Post by AdaSirin in Direct Controls for The Sims 4 comments

Direct Controls for The Sims 4 » Comments

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I really appreciate that you made this mod — it has a lot of potential and it's something I've been wanting for a long time. A few questions/requests:

- I find that the mod works a lot better and more reliably in ghost mode. Especially when navigating around areas with lots of clutter on the floor. The only thing I don't like about ghost mode is how your sim turns translucent while clipping through things. Would you consider releasing a version without the translucent ghost mode effect?

- I find that the walking animation is pretty fluid when the camera is directly centered on the active sim, but the walking animation looks laggy/choppy and like it's at a lower fps when the sim is walking on an angle. Is there a reason for this? It just seems odd to me that the camera angle would effect the smoothness of the animation to that degree. It'd be great if this could be fixed.

- Related to the previous point, I can't help but feel that it would be a much more fluid/intuitive system if the camera remained centered on the sim at all times while they're walking, and using the right-click mouse button to rotate the camera would also rotate the direction the sim is moving in. I find that the current system of moving diagonally left and right with the A and D keys a bit hard to control, and as I mentioned previously it makes the walking animation look quite laggy/choppy. Would you consider including an optional mode where the camera is always centered on the sim while manually walking, and the direction is dictated by rotating the camera with the right mouse button?

Thanks again for the great mod!

Victor Andrade5 years ago (1 edit)

Hello AdaSirin,

I'm glad you liked the mod and I'm aware of the things you mentioned. Unfortunately, The Sims 4 has a lot of limitations when it comes to scripting the camera. The game makes it unable to accurately track down the camera movement, and it only updates the camera position when its standing still. That's why its not possible right now to change the direction your Sim is walking towards on-the-fly based on the camera rotation.

I'm also aware that the animation may seem a bit choppy at times while on third person mode. This is due to the rate at which the game updates the current zone scripting. The actual game engine was not meant to have real time controls like this, and I wasn't able to find a workaround for that.

If these limitations bothers you in any way, I recommend that you give the first-person camera mode a try (Shift + Tab). The controls make it easier to freely rotate your Sim, and the movement may actually be a bit smoother.

Anyway, I hope this helped. Thanks for the feedback!

AdaSirin5 years ago

Thanks for the response Victor. I really appreciate you explaining the issues and engine limitations to me. Honestly, I'm amazed that you managed to get the mod working to such a degree in spite of all the limitations. I understand now that my original requests aren't really possible. I have one more suggestion that might be possible for you to tweak and which I think would increase the usability of the mod. The way I currently use your mod 90% of the time is by only using the W key to move forward, then momentarily stopping my sim from walking to change the camera angle and thus the sim's direction, and then pressing W again to walk in the new direction. This gives me a more accurate control over the sim's direction, rather than using the A and D keys to move diagonally. My only issue with this technique is that there's quite a long delay between stopping walking and having the sim become "centered" on the new camera angle so that they walk in the intended direction. If I just stop walking for a split second, change the camera angle, and then start walking again, the sim won't walk in a straight and centered way, they'll continue walking in the original direction even though the camera angle has changed. But if I stop walking, change the camera angle and wait for a couple of seconds, the sim will walk in the new direction correctly. I hope that makes sense, it's sort of hard to explain. Basically, my question is whether that "delay" could be removed or minimised, so that I can effectively have accurate and fluid control of my sim by walking forward with the W key, standing still for a split second to change the camera angle (and thus the sim's future direction), and then walk in the new direction without having to pause for a couple of seconds each time I change directions (in order to accommodate the delay and keep the camera centered on the sim). Is that something that could be tweaked, or is that a limitation of the game engine?

Victor Andrade5 years ago

Yes, that's the same camera limitation I talked about earlier. The mod actually tries to get an updated camera position on every game tick, but the game only updates the camera position when its standing still. That means that the mod only knows where the camera is when the camera is standing still for some time. So unfortunately, there's really nothing I can do to minimize this delay time because the game itself was programmed this way.

AdaSirin5 years ago(+1)

No problem, thanks for the explanation. It's still a great mod despite the limitations and really changes the feel of the game, so thanks for making it!

itch.io

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