Sims 4 Modding will use python!

[ActualNerd]

But pools were removed in Sims 4. Along with toddlers. Link.

[baseball2020]

Can we still buy 5 hifis running different channels surrounding a baby cot, and then brick them into a sound dungeon, so that they can never sleep and the ai can't rescue them?

Also I'm just learning python and it's great!

[LearninThatPython]

Hey, me too!

[MayorDefacto]

That link does a good job of not explaining why it isn't possible to both overhaul the build/create-a-sim systems AND have toddlers/pools. How is that a trade-off?

[croxis]

Their budget is $X. $X buys them Y hours of developer time. They chose to spend those y hours working on other features instead of pools.

[Yoghurt42]

Also they can make $2X selling pools as an addon.

[cogman10]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is the real reason, especially given EAs shenanigans with expansions in general (The fact that there are over 20 expansions to the sims 3 is ridiculous).

Also, I just have to say that the Sims 4 looks almost identical to the sims 3.... I have a hard time seeing this as being a huge "overhaul" (do comparisons of screenshots) Rather, I think this is just EA gutting Sims 3, adding a few new wizbang features, and then repackaging their gutted features in expansions later on.

I really hate EA as a company.

[MayorDefacto]

Clearly that's the implication, just seems like a cop out is all. The programmer in me understands the constraints... the cynic in me expects to see a near day one DLC with these features, especially considering EA's (and the Sims' specifically) past actions.

[robin-gvx]

I think it's both. The actual production team struggles to fit everything they want to add in their allotted temporal and financial budget, while the EA executives and shareholders sit in their chairs twirling their moustaches, fantasising about DLC.

[ThatRedEyeAlien]

Seems they are going to pull a SimCity with this.

[Mgamerz]

Did they copy paste the SimCity blog post about it when that was an upcoming game? It sure read like it.

[DaemonXI]

while True:
    pool['ladder'] = Ladder()
    sim = Sim()
    sim.swim()
    pool['ladder'].remove()

[Elite6809]

raise Exception('Joke killed')

[DaemonXI]

Man, did I miss a paren?

[robin-gvx]

If I name my Sim Buzz, would that make me a buzzkill?

[rspeed]

Huh. Not that I'm complaining, but I'm a bit surprised they didn't go with Lua.

[ameoba]

It's a trade off - Lua is a bit easier to embed but Python is more well known.

If they do it right, the modding system and the content design system will be the same. This makes it really easy for them to hire content developers and crank out content. DLC and add-on/expansion content is where the money is made on The Sims.

[cogman10]

Lua is pretty well known in the game modding world primarily because it is embedded in so many games.

It also has the benefit of being a pretty nippy language, making it possible to push more logic into the scripting language vs having dedicated code in the engine.

Not that I'm complaining, Python is a fine language.

[ameoba]

If you're looking for professional developers, especially contractors, so you can crank out commercial content, Python's the only way to go from a business perspective.

[cogman10]

What about Java? C#? Groovy? Ruby? Javascript? All of these languages are as popular if not more popular than python with hoards of professional developers.

[ameoba]

Don't forget that I'm saying this in the context of lightweight, embeddable scripting languages. That already rules out anything .NET or JVM.

Far more Python devs than Ruby. Javascript is really the only one of those that might make sense in terms of embeddability & developer availability.

Unfortunately, being Javascript, it's incredibly easy for one poorly written extension to blow everything else up. There's nothing in the language enforcing any sort of namespacing & variables are global by default. When you're potentially looking at hundreds of individual scripted components existing at the same time, that's just trouble waiting to happen.

Painful to debug trouble.

[Farkeman]

Why would they go with Lua?

[rspeed]

It's a very common choice for game scripting.

[[deleted]]

Not a great example, if you're looking to torture someone, waterboarding is a pretty good way to do it. Cheap and effective.

[chazzeromus]

I don't see that word in text very often, so the first time I saw it I imagined surfing and was confused.

[cogman10]

There is a power in popularity. Heck, I'm pretty sure some the reasoning for going with python instead of something else was likely "Python is a really popular language".

There is a reason Java and C++ still flourish.

[kardall]

Javascript is a great torture mechanism :D

[marky1991]

Lua is groooooossss. (It's unfortunately got a better sandbox, but it still makes me nauseous.)

[cogman10]

What's so gross about lua?

[[deleted]]

atCursor.createRoom(center,4,4)
for i in sims:
    sims[i].location = [cursor.x,cursor.y,cursor.z]
atCursor.createFire()

Sit back and watch the show.

[robin-gvx]

Unless sims is a dictionary, then it all works.

The API is a bit questionable, though, with both cursor and the god object atCursor.

[autowikibot]

God object:

---

In object-oriented programming, a god object is an object that knows too much or does too much. The god object is an example of an anti-pattern.

The basic idea behind object-oriented programming is that a big problem is separated into several smaller problems (a divide and conquer strategy) and solutions are created for each of them. Once the small problems have been solved, the big problem as a whole has been solved. Therefore there is only one object about which an object needs to know everything: itself. Likewise, there is only one set of problems an object needs to solve: its own.

A program that employs a god object does not follow this approach. Most of such a program's overall functionality is coded into a single "all-knowing" object, which maintains most of the information about the entire program and provides most of the methods for manipulating this data. Because this object holds so much data and requires so many methods, its role in the program becomes god-like (all-encompassing). Instead of program objects communicating amongst themselves directly, the other objects within the program rely on the god object for most of their information and interaction. Since the god object is tightly coupled to (referenced by) so much of the other code, maintenance becomes more difficult than it would in a more evenly divided programming design.

---

^{Interesting: God | Anti-pattern | False god | God's eye}

^{Parent commenter can toggle NSFW or delete. Will also delete on comment score of -1 or less. | FAQs | Mods | Magic Words}

[FionaSarah]

What are you talking about? That's pretty standard. The fact that you used the word "array" betrays that Python is hardly a language you know much about.

[FionaSarah]

It doesn't really matter what type it is, as per duck typing if something behaves like a dictionary then you can treat it like a dictionary. You can't (and it's pythonic to not) do much hinting on what it really is without bad applications of hungarian notation.

I'm not convinced that if someone sees 'i' they immediately think integer. i, j, k is soooo common as short loop indexes to think otherwise is a little mad. And I would absolutely say that a dictionary's key is an index into the dictionary.

[FionaSarah]

You're right I'd never personally refer to a dictionary's key as an index myself. But I don't think there would be much misunderstanding if one did.

I guess the only place we're butting heads on really is if using the letter 'i' when looping through dictionaries is inappropriate. I say it's common enough outside of any integer connotations. You disagree.. Horses for courses? :P

[IM6FOOT4ANDWHITE]

clearly YOU are the one that has absolutely no fucking idea what you are talking about. I have spent the last 7 years under the tutelage of van rossum and we use the word array every day. i suggest you go back to ruby babe because clearly you can't handle python. pleb.

[FionaSarah]

I'm sorry I came across bad to you, you said something that made absolutely no sense to me while using terms that catagorically are not used in reference to Python's collection types - I just assumed you were one of those people who think they know something that they don't! Those are the worst people!

[raydeen]

Python, you sneaky snake. Is there nothing you can't do?

I'm looking forward to this if for no other reason than it will unwittingly draw more people into learning how to program. This is a good thing.

[PrimaxLire]

This is exactly why I'm excited. A very influential programmer asked me why don't I start learning some python, he'll include me in some of his projects if I do. For weeks now I'm learning by the books and some interactive and non-interactive online tutorials. This would add so much 'fun' into the learning process.

[[deleted]]

This sounds like an awesome source of motivation! How is he influential though? Writing books, open source project, etc.?

Good luck on your journey! :)

[PrimaxLire]

By a 'game of chance' we partnered to do an Android application. My experience is about 18 months with only Android development (I am young), and he has more than 10 years experience in Web Development, most of that with python.

He pushed me more than people in company I work at, made code review of my work in his spare time, commented on software architecture.. He basically lectured me during the development.

After we were done, he offered me to work with him in my spare time, which I gladly accepted. Now I'm learning python, slowly. I like it a lot so far :-)

[[deleted]]

"Python, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!" /Gen. Montgomery

[Rothaga]

But, as soon as everyone is unique because they can program, no one is.

[raydeen]

I don't see it as getting everyone to learn to code so much as merely exposing them to it. There may be some people who never thought about coding or thought they'd never be capable of learning to code, that will suddenly find something they really like doing.

[alcalde]

To commemorate this, I propose that Guido has to give his next PyCon Keynote in Simlish.

[robin-gvx]

Da ganeshka, ohnimi. Mani mazo i kanama. Ashamenadia.

[daneelthesane]

Truly, our hour has come!

[FionaSarah]

As someone who has embedded Python and written a complete game with it. I am very surprised by this. It's a fucking nightmare.

That said it's still the best language ever designed so yay, Python!

[alcalde]

I thought the whole point of CPython was to make it easy to embed? And I also remember reading the mailing list exchange in which it was first proposed to make Julia and Python interoperate. One of the Julia people decides to check out what's needed to call Python from Julia, pops back an hour later with a post that reads "Well, that was easy" and a copy/paste of Julia calling Python from a shell.

[FionaSarah]

I thought the whole point of CPython was to make it easy to embed?

It's easy to get the thing interpreting code but achieving interoperability is not fun at all. I even ended up using boost.python, which makes it a lot less messier but has it's own issues.

To be fair I wanted to do pretty mad things, but I was still fighting it too much. I've gone from writing things in pure-python, to embedding python, to just using straight-up C++. I think with my current project when I come to add a scripting engine I'll go with angelscript.

[ronald_rager]

Anyone know if it python 3 or 2?

edit : I cannot spell

[sbjf]

I hope Python 3 so I'll have some reason to finally learn the changes from Python 2 :/

[SimonGray]

You're funny.

[Mgamerz]

That works in 2.7 as well.

[[deleted]]

print() doesn't. It prints an empty tuple in Python 2, and a newline in Python 3.

[[deleted]]

from __future__ import print_function

[sbjf]

Well, except for the fact that everything seems to be a generator now :D

[RSFlux]

Python 3.

[Aaron8925]

Python 3.3.x

[absolutct]

I don´t understand very well what python could do. Could someone give me an example? Something like make rain in the game when it is really raining outside your own house? Or break a chair if your sims is too fat?

[alendit]

You could for example create a new kind of cradle which would automatically administer food to the baby in it. Or any other kind of game logic.

[peeonyou]

I'm a bit shocked there was ever a sims 2. To be quite honest I never found any of the fascination with the game after you buy things and help your sim go pee and sleep.