Category: The Sims 4

We’ve reached the end of our three part The Sims 4 Create A Sim demo walkthrough. Now that we’ve formed our Sims’ personalities and created their looks, it’s time to share them with the world through the Gallery!

The Gallery window consists of three tabs: Home, Community, and My Library.

Home tells you how many players are online and the total number of households in the Gallery and your library. You may also find notifications regarding your uploaded households and a list of popular hashtags to the right.

 

Community is the heart of the Gallery. Here you’ll find all of the Sims 4 content players have uploaded. Lots and rooms will also be available on the Gallery in the full release, but for now we can only share Sim households. These can be sorted by the most recent uploads or by the most popular in terms  of downloads or favorites. A checkbox is included for hiding uploads containing any downloadable or expansion content for The Sims 4 that you don’t currently own. They can also be searched for by name, the Origin ID of the creator, or by hashtag.

 

My Library contains all of your saved households, including any downloaded from the Gallery. The files are stored locally on your computer and can be found in the Tray folder.

Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4 Create A Sim Demo/Tray

 

Uploading a household to the Gallery is accomplished through the household preview window. A button can be found at the bottom left corner which when clicked will upload your household to the Gallery. Before doing this you may want to add a description, including any relevant hashtags if you wish.

After a short load your content will appear on the Gallery and a notification will pop up. Your uploads can be removed at any time by clicking the same button.

 

You may also showcase one of your uploads prominently on your Gallery profile. Clicking your Origin ID at the top of the window will take your profile. Other players can follow you, leave comments, and view the full catalog of your uploaded creations from here.

 

Downloading content from the Gallery is just as simple. Clicking on another player’s household will bring up a familiar window. From here you can save the household to your library, favorite it, share it on Facebook, report it for inappropriate content, or bring it right into Create A Sim. The creator’s profile can be accessed by clicking on their name.

If another player uses your creations in their own Gallery upload, you will receive credit as the original creator.

Interestingly, the Create A Sim demo installation includes a Mods folder. With the right tools you can already start making custom textures for your Sims to fashion. An official Sims blog entry posted this week elaborated on this. They’ll be adding a basic guide explaining the game’s file structure and how to work with the files for modding purposes within the next few weeks. The updated Sims forums currently in the works will also include a section for modding and custom content discussion.

 

That wraps up our Create A Sim demo walkthrough.

 

We’re back with part two of our The Sims 4 Create A Sim demo walkthrough. This time we’ll focus on editing our Sim’s appearance.

Editing the Head

When you move the cursor over your Sim, you’ll notice that individual parts of their body will become highlighted. This indicates which parts can be adjusted. These parts can be dragged with your mouse and molded as you wish. When you reach the limit in any given direction that a part can be adjusted, it will light up red.

 

While zoomed out you can adjust the overall size of the head. You’ll need to zoom in close to the face to access its individual features. These include the head shape, eyebrows, eyes, ears, cheeks, nose, mouth, chin, and jaw. Rotating your Sim will allow you to perform additional adjustments.

 

You’ll notice than when you click on one of these body parts, a selection of different choices for that part will appear to the right. Each appears to be in some way unique and has its own limitations for adjustment. When you’re ready to start editing the finest details of your Sim’s face, double click on any part of the face or use the Detail Edit Mode button to the left. Now you can adjust things such as the nostrils, upper and lower lips, and even the size of the eye’s iris.

 

To the right of your Sim’s head you will see six buttons.

 

Editing the Body

To the left you’ll find two sliders for adjusting muscle and weight. Editing the body is mostly the same as the head, but there is no Detail Edit Mode or additional limb types to select from. Like the head, there are a series of buttons to the right.

There are five clothing categories, including Everyday, Formal, Athletic, Sleep, and Party wear. In The Sims 4, your Sim has every piece of clothing available for each category. Your Sim can attend a formal party in their underwear or sleep fully clothed!

The third and final part of our walkthrough will detail The Gallery and any additional information not mentioned in this or the previous article.

We here at SimCitizens got our hands on the Create A Sim demo and would like to give a detailed three part walkthrough of what we experienced. Keep in mind that this is an early demo and that many things may change for the final release.

Here we have a preset Sim generated by the game. You may have seen these Sims in promotional material for the game. There’s a lot to cover here, so let’s take it step-by-step.

1.) Clicking the Plumbob will open the Personality settings.

1. Clicking here will bring up two text boxes for choosing your Sim’s first and last name.
2. Your Sim’s gender can be switched with these two buttons.
3. The life stages are shown here. For the demo, only the Young Adult stage is available.
4. This opens a drop down menu with a selection of unique walk styles. There are nine available, including Default, Perky, Snooty, Swagger, Feminine, Tough, Goofy, Sluggish, and Bouncy. The latter two will not be included in the full release’s CAS. They will instead likely be temporary, emotion-based walk styles.
5. There are three voices per gender to pick from. The pitch can be adjusted higher or lower to your liking. Male Sims can have a Clear, Warm, or Brash voice, while females can have a Sweet, Melodic, or Lilted voice.
6. If you have more than one Sim in your household, a button for editing your currently active Sim’s relationships will appear. Two young adults may be roommates, siblings, or married.

2.) Let’s move on to traits and aspirations. There are ten aspiration categories, each including one or more aspirations to choose from and a bonus trait. My Sim, for example, has the Computer Whiz aspiration. This is part of the Knowledge category, which also includes the Renaissance Sim and Nerd Brain aspirations. Having a Knowledge aspiration gives my Sim the Quick Learner bonus trait. With this he’ll be able to learn skills faster.

There are 35 traits spanning four types: Emotional, Hobby, Lifestyle, and Social. As there are only three traits per Sim, you may want to choose wisely.

My Sim, for example, has the Geek, Lazy, and Creative traits.

The Geek trait allows him to find Collectibles more easily and Discuss Geek Things with Sims sharing the Geek trait. It also means that when playing video games or reading sci-fi novels, my Sim will become Happy. If he doesn’t play enough, he could become Tense.

The Lazy trait will give my Sim high Moodlets for napping, watching TV, or using comfortable furniture. However, it also makes my Sim become Fatigued faster when exercising and he will grow Tense when performing household chores.

Finally, with the Creative trait my Sim will have a high chance of becoming Inspired and can Share Creative Ideas with any other Sim. If he goes a certain amount of time without performing a creative task, he will become upset.

3.) From here you can access any Sims in your household by clicking on their portrait and add new Sims by clicking the Add a Sim button to the right. You can have up to eight Sims in a single household. 

You can also Play with Genetics. This allows you to create a new family member based on your Sim’s genetics. For the demo we could only create a sibling. These randomized siblings shared our Sim’s skin tone and tended to have the same eye color, hair color, hair texture, and facial hair in addition to similarly shaped faces and bodies.

4.) This area contains buttons for randomizing the appearance of your Sim and undoing or redoing changes made to it. A checklist feature for randomization has been added, which allows you to choose which parts of your Sim you want randomized.

5.) Starting over or saving your household can be done with these two buttons. Starting a new household will generate a random preset Sim and remove any Sims you were previously working on.

When saving your Sim you can change the household name and add a description. The camera button will randomize the poses in the household portrait. At the bottom left there is a button for uploading your household to The Gallery and another for sharing your uploaded household on Facebook. Finalizing your save is done by clicking the lower right button. The household is saved to My Library.

6.) Here you’ll find buttons for saving your household, opening the gallery, the notification wall, and the options menu. Various notes about your online interactions will pop up on the Notification Wall. From the Options Menu you can access the game’s settings, find help on the EA site, view lessons that will teach you about various features in Create A Sim, and quit the game. As this demo only features Create A Sim, the settings are fairly limited.

The next part of our walkthrough will focus on customizing our Sim’s appearance.