Re: 💡 Ideas > THINGS we want to see in The Sims 4 !!!

@Ashleyc1144 I'm assuming from the wording of your question that you're aware there's currently no ability to adjust height. Height is presently being used to distinguish between the ages (teens are shorter than adults).

Though I understand that it would make it more complicated to spot teens compared with a 'petite' adult, I also think it would be fun to be able to have at least a couple of height variations for adults. Perhaps if they made it possible to make an adult shorter (like the height of a teen) we could at least have that much of a variant for adults, and it would still stay within the height/clearance restraints for interacting with objects that are currently in place.

I assume this would cause the need to adjust clothing (perhaps making it able to 'stretch' in height like the clothing currently adjusts to weight gain and pregnancy). Anyway, I do think players would have fun with this option, so I'll give you a 'me too' and 'XP' on this one. Good luck! 🤞🏻

Hey @Ashleyc1144 may be you are aware of the fact that there is a height sliders modification. I can not share any links here but you can google it.
So as long as this possibility is not provided by EA you might try this mod.
Good luck.

Hi @SheriGR  As @Trismagistos mentioned, there are mods that already add height sliders and the various clothing items seem to adjust just fine. The biggest problem is the animations for some of the social interactions like hugging and kissing seem off. I know that not everyone wants mods in their games anyway so I am going to Me Too this as well. I would love to see this added and maybe not even a true slider but a few presets like short and extra short to average to tall and extra tall. This might make it easier to adjust the animations for those social interactions than if they went with a true slider.

@Psychotps I think you make a good point about the need to adjust so many things for a new height animation. I'm not familiar with game code, but I'm guessing the fact that since animations are in place for the 'teen' height that adding a 2nd adult height that's the same as the teen height would take far less adjustment to have things interact properly?

@SheriGR

The way I see it is like this...

Imagine there is a "height" slider in CAS. You click on it to drag it up. It goes up a notch. How many notches are there total? 5? 10? Let's say there are only TWO. Two different heights for your sim.

Let's say Sim1 and Sim2 are both at height "1" (of 2) The animation would not need one sim to "bend" over to align the kiss properly.

(Edit: Oh, now that's interesting. Would two sims at height "1" use the same animation as two sims at height "2"???)

If Sim1 is at height 1 and Sim2 is at height 2, the animation would need to be adjusted so a height 1 sim can properly tilt their head back to properly align with a height 2 sim. And vice-versa the height 2 sim tilts their head down to meet the height 1 sim.

That would require 4 animations.1->1, 1->2, 2->1, 2->2

With 10 different "notches" on the slider, you'd need 100 animations for each different height to match properly. You might be able to get away with fobbing it down a little and say like heights 1-3 use one animation, 4-6 use a second one... but you're still talking a LOT more animations.

I didn't even think about teens. Are teens the same height? If not, If you want teens/young adults to be included, then double the number of animations. Adults too? Holy cow... I'll need a calculator to figure that one out. I think it'd be something like (10^2)^3 animations?

I suppose it depends on if Teens/Young Adults/Adults are the exact same height as far as animation alignment is concerned. If they are the same height, then it would only be 10^2 animations total per. It would also depend on how different the actual height is per "notch". If it's not very much, then you may only need 1 new animation per 2-3 "notches". That would bring it down to something like 5^2 or 4^2. But given the number of total animations in the game, even 3 additional animations per animation (2^2) may end up being hundreds of thousands of new animations...

PS... I hope I didn't get too "technical"... I tried to simplify...

@Psychotps No, what I mean is teens are slightly shorter than adults, if I remember correctly, so there should already be interactions in place for that one additional height that they could attach to the one additional adult height. No worries about 'technical'. I do code, but mine is web design, not game code. 😉

@SheriGRI think a better way of doing it may be to use actual sim "heights" and not "Teen heights 1-10", "YA heights 1-10", etc.

Say teens are heights 5-15, YA are 7-17, etc. That way you can use one set of animations for everyone and only have to align say "5" to "8" or "12" to "9". It would cut down the number of animations two or three-fold. Of course that would mean teens would end up using the same animation as YA and A... which is not currently the case for some animations.

I don't think it's the fact that they're different heights, but they have different animations in some cases. The "Kiss" animation I used in my example is different for Teens vs YA/A. For those animations that are the same, then we're back to (10^2)^3 animations (minus 1 or 2 for your example of existing differences in heights... which doesn't account for much with all the new ones)

It'd depend on the animations. The "kiss" animation isn't meant for Teens/YA. They are different. (Try using MCCC to remove the T/YA restrictions in romance and have them kiss, you'll see what I mean) Some are different, some are the same.

Of course, different animations would end up the same way. A teen/teen kiss would be 10^2 animations, YA/YA = 10^2, which would end up being (10^2)^2 only spread over two different animations.

Lol... FYI I did web design but it was YEARS ago... the furthest I got was PHP. Current stuff is way beyond me and can get almost as complex as code.

PPS... of course, I'm only an Analyst.  I "see" things, how problems work. It might all be completely different in whatever code they use. I just don't see how atm.

It will not so much depend on bigger hard drives @Psychotps. It will probably ask a lot of computing power i.e. processor speed and Random Acces Memory. When you want to have the infinite numbers your calculated you will need something like a super or a quantum computer. But it is not purely the difference in height. When you look at the animation programs which you can use to make your own cc there is the possibility to install extra bones and rigs, thus you will be able to bend a neck a little bit extra. This results in not creating that much extra animation interactions. The Sims in CAS will look more lifelike as well, when there is the possibility of height sliders. I suggest that they could start with for instance 2 different body lengths for each cohort.
When they would also start sliding the legs or arms your initial calculations will be definitely more correct.

By the way, in a number of occasions i noticed that kids of let say 5-12 years seem to stretch more than would be "humanly' possible in their hugging interactions with older, grown-up sims. I never heard any one on any forum complain about these 'glitches'

Sorry @Psychotps, but i totally disagree with you. I just checked your statement and made a screenshot of the task manager and checked my Sims 4 folder twice. My Sims 4 folder contains round about 10 GB. almost 1.5 GB is custom music and over 2.2 GB of the space is taken up by al sorts of mods and scripting etc. That boils down to 6.3 GB for all the Sims 4 expansion packs etc.

I have a self/homemade gaming PC (Windows 10 pro) with an i9 processor and 32 Gig RAM, I use one of the newest Nvidia graphic cards: GeForce RTX 2080 Super. The rest of the specs are not needed in this discussion but i am willing to give them if you want them.

When i start up the Sims 4 it initially takes up 10% of the processor and almost half of the RAM. Agreed i also run a couple of other programs simultaneously which will make up for the rest of the usage.

Just check the screenshot i attached. I also attached a second screenshot to show you how much everything uses when the game is in full swing.

In the past, for Sims 3, i made some mods myself including a couple of animations. Okay i think they sucked that is why i stopped making them. I leave that task to the more nerdy brains. Nowadays i just enjoy playing Sims 4.

@Trismagistos 

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@Trismagistos wrote:

Sorry @Psychotps, but i totally disagree with you. I just checked your statement and made a screenshot of the task manager and checked my Sims 4 folder twice. My Sims 4 folder contains round about 10 GB. almost 1.5 GB is custom music and over 2.2 GB of the space is taken up by al sorts of mods and scripting etc. That boils down to 6.3 GB for all the Sims 4 expansion packs etc.

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What do you mean in the sentence I've put in bold? Please could you clarify?

@BluebellfloraQuit simple. That amount is all the saves etc. in The Sims 4 that is stored in the Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4 folder itself.
The amount of space that is in the Origin folder is round about 44 GB. Together that ads up to max 50 GB. Psychotps was talking about the huge hard disk it would require to ad extra animations for the height of the Sims 4.

@Trismagistos 

Yes but you're still not answering my question and frankly, it seems like you are muddling up game data and user data disk space. You are stating in your previous comment regarding the Sims 4 folder - "That boils down to 6.3 GB for all the Sims 4 expansion packs etc." - that packs take up space in the user folder, which they do not. Packs are installed into the Sims 4 application/program and can clearly be seen when you look in the game files. I realise this is OT with respect to the OP's initial request for additional heights, but feel it should be explained further because a lot of people read these forums and erroneous information, or information that is not clearly explained, does not help anyone.

We don't need to agree with each other, this is the General Discussion & Feedback forum, open for conversation and opinion.

@Bluebellflora
In my opinion the discussion still has to do with the amount of harddisk space that would be needed if height sliders would be part of the game itself.

I think you are trying to steer away from that part of the discussion.

Besides the round about 44 GB that the Base Game and all the Expansion Packs use on my Harddisk (I also downloaded the Legacy Edition, which is about 6.5 GB).
These files are stored in the Origin Games folder which can be found on the disk where the player wants them to be. (I store my games on a separate harddisk)

Perhaps it is my fault to think that most of the participants in this debat would know how much it would take. And of course this is a variable because not everybody has all the Expansion Packs.

I will answer your question about my user folder. In my folder I have 2.2 GB of Mods (including the variable Height Slider which hardly takes up diskspace) 1.5 GB of custom music, and most of the rest is saves (5.2 GB that is because i use al lot of different types of gameplay) Than 1.1 GB of Screenshots, small video's etc (The rest is neglectable) So this ads up to 8.4 GB. Together with the folder in which the Game itself is stored i get to round about 52.GB for all Sims 4 stuff

So, please tell me if you think that is a lot of harddisk space? Nowadays you can buy a harddisk of 4 TB. Hopefully you will grant me an answer as i answered your question.

And perhaps you will also be able to tell me why you think the whole Sims 4 game will not demand more computing power when the mentioned height sliders will be added to the base game? 

I hope you can clearly see how much all the pack including mods already ask of my PC, which is not a standard run-of-the mill.

In my view, adding any height sliders to the base game will not demand a lot more diskspace. 

@Trismagistos 

Right, but you specifically said:

"My Sims 4 folder contains round about 10 GB. almost 1.5 GB is custom music and over 2.2 GB of the space is taken up by al sorts of mods and scripting etc. That boils down to 6.3 GB for all the Sims 4 expansion packs etc."

What is the relevance to packs in that statement? How do they make the Sims 4 folder larger?  Sure they make the installed game bigger, that goes without saying. But you have just broken down that 6.3 GB and confirmed that your Saves folder takes up the bulk of it (5.2 GB) because of your gameplay style. That's not the packs adding more to the folder, it's you.

I'm not steering away from the height adjustment discussion, but I am asking for clarification on the above statement because it is relevant to hard disk space and apparent confusion as to what the user's Sims 4 folder contains.

Exactly how much more CPU and RAM do you think a machine will need to deal with different height sims wandering around? Or the ability to change height in CAS with a slider? Have you run performance tests with CC height sliders vs none?

I honestly think it would be a dandy idea to have height in the game but I think it'd be best left for sims 5. Height would be a crazy addition and think of all the stuff the animators have to do to make it work well in the game seeing as I've used the height mod in my game before(specifically sims 3) and the amount of distortion between two different heights in sims is a little hilarious. 

The height slider mod I use is only a 3 kb package file & using it vs. not using it makes no real difference in CPU or memory usage that I can tell. No bloat in save file sizes either. My teen - elder Sims vary in height from +20% to -15% of normal Sims. At those sizes the Sims do not look distorted at all. Virtually all animations look fine for tall or short Sims, even for things like holding hands or hugging. There must already be some form of compensating for height differences built into the mod, otherwise their hands would be off, like they are playing patty-cake and not holding hands! xD. The only thing that doesn't line up well for Sims at the extreme ends of my settings are their lips when they are kissing, but even then you have to look really close to notice it. I imagine anything the game devs would come up with, if they ever decided to add something like this to the game, would be even more polished than that.

I'm not trying to encourage the use of mods here, that's up to each player as long as they understand and accept the risks that go along with using them. I do like the variety that having different sized Sims brings to my game so I am still Me Too with the original post.

I love that we can make diverse characters with all the different skin tones, markings, and all that, but I feel like what would make it a lot better would be if we could make sims taller or shorter. Maybe not the toddlers and under, but the children and up could have some way to edit their height. I feel like it would make sims a lot more diverse and add a bit more realness.

I'd also like it if there was a way to choose a gallery pose for a household when you upload it. I don't exactly enjoy having to click through a bunch of randomized poses and still end up with a not-so-good photo. I'd enjoy it if we could choose poses instead for our households. The same goes for the poses in-game when pictures are taken of sims on the cameras. The poses aren't bad, but they could be better. Especially the Flash Photo Studio. I'd like it if it were possible to have different poses rather than have just one pose and not be able to switch it like how you can with the regular handheld cameras.

You should lower the heist so you can be shorter cuz it'll be fun to have very short characters imagine playing something Buddy and you're very short you cannot be tackled