Dear fellow Simmers and Gurus, I find that I am frequently upset about the lack of features / some malfunction that is probably a result of the game engine. An insufficient game engine seemed to be the reason for discontinuing Sims 3 and it seems to be the reason that Sims 4 lacks open worlds, large animals and has these lagging problems. I am playing games like Skyrim or The Elder Scrolls online with massive open worlds, great wildlife and multiple players - and they do not crash or lag. How is that possible? Can this technology improve the Sims? I find that I have insufficient knowledge about the mechanisms behind the games. If we could understand the reasons for the difference/limitation, we could avoid unnecessary frustration. Is anybody in a position to explain something? Thank you very much.

Those games are not simulation game. You can jump into GTA V and have 100 pedestrians walking around, they won't do much to performance because their code is simply looping animations, basic pathfinding and playing audio. Same for MMOs, other players are simply feeding a server that is not run on your PC their actions and you see them on your client. Those type of games are worlds apart from simulation games.That's not the case in The Sims. Each sim that is loaded per instance has a vast atray of data to cycle through. Inventory, traits, relationships, hundreds of autonomy options, dozens of interactive items to cycle through, etc. Which sims get pushed per zone and why. How much data is stored in your current save. This is all being processed and calculated at all times.Granted optimization and bug fixing has been quite rough ever since The Sims 3 so that adds the icing on the cake for performance issues.

"mirta000;c-16979136" wrote:"Archieonic;c-16979025" wrote:Those games are not simulation game. You can jump into GTA V and have 100 pedestrians walking around, they won't do much to performance because their code is simply looping animations, basic pathfinding and playing audio. Same for MMOs, other players are simply feeding a server that is not run on your PC their actions and you see them on your client. Those type of games are worlds apart from simulation games.That's not the case in The Sims. Each sim that is loaded per instance has a vast atray of data to cycle through. Inventory, traits, relationships, hundreds of autonomy options, dozens of interactive items to cycle through, etc. Which sims get pushed per zone and why. How much data is stored in your current save. This is all being processed and calculated at all times.Granted optimization and bug fixing has been quite rough ever since The Sims 3 so that adds the icing on the cake for performance issues.erm, The Sims 4 ignores all that. The Sims 2 handled all that and didn't crumble away like that. Inventory and relationships non player controlable sims most definitely ignore, as they will easily have the interactions to hug, chat, kiss, or fight, no matter your relationship level. Worst enemies will try to autonomously make friends with you. I don't think that it also does any elimination process which sims to push to a zone, heck it can't even keep service sims consistent and it seems like it lacks the care whether or not vampires should be out in daylight, so I'm pretty sure that there's 0 consideration there. I think a city sim has more consideration for a single person than The Sims 4 really lol. And yeah, I'm curious what kind of monstrocity they built this on too.No, it doesn't. It's all in the code. Starting by TS2 not having a mechanic that pushes several sims, up to and beyond 10 around the neighborhood.The fact that they ignore their inventory does not mean the game is not loading it in the background. The fact that enemies may autonomously be friendly is irrelevant to my point that the game per sim calculates tons of autonomous possibilities. Inconsistencies are a result of poorly coded autonomy, which again irrelevant to my point of how autonomy lists and processes affect performance in simulation games.I'm going by what others report too, since with my specs I run TS4 with 35 mods and all packs at 100-120 FPS most of the time unless I do social events with 40 sims or something like that which breaks the vanilla limit.Wanna talk monstrocities? Check TS3's engine and code. Spaggheti code is an understatement.

"mirta000;c-16979255" wrote:"Archieonic;c-16979170" wrote:No, it doesn't. It's all in the code. Starting by TS2 not having a mechanic that pushes several sims, up to and beyond 10 around the neighborhood.The fact that they ignore their inventory does not mean the game is not loading it in the background. The fact that enemies may autonomously be friendly is irrelevant to my point that the game per sim calculates tons of autonomous possibilities. Inconsistencies are a result of poorly coded autonomy, which again irrelevant to my point of how autonomy lists and processes affect performance in simulation games.I'm going by what others report too, since with my specs I run TS4 with 35 mods and all packs at 100-120 FPS most of the time unless I do social events with 40 sims or something like that which breaks the vanilla limit.Wanna talk monstrocities? Check TS3's engine and code. Spaggheti code is an understatement.Sims 2 has people walking by your lot all the time. And community lots remember their workers. The Sims 3 works based on actual scheduling. Do you have some sort of insider info on how The Sims 4 was coded that you know that inventories are taken into account in the background? Because if any sim buys anything, unlike in The Sims 2, once you switch to them it WON'T be in their inventory and they WON'T be in that spot. Meaning for all purposes the inventory is switched off. I run The Sims 4 with no mods and simulation lag plagues me. The game seems to kill itself in one generation's time. Which is once again why I'm wondering what they made this on. 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.The functionality for retail is not what I'm talking about. That does not mean inventories are switched off, it means items are set to not be added to inventories in the retail event. A very good thing when you have people buying from big malls and then end up with 50 TVs. Your active sims, or sims that you have actively filled their inventories carry that data whenever they are spawned. You can find the code within the snippet/tuning files for inventory management. I.E sims can access their inventories at all times including NPCs, which is expressed as True True Actorwithin the inventory tuning files. However, that's just the surface, the game has over 30 tuning files referencing inventory handling. So no, it's not as simple as "It's switched off" for all sims that are not your active household. No insider info needed, anyone can find that out.Simulation lag is a rather simple (or simpler than EAxis makes it out to be) issue. In fact it is something disgruntling that a whole dev team hasn't even addressed a little bit to remedy it. It's an issue tied with how the in-game clock interacts with the simulation, and the multitasking "breaks" that multitasking-enabled interactions have.So by targetting: and 17Along with modifying the vanilla standards for interactions via a script mod you get a game that has roughly 75% less simulation lag or better. Don't get me wrong though, the fact that they haven't done anything about it yet is ridiculous.So the engine isn't the issue. I've been running my current save for a whooping 375 sim-days with no issues other than the bugs that plague everyone. And of course, if the issue was the engine itself, no amount of mods would work at all since mods either rewrite tuning files or scripts write their own code that utilize the engine.

"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.

"HannaZoja;c-16980603" wrote:Very informative, thank you. It may be OT, but which Mod or Mods are you using to prevent the idle animation bug?And does it mean, if I run a large Sims 3 word without sims AND switch of story progession, the performance of the game increases greatly?I think Sims 4 produces large numbers of NPCs, far more than the official number of inhabitants. Sims 3 without Story progression should not do such a thing... Am I right there?Right. TS2 and TS3 are different because the game only created townies/NPCs when necessary (if you played one, or died etc.) TS3's story progression culls (moves out Sims) or moves them around when it's on. It also has to keep up with every Sim in the world, so turning it off reduces some lag on lower end machines. But that isn't the reason to turn it off, the reason is so you can keep the same Sims in the world without seeing new ones, but the Sim next door may grow up but never move out of Mama's basement. So, it's up to you of what you want to control, let the game move him or her out or turn it off so you never see new townies for awhile, but good thing is you can turn it off and on whenever you want. (Was not in original base).TS4 culls just to be culling, to make the towns feel more transient. But I think that breaks immersion. It happens every Sunday in your game. A new townie replaces one already there simply to make you think the games has more depth and vibrant, when all it does is ruin your stories, ruin your plans, and ruin the performance.

Game Engines - some information, please

24 Replies

Deshong04
7 years ago
"HannaZoja;d-956366" wrote:
Dear fellow Simmers and Gurus, I find that I am frequently upset about the lack of features / some malfunction that is probably a result of the game engine. An insufficient game engine seemed to be the reason for discontinuing Sims 3 and it seems to be the reason that Sims 4 lacks open worlds, large animals and has these lagging problems. I am playing games like Skyrim or The Elder Scrolls online with massive open worlds, great wildlife and multiple players - and they do not crash or lag. How is that possible? Can this technology improve the Sims?
I find that I have insufficient knowledge about the mechanisms behind the games. If we could understand the reasons for the difference/limitation, we could avoid unnecessary frustration. Is anybody in a position to explain something? Thank you very much.

The reason for discontinuing The Sims 3 is because it has to end eventually. Would you say the same thing for the reason why The Sims and The Sims 2 was "discontinued"? If TS3 game engine is so bad I don't think it would have 11 EP's, 9 SP's and The Store. Not to mention, even survive if the majority did not like and enjoy it. Afterall, TS3 did outsell TS2 in 7 days of its release. Because apparently many liked what they saw in the trailers, watching others play the game, word of mouth, improvements and advancements over TS2, etc.

The Sims Olympus became The Sims 4 meaning there was nothing being development for the main PC series, the way I see it, after TS3. TSOlympus was going to be an online multiplayer kind of game similar to TSOnline. The only good thing about TSOnline is that it was a standalone version and never interfered with main PC series. I wonder why teens are the same height as adults? I wonder why initially for a well established AAA game that infants turned back into objects and toddlers just vanished? I wonder why everything that TS2/TS3 worked so hard to improve the series just went out the window? I wonder why TS4 is so cheaply made yet so expensive? I wonder why less quality and mediocre content is so popular that it's simply demanded?

As someone already said, TS is a different game entirely than most games out there. How it works is not the same method(s) you would find in a game like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim or Fallout 4. In fact, TS3 is the first Sims game and the last, thus far, to ever dramatically improve and advance how the game plays while still keeping true, for the most part, of what makes The Sims, The Sims. A true life simulator in terms of how it actually works by simulating and not imitating as it is for TS/TS2/TS4.
Cherwell99
7 years ago
"icmnfrsh;c-16980962" wrote:

I've had this idea for a while where in future Sims games, NPCs should be "empty shells" that lack personality so that you could have bigger crowds where they can serve as set dressing, and they're deleted once you stop seeing them, UNLESS your own sims interact meaningfully with one. And in that case, the NPC becomes fully realized with their own personality. Kind of like how IRL, you won't really meet most of the people you come across day-to-day, and you won't really notice if you never see them again. They only become prominent if you get to know them.

That is a brilliant idea! I hope they will do this one day!
Cherwell99
7 years ago
"Deshong04;c-16981697" wrote:

The reason for discontinuing The Sims 3 is because it has to end eventually. Would you say the same thing for the reason why The Sims and The Sims 2 was "discontinued"? If TS3 game engine is so bad I don't think it would have 11 EP's, 9 SP's and The Store. Not to mention, even survive if the majority did not like and enjoy it. Afterall, TS3 did outsell TS2 in 7 days of its release. Because apparently many liked what they saw in the trailers, watching others play the game, word of mouth, improvements and advancements over TS2, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I love TS3. I own all EP, 8 EP and some 50 Store items. I am now able to play the game without crashes, as I bought a maximum high end Alienware gaming PC about 2 years ago. Previously, as a student I played on a fairly decent Dell PC, which was better than the PCs most teenage girls use. I could play a world for about 10 sim-weeks, then I had to transfer the family to a "fresh world" in addition to using multiple clean saves. In the Asian world the game always crashed due to bad routing.
EA/Maxis has always been keen to sell the game to the Kids (no adult stuff in game). However, precisely this target group would did experience crashes even with some of the EP installed.

"Deshong04;c-16981697" wrote:

The Sims Olympus became The Sims 4 meaning there was nothing being development for the main PC series, the way I see it, after TS3. TSOlympus was going to be an online multiplayer kind of game similar to TSOnline. The only good thing about TSOnline is that it was a standalone version and never interfered with main PC series. ...

That is interesting, I never really heard about the Sims Olympus. (I generally hate online gaming.) Somebody else mentioned that TS4 was meant to be an online game. I hope they will not make the same mistake when they are planning Sims 5.
Deshong04
7 years ago
@HannaZoja It doesn't matter to me whether anyone likes and/or loves TS4 or not. Sure there are some who support ill business practices and poor quality games but that's not me. On the other hand, there are some who support good business practices and excellent quality games that sometimes goes beyond the expectations of fans. Those who support all the bad stuff will get exactly what they deserve in their gaming. Those who support all the good stuff will get exactly what they deserve in their gaming. Fair enough. The only unfortunate part is some franchises no longer live up to its expectation, quality, popularity/success, etc and something once loved becomes ruined because of greed and lack of integrity. Business-Minded vs Business and Consumer-Minded.

Well, you must be playing TS3 in an out-of-control manner because one of my current saves is at 85+ weeks. Though I have some cleaning to do to restore having the best performance. Before that without mods/game altering ones, I think it was around 100+ weeks. Like I stated in another topic, if The Sims Studio had gotten more information out there about how to maintain saves this wouldn't be an issue for some being so confused and frustrated. However, there are plenty of tutorials to help alleviate and/or avoid lag/stuttering/freezing/error code 12/crashing, etc. Though, it would have been more helpful if TS3 had a 64-bit version and overall decent optimization. Read that wrong. But even on my non gaming desktop with an incompatible integrated video card I didn't have much issues getting way past 10 Sim weeks. The only reason why I quit for months after WA was because of a graphical glitch and I just decided to give up playing the game on an incompatible computer until I received a gaming laptop.

Not sure what you mean by selling the game to kids. There are many mature gameplay elements in TS that are not suitable for kids. Teens are not kids but not adults either hence the terms childhood, teenhood and adulthood.
https://i.postimg.cc/jjHChdzM/Teen-Rating.png
http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.aspx

https://i.postimg.cc/wvWqWt3Q/TS3-Rating.png
http://www.esrb.org/ratings/Synopsis.aspx?Certificate=26182&Title=The+Sims+3

About Sims Olympus, etc.
https://metro.co.uk/2015/09/27/the-10-biggest-problems-with-the-sims-4-readers-feature-5409308/

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Game Engines - some information, please

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