Oh and EDGE's preview, also from JAN/2000. Full respect to issues with dedicated pages to sims before it became the norm. Its graphic design (+ writing) has always been my fav.

I am sorry, will be typing with an on-screen keyboard as my backup usb ones are not v catholic today :-)

Gonna share an unsorted miscellany some of the earliest Sim scans known to Sim. What's cool about them is their subtle "uh.. gives us a moment to understand what on Earth we are previewing.." air :-)

GAMESTAR (Germany), MAY 1999.

Back when the UI took itself so seriously it looks like I am reading some sort of surgery textbook by Britannica!

Love those early sim models in the first image! Guy with red hair and the one playing pool have huuuuge heads, I kinda love them!

Computer Games Strategy Plus - March 1999

Kind of fuels for a nightmare or two, but they have charm!

Gets even better (?) as we learn the red hair dude was meant to look like Seinfeld!

I am here to represent the opposing viewpoint of: aaaauuuuughhh nooooooooo


...no soup for Maxis

Seinfeldt and Danny Kaye!

I love him so much, I generated an AI cross between those two:


Not too far off Fritz, no? I'm going to make a Sims 2 sim based on him!

Please simsample do not make my eyes shine for ai art..it is against my protocolar principles!

I know, they should be working out how to use AI to sweep the floor and clean the loo and weed the garden, so that I have time for art!

On to something I failed to mention in the past

my dear friends

I can handle & get things off of the older IFF files from the hideously amazing Steering committee and other builds. Color sprites+z buffers included.

Can anyone confirm if anyone has already done some sort of proto-2-final cc pack with objs from the demo? Cause.. if not.. we have a fun Winter project in our hands!

THE EXACT OPPOSITE IS HAPPENING. But, hey, the boredom involving sweeping the floor gives me new art ideas!

Interesting to see just how dedicated to the idea of promoting The Sims as a virtual dollhouse Will Wright was -- even just before the release of the game. Even posing for photos for newspapers using this original idea. Of course he's not wrong, that's what it really is, and always has been (and I love that the game has an actual dollhouse in-game that both child and adult sims will play with!), but this really didn't work from the marketing perspective. Looking at that photo, now, makes me chuckle. Dollhouses were, unfortunately, considered old-fashioned even in the 90s (with Mattel and Lego toys having replaced most traditional dollhouses). (They've been making somewhat of a comeback in the necent years -- which is fantastic!) But it's amazing how intuitive-creative, how original this concept was, and how it actually succeeded -- and how!!

It caused a whole new demographic to grow in video gaming. Before The Sims, we didn't really have quality games that did not feature violence and that were not specifically created for a male demographic. (Pretty much the only big company that dabbled in them for girls was Mattel -- and most of their games/software were not very good.) They were rare and few. So The Sims -- a virtual dollhouse from the creator of SimCity -- somehow blasted onto the scene, revolutionising the gaming industry, and filling a long-held void.

I love real-life stories like this -- where the unconventional and impossible becomes a practical reality, and it brings worthwhile new human culture with it. I love how Will pushed this idea through to the finish, and never gave up on it, even when he was ridiculed for it.

And how the people loved the game, and still do -- proving the veterans in the industry wrong.

I tried to use the Duchess head but I failed, the game won't read her head mesh for some reason, maybe you could do it

@LUCPIX, not sure if you've already found and shared this.

A recent PC Gamer article about the design and development story with the original Sims game:

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/the-s...lectronic-arts/

The game's funding and development was definitely not smooth sailing. The project got cancelled, and then saved, not once, but twice!

Maxis' CEO then: "A dollhouse? That's for little girls."

At one point, Will jokingly renamed the game/project to "Tactical Domestic Simulator", hoping that it will go down better with investors and testers, who were focused on a male-violence-based market for video games. 😂

Will's daughter also contributed with feedback/ideas to the early design of the game.

LMFAO, "Tactical domestic simulator" Thats for sure Will's humor coming in place. The man has humor for sure.

Here is an excellent half-hour documentary that sums up the origins of The Sims, and its development -- featuring many iconic choices for the game:

switching to mobile so i can type hold up

Ah! I did not know about the article, but definitely read the previewing pages of the book that the article references! It's a killer book, but it would cost me a fortune to get right away. Fun thing is, in spite of looking as though it hyperfocuses on SimCity's development, it dedicates a few good pages to cool facts about the earliest years of The Sims as it's been first ported to Windows. This particular topic interests me a lot - not only because of how absurdly alien the entire game looked like back then, but because it does its contribution in terms of presenting us the different iterative challenges the game faced, and all that. That's where the first Sims came to a shy, temporary but significant existence. Edith, Archie, Samantha, and an entire crew of low poly ugly biped models Anyway, the article + its references book 100% serve as citation materials that validate what we've been theorizing and speculating for a while! Cool reads all around.

All the sprites unique to the 1998 demo.

Extracting speech bubble sprites is a problem in itself, since not many simtools are capable of reading them!

Please note that some of these are not used anywhere in the demo!


Wired


Shower


Lightning


Comfy Chair

TV


Snooze


Sleepy


Very Tired


Dance


Doubly Lit Candle


Candle


House


Blah Blah


Weather


Prayer


Newspaper


Government

I love how in these ones the sims talk about their mood, too. "I'm so hyped right now." "I'm so exhausted." "I'm way too sleepy." Or perhaps these were meant as direct communication to the player -- as they appeared in the final game? But how cool would it be if they were actually part of the sims' conversation with each other? 😁


"I'm so tired."


"Yeah, me too."


"Have you heard about this new vacation resort that opened?"


"No, I haven't, but it sounds interesting! Do tell!"

WELP time for a new avatar

PC Zone (UK), Aug 99

Ah, the house one was definitely meant to be a warning of extremely low room scores (messy room! too dark!).

They redesigned it so it could be more up to par with the style of the later icons, except sims don't yell about their room motive at the player's ears at all. Glad they don't! The room motive takes into account the state of the area of the house the active character is in, so it can fall from 100 to -100 in one second. The game would be even more chaotic than it already is!

I noticed this on the press kit CD for the original game: why is there a screenshot of gift giving in the base game??! 😳 As far as I know, they didn't introduce that until Hot Date!! 😅

All of this points to the fact that at least for the first 3-4 expansion packs, they already had everything planned out, with most of it already coded in the base game beforehand, as you mentioned. 👍 I think Unleashed may have been their first truly unplanned expansion pack (since it changed the original neighbourhood layout).