Slashdot Mirror

Just wanted to address a few points in your post:

The Sims surpassed Myst at the top selling game of all time, quite a few years ago, and has continued to sell very well. The franchise has sold about 85 million games to date.

The success of The Sims is largely due to the fact that players can add their own content to the game. Conversely, The Sims Online was a flop because it didn't allow players to add their own content, even though that feature was initially promised, to the delight of the fans, then later forgotten, do the fan's dismay.

Yes there are official and semi-official mod tools. I wrote the character animation system in The Sims, and several tools for creating custom content. Before we release The Sims in March 2000, instead of releasing a demo, I developed a tool called "SimShow" that displayed the animated characters, and enabled players to create their own Sims. After we release The Sims, Will Wright hired me to use The Sims source code to develop The Sims Transmogrifier, a tool for cloning objects, exporting and importing theie graphics and properties, so players can modify them and create their own objects. I've created other easier to use "drag-and-drop" tools like Show-N-Tell for displaying Sims objects in a web browser, and Rug-O-Matic for creating picture story rugs. (You can enter text that's displayed in the catalog and in an in-game pop-up window, that tells a story about the picture on the rug.)

One important way that The Sims is family friendly, is that it does not discriminate against families with gay people, nor does it perpetuate the hypocritical anti-gay homophobic agenda of the Republican party (like some other games from Texas and Senators from Idaho whose names I won't mention). Any of The Sims characters can participate in gay or straight relationships with each other, without any negative consequences or stereotypes. Anything less would be hostile to many families and gay people. Anyone who would argue that it's family friendly to discriminate against gays is homophobic, and needs to have their head examined, and work through their self-loathing personal issues with a mental health professional, just like Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, or Republican Senator James Foley of Florida, or Republican Evangelical Crystal Meth and Gay Sex Addicted Reverend Ted Haggard. (Oops, sorry -- I just couldn't resist naming some names.)

-Don

To address your question about examples of younger kids making Sims objects:

I wrote a tool called The Sims Transmogrifier, that enables players to create their own Sims objects. It required the use of a program like Photoshop, and while that's too hard for younger kids to master, it's given older kids the incentive to learn Photoshop and other image editing tools, which is a good thing to know.

To open up Sims object creation to a wider audience, I made another simple tool called "RugOMatic", which provides an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface tfor creating rugs with descriptive text. The text, which you can read in the game, makes them more like picture postcards, suitable for storytelling and describing the pictures. Many of the RugOMatic users are kids, and more than half of them are female!

For Halloween a while ago, I made another online tool that was even easier to use and more accessible to kids: "Halloween Tombstones for The Sims". You can simply upload an optional picture, and type in the name of the deceased and their eulogy, and it instantly makes you a personalized Sims Tombstone that you can download and play with in the game. Lots of people have made their own tombstones: currently there are more than 2200 public tombstones in the cemetary, some by kids, some serious, some funny, some disturbing, some about pets, some about family members, some about celebrities, some about fictional characters, some about politicians (Bush tops the list!), some mean, some heartwarming, and most of them emotionally compelling.

I used the idea of tombstones precisely because they had a lot of emotional baggage, and people can take it in any direction they want.

-Don

To address your question about examples of younger kids making Sims objects:

I wrote a tool called The Sims Transmogrifier, that enables players to create their own Sims objects. It required the use of a program like Photoshop, and while that's too hard for younger kids to master, it's given older kids the incentive to learn Photoshop and other image editing tools, which is a good thing to know.

To open up Sims object creation to a wider audience, I made another simple tool called "RugOMatic", which provides an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface tfor creating rugs with descriptive text. The text, which you can read in the game, makes them more like picture postcards, suitable for storytelling and describing the pictures. Many of the RugOMatic users are kids, and more than half of them are female!

For Halloween a while ago, I made another online tool that was even easier to use and more accessible to kids: "Halloween Tombstones for The Sims". You can simply upload an optional picture, and type in the name of the deceased and their eulogy, and it instantly makes you a personalized Sims Tombstone that you can download and play with in the game. Lots of people have made their own tombstones: currently there are more than 2200 public tombstones in the cemetary, some by kids, some serious, some funny, some disturbing, some about pets, some about family members, some about celebrities, some about fictional characters, some about politicians (Bush tops the list!), some mean, some heartwarming, and most of them emotionally compelling.

I used the idea of tombstones precisely because they had a lot of emotional baggage, and people can take it in any direction they want.

-Don

Maxis has produced seven expansion packs for The Sims, and they have all sold extremely well. Some of the expansion packs have implemented ideas we had while developing the game, but didn't have time to put into the original product (like visiting town, socializing and shopping in Hot Date, or the pets in Unleashed).

In fact, a separate product from Maxis called SimsVille was cancled, largely because The Sims Hot Date expansion pack was able to realize many of the important new features that distinguished SimsVille from the original Sims.

The Sims expansion packs and objects are fundamentally different than typical monolithic game mods. They are modular components that plug together synergistically, not exclusive universes that you can only play one at a time. You can combine Sims downloads all together at once and play with them all like a big pile of legos, but you can only play one DOOM WAD at a time.

But the official expansion packs from Maxis are only one measure of success. More importantly, the players themselves have produced orders of magnitude more downloadable objects, skins and other content, than Maxis has produced.

The Sims is a flexible enough platform that supports other games and activities at many different levels: socializing, building, storytelling, crafting skins and objects, programming tools and behaviors, etc.

There has been an exciting Renaissance of original creative player produced content for The Sims. Player created content is the reason The Sims continues to sell so well after four years.

The Ultimate Sims List links to more than 3600 active Sims fan sites, where you can download an uncountable and growing number of objects, skins and decorations.

Player created content is where all the original creative action is happening with The Sims these days. Tools like The Sims Transmogrifier and RugOMatic enable players to create their own content. Players have figured out how to program the objects and written independent behavior programming tools like IFFPencil2.

One creative player called SimSlice has taken object programming much further than anyone at Maxis expected, by developing Slice City: a game within the game, like a little lilliputian version of SimCity! Other players are even creating add-ons to the Slice City add-on: making buildings, parks, landmarks, seaports and marinas to plug into Slice City!

I've made a video demonstration of RugOMatic and Slice City, that shows how to create rugs for The Sims by dragging and dropping pictures and text, and then set them on fire and kill people with the Slice City disaster menu!

-Don

Maxis has produced seven expansion packs for The Sims, and they have all sold extremely well. Some of the expansion packs have implemented ideas we had while developing the game, but didn't have time to put into the original product (like visiting town, socializing and shopping in Hot Date, or the pets in Unleashed).

In fact, a separate product from Maxis called SimsVille was cancled, largely because The Sims Hot Date expansion pack was able to realize many of the important new features that distinguished SimsVille from the original Sims.

The Sims expansion packs and objects are fundamentally different than typical monolithic game mods. They are modular components that plug together synergistically, not exclusive universes that you can only play one at a time. You can combine Sims downloads all together at once and play with them all like a big pile of legos, but you can only play one DOOM WAD at a time.

But the official expansion packs from Maxis are only one measure of success. More importantly, the players themselves have produced orders of magnitude more downloadable objects, skins and other content, than Maxis has produced.

The Sims is a flexible enough platform that supports other games and activities at many different levels: socializing, building, storytelling, crafting skins and objects, programming tools and behaviors, etc.

There has been an exciting Renaissance of original creative player produced content for The Sims. Player created content is the reason The Sims continues to sell so well after four years.

The Ultimate Sims List links to more than 3600 active Sims fan sites, where you can download an uncountable and growing number of objects, skins and decorations.

Player created content is where all the original creative action is happening with The Sims these days. Tools like The Sims Transmogrifier and RugOMatic enable players to create their own content. Players have figured out how to program the objects and written independent behavior programming tools like IFFPencil2.

One creative player called SimSlice has taken object programming much further than anyone at Maxis expected, by developing Slice City: a game within the game, like a little lilliputian version of SimCity! Other players are even creating add-ons to the Slice City add-on: making buildings, parks, landmarks, seaports and marinas to plug into Slice City!

I've made a video demonstration of RugOMatic and Slice City, that shows how to create rugs for The Sims by dragging and dropping pictures and text, and then set them on fire and kill people with the Slice City disaster menu!

-Don

Maxis has produced seven expansion packs for The Sims, and they have all sold extremely well. Some of the expansion packs have implemented ideas we had while developing the game, but didn't have time to put into the original product (like visiting town, socializing and shopping in Hot Date, or the pets in Unleashed).

In fact, a separate product from Maxis called SimsVille was cancled, largely because The Sims Hot Date expansion pack was able to realize many of the important new features that distinguished SimsVille from the original Sims.

The Sims expansion packs and objects are fundamentally different than typical monolithic game mods. They are modular components that plug together synergistically, not exclusive universes that you can only play one at a time. You can combine Sims downloads all together at once and play with them all like a big pile of legos, but you can only play one DOOM WAD at a time.

But the official expansion packs from Maxis are only one measure of success. More importantly, the players themselves have produced orders of magnitude more downloadable objects, skins and other content, than Maxis has produced.

The Sims is a flexible enough platform that supports other games and activities at many different levels: socializing, building, storytelling, crafting skins and objects, programming tools and behaviors, etc.

There has been an exciting Renaissance of original creative player produced content for The Sims. Player created content is the reason The Sims continues to sell so well after four years.

The Ultimate Sims List links to more than 3600 active Sims fan sites, where you can download an uncountable and growing number of objects, skins and decorations.

Player created content is where all the original creative action is happening with The Sims these days. Tools like The Sims Transmogrifier and RugOMatic enable players to create their own content. Players have figured out how to program the objects and written independent behavior programming tools like IFFPencil2.

One creative player called SimSlice has taken object programming much further than anyone at Maxis expected, by developing Slice City: a game within the game, like a little lilliputian version of SimCity! Other players are even creating add-ons to the Slice City add-on: making buildings, parks, landmarks, seaports and marinas to plug into Slice City!

I've made a video demonstration of RugOMatic and Slice City, that shows how to create rugs for The Sims by dragging and dropping pictures and text, and then set them on fire and kill people with the Slice City disaster menu!

-Don

I believe that one of the major reasons that The Sims Online has failed (in stark contrast to EA's expectations, and the success of the offline version), is that The Sims Online doesn't support player created content. It's been promised, but EA never executed on Will Wright's vision.

The Sims was originally designed to support player created content. Thanks to the enormous quantity of player created content (on the order of millions of unique skins and objects, many of them excellent quality), The Sims is anything but bland and empty.

I know people who actually make a full-time living and support their real families, by creating original, high quality Sims objects. There's a thriving cottage industry of publishing Sims objects and skins on many web sites, and selling subscriptions to Sims players who love to pay for downloading all kinds of original content!

But "bland and empty" does accurately describe The Sims Online: once you've played for a while, you get tired of the sparse selection of character skins and objects to buy. But that wouldn't be the case, if The Sims Online supported player created content like The Sims offline, as EA has promised but not delivered.

Player created content makes the economy richer, interesting, dynamic and personal, because it enables creative players to bring actual VALUE into the economy, and truly invest in building the virtual world.

Contrast that with The Sims Online economy, which has been flooded by Simoleans generated with MazeBots by people selling them on eBay. 100 million more Simoleans dumped into the Sims Online economy isn't going to improve the game play or the richness of the environment one bit -- in fact it just makes it worse.

But enabling players to add new skins and objects to The Sims Online would substantially increase its quality, while earning the creative players respect and Simoleans, and entertaining everyone.

If the enormous amounts of energy that players were putting into implementing MazeBots and generating Simoleans to sell on eBay, were put into implementing content creation tools and generating skins and objects, then The Sims Online might someday be even more successful than The Sims Offline.

It doesn't require "extensive tools and abilities" for players to create content. And it's not necessary for the tools to be built into the game itself. The content creation tools should be factored out into an SDK and released, so third party developers can extend them and integrate them into other tool chains and web services.

The Sims Transmogrifier is an external tool for The Sims, which enables players to create their own objects, by cloning existing objects and repainting the 2D graphics with programs like Photoshop. It doesn't require 3D Studio Max or any advanced 3D skills. Lots of kids and adults use it every day to make their own objects.

But it's certainly possible to make useful content creation tools that are easier to use than Transmogrifier. After all, not everyone knows their way around Photoshop, but many people want to make objects with pictures they download from the net or take with digital cameras.

I've developed an easy to use tool called RugOMatic, which enables players to create rugs for The Sims by simply dragging

I believe that one of the major reasons that The Sims Online has failed (in stark contrast to EA's expectations, and the success of the offline version), is that The Sims Online doesn't support player created content. It's been promised, but EA never executed on Will Wright's vision.

The Sims was originally designed to support player created content. Thanks to the enormous quantity of player created content (on the order of millions of unique skins and objects, many of them excellent quality), The Sims is anything but bland and empty.

I know people who actually make a full-time living and support their real families, by creating original, high quality Sims objects. There's a thriving cottage industry of publishing Sims objects and skins on many web sites, and selling subscriptions to Sims players who love to pay for downloading all kinds of original content!

But "bland and empty" does accurately describe The Sims Online: once you've played for a while, you get tired of the sparse selection of character skins and objects to buy. But that wouldn't be the case, if The Sims Online supported player created content like The Sims offline, as EA has promised but not delivered.

Player created content makes the economy richer, interesting, dynamic and personal, because it enables creative players to bring actual VALUE into the economy, and truly invest in building the virtual world.

Contrast that with The Sims Online economy, which has been flooded by Simoleans generated with MazeBots by people selling them on eBay. 100 million more Simoleans dumped into the Sims Online economy isn't going to improve the game play or the richness of the environment one bit -- in fact it just makes it worse.

But enabling players to add new skins and objects to The Sims Online would substantially increase its quality, while earning the creative players respect and Simoleans, and entertaining everyone.

If the enormous amounts of energy that players were putting into implementing MazeBots and generating Simoleans to sell on eBay, were put into implementing content creation tools and generating skins and objects, then The Sims Online might someday be even more successful than The Sims Offline.

It doesn't require "extensive tools and abilities" for players to create content. And it's not necessary for the tools to be built into the game itself. The content creation tools should be factored out into an SDK and released, so third party developers can extend them and integrate them into other tool chains and web services.

The Sims Transmogrifier is an external tool for The Sims, which enables players to create their own objects, by cloning existing objects and repainting the 2D graphics with programs like Photoshop. It doesn't require 3D Studio Max or any advanced 3D skills. Lots of kids and adults use it every day to make their own objects.

But it's certainly possible to make useful content creation tools that are easier to use than Transmogrifier. After all, not everyone knows their way around Photoshop, but many people want to make objects with pictures they download from the net or take with digital cameras.

I've developed an easy to use tool called RugOMatic, which enables players to create rugs for The Sims by simply dragging

By a large factor, players have created far more custom objects for The Sims, than the 1500 or so that Maxis has produced in 7 expansion packs. It's hard to estimate the exact number of player created objects, but it's interesting to note the number of "magic cookies" registered:

The free Transmogrifier program enables players to create their own objects for The Sims. Anyone who downloads Transmogrifier may optionally register to get a free "magic cookie" (a unique 16 bit number) that distinguishes the objects they create, so the IDs of the objects created by different players won't collide.

Ultimately, the 16 bit magic cookie wasn't big enough: In four years, I've given out 127,031 magic cookies (so the 16 bit counter is about to wrap around a second time), so there are at least that many people interested in making their own objects for The Sims.

Players have created and published so many objects for downloading, that you can buy third party utilities to help categorize all your object downloads, and renumber object id collisions.

Assuming conservatively that each player who bothered to register a Transmogrifier magic cookie made only two objects (and ignoring everyone who didn't register), and assuming generously that Maxis made 1500 objects in all 7 expansion packs (by my count there are 1461 objects, including official Maxis downloads, excluding characters and special invisible objects), that's a User:Maxis ratio of 169:1 -- a factor of a couple orders of magnitude.

-Don

This is a propsal I wrote to Maxis after The Sims was released in March 2000, outlining some of my ideas for third party content authoring tools that I could develop. This led to The Sims Transmogrifier, but it touches on several other interesting tools and projects that Maxis never got around to.

A Proposal to Develop Third Party Content Authoring Tools for The Sims
by Don Hopkins, March 2000

Problem Definition:

There is a strong demand many from third parties who want to develop their own custom content for The Sims, including characters and objects.

Proposed Solution:

Update, clean up and document the content creation tools, so third parties can make their own characters and objects for The Sims.

Port the tools to the latest version of 3D Studio Max.

Make the tools self contained so they can be run stand-alone, by removing all dependencies on the Maxis environment and expensive software packages: Character Studio (Biped, Physique), Access, SourceSafe, MKS Toolkit (Korn Shell).

Document the content creation tools with an overview, examples, tutorials, and a reference manual. Write down the folklore that has been passed by word of mouth. Read over the code and document how it actually behaves.

Provide consulting, training and content creation services to third parties who want custom content authored for The Sims, but don't want or know how to do it themselves.

Develop a Sims Content Authoring SDK, so it's possible for third parties to create specialized content creation tools, like FaceLift.

Goals:

Third Party Character Creation and Customization:

Characters include virtual people who the user can play with, as well as autonomous non-player characters with programmed behaviors. Characters consist of bodies, heads and hands of 3D polygonal meshes with texture mapped bitmap skins.

Characters are created at Maxis by highly skilled artists using expensive tools like 3D Studio Max, Character Studio, the CMX exporter, and Photoshop.

Simplify the content creation tools and make them run stand-alone, so third party artists and designers can create their own characters and objects.

Maxis' expert 2D character artists currently use Photoshop to paint body textures in layers, then flatten and dither them into 256 color bitmap files.

"Flesh out" the process of applying layered clothing to naked bodies and dithering to 8 bits, so anyone can dress up their characters in all kinds of clothes.

Maxis' expert 3D modeling artists create textured low-poly rigid meshes (like heads, hands and accessories) attached to individual bones, and the CMX exporter creates rigid suits.

Make the CMX exporter easy for third parties to use, so many proficient 3D artists will be able to make their own textured heads, accessories, selected character pointers, and carried objects.

Maxis' expert 3D character modeling artists attach textured low-poly deformable meshes (like bodies) to skeletons using Character Studio Physique and Biped, and the CMX exporter reads out the weighted vertex/bone bindings and creates deformable suits for the game.

Character Studio is an expensive plug-in that enables a skilled artist to bind deformable meshes to skeletons, but there are other ways to do that with 3D Studio Max and other 3D tools.

Enhance the CMX exporter to support Max's new way of attaching deformable meshes to skeletons, so third party 3D artists can create bodies.

Maxis designers and programmers use the Edith tool to configure the behavior of characters and objects.

Clean up and document Edith, so third party designers and programmers can program and modify their own characters and objects.

Third Party Object Creation and Customization:

Objects consist of pre-rendered z-buffered sprites, packaged together with character

Sims Proposals

Here are some proposals and documents I've written, describing the work I've done and projects I've proposed with The Sims character animation system, plug-in objects and tools. After four years, a great deal of useful information has been reverse-engineered by independent third-party developers and open source projects like The Sims Technical Library. I hope these ideas will inspire more tool developers to contribute their programming skills to the Sims community.

Will Wright's original vision was enabling creative storytelling, by allowing players to add their own characters and objects to the game, and encouraging developers to program new objects and create tools like Transmogrifier and RugOMatic. Before The Sims was even released, Luc Barthelet sewed the seeds of its success by providing fans with content and tools like SimShow, so they could start making web sites and character skins. By the time it was released, you could already download a wide range of skins from many different web sites!

Four years later, Sims Object hackers have taken it much further than anyone ever imagined. A third-party tool called "iffpencil 2" has taken the place of Edith (Maxis's visual Sims object programming environment) in the Sims object hacking community.

One mind-blowing example is Slice City, which is an amazing game within a game: SimCity within The Sims! Your Sims can walk around and interact with a live, growing city like a Lilliputian scene from Gulliver's Travels. I'm not making this up: this actually runs INSIDE The Sims, and is ingeniously implemented by plug-in objects!

You start with a power plant, which gradually grows a whole city populated by swarms of insect-sized people. As the city grows, it spawns new objects including buildings (reprogrammed houseplants that the gardener still waters), crowds of people (reprogrammed cockroaches that you can still stomp to death), parks, marinas and monuments. You can go into build mode and rearrange them however you like, place roads (that get extremely busy at rush hour), and interact with the buildings through pie menus in play mode. There's even a tornado that comes through and knocks down your buildings. And you can download add-ons and pre-made cities!

Nothing like SimSlice was in the original design plan, but Will Wright credits all the creative players as the primary reason The Sims has become the #1 selling game of all time.

I believe the starkly contrasting failure of The Sims Online has a lot to do with the fact that it doesn't support player created content like the original Sims. One of the fundamental reasons that original Sims players have been disappointed with The Sims Online, is that Maxis never executed on the original plan to let online players upload and exchange their own skins and objects.

In order to help more fully realize Will's original plan, I wrote these proposals and documents to support the community of Sims artists, tool developers and object programmers like Bil Simser, Judson Hudson, Michael Watson, Rick Halle, Tom van Dijk

Sims Proposals

Here are some proposals and documents I've written, describing the work I've done and projects I've proposed with The Sims character animation system, plug-in objects and tools. After four years, a great deal of useful information has been reverse-engineered by independent third-party developers and open source projects like The Sims Technical Library. I hope these ideas will inspire more tool developers to contribute their programming skills to the Sims community.

Will Wright's original vision was enabling creative storytelling, by allowing players to add their own characters and objects to the game, and encouraging developers to program new objects and create tools like Transmogrifier and RugOMatic. Before The Sims was even released, Luc Barthelet sewed the seeds of its success by providing fans with content and tools like SimShow, so they could start making web sites and character skins. By the time it was released, you could already download a wide range of skins from many different web sites!

Four years later, Sims Object hackers have taken it much further than anyone ever imagined. A third-party tool called "iffpencil 2" has taken the place of Edith (Maxis's visual Sims object programming environment) in the Sims object hacking community.

One mind-blowing example is Slice City, which is an amazing game within a game: SimCity within The Sims! Your Sims can walk around and interact with a live, growing city like a Lilliputian scene from Gulliver's Travels. I'm not making this up: this actually runs INSIDE The Sims, and is ingeniously implemented by plug-in objects!

You start with a power plant, which gradually grows a whole city populated by swarms of insect-sized people. As the city grows, it spawns new objects including buildings (reprogrammed houseplants that the gardener still waters), crowds of people (reprogrammed cockroaches that you can still stomp to death), parks, marinas and monuments. You can go into build mode and rearrange them however you like, place roads (that get extremely busy at rush hour), and interact with the buildings through pie menus in play mode. There's even a tornado that comes through and knocks down your buildings. And you can download add-ons and pre-made cities!

Nothing like SimSlice was in the original design plan, but Will Wright credits all the creative players as the primary reason The Sims has become the #1 selling game of all time.

I believe the starkly contrasting failure of The Sims Online has a lot to do with the fact that it doesn't support player created content like the original Sims. One of the fundamental reasons that original Sims players have been disappointed with The Sims Online, is that Maxis never executed on the original plan to let online players upload and exchange their own skins and objects.

In order to help more fully realize Will's original plan, I wrote these proposals and documents to support the community of Sims artists, tool developers and object programmers like Bil Simser, Judson Hudson, Michael Watson, Rick Halle, Tom van Dijk

Sims Proposals

Here are some proposals and documents I've written, describing the work I've done and projects I've proposed with The Sims character animation system, plug-in objects and tools. After four years, a great deal of useful information has been reverse-engineered by independent third-party developers and open source projects like The Sims Technical Library. I hope these ideas will inspire more tool developers to contribute their programming skills to the Sims community.

Will Wright's original vision was enabling creative storytelling, by allowing players to add their own characters and objects to the game, and encouraging developers to program new objects and create tools like Transmogrifier and RugOMatic. Before The Sims was even released, Luc Barthelet sewed the seeds of its success by providing fans with content and tools like SimShow, so they could start making web sites and character skins. By the time it was released, you could already download a wide range of skins from many different web sites!

Four years later, Sims Object hackers have taken it much further than anyone ever imagined. A third-party tool called "iffpencil 2" has taken the place of Edith (Maxis's visual Sims object programming environment) in the Sims object hacking community.

One mind-blowing example is Slice City, which is an amazing game within a game: SimCity within The Sims! Your Sims can walk around and interact with a live, growing city like a Lilliputian scene from Gulliver's Travels. I'm not making this up: this actually runs INSIDE The Sims, and is ingeniously implemented by plug-in objects!

You start with a power plant, which gradually grows a whole city populated by swarms of insect-sized people. As the city grows, it spawns new objects including buildings (reprogrammed houseplants that the gardener still waters), crowds of people (reprogrammed cockroaches that you can still stomp to death), parks, marinas and monuments. You can go into build mode and rearrange them however you like, place roads (that get extremely busy at rush hour), and interact with the buildings through pie menus in play mode. There's even a tornado that comes through and knocks down your buildings. And you can download add-ons and pre-made cities!

Nothing like SimSlice was in the original design plan, but Will Wright credits all the creative players as the primary reason The Sims has become the #1 selling game of all time.

I believe the starkly contrasting failure of The Sims Online has a lot to do with the fact that it doesn't support player created content like the original Sims. One of the fundamental reasons that original Sims players have been disappointed with The Sims Online, is that Maxis never executed on the original plan to let online players upload and exchange their own skins and objects.

In order to help more fully realize Will's original plan, I wrote these proposals and documents to support the community of Sims artists, tool developers and object programmers like Bil Simser, Judson Hudson, Michael Watson, Rick Halle, Tom van Dijk

The Sims "level designer" (i.e. the architectural tools for editing your house, buying and placing objects) are built into the game, which makes it possible for 8-year-old kids to easily "design levels".

But there's a lot more to customizing and creating you own game than "level design". The Sims also lets you design your own characters and objects, plug them together to tell stories, and even publish the stories online.

The Sims' storytelling ability hinges on the player's ability to add their own characters (skins) and scenery (objects) into the set, to illustrate whatever stories they want to tell.

Thanks to player created content, The Sims becomes more like the open-ended Perky Pat layouts in Philip K Dick's book, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

Tools like Transmogrifier and RugOMatic not only make it possible for characters to customize the game to tell their own stories, but also share their creations with other players, and download objects from the web to play in their own games.

High quality subscription web sites like SimFreaks actually pay talented artists to create beautiful sets of themed objects, like the Christmas Gingerbread House set.

Some experienced artists are generous enough to freely teach other Sims players how to create their own objects, by publishing step-by-step tutorials in the principles of object making for the complete novice, at sites like The Bunny Wuffles School of Sims Transmogrification.

The celebrated designers at the Cultural Heritage Foundation have made names for themselves by using Transmogrifier and other tools to create all the necessary scenery to build amazing historical recreations, like The Palm House, Kew Gardens, London England, the Isambard Kingdom Brunel Theme, and the Turkish Baths.

Maxis has created a wide range of objects for The Sims, which are included with the original game, the seven expansion packs, and numerous free downloads. But the player created object outnumber the Maxis created objects by an order of magnitude.

The Sims also opens up opportunities for programmers as well as artists: third party software developers like SimPrograms and SimsTools have created a market for tools that enable players to manage their Sims objects, and artists to make even more of them.

I'm developing some easy-to-use tools that automate the Transmogrification process, and open up Sims object creation to wide range of people. RugOMatic enables anyone, even without artistic talent or technical skills, to quickly create their own rugs for The Sim by dragging and dropping pictures and text.

RugOMatic

The Sims "level designer" (i.e. the architectural tools for editing your house, buying and placing objects) are built into the game, which makes it possible for 8-year-old kids to easily "design levels".

But there's a lot more to customizing and creating you own game than "level design". The Sims also lets you design your own characters and objects, plug them together to tell stories, and even publish the stories online.

The Sims' storytelling ability hinges on the player's ability to add their own characters (skins) and scenery (objects) into the set, to illustrate whatever stories they want to tell.

Thanks to player created content, The Sims becomes more like the open-ended Perky Pat layouts in Philip K Dick's book, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

Tools like Transmogrifier and RugOMatic not only make it possible for characters to customize the game to tell their own stories, but also share their creations with other players, and download objects from the web to play in their own games.

High quality subscription web sites like SimFreaks actually pay talented artists to create beautiful sets of themed objects, like the Christmas Gingerbread House set.

Some experienced artists are generous enough to freely teach other Sims players how to create their own objects, by publishing step-by-step tutorials in the principles of object making for the complete novice, at sites like The Bunny Wuffles School of Sims Transmogrification.

The celebrated designers at the Cultural Heritage Foundation have made names for themselves by using Transmogrifier and other tools to create all the necessary scenery to build amazing historical recreations, like The Palm House, Kew Gardens, London England, the Isambard Kingdom Brunel Theme, and the Turkish Baths.

Maxis has created a wide range of objects for The Sims, which are included with the original game, the seven expansion packs, and numerous free downloads. But the player created object outnumber the Maxis created objects by an order of magnitude.

The Sims also opens up opportunities for programmers as well as artists: third party software developers like SimPrograms and SimsTools have created a market for tools that enable players to manage their Sims objects, and artists to make even more of them.

I'm developing some easy-to-use tools that automate the Transmogrification process, and open up Sims object creation to wide range of people. RugOMatic enables anyone, even without artistic talent or technical skills, to quickly create their own rugs for The Sim by dragging and dropping pictures and text.

RugOMatic

The Sims "level designer" (i.e. the architectural tools for editing your house, buying and placing objects) are built into the game, which makes it possible for 8-year-old kids to easily "design levels".

But there's a lot more to customizing and creating you own game than "level design". The Sims also lets you design your own characters and objects, plug them together to tell stories, and even publish the stories online.

The Sims' storytelling ability hinges on the player's ability to add their own characters (skins) and scenery (objects) into the set, to illustrate whatever stories they want to tell.

Thanks to player created content, The Sims becomes more like the open-ended Perky Pat layouts in Philip K Dick's book, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

Tools like Transmogrifier and RugOMatic not only make it possible for characters to customize the game to tell their own stories, but also share their creations with other players, and download objects from the web to play in their own games.

High quality subscription web sites like SimFreaks actually pay talented artists to create beautiful sets of themed objects, like the Christmas Gingerbread House set.

Some experienced artists are generous enough to freely teach other Sims players how to create their own objects, by publishing step-by-step tutorials in the principles of object making for the complete novice, at sites like The Bunny Wuffles School of Sims Transmogrification.

The celebrated designers at the Cultural Heritage Foundation have made names for themselves by using Transmogrifier and other tools to create all the necessary scenery to build amazing historical recreations, like The Palm House, Kew Gardens, London England, the Isambard Kingdom Brunel Theme, and the Turkish Baths.

Maxis has created a wide range of objects for The Sims, which are included with the original game, the seven expansion packs, and numerous free downloads. But the player created object outnumber the Maxis created objects by an order of magnitude.

The Sims also opens up opportunities for programmers as well as artists: third party software developers like SimPrograms and SimsTools have created a market for tools that enable players to manage their Sims objects, and artists to make even more of them.

I'm developing some easy-to-use tools that automate the Transmogrification process, and open up Sims object creation to wide range of people. RugOMatic enables anyone, even without artistic talent or technical skills, to quickly create their own rugs for The Sim by dragging and dropping pictures and text.

RugOMatic

The Sims "level designer" (i.e. the architectural tools for editing your house, buying and placing objects) are built into the game, which makes it possible for 8-year-old kids to easily "design levels".

But there's a lot more to customizing and creating you own game than "level design". The Sims also lets you design your own characters and objects, plug them together to tell stories, and even publish the stories online.

The Sims' storytelling ability hinges on the player's ability to add their own characters (skins) and scenery (objects) into the set, to illustrate whatever stories they want to tell.

Thanks to player created content, The Sims becomes more like the open-ended Perky Pat layouts in Philip K Dick's book, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

Tools like Transmogrifier and RugOMatic not only make it possible for characters to customize the game to tell their own stories, but also share their creations with other players, and download objects from the web to play in their own games.

High quality subscription web sites like SimFreaks actually pay talented artists to create beautiful sets of themed objects, like the Christmas Gingerbread House set.

Some experienced artists are generous enough to freely teach other Sims players how to create their own objects, by publishing step-by-step tutorials in the principles of object making for the complete novice, at sites like The Bunny Wuffles School of Sims Transmogrification.

The celebrated designers at the Cultural Heritage Foundation have made names for themselves by using Transmogrifier and other tools to create all the necessary scenery to build amazing historical recreations, like The Palm House, Kew Gardens, London England, the Isambard Kingdom Brunel Theme, and the Turkish Baths.

Maxis has created a wide range of objects for The Sims, which are included with the original game, the seven expansion packs, and numerous free downloads. But the player created object outnumber the Maxis created objects by an order of magnitude.

The Sims also opens up opportunities for programmers as well as artists: third party software developers like SimPrograms and SimsTools have created a market for tools that enable players to manage their Sims objects, and artists to make even more of them.

I'm developing some easy-to-use tools that automate the Transmogrification process, and open up Sims object creation to wide range of people. RugOMatic enables anyone, even without artistic talent or technical skills, to quickly create their own rugs for The Sim by dragging and dropping pictures and text.

RugOMatic