EA Germany confirmed mods are still possible.

I wish twallan come here and suddenly tell that I was just kidding, I will make mods for TS4 and suddenly surprise us all! But It's not gonna happen. Seriously, I can't play TS4 without your Relativity mod at least!

Hiring programmer(s) to make something like TSR Workshop is a pretty expensive proposition. I think we are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

While people talk about placing restriction on how a software tool can be used, I don't know how LEGALLY enforceable those provisions are. It is well outside of limitations of copyright law, as much as copyright restrictions have increased over the past few years.

Since featured creators are closer to independent contractors than employees, I doubt a toolmaker could go after TSR directly for hosting items made with one of their tools. There is no privity of contract (i.e. no contract between the tool maker and TSR) upon which to base a contract claim. And, as previously stated, such a claim would be well outside of copyright law.

Add to that, Sweden is not a particularly friendly forum in which to litigate copyright claims. The Swedes seen to have an inherent hatred of those types of restrictions, which explains why sites like the Pirate Bay tend to be based there. Anyone who wants to make a claim against TSR is talking about litigating in Sweden.

Even if some tool maker wanted to make a fuss, legally enforcing such a claim is pretty expensive. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars for that type of litigation. This is why it generally is the province of corporate behemoths who have a pretty large financial stake in these matters, as opposed to hobbyists who really receive no financial gain.

At its heart, these restrictions defeat the whole purpose behind things like copyright law. Imagine if authors had to share their royalties with Microsoft because they used Word in writing their novels. Or if Sims creators had to give credit to Adobe because they used Photoshop. The whole point of copyright and patent law is to encourage the creation of literary and artistic works, not discourage it.

For the most part, the tools and restrictions were not forthcoming with the Sims 3. Perhaps, in part, because of the existence of TSR Workshop.

Well I dunno if Micke gets hundreds of thousands a year! It was just him, not even working full time as he also had to program the site's interface, and he had Johan to help him at the beginning of development. Again not fulltime as Johan also helps to run the business. SimPE was similar to TSRW in its scope - wider in fact, and that didn't cost a penny in wages.

Until they realize THEY will have to fix their game themselves.

I sure wish I had time to do modding. Things got really busy last summer and never got unbusy - I have so many unfinished Sims3 tasks. I hate leaving anything unfinished, too. Sims 4 is still a year away and I totally, totally hope I can help out then - it would be so cool to get in on the beginning. Hey, who knows, the way the US keeps outsourcing software testers overseas I may be unemployed when Sims 4 comes out (yay! umm.... shoot.)

Canadian health care has its problems too. And eventually, it will implode on itself. Just like everything did in Greece.

But it's not nearly as insidious as Obamacare. In Lansing, stores are disappearing like never before. Employers are quivering in their boots. "Now Hiring" signs are becoming rarer and rarer, and competition for the few jobs left is more dog-eat-dog than it's ever been.

********Economics lecture mode**********


Employers are becoming more discriminatory over sillier and sillier things than ever before - just to survive. If they have to pay the full Obamacare benefits package for an employee they don't even know can pull off the job, that's money wasted. So they only hire whom they feel can do work of a quality deserving twice what the actual pay rate is.

If you do more than $89/hr-grade work, you would stand to get paid $45/hr for it. And nobody in Lansing can afford that, except the State of Michigan. So that's the Ceiling of Employability. The floor is $15/hr in work ethic value. Because if you are not worth $15/hr, then there's the risk of the worth-to-actual pay ratio resulting in a number where they're paying you below minimum wage.

So if you're not worth $15/hr, you can't get a minimum wage job making a little over $7-something an hour. My measured labor force worth is $13/hr. So employers wishing to survive under Obamacare and residing in Lansing would only be willing to pay me $6.50/hr. Which is illegal.

Therefore, I get turned down for job offers. Those pushing for the minimum wage to be raised to $9/hr fail to understand that every 30% raise in wages leads to a 50%-or-higher raise in the cost of goods. This has been consistent with the rate of inflation from Jimmy Carter to the present.

It will also cause employers to want to go from a half-value floor-ceiling model to a third-value model. That will lead to at least a doubling of U6 unemployment, putting almost the entire country out of a job. Because not enough will be left with the skills to survive the third-value floor:ceiling system.

All this, of course, is assuming the dollar doesn't completely collapse first. Which would not only lead to national economic meltdown, but loss of national sovereignty. Under such a system, a new government would have to be implemented. The interim would lead to martial law and a suspension of acknowledgement of basic human rights. Thereby leading to paranoid official foolishly and short-sightedly annihilating unforeseeable thousands of potential workforce.

The revelation of a provision for "full-time equivalents" being used to force crippling benefits packages on employers who have X number of part-time employees has pulled the floor out from under many employer's final method of not drowning: making everyone part time.


*******End economics lecture mode***********

But you and I agree on one thing: EA's decisions in recent years, especially with the SimCity reboot failure, have been nothing short of a PR nightmare. I don't blame you one bit for wanting nothing to do with them (besides making very useful mods to fix their games, which I can't thank you enough for.)

Please leave politics off this forum. I am not a moderator, but I am an American and I hate to have to deal with this political divisiveness on my favorite game forums. It doesn't belong here. I actually hope this thread is deleted since it is very one sided and has a lot of those sorts of stuff you get in spam emails.

Thanks.

Nice to know that you think my everyday reality is nothing more than "spam e-mail." Remind me not to call you when I'm adding illustrations to the dictionary for examples of empathy.

It resembles what I get as spam. I would apologize but this does not belong here. Because it doesn't belong here, it is spam and unsolicited, although not bulk so fits half the definition. Empathy? How ironic.

There are other places for this sort of stuff even here on MTS.

Alright, I haven't the faintest idea why a discussion about the US healthcare system has ended up in a thread about TS4 modding, but it shouldn't be here. If you want to continue discussing this, please do so in the debate room.

I don't know how much programmers are paid in Sweden. I do know I have several friends who are programmers and who make pretty good money -- usually well into the six figures. In fact, the only people I know who seem to make more money than programmers are doctors.

I really don't see why someone would work for someone else for less than the market rate. It certainly is not a minimum wage job. If someone is not being paid the market rate, eventually they will go somewhere else.

Usually, high end jobs come with pretty good benefits. Places like Sweden, by law, offer pretty good working conditions for employees.

If you are hiring even one programmer to do stuff like maintain a website and program something like the TSR Workshop, that still represents a considerable expenditure -- especially over the five year life of an EA game.

I have always wondered that if people like you, Peter, Twallan, et al, had been charging money for your work if we would be having this discussion at all. Simmers seem to have a massive sense of entitlement, and seem to demand that others give away their time, effort and expertise for free.

I do know that for other games, and particularly flight simulators, people who make utilities and other add ons, typically charge for them. Perhaps they have a shareware version, but then they will offer additional functionality for a price.

If Twallan, for example, had been charging $10.00 apiece for each of his mods (and perhaps $30 each for master controller and story progression), and people were paying for them, I wonder if his attitude might be different. I for one would be quite willing to pay for what the mods bring to the game.

Similarly, S3PE is easily worth $30 to a serious modder. I paid more than that for Milkshape without hesitation.



You should not be lecturing anyone on economics. It is obvious that you know squat about economics or healthcare economics. Have you even taken a basic macro-economics or micro-economics class? Do you even know the difference between macro-economics and micro-economics? Do you even know who Kenneth Arrow is? Are you even aware that Obamacare was the Heritage Foundation plan? That it was modelled after the Swiss healthcare system? And that it was first introduced in the United States by Mitt Romney?

I think there are a lot of maybes in here, I am very tempted to continue nraas into 4 when twallen said no way, looking at the amount of work he put in, I'm glad ; very glad I didn't pick it up from stone for ver 3, if it's dot net based and going forward, from what we have yea, but it looks like a new code base and I'm very disinterested in what I've seen of 4.

And how'd you come to that conclusion...

If Twallan were hired by EA he'd end up hating his job just like every other low level / non-management employee. The problem with EA developers isn't lack of skill but lack of motivation. You try giving a **** about the customers when you have to meet ridiculous deadlines and put up with EA's marketing schemes all while underpaid.

Reading this thread really got me to thinking should be contributing a lot more to the Sims community. I, like a lot of simmers out there however, lack the fundamental programming knowledge required to make a significant difference. If Anyone out there is willing to help me begin learning (which I do fast) I have literally unlimited time available in my life at the moment and wouldn't need to make time for family, school or employment. Having finished college with a general knowledge of 3D modeling and animation (mind you it hasn't been put in practice in several years) having no current job due to a disability, and no prospects for a family in the foreseeable future, (unless cats count) I would be able to do a lot of the intricate time consuming work a lot of people are dreading.

I want to help, and if anyone is willing to take me on as an apprentice of sorts to help them going forward I would be very grateful and eager to give back to the community!

Why...

Dude it's a product that you're paying money for. Way more than it's really worth for that matter, you have every right to expect things from EA.

I don't know what's worse, that we keep buying EA products or that we actually think they're doing us a favor...

You'd probably be better off taking real courses, rather than hoping that someone can teach you to program.

Plenty of good, free ones on the net. But as to what language to focus on, well, that is a different discussion.

Hi,

I'm not skilled enough to take on a huge project such as developing a whole tool.

But I do have an IT degree and some skills in coding if one of our better modders is looking to team up.
They would have to put up with a few dumb questions in the beginning as I learn. But I promise I learn fast.

My Skills:
Currently I only have skills in JAVA, lotus script (yes it is a language), SQL and Web development. But I am looking to expand.
I also have experience as UAT tester and hopefully will be getting experience as SIT tester in the next few months.
Edit: because my phone has auto correct and it is terrible.

If programing isn't your thing you could also work on object meshing to create new objects for the game. They don't get as much glory but many peoples games wouldn't be the same without the great CC created by the community.

But if you do want to learn to code. I'd start with JAVA since it is the easiest of the Object Oriented languages to learn and it has the most tutorials online. And while the sims games will never be written in JAVA if you know one Object Oriented language then learning others is easy.
Then I'd start with object scripting for Sims 3, there are some great tutorials and will be a good way to build your skills to then move on to bigger projects.