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Found this in an unrelated thread over in Discussion, just in case it’s interesting for some downloaders – about “liberated” world objects in general, not this download in particular:
Quote: Originally posted by SimGuruGraham
Quote: Originally posted by kiwi_tea
Edit: One quick comment for poor Graham, who is getting harassed a bit here: Have you seen plasticbox's "liberated" objects in the MTS downloads section (http://modthesims.info/member.php?u=178282)? When I first jumped into the game I was very mildly impressed by the build mode changes, but quickly became frustrated as all the nice plants and stuff I saw round the neighbourhoods inexplicitly weren't available on lots. You have a heap of beautiful assets there, mostly finished (plasticbox made it clear some were not, and her/his "liberated fences" obviously don't have correct footprints for use on lots). Is there any reason why you guys did not give so much of the decorative content you made to the players? It was a minor annoyance in TS3, but in TS4 it looks to be a major issue.
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I hadn't seen that mod, but I'm glad to hear such a thing exists. As for why some objects are unavailable in the catalog... I don't know about it in The Sims 4 as I haven't personally worked much with it in this game. I'd hazard a guess that it has to do with limits enforced on the artists for on lot vs off lot assets... objects have different rules such as the number of polygons that are allowed per 1x1 tile space that varies between on lot and off lot. I want to say the artists are required to make off lot objects have less detail to adhere to strict performance requirements for each neighborhood in the game. Because those objects have less detail, they're not supposed to use them on lot - where a player is presumably spending the majority of their time. Although I'll reiterate - that's an educated guess on my part on the philosophy behind it and shouldn't be taken as fact.
In practice, each person who works on areas of the game brings their own ideas and approach to things. I was the object producer back on World Adventures and Ambitions, and I tried to ensure that every piece of content was available to players in the catalog, or at the very least within buydebug where they could still get to it. At the risk of sticking my foot in my mouth with an art director, I remember a discussion way back on World Adventures when some of the artists didn't want any non-complatable objects (aka, ones you couldn't use Create a Style on) that they made to be available in the catalog. I understood their concern; because internally we shouldn't be placing those types of objects on the lots that we're building. That said, as a player I want access to every piece of content in the game, and I want to play with it in any manner I want, and I don't think we should try and enforce our own internal rules on players. Sometimes when a bug gets closed in our database, it gets labeled as a "DDT" - aka, don't do that. What that boils down to is, if you don't want a weird object on your lot... well, don't place it there. But if you do, I think we should allow it. That's the beauty of buydebug as well; rules get much more relaxed about what shows up in there.
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Source
The thing with the footprints is, I think, because routing in the neighbourhood works differently than on lots – I imagine it’s probably similar to TS3 where off-lot routing was governed by a combination of object footprints and routable / non-routable areas on the terrain (applied similarly to terrain paint), which is something that can’t be done on a lot. So, objects intended for off-lot use only (like these) do not need actual working feetprint – some of them, like rocks, even have dedicated “no-footprint” variants –, and neither do they need catalogue flags and descriptions and so on.
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