Game Engines - some information, please

"mirta000;c-16979494" wrote:

"Archieonic;c-16979399" wrote:

Walkbys in TS2 are not the same as those rendered to utilize the common areas in TS4, which can escalate to several sims loaded. I.E San Myshuno, where there can be 12 sims in the common areas using the grills, talking, ordering food, etc. There are no such areas in TS2, and as such, walkbys are only loaded into your lot itself and just stroll across.

They would be in apartment building common areas and university lots.

And if inventory use is disabled, why even load it?

You could, and even then it would be one single lot, no areas other than that lot were enabled. In TS4 it's constant, all the time. The single algorithm that determines the walkbys is constantly being run 24/7 on any lot. Go to a nightclub? Well, that's, say, 10 sims there + 5+ walkbys. I find the 20 sim limit per zone arbitrary, it should be a setting. I get up to 40 sims in one lot with acceptable performance loss (from 100-120 FPS to 50-80 FPS) That's why I removed it. The devs seem hard bent on deciding for us if our rigs can handle more or not, we can choose that ourselves IMO. In TS2 that algorithm is much simpler and easier on processing power.

Inventory is tied in with Sim Data. It's part of a sim. To separate specific parts of a sim's data you have to build the data structure to support that, which is why the approach to retail is to instead make items marked for sale as non-valid for being input in a sim's inventory. An odd thing is that in theory, in the code, there is the ability for NPC sims to use items from their inventories, but it set as "allow_autonomous false". I'm guessing that is to prevent your other played sims from using up whatever items they have in their inventory that you'd not want them to consume. But it is entirely possible to open that door and you'd have your NPC sims consuming fruits and reading books from their own inventories.