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Mad Poster
Original Poster
#1 Old 12th Sep 2013 at 3:24 PM Last edited by leefish : 12th Sep 2013 at 8:51 PM. Reason: Fix title spelling
Default Graham Nardone confirms ts4 will not run on glassbox
http://www.nowgamer.com/features/20...t_weddings.html

new interview
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One horse disagreer of the Apocalypse
#2 Old 12th Sep 2013 at 3:28 PM
I am not sure what grounds there ever were to think it would. I can't imagine its a suitable engine at all to simulate humans other than keeping their needs green by following set paths to resources.

"You can do refraction by raymarching through the depth buffer" (c. Reddeyfish 2017)
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#3 Old 12th Sep 2013 at 3:35 PM
i don't know enough about game development to say, but there was a thread here where people were discussing glassbox for ts4. it was just an assumption.
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#4 Old 12th Sep 2013 at 5:14 PM
From the interview:
"but if you’re more of a deviant player, we’re going to have a lot of fun things in there for you to be able to mess with other sims, control their lives, manipulate them, make them have a miserable existence. If you want to do that, it’s going to be there for you"
Sounds promising.

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Alchemist
#5 Old 12th Sep 2013 at 6:13 PM
From the interview...
Quote:
I think in our past games, we had to rely on a lot of UI and menus and that doesn’t instantly register with people, especially if they’re not already a hardcore gamer. We wanted to make a lot of sense to people who just think, ‘why can’t I just click on my sim and directly manipulate?’. We’ve been trained to think about things a different way, but that’s how things should be.

By "not already a hardcore gamer" could he possibly be referring to casual gamers with the attention span of a gnat and the IQ of a sock drawer?

I didn't have problems with the UI and menus in previous games. The Sims 3 was slightly difficult to navigate because it mixed things up a bit (Live/Buy/Build mode buttons are placed vertically instead of horizontally like in the first two games). And even then, I learned fast. No muss, no fuss.

I'm all for pushing-and-pulling until you reach CAS-induced climax, but the UI in the first two games were far from overly complex.
Quote:
That’s a very interesting question because our audience ages with us. I think with a lot of other games you see people age out of a franchise and I don’t think we suffer from that problem. Really, we bring in new players as they age into the franchise. It’s kind of interesting because you start to see the mix of people amongst the community. The people who have been there since The Sims 1 are a lot different and have different opinions on what The Sims 4 should be compared to people who’ve just started The Sims 3.

It's difficult to age with the franchise when the target audience keeps getting younger and younger.
Quote:
As they continue through life - we have middle-aged players, we have older senior players – they don’t leave us, they just add another wrinkle into what we’re thinking about when we’re developing the game.

Well, isn't that punny...lol.
Lab Assistant
#6 Old 12th Sep 2013 at 7:28 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Original_Sim
Well, isn't that punny...lol.



Sims Producer Graham Nardone - Follow me on Twitter @SimGuruGraham
Test Subject
#7 Old 12th Sep 2013 at 8:16 PM
Was there ever an assumption that it will? Run on glassbox, that is? I mean, they do remember Simcity, right? Guess not.
Mad Poster
#8 Old 12th Sep 2013 at 9:09 PM
http://linna.modthesims.info/showth...hlight=glassbox

That thread assumed it.

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Theorist
#9 Old 12th Sep 2013 at 9:13 PM
I really thought it would run on Glassbox, but I've not played SimCity so I don't really know how it works to be honest.
They are totally different games and play styles, of course, but I thought that most game developers adapt their current engines instead of creating new ones each time?


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Mad Poster
Original Poster
#10 Old 12th Sep 2013 at 9:47 PM
they probably could use it, but it would be a bad idea.
One Minute Ninja'd
#11 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 12:16 AM
Given the problems glassbox has had when scaling up with town growth, I'm relieved those agents won't be making an encore in this series.

Nice interview, Graham.

Now, about that emotional roller coaster ride for the simmies, and the lack of plans for CAST.....................................
Scholar
#12 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 7:44 AM
That create-a-sim picture sparked my curiosity. Does this only work for faces, or will I also be able to poke butts and boobs to mold sims into shape? I do agree that direct manipulation of the sim could be more intuitive though. I have played a lot of games with charactercreators and they all have sliders with similar names, but you always have to get used to them to learn what the effect will be. If you have a specific look in mind for your character, it is not always obvious which sliders you need. Especially with the sliders for face features.
I would like to know more about create a sim though. Will we be able to change how clothes look in some way? (Colour, pattern). This goes for building mode too. A set catalogue with fixed colours and patterns would become very boring very fast. And no, it won't make me buy clothes/furniture in the store. Also, in TS3 I like it that the game doesn't list 20 of the same model pants, just because they have different colours. I prefer to save colour/pattern presets. I think it is a lot more efficient for keeping buy and build items organised this way. And it has the advantage that you can create interior styles easier. This used to be a real pain in TS2 imo.
Mad Poster
#13 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 8:14 AM Last edited by HarVee : 13th Sep 2013 at 8:27 AM.
Quote:
I think in our past games, we had to rely on a lot of UI and menus and that doesn’t instantly register with people, especially if they’re not already a hardcore gamer.


I wasn't aware that the user interface on the older titles were so complex that anyone who wasn't a hardcore gamer couldn't comprehend how to navigate them efficiently.

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A choice profound is bittersweet, no one hears Cassandra Goth cry

One horse disagreer of the Apocalypse
#14 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 9:00 AM
I always found ALL the sims games completely intuitive to operate - and I am a person who doesn't actually play any other 3D game cos I can't understand how to work them! So I am not sure what he was thinking about here, and I hope it won't change too much!

"You can do refraction by raymarching through the depth buffer" (c. Reddeyfish 2017)
Lab Assistant
#15 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 10:18 AM
That's funny, I was under the assumption that they would. I mean, Maxis poured a lot of resources into developing Glassbox, I would have thought that they would want to get some mileage out of it, even if it's reputation was dragged through the mud by the Simcity launch.

However, the cynic in my narrows in on this bit of the quote

Quote:
a lot of people went into The Sims 4 announcement with this assumption that we were using Glassbox technology and we’re not. We’re on our own completely separate proprietary engine that we built just for The Sims 4.


I recall Bethesda saying something very similar before Skyrim launch, but afterward we found out that the vaunted Creation Engine was just a rebranded Gamebryo engine. I wonder if Maxis might be pulling something similar.
One horse disagreer of the Apocalypse
#16 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 11:02 AM
But Glassbox just isn't about that type of thing. It's a kind of script interpreter for scripts that use input and output of resource types (meaning stuff like fuel, crops, fire vehicles) and work out paths for them to travel to get to where they are needed. It could just about be stretched to get a sim to the nearest fridge and choose food to fill their hunger bar or to nearest bed to fill energy. But I don't think it could do much more than that and certainly not emulate nuances of human relationships. It's better to have a game engine that is optimised to what it is driving.

"You can do refraction by raymarching through the depth buffer" (c. Reddeyfish 2017)
world renowned whogivesafuckologist
retired moderator
#17 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 1:00 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Original_Sim
By "not already a hardcore gamer" could he possibly be referring to casual gamers with the attention span of a gnat and the IQ of a sock drawer?



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Field Researcher
#18 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 7:46 PM
Quote:
How did the conversation for making The Sims 4 begin? What prompted it?

Well I think a lot of it reaches back to where we want to take the franchise and what we want to do with our sims. Realistically, when you look at it, being a life simulation, it’s all about injecting life back into our characters. So you see a lot of that come through in the main things that we’re talking about at Gamescom, so the way thay emotions drive a sims behavior really brings them to life in realistic ways.

Our new technology that we’re calling ‘SmartSim’, it allows us to do a lot of things that make them act realistically that we simply couldn’t do in the past. Stuff like multitasking, things like being able to have real group dynamics where you can have a conversation and it looks believable and we just couldn’t accomplish that in the past. I think some of it almost seems subtle, but when you see it all brought to life within the game, you instantly get we’re delivering a life simulator that’s better that any that we’ve ever built before.


"Oh shit, this Sims MMO looks terrible, what do we do now?"


Fixed..

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Lab Assistant
#19 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 7:48 PM
Quote: Originally posted by The Wild Turkey
I recall Bethesda saying something very similar before Skyrim launch, but afterward we found out that the vaunted Creation Engine was just a rebranded Gamebryo engine. I wonder if Maxis might be pulling something similar.


Let me be definitively clear that we are not using the Glassbox engine. It was a decision driven by the needs of The Sims 4; Glassbox wasn't anywhere near complete when The Sims 4 began development, regardless if it could be adapted for use in a Sims game or not (I have no idea). We use a proprietary engine developed within The Sims Studio that doesn't have an official name yet.

Sims Producer Graham Nardone - Follow me on Twitter @SimGuruGraham
One horse disagreer of the Apocalypse
#20 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 8:02 PM
Quote: Originally posted by SimGuruGraham
We use a proprietary engine developed within The Sims Studio that doesn't have an official name yet.


I thought Rachel called it SmartSim?

"You can do refraction by raymarching through the depth buffer" (c. Reddeyfish 2017)
Lab Assistant
#21 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 9:25 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Inge Jones
I thought Rachel called it SmartSim?


SmartSim is the name we've given to our new AI technology which is powering the behavior of the Sims (the little people, not the entire game). The Sims 4 as a whole is built on a new engine which doesn't yet have a name.

Sims Producer Graham Nardone - Follow me on Twitter @SimGuruGraham
Instructor
#22 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 10:20 PM
I recommend calling it, "The Sims 4 Engine."
Alchemist
#23 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 10:22 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Glic2003
I recommend calling it, "The Sims 4 Engine."

But...I wanted to call it Mr. Snuggles...
One Minute Ninja'd
#24 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 10:48 PM
Bet it was going to be called SimNet before it became a "single-player, offline experience".

So, Graham, if it doesn't have an official name yet, do you guys just sit around calling it "the thing the game runs on" or does it have a pet designation? Don't worry, we won't tell anyone over there you let that info out.
Lab Assistant
#25 Old 13th Sep 2013 at 11:11 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Glic2003
I recommend calling it, "The Sims 4 Engine."


Boring.

Quote: Originally posted by eskie227
So, Graham, if it doesn't have an official name yet, do you guys just sit around calling it "the thing the game runs on" or does it have a pet designation? Don't worry, we won't tell anyone over there you let that info out.


There's no particular need to reference it by a name internally. Even if it had a name we'd probably just call it the engine when discussing it anyway. Heck... I have no idea what Sims 3's engine name was if it ever had one.

On a side note, someone ought to edit the Sims wikia for The Sims 4.

Sims Producer Graham Nardone - Follow me on Twitter @SimGuruGraham
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