The Laundry Day stuff pack doesn’t release until 2018, but thanks to SimGuruGraham, we have our first look at every object (and color swatch) that will be available in the fan-made DLC.
Get ready for rugs on rugs on rugs. You will have some serious carpet options when the pack releases. The screenshot also reveals the stackable washer/dryer combo, as well as the standalone machines. The range in colors is plentiful. You’ll also notice the clotheslines come in eight different color variations. There is a set of wicker furniture -- a love seat, what looks to be a dining room chair, as well as a more relaxing chair. There is plenty of new wooden shelving and surfaces to choose from to give your homes a more country flavor. These objects will fit perfectly for the new seaside neighborhood, Brindleton Bay, which will be released in the forthcoming Cats & Dogs expansion pack.
Part of what makes this fan-made Laundry Day stuff pack special are the insights into the creation process. Fans have always wondered what goes into creating a DLC -- the design, deciding on features, testing, etc. -- and now we have our answers. Below, SimGuruGraham gives frequent updates on how these objects all came to fruition. We’ve pasted all the tweet text below. If you would like the links to the tweets, click on the date to see the lists compiled by The Sims Community.
-Post-alpha is my busiest time as a producer; I do extensive testing on every feature to suss out bugs & identify areas for improvement.
-One thing I like to do for every Stuff Pack is to create a lot that has every object in every color variant that's coming with the pack.
-While I don't use this lot for actual feature testing, it's a great way to see every asset at a glance and quickly identify any art issues.
-You may notice the rugs in the bottom left-hand corner of that lot screenshot... The middle one won in the vote, but we made all three.
-Those round rugs all use the same geometry for the model, and make use of different material states to create the different visual patterns.
-By doing this, those extra rugs don't count as an additional full asset when working with our external partners.
-It's a good example of a way that we try and give players extra content while working within the scope of our project.
-Also, compare that lot screenshot against the original group of winning objects for this pack... we've come a long way!
-We're in a phase of polishing & bug fixing for Laundry Day. A good example of a polish issue came up this afternoon…
-While the visual status panel on our Washer and Dryer are very detailed, it's difficult to get the most important information at a glance.
-You want to quickly know from various camera distances if the machine is currently in use, or if the laundry inside the machine is finished.
-A quick desk side chat with our art director, VFX artist, tech designer, and myself helped us suggest improvements and align on a decision.
-Afterwards, I entered an issue in our bug database so that the issue is understood, tracked, and can be verified once the work is done.
-Here's a screen grab showing what that looks like:
-Here's what prompted the initial conversation. Each day we're playing, evaluating, and iterating on our work to release something great.
-Oh, there are certainly a whole bunch of debug overlays that we can toggle on to examine various aspects of the game in painstaking detail.
-There will be multiple upgrades that handy Sims can apply to improve various aspects of the machines.
-That's essentially what we're doing. Adjusting it to have larger more obvious lights, and additional colors to help convey context.
-Thought you might enjoy a visual of what that looks like on my end. Since this is a VFX issue, here's what I see with our VFX layer on:
