Sims 4 News and Game Guides
EA_Mage has announced that the “Help Center” on the official forums will be permanently redirected to the EA Answer HQ forums starting August 20th. This change allows them to consolidate all bugs into one place in order to identify issues much quicker.
❗ The February 2nd Game Patch has corrected this issue.
If you own The Sims 4 Get Together and have (or are going to) install The Sims 4 Vampires Game Pack, please note that entering build mode on any lot through Manage Worlds (instead of Live mode) will result in a loss of Club Points/Perks.
An official QA leader for The Sims has posted a temporary workaround for the issue, letting players know that they are definitely working on fixing this for the future.
We are aware of an issue that may cause players to permanently lose their club points/perks.
We are working on a fix to prevent this from occurring in the future. In the meantime, you can avoid this issue by avoiding entering build mode on any lot through Manage Worlds (instead of from Live Mode).
If you do encounter the bug, do not save. If you do save after the bug occurs, you will have to either regain the points/perks manually, or revert to an older save (that has the club points/perks saved).
This post explains how to load older versions of save slots if you need to: http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/14302212#Comment_14302212
Apologies for the inconvenience.
❗ The Sims Team has released a brand new Game Patch today that is supposed to correct the issue with the broken Club System. Please see here to update your games.
If you own The Sims 4 Get Together and have (or are going to) update to the latest Sims 4 1.25.135 Game Patch, please note that this patch will break the Club System in the game. Users on the official forums are reporting a variety of club breaking issues.
SimGuruNick has stated they are looking into the issue, but in the meantime, you will want to steer clear of using any saves with Clubs. Thanks to alanmichael1 and the always awesome Crinrict for the following information on the issue. See here for additional help.
- Restarting the game or changing the lot, will reset your club points to zero points. They will come back after starting a meeting or clicking on the group settings.
- If you have existing groups with more than 6 people, the extra members will be removed and the places locked
- After restarting the game, every new member in smaller groups will be evicted although they’re place stays unlocked
- The lot the meeting starts isn’t really the lot type chosen
This affects new and old saves and it’s unclear to what extent it will break your clubs. I would suggest not playing any existing save games that you have clubs in. If you haven’t patched yet, you can try avoiding the patch but you’ll need to put Origin in offline mode before it gets a chance to know about the patch. Be sure to backup your files before attempting tests.
If you’re looking to fix various simulation lag issues in The Sims 4, the Simulation Lag Fix Mod by SimmytheSim will do the trick! This mod addresses issues such as head bobbing, sims doing nothing for a few hours, time slowing down on Speed 3, and more.
UPDATE – The Sims team has released a new patch for The Sims 4 that addresses the issue of poor performance with too many items in theTray Folder. Update your game to check if this patch resolved your issue.
The latest Sims 4 Game Patch has brought on some severe freezing and lagging issues for simmers across the globe. If you are one of the many who are experiencing these issues since updating your game to Version 1.24.102, SimGuruNick would like you to send over your DxDiag to the team so they can further investigate the issue.
Until they release a “fix-it” patch, or info on how to officially correct the issue, there are several things you can do to help stop the constant freezing and lagging in the game.
- Play Offline – Users have reported that turning off the switch on Origin has tremendously helped resolve their issue. Use the “Origin” tab on the top left corner of the Origin client and select “Go Offline”.
- Backup & Remove the Tray Folder – SimsVIP reader Facsimiles has reported that removing the Tray table helped resolve their issue. To access the Tray table go to Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 > Tray. SAVE A BACKUP OF THIS FOLDER ONTO YOUR DESKTOP. Once you have backed up those files, remove the folder from the Sims 4 game folder. Keep in mind that this folder contains everything you have saved in your Gallery Library, so you will not have those items in your game once you remove the folder.
- 32 Bit vs 64 Bit – The latest patch reverted some 64 Bit games back to 32 Bit. Open The Sims 4 in Origin and go to Settings > Game Properties > Advanced Launch Options and select the 64bit version. This helped resolve the issue for some.
- Remove Mods – Even though the game automatically disabled mods, please be sure that you are running compatible and up to date mods upon enabling mods in the game again. Several mods have been updated or are pending updates since the patch, and outdated mods makes for a problematic game.
Have you solved the issue another way? Let us know in the comments below!
❗ This issue has been corrected with the latest game patch
EA and The Sims team have released a temporary Beta Fix for players who are experiencing animation issues with the water slide object in The Sims 4 Backyard Stuff Pack. The issue is affecting those with Intel graphics chips, and causes Sims to deform and teleport.
Players are urged to download and install a temporary mod fix to address the animation issues. The Sims team is aware of the issue and working on a more permanent fix.
UPDATE: This issue should be fixed with the latest Sims 4 game patch.
After today’s Sims 4 Game Patch, players are reporting that the game freezes at the boot screen when loading up the game, and can take up to 10 minutes to resolve. SimGuruArvin and the QA team at Maxis are aware of the issue and state that the issue can be temporarily resolved by removing or renaming the screenshot folder.
To access your screenshots folder and resolve the issue, open up Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 > Screenshots and either remove the folder and save it on your desktop, or rename the folder all together. Note that the game auto generates new folders.
On April 22, SimGuruNick and SimGuruArvin were both welcomed via Twitter and revealed to be members of the Live Ops QA. Yesterday, a fan on the forums posted a welcome thread to greet the new gurus. Both took the time to reply to the thread with an introduction to themselves and their job.
SimGuruNick has been working on The Sims PC for over 9 years in Quality Assurance. In fact, his first project was the IKEA Home Stuff for The Sims 2.
While SimGuruArvin hasn’t been around quite as long, he can boast that he’s been with The Sims team since The Sims 3 Island Paradise. Arvin also spends a lot of time on The Sims 4 gallery providing feedback and comments.
The Live Ops QA is a team of employees that continue to ensure quality assurance after the content has gone live. Live meaning the current build of the game that players have access to. According to the gurus, they have a laundry list of responsibilities and even compared themselves to a ‘bug assasination squad’.
- We strive to track and organize bugs and issues that you report. We then try to reproduce the issue on our own, narrow down when exactly it was introduced, figure out how many people it’s affecting, and write a separate report that goes to the people who do the actual fixing. We sit right next to the people doing the fixing, so we’re able to accurately describe in-person some of the more complex bugs when we need to.
- We track and organize crashes. Any time you crash, if you have Share User Data enabled in your Game Options, the data gets uploaded to us, and we’re able to enter reports and hopefully get those crashes fixed!
- We run all sorts of tests and checks for every game update released, and server maintenance. Server maintenance is when you notice the Gallery go down for an hour or so, while we’re doing repairs.
- We run tests on candidates for Maxis Favorites on the Gallery (you can see what goes into testing Maxis Favs here)
Nick even made the obligatory note in his post to remind players that they cannot share knowledge of future content. (And let’s be honest, who didn’t see that one coming?)
Until now, it was common to see the Gurus mention that they would forward the something to the QA team, but now they’ve stepped out from behind the curtain. Simmers are allowed to contact both Nick and Arvin concerning whether the QA team is aware of any bugs or issues, and to inquire if the team is able to reproduce the problem. Nick and Arvin have both expressed that they are excited to begin working more closely with the community.
Hopefully this means that there will be more feedback concerning players that are having trouble with their games. How do you feel about the surge of community involvement from the QA team?
Have you heard of the program OBS? This is one of many programs you can use to record videos of games like The Sims 4. In this guide we will be teaching you how to setup the program for the best quality video; continue reading to find out more.
When first installing the program and launching it you will be greeted with this screen. As you can see there isn’t much here. This program lets YOU control what you want to record rather than telling you what you can record at one time. To get started let’s add a scene. Right clicking in the “Scene Area” will bring up a list of options. The first option will be “Add Scene” you will want to click on this and then the following will pop up. Go ahead and give it a name, I often name it something like “Let’s Play” or “Current Household”. This is useful if you have multiple videos with differnt layouts; but more on that later.
After giving it a name you will see it added to the “Scene List”. Now move over to the “Source” section and right click. Only one option will pop up initially, however over the one option and more options will appear. As there are multiple options here and we don’t have time to go over all of them we are going to select “Game Capture” a window will pop up again to provide a name. This name can be whatever you want though I tend to name it the name of the game I’ll be using. After that this window will pop up.
At the top there is a dropdown list, you will want to select the program you will be using for this. As you can see I have [TS4_X64:] selected. This is The Sims 4, 64bit. The name might appear differently for you depending on if you’re using 32bit but the TS4 part will always be there so look for that. The only other option we want on this list is “Stretch Image To Screen”. This will make The Sims 4 Window fill the screen when recording removing the black bars you would otherwise get. Now press okay and you’re done with this section!
Before you can start recording it’s best to play around with the settings a little bit. To do this up near the top of the main window you will see a menu with [File, Settings, Profile] ETC. You want to click on “Settings” and then “Settings” again. This will load a window like this:
The main settings page isn’t really of interest to us so we can skip that for now. Next on the list is “Encoding” this is something we want so go a head and click there this will open the following window.
We are going to be changing multiple options here. First find “Use CBR” and make sure it’s disabled. Next find “Quality Balance” and have it at 10 being preferred. Next find “Bitrate” and have that set to 1000. Now find “Use Custom Buffer Size” and make sure that’s enabled and finally in “Buffer Size” set that to 0. Click Apply and then your done with this section. Now let’s move onto the “Video Settings” section.
In video settings there is really only one option we are going to change here, and that is the framerate option. If your computer can run The Sims 4 at 60FPS then where you see “30” change that to “60”. This will make all videos you record output in 60 Frames Per Second. You shouldn’t have to change anything else here, let’s move onto the Audio Settings.
Alright, in this section we are going to want to look at two options. “Desktop Audio Device” and “Microphone/Auxiliary Audio Device”. Both of these should be on default by default. For most people, this is alright but if you are more experienced you can pick a custom audio output and input device. i.e your output device might be some headphones you use and the input device would be a Mic like a Blue Snowball etc. Now lets move onto the Advanced Options.
Alright, moving right a long to the last section of interest here is the “Advanced Options” section. First off, is “x264 CPU Preset: Veryfast” This is a dropdown menu with multiple options. It’s best to use Ultrafast but if you notice stuttering when recording you might want to stick with Very Fast. Of course you can pick any option from the drop down menu to get the best performance, play around with it. Next is “Use Custom x264 parameters: crf=x” where X is a number, the lower the number the better quality, but also the more CPU usage it will use and the bigger file it will output. It’s best to stick to “15 – 20” but it can go as low as “0”. (For example, if your computer specs are similar to Alexis’s then you should be alright putting 0 here.)
One last thing to note is, with this program you must run the game in either windowed-fullscreen or windowed mode or your video might not show up after being recorded. It’s best to test your settings by clicking on “Preview Stream”. If you see your video and audio settings working (as seen below) everything should be done and you can click “Stop Preview” and click “Start Recording“!
Alright, this step is optional but it can make your videos really your own. I’m sure you’ve seen videos on Youtube that have cool layouts, you know something like this.
The video has a background behind it. This is a small touch you can put into your videos to really tell people “This is one of YOUR videos”. You can even add a spot for your webcam if you do Facecam while recording, there really is no limit other than your imagination when setting your layout, get creative!
To get started, click on “Preview Stream” and then click “Edit Scene”. A red outline will appear, click and drag the corners to your desired size. Then, Click on the source you want to move (In the source section) then click and drag the source you added into the correct location. When you’re happy with how everything looks click “Edit Scene” again and it will lock everything in place.
That’s it! You’re ready to start recording videos of The Sims 4! But don’t stop there, this tutorial also applies to almost any game, including The Sims 1, The Sims 2, and The Sims 3!
Have an idea for a future tutorial? Leave a comment down below and I might just use your idea! You can also leave any questions regarding this post down below and I’ll try to answer them as best I can.
Microsoft released updates on March 8th 2016 for Windows 10 that are for stability in programs. It’s recommended that you update to the new version before deciding to downgrade. There is a noticeable improvement with this update. Also at least for me, it fixed the 64bit FPS bug, and 64 bit is working great now.
WARNING: It’s best to have your files backed up somewhere safe, there is a chance The Sims application and Origin will be uninstalled by doing the following listed below.
Windows 10 was a great upgrade for most users. It gave the start menu back that was taken away with Windows 8 and 8.1 and even supports directx 12 which will provide a performance boost from future games. However when Microsoft pushed out the latest build 1511 for Windows 10 the performance of some games appear to suffering. The good news is this can be fixed if you are within 30 days of upgrading to the new build. First, to find out what build you have press Windows Key + R and type Winver.
Next to Version, you should notice the build and version number. As you can see I’m 10.0 (Build 10240). This version doesn’t suffer from the FPS bug that I have found, if yours says the same as mine and you are still having issues with performance skip to the end. For more information go to Windows 10 November Update
This update first came out in November of last year, however many people have not yet upgraded. However if you have, and you’re within the 30 day downgrade period follow the steps below to downgrade back to build 10240.
You want to click on “Go back to an earlier build”. It will take a few steps to confirm this action, follow the prompts until you see this:
Select all that apply and click “next” and confirm you really want to downgrade back to an earlier build.
Depending on your computer this can take quite a while to downgrade. Make sure you know the password you are using on your computer before the downgrade. If you had a old password that changed after this upgrade you must USE THE OLD PASSWORD to login again. After the computer prompts you to, login and you should be on an older version of Windows once again. Now, if you’re at the reset screen and you don’t see this “downgrade” option one of three things can cause this. That’s it, if the downgrade was successful when you press Windows Key + R and type winver you should be on build 10240.
If you do not have the option to downgrade, there are still some things you can do to resolve performance issues.
That’s it! If you’re still having performance issues after downgrading (If able) and changing your bit setting try lowering your graphics settings.
Mine are on ultra, but you might want to play with the settings to get the preferred performance for you. Edge Smoothing is the biggest culprit for performance issues. If you have any questions please leave a comment down below and I’ll try to help or point you in the right direction.
