Never heard of carpeted bathrooms. Never want to experience them. A damn petri dish of life I reckon.

The worst ones are the ones that extend the carpeting around the toilet and bath/shower so there is no linoleum or tile in the bathroom at all.

EDIT: I was talking about keeping that stuff clean, not design or interior decorating. A clogged toilet becomes a disaster that comes with cleaning carpet stains out. Some men can't hit the toilet to save their lives, so you'll have drops of urine possibly hitting the carpet surrounding the toilet and you can be sure they won't tell you about it if they miss. If you're cleaning the bathtub, make sure you don't spill any cleaner on the carpet or you'll end up with bleach spots. Not to mention the mildew that could possibly grow due to the moisture. Due to all the germs, fluids, and moisture that's in a bathroom, carpeting in the bathroom is nothing more than a potential sponge for all of it.

Is the gallery going to be moderated at all? I think it needs to be. Seems like it's getting filled with a lot of junk and duplicate families.

I'm sure it'll be moderated just as diligently as the official forums

Say hello to the six million strong clone army of Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Daenerys Targaryen, the cast of Harry Potter, and Hannibal Lecter.

You forgot Justin Beibers. An army. of. Justin. Beibers.

Just think of how bad it will be once everyone has the demo and after the game is out.

I'm curious about this too. I think (god I hope) they've already done their worst in terms of bad news. But I also said everyone was being paranoid about toddlers, soo....

Another example of how TS4 is technically inferior to TS3. In TS3 if you used any means at all (cheats, friezes etc) to make a room taller, the staircases would add extra steps to make up the height - just like a carpenter would in real life. In TS4 apparently they simply stretch the wretched thing and make it unsafe. I wonder how well the stair climbing animation will be adjusted to fit? Or was animating stairs "too much work" and the sim will simply appear at the top or bottom?

Im sure it will be something similar to what they did with Kotaku... or PC gamer, whoever the hell it was. With the weird scientists. They're so in love with touting their "weird stories" gameplay I feel positively nauseous.

I'd file a complaint with City Hall about the building codes being broken and call my sims' lawyer. Except, of course, there is no legal representation in the game, I don't recall seeing a City Hall, and I have yet to see any police who can arrest these criminal builders.

What time is the EA press conf from Gamescom?

Edit: to answer my own question "When: Wednesday, August 13 (9am-11am UK time)"

I want to brand "LIFE SIMULATOR" into the entire Sims team's foreheads with a hot iron.

Just saiyan.

What's with the stupid embargoes on being able to even say you're going to Gamescom? The creators camp was one thing, it was an internal event no one needed to find out about if they didn't want us to, but how the hell can you seriously have an embargo on someone knowing you're at a public expo? Or what you're seeing there? Why should the Sims community attendees keep quiet about it when anyone who's there not at EA's invite can tell us "Oh IPodZeke is there, and today he was on the twerking stand" ???

*everyone complaining about awful grass textures*



It's like Slimer rolled around on your dirt.

I didn't realize this. That's actually kind of creepy how controlling they are, and that people just roll over and go along with it.

I don't want to call anyone out specifically as they're happily showing off their sims and I'd feel weird going like, "Here's half a dozen random pics from Tumblr whose sims I think are super bland, hope you don't recognize yours!"

But just try this: https://www.tumblr.com/search/sims+4 or https://www.tumblr.com/search/ts4+cas+demo

Scroll through there a bit, and look at the sims people have made. Close the tab. Wait an hour. How many of those sims can you really clearly picture in your mind? How many of them would you recognize as the same sim if you saw them tomorrow? I'm sure there's some, but don't you also start to get a "template" in your head on what a TS4 sim typically looks like? I do - and a sim has to deviate pretty significantly from that to be memorable to me.

I know the lack of CC and limited hairstyles contributes somewhat to it... and just that people tend to like "pretty" faces which usually fall into a very narrow range of shapes... But either people are afraid to branch out, or it's actually difficult to get a nice face that doesn't look quite plain and the same meaty jaw on guys/cheery grin and pointy chin on girls.

Having had a play with the Demo for a couple evenings now, I will say one thing I noticed regarding the sameyness. The faces can look different but they all smile the same. Whatever mouth style I put on, all the smiles are the same shape regardless of the mouth turn, corners angle and go wider than I expect. It's just my opinion of course.

Well that's exactly what I used to complain about in TS2. You can spend as much time as you like making their *straight* face look individual, but since there are a limited range of expressions, and all sims seem to share them, they start to all look the same in the game. In TS1 they had no expressions at all, and I found I was quite able to imagine their feelings based on what was happening in my imaginary story. That is why I spent so much effort in TS2 trying to make a mod to stop the facial expressions.

In real life, expressions are as individual as the face shapes. What they could have done in CAS is after we model their straight face, then have other settings to shape their face in a handful of emotional states, like angry, sad, laughing etc by pulling a few key sliders for width of smile, rotation of brow, amount of face crumple for upset etc.

Also the eyebrows!! They shoot up and waggle all over as soon as you try and zoom out a little from the head view. Very annoying when trying to grab different screenies of the overall look of the Sim.

And yes Inge, I agree about the ability to tweak facial expressions to match their face better. That would have been a nice touch, especially as so much was supposed to be focused on the Sims themselves. Because of the same poses/expressions in the CAS slapped on every Sim, it's not surprising they look so similar

Well, habitual expression is a strong marker for character and that's something the game can't manage to make individual.

I know what you mean HP but at least there isn't too much of a rash of the boiled sweet eyes/pencil nose/poufy lips look that I so hate. Still, give it time. There are a few in there already.

...even though they managed to sort it out for the walks, to a certain extent.

I understand there might be limits, but it's so exaggerated. It would have been nice if the expressions were dialled down in intensity a bit so Sims with a downturned mouth in a resting/expressionless face would not suddenly have a Joker "why so serious" smile effect. I get they can't fit every face but they could have made it more subtle. It kind of negates the nice detailing we do in the first place. Why bother if the Sims animate in a way that cancels all the indivduality out of them?

Ye-es, if you want your sim to impersonate a chimp, I guess. Actually, Inge, you are right, they could make it more differentiated by linking suites of expressions to traits. That would be good.

That's a great idea - just slight changes in a few basic expressions (smiling, for example) based on personality would make sims so much more 'real'. And it's so true that unless you go to huge extremes, sims just look the same when doing those expressions. It never really occurred to me until now, but even just selecting whether your sim will smile close-mouthed, or have a big old grin, would make a huge difference in personality. It'd be great to make a super apathetic, Wednesday Addams-type sim.