One thing the Sims 4 is not short on is settings options. Grant it a lot are this/that or off/on settings, but there is still a good bit of options here. And… when the built-in-game options fail you there are mods… But we are not talking about mods or CC today. No no no… just plain base game… well basic Sims 4 settings. I will briefly discuss what each of these following sections, as this is important for new Simmers or if you have not really messed with settings before.
Gameplay
Do you mean you actually want to play the game? LOL just kidding. Ok so for those of you who like to play actual gameplay the Game Options section is going to be where *most of the gameplay settings are. Here in this section, you can change autonomy level, aging settings, ui basics, lifestyles, whims, and max Sim count. (The townies will come to fill your worlds!)
All joking aside one of the primary selections here is Autonomy, for those of you who want to dictate EVER single thing your Sim does you are going to want to disable your autonomy for your Sims. Now if you are like me and make Sims, abandon them, and then let the chaos unfold you are going to want that checked. Don’t worry about your Sims, they will be fine destroying themselves on their own… Sims are good at that. Just to give the Sims more time to really mess things up I make sure to give them long lifespans.
The next section for Gameplay options is Weather, here you can set your season length and weather you will see in your game (if you have Seasons).
Of course the more packs you have the more tweaking you will need to do. Pack settings are found in ‘Pack Settings.” oh wow that actually makes perfect sense… So if you are like me and have the packs but want nothing to do with them there are specific elements like fame and Eco footprints that you can opt out of your game. (Eco footprint is a cool idea but quite possibly the most annoying feature to me.)
Graphics
Graphic settings… ah yes. Ok, so a lot depends on your computer and what it can handle. LOL Obviously, I am rocking a custom-built gaming machine for work, which involves high-end graphics. I cannot even stand to look at Sims in any graphics setting other than High. (and I add reshade… oh yeah no mod talk.) Know what you have, what kind of graphics card and ram, size of your screen. Start there, if you are the closer to min system requirements start with a low or medium setting. You don’t want to fry your computer with Sims… Not that has ever happened to anyone… *whistles and walks away.
Ok, this part is very important to those who want to capture screenshots and video with the built-in features… again I have a beasty lil machine… and actually for many things even go as far as using other programs to make my images even BIGGER. But the important part is you can set your basic size of the image and… what folder the image goes to! Of course if you forget where your images are going you can always look there and figure it out quickly.
Music
Do you mean there is music in-game? I suggest this method if you actually want to listen to good music while you create or play. Just turn it all off!
CC
ok so I lied, we are totally talking about CC and Mods… and I may have mentioned them already. To use CC and mods that Enabled Custom Content and Mods MUST be checked or your wonderful downloaded collection of CC hoarding will not show up. If you are using script mods the Script Mods Allowed box must be checked, or again they will not show up.
*Updates usually uncheck these boxes… your CC will not come back until the box is clicked!
Accessibility Options
As far as accessibility options go there is really not much here aside from the ui scaling. I am a little disappointed in this as one would think for how long The Sims 4 has been around there would be a bit more here. I do use the ui scaling as a preference, but that is really all that is here.
Summary
Of course, each person playing the Sims is going to want their settings to be a little bit different and that is the beauty of having options. I may like to give my Sims a long life… but someone else may not and that is ok. This is the magic of Sims, you can really play your way… and with the creative minds in the community with the mods there is no limit on how you can play, as chances are there is a mod or CC out there that you are looking for.
So this is a nice brief overview of settings in the Sims 4, I have intentionally left out camera settings because… we are going to do a full tutorial on camera and screenshots later on!
Keep up with more Sims stuff and what I’m up to at @TSR Jezi
Check out more Tutorials, Paige’s Book of Building or You can check out my tutorial – Modeling Cheat Codes.
