Hallo!
I have something that might be kind of sort of interesting.
So when Don Hopkins graciously showed off the Steering Committee build to the public, he also briefly showed two internal documents before diving into gameplay proper.
These are The Sims Quick Start and The Sims Quick Reference. Unfortunately like the build itself we do not have a version that is publicly available for our own perusing, however since they are written documents with pictures, that makes them easy to recreate. And so I’ve done just that on Google Docs.
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The Sims Quick Start

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The Sims Quick Reference

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The actual contents of these documents isn’t anything too spectacular or groundbreaking, but it does reveal some interesting bits of information. Like how the game at the time only took up 67 MB of space, or how Live Mode was called People Mode, or how there wasn’t even an autoplay installer at this point of development!

The formatting of the documents may not be 1:1 with their original versions, I did the best I could though to get it close.
The pictures are screenshotted directly from the video, so they’re not in the best quality.
All the text is transcribed directly from what was shown of the documents in the video.
The Quick Reference document was originally written as an HTML page, where the user was able to click on images in the document to be taken to the corresponding section. I could not replicate this in Google Docs unfortunately. If downloading it is best to get it as an HTML page due to the pageless setup.
The Quick Start document appears to have had two pages in the video, but the second page was never shown off in any way.

Fab! That demo is a wild hypnagogic ride at best, and certain things (= Archie Bunker-esque Sim forever holding a cigar in his hand, as part of his skin ) virtually distracted most of us from seeing the big picture.
http://web.archive.org/web/20170813...kStartGuide.pdf
>Good news is that the Design Documents dir has a TheSimsQuickStart file with all the pages! But, uh-oh, it's pertaining to a build that, more or less, directly succeeded the steering committee wild ride, and won't help too much to complete the jigsaw accurately.
http://web.archive.org/web/20181005...esignDocuments/
>Being it a deliberate take or not, the original design doc pdf's are long gone? Dear Don, I've improved my USEnglish to dive it at its best in the same vein as Sigmund Freud learning Spanish for the sole frivolity of reading the original Dom Quixote!! If anything, time traveling exists.

Speakin' of the man..

https://web.archive.org/web/2006070...ves/000117.html
>Mr. Hopkins is interviewed by the one website whose author was wisely vocal about TSO' sloppy social MO and EA punished him in return. An equally-honest take on Sims' history and TSO's biggest mistakes, from the man who was actively present within the context, and in time. It'll make your heart warmer.

now...

MAXIS was bought by Electronic Arts in 25th of July, 1997, precisely 25 years ago.

Swallowed by the highly stressful endeavor of pursuing the development of a big title that could somehow keep up with the good reputation that SimCity 2000 brought to the company, not without its fair share of trials and errors, EA's former big "LBs", Lucy Bradshaw and Luc Barthelet, were particularly thrilled when they heard the ideas that the people at Maxis had in mind — however, still short of some extra spiritual/financial support in order to put those in practice; that, including, oddly enough, a certain Dollhouse/X/Jefferson/TDS/you-name-it project (later renamed to a more Domestic Comedy-fashioned "The Sims"), the one that none of Will Wright's co-workers gave two shits about until that moment! On the other hand, EA's top authorities did not see the charm behind life Sims at first. By very little, their traditionalist roots made them to decline for good a game "where you have to clean toilets". Of course, one of the secret ingredients that made "The Sims'" pitch palatable was the developers' desire to make the game as customizable as possible, preparing the terrain for the spontaneous formation of a big creativity-based community, entirely accommodated for the infinite activity of sharing with pure win-win benefits. The community has made The Sims a winner at the time it was needed in order to prove its own publisher that it wasn't that far-fetched that a game of Sims' caliber should be shipped, after all, plus the own The Sims team's endeavor in programming licensed custom content tools whose subsequent artifacts originated the very first Sims fan sites, many months prior to the game's de-facto launch, catalyzing a marketing boom that has put the game in the mainstream radar faster than you can say "sul, sul", and no-one has never again questioned MAXIS importance! You'd probably guess the sound of the emerging coins was what convinced EA to prioritize The Sims and invest their commercial faith in it like hell ever since it's received the attention it deserved from the world. And the saga continues. 

But, along with that, shit obviously hits the fan, every now and then: The creativity autonomy that was the fabric of The Sims' player education worked so magnificently well and blossomed so many different fun user-made creations that, in a way, one could say that it went all against EA in no time. Comparable to the Greek figure of Daedalus (who, though one of the most acclaimed architects around, still felt extremely uncomfortable at the sight of his innocent nephew's natural talent, ultimately causing Daedalus to murder him), it's almost as though EA feels constantly threatened at the idea of Simmers achieving a state of modding virtuosity to the point it can minimally eclipse the "official" productions. Which, perhaps, justifies their old deliberate resistance in applying custom-content facilities for The Sims Online (by the way, making the playing experience extremely null as consequence) and most recently, refraining you from transforming your useful modding talents into an extra fund supplier so you can deposit your valid capabilities as a coder/artist into something that can potentially save one's life, and/or pay those damn debts, leading to audience alienating cycles back-to-back. Provided, of course, you are doing something that it's worthy being paid for!

We want to believe that we should now experience a silent turning point when it comes to how the community is bound to perceive their value as creators, more than we ever did in all these twenty-three years of creating (if we properly start counting from 1999), be you a 3D modeler, a programmer or "regular" consumer of anything Sim. Only God can explain this weird star alignment here, but now, the 25th anniversary of EA's Maxis acquisition, funnily enough, coincides with the day this solo HI-SIM project, intrinsically dedicated to the understanding of the super interesting roller-coaster that The Sims' development adventure is (that this whole thread is a sorta Head-Quarter of), is surprisingly considered eligible to raise onto an academy-leveled "fair use" condition, enough for us to be one of the people in this planet to be handed Edith: the original neurons behind the original game, the resource editor of the visual programming language SimAntics that orchestrates the intelligence behind The Sims 1, its interface and its world (Wait, what? Did you really think your SIMS were the ones who knew what to do at all given circumstances?), in the context of suiting our The Sims History lifelong studies the best it can. Most notoriously, it's in fact such a big deal that Electronic Arts has been overprotecting Edith under several nasty legal conditional branches against anyone who happens to provide or download this program publicly, so in the most sincere respect and safety for those at Maxis who were there since the franchise's baby steps + the whole community (including, of course, they who gifted us the tool: you know who you are!!) , we won't do anything but deliberately document its most noteworthy aspects until otherwise allowed to get the collectivity involved with this brilliant artifact that we are still figuring out how to master.

Until then, we reiterate how we feel that it's a brand new time for The Sims scene, though you perhaps are feeling unheard as a Simmer. You probably been suspecting as you grew up that EA has a love/fear relationship with you, and we're here to tell you that maybe they should! As a solo and embryonic project, should the knowledge that our little HI-SIM/"Sims 1 Beta Discussion" (though I hate hate hate hate using the term "beta" as a generic synonym for "pre-release" nowadays, ha!) produces serve as a direct indication of where you can go to, and what can be achieved when you are unconditionally hustling for something you are passionate about. Most importantly, though, shall our current (and future) efforts, undoubtedly the most important and frightening ones this thread is covering since its #1 post, wholeheartedly sign to YOU and the "ones above" that the Simmer fan base is awesome by being (hopefully always) resilient, never short of creative stamina, and pretty good at this whole business of never keeping the mouth shut until they get what they want. Fuck knows who this thread is reached to, but I will try and be with you. Metaphorically speaking, they planted that Monolith out there at Maxis' day 1. No wonder its logo used to be the Moon's darker side. Damn!

The Sims is a beautiful wormhole and we celebrate o.g. MAXIS for this
...and for everything else, sure

Signed,


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Post dedicated to @ed95 and SuperLegal, as, like, always!


> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tle61NrBmyA - #01: Demonstration of a scrapped (but half-functional) Quick Meal preparing interaction for children Sims, with proper animations and all;

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueg-ujK19VE - #02: Demonstration of an earlier repairing interaction for Stereo objects, when they, in fact, are one of the few electronic items that never break;

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RplCCKOK7I&t=33s #03: Terrain Tweaker Demo;

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Courtesy of Kult Cover Disks, Retromags and Abandonware France.

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Ever wondered about the musical essence of SimsVille, the unplayable Sim that everyone loves? Some gems at Jerry Martin's vault will satisfy, in excerpts, your listening curiosity.

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Oh, it's adorable! Just like a doll's house. As the biggest milestone of what can now be viewed as Maxis' own Renaissance Age (along with its old sibling project SimCity 3000), the development journey of The Sims is a textbook case of redemptive game design. Having mushroomed over seven years of creation during the nineties, the game unintentionally captures the technological (and, why not, cultural) touchstones of each moment the builds were compiled and, as such, joined the iterative dance at its own pace, being caused dramatic overhauls until Sim Lane's streets could be open upon the world and everyone (emphasis on the game's broad demographic reach) were free to build up a personalized American-Dream-Come-True...

However, before the splines were at last reticulated and the production has met minimal security, the project could not have been more of a disaster, being often plagued by one of its medium's biggest ironies: the overall skepticism among the scene (including some fellow Maxoids) that did not quite feel as though the simulation of the mundane life would find its space in the mainstream gaming. But it's OK, as neither the world, nor the game itself, were quite ready to fully get into Will Wright's vision.

The Sims' tremendous community-building potential was what hit a soft spot within a-very-conservative Electronic Arts and convinced Maxis' new owners to supply the Sims department with the drop of support it needed — from then on, an admirable endeavor has been made in order to turn every aspect of the game as disassembleable as it could, evolving it as a custom-content WonderLand. Fans saw an active support from the game's core team to create multiple (and, why not, competitive) fan-sites and establish a solid participatory culture all around the Sim sphere, catalyzing a spontaneous marketing "boom" that proved a win-win for all the sides of the newly-built fan base... you see: many months prior to the game's de facto launching! And, boy, did they succeed.

The community made The Sims a winner: In the early 21st century, it overtakes Myst's throne and becomes a worldwide PC bestseller, as well as a cultural icon. As sweet side effects, not only its phenomenal sandbox-esque nature influenced many people to take their creative/intellectual juices to a new degree through programming/3D modeling, but is often quoted as a premiere example of empowering the players with a metaverse of infinite storytelling capabilities to be shared to the world, bulldozing the collective consciousness that girls could not game and homosexuality wasn't quite appropriate for the medium, and made virtual architecture as insanely easy as Build-Buy-Live.


Not bad for an abandonware, dont'cha think?



Hellooooo, quick shoutout to the Prerelease portion of the original The Sims-oriented article at The Cutting Room Floor.

Two of this attached media went recently featured (one of them displayed at the webpage's main page today), followed by this slow-paced redevelopment (or gentrification, if you insist) we are messing 'round with the whole page so it becomes your in-depth (over 70 references from the gaming deep web, personal curatorship and whatnot, and counting), collaborative (as a public wiki-fashioned page, all of it will be eventually improved, in content and formatting, by those infinitely more intelligent than us, who knows even YOU, just imagine that) and wonderful The Sims history plaza, with the gratuitous intention of discovering and/or satisfying your natural interest and curiosity towards the game's making saga the best way we can with our intermittent idiomatic and research skills — that, hopefully a little beyond the "there was a fire, a lesbian kiss and they lived happily ever after" layer, if we're lucky



but if it's not your cup of tea, that's okay too!!!!! there are plenty of articles for different games made by many other wikigeeks as ourselves

We just love it so much

later

sent at local campus in a very uncomfortable position

My God, do you have a treasure trove of mid-to-late nineties media! Gotta love the videogame press of the 90's/early 2000's; they really didn't have any filter at all.

I specially like that photo with the heavyweights of PC gaming from the 90's. You will probably never see again such an amalgam of talent. I figure, however, that the process of making The Sims would have been very taxing on Will Wright, given that it took him almost 10 years to see it realised; no wonder he immediately started development of TS2 right after the first one was published, and then started Spore's development right after that one came to an end.

I wonder however how you were able to get Edith in your hands! Some people on your YT account were mentioning this could open the door to decoding, or at least approximatingm, the source code of TS2. Ah, but is TS1 the one that's more interesting; as we talked a long time ago, you can do nearly everything with that game and make it work. It will be really interesting seeing what people do invent now we do have Maxis' editor.

Thanks as always for your work; it's quite a happy moment everytime I open the forum and see a new post on this thread!

:lovestruc :lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc:lovestruc








==========================================================================================

Hello, everyone!

Design documents for The Sims have become unavailable on Don Hopkins' website. A "Not Found" message appears on this page:

https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/



The Sims design documents are available at this link:
https://www.gamedev.net/tutorials/g...ign-docs-r4727/

But there you need to rename the files after downloading them, so they can be opened. And to download the last 5 files you need to edit the link in the address bar of your browser.


The design documents from the website listed above are also available at Archive.org. To find them there, you need to enter "The Sims Design Documents" in the search box on site.

You can find the gorilla and Mrs. Crumplebottom at https://oddsim.com/the_sims_skins/female. The tragic clown is at https://oddsim.com/the_sims_skins/male.

And on 0:25 you can see a parked car. Sims in The Sims can’t have cars in base game, like sims in The Sims 2 base game. But developers tried to add cars in game:

Cars in The Sims 2 Base Game (DO NOT TEST. DO NOT TEST. DO NOT TEST...)

This guy looks like Sigmund Freud. Moreover, his name is Sigmund.

Maybe name of this guy (Crazy Larry) is reference to main character in movie "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry". Google finds this movie if you enter the model's name.

I found an uncorrupted copy of Whatscooking.zip. Here's a complete microwave image.
https://imgur.com/a/wWnCq7R

Yall 2 sweet tbh

You know that your ts1 copy contains partial Edith data, right?

Check it out

2022 was a grand year for us

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[email protected]

@Burnziie , Hello. Can you please write names of documents that related to The Sims 2? I find that only Storytelling.pdf related to The Sims 2.

I know there was some unreleased version of Groceries or Mall Rat in here, but I can't seem to find it in the replies, I went one by one. It was a video showing a very minimal difference from the final version. Can somebody help me?

First post, pal

Note to self: Post the goddamn mag scans & anything Pre-Alpha TSO blablabla

As a sims 1 fan, I am VERY happy I got to stumble across this thread. Beta material is so fascinating to look at, having a glimpse of what could've been. Or, in a strange way, it feels like looking at baby pictures for the sims series as a whole.

I don't have much to contribute to this discussion but I'd like to thank OP for making this thread and compiling what they have together for me to obsess over for the rest of the night!

Now all our knowledge is HANDWRITTEN! So you know we're real, in times of absolute GPTitude!



Scanning attribs. go entirely to the following RetroMags users: Areala, Kitsunebi

If you want to preserve the issue in its entirety (?), go here...



Funny OG pays us a visit and explains everything you want to know about PORNTIPSGUZZARDO 29 years later:




As said in a random server: Rude of our academic schedule not to save us more time for sims:

The Sims 2 Console Intro: from scratch live action reference to release

It would be great if you could upload the video to your YouTube channel.

This video is scratch live action reference shoot for “Sims2Console” intro video animation with Paul Metcalfe and Kam Zambel. The video will be downloaded automatically after clicking on the link. And it's without sound.
Source: Online Portfolio of Chuck Eyler

https://web.archive.org/web/2016011...production.html

Or you can download video from Archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/pre_pro...2_Animatic_h264

Video available for download in .mov (original) and .mp4 formats.

Chuck Eyler is Art Director of The Sims 2 for consoles and Additional Art Director of The Sims 2 for PC.
https://www.mobygames.com/person/18174/chuck-eyler/

Paul Metcalfe is Animation Director of The Sims 2 for consoles.
https://www.mobygames.com/person/10...tcalfe/credits/

Kam Zambel is Project Manager of The Sims 2 for consoles:
https://www.mobygames.com/person/78...zambel/credits/

All information in link below:
https://l-1-z-a.tumblr.com/post/700...tch-live-action

This is a visual model of neighbourhood from The Sims. Created by devs before create of neighbourhood itself.



From conference Lessons in Game Design, lecture by Will Wright [Recorded November 20, 2003].
Link to conference:
https://youtu.be/CdgQyq3hEPo

And gem for you by Don Hopkins:

Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996) (2023 Video Update)

A summary of Will Wright’s talk to Terry Winograd’s User Interface Class at Stanford, written in 1996 by Don Hopkins, before they worked together on The Sims at Maxis. Now including a video and snapshots of the original talk!

This article discusses a talk given by Will Wright, the designer of popular simulation games such as SimCity and The Sims, at Stanford University in 1996. Wright discussed the importance of designing the simulation model, gameplay, user interface, and user's model together in order to create a successful game. He also reflected on the educational value of his games, which implant useful models in users' minds. The article includes notes from the talk, as well as the author's own comments and links based on his experience playing and studying SimCity. The article also touches on the potential for games like SimCity to be used for less noble purposes, such as teaching people what to think instead of how to think.

Link to article:
https://donhopkins.medium.com/desig...es-bd7a9d81e62d

Hi, first-time thread lurkers! We celebrate the ups-and-downs and the weirdest facets of the herculean job that the makin' of The Sims (199?-2000) is, in a way that only we do... don't forget you can participate too, okay?

Convenient shout out to Mother's Day is convenient:

The Sims's first Sim ever made is also the mother of the 20th Century's core culture:

Edith Bunker: