I'm playing the sims 4 again! It's entertaining enough, especially with the few playstyle changes I've made since last time I touched this game. At least, the hyperfixation has not left me yet and it's been two weeks already. That's longer than most of my hyperfixations.

Some of my friends started playing it again, and I hadn't touched the game in a while. So why not? Plus it's a fun little puzzle to get as much working on linux as possible.

The Setup

I needed something where I could both play on linux and my windows PC. As unfortunately it is more comfortable to play on windows still. Proton is great, but I do have performance issues while using it with the sims 4.

Here's some loose notes on what I did.

• Set up the game via steam so I could use proton (I do not use lutris)
• Made a folder for all sims related things.
• Set up a symlink to the Sims 4 folder inside proton's wine prefix.
  • This folder is awfully nested, it's actually kind of hilarious. Making a symlink means I don't have to scour for it every time I want to download something to my mods folder.
• Set up syncthing between my windows PC and linux laptop. More on that later.
• Set up reshade (on linux only so far). Again, more on that later.
• Downloaded a mod manager for the sims on both devices. Repeat what I said in the last two bullets.

You mentioned peformance issues?

Yeah, so there were two reasons I went through all the effort of setting up syncthing.

1. My preferred mod manager for the sims 4 isn't available on linux, and my efforts to get it working via bottles were fruitless.
2. Unfortunately the game runs better on windows.

The second thing isn't a hardware issue. My laptop has near identical specs to my desktop, if not slightly superior. A friend who dual boots also confirmed that the game loads a lot slower on the linux side of his desktop.

Gameplay is broadly unaffected, but most things just load slower. Sometimes, a lot slower. Booting up the game can take up to 5-7 minutes on linux. In windows it takes like a minute at most.

Some other minor things like using the eyedropper tool in build&buy, loading between venues and opening certain menus also are a tad slower. Though the latter is very minor and doesn't impact my enjoyment of the game. It's the sims 4, lag is anticipated.

I have looked around a bit to see if there was any way to mitigate this, but most people either 1. don't report issues or 2. didn't find a solution. I'm choosing to believe the former category just didn't have great specs on windows to begin with, as most of them were steam deck users.

It's definitely not unplayable, but if you're tweaking mods, it's awful to reopen and close the game.

How do you use syncthing?

I set up some synced folders for 1. my mods, 2. my tray and 3. my saves. The first two are straightforward and don't really have issues. My save file syncing sometimes results in conflicts. The initial sync resulted in a lot of conflicts, since I had multiple different saves that were titled the same across devices.

I just carefully renamed these. You have to make sure every file belonging to the same save is renamed the same number. If you do that, you're good to go. For any future conflicts I just delete the older version of the file and rename if needed.

However, do not play the game on two devices at the same time. That's guaranteed to get you conflicts! Gnarly ones!

To avoid syncthing syncing my saves mid-save (that sure is a sentence), I set the scan interval to 0 and disabled watching for changes. I go into syncthing's web UI and sync manually after quitting out of each playsession.

Reshade? On linux?

Yeah! I don't use gshade for... reasons... but reshade does not have an easy way to install it on linux. However, someone made an easy way for it.

Using LeShade, installing reshade with the sims 4 in proton is pretty trivial.

1. Download appimage
2. Install reshade
3. Select the sims 4 executable
4. Select DirectX 11
5. install. Add whatever addons you want/need (I just pick all of them other than the 2GB LUT one)
6. install add-ons.
7. Reshade should work now.

The presets I used all worked fine. I'm thinking of making my own presets now since I'm familiar with what a good chunk of the effects do. Shouldn't be too hard, right? Right???

Mod Manager

My preferred mod manager still is the S4MM. However the most recent versions don't play nice with WINE. At all.

Someone did make a mod manager for windows, mac and linux, though! It's... okay. It doesn't entirely fit my needs, like the sorting capabilities that S4MM has, or a way to download from curseforge directly. But I can visually see my CC in their folders and that's enough while I don't have access to my desktop.

Playstyle

I'm trying out a new playstyle! If you're familiar with the concept of forever worlds in minecraft, this is similar. Instead of making new worlds all the time, play in the same world for a... long time.

I used to make a new save every time I wanted to play with a new household, and it bored me within a couple of hours. I haven't gotten bored with this save yet because there's so much I want to add. I have so many ideas for households, storylines and challenges I want to do. Maybe this'll be the first time I actually tackle a legacy challenge haha.

I don't plan on playing in this save forever, as I do want to make some save files that are more themed and cohesive. This current world really is just for me to play with toys in, and practice my building skills.

I love building in the sims. I'm not the best at it, but I'm also not horrible at it and I think there's potential for me to get pretty decent if I keep pushing my limits!

Mods

Oh, yeah. Mods. Shoves my 15.8 GB mod folder under a rug. Though that's probably not so bad, I've heard of people with 100+ GB folders on reddit.

Here's my essentials.

• MCCC - no-brainer for any kind of gameplay tweaks/control.
• UI cheats - I might take this out eventually if it proves to be too difficult to keep up-to-date.
• Wicked Whims - hey, don't look at me like that! It's also good for posing your sims! Normal-style!
• Better BuildBuy - I don't know what I'd do without organized debug.
• 20th Century Plumbob's Map Makeovers - I like detailed maps, what can I say?
• Sunblind by Softerhaze - lighting mod that's much better than EA's godawful blue lighting.

Along with these, I also am a hoarder of skin detail CC. I like to really finetune my sims' faces. Though most of my CC is probably hair. I can't delete any. You never know when I'll need this one even though it's been sitting in my folder unused for a couple of years now.

Potential Future Rabbit Holes

Oh god there's so many.

I want to learn how to make CC, specifically hair CC. Which will be difficult and torturous but probably also incredibly rewarding.

I want to make save files. Maybe a base-game save file that has some strong theming. Throw out the existing townies altogether.

I want to make some personal reshade presets. Probably no public ones. I don't think I have the strength in me for that.

And lastly, I just want to explore so many aspects of the game I have ignored. Legacy challenges, game packs I bought but never used. I want to solve strangerville's mystery. I want to get my sims alien pregnant. I want to have a werewolf and a vampire get married. You get me? You catch the drift I'm on?

This was a long post written entirely within one sitting. It's probably not good, but I wanted to ramble anyhow. And that's what this website is for, so...

Either way. Catch you next time, whenever that is.