The population of the world, will the sims walking around and interacting only be the ones with physical houses or will there be townies (homeless) also. Although I am not worried about only having a total of 25 lots to work with right now but I want to know how the lots be populated with 20 sims at any time when visiting community lots? If we have homeless yet part of the day to day going on in the world, I can understand how that will work, then the number of playable households don't have to be large.

Will there be a need for population control? I am worried about file bloating and how the game will create the sims from otherworld, homeless. I hope that one lesson they learned from Sims 3 to have some type of system that controls how many townies will be allotted to keep the file size reasonable. I have so many questions, hopefully they will release more before Gamescon.



I am too. I don't mind some suburban living but I also enjoy a more urban looking area too. I remembered how happy I was with Sims 2 Downtown just for that reason, the homes were closer together and gave a city feel in that neighborhood.

So...is this whole speculation about neighborhoods gonna keep going around in circles? Should I just continue my lurking for news on Honeywell's tumblr?

Graham, could you share any details on how story progression will function? - i.e. births, deaths, careers etc in other lots in the neighbourhoods? Obviously with rotational play you'd want to be able to turn these options off, but what about for non-rotational simmers who want the world to progress around them?

Graham has mentioned that sims and families you've made but haven't placed into homes yet, will show up around the world as townies. You know, those unplaced sims in the family inventory of the main menu.

I'm also a huge fan of urban areas! And I can actually see an urban world happening with this new world system. There would just need to be a lot of decorative tall buildings surrounding the world to create an immersion of a city, and the hoods would be nestled between those. But five lots per hood... yikes. It's just not enough.
And with the new streetcar, in a city world there could be a greyhound with graffiti on it!

Well it's not the actual quantity of lots that worries me it's the density, or appearance of density. Having 5 little villages in each of 100 worlds still gives me rural living, not a town.

Ugh, hope there's a way to set ones you don't want that to happen with.

I'm still holding on to hope that there's more, until they really confirm in exact words that there are five lots per hood and 25 per world... it's just so tiny, and the playable community area around the lots don't seem that big either.

I'm really curious to see more of this neighborhood, the one with the bridge and city decorations in the background. This actually seems like a dense outskirts of a city. And there kind of seem to be more than five houses along that road!
http://i2.wp.com/www.beyondsims.com...ize=1920%2C1080

And in this screenshot, the skyline doesn't look as 'painted on', but actually quite good. Eugh, so many trees in the way that we can't see the actual roads/layout of the world...
http://i2.wp.com/www.beyondsims.com...ize=1920%2C1080

The houses over the road look less high resolution. Wouldn't be surprised if they were in the "next hood" rather than the same as the one in the foreground. Or, maybe they did knock up some quick lot imposters to fill things out a bit. Similar to my ploppable shell idea, but lower res.

Inge Jones I thought about that too, I'm just trying my hardest to stay optimistic.
I'm also getting the feeling that the car traffic is just fake, since there are no garages, driveways or vehicle section in buy mode. And you can't see inside the cars.

To continue being optimistic, flat lots could mean the return of TS2-style driveways, if ownable cars are in TS4 (now or in a future EP).

tedw AKA proper car animations could return!

This picture shows six houses, and maybe a 7th behind that big tree where there's definitely something. The ones in the top of the image do look low-res and lack details around them... It really could be that there will now be dummy houses all over. :/ Oh man...

*sigh* I think it's mostly stage prop stuff, for want of a better term, in the background. Then, the 5 lots, plus public areas.
I think that's why they are concentrating on CAS so much. The 'hood-style things are pretty well eye candy and not something you can brag up.
AND - I really hope I am very wrong.

Could it be a depth-of-field effect? I know people talked about the possibility when that Beatles homage picture came out, but I can't recall whether it was ever confirmed. But the screenshot below shows that detail further away from the camera seems to blur, if you look at the road texture. It might account for houses/buildings looking less sharp in the background.



Edit: Just realized the lot in the screenshot I'm using is now the Goth's house. I preferred the white house they bulldozed.

That's pretty clear to me Graham and thank you. However, what about life events happening to your sims when you're not playing them? Can they, for example change job, get pregnant or get a divorce?

Edit: just watched SimsVIP interview for the first time (felt too deflated to watch all the way through before). I think both participants did a good job there.


Kim Jong Un is a celebrity?

tedw Yeah, could be that too. Oh boy, we are in for a long road of wild speculation if they won't show the world and game play at all before Gamescom...

Edit: I also loved that white house!

Well that's fine by me. In real life there are loads of buildings that might just as well be deco shells as you can't go in them, and loads of cars that might as well be fake because you have no idea who is in them or why. As long as somehow the atmosphere can be made to support my imagination when I want to play an urban area, I don't care too much how it is achieved.

Graham apparently expanded on the loading screen situation on the official forum .



Edit: found on SimsVIP .

I can't wait for the neighbor wars. You kick my trash can, I kick your trash can. Yeah!

And don't forget to kick the pink flamingo! And in a neighborhood of just 5 families, we'll instantly have The Sims: Advanced Warfare.
Just add a Kevin Spacey sim in there, and we're set!

"Hmm, next let's steal this guy's gnome!"

omg! I hope they've not forgotten to put the flamingo in - or the hydrangea bush! I rely on those for my modding bases.

After all this discussion it's pretty much confirmed every different lot can be a different loading for every lot (expect the open public spaces that are in the area you loaded).
So The Sims 4 is one game where content is loaded piece by piece, with background simulation.

But one note, for those who were posting "game loads in 30sec", "15sec travel times", you must be VERY aware to avoid disappointments the PC they ran the demo from is certainly with high-end specs, for one E3 demo they had to run it from something powerful enough so it could be very fast even with the game optimization yet being performed.

That's why Gurus never mention Loading Times, because they will depend of each player PC. I see much people misunderstanding thinking if it is fast on demo, it must be fast for everyone.

For example if you use HDD Drive, and I use SSD, I will load the game faster (depending of each game can be half of the time), if you're around with one SSD Disk, i7 CPU and some 8GB RAM, i say you may make use of the best performance playing TS4.

one thing I just realized. Loading times between visiting your NEIGHBOR!!!!

Sorry but for some of us who still have only played sims 2 I will gladly take a loading screen for the capability to have my sim visit a neighboring house

And thankfully they do have the option for played families to not age until played again so now i'm even more on board

Also, a big part of achieving atmosphere is sound. In TS3's Bridgeport the deco shells emitted city sounds around them, which was great. The subway made sounds too. You could even hear a distant ship horn every now and then. But of course there was no ship... This time around it seems like they can actually do that kind off stuff, like a ship going by in the distance.

It seems like Willow Creek neighborhoods are divided by, well... creeks. Maybe city world hoods could be divided by train tracks or dummy highways with dense dummy traffic. Then the edges of the world could have tall deco buildings to create an effect of being in the midst of a city and the horizon could have a painted skyline. I can kind of see it somehow working out, despite being limited to five lots per hood.

Fortunately the 3-level limit wouldn't interfere with being able to use apartment shells like TS3 if they wanted to put those in an EP, cos you only actually need two levels in an apartment block - the lobby, and the apartment.

I wonder if we can make a sort of basement in our foundations?

Ah The Sims 4 and cars will be fun, before we used them to reach places faster, now i'm unsure if they will be visual-only as there is loading between areas.
At least it looks they don't have animations, can't see who is inside driving them.... // WONDERS //