all need to do the same things in order to fulfill their needs—because that’s how people really are.” 

CONCLUSION
“The only thing dampening my enthusiasm for the game in the months before the release is concern about its stability. The version I was shown was alpha software, so problems are to be expected—but there were none the less prominent crashes and the odd overlong loading screen.” 

“The game seems remarkably complete, content wise—Maxis promises more stuff to do on day one than any prior Sims launch—so perhaps there’s time to get on top of the issues I saw. I hope so, because what I’ve seen of the Sims 4 has rekindled my affection for the series.”

Source: jimmysnan, Honeywell