Simming Tips, Tricks, and Curiosities

Simming Tips #15: Rug-ged Living

In Simming Tips #11 we traversed past the first swatch of the things that adorn the four sides of a room, in order to find "where the wall things are". Now it's time to go back. The world within Build Mode yet hides more secrets to uncover beyond the first swatch. This time, however, instead of looking straight ahead...it's time to look down.

Between one's toes are a medley of shapes, sizes and colours as one's steps are cushioned with every footfall. Yes, today we're looking into rugs.

Rugs in TS4 are a weird paradox of not enough colours/designs, and too many, all at once. A cursory glance often gives off very few attractive options, exhausting the attention span into instead looking back to tried and true options. In a way, the way swatches are set up make it very hard to see an object as anything but its first iteration. Hovering over the object reveals the miniature lines of colour off to the left, then one must click to expand them, and hover over the now expanded options in order to see the other forms. This is fine...in theory.

The best judge of something is what one sees in the first thumbnail, which should be an indication of what's to come, regardless of colour. The problem is that if there are other shapes or designs, once one has finished utilising what one needs, it's hard to remember that (for example) there's a circle of vegetables hidden behind one of City Living's rugs. If it isn't front-and-center, then it's hard to both remember...and care to find it again.

In my opinion, what would work better would be a panel that shows all forms of the object side-by-side (perhaps in a filmstrip format just above the BM UI, or off to the right of the screen), which would, in essence, showcase the object's forms as their own separate objects, but without sacrificing BM space.

But I digress...Let's begin, shall we? It's time to delve into the the nuances of shape, size, and form. Let's peer between our toes and marvel at the wonders of rug-ged living.

Rugs (From left to right, top to bottom):
Basegame:

Get Together

City Living

Cats and Dogs

Seasons

Get Famous

Island Living

Discover University

Eco Lifestyle

Snowy Escape

Outdoor Retreat

Vampires

Parenthood

Jungle Adventure

Strangerville

Realm Of Magic

Spooky Stuff

Movie Hangout

Backyard Stuff

Bowling Night Stuff

Fitness Stuff

Toddler Stuff

Laundry Day

Moschino Stuff

Nifty Knitting Stuff

Holiday Pack

My First Pet Stuff

Journey To Batuu

My Wedding Stories

Werewolves

Cottage Living

High School Years

Growing Together

And we're done. Don't worry, we'll take a trip back into build mode sometime soon. For now, enjoy the sole (pun intended) pleasure of a nice rug.