Well, undo it. So the texture has to be accomodated in accordance to this new style.. so why this new style? i thought it was maybe the other way around.

Also, he talks about the "placeholder" remote on that wat render, where he was surrounded by females. So that remote control was in fact from sims 3... is the Hair a placeholder too??

Hmm.. So I was watching this CAS Demo from GamesCom http://youtu.be/wZ30hNwRWRM?t=5m19s (at 5:19) and it seems there is an "Randomize Color" thing.
So, why are we getting somthing like this but not an actual Colorwheel wich is doing the same? (just not randomized)

Maybe because it's not tht randomize as you would think. Maybe only randomizes the colors they give you. not ANY COLOR.

That looks so stupid, I demand a proper colorwheel like in Sims 3. I want to be able to choose to give my sims a periwinkle blue top and not be forced to have them walk around in a light blue top.

C-A

I'm being very cynical but something about that response just seems... off to me. My inner tinfoil hat wearer says they're covering something up, like say, really poorly detailed objects, since the game was going to be online and to recreate absolutely everything will have been a big no-no when EA has such strict deadlines (see: TS3's recycled animations from TS2 )

True, there's going to be always something fishy until they release new things.I'm not against reclycling animations, or expantion packs... but if you're getting more time that it was going to be used to do THOSE animations, add something new and fresh.

All I'm hearing is "it's not that we can't make things look good; it's that we've designed them to look bad on purpose." And yes, good and bad are opinion words for soft/sharp and plastic molded hair.

With that kind of talk, I'm also feeling more of the "originally online" vibe. Don't know, of course. Be interesting if we ever get real info on what was planned, and when/if plans changed and so on.

Edited to add: I'm against wide-scale recycling of animations - TS3 never really felt like new game to me because so many of the social-interaction-animations were lifted directly from TS2.

Well I am no newbie in Sims series myself either I have played it since The Sims Superstar came out after my cousin showed it to me and was hooked since. Sims 2 and 1 are my favorite games in this series with Sims 4 coming behind them. I like Sims 4 so far and want to learn more of it. I will first play it and then judge on how good it is. I might sound like an asshole to some but oh well, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Just one small point being a mere 'Test Subject' does not automatically say we are inexperience about the game or that we have not been playing it as long as anyone else on this forum. IMHO your post comes across as you feel anyone new on the MTS forum is to follow superiority that is deemed that way because of length of time they have been here? or the status under their name?

Just my 'mere' 'Test Subject' opinion (which I thank you for giving me the go ahead to have), you may now carry on.........

So, the art stylized graphics is not as low resolution as some may think it is? That may peeve off the group that believed the graphics will serve the lower end, 10 yr old computers. Might not.

Also, I forgot there was the Making Magic broadcast today. I need to find some information about that.

It was Ryan, Shannon, Azure and one other womans who name I can't remember (sorry). They played Makin' Magic for about 40 minutes, touched on the development side of things while playing and shared some stories. I was a nice little broadcast (I wish it was longer, I was enjoying it).

They got a baby dragon, and it turned read, so it set some stuff on fire. Mortimer died.

Also, we're all wary of Ryan's involvement with the series. He had no idea about the scuba tank in Showtime, while the woman the room who was controlling the game (who hadn't touched the game in a decade) knew about it and she was only a producer for Makin' Magic. Sadly, she couldn't answer azure's questions (because she joined the dev team until around 3). All Ryan had to say about the tank was "Awesome!"

I am with you on this. As I said this in other threads If a colorwheel isn't present in the final version game then the color options will get very limited real fast. This is one of the few things that I will personally will keep repeating on and suggest about adding a simple color wheel. That's it. I don't know what so hard about that,this is the part that I don't understand. It may not be CAST but it will have thousands or more of combinations instead of a few limited obvious combinations.

Err, can someone please clarify how "less high frequency details in our textures" is different than "lower resolution textures"? Because those "less high frequency textures" sound a lot like spin for "lower resolution textures" to me. I mean, if you're using less high frequency details, doesn't that mean you're reducing those details, even if it is justified as an "art style" decision?

A game's minimum requirements aren't based on its highest graphical settings, but its lowest. A low-contrast art style means that low settings will be able to reduce the resolutions of textures more while still looking good, whereas you can't downsize high-contrast textures as much without it looking ugly. So if you've got TS3 where your grass texture is very busy, lowering the graphics to make grass a flat color looks super ugly because that's not how it was designed to look. But if you've got TS4 where the grass texture is smoother, lowering the graphics to make it a flat color doesn't look as bad because the game was designed around lower contrast anyway.

OK, I can see that. I was saying that the low resolutions in The Sims 4 may not be easier on low end computers, at least not the way some think it will be.

The general style is meant to be softer and more delicate, so things like wood will looks like a strokes of paint compared to seeing all of the finer grainy details that exists in 2 and 3.

Lower resolution textures are just smaller images. Not lacking detail (though, it would depending on the size of the image, though it'd have to be pretty small), but just smaller in size. Like, a large 256x pixel blue square and a 32x pixel blue square are the same square/image, but the resolution is smaller in one than the other. Those images could very well be high resolution, but they aren't very detailed, on purpose, to accommodate for the art style.

The few last entries are pretty interesting. Everything sounds cool, but at the end of the day.. do they work?. it's obvious that neither of us know it yet... but, you see, today i just updated my windows 8 laptop (1 year old, Intel 4000 video card) to the new 8.1 OS. And for some reason, this guys decided to update (at last) the driver for my card.. and guess what? i works better than it used to. How the H*** am i going to downgrade to this now?

Also i hear this "Art Style"... i wonder, who decides what "Art style" to take

Edit: I also forgot about the streaming. You can see it at simsVIP if you missed it too.. but for those who watched it... did they anything.. about anything?.. relevant?

I know what you mean, Missgothika. I don't want to downgrade after upgrading in order to play Sims 3 on high settings. Sims 3 with custom skin tones and hair looks great.

You like a game you pretty much know nothing about? EA loves customers like you

Sorry if this has been covered already and sorry if I'm being an annoying newbie, but... I think it's fair to say most of us commenting here on this particular area of the forum are pretty jaded and cyncial about TS4 and a lot of EA's um, more questionable moves. But having looked on the official Sims forums and on Simsvip I've noticed so many people seem to defend almost anything EA do, sometimes to the point of fanaticism. Down to defending mean comments from a certain Simguru. Any way, my question is, are we a vocal minority and most people are happy with the perceived problems lots of have with TS4 here?

Agree - LOL!

I've been a member and lurking around since 2005..... dang dusting old thing, not a fast mover only posted a measly 100 odd posts (a Lab something now!)

I'm a senior member! Yes!

or maybe not? I wonder if I'd get a lesson on how to play on this forum having a foot in both camps?

Anyway I've got to say I have come out of my shell a tad of late and tapped away on the keyboard more than ever before out of sheer boredom - TS3 was a fail for me so nothing better to do Simish than join you lovely folks a little more here, (can I hear some cheering in the back bleachers! )

Oh the boredom - Graham - knock - knock are you there? can we see a kid? maybe a peek? just the eyes maybe? oh no really would like to see the nose because they all looked like their nose sort of turned into a beak type tip in TS3 and they always looked so sour! And those eyebrows never helped made them look like they were frowning all the time.

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/...A7gFxhMncmohU3Q

I really hope the kids laugh a lot, giggle a lot, smile a lot and are extra cute

The thing is, though a 32X32 pixel square that's solid blue and a 256X256 pixel square that's solid blue have exactly the same resolution, differing only in size. They contain the same information (a solid blue square of such and such a dimension). But that's not what they're talking about in the renders they're showing. They're talking about the art style being that of "lower frequency details". As EmotedLlama stated, it appears that by using lower detail in the renders, such as the grass, they become less objectionable when rendered at a lower resolution, because they're starting out as lower resolution/lower contrast patterns to begin with. Which means, they might very well be more acceptable when running on low settings, but, because they lack the detail, they will render softly with high resolution settings. Which means, the game will not scale to provide more "eye candy" if your hardware would allow for it, because there is no "eye candy" to render.

So while you could say that it's a matter of "art style" to go with a more paintbrush type of softer and delicate style, I could say it's a matter of giving up the detailed patterns such as in wood which we've become accustomed to in TS2 and 3. And how is giving up detail just to improve performance on borderline hardware advancing the improvement one usually expects when moving up to a next generation sequel?

It's simple:

We're of different species. *drinks juicebox*

I think a lot of people defend Ea because a lot of peoples views on them seem either over exaggerated or ignorant. I don't care for the upper management at EA, but many people make ridiculous assumptions about the sims team and the choices they make. A lot of times they clearly don't understand what goes on with game development.

Then there's always the paranoid crew that insists anyone that likes what they've seen from the sims 4 is just paid by EA or something ridiculous. It is possible to not hate that game you know.

And this must be a personal thing, but I hardly call the simguru's comment mean. He explained what the texture artists have to deal with because she acted like it was a piece of cake. She clearly doesn't understand the process of game development, said she could do better, and he took her up on her offer. Whether serious or a joke (most likely) I think people took that too seriously.

Some of those ones are being paid off/employees. You can always tell

I happen to be someone who can smell the BS in their posts