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Original Poster
#1 Old Yesterday at 2:25 PM
Default Now that the rerelease is out and new modders are working on the game....
Is it possible to add some much needed features to the game?

i was thinking about a more floor levels mod, copy instrument for build buy mode, more roof styles and a better zoom.
Lab Assistant
#2 Old Yesterday at 6:05 PM
I have a couple questions... and then a really long post that's going to sound discouraging. Sorry! D: What do "more roof styles" and "better zoom" mean?

If you mean more roof PATTERNS that's possible now and needs only a correctly sized bitmap of the pattern. And I'm sure you mean copy while not holding anything (i.e. like an eyedropper tool) but you CAN hold shift while placing an object to keep that object in your hand if you need to place multiple.

On to the potentially discouraging part. 😔

Almost everthing you describe would probably need a custom engine (a special exe that you run) that has been coded to have those new features, and the number of people known to have ever worked on a true custom engine is close to zero as far as I know, because it is a very different skill set than things like making or modifying objects (it's different coding languages, different things you need to know how to do, different risks if something goes wrong, etc.).

I can only think of two custom engines (not counting minor modifications to a stock Sims exe like the widescreen patch or dev cheats patch), and only one is one I know has released: a vague memory of someone on Simblesse Oblige (no longer extant Sims 1 forum) mentioning a custom engine idea that never released publicly AFAIK, if it ever got past ideas and mockups in the first place (though I think it toyed with the idea of adding more floors), and Simitone, a side project to FreeSO that implemented true 3D (though the objects looked bad sometimes if they weren't manually meshed since the sprite-to-model automatic conversion was really cool but had some shortfalls). Simitone stopped getting significant updates before it was in a truly usable state--it was missing some game features and could be prone to crashing, especially if you had custom content in your game. (It also didn't really add extra features past the 3D thing.)

It's also possible that, especially for some of these features, any custom engine might create saves or files that are incompatible with official versions of the engine if it doesn't know how to handle the different data (for instance, while I don't know that it would DEFINITELY do this, I'd imagine there COULD be a chance extra floors could crash a normal game, for instance, sort of like how evicting a family with more than 8 members (normally impossible number of members without mods like the move-in plant from Simlogical) would make the Create-a-Family screen crash until that family was less than 8 members in size). Some files that Simitone is capable of creating are incompatible with an official engine, for instance, because the way they were implemented in Simitone is sometimes based in how TSO handled things instead of how TS1 did.

TL;DR: It's not impossible to achieve these things and I do think it'd be really cool if someone managed to make them happen!! It's just that a number of them, if not all of them, would likely need to have the exe itself changed, and the number of people with the desire/skills to do that has always been significantly lower than the number of people with the desire/skills to make or modify objects inside the game. Even people with the abilities to build programs that Simmers use tend not to end up making custom engines.

Even shorter TL;DR: It could happen. It'd be so cool if it did happen. But there are probably less people equipped (with the skills/time/desire) to make it happen than you'd think.
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Original Poster
#3 Old Yesterday at 6:17 PM
Quote: Originally posted by purplewowies
I have a couple questions... and then a really long post that's going to sound discouraging. Sorry! D: What do "more roof styles" and "better zoom" mean?

If you mean more roof PATTERNS that's possible now and needs only a correctly sized bitmap of the pattern. And I'm sure you mean copy while not holding anything (i.e. like an eyedropper tool) but you CAN hold shift while placing an object to keep that object in your hand if you need to place multiple.

On to the potentially discouraging part. 😔

Almost everthing you describe would probably need a custom engine (a special exe that you run) that has been coded to have those new features, and the number of people known to have ever worked on a true custom engine is close to zero as far as I know, because it is a very different skill set than things like making or modifying objects (it's different coding languages, different things you need to know how to do, different risks if something goes wrong, etc.).

I can only think of two custom engines (not counting minor modifications to a stock Sims exe like the widescreen patch or dev cheats patch), and only one is one I know has released: a vague memory of someone on Simblesse Oblige (no longer extant Sims 1 forum) mentioning a custom engine idea that never released publicly AFAIK, if it ever got past ideas and mockups in the first place (though I think it toyed with the idea of adding more floors), and Simitone, a side project to FreeSO that implemented true 3D (though the objects looked bad sometimes if they weren't manually meshed since the sprite-to-model automatic conversion was really cool but had some shortfalls). Simitone stopped getting significant updates before it was in a truly usable state--it was missing some game features and could be prone to crashing, especially if you had custom content in your game. (It also didn't really add extra features past the 3D thing.)

It's also possible that, especially for some of these features, any custom engine might create saves or files that are incompatible with official versions of the engine if it doesn't know how to handle the different data (for instance, while I don't know that it would DEFINITELY do this, I'd imagine there COULD be a chance extra floors could crash a normal game, for instance, sort of like how evicting a family with more than 8 members (normally impossible number of members without mods like the move-in plant from Simlogical) would make the Create-a-Family screen crash until that family was less than 8 members in size). Some files that Simitone is capable of creating are incompatible with an official engine, for instance, because the way they were implemented in Simitone is sometimes based in how TSO handled things instead of how TS1 did.

TL;DR: It's not impossible to achieve these things and I do think it'd be really cool if someone managed to make them happen!! It's just that a number of them, if not all of them, would likely need to have the exe itself changed, and the number of people with the desire/skills to do that has always been significantly lower than the number of people with the desire/skills to make or modify objects inside the game. Even people with the abilities to build programs that Simmers use tend not to end up making custom engines.

Even shorter TL;DR: It could happen. It'd be so cool if it did happen. But there are probably less people equipped (with the skills/time/desire) to make it happen than you'd think.


well i saw that with the rerelease some people started releasiing new mods, like diagonal object placing, a calendar that works in sync with all the houses of the neighborhood and a slower motive decay mod, also the beta game of the sims 1 had 3 floors and the roof so it may be laying somewhere in the game files that feature (?)

About the zooming i don't need a smooth zooming like the other games, i just wish someone could add more zooming options than just three.
The eyedropper tool would be ideal so u dont have to look for the exact same floor or wall or fence through the catalog each time, like it works with shift for objects.

for the roofs it was more of a fantasy of having like octagonal roofs and gable roofs in the game but there are custom sets to make gable roofs for the game and i am working on a set about it.

i really hope it could happen tbh and i thank u for ur time
Top Secret Researcher
#4 Old Yesterday at 9:13 PM Last edited by Corylea : Yesterday at 10:11 PM.
People who don't make hacks mostly have no idea which things are easy, which things are hard, and which things are probably impossible.

It's easy to modify the files that are accessible to us. That includes all the objects, all the skins, and a lot of the gameplay files.

But modifying the exe takes VERY advanced skills, which most modders do not have. (I certainly don't!) Seriously, it's SO MUCH easier to just click on the catalog entry again than it is to make an eyedropper tool. :-)

I've made some mods for The Sims 1 -- yes, The Sims ONE :-) -- which you can find at http://corylea.com/Sims1ModsByCorylea.html
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Original Poster
#5 Old Yesterday at 9:41 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Corylea
People who don't mod mostly have no idea which things are easy, which things are hard, and which things are probably impossible.

It's easy to modify the files that are accessible to us. That includes all the objects, all the skins, and a lot of the gameplay files.

But modifying the exe takes VERY advanced skills, which most modders do not have. (I certainly don't!) Seriously, it's SO MUCH easier to just click on the catalog entry again than it is to make an eyedropper tool. :-)


i do mod, i create custom contents for sims and walls n floors and i am working on a house set for the sims 1, so i do know how to mod.
What i don't know is how to hack, and that is why i made this question trying to find someone that could do it and would do it or to know if that is even possible to do.
Top Secret Researcher
#6 Old Yesterday at 10:10 PM Last edited by Corylea : Today at 6:36 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by itsmattyu
i do mod, i create custom contents for sims and walls n floors and i am working on a house set for the sims 1, so i do know how to mod.
What i don't know is how to hack, and that is why i made this question trying to find someone that could do it and would do it or to know if that is even possible to do.

Yes, hacking was what I meant; I thought that was obvious from the context.

I've made some mods for The Sims 1 -- yes, The Sims ONE :-) -- which you can find at http://corylea.com/Sims1ModsByCorylea.html
Test Subject
#7 Old Today at 4:26 AM
Mods do not mess with core files because it can cause a lot of problems. Such as if Joe modifies the EXE to make the game bigger and then Bob decides he's going to modify the EXE so all the wallpapers are now displayed with a pop up in the middle of the screen, so you can see the detail, someone's mod isn't getting used. EXE modification has always been frowned upon in The Sims 1 community. We don't modify it not because we can't, but because we won't.

That being said, it done for wide screen in the and zoomed in. The art looks crappy that way but you can use it in the Complete Collection.

Heather Castillo
http://www.simfreaks.com
Test Subject
Original Poster
#8 Old Today at 2:37 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simfreaks
Mods do not mess with core files because it can cause a lot of problems. Such as if Joe modifies the EXE to make the game bigger and then Bob decides he's going to modify the EXE so all the wallpapers are now displayed with a pop up in the middle of the screen, so you can see the detail, someone's mod isn't getting used. EXE modification has always been frowned upon in The Sims 1 community. We don't modify it not because we can't, but because we won't.

That being said, it done for wide screen in the and zoomed in. The art looks crappy that way but you can use it in the Complete Collection.


so no chance of it happening cause no one wants to try doing it?
Lab Assistant
#9 Old Today at 5:23 PM
That was what I was trying to get at in my original reply (though I tried to soften it).

It requires the

- Skill (someone needs to know how to write computer/Windows programs that can work with Sims data and not simply know how to make or edit objects--some Sims creators know how to do this, some don't)
- Desire (which a lot of people do not have, either because they just don't want to make a custom engine OR because the risks of a custom engine (and what it would take to mitigate--not even eliminate--said risks) are so unappealing that... why do it? (aka the problems simfreaks talks about))
- Time/Energy (even if you have the skill AND desire to do it, you gotta have the time to make something as complex as a full custom exe RIGHT or it's never gonna get done)

Many people have one or two (i.e. some people have the skill but no desire or time/energy, someone may have the time/energy and desire but not the skill, someone may have the skill and time/energy but no desire, etc.). Almost no one has all three. Which is why the number of times this has been known to be attempted is close to zero despite a bajillion creators (including some who have made other kinds of programs) having historically existed for Sims 1.
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