@SimGuruModSquad: cfe?
What are the chances of the constrainfloorelevation cheat becoming available again? Is there a technical reason for its disappearance from the out-of-box game, or did it just get dropped because nobod...
Forum Discussion
Thanks for your thorough answer! Much appreciated, even more when you're "not actually" a build mode person. (I woudn't know who is, btw, your internal food chain is rather obscure to me .. maybe it would be an idea to add some basic info on who does what to the various Guru profiles on this forum? That way, people would have a chance to figure out who they should try to get hold of, instead of randomly pestering the next best person with a "Guru" nametag ..)
Regarding "actual" content (as in, new shinies) vs functionality, I understand your reasoning -- I assume "actual content" also has the very big advantage of being a lot easier to sell =P. Pretty pictures and all. Still, the point I was trying to drive home above -- in case that wasn't obvious enough already -- is that the "return on investment" on anything that offers more options for creation (be it building or whatever else) should perhaps not only be seen in terms of "percentage of users actually using this feature themselves" but rather "gigatons of content being created by using that thing" .. essentially, give us the tools and you're getting free labour in return. But I guess you know that already, otherwise why would you support modding at all.
Re cheats vs supported features, that's exactly what I was thinking. But this is actually win-win, isn't it? The cheat way, I mean? You do the foolproof stuff and let modders/creators take care of the rest -- provided we can take care of it, which we can't when we're being locked into a cage of "foolproofness". This has worked very well for like 10 years now; TS2 was never designed for, say, row houses, yet we managed and *nobody* flamed us for a few "edge cases" not being solved. We simply informed people what does and does not work and that was basically it (which is obviously much easier for anyone who is not a business).
Also, in my experience, creators in general are rarely among the folks who would flood forums with complaints about "game sucks" and "EA suck" and "they never test anything" and so on -- on a small scale, they are in the exact same boat when it comes to testing and figuring things out and finally getting them to work, so they can relate. <-- e: Might have been slightly too optimistic here, urgh >.< anyway .. my point being: I don't need a clickybutton, I'm fine with using cheats, I'm fine with stuff going wrong or not always working -- I only want things to be possible when they're technically possible (and not locked away like I'm three years old).
One thing that would have helped greatly in the TS2 era -- and maybe will be possible now for things like a cfe cheat, seeing as there is actual communication going on? -- would be a little "advance warning" when you already know where the problem zones are, just so that we don't miss things and accidentially share lots that break people's games or something (who in turn may blame it on the game instead of the unsupported procedure .. nobody wants that).
By the way, how does the sim routing work with the "planes" (floors/levels) in TS4 -- it seems different (improved) from past games, as sims seem to be able to walk up/down a "1-step" foundation without needing stairs at all (I only discovered that on accident o.O) .. they seem to be somehow "aware" they can traverse between levels freely, could that be? Are those stair portals a thing of the past? (This is just pure curiosity .. I was wondering what the issues might be with actually *using* cfe, would sims try to walk up a roof (a sloped ceiling/floor one) now more or less "because they can"?)
Thanks for checking re. the UI question and the enlarging feature. Regarding that crinrict thread, um .. isn't bug tracking something that should *actually* be your core business? It does smell a bit funny that you're relying on an unpaid external volunteer with that. The roof things are unrelated to mods in any case, I'm sure of that (had it myself often enough). Only not being able to save anymore was something I had never encountered before (knock on wood).
Regarding "actual" content (as in, new shinies) vs functionality, I understand your reasoning -- I assume "actual content" also has the very big advantage of being a lot easier to sell =P. Pretty pictures and all. Still, the point I was trying to drive home above -- in case that wasn't obvious enough already -- is that the "return on investment" on anything that offers more options for creation (be it building or whatever else) should perhaps not only be seen in terms of "percentage of users actually using this feature themselves" but rather "gigatons of content being created by using that thing" .. essentially, give us the tools and you're getting free labour in return. But I guess you know that already, otherwise why would you support modding at all.
Re cheats vs supported features, that's exactly what I was thinking. But this is actually win-win, isn't it? The cheat way, I mean? You do the foolproof stuff and let modders/creators take care of the rest -- provided we can take care of it, which we can't when we're being locked into a cage of "foolproofness". This has worked very well for like 10 years now; TS2 was never designed for, say, row houses, yet we managed and *nobody* flamed us for a few "edge cases" not being solved. We simply informed people what does and does not work and that was basically it (which is obviously much easier for anyone who is not a business).
One thing that would have helped greatly in the TS2 era -- and maybe will be possible now for things like a cfe cheat, seeing as there is actual communication going on? -- would be a little "advance warning" when you already know where the problem zones are, just so that we don't miss things and accidentially share lots that break people's games or something (who in turn may blame it on the game instead of the unsupported procedure .. nobody wants that).
By the way, how does the sim routing work with the "planes" (floors/levels) in TS4 -- it seems different (improved) from past games, as sims seem to be able to walk up/down a "1-step" foundation without needing stairs at all (I only discovered that on accident o.O) .. they seem to be somehow "aware" they can traverse between levels freely, could that be? Are those stair portals a thing of the past? (This is just pure curiosity .. I was wondering what the issues might be with actually *using* cfe, would sims try to walk up a roof (a sloped ceiling/floor one) now more or less "because they can"?)
Thanks for checking re. the UI question and the enlarging feature. Regarding that crinrict thread, um .. isn't bug tracking something that should *actually* be your core business? It does smell a bit funny that you're relying on an unpaid external volunteer with that. The roof things are unrelated to mods in any case, I'm sure of that (had it myself often enough). Only not being able to save anymore was something I had never encountered before (knock on wood).
