The Sims 4 Official Information

[Bri]

There are a few more tweets which came out, and I've had some time to go digging.

• Looks like babies can't be made in CAS:

Henry Smith @Plumbob0721:  @SimGuruGraham Can babies be made in CAS in The Sims 4? I saw this picture and was wondering.
 Graham Nardone @SimGuruGraham:  @Plumbob0721 Babies can't be made in CAS, but they will show up in the family portrait if you upload the household to the Gallery.

(Source:  SimGuruGraham)

• Only a birth mother can breastfeed:

Grant Rodiek @SimGuruGrant:  @GracefulSimmer The mother only. Stepmother would bottle-feed the baby.

(Source:  SimGuruGrant)

Grace ‏@GracefulSimmer:  @SimGuruGrant cool what if you adopted would it be the same?
Grant Rodiek  ‏@SimGuruGrant:   @GracefulSimmer Yes. Birth mother = breastfeeding.

(Source:  SimGuruGrant)

• Cheats are still a thing in the game if you wish it:

Grant Rodiek @SimGuruGrant:  @PandaSimCake Yep. I didn't work on it specifically, but we have many of your favorite cheats in TS4

(Source:  SimGuruGrant)

• Just another confirmation, while the color wheel, and whatnot is gone, there will still be some variations for items/clothes/etc.

Nick @Nick250:  @SimGuruGrant Since CASt is no more, will style/materials for furniture be similar to the Sims 2? (a view variations of an object)
Grant Rodiek @SimGuruGrant:  @Nick250 We have variations on colors and patterns for objects, clothing, and so forth.

(Source:  SimGuruGrant)

• Not really an announcement, but something one of the SimGuru's found amusing:

Grant Rodiek @SimGuruGrant:  I'm busy working on a presentation, but I want to share with you fine folks my FAVORITE BUG (that we fixed!) of The Sims 4. Are you ready?

When we first implemented breastfeeding, we forgot to make it female only. That's right! Men used to be able to breastfeed.

Even funnier, we forgot to make it female parent only. So, female neighbors could show up and breastfeed your baby. Whoops!

(Source:  SimGuruGrant)

[Bri]

New video on the official Sims Youtube Channel.

The Sims 4: Stay Weirder - Weirder Stories Official Trailer

[Metropolis Man]

New video on the official Sims Youtube Channel.

The Sims 4: Stay Weirder - Weirder Stories Official Trailer

Oh, I love it. A nice EA tip of the hat to the funny Dos Equis commercials.

[Bri]

A few more goodies:

First is a link to the SimsVIP MegaPost.  I held off putting it here since it wasn't official EA, but considering it was an EA run event, I am going to go ahead and put a link here.  This is information gathered from the recent Creator's Camp they gathered, so some of this information may change with Sims 4 release.  There is some very good information here:

SimsVIP The Sims 4 Creator's Camp Mega Post

Additionally, EA released another fun trailer for another character:
Sims 4: It’s Amber - Weirder Stories Official Trailer

[Bri]

A few more goodies are out.  The first is another video on Youtube called Epic Wood:
The Sims 4: Epic Wood - Weirder Stories Official Trailer

The second is talking about modding on the official Sims page; it really looks like they are embracing the modding community this go around.

Source:  It's a Mod, Mod World

Since the first installment of The Sims, we have supported player creativity. In-game tools such as Create A Sim and Build Mode have grown and improved over the years, adding more powerful functionality while simultaneously becoming more intuitive to use.

We know some of our fans have pushed the game’s boundaries even further by lovingly and painstakingly making their own Custom Content called “Mods” for The Sims. Your endless imagination has been so inspiring to us, and we don’t want to inhibit that passion for creativity. And, that’s what this blog is all about; Custom Content and The Sims 4.

Our guiding philosophy for The Sims 4 is to enable player creativity, to enable your creativity.

We’ve built The Sims 4 on top of an entirely new technology platform that not only powers this new generation for our game, but is also flexible enough to adapt to the needs of the future, including providing a foundation for those players who want to create Custom Content.

It’s still early days but we are hard at work on features that will make it easier for you to add, manage or remove Custom Content. We also want to reduce the chance that your Custom Content will be affected when we enhance or update the game.

• The first step is the Mods Directory. For those of you who have already installed The Sims 4 Create A Sim Demo, you can find the Mods Directory added to your User Data folder. This is where you can start putting your Custom Content so you don’t have to dig deep into the game files*. This directory is going to make your Custom Content more manageable by keeping it from becoming too embedded within the game itself.

• In the next few weeks we’ll post a guide to the basics of file structure and “decoding” our files which will help you understand more about the interaction between Custom Content and The Sims 4.

• We are creating a dedicated section in our forums for discussing Custom Content and Modding. There you can provide feedback on your experiences, seek out help from other Simmers, and talk to the Studio team about your ideas.

We’ve already spotted a couple of pieces of Custom Content for The Sims 4 Create A Sim Demo and can see how excited you are. We love the creativity of our fans and our mission is to help you share that creativity with the whole Sims community. We are at the start of a new and exciting journey of discovery in The Sims 4. We look forward to taking that voyage with you, hand in hand.

Thank you!

Lyndsay Pearson (Sr. Producer)

Darren Gyles (Technical Director)

*Please note that we do not pre-screen Custom Content and that players should always exercise caution when adding Custom Content to their game files.

[Bri]

A few more tweets out with some new information.

•  First, there isn't going to be a launcher like we are used to:

‏@SimGuruGraham:   @alloyd93 There's no longer a launcher. You start the game via Origin, which can also be done in offline mode

(Source: SimGuruGraham)

•  You can play the game offline, though you do have to go online to verify it.

Nope; you can always play offline. You only need to be online once during the install for verification.

SimGuruGraham

• You will be able to put custom music in the game.  It is confirmed they have to be MP3 format.  It is unknown if other formats will be supported.

Graham Nardone @SimGuruGraham:   @TessaHerondale4 You can add music (and turn off the current songs) to the existing radio stations; there isn't a dedicated custom station.

Graham Nardone @SimGuruGraham:  @_WillH_ You place your custom music tracks among the rotation of songs in the existing stations. You can turn on/off individual songs.

SimGuruGraham

•  50x50 lot is the largest sized lot.

BAD WOLF @JakeRitchie18:  @SimGuruSarah what's the largest lot size in Sims 4? I always like to make Collinwood from the dark shadows movie

Sarah Holding @SimGuruSarah:  @JakeRitchie18 50x50 - I love Dark Shadows!

(Source:  SimGuruSarah)





Nothing really official at the moment, but I did get some amusement out of this Facebook post on the Sims page.

Some say love is blind. Learn more about this The Sims 4 love story tomorrow!

(Source:  The Sims Facebook Page)

[Bri]

Another new trailer on the Sims channel, this one I really enjoyed:
The Sims 4: Cow Plant Love - Weirder Stories Official Trailer

[Bri]

Unlockable Park-Like Lots
(I first came across this on SimsVIP).

It looks like there will be some hidden lots one can discover in the Sims 4.  Depending on how it is implemented, this can certainly supplement the feel of the worlds.

The following is a quote from GameRevolution
Additionally, Sims are no longer locked into a single neighborhood either, allowing them to live in one neighborhood but attend work in another. So far, only Willow Creek and Oasis Springs have been revealed, but Sims can also travel to Crick Cabana after viewing a special looking tree multiple times and can unlock the Forgotten Grotto by breaking open a sealed Mine Shaft in the Desert Bloom Park with Level 10 Handiness. Strangely, the loss of the open-world design has made the travel options far more expansive.

A SimsVIP and SimGuru tweet are as follows:

SimsVIP ‏@SimsVIP:   @SimGuruGraham Can you tell us about Crick Cabana? Any other places that "unlock"?
@SimGuruGraham:  @SimsVIP They're what I was alluding to in your E3 interview about how what you think of as a "rabbithole" can work completely differently now. It gives us the flexibility to do many cool things that wouldn't have been possible in Sims 3. I was wondering if anyone at Creator's Camp would find them I'll leave details about discovering and exploring them for players to share though.

(Source:  SimGuruGraham Twitter)

[Bri]

Not directly the Sims 4, but EA/Maxis currently has the English version of their Sims 4 forum.  Below it is the normal Sims 3 forums/areas you have come to know.  I believe it is still a work in progress, so expect things to change.

The URL for the English Sims 4 forums is as follows:
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/

One thing to be aware of is, at least the time of this posting, you are taken to a page which requires you to login by your Origin name before you can even see the forums.

[Bri]

For those who didn't have the opportunity earlier, the Sims 4 Create-A-Sim Demo is now available for all.

You will have to log into Origin to claim it.

Here is the Origin page for the US with the current free demos, so if you wanted to try some other game, you could give them a whirl:

The Sims 4 Create-A-Sim Demo

Additional news:
There is an event in Germany that will occur tomorrow called Gamescon, and EA is going to have a presence there.  It is known they will display some of the Sims 4, so if there is something significant, we will post it as well.

[Bri]

Todays new information is just a series of video links.

First, courtesy of SimsVIP, is a replay of EA's presentation of the Sims 4 at Gamescon:
The Sims 4: Gamescom 2014 Presentation (Replay)

Second are some videos on the official Sims Youtube channel:

The Sims 4 Academy: Swagger - Lesson 1: Create A Sim

The Sims 4 Academy: Thunder Thighs - Lesson 2: Create A Sim

The Sims 4 Academy: Personality Diagnostic

Here is an article from JoyStiq
Coveting My Neighbor's House In The Sims 4

[Bri]

From one of the video links, EA/Maxis has a The Sims 4 Personality test up:

The Sims 4 Personality Diagnostic!

[Bri]

Couple tweets for the Sims 4.

First, teens are going to be the same height as adults.

Dores Sims 4 ‏@Bruno_Dores :  Why the teens have the same height as adults?
SimGuruGrant   @Bruno_Dores The quick answer is that instead of spending hundreds of days making custom height animations, we focused on broader content

(Source:  SimGuruGrant)

The second is at the moment, there won't be any family trees in the game.

@SimsVIP We had a presentation today. The answer for this question from @SimGuruLyndsay: no family trees.

(Source:  The SimsTime Team

[Bri]

The ESRB (the software ratings board in the US) has given an official rating to the Sims 4.  It is rated T, though mostly for Woohoo, and other 'real world' simulations' (going to the bathroom, fights, etc.)

If you curious about the rating, here it is:
ESR The Sims 4 Rating

[Bri]

If you are curious, The official Sims site has an article about  Create A Sim and Animation:

Create-A-Sim And Animation