I decided to give Carl’s Dine Out Reloaded mod a try. Within minutes of playing, it felt like an entirely new experience.

It did for the game what Dine Out should have done - it adds variety, versatility, and dynamism. I would love an official update to Dine Out with better lot settings and UI to tailor the lot to player wants and needs.

The kits leaked. Surprised it took this long to get literal basic party decoration - you know, stuff we had in every other game - after a decade, but hey

Seasons has party decorations, but it's literally for holidays, not like... a baby shower. And it has a smoke machine in it, so whatever.

https://simscommunity.info/2024/04/...s-leak-april24/

It also appears we're getting buffet tables back? The cake is propped up on a riser I've never seen before, similar to circular buffet tables, but wide. This, and For Rent taking ages to patch, makes me assume hotels are coming soon.

Update: No buffet table, but this features a cake riser to put on tables. I’m very confused.

Update II: And a fog machine? Have we gotten a fog machine before?

I see TS4 is still staying strong. Partying is exactly where TS4 is crucally lacking Took Maxis some years to figure that Luxury pack didn’t cut it with just a poor excuse to just include LED bar for formal gather, to make parties more vibrant than they are not. Surely isn’t enough that guest tend to bring their own food, so a buffet table is a must for us all to waste more food to rot or throw out.

I would bet balloons are not as cool as the ones were in TS2. That shit actually popped and exploded. These probably be less 3D dimensional and are more cartboard looking than that of a elastic plastic baloons were in earlier days of the Sims.

My issue with the party kit is that it doesn’t look like actual party essentials.

Celebration Stuff was a party pick, and was good for family parties in TS4 or a variety of actual celebrations: Birthdays, Weddings, Graduations, Backyard Parties, Venue Gatherings, etc.. It was a fair combination of formal and casual.

This pack seams more geared towards house parties. Fun, but lacks variety and dynamism. I expected something a little more generic with playful swatches and bold accents.

I see cars, garages, and driveways requested a lot for TS4, but honestly, I do wonder why. When you think about it cars will have little impact on gameplay, and I'd go as far as to say they're completely unneeded because of the way TS4 is designed with its small "semi-open" worlds. It's not like in TS3 where cars have a real use seeing as the worlds in that game are much more vast and open where travelling by foot is slow and cumbersome. In TS4 travelling is quicker in the sense where you can just click on a lot or bring up the phone and go there, with a dreadful loading screen of course.

Cars in TS4 would be rather mundane I'd imagine. They probably wouldn't move and just be stationary objects where if you clicked on them it would bring up the travel loading screen. Not very exciting sounding, is it?

I've always said this. There is a mod out there for cars (called SimNation IIRC) and I can't imagine it being too much different from how cars would be officially implemented in The Sims 4. You'd just be clicking on a stationary object where you'd instantly teleport to a loading screen, as you said. Driveways wouldn't even be able to connect to the road, either, as not all lots have roads connected to them in TS4.

However, I don't fault people for wanting them either way.

Players want cars in TS4 for the same reasons we got them in TS2.

I also learned cars in TS2 didn’t need to connect to the road to function either. They also faded and teleported to the road like they do in 3 if the driveway isn’t used. I’m still 100% on board with cars being fixer uppers and purchasable, as well as having garages and parking spaces (if the players drives to a lot with a community lot with a parking space).

From a budget standpoint, players can get more out of a static but interactive vehicle.

This is TS4 we’re talking: how much gameplay impact has anything when everything is already shallow and set dressing, so why even bother including gimmicky things? Why have anything nice at the gams?

The amount of times I hear people defending devs not giving a fuck about cars is the same reason I can say there wasn’t any practical reason for them to include ocean swimming when pools existed, ghost to be patched in (why have them at all?), or toddlers and windows to be presented either way?

For one, isn’t it be cool already to have as a BB object when like cars are enough warrant to make a lot a complete build? Second, there loads of practical things cars serve in real life, aside from travelling (sleeping in, repairing, listening to music, to protect yourself from elements/strong temperature, to improve handiness/hobby, resell parts, jam to music, find new spots or encounter side quest and adventures if you go in the outskirts, to have private time with date or ‘get away’ from everyone, etc etc).

In TS2, we had cars and those served more fun ways to interact aside from travelling, and one ways TS4 could improved if it allowed for community lots to hold actual functional parking lots where cars of active and inactive sim’s parked automatically on the commercial lots, And if its somehow impossible to calibrate to have inwarded routing pattern than that of bicycles, than at very least they could be animationless much like elevators are in CL.

Cars have as much necessity as horses brougt and anything else in the game (much like elevators could have had but EA went lazy and that STILL made the cut).

Cars are already presented as FX in the neigborhood on the road, so there really is no reason to even not have them as lame telepoeting objects, when invisible phantom Sims are already joyriding them in the streets of Willow Creek and Oasis Spring.

P.S. Also, once again, how come modders always able to do impossible, while we Simmers always wanna keep our expectations low and not demand Maxis to do stuff they once were beloved for in early days:

https://youtu.be/Zq6lUmHCY90?si=KFL_2_C8n0A8z3gb DO YOU SEE GUYS CARS HAVING VECTORS WITH THE WHEELS ROLLING AND HATING????? HARVARD IS CALLING FOR REVOLUTIONIZED FORD111 0:34 *gasp* would you thought of that?!

As far as cars go, if sims cannot drive them, there's something I'd like to see added to the game. It always seemed so ridiculous to me that when a sim leaves (on their own or sent away) from a house or venue, they walk nearly half a mile, then stop and "disappear". Why not just disappear at or just outside the door? Hence, one thing I'd like to see is a car, or taxi, pull up to a house or venue, have the sim get in, and the vehicle drive away (disappearing of course, which, as I guess I've already mentioned ad nauseum, is the usual way it goes since they're certainly not going to let it drive away down the road).

Instead of my sims wasting time making that walk, I use the M key to take them directly to the map so I can pick where they are going.

Are you implying cars are 'gimmicky'?


Was this directed at me? I wasn't 'defending' the developers, I was simply hypothesizing how cars would likely be implemented. Yes, it'd be all rainbows and glitter if they moved and were animated, but Maxis is a developer that takes shortcuts and a stationary object you click on to travel would be the most realizable shortcut-like way they could do it.

You wonder why they been requested. I gave a possible reason. Most of us know that EA would be a toughy to program animation to cars due to how roads are programmally build, but at this point player would appreciate even if the bare minimum is done where you can place one for a house and allow Sims to use it somewhat.

Im implying they could be gimmicky and that players dont necessary need it to be useful to enjoy it (hence the word). Even LGR wants the sims game to have it in his recent review. It’s like the first tike TS4 will have an object that transports/teleports sim to another location. All it would just make Sims teleport getting in or disappearing with a car oppose to dialing the phone, giving a different sense of animation and ‘realism’ so to speak

If Maxis were to ever make a "vehicle" as a mode of transport to travel to venues, I cannot imagine them doing it with a car. As already noted by others, for ten years Maxis has not designed neighborhoods and lots to sit in a position where cars have direct access to roads. It would not look or be credible, as if hard baked into Maxis' minds that cars will never be a thing. However, occult packs and sci fi themed packs sell well, so perhaps a futuristic flying car. Can sit anywhere, front of house or on a flat roof. Plenty of options to do things like tinker with it, dance to radio, woohoo in it, all that jazz. Then travelling to lots, it just goes straight up, like spellcasters on magic brooms, then loading screen starts, and after arrival flying car placed into inventory if no parking spaces are present on the lot.

Alternatively, if a player just wants something other than a phone to initiate travel, another type of wormhole travel machine. Much like the one form Get To Work. That is doable as I have indeed long since modded that version as a means to travel to any lot, including all the secret and hidden lots.

But traditional cars, half the neighborhoods in the game have been built in a way, the position of venues near streets, as if cars don't exist in that universe. Despite having animated cars on inaccessible roads nearby.

If Maxis just gave us cars, just click on them and travel anywhere - actually there are already mods that do this to some car models - then what goes on in my mind, my imagination, as like many other players, is how do I drive that car off this lot onto nearby road because trees, bollards, streetlamps and high pavements are all that's there, no visible driveway connecting to road. Cars are not going to be animated anyway, so who cares? That's my point, I do care, and it will never sit right in my mind and imagination how the car is supposed to safely get off lot when it's just never viable visually. I'd sooner turn them into a spellcaster and give them a broom, because that does appear a more credible way of getting off that particular venue than give them a car that has zero visual access to travel on and off lot. (Or use my modded worm hole machine.) There's only so far the imagination can be stretched when contending with visual, on screen barriers that say no, it's not possible to do this here. Before long the car would just be a nuisance playing in the back of my mind every time I had to look at it, so would be better off removed from a lot where it's not visibly viable, which is half the lots in the game! I have trouble placing debug decorative cars on lots due to this very thing, let alone some form of "working" car.

Or is it just me that gets agitated over little quirks like this?

The new party kit has new functionality on some of the items.

- The dance floor is invisible in live mode and has fog that can be toggled
- The smoke machine is a light has fog that can be toggled
- The disco ball is a light that has new effects that can also be toggled
- The pedestal can have food placed on it and food eaten off ofit, but you can’t add candles and wedding toppers to non wedding cake style cakes while on the riser. However, the drinks and clutter are deco. I wish the drink station was just a drink tray with a punch bowl on it but whatever.
- The record player spins.
- The television is backlit.
- The MASSIVE LED light strip is ugly