Nice I love looking at these sorts of things. RCT would be a dream.<p>If you want to download all quickly:<p>curl -s <a href="https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/" rel="nofollow">https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/</a> | \
grep -o 'href="[^"]<i>"' | \
cut -d'"' -f2 | \
while read -r file; do
# Skip parent directory and query strings
if [[ $file != "../" && $file != </i>"?"* ]]; then
echo "Downloading $file"
curl -O "<a href="https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/$file" rel="nofollow">https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/$file</a>"
fi
done
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!<p>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.<p>Personally I'd spend weeks just building, paused, filling up my account §§§ 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.)<p>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.<p>Thanks so much for posting all the tidbits and insight into another true gem of a game.
Also:<p>The Sims Steering Committee - June 4 1998<p>A demo of an early pre-release version of The Sims for The Sims Steering Committee at EA, developed June 4 1998.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY</a>
tangential but this game has one of the best soundtracks imo<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs5QGN-zhwM&list=PL538B8AD43F078BFA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs5QGN-zhwM&list=PL538B8AD43...</a>
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.<p>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…
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. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42926076">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42926076</a>
There is also a script language powering the game, it is +/- documented here: <a href="http://simantics.wikidot.com/" rel="nofollow">http://simantics.wikidot.com/</a>
> 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.<p>So they are basically drugged?