Greetings, Sims Fans!
We're inching ever closer to completing the game, and you can really feel a change in the office atmosphere. We're all crunching pretty hard right now, but the mood feels more festive by the moment, and you can bet that when the game goes final we're gonna party like it's 2999! And come September 17th, we hope you'll join in the party as well, The Sims 2 style!
That's right – in The Sims 2, you'll be able plan the party of your dreams! Whether it's a quiet get-together at home, a heavy metal head banger, or a dignified and structured social gathering to commemorate a Birthday, Wedding, or Anniversary, we've got the right party for ya!
Just like in real life, the type of party you have and the people you invite are crucial to its success. Parties are all about positive social interactions, so it's generally a bad idea to throw together Sims that don't get along. It's possible to throw a party just for your Sim and a guest, but expect only modest social success if you include fewer than three guests at your party. As they say – two's company, three's a crowd, but four or more is a par-tay!
Naturally, the amenities that you make available go a long way to ensuring a successful party-going experience for your guests. In The Sims 2, there are a variety of different objects which can help get the party started. We don't want to give too much away, but it's always good to remember that everyone loves food, and balloons are always fun. And if the occasion calls for it, a wedding or birthday cake can really set the mood effectively.
So, there you have it, Party People – a great little primer on tearing the roof off the sucka in The Sims 2. Just remember - try to keep open flames to a minimum at your party. You don't want your fete to come to a screeching halt when some poor Sim notices that the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!
Party On:
We don't need no water!
Lucy Bradshaw
Sims 2 Executive Producer and Social Gadfly Extraordinaire
P.S. In case you're one of the legions of people that created Sims of myself, Jonathan Knight, and Tim LeTourneau, we thank you! All three of us have always secretly longed for an army of clones willing to do our darkest bidding, and it seems we're well on our way to living our dreams! Of course, everyone who participated did a great job, but there were a few entries that we thought really shined:
News
Lucy Bradshaw explains what the development team has been working on, and she also gives us an introduction to some of the unique families that will ship with the game.
The Sims 2 Designer Diary #9
As The Sims 2 nears completion, Maxis' Lucy Bradshaw tells us about some of the new families that will ship with the highly anticipated sequel.
As the September release date for The Sims 2 nears, the developers at Maxis are busy putting the finishing touches on what is undoubtedly one of the biggest game releases of the year. In The Sims 2, you'll once again have the opportunity to create your own sims, or virtual people, and manipulate their lives. However, the gameplay has been deepened, so you will also have to take into account your sims' desires and fears. Sims will want riches, fame, family, and more, and it'll be up to you to decide whether or not to give it to them. Your sims will also marry, have children, grow old, and eventually die, but you can still carry on playing the game with their children. In this edition of our designer diaries, Maxis vice president Lucy Bradshaw explains what the development team has been working on, and she also gives us an introduction to some of the unique families that will ship with the game.
Crunch Time
By Lucy Bradshaw
VP PC development
Here we are at the final phase of development on The Sims 2. Just to give you a sense of what things are like around the office these days, let me paint the picture. It is Tuesday at 1:30am. I just had a meeting with about six members of the team to review how we are tuning the popularity aspiration in the game. Yup, we are in crunch mode. We have a wall here at the office called the "Sticky Wall"--basically a huge wall with a high-level snapshot of the schedule reflecting the last four months of the project (the entire project would take a much bigger wall), completely covered with Post-it Notes. Each Post-it Note represents a specific high-level task that we need to complete. It is a very tall and very long wall. Each time we complete one of the tasks, we stamp a big "DONE" stamp on its Post-it Note. Well, I am very happy to say that we are awash with "DONE"-stamped Post-its!!!! Ah, but we are not done yet...
We are at that point where we are hammering away at bugs and tuning, tuning, tuning. Truth be told, it is a blast. It's like rounding that final curve and all of your adrenaline is pumping. Each day the gameplay gets tighter as we tune. We're also getting a lot of quality time with our teammates; this is a time we like to call "crunch time." One thing that keeps us laughing as we work is our group of favorite bugs. (Oops, that is a sneak preview of what I'll be writing about next month!)
Another thing we go into overdrive on, at this point, is getting play feedback. Throughout the course of development, we pull together play groups and what we call "Kleenex- testing" groups. (Kleenex tests are where we have first-time users play the game. The deal is, once we have "used" this player, that's it. We can't get first impressions again, so they are used up). We check on how well the user interface is delivering and if players are getting the key concepts of the gameplay. One thing that came clear through these tests is that The Sims 2 is an enormous game. It occurred to us, in such an open-ended game, it might be cool if we expose some of the possibilities in store for your sims by setting the stage, so to speak. So we've been having some fun with our own game.
When you enter The Sims 2, you can either choose from one of three neighborhoods that will ship with the game or you can create your own. You can create your own family in any of the shipping neighborhoods, or you can play as one of the existing families that we have created, just to get a sense of what can happen. Each family is very unique. One neighborhood that I like is Strangetown--this is where we decided to put all of our very "out there" sims. And the really fun thing is that you can set up relationships across families. Sims are more aware of their relationships than ever before, so the goings-on in the 'hood can get pretty funny.
Welcome to Strangetown
Without further delay, here's a sneak preview of a few of the families of Strangetown: the Curious brothers, the Smiths, and the Grunts.
The Curious brothers live in the coolest house in town; it's located near the satellite dishes, and it's a modern home with cantilevered decks. The three Curious brothers, Lazlo, Pascal, and Vidcund, are all knowledge sims, which may have been influenced by the fact that their dad was abducted by aliens and never returned (check out their family tree). Aliens play a big part in their lives. Always wanting to catch sight of a UFO, they invested early in a telescope, which they have stationed at the tip-top of their highest deck. Play this house and you'll have a real challenge in store very quickly. Raising sim kids--from babies through those awkward teenage years--is one of the new challenges in The Sims 2. But raising two little alien half-breeds--who would have thought of that? We did! One of the funniest moments is watching Pascal and Vidcund waddle about and eat like maniacs.
The Smith Family has a nice little Cape Cod house with a well-manicured lawn and white picket fence--the picture of suburban normalcy. Take a closer look. The dad's name is Pollination Technical #9. What is that? Take a look at his profile; despite the Hawaiian shirt, it looks like he's going to have an interesting time passing himself off as the typical suburban patriarch. But he just loves his lawn and can't get enough of barbequing. After a long and fruitful career of abducting hapless sims, he decided Earth was a pretty good place to settle down. Now he's just trying to fit in. Those unfortunate genetic traits have been passed down to his son, Johnny, who's trying to make it as a popularity sim, but it's a tough road to haul with his green skin.
The Grunts live in a barracks-style house at 51 Road to Nowhere. General Grunt runs a very tight military household; a true domesticated boot camp, complete with one of the new career reward objects, the obstacle course. He can be found drilling his three sons, Tank, Ripp, and Buck, in the art of boot camp basics. They are not all that thrilled. Tank is a bit on the immature side, and will take any chance he can to pick a fight, give a noogie to his little brother, and just be outrageously annoying. Ripp, the lazy one, wants to chat on the computer, and little Buck is happy just swinging on the swing set. The general is a bit suspicious of the Smiths. He just can't stand the sight of them. But PT9 is so oblivious; he thinks the Grunts are a nice, typical Earth family.
The sparks fly in this neighborhood with all of the alien abductions, the other neighbors butting in, and lots of interesting family connections. Like I said, you can move your own family in and make Strangetown your own, or play one of ours for a bit. You'll have fun with the extreme situations your sims can get into.
Pools, alien babies, thieves and more happenings from Strangetown. Check out the latest selection of screenshots.
Electronic Arts will be conducting focus groups that will discuss The Sims video games on the evening of Thursday, August 19, in Encino, California.
We Need Your Opinion About The Sims!
Electronic Arts will be conducting focus groups that will discuss The Sims video games on the evening of Thursday, August 19, in Encino, California. If you own The Sims Bustin' Out and/or The Sims Get A Life and are interested in participating, we invite you to come to our facility for a two-hour group to talk about your experiences with The Sims.
If you qualify, the discussion will last approximately two hours and participants will be paid $75.
We have hired an independent research company, Adept Research, to conduct these discussions. If you would like more information or would like to participate in the focus group, please call (818) 905-9666 and ask for Alex at Ext. 433.
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO RESPOND, please call (818) 905-9666 and ask for Alex at Ext. 433.
Thanks,
Electronic Arts
1_and_1_is_2 Interviews thesiddog about his most well known album, Wasteland. Today we feature his album as a Maxis Pick.
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...
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Winners from his contest are reposted in the categories of Best Writer, Best Male/Female Character, Best Heros / Villains and more!