Brian Bell – Senior Software Engineer on The Sims 4, shared some info on Game Developers Conference website about how The Sims 4 runs better on low-end machines. A few months ago, during The Sims 4’s big reveal, SimGuruRyan made a statement about The Sims 4 running better on low-end machines than The Sims 3:

We know that our players have a wide range of different PC specs. We want to make sure that somebody playing on a lower end machine has just as great an experience as somebody on a higher end machine.

Right now we’re doing a lot of work to optimise the game’s performance, cut down on loading screens, and make sure everything still looks as beautiful, the Sims feel as vibrant, and that your gameplay is just as much fun regardless of what spec you’re playing on.

Today, Brian Bell shared some interesting news about his upcoming class on GDC on how The Sims 4 works. What’s really interesting about this text is that he often compares The Sims 4 to an online game.

As online gaming continues to surge in popularity, simulation complexity increases rapidly and aggressively multi-core platforms become the standard, decoupling game presentation from simulation becomes increasingly important. For The Sims 4, we’ve developed a novel model for rendering high-fidelity synchronized behaviors involving multiple actors, even when driven by a simulation that runs at highly variable and/or low-frame rates, and which potentially communicates with the renderer over a high/variable latency connection. Historically, such products have often made significant compromises, either by requiring their simulations to run at real-time rates, and forcing extremely rigid synchronization, or by limiting visual quality in critical areas like character animation. Our solution addresses all of these, and is capable of scaling across a variety of game types by offering a core framework for individual game teams to extend and customize.

Takeaway

Attendees will leave this presentation with a working general knowledge sufficient to recreate a basic version of our solution to the problem of high-fidelity, multi-actor behavior in a game with a decoupled simulation, as well as specific solutions to common problems related to character animation in such an environment.

Intended Audience

The primary audience for this presentation is software engineers who are interested in delivering high-quality, multi-actor character animation and other visual behaviors in an online or otherwise parallel game architecture. Prior experience with online (client and server) and simulation-style game development is helpful, but not required.

GDC Link

Thanks to Rincon Del Simmer for the find!

Honeywell’s Sims 4 Blog made a post about the old The Sims 4 Survey. That Survey was leaked on 11th of June, 2013 – several weeks after The Sims 4 was announced.

Let’s take a look at the features that are confirmed by EA:

Wardrobe Moodlets – Outfit your Sims with a diverse range of clothing and aspire to get your Sims’ selective fashion items that can directly affect their mood.

Aspirations – Assign your Sims a long-term goal called an Aspiration then achieve it by having your Sims compete relevant short-term goals throughout their life.

New CAS System – Just like modeling clay, Create a Sim is a powerful, easy-to-use tool that lets you directly sculpt face or body features by clicking and dragging to perfection.

Events – Easily host or attend events with your Sims to earn rewards, complete goals, enhance skills or jobs and discover new storytelling and relationship possibilities with neighbors!

Featured Looks – With Featured Looks you choose from a catalog of curated styles and outfit your Sims in designer looks with just one click.

Magazine View – Flip through Magazine View to choose from pre-configured, fully furnished room layouts, then drop the entire room into your home with just one click.

Group Socializing – Your Sims social interactions are more realistic and lifelike in social groupings.

Multitasking – For the first time in The Sims, your Sims can now multitask by doing many actions at once, such as enjoy a drink while talking to friends and watching TV, giving them more realistic living and social behaviors.

Levels of Emotions – Your Sims’ emotions have varying levels of advancement, giving you the power and control to push their emotions to the extremes creating new and interesting gameplay opportunities to explore.

Account Achievements – Unlock Account Achievements for completing in-game tasks and earning accomplishments, then share or compare your progress with your friends. Note: Account achievements are confirmed, the share & compare w/ friends isn’t as of yet.

Reward System – Earn new objects, outfits and Sim Traits for completing in-game tasks like completing Events, finding Collectibles, being featured in Sims Share, and unlocking Account Achievements.

Environment Impact – Objects and decorative items in your home impacts your Sims’ emotions and mood, giving you the power to create a room that’s inspiring, romantic, depressing, or anywhere in between.

New Build System – Build the home of your dreams with a powerful new range of tools that allow such great control as moving an entire room with ease, placing new walls with prevision and adding detailed finishing touches.

Expressiveness – Quickly see how your different Sims may be feeling by watching their facial expressions, vocal tone, and body movements, not just a bar or icon in the UI.

Memory Moodlets – Create memories through captured screenshots and assign emotions to them – when your Sims reminisce about the memory, they’ll get that emotional buff.

Possible features from the Survey that are not confirmed:

World Creation Tool – With the world creation tool you can change the terrain, place environmental objects, and create a custom backdrop for your Sims’ neighborhood.

Personalized Neighborhoods – Each section of a neighborhood is yours to personalize through shared content or Maxis creations that you place yourself.

Cradle to Grave – Sims can experience age-specific gameplay and a true life cycle with big life moments such as birth, marriage, and death.

Traits – Create unique Sims with traits that change the way they can interact with the world around them. Watch as your decisions cause Sims’ traits to evolve and lead to surprising moments.

Possible Online features from the Survey that are not confirmed:

Real-Time Co-Op Gameplay – Invite a friend into your game to play cooperatively, share a home and manage your Sims together all in one online world that continually evolves even when you’re away.

Remote Sim Share – Use Remote Sim Share on the web, your mobile device or tablet to browse The Sims community’s creations then queue them up for download to your PC.

Create a Sim Mobile – Harness the powerful new Create a Sim tool on your mobile device to create Sims on the go, then upload to your The Sims 4 game on your PC.

Live Stream – Use this built-in tool your game to an online streaming provider and give The Sims community the opportunity to watch you play.

Account Achievements – Unlock Account Achievements for completing in-game tasks and earning accomplishments, then share or compare your progress with your friends.

Player-Run Events – Invite your friends to your own special Event like weddings and birthday parties to unlock new skills, level up your Sims and make progress together in a social environment.

Mobile Stats App – Get a robust breakdown of your game stats and your Sims’ activities by using this Mobile Stats App.

Mobile Mini-Games – Take control of your Sims’ dreams while on the go by playing mini games that will effect your Sims’ emotion and advance their careers, then check their progress in game when you return to your PC.

Integrated Sim Share – Participate in Sim Share to instantly share and track your Sim or home creations with the world. Seamlessly browse creations made by The Sims community within the game.

More than 50% of the features from the Survey are confirmed. Time will only tell will the unconfirmed/unmentioned features be in The Sims 4 or not.

Source: Honeywell’s Sims 4 Blog, Lace’s Blog

Blog Post

During the Summer of 2013, I interned at Electronic Arts in Redwood Shores as a Software Engineering Intern with a focus on Gameplay User-Interface features on The Sims 4. It was a full circle experience. The Sims was “the game” of my childhood; the one I played most often. Now I was getting to contribute to the latest installment of the game.

While I was there the engineering team met a big deadline, so we were all treated with a 3-day hackathon (we could code anything we wanted into the game, as long as it got support from the producers & designers of the game [to make sure it was appropriate for The Sims]). I took the time adding features and special objects to the game that I know the little me would have loved and obsessed over.

It was a great experience. I could see this being my job in the future. It wasn’t really a “job” in the normal sense where people dread going to them. I am not a morning person. Not at all. All my courses this semester are in the afternoon. But I was continually waking up at 8am to head into work and staying at work until 7pm. (As a reference, most engineers didn’t get into the office until 10am and then stayed at work until 7 or 8pm). Anyways, long story short I found myself trying to spend as much time as possible working on the game. It was this summer on The Sims 4 that I knew that I wanted to make video games for a living and that I wouldn’t be happy doing anything else.

EXPERIENCE

MORE INFO, PHOTOS & VIDEOS TO BE ADDED POST GAME RELEASE 😉

While I was there the engineering team met a big deadline so we were all rewarded with a 3-day long hackathon. I contributed to multiple features during Engineering Team’s Hackathon.

Hackathon participation included:

    – Receiving Producer support on features and created design documents for features

    – Coordinating features with several other engineers on the team

    – Assisting Producers with adding content to the game, which included adding of some Easter Eggs

    – Receiving art support to add special object to game (Hackathon was suppose to be limited to engineering only)

    – One feature’s tech has been reused to implement a planned game feature

Thanks to Rincon Del Simmer for the find!

Update: The Sims Brazil changed the text from September 2014 to Autumn 2014. That can only mean one thing…  😀

Source: SimsDomination

How exciting! According to a blog post, EA Brazil has let it slip that The Sims 4 is set to release in September.

Check out this link to read the full blog post!

Image below is part of the blog post that has been translated.

SimGuruSarah updated her Twitter Profile picture with a picture of a Sim in The Sims 4 that looks like her! Sarah said that she planned to update her picture a long time ago, and that today it seemed like a good day to do so.