Waffle Explains The Weather (Patreon)

Ravenwood in Life and Death does not experience proper weather patterns. It does not experience color-changing fall, or snowy winter. This is an aesthetic choice by the devs, apparently.

It is not a mistake.

I see lots of people calling it lazy, in the sense that the devs just "didnt feel like it". I see lots of people calling it incompetent, in the sense that the devs "don't know how to do it". These are both pretty dumb complaints. The idea that they've managed this for all worlds since Seasons came out but just "forgot" or "didn't get it" this time is ridiculous. It's completely unfair.

UPDATE: SimGuruNinja has deactivated his twitter over backlash from this choice. If you wouldn't mind, please use this post to explain to people, when relevant, that this is not "dev laziness", such as in this reddit post I am actively asking someone to go to and try to clarify in.

But I've also started seeing people reminisice- "Remember in Sims 2 you had the choice for the weather in every world?" and "This is why Sims 4 continues to be the inferior version of the game".

Which prompted me to want to explain how weather in Sims 4 works, because...uh, surprisingly, it's more complicated than it was in Sims 2. It's pretty silly to dismiss the improvements here because one design choice is distinct from Sims 2- the player choice.

Seasons in Sims 2 are static. Spring is Spring. Fall is Fall. Every world's Spring is identical. Every world's winter is identical. There are no differences between them. Each season has a ramp-up period where the first couple days, things are actively changing. Leaves going orange, or the temperature getting lower, until they normalize into a pattern of expected weather behaviors. Winter will be consistently freezing with random chance of snow or blizzards, and lots of wind. Summer will be consistently hot with random chance of thunderstorms.

That's quite literally it.

Now, to compare, check out Sims 4....

 
Every single world in Sims 4 has a weather forecast...for each of the 4 seasons...for early, mid, and late timeframes in the season.

A handful have only a list for each season with no early/late settings, but those are worlds that are less diverse in terms of climate- like Tartosa, where's it's warm and humid pretty much all the time.

Within each of these forecast lists, there are individual weather forecasts- which tell the game what kind of weather should happen, how cloudy it should be, and the chances of precipitation, as well as the temperature. It may be cloudy...but is it cloudy and hot? is it cloudy and cold? is it cloudy and rainy?

 

And within each forecast, is further options for what that forecast actually means! "Cloudy Hot" includes cloudy weather with hot temps, and cloudy weather with warm temps. "Rain Cool" includes cloudy cool temps, rain with cool temps, and heavy rain with cool temps.

So one single world says "For Fall, when it's the MIddle of the season, you can use these forecast lists, and each of these forecast lists determines a specific set of possible forecasts, and each set of forecasts determines a specific possible type of weather".

Further, the weather types blend into each other. Even if the forecast flips wildly from cloudy cool rainy to hot sunny heatwave, there will be a transition period. The game handles these for all weathers, they all transition in and out and can blend together as they do.

As Ravenwood is one of the very few "more static weather" worlds, it doesn't have the Early/Mid/Fall tunings.

 
It simply has the season tunings.

We can see here that in Fall, the possible weather types are the same for all 3 chunks of the season:

 
And here's what those forecasts actually look like. This is the weather that can happen in this world in fall:

 

and here is the weather that can happen in this world in summer:

Notice that the potential weather patterns are different. Fall will be much rainier and colder than Summer, but both will be kinda dim and rainy a lot of the time.

What this means is that they didn't "cheap out" on the weather in this world...it's just a different design choice. I agree, it's a stupid one, but it was on purpose and does NOT mean the world took any less effort.

(Also note, as far as I can tell, no single world has different weather for different neighborhoods WITHIN the world. I don't believe there's any reason they couldn't do this, but note that there's no precedent for it.)

Now, for fun, let's move onto some more technical stuff that I won't have a great explanation or examples of, but can explain: Things like Snow.

Snow in this game, and many games, is not something the devs handle "by hand". The snow overlay on objects, with very few exceptions, is entirely automatic! What the game does is it checks the models of objects, and it looks for parts of the model that are at certain angles. If the angle on the part isn't too steep, snow is allowed to apply there. It checks the way the model's sides are facing- if up, apply snow. If down, don't apply snow. Snow fades away at the bottom of these valid-for-snow areas. And if there's part of the model that is "under" another part, sometimes snow isn't allowed there, depending on the shape of the model and how "under" those parts are. The game can dynamically check this information for basically everything- meaning the snow overlay handles itself. The devs don't manage snow for each individual object, and neither do CC creators. The game "just does it". So there's no arguing that the devs are "too lazy to make the snow work" in this context, because the snow "just works". It's designed that way on purpose. For what it's worth, this is also how it worked in Sims 2.

(Pictured: Devs can decide how snow should cover objects in most games. How far down it goes, how thick it layers, what angle of model faces to ignore, whether parts touching the ground get snow on them too, etc)

Puddles are a different story. I'm not super clear on how they work but it is similar. Areas the game can detect as outdoor receive them, and they, usually, check for slopes, so puddles won't appear on sloped surfaces. The puddle mapping may be hand-crafted, using an image overlay onto the world's terrain, that tells them where they can go. I'm not sure but I would not be surprised. This world supports puddles which means that work was done.

Now, is there a reason we can't pick which seasons apply in which worlds? Well, sort of. When you say "All winter all the time!" in Sims 2, it means "This world has snow, all the time, pretty much!". But if you say that in Sims 4.......it means something entirely different for each individual world. It would mean Oasis Springs is cold out, but it doesn't actually snow there. It would mean moderate temperatures in some worlds, and constantly freezing temperatures in others. It's very varied. So they likely opt not to let you do this because the inconsistency could get confusing to players unfamiliar with each world having a unique climate.

Additionally, we have to remember- in Sims 4, the areas outside the lot are actively used by sims. What happens if you set the season exclusively to Winter, but there's things outside the lot that only work in warm weather? Festivals are cancelled in inclement weather and/or have significantly reduced visitorship. Do we allow the player to effectively make San Myshuno's outdoor spaces worthless by making the festivals never really compatible with the weather? Or do we reign them in a bit? The choice made was to reign the player in a bit...but still afford them an option, in the form of the weather control machine, which can jump seasons whenever you please.

But that ties back into Ravenwood...which features outdoor festivals several times a week. You know what other world features outdoor festivals several times a week- every single day, in fact- and experiences a nearly permanent season with only one real chance for severe weather? Sulani! Permanent summer and the rare Monsoon. So there's precedent still for making this sort of design choice in a festival-heavy location, although it may not be a huge factor, considering worlds like San Myshuno and Henford-on-Bagley.

But at the end of the day the point I'm making here is that while tying Ravenwood to a permanent cool-end-of-summer vibe with no snow and no tree changes may be a stupid, frustrating design choice- it is not a symptom of laziness of inability. Weather in Sims 4 is crazy complicated and proficiently designed, and this world is, otherwise, fully featured for it.

NOTE TO CONTENT CREATORS: I write these posts on my own time, using my own research into mechanics, using my own ability to understand tuning and navigate through it to find what it does, where, and how. If you use this information for any purposes, such as making videos about game mechanics, please, please, please, credit me and link to these posts as the source. I know for a fact content already exists where I am the source and not credited.

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