[HN Gopher] The Sims Game Design Documents (1997)
___________________________________________________________________
The Sims Game Design Documents (1997)
Author : krykp
Score : 398 points
Date : 2025-02-16 01:06 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (donhopkins.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (donhopkins.com)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Also:
|
| The Sims Steering Committee - June 4 1998
|
| A demo of an early pre-release version of The Sims for The Sims
| Steering Committee at EA, developed June 4 1998.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY
| hn_user82179 wrote:
| The Sims is one of my all-time favorite games. Reading these
| documents have been such a surprising delight and are a huge
| dose of nostalgia for play this game in my childhood, but now
| (>20 years later) I have a huge respect for how well-thought
| out and absolutely massive the whole game is. I especially
| enjoyed the TheSimsDesignDocumentDraft3-DonsReview.doc writeup,
| such as the `Other game elements` section because it shows how
| daunting it is to do a life sim game like this and do it well.
| Thank you for sharing!
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Thank you! Here's some more stuff:
|
| I attended this talk by Will Wright in 1996 at Stanford, and
| went to work on him at Maxis soon thereafter. Years later
| looking back and watching this after working on and shipping
| the game he demonstrated for the first time in public in this
| talk, I was surprised by how much of the important parts of
| the design he already had thought through and explained in
| this talk, including having the Sims talk with an abstract
| language like adults in Charlie Brown, and using the game to
| enable storytelling.
|
| Will Wright - Maxis - Interfacing to Microworlds - 1996-4-26
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsxoZXaYJSk
|
| Jan 27, 2023 STANFORD UNIVERSITY - COMPUTER SCIENCE
| DEPARTMENT
|
| Video of Will Wright's talk about "Interfacing to
| Microworlds" presented to Terry Winograd's user interface
| class at Stanford University, April 26, 1996.
|
| He demonstrates and gives postmortems for SimEarth, SimAnt,
| and SimCity 2000, then previews an extremely early pre-
| release prototype version of Dollhouse (which eventually
| became The Sims), describing how the AI models personalities
| and behavior, and is distributed throughout extensible plug-
| in programmable objects in the environment, and he
| thoughtfully answers many interesting questions from the
| audience.
|
| This is the lecture described in "Will Wright on Designing
| User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996)": 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.
|
| Use and reproduction: The materials are open for research use
| and may be used freely for non-commercial purposes with an
| attribution. For commercial permission requests, please
| contact the Stanford University Archives
| (universityarchives@stanford.edu).
|
| My notes and write-up:
|
| Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games
| (1996) (2023 Video Update):
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-
| to-s...
|
| HN discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34573406
|
| Lobster.rs post:
|
| https://lobste.rs/s/fz36cj/will_wright_on_designing_user_int.
| ..
|
| Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games
| (1996) video games donhopkins.medium.com
|
| DonHopkins avatar authored by DonHopkins 2 years ago | caches
| | 3 comments
|
| On April 4, 1996, Terry Winograd (who I worked with at
| Interval Research) invited me to sit in on his HCI Group
| CS547 Seminar where Will Wright was giving a presentation
| called "Interfacing to Microworlds", in which he gave demos
| and retrospective critiques of his three previous games,
| SimEarth, SimAnt, and SimCity 2000.
|
| He opened it up to a question and answer session, during
| which Terry Winograd's students asked excellent questions
| that Will answered in thoughtful detail, then one of them
| asked the $5 billion question: "What projects are you working
| on now?"
|
| Will was taken aback and amused by the directness, and
| answered "Oh, God..." then said he would back up and give
| "more of an answer than you were looking for."
|
| The he demonstrated and explained Dollhouse for the first
| time in public, talking in depth about its architecture,
| design, and his long term plans and visions.
|
| I took notes of the lecture, augmented them with more recent
| information and links from later talking and working with
| Will, and published the notes on my blog. But all I had to go
| on were my notes, and I haven't seen a video of that early
| version of Dollhouse ever since.
|
| But only last week I discovered the Holy Grail I'd been
| searching for 27 years, nestled and sparkling among a huge
| dragon's hoard of historic treasures that are now free for
| the taking: Stanford University has published a huge
| collection of hundreds of Terry Winograd's HCI Group CS547
| Seminar Video Recordings, including that talk and two more by
| Will Wright!
|
| I really appreciate Terry Winograd for inviting me to Will's
| talk that blew my mind and changed my life (it overwhelmingly
| and irresistibly convinced me to go to Maxis to work with
| Will on The Sims), and to the Stanford University librarians
| and archivists for putting this enormous treasure trove of
| historic videos online.
|
| Guide to the Stanford University, Computer Science
| Department, HCI Group, CS547 Seminar Video Recordings
|
| https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c82b926h/entire_tex.
| ..
|
| Will Wright, Maxis, "Interfacing to Microworlds", April 26,
| 1996:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/yj113jt5999
|
| Will Wright, Maxis, "Games and Simulation", May 2, 2003
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/pw467bz3079
|
| Will Wright, Maxis / Electronic Arts, "Laughing Creative
| Communities: Lessons for the Spore community experience", May
| 22, 2009
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/pd936vc7267
|
| I uploaded the video to YouTube to automatically create
| closed captions, which I proofread and cleaned up, so it's
| more accessible and easier for people to find, and you can
| translate the closed captions to other languages.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsxoZXaYJSk
|
| And I updated my previous article "Will Wright on Designing
| User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996)" to include the
| embedded video, as well as the transcript and screen
| snapshots of the demo, links to more information, and slides
| from Will's subsequent talk that illustrated what he was
| talking about in 1996.
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-
| to-s...
|
| [Reposting this thread here, because a GamerGate incel
| "FAAST" just tried to vandalize this discussion by posting an
| incoherent angry reply and flagged my comment as undermining
| his self-loathing homophobic ideology, so now you can read it
| without his ridiculous hate speech:]
|
| I'm disappointed The Sims 1 wasn't included on that
| frightened angry list of "Woke Games" the GamerGate incels
| were circulating around!
|
| https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSims/
|
| The Sims Design Documents
|
| https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSims/TheSimsDesignDocumentDra.
| ..
|
| This is a PDF file with the annotated Word document of Don
| Hopkins's Review of The Sims Design Document Draft 3, 8/7/98.
|
| On page 5, he wrote the following comments about same sex
| relationships in the game:
|
| >The whole relationship design and implementation (I've
| looked at the tree code) is Heterosexist and Monosexist. We
| are going to be expected to do better than that after the
| SimCopter fiasco and the lip service that Maxis publically
| gave in response about not being anti-gay. The code tests to
| see if the sex of the people trying to romantically interact
| is the same, and if so, the result is a somewhat violent
| negative interaction, clearly homophobic. We are definitly
| going to get flack for that. It would be much more realistic
| to model it by two numbers from 0 to100 for each person,
| which was the likelyhood of that person being interested in a
| romantic interaction with each sex. So you can simply model
| monosexual heterosexual (which is all we have now),
| monosexual homosexual (like the guys in SimCopter), bisexual,
| nonsexual (mother theresa, presumably), and all shades in
| between (most of the rest of the world's population). It
| would make for a much more interesting and realistic game,
| partially influenced by random factors, and anyone offended
| by that needs to grow up and get a life, and hopefully our
| game will help them in that quest. Anyone who is afraid that
| it might offend the sensibilities of other people (but of
| course not themselves) is clearly homophobic by proxy but
| doesn't realize it since they're projecting their homophobia
| onto other people.
|
| https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSims/TheSimsDesignDocumentDra.
| ..
|
| https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSims/TheSimsDesignDocumentDra.
| ..
|
| This is a PDF file with a scan of the handwritten notes, and
| a PDF file with the annotated Word document of Don Hopkins's
| Review of The Sims Design Document Draft 5, 8/31/98.
|
| On page 4, there is a section about Same Sex and Opposite Sex
| relationships, which reflects Don's suggestion to change the
| design to support same sex relationships.
|
| >Same Sex and Opposite Sex relationships To be outlined in
| 9/30 Live Mode deliverable. Currently the game only allows
| heterosexual romance. This will not be the only type
| available - it just reflects the early stages of
| implementation. Will is reviewing the code and will make
| recommendations for how to implement homosexual romance as
| well.
|
| https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSims/TheSimsDesignDocumentDra.
| ..
|
| This is a PDF file with the annotated Word document of Don
| Hopkins's Review of The Sims Design Document Draft 7,
| 10/2/98.
|
| On page 21, there is a section (same as above) about Same Sex
| and Opposite Sex relationships, which reflects Don's
| suggestion to change the design to support same sex
| relationships.
|
| After discussing it with Patrick J. Barrett III, we've
| determined that the sequence of events that led to The Sims
| having same sex relationships: The initial prototype
| implementation did not support same sex relationships, and I
| noticed that, when I tried to have two women kiss, the would-
| be-kissee slapped the kisser. So I wrote up my opinion that
| it should support same sex relationships, instead of
| resulting in homophobic violence, and proposed a straw man
| 2-dimensional way of modeling it. Subsequent design documents
| said heterosexual romance would not be the only kind
| available, and that Will was reviewing the code and would
| make recommendations on how to implement it. Patrick was
| hired soon after that, and was set to task implementing some
| social interactions. But Will didn't get back to Patrick and
| the production database didn't reflect his opinion by the
| time Patrick started working on it. But Patrick implemented
| support for same sex relationships anyway, but not by
| explicitly modeling sexual preference as property of The Sims
| personality -- just as a behavior that was possible at any
| time for any character.
|
| spondylosaurus 1 hour ago | parent | next [-]
|
| And the Sims 1 live demo at E3 had two female sims
| unexpectedly kiss!
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-
| kiss...
|
| Which generated a lot of buzz for the game, as you might
| expect. Maybe it wouldn't have taken off without that
| publicity.
|
| DonHopkins 42 minutes ago | root | parent | next | edit |
| delete [-]
|
| Yes, the unplanned off-the-rails lesbian kiss at E3 generated
| some really great press coverage! And it was also soon after
| Columbine, when video games were getting a lot of unfair
| flack and blame for causing violence and school shootings, so
| people were really hurting for a non-violent gender inclusive
| video game, both for gamers to play and for the press to
| write about.
|
| Here's a great video essay by Alex Avila, who deeply analyzes
| The Sims, and discusses "The Kiss". The YouTube comments are
| exceptionally amazing and heartwarming! (Well curated to
| eliminate the toxic slime from hateful GamerGate incels like
| FAAST, too.)
|
| Did The Sims make you gay? - a video essay.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi-HWyh0Ybk
|
| >It's no doubt The Sims is an influential video game. In this
| video essay, we're going to talk about its GAY influence,
| particularly the role it plays in queer people's identity
| development. Enjoy the presentation as we go over how the
| Sims influenced a generation in letting them live out their
| Tumblr dreams...
|
| Just a few of the many comments:
|
| Yes it did, I used to make wlw families in my Sims 2 games
| and make their homes lower than the ground level bc I thought
| it'd hide them from my parents
|
| I DID SOMETHING LIKE THIS. I made the bedroom downstairs so
| when they slept, cuddled or whoohoo, my parents would not
| see.
|
| Ah yes, fond memories of saving my gay in-game relationships
| on a separate memory card. And if that wasn't enough good
| measure, being a psychopath and making my characters fight to
| reduce their social status back down to friends or enemies so
| that no one would see or suspect that they were ever married.
|
| You were hardly made gay by the sims. You were always gay.
| The sims just help you discover it.
|
| @tikimillie hey not trying to respond in a mean or hateful
| way, I'm pretty sure everyone commenting and the person who
| made the video know the sims didn't make them gay, but it's a
| joke based on anti lgbt people claiming stuff makes us gay,
| so this joke subverts that by claiming the thing that made us
| gay is a game we love.
|
| My wife was a huge fan of The Sims and your video on its
| impact on sexual orientation made her laugh out loud. She
| would watch it over and over, always finding something new to
| enjoy. Though she is no longer with me, the memories of her
| laughter while watching your video will always be a source of
| comfort. Thank you for creating something that brought her so
| much joy. Rest in peace, my love.
|
| I 100% made gay sims but the pattern actually started way
| earlier. When I was five had a pair of polly pockets who were
| "married" and lived in the same little pocket house. My
| parents thought this was very cute and were equally sweet
| (and completely unsurprised) when I came out 10 years later.
|
| I was gay before but the Sims make me accept in who i am,
| because of how gay people in the game is treated as just
| normal people, it was so heart warming to see my two gay sims
| kiss each other in public without people harassing them
|
| I remmeber playing my first sim game (3) alone at the age of
| 10 and my two characters, one rich old man and one surfer bro
| who started out as roommates, eventually fell in love and
| started cuddling on their own and at the time I was so
| unfamiliar with gay content in any of the media I consumed I
| remember being absolutely astonished that the game would let
| them do that at all. not in the angry reactionary way but in
| the "holy shit... they can just DO that????? and it's
| FINE???????!!!!" kind of way
|
| When I came out to my sister, the very first thing she said
| to me was "....... Is that why all your Sims were gay?"
|
| I'm one of those players that never had a problem with the
| sexuality system in The Sims. I never felt the need for
| labels, homophobia, queer history and such in my game. Equal
| for me was enough. More than enough, it was everything I
| wanted. No distinction means no hate. Everyone is normal and
| the same. I love queer history irl, but I long for a world
| where I don't need to label myself, to come out, to identify
| with a community and not with another. For me, not having to
| be different is freedom. As in, I can be as different and
| unique as I want, but it won't make a difference in how much
| people love me or hate me; I want walk down the street
| holding hand with my partner without people looking at us
| because we're not the pair they expect. Their indifference
| would mean the world to me. And The Sims gives me that. I
| don't want no labels, no hate, trauma in my game. Not the
| real life kind that is. Downloading extreme violence and
| ending families is a whole different story :)
|
| Making my sim flirt with/date/kiss a female sim every day
| before quitting without saving so my parents wouldn't find it
| and so it didn't count is one of my gayest experiences
|
| That reminds me a story of my childhood: Me and my cousin
| playing the sims together. Making two sims (me: a female, he:
| a male) and controlling them in turns. My cousin controls his
| sim and gets him a girlfriend from some of the neighbor
| households. Then he says: "Yay, I started dating her! And who
| are you going to date?". And I answered, without a second
| thought: "I am going to steal your girlfriend". He: "What? Is
| it even possible?" Me: "Let's try and see." And it worked, my
| sim successfully stole his sim's girlfriend. That's how we
| discovered the sims can be gay. And how I discovered I prefer
| girls. So I quess The Sims made me gay? :D
|
| When I was like 7 I used to play a psp sims game and saw the
| option for 2 same sex sims to get married, so I tried that
| and was surprised to see it wasn't like a weird insulting
| thing. When I showed it to my grandma she just confiscated
| the psp and hid it for actual years which was so confusing
|
| I remember the first time I ever made gay happen in the Sims.
| As a kid I didn't know sex worked so I made my Sims adopt
| their children as I was unsure of how to make them have
| children naturally. I learnt much later by accident when 2 of
| my Sims were sharing the same bed and the option came up. So
| the next generation of my Sims family came along. Their
| offspring was a girl who had a friend throughout childhood
| who was also a girl. As they grew into teenagehood, I
| realised the option to do romantic interactions was there. I
| was really surprised. When I clicked on them I didn't think
| the two girls would actually kiss. I felt really hot all
| over, it was so exciting. I made them kiss over and over and
| over. I didn't know why this kiss felt different from all my
| other Sims kissing. Quickly, I started to feel guilty and
| embarrassed (I don't know why because my family have no
| issues with gay things, seeing as many members are gay
| themselves). I forced my sim to leave her girlfriend and
| marry a man so they could have children, because I was
| desperate to have biological children. My Sims were basically
| always gay as I got older and older. The Sims actually helped
| me to realise that I was apart of the lgbtq community myself
| even if I didn't know it yet.
|
| as a bisexual sims fan, i view the lack of choosing an
| identity, and the "utopia" of existing without having to
| declare a label as something that was helpful to me. to see
| sims autonomously love each other despite that was one of the
| things that helped me realise that people having to come out
| is just strange. And as someone who loves queer history and
| understanding the oppression and suppression presently and in
| the past i think having a game where flirting with the
| opposite sex is the same as flirting with the same sex. it
| felt refreshing to other games i also like, such as stardew
| valley.
|
| When we were 9 or 10 my best friend and I made an all-female
| prison and since we had heard that lesbians were bad people
| we made two prisoners kiss, it was supposed to be wrong but
| for some reason it felt more familiar to me than my sim
| self's life with a husband and kids. So I decided to give
| myself a girlfriend and see how I felt, I realized this is
| how I wanted my real life to be as well when I grew up.
| Unfortunately, my mom caught me and made me delete my gf and
| back in the closet I went.
|
| I'm obsessed with how well this essay was put together. The
| background information laid a wonderful platform to build off
| of and put things into perspective, and then call back to as
| we went and were introduced to new information. Not only
| that, but it created a sense of tension that led up to and
| really paid off around the 30 minute mark when the mirror
| stage was brought up. That whole section brought all the
| other ideas talked about into a singular, clear focus and
| made a really compelling argument.
|
| From the title before watching, I thought the video was going
| to talk about being able to discover your identity through a
| private experience with a game that allowed queer expression
| that you might not have seen/experienced before, but damn, it
| went in hard with the idea of queerness coming from innately
| within or from external societal ideology and has seriously
| made me rethink a bunch of things, past just the game and
| even past the subject of queerness.
|
| Seriously, amazing job. I hope you got great marks for your
| school essays, because I'd bet my left foot you deserved
| them.
|
| [These are just a few examples. There are many more great
| comments on the video!]
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| And the Sims 1 live demo at E3 had two female sims
| unexpectedly kiss! https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-
| of-technology/the-kiss...
|
| Which generated a lot of buzz for the game, as you might
| expect. Maybe it wouldn't have taken off without that
| publicity.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Yes, the unplanned off-the-rails lesbian kiss at E3
| generated some really great press coverage! And it was
| also soon after Columbine, when video games were getting
| a lot of unfair flack and blame for causing violence and
| school shootings, so people were really hurting for a
| non-violent gender inclusive video game, both for gamers
| to play and for the press to write about.
|
| Here's a great video essay by Alex Avila, who deeply
| analyzes The Sims, and discusses "The Kiss". The YouTube
| comments are exceptionally amazing and heartwarming!
| (Well curated to eliminate the toxic slime from hateful
| GamerGate incels like FAAST, too.)
|
| Did The Sims make you gay? - a video essay.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi-HWyh0Ybk
|
| >It's no doubt The Sims is an influential video game. In
| this video essay, we're going to talk about its GAY
| influence, particularly the role it plays in queer
| people's identity development. Enjoy the presentation as
| we go over how the Sims influenced a generation in
| letting them live out their Tumblr dreams...
|
| Just a few of the many comments:
|
| Yes it did, I used to make wlw families in my Sims 2
| games and make their homes lower than the ground level bc
| I thought it'd hide them from my parents
|
| I DID SOMETHING LIKE THIS. I made the bedroom downstairs
| so when they slept, cuddled or whoohoo, my parents would
| not see.
|
| Ah yes, fond memories of saving my gay in-game
| relationships on a separate memory card. And if that
| wasn't enough good measure, being a psychopath and making
| my characters fight to reduce their social status back
| down to friends or enemies so that no one would see or
| suspect that they were ever married.
|
| You were hardly made gay by the sims. You were always
| gay. The sims just help you discover it.
|
| @tikimillie hey not trying to respond in a mean or
| hateful way, I'm pretty sure everyone commenting and the
| person who made the video know the sims didn't make them
| gay, but it's a joke based on anti lgbt people claiming
| stuff makes us gay, so this joke subverts that by
| claiming the thing that made us gay is a game we love.
|
| My wife was a huge fan of The Sims and your video on its
| impact on sexual orientation made her laugh out loud. She
| would watch it over and over, always finding something
| new to enjoy. Though she is no longer with me, the
| memories of her laughter while watching your video will
| always be a source of comfort. Thank you for creating
| something that brought her so much joy. Rest in peace, my
| love.
|
| I 100% made gay sims but the pattern actually started way
| earlier. When I was five had a pair of polly pockets who
| were "married" and lived in the same little pocket house.
| My parents thought this was very cute and were equally
| sweet (and completely unsurprised) when I came out 10
| years later.
|
| I was gay before but the Sims make me accept in who i am,
| because of how gay people in the game is treated as just
| normal people, it was so heart warming to see my two gay
| sims kiss each other in public without people harassing
| them
|
| I remmeber playing my first sim game (3) alone at the age
| of 10 and my two characters, one rich old man and one
| surfer bro who started out as roommates, eventually fell
| in love and started cuddling on their own and at the time
| I was so unfamiliar with gay content in any of the media
| I consumed I remember being absolutely astonished that
| the game would let them do that at all. not in the angry
| reactionary way but in the "holy shit... they can just DO
| that????? and it's FINE???????!!!!" kind of way
|
| When I came out to my sister, the very first thing she
| said to me was "....... Is that why all your Sims were
| gay?"
|
| I'm one of those players that never had a problem with
| the sexuality system in The Sims. I never felt the need
| for labels, homophobia, queer history and such in my
| game. Equal for me was enough. More than enough, it was
| everything I wanted. No distinction means no hate.
| Everyone is normal and the same. I love queer history
| irl, but I long for a world where I don't need to label
| myself, to come out, to identify with a community and not
| with another. For me, not having to be different is
| freedom. As in, I can be as different and unique as I
| want, but it won't make a difference in how much people
| love me or hate me; I want walk down the street holding
| hand with my partner without people looking at us because
| we're not the pair they expect. Their indifference would
| mean the world to me. And The Sims gives me that. I don't
| want no labels, no hate, trauma in my game. Not the real
| life kind that is. Downloading extreme violence and
| ending families is a whole different story :)
|
| Making my sim flirt with/date/kiss a female sim every day
| before quitting without saving so my parents wouldn't
| find it and so it didn't count is one of my gayest
| experiences
|
| That reminds me a story of my childhood: Me and my cousin
| playing the sims together. Making two sims (me: a female,
| he: a male) and controlling them in turns. My cousin
| controls his sim and gets him a girlfriend from some of
| the neighbor households. Then he says: "Yay, I started
| dating her! And who are you going to date?". And I
| answered, without a second thought: "I am going to steal
| your girlfriend". He: "What? Is it even possible?" Me:
| "Let's try and see." And it worked, my sim successfully
| stole his sim's girlfriend. That's how we discovered the
| sims can be gay. And how I discovered I prefer girls. So
| I quess The Sims made me gay? :D
|
| When I was like 7 I used to play a psp sims game and saw
| the option for 2 same sex sims to get married, so I tried
| that and was surprised to see it wasn't like a weird
| insulting thing. When I showed it to my grandma she just
| confiscated the psp and hid it for actual years which was
| so confusing
|
| I remember the first time I ever made gay happen in the
| Sims. As a kid I didn't know sex worked so I made my Sims
| adopt their children as I was unsure of how to make them
| have children naturally. I learnt much later by accident
| when 2 of my Sims were sharing the same bed and the
| option came up. So the next generation of my Sims family
| came along. Their offspring was a girl who had a friend
| throughout childhood who was also a girl. As they grew
| into teenagehood, I realised the option to do romantic
| interactions was there. I was really surprised. When I
| clicked on them I didn't think the two girls would
| actually kiss. I felt really hot all over, it was so
| exciting. I made them kiss over and over and over. I
| didn't know why this kiss felt different from all my
| other Sims kissing. Quickly, I started to feel guilty and
| embarrassed (I don't know why because my family have no
| issues with gay things, seeing as many members are gay
| themselves). I forced my sim to leave her girlfriend and
| marry a man so they could have children, because I was
| desperate to have biological children. My Sims were
| basically always gay as I got older and older. The Sims
| actually helped me to realise that I was apart of the
| lgbtq community myself even if I didn't know it yet.
|
| as a bisexual sims fan, i view the lack of choosing an
| identity, and the "utopia" of existing without having to
| declare a label as something that was helpful to me. to
| see sims autonomously love each other despite that was
| one of the things that helped me realise that people
| having to come out is just strange. And as someone who
| loves queer history and understanding the oppression and
| suppression presently and in the past i think having a
| game where flirting with the opposite sex is the same as
| flirting with the same sex. it felt refreshing to other
| games i also like, such as stardew valley.
|
| When we were 9 or 10 my best friend and I made an all-
| female prison and since we had heard that lesbians were
| bad people we made two prisoners kiss, it was supposed to
| be wrong but for some reason it felt more familiar to me
| than my sim self's life with a husband and kids. So I
| decided to give myself a girlfriend and see how I felt, I
| realized this is how I wanted my real life to be as well
| when I grew up. Unfortunately, my mom caught me and made
| me delete my gf and back in the closet I went.
|
| I'm obsessed with how well this essay was put together.
| The background information laid a wonderful platform to
| build off of and put things into perspective, and then
| call back to as we went and were introduced to new
| information. Not only that, but it created a sense of
| tension that led up to and really paid off around the 30
| minute mark when the mirror stage was brought up. That
| whole section brought all the other ideas talked about
| into a singular, clear focus and made a really compelling
| argument.
|
| From the title before watching, I thought the video was
| going to talk about being able to discover your identity
| through a private experience with a game that allowed
| queer expression that you might not have seen/experienced
| before, but damn, it went in hard with the idea of
| queerness coming from innately within or from external
| societal ideology and has seriously made me rethink a
| bunch of things, past just the game and even past the
| subject of queerness.
|
| Seriously, amazing job. I hope you got great marks for
| your school essays, because I'd bet my left foot you
| deserved them.
|
| [These are just a few examples. There are many more great
| comments on the video!]
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| > [These are just a few examples. There are many more
| great comments on the video!]
|
| Just FYI, in general people on this forum (and many
| others) _really_ don't appreciate a big wall of text;
| more so if the text is just a big paste from another
| source.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Funny you'd say that in a discussion of a whole directory
| full of gigantic walls of text. Other people posted
| replies thanking me for sharing the big walls of text,
| and I think most people prefer to have all the text and
| links curated, deduplicated, links checked and broken
| links updated to archive.org, and merged together in one
| place, instead of scattered around across many different
| pages with broken links.
|
| It takes more than a few words to describe the contents
| of the half a gig compressed archive of Sims objects I
| posted a link to, and I think most people would want to
| have some idea what was in it, installation instructions,
| and links to videos demonstrating how to use it, before
| downloading it.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Can't reply directly to Don's comment because it has been
| flagged unfortunately. Do I read this correctly that you
| (Don) are responsible for allowing same-sex romantic
| interactions in The Sims? If yes, that's so cool! I
| played The Sims as a teenager and this feature really
| stood out to me!
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I was the first one to suggest it, and sketched out a
| straw-man design, but Patrick implemented it himself with
| his own design, after the design document mentioned it
| was TBD, but before the production database specified a
| design.
|
| My straw-man design suggested a two-dimensional
| representation in the character properties: male
| attraction and female attraction.
|
| But Patrick's design was actually much better from a game
| play and exploratory experimental perspective: it didn't
| explicitly represent the character's sexual preference at
| all, just their relationships with each other, so it was
| all up to you to decided who to love and what to do at
| any given moment, and you could change your mind if you
| wanted.
|
| Regardless of whether or not sexual preference is
| something that's set at birth or you can change it if you
| want to, all human beings deserve the right to love who
| they choose, and how they behave, just like you get to
| decide your favorite color or food regardless of whether
| you're born with that attraction and can change it or
| not.
|
| In the debate about LGBTQ+ rights, it really doesn't
| matter whether or not sexual preference is innate,
| because human beings already have the right of freedom of
| choice, and deserve to love anyone they want, no matter
| if they can chose or change their sexual preference or
| not.
|
| The bigoted arguments against gay rights and marriage
| based on the belief that sexual preference is a choice
| (which is pretty presumptuous of anybody who's not LGBTQ+
| themselves to have an opinion about) don't matter at all.
| Nobody even really knows or understands how the human
| mind and body works enough to be sure, and it's different
| from person to person, and there are many factors at
| play, so why bake it into the game one way or the other?
|
| So from a gameplay, family representation, and
| storytelling perspective, it was better not to explicitly
| represent sexual preference, and just let the players and
| Sims be free to love whoever they want. Like it should be
| in the real world.
|
| >After discussing it with Patrick J. Barrett III, we've
| determined that the sequence of events that led to The
| Sims having same sex relationships: The initial prototype
| implementation did not support same sex relationships,
| and I noticed that, when I tried to have two women kiss,
| the would-be-kissee slapped the kisser. So I wrote up my
| opinion that it should support same sex relationships,
| instead of resulting in homophobic violence, and proposed
| a straw man 2-dimensional way of modeling it. Subsequent
| design documents said heterosexual romance would not be
| the only kind available, and that Will was reviewing the
| code and would make recommendations on how to implement
| it. Patrick was hired soon after that, and was set to
| task implementing some social interactions. But Will
| didn't get back to Patrick and the production database
| didn't reflect his opinion by the time Patrick started
| working on it. But Patrick implemented support for same
| sex relationships anyway, but not by explicitly modeling
| sexual preference as property of The Sims personality --
| just as a behavior that was possible at any time for any
| character.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| > So from a gameplay, family representation, and
| storytelling perspective, it was better not to explicitly
| represent sexual preference, and just let the players and
| Sims be free to love whoever they want. Like it should be
| in the real world.
|
| Agree 100%!
| dang wrote:
| (This was originally a reply to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43065004 but I've
| moved it to Don's other subthread so more people will get
| to see it.)
| nativeit wrote:
| This is a wonderful trove of historical and contextual
| material. I had moved on to other interests by the time The
| Sims was released, but I remember thinking it had broken
| some interesting barriers in gaming. I just wanted to thank
| you for being so generous with your knowledge and
| experiences. This has been a really fascinating rabbit hole
| to dive into.
| 101008 wrote:
| Don, what are you waiting for to write a book about The
| Sims and its history? I'm sure a lot of people (me
| including) would love to read.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Thank you for the kind feedback and encouragement!
|
| I'd love to write a book, but it's an enormous investment
| of time and effort, so I write about it here off and on
| when I can. I'm working on collecting it all and
| publishing it in a blog in my rare spare time.
|
| Chaim Gingold wrote an excellent tour-de-force book all
| about Building SimCity, which he invested many years in,
| and I can only dream and aspire to write something as
| deep and comprehensive as that, but writing on Hacker
| News and collecting it in blog will have to do for now.
|
| Check out the Hacker News discussion about Chaim's book,
| where he popped in and answered questions:
|
| Building SimCity: How to put the world in a machine
| (mitpress.mit.edu) 440 points by jarmitage 8 months ago |
| hide | past | favorite | 168 comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40698442
|
| chaimgingold 8 months ago | next [-]
|
| Hi! I wrote this book. Ask me anything. I also was a
| designer on Spore. I'm also trying to feed my 8 month old
| lunch and he is very excited to asn``wer anything too.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40695565
|
| DonHopkins 8 months ago | parent | context | favorite |
| on: SimCity in the web browser using WebAssembly and O...
|
| Micropolis Web Demo 1:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlHGfNlE8Os
|
| Micropolis Web is the browser based version of Micropolis
| (open source SimCity), that uses WebAssembly, WebGL, and
| SvelteKit. Based on the original SimCity Classic code,
| designed by Will Wright, ported by Don Hopkins. This
| first demo shows an early version that runs the
| WebAssembly simulator and animates the tiles with WebGL,
| but most of the user interface is still a work in
| progress.
|
| Live MicropolisWeb Site: https://MicropolisWeb.com
|
| GitHub Repo with source code and documentation:
| https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore
|
| Much more Info in Chaim Gingold's book, "Building
| SimCity":
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262547482/building-simcity/
|
| Chaim Gingold's "SimCity Reverse Diagrams":
|
| https://smalltalkzoo.thechm.org/users/Dan/uploads/SimCity
| Rev...
|
| Micropolis Web Space Inventory Cellular Automata Music 1:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBVyCpmVQew
|
| Micropolis Web is the browser based version of Micropolis
| (open source SimCity), that uses WebAssembly, WebGL, and
| SvelteKit. Based on the original SimCity Classic code,
| designed by Will Wright, ported by Don Hopkins. This
| first video has music by Juho Hietala, Blamstrain, and
| the Space Inventory Cellular Automata is performed by Don
| Hopkins.
|
| Music by Juho Hietala, Blamstrain:
| https://blamstrain.com/
| DonHopkins wrote:
| [flagged]
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Ah, the guinea pig cage disease... that must have been fun to
| pitch. And the cowplant in later installments.
| clondon00 wrote:
| I was in the cow plant design meeting, with a few others, was
| Creative Director back then. Fun times
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Hi Charles! ;)
|
| Remember how the players were totally freaking out that their
| Sims were dropping dead due to them not taking good care of
| the guinea pig? (Not that the cause/effect relationship was
| at all obvious!) It was the first downloadable object for The
| Sims, with an actual communicable deadly virus! I think that
| was one of Will's twisted ideas.
|
| https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Illness#Guinea_Pig_Disease
|
| I wrote more details about it here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22599872
|
| Something Is Killing the Sims, and It's No Accident. By John
| Markoff, April 27, 2000.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/27/technology/something-
| is-k...
|
| The Sims Pie Menus: SimAntics visual programming language:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs&t=743s
|
| Soon afterwards, we issued a downloadable painting of a
| guinea pig that would immunize your whole family against the
| deadly Guinea Pig Virus. Kind of the opposite of the tragic
| clown painting, which if you looked at it would summon that
| poor depressing sad clown character to torment your family.
| (Another of Will's twisted ideas, if I recall.)
|
| https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Tragic_Clown
|
| You could also get Poopy Pants if you ate from the buffet
| table when your hygiene was low. Another valuable life
| lesson!
|
| https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Illness#Poopy_Pants
|
| Irk's posted some great videos with his memories and artwork:
|
| The Sims Animation Basics Video. Stories, events, how's,
| why's of 2000 Game the Year by Will Wright:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXSAT-4GjNQ
|
| >A basic Primer and stories from the Crypt on the animation
| of The Sims PC Game of the Year from the year 2000. Two years
| of heavy toil, fear of cancellation, game industry politics,
| real & artificial personalities, and Silly Little Computer
| People. How we provided scads of content over a very short
| amount of time to help make millions of people happy. Using
| old techniques of acting to give life to artificial beings.
| What was at the core of a phenomenon when it came to building
| the style and the substance of a something special. The Sims,
| The Sims PC, OG Sims, 24th Anniversary, Will Wright, Maxis,
| Electronic Arts, TS1, The Sims 1, irk, animation, fun, joke,
| whimsy, Eric Hedman
|
| irk says, the Sims Livin' Large is special. for many reasons.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx-Fy1SENbc
|
| Sims Unleashed Object Story My Corgi's Distant Cousin
| Hachiko's Statue
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da4kAQRFS98
|
| This The SIMS image helped keep the project alive.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh-NOVzJ9ds
|
| The Sims "Wild Bill" Big BBQ is not for cooking babies.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvGXu4uE0kQ
|
| Also: Juno Birch the delusional alien diva just posted this
| delightful tour of the re-release of The Sims 1 -- she really
| loves Jerry Martin's music:
|
| The Sims is back! Juno plays the Sims 1 for the first time in
| forever:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4A00YPJpUU
|
| Jerry Martin's Music:
|
| https://boombamboom.com/
|
| How The Sims Made New-Age Jazz Piano the Soundtrack of Our
| Lives:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LpVUi9TQ8U
|
| The Sims Soundtrack CHEATED. Here's how:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJMds3jT7c8
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| gold mine. thanks, OP
| clondon00 wrote:
| Hey, it's Charles! Nice to see all this stuff, Don. I remember
| writing up that State of the Art doc.
| tiahura wrote:
| Seemed like a copy of Little Computer People.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Yes, Little Computer People was certainly one of the
| inspirations for The Sims! I played it on my Apple ][+.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Computer_People#Legacy
|
| >Little Computer People is often compared to an early
| predecessor to The Sims game series.[12][11] When asked about
| its influence, Crane responded that "Almost everything we
| touched in those days could be constructed as the precursor to
| something on the market today. So rather than go there, I
| simple acknowledge that I took the first baby steps toward the
| simulation genre when I added human-like interactivity to
| Little Computer People."[12] Will Wright, designer of The Sims,
| has mentioned playing Little Computer People and receiving
| valuable feedback on The Sims from its designer, Rich Gold.[23]
|
| Will Wright: A chat about the "The Sims" and "SimCity", January
| 20, 2000, CNN:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20190412045233/https://edition.c...
|
| >Question from MaxSteele: Will, did you ever play "Little
| Computer People Research Project" from Activision, and did it
| influence you at all?
|
| >Will Wright: Yes, a long time ago. I've since gotten to know
| several people who were involved with that project, and many of
| them gave valuable feedback on The Sims, especially Rich Gold.
|
| >Question from Dan: Can Sims express their sexuality?
|
| >Will Wright: To a degree. We have different levels of romantic
| involvement. At the highest you see very passionate kissing,
| sharing of the hot tub naked, sharing a bed together, and
| sharing of the bathrooms with no modesty.
|
| >But as I said we wanted to keep the game accessible to kids.
| The Sims make babies by very passionate kissing.
|
| >Question from Pinky: Is homosexuality addressed in the Sims?
|
| >Will Wright: We wanted players to be able to roughly model
| their own family structures whenever possible. So we allow the
| players to develop homosexual relationships in the game, though
| they won't happen automatically unless the player is directing
| it in that direction.
|
| The awesome recent indie game "TinyLife" is even Little
| Computer Peoplier than The Sims 1! It takes it the opposite
| direction of The Sims 4, with a beautiful retro pixelated 8 bit
| graphics style.
|
| https://tinylifegame.com/
|
| https://x.com/TinyLifeGame
|
| https://x.com/xardox/status/1785112477904023674
|
| >Don Hopkins @xardox
|
| >@TinyLifeGame by @Ellpeck is an awesome indie game that's a
| retro pixel graphics deeply moddable modern re-interpretation
| of The Sims 1, but is also highly unique with its own style,
| and stands on its own, with a mesmerizing soundtrack by
| @leissMusic !
|
| It blows my mind that one person could accomplish all that (he
| says it's a labor of love). And I really like the retro 8-bit
| pixel art style. The music is also top quality, listenable to
| for hours. And it even allows plug-in user created content,
| which was essential for the success and popularity and
| longevity of The Sims! I can't wait to see how it develops over
| time.
| yreg wrote:
| It's the same genre, but not a copy at all.
| mewc wrote:
| Nice I love looking at these sorts of things. RCT would be a
| dream.
|
| If you want to download all quickly:
|
| curl -s https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/ | \
| grep -o 'href="[^"] _" ' | \ cut -d'"' -f2 | \ while read -r
| file; do # Skip parent directory and query strings if [[ $file !=
| "../" && $file != _"?"* ]]; then echo "Downloading $file" curl -O
| "https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/$file" fi
| done
| philsnow wrote:
| Another way is plain old wget wget --no-host-
| directories \ --cut-dirs=1 \ --recursive
| \ --no-parent \ --accept '*.pdf' \
| https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/
|
| drops all the pdfs into ./TheSimsDesignDocuments
| fambalamboni wrote:
| Nice. Anyway to batch convert it all to ePub?
| w4yai wrote:
| Here's how : $ sudo apt install poppler-
| utils pandoc $ for pdf in *.pdf; do pdftohtml -c
| -noframes "$pdf" "${pdf%.pdf}.html"; done $ for html
| in *.html; do pandoc "$html" -o "${html%.html}.epub"; done
|
| For your convenience :
|
| https://files.web.dynu.net/RCDtnceIVfyv.zip
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Thanks for the helpful comment! Also there's a handy zip file
| here:
|
| https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/TheSimsDe...
|
| Additionally, here is a treasure trove of about half a gig
| compressed of unreleased custom Sims objects, including the
| Simprov Wedding Play Set stuff like Cupid (who makes you
| instantly fall in love with anyone you want, even cats and
| dogs) and Buddha (who makes everybody happy and not piss
| themselves and fall asleep in their own puddles of urine during
| parties) and the Crowd Sitter (to make your guests all sit down
| and shut up for the wedding ceremony, also useful for
| assembling and controlling cults) and lots of beautiful
| SimFreaks objects and skins.
|
| Please subscribe to Zombie Sims to thank and support Heather
| and Steve for all their great and generous work, which they've
| updated for the recent 25 year anniversary release of The Sims
| Legacy Collection. Then you can spice up your wedding by
| inviting zombies!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34485103
|
| DonHopkins on Jan 23, 2023 | parent | context | favorite | on:
| A guide for playing The Sims 1 on Intel and ARM Ma...
|
| ZombieSims is a mind-blowing, brain-eating, tour de force Sims
| 1 fan expansion pack by two of the greatest Sims user created
| content artists and programmers: Heather "SimFreaks" (who
| created SimFreaks.com and much of the beautiful content for
| Sims 1 at http://www.simfreaks.com/index.php including themed
| play sets like
| http://www.simfreaks.com/themes/storytime/pirate/index.shtml )
| and Steve "SimSlice" (who created SliceCity: SimCity within The
| Sims at http://simslice.com/Slicecity.htm by programming many
| interlocking objects in SimAntics, and also many other amazing
| Sims 1 objects like the weather machine at other cool stuff at
| http://www.simslice.com/Objects-Electronic.html ). Heather and
| Steve were both early Sims 1 fans who each published their own
| popular web sites with downloadable objects, met through the
| Sims 1 modding community, then eventually moved in together and
| got married, and now they've combined their extreme art and
| programming talents to make an intricately intertwingled
| collection of Sims 1 Zombie objects, with a whole lot of
| original artwork and programming!
|
| https://zombiesims.com/
|
| Twitch streaming videos:
|
| https://www.twitch.tv/simfreaks_heather/videos
|
| Highlight: Zombie Sims - Beta - Everybody Dies
|
| https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1049524221
|
| Check out some of the crazy menus that pop up -- this demo
| barely scratches the surface!
|
| DonHopkins on Jan 23, 2023 | parent | context | favorite | on:
| A guide for playing The Sims 1 on Intel and ARM Ma...
|
| (In Professor Farnsworth's voice:) Good news everyone! I asked
| Heather permission, and she says it's OK for me to give away
| the huge collection of custom Sims objects I have that includes
| an archive snapshot of many classic SimFreaks objects, as well
| as all the unreleased SimProv Wedding Playset objects that
| Heather and Donna and Steve and I created years ago but never
| finished and released, and a whole bunch of other stuff like
| the Transmogrifier object that randomly changes your body, the
| Dumbold voting machine that sometimes makes you accidentally
| vote for Pat Buchanan, Satan who shows up when you're depressed
| and offers to buy your soul, the Crowd Sitter that makes
| everyone gather together and sit down on chairs, and the Cupid
| that lets you instantly fall in love with anyone in the
| neighborhood, and the Buddha that makes everyone happy and not
| piss themselves and fall asleep in their own puddles of urine
| during parties.
|
| I don't have time to actually support and debug any of this
| stuff, but at least I recently updated the Cupid to be
| compatible with the Pets expansion pack, so it now lets you
| fall in love with any pet in the neighborhood. (You just can't
| actually marry them -- not that there's anything wrong with
| marrying cats and dogs, but we didn't have the animations for
| that!)
|
| If you want to express your appreciation, then please subscribe
| to Zombie Sims for a $9.99 lifetime membership, and then you
| can play around with inviting lots of Zombies to your weddings
| and see how that works! (Or don't invite them, and they will
| crash your wedding anyway!) But no guarantees or warranties
| that it doesn't devolve into a bloody mess!
|
| Here's my special collection of Sims 1 downloads, including the
| unreleased and not quite finished "SimProv" wedding Playset and
| handy "Cupid" that lets you instantly fall in love with anyone
| in the neighborhood (including pets)!
|
| https://donhopkins.com/home/DonsSims1Downloads.zip
| cd ~/Downloads curl
| https://donhopkins.com/home/DonsSims1Downloads.zip >
| DonsSims1Downloads.zip cd ~/Applications/Wineskin/The\
| Sims\ Complete\
| Collection.app/Contents/SharedSupport/prefix/drive_c/Program\
| Files\ \(x86\)/Maxis/The\ Sims/ unzip
| ~/Downloads/DonsSims1Downloads.zip
|
| Simprov Wedding Play Set: Demo of the Simprov Wedding Play Set
| for The Sims 1. Graphics by SimBabes and SimFreaks. Programming
| by Don Hopkins.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwt5LJlrMe8
|
| Speed Dating With Cupid: A demo of Speed Dating with Cupid,
| part of the SimProv Wedding Play Set for The Sims 1.
| Programming by Don Hopkins. Graphics by SimBabes and SimFreaks.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVUP9OXmHTM
|
| Transmogrify Self: A quick demo of The Sims Transmogrifier
| personified in The Sims 1. Graphics by SimBabes, programming by
| SimSlice.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsTbs7IL5EI
|
| To find the Cupid and other Simprov items, go into buy mode,
| press the last icon of three dots for "Miscellaneous", then
| press the first icon with a pool table for "Recreation". The
| main item of the Simprov wedding playset is the "Hope Chest",
| which has a "Help" item that explains what to do next, and it
| summons a wedding consultant (who you can dismiss and call back
| if you don't like her hanging around in your bedroom forever).
| Then you can click on the hope chest to make other objects like
| the Cupid, and click on the wedding consultant to make catalogs
| of other items (most of them are just placeholder programmer
| art right now, but some of then configure things like what kind
| of wedding you will have and who will officiate it), but the
| idea was that you could order lots of items through the
| catalogs that you couldn't get through the normal shopping
| interface. But for now most of the wedding items are still in
| the build mode shopping catalog. The Simprov Wedding Playset
| video above walks through how to use most of the objects!
|
| Also be sure to check out Donna's beautiful wedding beds, the
| luxurious buffet with ice dolphin sculpture, gold inlaid glass
| dining table, fancy dollhouses, elegant dolls, and many other
| premium objects identified as Simprov, SimBabes, and SimFreaks
| in their catalog descriptions.
|
| The crowd sitter and the Dumbold voting machine are included in
| the collection. (Just kind of hard to find since there are so
| darn many objects!) The Sims 1 Crowd Sitter
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-sims-1-crowd-sitter-1f478b...
|
| Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims 1
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/dumbold-voting-machine-for-the...
|
| Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games
| (1996)
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-s...
|
| The Sims, Pie Menus, Edith Editing, and SimAntics Visual
| Programming Demo
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs
|
| Demo of The Sims Transmogrifier, RugOMatic, ShowNTell,
| Simplifier and Slice City.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imu1v3GecB8
|
| Transmogrify Self
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsTbs7IL5EI
|
| Speed Dating With Cupid
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVUP9OXmHTM
|
| Simprov Wedding Play Set
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwt5LJlrMe8
|
| FreeTheSims Sims Character Animation ActiveX Control Demo
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzz0cFSmgiM
| danielskogly wrote:
| Thank you for the zip! Unfortunately it 404's for me, though
| :/
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Oops, right, thanks for letting me know -- I forgot to take
| out the directory name. Try this:
|
| https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments.zip
| danielskogly wrote:
| Works! Thank you :)
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| x=https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/
| curl -s "$x" \ |sed -n
| "/href=/s/.*href=.//;/pdf/{s/\".*//;s>.\*>url=$x&@output=&>p;}"
| \ |tr @ '\n' \ |curl -K /dev/stdin
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| Can we _please_, __pleeease__ go back to doing software like
| this?
| robjan wrote:
| If you work in a regulated industry there is no way around
| producing design documents.
| lemurien wrote:
| Do you mean something like defense or banking?
| mandarax8 wrote:
| 'So what are the requirements for this project?'
|
| 'Requirements? Were agile, we'll figure it out as we go!'
|
| ...
|
| Actual conversation a while back at work regarding a (now
| failed) project.
| hinkley wrote:
| I can't be the only one who is a little bummed that Will
| basically disappeared after Spore turned out not to be
| everything he hoped it would be. And now he's old enough to be
| retired, and I have little hope of him doing a Miyazaki and
| coming out of retirement multiple times for good premises.
|
| Oxygen Not Included, Rimworld, and City Skylines have all
| occupied niches that used to be his to rule.
| lastdong wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! So great to learn more about this iconic
| game. Just recently there was a discussion about the Video Game
| History Foundation library -- this feels like it could be a nice
| addition to it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42926076
| _def wrote:
| > This is the prototype for the soul of The Sims, which Will
| Wright wrote on January 23, 1997. [...] This code is a
| interesting example of game design, programming and prototyping
| techniques. The Sims code has certainly changed a lot since Will
| wrote this original prototype code. For example, there is no
| longer any "stress" motive.
|
| So they are basically drugged?
| iknowstuff wrote:
| The game kept an average of all the motives, and if it was less
| than half, Sims would refuse to learn or do chores. Kinda like
| stress!
| nalekberov wrote:
| Thanks a lot for sharing! These are real gems.
| lazylion2 wrote:
| tangential but this game has one of the best soundtracks imo
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs5QGN-zhwM&list=PL538B8AD43...
| seanthemon wrote:
| I listen to this soundtrack while working, been doing it for
| years. Recently my wife started playing the remaster and now I
| feel my adrenaline spiking when I hear the music lol
| spacechild1 wrote:
| When I was a teenager I wrote an e-mail to Jerry Martin, the
| composer, to ask him various questions I had about the music.
| He actually send me a very nice and helpful reply!
| sandblast wrote:
| Can you share anything more?
| spacechild1 wrote:
| This was almost 20 years ago and I can't remember my exact
| questions unfortunately. I just found it really cool that
| he would answer me.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I really love Jerry Martin's music -- here's his web site with
| more:
|
| https://boombamboom.com/
|
| How The Sims Made New-Age Jazz Piano the Soundtrack of Our
| Lives:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LpVUi9TQ8U
|
| The Sims Soundtrack CHEATED. Here's how:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJMds3jT7c8
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| The mood change between Build Mode and Buy Mode is genius.
| Build always felt tranquil, almost contemplative, whereas Buy
| was exactly the kind of peppy music that makes you want to
| spend your hard-earned (or in my case, hard-cheated) simoleons.
| fullstackwife wrote:
| > Ch04-People.pdf
|
| Common sense approach to AI in game, no buzzwords, or resume
| driven development!
| rvnx wrote:
| There is also a script language powering the game, it is +/-
| documented here: http://simantics.wikidot.com/
| spacechild1 wrote:
| This is so cool! The Sims was one of my favorite games as a kid
| and I am so excited to get a glimpse at its inner workings.
| z3t4 wrote:
| hmm, so The Sims is kinda like Crusader Kings ? :P
| oktwtf wrote:
| The Sims will forever be one of those magic games to me; one that
| inspired me to learn MAX to get my own items into the game, non-
| perspective rendering, sprites, z-buffer, iirc. I still play and
| work in 3D to this day, game modding has taught me the best way
| to interact with a computer... create vs. consume!
|
| It has this quality that I'd describe as toy-like, you can pick
| it up in so many different ways and let your imagination fill in
| the experience.
|
| Personally I'd spend weeks just building, paused, filling up my
| account SSSSSS as I need, ignoring my sims at the curb. Other
| times I'd give it an honest play-through roleplaying as myself in
| a different world. Eventually I'd be mean and lock my Sims in a-
| (maybe I'll not document my war-crimes today.)
|
| I'd reinstall and build up a fancy house, but I fear it'd grab me
| like a Factorio drip and I'd disappear into the Sims for a month.
| I think I'll give this a read instead, I haven't done the design-
| document thing since I studied Game Design in college many moons
| ago.
|
| Thanks so much for posting all the tidbits and insight into
| another true gem of a game.
| mlsu wrote:
| Wow, incredible. Reading these brings back so many memories. I
| remember spending so many hours in architecture mode designing
| houses, reading these makes me realize how well designed the
| whole thing was.
|
| These design documents are incredibly rich. I would love to work
| at a place that had such clarity and vision before sitting down
| to actually write software...
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