Forum Discussion

datawrangler's avatar
datawrangler
New Traveler
6 years ago

Re: [FIXED] Jumpy Animations/Sims teleport

I don't think this bug has much to do with the power of the computer. Here's why:

Say I direct my sim to clean up a dish. The expected behavior would be to walk over to the dish, pick it up, walk over to the sink, and wash it.

If I set my graphics to ultra, the frame rate drops to below 1 fps, and my sim appears to "blink" from one position to the next, BUT it still performs the actions in the correct sequence.

When the bug manifests, the sim will walk to the plate, not pick it up, walk to the sink, blink back to the plate, pick it up, blink back to the sink, and wash the plate. I say "blink" instead of teleport because teleporting is something that is an actual ability in the game, and usually involves the sim fading out of their current location and fading into their new location. There's none of that here - one moment the sim is here, the next it's there.

It REALLY annoys me when people give a quick diagnosis of insufficient computing power as the cause of a bug without getting a proper understanding of the bug. It COULD be a hardware problem, but before I believe that, I need an explanation of exactly HOW my hardware is causing the bug. If it's just a case of no one tested it on a system that barely meets the minimum requirements, I consider that a software engineering problem. The engineers have an obligation to write the code so it will function properly on any system that meets the minimum requirements. It's a poor worker who blames their tools.

Anyway (stepping down off of soapbox), the bug looks to me like an action queue and/or routing problem, not a graphics problem. The frequency of occurrence on my setup has gone up or down with each patch, it has not gotten consistently worse as more load is put on the system.

- an out-of-work software developer who gets very annoyed by poor quality software made by software developers with jobs

6 Replies

Replies have been turned off for this discussion
  • jpkarlsen's avatar
    jpkarlsen
    Hero (Retired)
    6 years ago

    @datawrangler 

    That you meet the minimum requirements does not mean that you are guaranteed to run the game at the highest possible settings. That is why there are also recommended requirements. If you meet these you should be able to run the base game at high settings.For ultra settings you should exceed even these.If you only meet minimum requirements means that you should be able to run the game on minimum settings.

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    6 years ago

    I did initially think it might be a computer problem, but I tried with everything on lowest settings and still have the problems, and the Can You Run It tool thing shows I exceed the recommended settings.

    I found the post by datawrangler interesting because I have seen similar behaviour, in that sometimes my sims teleport but still "do" the actions, and sometimes they take random extra steps to their destination.

  • jpkarlsen's avatar
    jpkarlsen
    Hero (Retired)
    6 years ago

    @Anonymous 

    There is a known problem that I mention above with spellcasters. That is however not all there are also issues with Mods and CC and some cases where there is no known cause. The latter are examined by EA to see if a cause can be found.

  • datawrangler's avatar
    datawrangler
    New Traveler
    6 years ago

    @jpkarlsen

    OF COURSE! If my system only meets the minimum requirements, I can only expect it to perform (correctly) at the minimum settings.

    My point was that the behavior demonstrated was not explained by graphics settings beyond the capability of the hardware. I do not expect high performance out of minimum hardware, only correct behavior at the lowest settings. This means the software should be tested on that sort of configuration, and the default testing protocol is to test on the developers' machines, which are usually high-end.

  • datawrangler's avatar
    datawrangler
    New Traveler
    6 years ago
    @Anonymous

    I have also seen the behavior you describe, on occasion.
  • datawrangler's avatar
    datawrangler
    New Traveler
    6 years ago
    @jpkarlsen wrote:

    The latter are examined by EA to see if a cause can be found.

    In my experience, the first step in fixing a bug is reproducing it. Only then can one investigate into a possible cause. There's no reason the Maxis engineers can't install the particular mods a user had and try to replicate the bug. They probably don't because if the mods cause the bug, then their efforts are mostly wasted. Before submitting a bug, we (the user community) should try to replicate the bug without mods or cc. And the more information we can provide on how to replicate the bug, the greater the likelihood of them being able to fix it when it finally gets to the top of their work queue.

    This particular bug, while extremely jarring, doesn't really do (much) harm to game play. The sims still execute the actions in their queue, just in a weird way. That probably makes it a lower priority. I suspect the engineers simply haven't gotten to this one yet.

About The Sims 4 Bug Reports - Archive

This is a read-only archive of bugs previously reported on Answers HQ. Click "The Sims 4 Bug Reports" in the right-rail to browse and create new bugs.14,625 PostsLatest Activity: 4 years ago