Sims News

Johnny Smith's life aspiration is popularity, but he is faced with one of his fears when rejected by his heartthrob Ophelia. See if Johnny Smith is able to overcome his fear and unlock love- so long as his desire to play videogames doesn't get in the way. Will Johnny ultimately get what he wants?

Hi Everyone!

This week, rather than extol another of the fun new features in The Sims 2 (which I could do at length!), I wanted to discuss the topic of integrity of custom content creations. Our goal, upon kicking off The Sims 2, was to further integrate the accessibility and ease of use of custom content so that it positively impacts more players of The Sims 2 than we were able to reach in the original The Sims. We are very keen on keeping The Sims and The Sims 2 community as vibrant as it can possibly be. We have, however, heard your concerns about how to better promote strong ethical standards within the community and to help the creators maintain their identity in connection with the assets they create. We've also taken in some really good feedback about The Sims 2 Body Shop that we have been able to act on to make it more usable as well. So, based on some of your direct feedback as well as via the forums you host on your sites, I wanted to give you some insights into steps we are taking to address some of your concerns.

Here's some of the features that we plan for the full Exchange site which ties with our launch date...

1. The shipping version of The Sims 2 Body Shop will support longer tool tips and we'll expose that information on The Sims 2 website. The tool tip character limit will be 40 characters (instead of the current 16 character limit) and will be associated with the custom part. It can include URLs that will appear as hot links on the website. So a player browsing the site could click on your tool tip and open a window to your website to see more. We hope that this addresses creator credit as well as leveraging the Exchange as a means to bring traffic to the community sites as well.
2. We will indicate the parts of a Sim that are original to that uploaded Sim. For instance, if you create new eye shadow for your Sim and are the first to upload it to TheSims2.com, that new eye shadow will be acknowledged as the original eye shadow. Many of the complaints have been about users who just pull down a Sim and re-upload it as their own, so this should automatically credit the original part's creator, as long as the part is not modified.
3. The creator's user name will appear next to any customized parts of the Sim. Please see the attached mock-up of a Sim detail page to get a basic idea of how this might look.
4. We are also planning on offering the ability to upload screenshots which will allow the creator's to highlight their creations better. This may not be ready at launch, but is a planned feature that should roll out shortly after launch.

And some specific enhancements to The Sims 2 Body Shop...

We've added a "free camera" mode to The Body Shop which allows skinners to view their Sims from every angle and at every level of detail. This new functionality, combined with functions like the "bind pose" F6 key, or the F7/F8 zoom keys (all of which are already available in the current version of The Body Shop) makes The Body Shop the powerful customization tool that you, the user community, demanded it be. Also, just in case you've managed get tired of it, you'll be able to drop in your own images and replace The Body Shop backdrop with any picture you'd like.

Check out these links to some fun new screens and the details page mentioned above...

Thanks for all of your feedback...keep it coming! Have a great weekend.

Lucy B

P.S. Thanks for all of your submissions in the Create A Lucy, Tim or Jonathan challenge. We'll be sharing the highlights with you next week.

Claire Curtin, one of our super-talented Game Designers, and Robi Kauker, our Audio Lead shed a little light on your favorite language, Simlish.

Hear Some Simlish!

A Quick Bit Of Simlish History

A certain species of geek may be quick to point out that Klingon is the fastest growing new language on the planet, but those of us involved in the making or playing of The Sims games know what the real score is – Simlish is enjoyed everyday by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people! Will Wright knew how to keep the bar low on getting people fluent in the language of The Sims – give it emotion! Even though the language may lack formal structure, that doesn’t mean that recording all the vocal parts of the game was a slapdash, haphazard affair. No way! In fact, a tremendous amount of care and planning was required to get your Sims spouting the language we all know (sorta) and love. Here to shed a little light on the process is Claire Curtin, one of our super-talented Game Designers, and Robi Kauker, our Audio Lead. Take it away, Claire & Robi:

With all the new updates and gameplay options in The Sims 2, there are several features that players of the original The Sims will recognize. One of the cornerstones of the Sims identity is the gibberish language we call Simlish. This time Simlish is back, with new voices representing each of the age ranges. We’ve included a few samples to give you a sneak preview.

A quick bit of Simlish history: when The Sims was originally designed Will Wright wanted the language the Sims spoke to be unrecognizable but full of emotion. That way, every player could construct their own story without being confined to a Maxis-written script (to say nothing of the mind-numbing repetition). We experimented with fractured Ukrainian (one of the original The Sims designers was a native speaker), and the Tagalog language of The Philippines. Will even suggested that perhaps we base the sound on Navajo, inspired by the code talkers of WWII. None of those languages allowed us the sound we were looking for – so we opted for complete improvisation, originated and performed by some SF Bay Area professional actors whose specialty was improv; Stephen Kearin and Gerri Lawlor.

So now it is five years since Simlish was born, and the tradition is carried on by an additional nine actors performing all the age range voices: baby, toddler, child, teen, adult and elder. The auditions were held January through May 2003 with over 100 actors from SF and LA trying out. We selected a highly talented cast and quickly got them to work recording many full 8 hour days, recording voice to over a hundred animations a day, resulting in thousands of takes a day.

With such a huge amount of voice data -- 40,620 samples at the moment -- our pre- and post- production processes have been streamlined to get the voice into the game so it can be listened to, assessed and either re-recorded (in rare cases) or hacked (constructed out of similar-sounding files) . Currently there are at least six Maxoids dedicated to getting the sound effects and voice in the game.

And even though I said Simlish is not a language per se, there are some common words that we directed all the actors to perform. If you listen closely, you’ll hear a word that means baby (nooboo), another for pizza (chumcha), and another phrase said during the Dirty Joke interaction that isn’t exactly defined, but just seemed to fit. That one was invented by Liz Mamorsky, our elder female voice.

Check out these samples!

• Sample 1
• Sample 2
• Sample 3
• Sample 4
• Sample 5
• Sample 6

Maishuno!
(You’ll see what that means when he game comes out on Sept 17th)

We have created a new set of wallpapers and posted them in the goodies section. Update your desktop with this latest touch of class.

I'm Ready To Re-Decorate!