Eep² - The Sims

12/10: I finally got around to playing Livin' Large but am not all that impressed. At least people can make their own objects now, however. I doubt I'll be getting back into The Sims but I just wanted to let you all know I'm still alive. This page still averages 100+ hits a day. The Sims' webring page is down and I don't know who's running the ring anymore so I just put The Sims' logo there instead.

Added Transmogrifier.

10/1: Blueprint seems to be back in development, although very much diminished (just a converter). Oh well...I doubt if even when it's released I'll be motivated to play The Sims more, as the high-end 3D modellers like 3D Studio Max, trueSpace, LightWave, etc, are too clunky and user-unfriendly for me, not to mention overpriced for the average gamer who might want to play around with creating Sims objects...

9/3: Well, I still haven't been playing The Sims lately, Livin' Large isn't motivating me much to want to try The Sims again anyway, and now it seems Blueprint is dead (from Bil Simser):

"It is with absolute regret that I have to announce the death of blueprint. This was not a choice, it was an unfortunate circumstance. The entire project is gone, wiped clean by an electronic tornado that ripped through my system yesterday. After 18+ hours of tweaking, hex editing and running every disk tool known to man (and a few unknown) I have to announce that the patient is dead." So much for object editing--where is Maxis' Edith?? Oh well...

6/5: ~~Blueprint RC1 screenshot~~

5/14: Sorry for the lack of updates, but I just haven't been playing The Sims as much lately (been busy testing Active Worlds 3). Hopefully whenever Blueprint is released I'll become interested again. Anyway, just got an email from someone about BodyWarp.

5/2: Skn->Obj & IFF Editor added. From Aladrin: "Scott McDonnell got me started on the track to convert SKN to OBJ... OBJ is a generic 3D file format. We can now convert any single-piece object (heads, hands, glasses, bottles, wrenches, etc) to an OBJ with the program I made! We'll be able to convert them back soon! (Which means we can edit them, of course). We hope to be able to do bodies soon. (They're a major pain!) Check out the latest compile of Skn->Obj on my site!"

5/1

Apparently I had the wrong email address for SimEdit.

Character Editor added.

4/12

Uh...oh yea, regarding Blueprint's modules: FAR Editor released. Material Editor in testing. Object Editor coming afterwards.

New newsgroup link added to Intro above.

Someone from the newsgroup claimed: "Klapaucius [this is the name of the money cheat, for those who may not know] is the name of a character in The Cyberiad, a collection of short stories about two intergalactic constructors."

From Aladrin (edited): "Guess what!?!? I've (kinda) figured out the format for IFF/WLL/FLR Files!! Currently, my program can only extract the BMPs from them... But the plan is for it to extract all the data into pieces, let you modify the BMPs (and the other stuff if I ever figure what it all is), and put it all back together!

It's in such a primitive state right now that I haven't even bothered compiling it. Once it can write all the pieces and put them back together, I'll post it on my site. I was hoping to be able to skin couches and stuff with it, but alas, it doesn't seem the skins work the same way. I think they use palettes and sprites, somehow (which would mean they aren't truly 3D, so I dunno).

4/6

Bil Simser emailed me about FAR Edit.

More info about FAR Edit (since I'm testing it now):

Create FAR archives
View FAR archives including bitmap previews (Sim Model and object previews coming shortly)
Extract single files or entire filesets from archives
Import files or entire directory structures into archives
Recent file list of last 4 FAR files opened for quick access (Alt+1..4)

From Bil: "The BCF format is actually the real format, the ASCII one is just a hack for Sim Show."

4/5

In Software:

FAR Extractor updated.
SimEdit link fixed.
FarView edited--it stopped crashing on me for some unknown reason.
BMF2SNK added.

Add glasses, hats, etc to heads!

3/31: Patch section added, which lists which files the patch modifies/adds and some help if you're having trouble installing the patch. Note: there are no new walls and floors and my custom walls' thumbnails are still screwed up. :/

3/29: Electronics Arts has some more info about the patch. I still haven't gotten the patch to work (now I need sims.exe since the patch doesn't like mine either) but someone emailed me and said the money cheat has changed to "rosebud", and I read on the BBS that the "set_hour" cheat has been removed. Cheats updated accordingly.

The Sims 1.1 patch is available, but Maxis has done a poor job of telling us what exactly it changes. Until I get the files clcd32.dll and dplayerx.dll from the main The Sims directory, I can't get the darn patch to work. Can someone email them to me please? I'd really appreciate it.

Anyway, from some Maxis guy on The Sims BBS, the patch "FIXED: unremovable snacks, lost night-shift job for 1 day absence, incorrect 'in use' state for objects, crashes from old or missing custom files (skins/walls/floors), MIA carpool, unreachable wall lights, delinquent repairman and miscellaneous crashes from several causes. IMPROVED: better recliner benefits, slower motive decay, redesigned album page layout, thumbnails for custom walls." Note: "motive decay" is the rate at which the various status bars (energy, fun, social, etc) decrease. Someone else mentioned when sims bump into each other they don't stand around for as long before moving again. Someone else mentioned 1x1 flower beds and bushes/ferns can be built "under" 4x4 trees. Still someone else mentioned there are new walls and floors. I'll have a full report once I finally get the darn patch installed...

3/24

FAR Extractor updated; it can now extract multiple files and has a resizeable window so filenames can be seen more easily.

Tabled up Software and Other a bit to make it easier to navigate.

3/23

Sim Search .4

Original FAR Extractor download link back in service.

Blueprint website back up!

3/22

More from Bil on 3/20 in a newsgroup: "I'm just finishing up a new version of blueprint that will allow full model editing (manipulating vertices and such) and creating new models (they still have to be put in as replacements for existing ones though as I can't change the names). It's ugly work (an average head has about 300-500 vertices and then there's the body) but for those that like that kind of torture, this will open up a whole new world of the Sims. There's also a couple of other people working on Sim model editors that should be out soon."

Found a site with Blueprint; it's not Bil's but it will allow people to get the previous version while waiting for Bil to tell us his new site.

FAR Extractor download link dead, so I put it on my site until I find out from Aladrin what's going on.

3/21

Program request added to Software.

Fixed nude censor patch link in Software.

Edited FAR file formats in Software.

3/20

Walls and Floors added to Textures.

I was reading ZDNet's ZDTV Big Thinkers' "Will Wright Playing God" Talkback and came across a post from Don Hopkins who worked on The Sims character animation and user interface:

You can't count how many lines of that kind of SymAntics code there are, since it's two-dimensional, but there must be a few thousand acres of it, if you go by the scale of the neighborhood screen.

It looks like boxes and arrows, and is configured by many controlpanels, and it's good for writing the "Spaghetti Code" necessary for describing quirky human behavior."

So I emailed him about trying it, and it turns out:

Note that this is the same "Edith" Will Wright confirmed last week the release of in hopefully about a month or so. Stay tuned!

More from Don: "I'm going to be helping Bil Simser on Blueprint. Now that the project has shipped, I took a short vacation and I'm now working as an independent contractor for Maxis. We'll be releasing several different tools for creating different kinds of objects, first kind of hard to use, but later more user friendly. In the mean time, read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K Dick, if you want to know where we're headed with The Sims!

3/19

Read the emails between Will Wright (The Sims creator) and I regarding a multiplayer The Sims.

Command-line switches and cheats added to Other.

Blueprint status updated.

Newsgroups added to Intro.

3/18: Multiple neighborhood how-to added to Other.

3/17

This just in from Bil:

"Here's a brief rundown of the blueprint website folly:

1. I put up my own blueprint site back in July of last year. It stayed until sometime in January 2000.
2. blueprint moved to Sim Heaven. Due to a long downtime of the site and some problems with submitting news and files, I decided to move it.
3. blueprint moves to MOTS. About a month after the move, MOTS experiences a whack of server problems and is forced to move, twice with another move coming shortly. This was unacceptable to me as the stability of having a place to come for blueprint news (especially now) is essential.
4. A new site has been chosen and will be announced and open for traffic shortly.

Now onto blueprint. Beta 3 is in the works and will be coming shortly. This will include CMX importing and basic manipulation including 3D painting (more info on the new site about all this). Beta 3 also includes importing for various 3D model formats (3DS, LWO [LightWave], etc.) so you'll be able to start grabbing stuff from places like 3dcafe.com and working with that. As well, a whack of new features, new primitives, a 2D editor, a much more stable release, Windows 2000 support and other goodies.

At this point I still have not received the additional info from Maxis with regards to file formats so I'm still dead in the water (hence the time spending working on these other new features)."

Moved Software, Textures, and Other sections onto another page, as these news/updates are getting lengthy...

Introduction added

Sim Search added to Software.

Body type #s added to Textures.

Forgot to add this yesterday, from Aladrin Kelahn: "I haven't had any time to work on programming the BMF2SKN but I've pretty much figured out how the file is set up. Once I've had time to work it all out, I'll either re-write the FAR extractor or write a second program."

3/16

Seems Will Wright really did email me the other day. After comparing email and newsgroup post headers, and emailing various Maxis addresses to attempt to get to the real Will Wrig. Apparently he has 3 email addresses. OK, anyway, so Edith (The Sims' object programming language) is going to be released in about a month or so (hopefully), and in Wright's most recent email to me, he said they're (Maxis) also working on a multiplayer online The Sims version.

Bil Simser tells me that The Mall of the Sims (the name "The Sims Mall" would be more efficient) is the official Blueprint site, even though I found Sim Heaven to have more updated info. At any rate, both sites are still down and I've offered to be the official Blueprint site but no response from Bil yet...

Added skin size examples and moved body skin template to Skins section.

3/13

In an email from Bil Simser (Blueprint author), I asked: "Since the skn [body/head models] files are just ASCII text with all the vertices and polygon filling order, how about allowing Blueprint to import/load and edit them?" He replied: "That feature is available in the next version of blueprint, due out soon."

Seems some of the "major" Sims fan sites are not working or very slow to respond. This, unfortunately, includes the two Blueprint sites I know of, so I will make Blueprint available for download if these sites don't get their act together soon...

3/13 Apparently, some twit named Krud (appropriate name, eh?) from the newsgroups admitted to falsly impersonating Will Wright. I have reported him to @home abuse so hopefully his account will be yanked soon enough. Why some people feel the need to act so lame is beyond me but it's a definite sign of a low self-esteem and a desire for attention. Sad, really...

3/12

Found some other texture/model extractors and SimEdit.

Redesigning page...

And in an email from Will Wright (he's The Sims' creator, if you don't know; I'm skeptical but it may be legit), regarding one of my newsgroup posts:

Subject: Re: object editing & customization (was Re: Sims time)
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 01:22:39 -0800
From: "Will Wright" <1wwright@home.com>
To: "Eep�" <>

[Eep� wrote:]
> And note that Maxis is NOT working on releasing the object editor but rather simply the specs for modifying existing objects (basically just changing the way they look). At least this is what I gather from Blueprint's site anyway. Because Maxis chose to use 3D Studio for object modelling and Character Studio for object interaction, most people (perhaps 90+%) will not have these programs to create/edit Sims objects. However, Maxis DOES supposedly have some non-programmer-friendly scripting language ("Edith" or something) which they should release. And looking at .skn files, since they're in ASCII it shouldn't be too hard for a body editor/creator. I would hope Bill Simser is looking into this for inclusion into Blueprint...
>

Actually we are working on a releasing our object programming system. I want to get it cleaned up a bit and documented first. Otherwise everyone will complain about how we released a buggy programming system with no documentation. Hopefully we'll have something ready in about a month.

-Will Wright

Added Maxis' tools for completion (I plan on making this the Sims editing site).

3/11: Added nude censor patch, body skin template, basketball textures, social worker skin, & FAR extractor.

~3/9: site opens

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