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Sims News
28 Aug 2003 - 23:10
28 Aug 2003 - 23:00
It’s 3 AM. You’re leaving work. It’s dark. Two figures emerge from the shadows. They approach. What do you do?
Read more below!
When Hardcore Fans and Overworked Testers Collide...
Lead Tester John Cook and fellow Tester Kip Katsarelis had been laboring long into the wee hours of Saturday morning, when they finally decided to succumb to their own circadian rhythms and go home for as much sleep as they could spare. On the way to their cars, they were stopped by two shadowy figures, and... asked for a tour of the office! It seems that a husband and wife team from Kansas City had scheduled some time to swing by Maxis on their trip to California. Perhaps they’re well versed in the working and sleeping habits of game developers. Maybe they were either incredibly behind (or ahead of) schedule. Whatever the case may be, they felt an impromptu late, late, late-night visit was in order. We’re sad to report that the glorious inner workings of Maxis remain a mystery to them, although their sunny Midwestern charm bought them a few snapshots under the company logo and their signatures now grace the official Maxis Guest Book.
Although we heartily appreciate their rabid devotion to The Sims, they might have had better luck if they had tried to gain access to the building during normal business hours. Or at the very least, during daylight hours.
25 Aug 2003 - 23:00
Tomorrow, we are announcing that The Sims™ Double Deluxe will be available this September. This ultimate compilation will include The Sims™, The Sims™ Livin. Large, and The Sims™ House Party all in one value-packed product. Bonus content will also be a part of this must-have collection including dozens of new walls, floors, and objects in African and Asian design themes. For all current Sims players, this bonus material will be available to download right here! Each week we will feature a download, so stay tuned for further information.
25 Aug 2003 - 23:00
Tomorrow, we are announcing that The Sims™ Double Deluxe will be available this September. This ultimate compilation will include The Sims™, The Sims™ Livin. Large, and The Sims™ House Party all in one value-packed product. Bonus content will also be a part of this must-have collection including dozens of new walls, floors, and objects in African and Asian design themes. For all current Sims players, this bonus material will be available to download right here! Each week we will feature a download, so stay tuned for further information.
25 Aug 2003 - 23:00
Tomorrow, we are announcing that The Sims™ Double Deluxe will be available this September. This ultimate compilation will include The Sims™, The Sims™ Livin. Large, and The Sims™ House Party all in one value-packed product. Bonus content will also be a part of this must-have collection including dozens of new walls, floors, and objects in African and Asian design themes. For all current Sims players, this bonus material will be available to download right here! Each week we will feature a download, so stay tuned for further information.
25 Aug 2003 - 23:00
Tomorrow, we are announcing that The Sims™ Double Deluxe will be available this September. This ultimate compilation will include The Sims™, The Sims™ Livin. Large, and The Sims™ House Party all in one value-packed product. Bonus content will also be a part of this must-have collection including dozens of new walls, floors, and objects in African and Asian design themes. For all current Sims players, this bonus material will be available to download right here! Each week we will feature a download, so stay tuned for further information.
21 Aug 2003 - 23:10
First let me thank you again for being such strong contributors to the Sims' community. As we did 4 years ago when we launched the original Sims, it is our intent here at Maxis to provide to the community with as much information as possible about The Sims 2 leading up to its launch. I am going to communicate directly with you between now and when the game ships and I welcome your honest feedback. Do not be afraid to email me.
I need your help in many domains to ensure that when we launch the new game, we have an even stronger community than we had with the original game. I am ready to do what it takes to get there, but I know I can't do it alone. My dream is to be able to provide more custom content for The Sims 2 at launch than we have now for the current Sims game.
Each of you has a unique strength and a valuable role in the Sims' community. Some of you are running custom content web sites, help sites, forums, email lists, and news sites. I am extremely interested in understanding how you see that role changing and evolving with regard to The Sims 2. The success of The Sims 2 is so interdependent on all of your efforts. All of them are crucial to us and this time around we are hoping to see even more in-depth specialization!
I would like to hear from you about any and all road blocks you might encounter that would prevent you from reaching your community goals. I want to help. For example, I am already working on providing a hosting solution through Maxis that might alleviate the cost of bandwidth for our webmasters.
That's all for now. I am excited about our upcoming challenges and believe that, as a combined team, we can make The Sims 2 bigger and better than ever.
Cheers,
Luc Barthelet
General Manager, Maxis
21 Aug 2003 - 23:00
Gamespot gets up close and personal with The Sims 2 Creative Director, Charles London.
The Sims 2 Designer Diary #2
Get more details on this highly anticipated sequel right from the designers.
The Sims took the world by storm when it was first released in 2000. The unusual strategy game, which lets you control the lives of autonomous little computer people called sims, went on to become the best-selling computer game ever, and it also gave rise to a series of successful expansion packs that expanded upon the original game with lots of new household items for your sims' houses, as well as new gameplay options, such as having pets or going on vacation. The Sims 2 will attempt to expand on the original game by letting you build bigger houses, create more-detailed sims, and, most importantly, have sims that grow and change over time--sims that start out as children, mature into adults, get married and have kids of their own, and eventually become senior citizens of SimCity. We caught up with Maxis creative director Charles London for more insight into the development of the upcoming sequel.
Up Close and Personal with The Sims 2
By Charles London
Creative Director
When we set out to make The Sims 2 the greatest game of all time, we knew we had our work cut out for us. After all, we were our own competition. We knew we had to bring every aspect of the game forward to give our players the richest possible experience. The sims had to simply be the most believable, engaging, and truly living characters anyone had ever seen.
Making little people that we big people really believe in is hard. We all instinctively know when something is alive and when it's mechanical, when it's real and when it's fake. The sims had to be as real as possible. To make sure we delivered on the necessary level of realism, we went back to the drawing board. We spent time identifying what it takes at the core to convince players that the little characters they see on the screen have real wants, needs, fears, and tastes. Only then could we count on our players caring about them and wanting to affect their lives for better or worse.
We started by giving the graphics of the sims a complete overhaul. When we made the decision to push The Sims 2 forward into a fully 3D environment, we knew we'd be judged against the other top-flight real-time games out there. Bringing the sims themselves to that level of richness meant driving their complexity beyond the bar set by our competition. In The Sims 2, sims will have a much more-complex skeleton that permits a new level of realistic motion. The old paddle hands have been replaced with articulated fingers, and the rigidity of their faces has been replaced with a capability for animated and communicative expression. Their hair now moves as a result of their motion or the wind, and even their clothing can move independently of their bodies.
The sims' skin tones have been improved with regard to color richness and material feel, and the clothing they wear has been enhanced with reflection, shininess, and bump maps. Little details are the key to delivering on a goal of richness. We looked for every opportunity to incorporate these details, including actual teeth, variable eye colors, blinking eyelids, and accessories such as jewelry and eyeglasses.
One of the most important goals when shooting for believability in human form is to develop a balance between recognition and uniqueness. When we look at characters in games, we often respond most strongly to those faces that resemble people we know or have seen elsewhere in the world. At the same time, getting someone to truly care about a sim requires the belief that the character is a unique individual. The variety of facial features needed to achieve this went far beyond hand-sculpting each face, as is the norm in the industry. Instead, we delved into the power that real genetics provides by developing a genome for the sims.
When creating a genetic pool of individual faces for The Sims 2, we defined a huge design space bounded by the familiar faces we all know, and then mined that design space to create literally billions of unique faces. This allows players to feel that their sim is truly distinctive. These faces not only respond with animation and expression, but they also keep their identity as the sim grows up and allow for strong family resemblances without losing any of that precious uniqueness. Players can then tailor the look of their sim to help better illustrate the story they are telling in the game.
Once we brought the physical appearance of the sims into the future by expanding the system's capabilities, we then faced the massive task of bringing their behavior forward to the same degree. The animation engine developed for The Sims 2 permits numerous actions and gestures to play at the same time, providing the ability for the sims to look quite natural and complex in their behaviors. They are able to react to their surroundings, both according to the events around them and according to their various particular personalities. Dozens of facial expressions have been developed to allow sims to express real emotions, such as anger, pity, sadness, joy, and fear. The sims' conversations have been improved by developing a dynamic system that draws upon a rich library of gestures to permit sims to talk in tones that range from lively to bored. Even walking has been improved to allow the expression of emotion and personality, and to permit sims to interact with each other as they pass. Underlying all these advances is a new and improved AI engine that drives the sims' needs, memories, aspirations, and desires, providing the dynamic information necessary to weave together realistic human behavior.
Of course, one set of advances requires another. For example, when you give a character the ability to move its fingers, you then take on the responsibility of creating compelling gestures and animations to drive those fingers. Animation and character modeling are demanding tasks, and success relies on clear planning and a solid aesthetic vision. To that end, planning is always king. To make sure our work comes across as powerfully as possible, we spare no effort to design and redesign the artwork until it provides the most satisfying result. It's not uncommon to walk the halls of Maxis and find animators leaping like they've been shocked, or pretending to open a refrigerator repeatedly, simply to properly internalize the action to get that perfect result.
Finally, executing against those final designs meant scouring the industry for the finest talent available, and we did exactly that. The Sims 2 team has one of the most robust and accomplished art departments ever assembled for a game development effort. Tens of thousands of animator-hours have been spent on crafting subtle and compelling motion for sims and on modeling and painting clothing and accessories to let the players create exactly the sim they have in mind. Speaking of clothing, these are the trendiest sims yet, with fashion choices that are varied and hip. Don't even ask how many catalogs we've perused!
Creating characters that people believe in and care about has always been among the most difficult of creative challenges, since way back in the Stone Age when we told stories by the campfires over roasted mammoth. But that's what we committed ourselves to here at EA, and we're just so excited to see it all finally coming together. At last, we can say that our sims really live and breathe, and that they're so much the little people we always wanted to make that they take our breath away. We just can't wait to introduce them to you.
14 Aug 2003 - 23:10
ComputerAndVideoGames.com interviews The Sims 2 Associate Producer, Destry Davison.
Sims 2: exclusive interview
EA reveals its true follow-up to the devastatingly successful series
With The Sims, EA seemed to be putting together an entertaining-if-you-like-that-sort-of-thing Little Computer People remake. Which happened to be a ridiculous amount of people's sort of thing. With The Sims 2, it's almost as if the developer has decided to do its level best to simulate a heightened version of real life. DNA, new generations, character traits - it's downright scary.
Destry Davison, associate producer on the title, tries to convince us that this is even better than the real thing...
Okay, so what have you guys done with the sequel?
Davison: First up, there's the face tool. This is what users will use to create the Sims that they want to have in their world. It's a customisation tool. You can create a huge variety of different types.
In the Sims 2 you have genetics, so traits are passed on from one generation of Sims to another. So genetic factors are things like hair colour, eye colour. You can give people different hairstyles, or you can go deeper. We have different nationalities that you can blend, or you can just select an archetype Sim and not mess with it.
But you can take it even further - maybe you don't like your model's nose, you can take that nose and change it. Or you can add more subtle changes, like the way someone's eyebrows arch. You can up them, tilt them down a little, you can lower lip thickness; you have a lot of control.
So then you can pick a male and a female Sim, pair them together and see what their offspring will look like. You can see not only what they look like as kids, but as they grow up as teens, and as adults, and you can see the way the parents' features, skin tone etc. are reflected in the child. Plus there's some fun characters in there, some of these we've drawn up resemble Spock, Mr T, etc.
Another thing we've done is added custom content. So other people can create characters and you can pull them in. So maybe someone's built an alien - you want to breed that alien with our demon figure, you're going to come up with some pretty strange offspring.
So you can see there are all sorts of possibilities; you can build a Sim take on your family, Sim takes on celebrities - we might actually ship this tool early, so people can build their Sims ahead of release, so that when they get the game they're all ready to go.
There's also going to be more customisation with what we're calling design mode, where you can select the couch that you have. Maybe you have a brown leather couch and you want a black leather one, so be it, you can change to a black leather, or maybe a corduroy [Let's not get bogged down in materials here guys]. So instead of having a brand new object, you just reupholster it.
It's a sandbox experience. We create some boundaries, but basically it's pretty much your game to play the way you want to play it.
It seems like it's becoming so sophisticated that, in a way, it's almost disturbing. Sims get old - so presumably at some stage they're going to die. There's almost room for some kind of emotional attachment...
Davison: Correct. That's a good reason to want to carry on your genes - when your Sims die you get their inheritants. We are talking about putting a mode in where you can turn that off, so that if you want to play it the old Sims way, you can.
But do that and there will be a lot of the gameplay happenings that you'll miss, taking your Sims through their career and their life.
So into the game and right off the bat you can see the new 3D engine; you have free camera, camera rotation, just a much more detailed landscape, three storeys to a house. You'll still go to downtown types of blocks to buy groceries, and other things.
The other thing that we've introduced is the idea of life-score. Sims have different life-scores where you have Marty, say, and his brother Bernie who I really didn't pay that much attention to, so he has a low life-score, sits around a lot, not very active.
Whereas Marty I paid more attention to when he was a child; I made sure he was able to walk, potty-trained him, worked him through the different life moments, so his life-score's much higher.
So if I take Marty, he has a charm interaction 'cause he's a high life-score Sim. You can match them up with these two girls at a party who also both have high life-scores, so they're more attracted to Marty - he's kind of a player. So Marty's chatting to the girls, having a fine old time, while Bernie's over here on the couch, eating pizza.
We're kind of sympathising with Bernie right now.
Davison: I like Bernie the best, too. But Bernie doesn't have too much charm, so let's see how he does with the ladies. He's kinda sleazy, it doesn't go so well.
So anyway, you can crank the party up a notch and take it outside to the hot tub - you've got Bernie and Marty in there, so now we can invite the girls to join us.
So watching this demo, you can see that Sims will look at each other, and show awareness of The Sims around them. That's one thing we've implemented, The Sims are much more aware of their environment and the people around them.
So you can try to get a little cuddle with one of the girl Sims - is Marty gonna be successful? 'Course he is. The other girl isn't too happy about that though, because she liked Marty too. We've added facial animations to the game, so you can see her glare at the other girl.
And of course, Bernie's still not a hit with the ladies; but you can take him out of the tub, back into the house, get him to do a little work-out. It's a little easier than real life; have Bernie workout for a few seconds on the mini-gym and he comes out with rippling muscles which of course the girls can't resist.
But there's all kinds of options, obviously all kinds of things you can do - you can even sit in your bed eating potato chips, watching TV.
Art imitating life. So when they kind of like... have sex, what is it, tastefully done?
Davison: You know, we have to pass the ratings board because we have such a wide audience. So we can't get too steamy. Under the covers, tastefully done, that kind of thing.
You see now how everyone's left the hot tub but this girl? Now there's a thunderstorm brewing and before you know it, watch out, she's hit by a bolt of lightning. So there's funny stuff in there too.
So that's it, the different life-scores shape your character, the genetics, and mainly playing your Sims through the different ages.
So we've seen the Sims at play there, but presumably work is also a factor?
Davison: Yeah. The new parts are that having elders and teens, they both get jobs. So having an elder is a bonus actually, because they're bringing in a pension usually, so they can take care of house chores, watch the children, and still bring in money. There's advantages and disadvantages; it just adds that much more gameplay.
So how long does the lifespan of a Sim go on for in a game?
Davison: The lifespan will vary based upon age-range, and also on how you treat your Sims. We're still in the tuning stage of how long each life-span will be, so it'll take us playing it and playing it to really nail down what we think is the right amount of time.
So you could have ancestors going back years...
Davison: There are certain rules that we've set - we want grandparents to be able to meet their grandchildren, so there's certain things that we'll have to play with to make sure that it plays right. And motives will change too; they'll be based upon your age range. So toddlers won't have nearly as many motives as older Sims.
So are we right in thinking you don't really control The Sims as such - you make a decision and then The Sims react accordingly?
Davison: In a sense, but you do control them in that you guide them to do what you want them to. You can just let the game run and they will choose autonomously and do things, or you can actually take charge and direct your Sims.
But with the life-scores, you can really tour the deviant low life-scoring Sims and live that lifestyle, or you can take the high road and be smart and arty and cultural.
We've seen the high and low life-scores depicted in very broad strokes, but is there room to be more subtle than that?
Davison: Sure, we bring the sandbox of tools, and it's up to you what you want to do with those tools. they'll push towards certain interactions, but it's really all about how you guide them...
14 Aug 2003 - 23:00
"We also saw that The Sims 2 will feature at least one bizarre-looking face type: that of a green-skinned, bug-eyed alien."
The Sims 2 Impressions
By Andrew Park
We got an up-close look at the sequel to the best-selling PC game.
At the recent Camp EA press event, we had an opportunity to get an up-close look at The Sims 2, and while the version on display was the same one that was shown at E3, we were able to take a more in-depth look at the upcoming sequel and its features. One of The Sims 2's most intriguing new features is the way that its computerized people (or "sims") will change over time--they'll not only age from babies to children to adults to senior citizens, but they'll also change in other physical, emotional, and mental ways.
We watched a demonstration with four teenage sims: Bernie, Marty, Jennifer, and Lisa. Bernie and Marty were male characters who had led very different lives. The suave, well-dressed Marty had access to many social interactions because of his extensive socializing with other characters, and he was also well dressed and in good physical shape. Bernie, on the other hand, was a pot-bellied, poorly dressed teen wearing a filthy T-shirt and jeans, and while Marty chatted up the ladies, Bernie was content to hang around the recently delivered pizzas and make a pig of himself. As we watched, Marty put the moves on the blonde Jennifer by flirting with her, which caused her to swoon and quickly develop a crush on him, but Marty was then directed to go and flirt with Lisa, who was right across the room. Marty's charms worked just as well on Lisa as they had on Jennifer, but Jennifer actually witnessed Marty's cheating ways and broke down and wept. In The Sims 2, sims will actually be acutely aware of the events going on around them, and they'll react to and remember these events. We then watched as Bernie attempted to get Jennifer's attention, but while the debonair Marty had been able to use a "flirt" social to get the ladies' attention, the crass Bernie's only option was the "hit on" social--a far less graceful way to break the ice that betrayed Bernie's poor social skills. Jennifer turned him away, of course.
We then watched as the four teens moved out to the patio to the hot tub, and got a chance to look at their house from afar. The Sims 2 will let you build much larger and more-detailed houses than the original game--houses with curved architecture and three or four stories, if you prefer. The four teenagers we saw preferred to jump into the hot tub, and Marty and Lisa, who had by now fallen in love, held each other close, gazed into each other's eyes, and then proceeded to get intimate by cuddling and then "playing" underwater in the hot tub. In social situations in The Sims 2, sims will progressively unlock more in-depth social activities the longer they interact with each other, so that sims who are dating may begin by simply flirting with each other, but may eventually end up performing steamy synchronized swimming parodies in a hot tub, as Marty and Lisa did. We also watched Bernie make another sorry attempt at getting Jennifer's attention, but since Bernie lacked Marty's social skills and any kind of rapport with Jennifer, the best he could do was use a "splash" social, which caused him to playfully but roughly hurl a wave of water in Jennifer's face--something she didn't especially care for.
The disgruntled Jennifer and Bernie were both directed to return indoors, and Bernie was instructed to use the exercise machine. After a sped-up demonstration of the wonders of the home gym, we watched as Bernie stood up from the exercise machine having lost all his excess weight--physical activity, or lack thereof, can change your sims' appearance, as well as their appeal to the opposite sex, as we saw: The rather superficial Jennifer took a much-improved view of the slimmer, trimmer Bernie. But sims won't just experience permanent changes physically. Apparently, your sims will also have memories that will affect their behavior, especially when those memories date back to their childhoods. If child sims burn themselves in the kitchen while fooling around with the oven, the trauma might affect them to the extent that, as adults, they may avoid going into their kitchens altogether.
We were also able to get a closer look at The Sims 2's face designing tool, which will let you customize your sims' faces in great detail by choosing eye size and color; hair style and hair color; nose size, width, and length; and plenty of other minute details that should help you create whichever sim you like, even if they happen to resemble real-world people, such as megastar Laurence "Mr. T" Tero, whose likeness was included as one of the examples. We also saw that The Sims 2 will feature at least one bizarre-looking face type: that of a green-skinned, bug-eyed alien. But regardless of whether your sims are black, brown, white, or from Mars, they'll pass on their appearance traits when they have kids--in fact, the face designing tool will let you design two prospective parents and then actually see how their children might look, not unlike the very popular gag that several late-night talk shows run with manipulated photos of famous celebrities.
The Sims 2 is scheduled for release sometime next year. We'll have more on this promising sequel soon.