Re: Adding height to The Sims 4 or maybe it will be a Sims 5 edition
Don't hold your breath because it's not as simple as just making one sim taller or another sim smaller and bingo, you're done! Speaking as a self-taught 3D artist and self-taught coder, the problem is that in order to keep one sim from kissing another's knees (lol nice example OP) is that targets are generally created during the coding, adjusted during modeling and then positioned during the animating process. For example in order to reach the lips of Sim A by Sim B, Sim B must tilt its head downward by angle s while Sim A tilts its head upward by angle r. Then if Sim B decides to kiss Sim C, Sim B instead has to tilt its head upward by angle r and Sim C has to tilt its head downward by angle s where r and s are variables designated to angle of tilt for kissing. That's just for the head. Any physical interaction between sims would also have to be adjust so that if Sim B is trying to brush the cheek of Sim C for example, Sim B's hand isn't actually brushing the air above Sim C's head. So now, instead of having one action animation that fits all sims of that age group, you have to have many animations for each sim of every height variation. After all, trying to kiss someone that is a full foot shorter than you is a lot different than trying to kiss someone that is just an inch or so shorter. Coding could be written perhaps to adjust these different angles but again coding is tricky.
Think about how one game would likely have upwards of a million lines of code (I've never programmed a game so can't be certain), however from my own limited programming experience I can tell you it takes a lot of code to perform some simple tasks. Also coding is a lot more demanding than say writing a thesis. In a thesis if you misspell a word or misplace a comma, you get points off for it. If you misplace a comma or misspell a word in a massive code, the code breaks.
So imagine trying to tell a computer to tell a skeleton to tell a body that there is someone in front of it that wants to kiss it. Then telling that computer to tell that skeleton to tell that body where that someone's lips are. Now the computer has to adjust how far the head and the back have to tilt and if perhaps one sim may have to raise itself up on its toes while the other sim bends its knees. Typically from what I've learned by talking to people in the industry, animations are done then adopted by all characters so that these details are dealt with. However, adding height variants suddenly takes away the possibility of creating a one size fits all animation loop and now coders have to manipulate the skeleton (called the rig) to meet each individual encounter. That sounds to me like massive code re-writes.
That's just for height. A lot of what people (myself included) would love to see in the game simply can not be done after the initial coding is written without risking a full breakdown of the entire code. Coding can be very strong and powerful but coding is always more fragile than glass. The whole plane of glass is always just one crack away from shattering.
So that's my perspective based on my personal experience. Perhaps in four years, after I've gotten my BAA in game development, I'll have a clearer understanding and find out I'm wrong but I don't see how.
Anyway, I've always loved the idea of height variation but until I started playing with modeling, rigging and animating objects as well as picking back up on basic programming in office settings, I didn't realize just how much goes into a single line of code and just how fragile an entire game can be. After all, how many times does a new update come out and suddenly people start reporting new breaks in seemingly unrelated areas? That's the nature of glass, it splinters before it breaks.
