"Sk8rblaze;c-16214670" wrote:
"Writin_Reg;c-16214027" wrote:
"aricarai;c-16213467" wrote:
"Writin_Reg;c-16212917" wrote:
Sims 1 vacations were all in one pack as well as I recall. You just did not have any weather in the regular game.
You do realise you're talking about a game that was released almost 18 years ago? That would definitely be a time warp to go back to something that came out that long ago.
It has nothing to do with time - as plenty of other games back then had weather effects in them - it had to do with game design and that is an issue in this game as well now there are issues with adding anything to the game that affects finished worlds. Sims 1 did have the added issue of being 2 D too. But I played games like Baldur's Gate - all of them - Diablo - and many others back in the late 1990's- 2002 all had weather - fierce snow and rainstorms in fact -
I think The Sims 1 came down to technical limitation. If not, then why did The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 both change this, allowing for different seasons/weather in ALL locations by the time of their release?
In a game whose goal is to simulate life and allow for us to rule, EA would be doing the EXACT opposite for both cases in restricting certain worlds to certain weather/season conditions.
Each one was different. Sims 2 used Sim City 4 to make their worlds and Sim City 4 already had the mechanics for not only weather - but disasters as well. You can use Sim City 4 to make templates to add to Sims 2 even - so you get all the mechanics in there. Sims 1 had a Unity 2 D game engine and just was not capable of world wide weather which is why they did vacation worlds for fall, summer and winter. Lightening and wind affects were added to the Makin Magic Haunted world only.
Sims 2 was actually meant to have weather in the base game - but they had issue in the game they didn't have in Sims City 4 - was the snow and rain was going inside all the building. Sim City 4 we did not go inside the buildings but in Sims 2 all our play practically was inside - so that presented another issue it took them a few years to figure out and fix and so we got Seasons when they solved that issue.
Sims 3 used Maya's plug in - World Builder 3.1 or 3.4 for worlds that had weather basics, - but again to get the effect even more accurate and out of the inside of buildings and vehicles - it too took a lot of tuning and work.
Now you have Sims 4 that doesn't use a specific world building tool on a Maxis made game engine using what they call smart technology that is all about multi-tasking and emotions - sims movements. They are hand crafting the worlds with a variety of tools not a world software program - that basically means no weather systems in a world/ map program or anything else - no road system, nothing much akin to anything they have used before. As I said each game is very different and technology wise with nothing similar other than it is a life simulator - but anything they put in this game they do from scratch and pure talent, with nothing to build off of. They have to make it all from scratch pretty much not having the additions of already built in software.
That said - it does not mean they are limited as long as they have the talent - but there sounds to me as if it is far from easy for sure -
None of us can actually say what they can or can't do as we really have no way to even know about that game engine or its capability as it is one of a kind. Nor can any us determine anything in this game by any of the previous sims games - as everything about it is different and unique - and it doesn't use any basic software program that we can know the things that software does or doesn't do. Many of us are familiar with Sims City 4, and some of us are familiar with Maya and the World Builders plug in (I only know it because my son had to learn to use Maya when he was in College studying programming) - but there is enough info out there even if you knew nothing on those product that you could easily learn their capabilities - but we are talking from scratch and various different tools - which even if you know the tools - you have no idea in many cases what one can do with them free hand - or on a game engine none of us know a thing about outside of the fact it is unlike any other game engine.
Really basing anything in Sims 4 off any of the previous games or years - does not mean a thing in this game without them at least sharing something about it all. So really not one of us can actually say to do this or that can be done in this game because 10 or 18 years ago it was done in those games. We might want that to be the case - but none of us can actually know. We can only judge by what performance we have seen so far - IN THIS GAME and the tidbits they share.
ETA - One important fact - they have never once said they were making a Seasons/ weather pack as far as I know. We just assume they will - so that may be another possibility I don't think any of us relish to be honest.
