Hey MTS I've been away from simming for a few months... TS3 just got to the point where it was overstuffed with EPs IMO, so stopped playing But I've been checking in on TS4 every now and then. Happened to notice on Monday that EA was inviting Simmers to apply to attend the EA pre-E3 press conference in LA... and since I live in the area and could get the day off work, I sent in an email, and got invited. Yeah, you can watch the whole thing on livestream anyway, and yeah, there'll be a ton of stupid sports games shown too (though I AM interested in the new Dragon Age as well as TS4). And it will be a mob scene with little chance to talk to actual devs I expect, and yeah, like many of you I'm ambivalent about TS4 (good things and bad things IMO), but nonetheless, I kind of get a kick out of mass gaming events, so I'm looking forward to it

Anybody else from here going?

No, but have fun out there!

Yes I am attending! If there are enough people we should group up

I don't live near that place (8548.1 kilometers) so the answer is no. But I hope you have fun out there
Will be checking all the live streams from home. Do you plan on pestering some of the Guru's with questions?

Cool, tell us all about it when you get back.

If there's an opportunity, absolutely! But it's going to be a massive press conference... covering EA's entire E3 lineup. http://www.ea.com/news/see-our-late...-live-on-june-9

So I am not expecting a lot of access... but you can be sure that if I DO get a chance, I will be asking, and suggesting. Particularly about modding. I've read that Graham said they are not going to go out of their way to prevent it, but I also don't think it's at all likely that they will directly support it by providing much more than they have in the past in the way of modding tools. But there is a middle path where they expose more in the way of information to the free modding community that could really hasten the development of community mod tools and hence community mods. In the case of TS3, we had some mod tools (like Delphy's pattern packager) within a few days of release, but other things took months or even years. If the community didn't have to pick code apart literally bit by bit to figure out file structures and script mechanics and so on, we could have done a lot more a lot sooner

Something else I am personally curious about after seeing the building video is the relationship of the pre-furnished rooms (the new version of blueprints) to new content. One of the reasons I personally almost never use blueprints in TS3 is that they don't support EP, store and custom content, so they pretty much become obsolete almost as soon as they're published. A tool like VelocityGrass's blueprint editor should be built into the game, or maybe blueprints could be self-updating, or at the very least new item sets whether from the store, EPs or SPs could come with blueprints included. That is my currently most burning question about game mechanics

If others have questions they want to ask feel free to post them and I'll see if I can work em in... if I get a chance at all. However, I am not going to forward complaints about the information we've already been given (yes I have plenty too but it's not a good use of the time... CaST! Dammit!), or questions about specific objects or interactions (anything not in at release may well be in later). More interested in higher level questions about what CAN be done in this game



Cool... I'll be driving down from Santa Barbara, and back up, the same day, so not sure how much time I'll have around the actual show, but I'll PM you with my cell # when my plans firm up in the next couple of days. With the magic of texting it might be possible to get together, even though based on my experience of large gaming events it will be mass chaos, very dark and very noisy



Since the whole thing will be livestreamed I may not have much new news, but I'll definitely post here with my impressions

ooo - lucky you on the invite (and the day off). We will need a full report back. With a PowerPoint presentation and everything.

Oh, excellent, and nice to see you about Srikandi. I've missed you. I look forward to hearing what, if anything, you dig up. Mostly, have fun.

Nice to see you back Srikandi! I hope you'll have fun at the conference. If by some miracle you'll manage to get simguru to answer a couple of your questions could you please ask if we are going to have graphic options control? (bloom on/off, less or more brightness and saturation and if they are going to make the lighting moddable, as in the Sims 3, I'm talking about .ini files).

I wonder what the disagree means on my post. Does it mean...I hope you have a lousy time? I hope your time there totally sucks? Omg. That's horrible.

It means someone thinks you lied when you said you weren't going, because they already saw your name on the YibSim VIP admit list. I mean, come on, do you think there are really TWO Madame Butterfly's in the community?

No, I won't be going even I don't live that far from E3. Nice to see that you are invited. I hope you will have the time of your life at E3 !


As for the major questions......

I want to know is that will they provide and consider an offical CC tool program for CC creators soon? (ex,Bodyshop/Simshow/Caw,etc..)
Can you import custom CC color swatches into the game?
will and How will it be easier to create CC/mods to share;fiddle with this time around?
Can CC be shared without the Exchange and shared with anyone wherever you want?
How many floor limits will there be?

I hope these are acceptable questions for you?

LOL...that's actually the conclusion I usually draw when someone hits disagree on my posts. They think I am lying through my teeth! (Omg, they are spying on me! NSA creepers!)

Those are great questions. I'll see what kind of answers I can get By "importing custom CC color swatches", are you talking about recolors, or something else?

Yes you are right exactly, I am talking about creating your own recolors of any mesh/CC mesh and applying it in the Sims 4. So that there is not a single duplicate of reds or same boring shades of red for example.

@9b8ll I don't remember where they confirmed floor limits, but I know the limit is 3 floors. That might change with EPs

Please come back with as much information as you can :lovestruc

First E3 in almost 15 years without Need For Speed in it. Feels weird.

So, I'm home after the event As expected I didn't learn anything you couldn't learn from looking at the stream... no question and answer, no simgurus to interrogate, no live demo stations (sadly, they DID do this for a new super violent cops and robbers game but not TS4 ).

However I did meet up with some fellow simmers... Alexis from http://simsvip.com/, Berry from http://berrysweetsite.forumotion.co...s-a-berry-sweet, their partners, local Simmers Danielle and Hannah, and some other Sims players who stopped by to say hello when they saw Berry's plumbob. Alexis is there for all of E3, has an interview coming up (actually probably over by now) and will be playing the game tomorrow...so I passed on the modding related questions to her, and if you have other questions, posting them in her blog is probably a good way to get them addressed (although she already has a long list, of course!) I'd definitely recommend keeping an eye on her site for the latest stuff. I'd never met her before but she's a great person and not as uncritical of the series as her blog might seem to suggest Really enjoyed everybody I met actually... simmers are so nice! (OK not ALL of them, but if Pescado was there he didn't introduce himself! )

Sorry if I sound bubbly, but that was fun!

Thank you for reporting back. Glad you had fun, even if you didn't get to learn anything revealing.

Aw I though you were going to stick around until next week.. At least you had a very great time. Also, it was nice that she took some our questions for tomorrow morning. Hopefully Alexis will answer those same exact questions about any CC/mods, custom color swatches and CC tools in the Sims 4.

I pushed her on it... her interview with Graham should be going up later tonight, so we'll see

The invite to the general simming public was ONLY for the EA press event. My guess is they had empty chairs to fill That was a PRE E3 event... it was on Monday, and E3 didn't start till today (Tuesday). So yeah, admission to the press conference has no relation to actual E3 admission (which is for actual press only, or is supposed to be).

I did go to an entire E3 once years ago... was a community manager for Ubisoft's Myst game series, and they got me in. it was a blast and I'd love to go again, but sadly this wasn't the year