Forum Discussion

SimmerNickYT's avatar
7 years ago

My feedback on the glass roofs

Yesterday we got the pre-EP patch for The Sims 4. As I builder I was very excited to see the new glass roofs coming! I’m very happy to see that this became a roof texture. But with this there are also some problems, which lead me to give up on this game as a builder for now.

The positive
First I’m going to start with all the positive feedback. I really like the different textures. We have a plain glass one, two others which have panels and we have three others with more complex shapes of the metal. I especially like the very traditional one with the Victorian-like iron shapes.
When you have lighting settings on ‘very high’, you will also see the sun shining through the glass roofs, with the shadows of the iron of the roofs.
https://i.imgur.com/KodBTXh.png
Glass pannel texture

https://i.imgur.com/K0iPGZr.png
Victorian-like glass texture

Also I really like how when placing a roof with the glass texture on the same place as a roof with a normal texure that the roof with the normal texture is the ‘dominant’ one which will show, instead of the glass one. This way we can create diagonal roof windows by extending the eaves. This can only be done at certain roof angels though.
https://i.imgur.com/nEj9i3d.png
Diagonal roof windows (Velux)

The negative
What I don’t like is how they still did not tackle the issue that under the roof the lighting is different than in a normal, four-wall, room. And I find this to be quite sloppy. Also the interior wallpaper on the walls of a roof are still the same as on the exterior.
https://i.imgur.com/0fLgZb7.png
Notciable difference in lighting

Now the biggest issue for me
This one is slightly difficult to understand, but bear with me.
To make glass roofs work, the roof has to be transparent, both inside and out. After all your Sims should be able to look outside through the roof.
The way that roofs looked on the interior was that they had a white/grey-ish colour. You also had this same colour on the eaves of the roof. They had to change this though, right? Otherwise Sims couldn’t look outside from the inside.
https://i.imgur.com/WLnF7xX.png
Interior diagonal roof colour/eaves colour before

So what the devs did: Roof textures are now double-sided. For glass roofs this means that, yes, your Sims can now look outside through the roof. But for regular roofs this means that the roof texture on the outside is now also showing on the inside. The white/grey-ish colour from earlier is now gone. With some textures this will look fine, but for roof tiles, or wooden shingle roofs this looks horrible.
https://i.imgur.com/3tHg7JN.png
Interior diagonal roof colour/eaves colour after

Another problem with this: the colour of the eaves are not seperate from the colours of the interior roof colour. At first the eaves were white/grey-ish, but those have the roof texture on them too now. So on every build we now have with roof tiles, the eaves now have roof tiles too.
I think this is so incredibly unrealistic. But what really upsets me is that they actually did this! Instead of adapting the glass roofs to be different from the other roofs, they adapted the other roofs for the glass roofs to work. And it does not work. Not for me at least. To me this reflects the bare minumum mentality that has happened too often in this game already. It's the last straw for me.

This will result in me leaving The Sims 4 for now, until they will acknowledge/fix what they have actually done. I am not trying to discredit the hard work of the devs. I really appreciate them adding this for us builders! I just can't get behind the fact that roof textures are now double-sided. For glass roofs it looks nice, but it ruins every basic roof.
I have seen many people that like this, but I don’t. I have never seen a house irl that has roof tiling on the eaves. There should be an option to change the eaves/interior roof walls or those who like it the way it is now. Because with some metal roof textures, it actually looks good on the interior.
https://i.imgur.com/6Rtq2Uh.png
It does look good with this texture. Please give us the option to have it like before or after!

EDIT1: According to SimGuruNick, this is an issue and not by design as he has been told. I mean I don't think this is wrong or anything, but I think they knew exactly what they were doing.
I don't think this is an issue that they will fix anytime soon. They would actually have to completely change all of the roofs. Until now they have been avoiding to do this.
https://twitter.com/SimGuruNick/status/1009146930717310976

EDIT2: And I'm weak. I was building again today in the game.
  • The other problem with the walls that are part of roofs is that they take the outdoor lighting conditions, so even if you do paper them to match the inside walls, they look different. I don't see why all walls, inside and out, don't have light and shadows the same as if they were outdoors, it looks much more realistic to have the walls making the room in shadow, instead of some weird artificial lighting algorithm making the whole room suddenly lighter or darker just by taking away or adding that last bit of wall.
  • anthonydyer's avatar
    anthonydyer
    Seasoned Traveler
    I've always been frustrated with roofs. Especially in Sims 4. I don't like how the game forces all roof 'walls' to be the same color. In sims 2 and 3, you could specify the color for each segment. Also you had the ability to delete particular sections, which came in handy when creating attics.

    I understand your frustration with the two-sided roofs. That does look bad. I currently have a house where I removed the ceiling and let the roof go above it. I'm afraid of what it looks like now. I'll have to start up the game.

    I kind of gave up on attics. 2 and 3 never had full support for attics, but I managed. 4 changed all the game behaviors and in order to have an attic going, I would have to set my game to walls down. I play with walls up. Also I cannot remove roof 'walls' so my attic is full with these useless roof 'walls' cluttering up the space. Hopefully things will get better.
  • anthonydyer's avatar
    anthonydyer
    Seasoned Traveler
    The sims 2 had a good structure when it comes to differentiating between indoor and outdoor. I remember I had just built a house, and I have not yet built a roof. My sims were sleeping, and it started to rain, so all of them jumped out of their beds and were upset. :)
  • anthonydyer's avatar
    anthonydyer
    Seasoned Traveler
    "Cynna;c-16552610" wrote:
    In TS3 and TS2 also (IIRC), it was possible to wallpaper the walls of the roof, inside and out, however we liked. I wish that, that customization hadn't been removed from the series.

    I used to love to build/decorate. However, with TS4 not so much. There are too many unnecessary restrictions. I really feel for the builders this time around -- no terrain tools, difficulty creating outbuildings, no constrainfloorelevations cheat. It's hard.


    Well said @Cynna ! This is precisely what the frustration is for builders. Especially the part with the unnecessary restrictions.
  • "IngeJones;c-16559964" wrote:
    The other problem with the walls that are part of roofs is that they take the outdoor lighting conditions, so even if you do paper them to match the inside walls, they look different. I don't see why all walls, inside and out, don't have light and shadows the same as if they were outdoors, it looks much more realistic to have the walls making the room in shadow, instead of some weird artificial lighting algorithm making the whole room suddenly lighter or darker just by taking away or adding that last bit of wall.

    I know what you mean. Outdoors and indoors are so different to each other in terms of color tone in this game. I don't like that overly blue tint to the outdoor lighting.
  • In the lastest patch they fixed the double-sided roofs. So now only glass roofs will be double-sided! Guess I didn't expect them to fix it this quickly! It makes me very happy and now the last point of this thread is completely irrelevant.