I am afraid I have to disagree, as an avid builder I committed to memory the post some years back where they said "everything is possible" or "it's definitely possible" in response to a question about terrain tools. In fact I was one of the people who doubted its feasibility with the new engine in spite of that reassurance.

Yeah, now to go dig a hole I can't get out of. No, wait... Akkkk.

The dreaded steeplechase camera. Going up and down with every lump, divot and bump in the ground like the camera is on the back of a horse. Rough ride ahead. Though it does that quite a bit anyway when going higher than two floors. Suicide cam. Where if you go outside the edge of the building the cam plummets to the ground as if on the back of a sim diving out a window. Imagine aeroplanes did that, flying in a straight line from point A to B, but going up and down with every bump and pothole in the ground thousands of feet below. Those little paper sick bags would not be enough to contain the sea of puke released en route. Boy do I hate that mechanic in camera movement. Like watching an early episode of Breaking Bad and that awful shaky cam, just have to pause and take eyes of the screen for a bit before you puke.

But Terrain Tools at last. Okay. Hope those constrain floor elevation cheats also make a return for some funky, bendy buildings. That was fun.

That made me laugh out loud I know exactly what you mean with the camera issues.
Besides that I also hope there won't be routing issues. Though I can clearly see it - The patch is available, everyone is excited, we start playing, suddenly all our Sims are stuck, waving their hands in the air, and we either have to reset them or constantly change the terrain so Sims can find that sweet spot where they can actually walk. And then we wait another eight weeks until they start to fix it. Let's hope it won't come to this


Wow, that is a lot higher than I thought, for example here:


But it does look awkward, yeah. Maybe there are better places to build such huge mountains. I guess the picture is just to show how high up you can build (surprised they didn't show that height in the stream, but they did say it's really early stage, so maybe it wasn't ready to be shown live). Now a Create A World tool would be handy, so you can give your surroundings some hills too.

I think, personally, the most exciting prospect of the addition of terrain tools is how they'll change the way Maxis creates any future TS4 worlds and the lots in them. I hope they add a pond tool though, or at least make those hidden pond objects unhidden in Build mode.

I just wonders if what's behind the circle I made, is a pondtool? That would be something.



I think the little show they made there, was interesting. I didn't see him lift any part of the building though. The ground was leveled out when he made staircases, and the staircases didn't do anything for the ground. It looks like the tools are very specific, unless he has some cheats available.

Pacific time 11:30 is CEST 20:30. Just the right time. Did I get that right?

Heh. Well then I stand corrected

Though now I'm drawing a blank for what they DID say was too hard for them since this whole time I thought it was Terrain Tools

I work for a very large tech/software company similar to the size/ scope of Maxis. I'm going off of my experience at work, but I would say that they phrase things this when when they actually aren't sure whether or not something is possible and are testing but haven't yet reached a clear conclusion.

There is no company on earth that will tell you- in the detail you want - every step of the way as they are creating something or not creating something. It's just not done. They tell you they've got new features! Which turn out to be a rebrand of the same ones. Or they'll say they've launched the most incredible update ever! And it's really just a niche thing for some users. Welcome to the tech space!

Maxis is actually behaving like a software developer, which technically, in this context, they are. The gurus are what we call 'evangelists' at my company - it's their job to be the face of the company and talk about things, but it's unlikely that they have any legitimate hand in creating things. They may have done in the past, but they're just the front now (ours used to work in sales and marketing and IT, like 8 years ago before they got paid to give speeches and write books). There's a PR team behind them - could be one person or 20, but there is definitely PR and Legal involved in what gets said. Every statement, every 'launch' interaction is going to be evaluated by PR and Legal because no one wants to get sued.

That said, some of our evangelists also go off script and say crappy things sometimes. It's a PR nightmare every time. I'm guessing from the quality of their comms so far that they have a pretty small PR team, and may have just hired a new PR lead (hence the pivot to these monthly streams). Again, I don't work there, but going off my work experience, that's what I'm thinking. If they have done that, then the gurus and all other communications will be reigned in more than ever because you can't have evangelists fighting with customers. It's bad business. The new PR Lead/ head of Comms will be going through there with a whip and making sure they say what they're supposed to say, all approved by PR and Legal, so comms will be released more slowly and more hesitantly. << again, this is my thought.

I just wanted to share that since people here do seem to think you can just do/say whatever the hell you want in a corporate job, and that's just not true. It's not one person who's involved in planning and executing these, and it's not 'omg how can I be mEaN tO tHE aNgRY fAnZ' type stuff. It's literally business, and the business of business is selling shit. They aren't trying to be mean to you or "lie", but to be real, corporations don't operate under the same definition of 'lie' as a single individual. For a company, a lie is when they tell you a product does a bunch of things that it can be PROVEN IN COURT not to do. Or when they tell their share holders they have 65% YoY growth and really they're hemorrhaging money. It's not telling a bunch of angry people on twitter that they have no terrain tools coming and then launching terrain tools.

For the angry people in the back: this is not a defense of maxis. It's just an explanation - or rather, a translation, and a guess at that, of comms speak to plain english. Source: I work in Comms. We do and deal with this shit all the time.

Yes there was something, I do remember *something* but not the terrain tools. Hmm was it making babies come out of their cribs? I just forget

Yes that's right lounge chairs was definitely one they said would take a lot of animating effort and might not be the best way to use their resources but it wasn't the "too hard one". But it might have been beards, yes

So, according to SimGuruRomeo, you will not be able to paint the sides of terrain. Each world will have its own terrain texture on the sides. Sigh... why is there always a "but..." with the Sims 4.

... everything?

"We're probably not going to make toddlers." --> makes toddlers.
"We're probably not going to make pools." --> makes pools.
"We're probably not going to make terrain tools." --> makes terrain tools.
Etc...

So is there any reason X isn't in the basegame? --> "Too difficult." --> *goes on to make it months to years later, just because they supposedly now can* (even if the same thing was in previous basegames even as far back as TS1 in some cases).

Just goes to show that they did indeed release a very unfinished game when the basegame came out. Had they given it a few months to a year more to sort out these things, I think TS4 may have been a better, possibly more stable game with a lot more functionality than the bare-bones game they did release.

If they're going to continue this way, can't they just finish doing everything terrain-related before they release it and move on to the next issue? Is it too much to ask to be able to paint the terrain on slopes? You could do it in a game released 14 years ago, for crying out loud! Can't be that hard...

Haha so that wasn't just me? I thought it was something to do with a mod conflict. I thought for sure there was no way EAxis would be dumb enough to rig it a certain way where after a certain floor the camera goes insane. Welp, can't say I'm surprised, so that's disappointing, but at least it wasn't a mod causing it.

I for one am glad I had a change of heart on this game a few years in. Good to see it getting the crap it needed from the beginning, but moreso it's good to see that they haven't completely given up on it despite the game's reputation with long-time fans. It's still boring unless you have an imagination but that can be said of all games, really.

Bruh. Why is there always a catch!? Why can't we ever get something back the way it was?

Oh, nice. Now, introduce CASt (or at least colour wheel) and tone down the emotions system please and I might buy your stuff.

You can’t paint the sides of terrain?

All they had to do was lift the polygons up... no one asked for fixed terrain paints. Why are they like this?

I would be excited about this, if I had opened 4 more than once since Seasons was released which I got half off, and I have not, .... and if there was anywhere whatsoever to build.

Well there appeared to be floor tiles on one bit that was flat then got raised, so maybe if we can't paint we can tile?

Where was that?

It might have to do with stretched bitmaps. Alongside something like: "it's going to look like crap, so why bother making anymore textures available".

I wonder what makes people expect them to tell in detail what they will release next year? I mean, what companies do that? No one does that. I have this way of deating with my bosses at work. If you don't want to hear crap, don't ask about it. If you don't want your bosses to limit your amount bottles at work, don't ask them about it.

Of course they're not going to tell you what they will release next year, so why do you ask. I mean, who the hell knows what will happen next year? They can't promise you anything, so leave it. That's my opinion anyway.

At about 28:53 but when I looked again it was either some very precisely painted terrain paint or tiles that vanished when the land got too steep. So like with most games that allow terrain sculpting, there is a threshold beyond which steepness you just get bare subsoil or rock

Yes, if it's like I think, they have a very square brush when flattening the ground. I also saw some bright and shiny tiles on the ground before they started squlpting, but I think that's some kind of markings for the tool.

This is really awesome, but somehow - I had become content with Sims 4 being flat. It's been flat for years, all the worlds have been designed with this perpetual flatness in mind. It isn't like TS3 where you can create dynamic landscapes. Still I bet there will be some gorgeous and creative builds from the community, and I can't wait to see them.

We probably just have to cover the slopes with plants. I guess we can still blend alongside the edges of the lawn with just terrainpaint. It wouldn't surprice me though if they made the hole lot unpaintable if you started twisting the ground.

In Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 and Planet Coaster you can repaint textures of the slopes of the mountains. I adore the landscape editor in Planet Coaster. It allows you to create anything, even a wonderful sculpture.

On this channel a lot of cool sculptures created with the help of a landscape editor.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf...V7qEEihUn-YZ0KA

I would like to have an editor of this level in The Sims.

I just watched this and all I can say is... no I don't think that we will be able to use CFE on walls and fences. The only reason I think this is because of how the slope works and is presented in the build mode. You see the slope in a topographical representation while the top and bottom, if they are flat, have visible tilles.

So it's not the old system from previous games, it's a completely new system similar to how Sims 1 terrain works, just that the tools a little more polished. Still pretty limited compared to what Sims 2 and 3 can do if you are a skilled builder.