Slashdot Mirror
In-Depth Sims Online Development Story
Nicholas Palmer writes "GameSpot has a really
in-depth feature story on the development process behind The Sims Online.
It gets into things like how the team had to refactor the game's 3 million lines
of code last year. Will Wright mentions his desire to see TSO to grow into
a community similar to
Slashdot's." Great game - although the latest wipe of the game means all Blockstackers' hard work on our house will be gone. Still, the social dynamics, IMHO, are much more interesting in TSO, because it enforces cooperation.
You mean there will be simtrolls?
The will be sim gnu/hippies?
sim linux zealots (running simlinux)
Sim janitors (and their dupes)
And the abillity to sim-mod simtrolls to -1?
..and make some real friends!! Leave these Sims alone.
Now, excuse me while I go play some Metriod Prime.
Enters dark room, all alone with only some Diet Rite and some leftover turkey Ahh, sweet sweet bliss.
What, me Tweet?
How long before ..TSO has its 1st divorce in game ...is cited in a real divorce case when the TSO players other half, can't play the latest doom/quake/enter generic fps online, because their missus spends all day gossiping on TSO. .. bill gates, global corporations, the illuminanti, aliens, hyperintelligent mice, the masons etc secretly control the lives of your sims online
He must be thinking of Kuro5hin...
*ducks*
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
If The Sims Online is going to be anything like Slashdot, it's going to have the following things:
1. Duplicate Everything.
2. Cheesey polls with the ever-present CowboyNeal option.
3. Trolls.
4. Anonymous Sims who think they're smarter than everyone else, but afraid to reveal their true selves.
5. CmdrTaco's Anime Hut (to me, that'd be a plus)
6. A Town Hall where geeks with no lives can bitch about Farscape and Firefly being cancled.
7. Computers that boot into Linux, run WINE, and then play The Sims Online.
8. Insert Rip on JonKatz Here.
9. A graveyard with tombstones that read MINIX, FreeBSD, and other OSs people are fond of calling "dead."
10. UFOs and subsequent Government Cover-Ups.
11. A Babylon 5 Shrine.
12. The city of Torvalds, CA.
What I'd really like to see in TSO would be a hidden Middle Earth landscape, in which case I'd hustle in and set up shop at either Eisengard or Mordor (preferably Mordor). Sim LotR, Sim Hobbits, Sim Uruk-Hai, Sim Rangers, wouldn't that be grand?
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Not a bad idea - Then slashdot readers will know how social interaction works :)
codegolf.com - smaller *is* better.
Like Slashdot?
.
You mean fractured down opinionated economic, moral and technology fault lines?MS-bashers/Linux-bashers, Linus lovers/Linus haters, ecofreak/technojunkies, libertarians/communists, 'information wants to be free' swappers/ 'theft is theft' moralists and JonKatz fans/foes
I can just imagine it, your choice of spouse is decided by the ominous by BSD/Red hat question? Or even worse, Star Trek/Lord of the Rings?
Or you meet a new neighbour and you wonder whether their game house or the computer that they're running it from is more modded?
Or that neighbour constantly comes round your house asking if you've heard of a free sofa that is also a fridge and a multimedia centre (must play OGGs) and a PDA. And is a eco friendly. And open-source. Or when they should start teaching their kids how to code, at 2, 3 or in the womb?
I also wonder how many CowboyNeal based aliases there will be on-line.
Then again, since it'll be a Windows game, I don't think 'all' the Slashdot community will take it up.
How does the Sims Online correspond to that model? This might seem a jaded view, but it looks from the article as if you build houses and wander around. What else is there to do? Do they expect people to 'make their own fun' so to speak or is there actual advancement and tasks that give a point to the thing?
There is no way you can really simulate a bitch slap from your girlfriend 'cause she found out you were screwing her sister...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
It allows someone without a real life to simulate one.
"And like that
The article mentions that Will Wright has talked stuff over with Neal Stephenson, and that in some ways TSO will be similar to the "Metaverse", as described in Snow Crash. One thing I'd like to see in TSO is the ability for characters to share non-TSO "objects" with other characters. For example, I'd like my character to hand another character a "file" and have a real file transfered from my hard drive to the other character's drive.
There are a lot of technical issues involved with this sort of stuff -- and some legal ones as well (think MP3s). However, this feature would bring TSO a lot closer to the Metaverse, uh, universe.
I wish I could metamoderate the moderation to +1, Funny.
stories of the development process. This really gives an in-depth view of the ordeal that the developers go through like the problems they face and the solutions they come up with. Besides being an interesting read, these articles give the players an appreciation of the hard work done by the coders/designers. Geoff has done such Behind The Games articles on other games including Black&White. I was so impressed by efforts of the developers and the main designer Peter Molyneux, that although I had a warez copy of the game, I went ahead and bought the game. Being a developer myself, I really wanted to see these guy's hard work pay off.
Again, thanks to Geoff for bringing these interesting articles to the public without which no one would have had a chance to appreciate the games in a different way.
as a slashdot reader for 3/4 years this would be my first post.I just want to point out how I find it funny how i was nieve to think a cooperation would get in the way of my Daily routins. i'm just going to sum this up by a letter i got. Notice, I'm a Huge FAN that plays sim's online 24 hours. I don't know if i'm part of the demo-graphic, but i'm in utter shock right now. If the Sim's Want to become a community like ours. Then how are we suppose to express our views. Saying nigga'(and yes i added a Hiphin to show he was my friend/bro) is wrong, but NOT ENUF TO GET BANNED OVER. Imagin if EA were to censore flashdot. You'll need a whole new server and enuf space for a huge database. I also wanna point out how limited sim's system fliter yes. We all(seasoned comp freak) what "WTF" stand for, they deem that as unapproit(sp) along with countless other. i'm going to end my rant. TO finish it would take a day or two.
e ment.jsp
.
START
Hello,
This letter is to notify you that your account has been temporarily suspended
for 72 hours for Terms of Service violations.
Specifically:
Racial Harassment. nigga' 03:53:08 Master Bishop
After this suspension, you will be able to rejoin TSO without further
consequence. However, if you are found to be breaking any of the Terms of
Service again, your TSO account will be permanently closed.
Please review the following policies with regards to this issue posted at:
Terms of Service http://www.ea.com/global/legal/tos.jsp
User Agreement: http://player.thesimsonline.ea.com/home/user_agre
Please take the time to review these documents. Although we would regret the
closure of your account, we feel that it would be in the best interest of the
service and community as a whole. This notice serves as your final warning in
this matter.
EA.com Customer Relations
We request that you review our EA.com Terms of Services by going to
http://www.ea.com and clicking on the "Terms of Service" link at the bottom
of the page.
If you have any questions about this, please direct your inquiry to TOS@ea.com
end
this Makes AOL look good.
Then again, since it'll be a Windows game, I don't think 'all' the Slashdot community will take it up.
Yeah, just 90%. You know, that 90% of the Slashdot community that raves about how great Linux is and how much Microsoft from the saftey of Internet Explorer on Windows? Slashdot: you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and hypocrisy.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
I am too. In my pants.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I had a really low UID on kuro5hin, but while I wouldn't say it got taken over by terroris sympathisers, it definetly got boring.
I still stop buy once in a while. The diary section is always a good place to get tech answers, I've found.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.