When The Sims 4 Toddler Stuff was released last year, one of the biggest issues for many players was the visual appearance of the functional Ball Pit. Just a few weeks after, Maxis released a game patch to address the flat texture and improve the appearance.
During the Get Famous Sims Camp event in London 10 days ago, popular Sims YouTuber The Sims Supply joined SimGuruGraham in a real life ball pit to discuss the “real story” behind The Sims 4 Toddler Stuff Ball Pit “scandal”.
During the interview in the video above, SimGuruGraham states that the original plan for the “Jungle Gym” item in Toddler Stuff, was for it to be a fully modular jungle gym. This created an issue down the road where the entire model needed to be reconstructed to be released. In the end, the texture of the ball pit suffered, but was eventually fixed.
Also, for the first time ever, here's a look at the original toddler jungle gym that I mentioned in the interview. Although they look like three separate objects, this was one single object (note the mouse cursor over the ball pit, but all three pieces are highlighted.) pic.twitter.com/LXe9aJeCkN
— Graham Nardone (@SimGuruGraham) October 23, 2018
The tunnel piece was definitely envisioned more for venues than home lots, but yes – that was another aspect of the original version that we felt was important to adjust. You can see how we intentionally reduced the size in this mock-up as we were working through the changes. pic.twitter.com/Q1C0dpBlAc
— Graham Nardone (@SimGuruGraham) October 24, 2018
As you can see, this issue caused the item to be reconstructed in order to ship without causing issues for players. We never did get the original plan for the jungle gym, but at least Graham took the time to share some background on what happen with the Ball Pit.
Unfortunately no, the functionality and behavior of Sims on the jungle gym works in tandem with the shape of the object itself, so creating and supporting both of them wasn't an option that was available to us.
— Graham Nardone (@SimGuruGraham) October 24, 2018
As I touched on in the interview, we had some ambitious goals for this pack. As we worked through technical implementation challenges, work between various disciplines was getting out of sync, resulting in an object that didn't really behave the way you'd expect in The Sims.
— Graham Nardone (@SimGuruGraham) October 23, 2018
Looking back, I learned important lessons that made me a stronger producer moving forward. Chiefly, making a difficult decision that burdens the team but is ultimately necessary for our players doesn't absolve us if that results in quality control slipping elsewhere.
— Graham Nardone (@SimGuruGraham) October 23, 2018
Ultimately, I'm happy that we were able to patch it quickly to get everyone more balls 😉 Quite proud of the team for rallying around the requested changes to make something even better; they did a fantastic job!
— Graham Nardone (@SimGuruGraham) October 23, 2018
