Prerelease:The Sims (Windows)/Late 1998

This is a sub-page of Prerelease:The Sims (Windows).

June

Coverage of the current build is "pre-release" biased — it focuses on comparative analysis between the previous and next known demo iterations from its era. For an in-depth analysis contrasting the whole body of resources of The Steering Committee demo with its final counterpart, please check its "Prototype" article.

On June 1998, the developers promptly compiled an entirely revamped demo build of The Sims, showcasing resources as they appeared at that stage in development. This build, designed specifically for EA's Steering Committee, aimed to secure their greenlight for the game's concept and continue production on a more stable foundation. It featured a new Sim alongside the removal and renaming/retooling of some existing ones. Notably, it introduced a remade scenario-based storyline centered around a male character named Ross, who's in pursuit of good fortune trying to kiss one of the two attractive women that just moved to his neighborhood: Happy Acres.

People Mode

Apr '98 (Mock-up)	Jun '98

Since this build was compiled specifically for demo purposes, the GUI has been revamped to better accommodate these needs. The control panel no longer dynamically inserts thumbnails as new Sims are added (as it speculatively does in previous builds). Instead, it features a fixed 3-slot area displaying only the Sims specifically intended for each scenario. Also, the game now features the final arrangement of Sim needs, with the "Stress" and "Alertness" motives permanently removed. Time-wise, the strings associated with the in-game year, month and day are no longer shown, given its decreasing importance in gameplay. Hours and minutes are now shown as a digital clock, replacing the previously used analog clock for the iterations to come. The GUI section that likely displayed the active household's last name now showcases the strings associated with the current demo's level. Interestingly, some finalized houses in the retail builds still contain raw text data linked to these early level names.

Object Mode

Feb '98 (Mock-up)	Jun '98

The default Object Mode thumbnail template no longer places a white platform tile underneath objects, and the three-dimensional depth of the catalog page has been reduced. Button labels across all GUI sections now consistently feature a "wooden" pattern, replacing the previously used "marble" pattern.

Architecture Mode

Feb '98 (Mock-up)	Jun '98

The icons and floor tile thumbnails were redesigned to ditch their flat, placeholder look for one with more depth and perspective.

Options Mode

Feb '98 (Mock-up)	Jun '98

The house files no longer support more than one save slot. New button labels show info. about the current scenario level and take users back to the newly-added Neighborhood Menu.

Pie Menu

Feb '98 (Mock-up)	Jun '98

From this development iteration onward, the pie menu's style was significantly simplified to a design closely resembling its final counterpart. The pseudo-three-dimensional background was replaced with a sphere featuring a progressive contour and a blending effect that decreases the saturation and brightness of the in-game world screen rendered directly underneath it. Additionally, the head of the active character is now rendered across the sphere, always facing the coordinates of the mouse pointer.

Neighborhood Menu

This is the oldest known iteration of the Neighborhood Menu. GUI-wise, it resembles a typical Simulation game campaign menu. As with the previous demo builds, the game adopts a pre-scripted scenario format for each available house file. There's still no sign of interactive menus for creating families from scratch. Hovering over the static lot thumbnails reveals title boxes for each scenario, instead of the iconic roof-fading special effect that accompanies the final menu selection.

Main
#	Thumbnail	Brief
1		Ross is handsome, sporty, but--since his accident--not so bright. Amnesia has made the simplest tasks a chore. Help him remember how to cook, clean, bathe by directing him toward the objects that will satisfy each of his needs. Once you get all his motives into the green, he'll be well on his way to a productive life.
2		Samantha and Mercedes have little to do and a dwingling household account. Mercedes is waiting for an inheritance, but until it comes (it won't be soon), her earning potential is nil. Samantha is an artist and has just found a gallery that will carry her paintings. She's only productive when her mood is good. Keep her happy and productive and you'll make enough money to score a new toy. Something electronic like a stereo or TV ought to do the trick.
3		Ross has had a dramatic recovery and is getting around by himself quite well now. As if that wasn't enough, he just scored a spot in a house with two women. Samantha is calm, quiet and focused on her thriving artistic career. She's cool and shares a lot of interests with Ross but may be slightly standoffish. Mercedes is hot but somewhat ditzy. Help him choose whom to pursue. When you get a kiss you'll know he's on his way to some fine lovin'.
4		Okay, architect. Three rich kids just showed up with a good chunk of cash and an empty lot for a dream house. You have total creative freedom. So go wild. Make a terraces mansion on a hilly lot. Try a humble level on a woodsy lot. Build the worst house imaginable and watch them go slowly nuts. While you're at it, try planning for maximum efficiency. You know you can't resist picking the quickest course in traffic...now take it to the next level of anal. You will need to use architecture mode to build the house (the saw and hammer icon below the chair). Remember to save enough money for furnishings.

Demo Characters

Main
Name	Sad	OK	Happy	Skin	Note
Ross					The demo's male hero, portraited as your classic, handsome bachelor. His existence in game is justified by this off-screen whoopsie that temporarily caused him to lose the best out of his memory. For the time being, it is down to the Simmer to provide him minimal guidance when at his most mundane tasks. In later scenarios, not only does his amnesia get miraculously sorted, but the man moves into the exquisite abode owned by the single girls next-door, with whom he will of course fancy to get lucky. Another commentary on Ross is that both his head mesh and texture proved to very well become the good standard for the following concept of Sim characters in game, hence the fact it went used in the final release of The Sims, left basically untouched since its alleged debut, here on Steering Committee. The same does not apply to his body mesh/texture. An unused UI graphic in the final game, however, contains copies of prerendered models of Ross, whatever its usage intention was.
Samantha					Sam is the "calm, quiet", professional artsy Sim — the one you'd imagine as the extremely grounded part of the trio. That being said, as unrealistic as it gets, she won't find any inspiration for her paintings when unhappy — a perfect recipe for a Motive tutorial scenario protagonist. Unlike Ross and Mercedes, Samantha's bank of skins and textures was entirely cut from the game in mid-production. As some sort of symbolic shout-out, a character of exact same skin properties as hers does appear as a stock asset in the game's original box, facing backwards in relation to the viewer. A character with the same properties also makes a brief appearance in the game's intro video.
Mercedes					Samantha's "hot" roomie. One could say her existence in game is justified by the large amount of Simoleans she's inherited with at some point in the demo's guided tour, as well as being a potential love interest for Ross. Technically, she is the only character in this demo that can be replicated, head to toes, by a player in the final build, as both her body and head meshes have gone through all of the following development iterations until the retail one, having suffered only compulsory tweaks, as you would expect from most resources that, by chance, prove themselves to be good enough in all stages of production since their conception. Attagirl.

November

Will Wright presents a demo of The Sims at the fifth Door of Perception conference in Amsterdam, entirely dedicated to games and technology. The game, now under Electronic Arts and significantly different than previous iterations, was part of his talk titled "Build, Buy, and Live." Wright innocently predicted a four-month release window (it actually took eleven more months!). In spite of the brief online exposure of two of the game's snapshots at the conference's webpage, only thumbnail remnants survived.

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  Kids love failure: Wright's written rehearsal upon his The Sims presentation at Doors of Perception 5: PLAY.

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  Prior to 2019, this was one of the two existing media of a 1998 The Sims' build of public reach.

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  Neighborhood Menu, plus some unintelligible signs.

Irk's Artwork

We made it! Hadn't Electronic Arts green-lit the The Sims project, the game's shipping — as well as this article's following segments — would be but a dream. Thank you for this.

Visual Development

The game saw a massive creative face lift at this point. In order to seek an overdue continuity in visual terms, mid-to-high fidelity mock-ups by Eric "Irk" Hedman describe what is getting nearer from what the players know as the Sims' look. Among their design proposals, it's notable that an effort has been made for the development of doors and windows placed diagonally, at the isometric world — also observed in leftover alpha channels at the final game's sprite resources. The house renders also notably have foundations, which would not be introduced until the next mainline entry. Some of the items shown in these mock-ups would appear unscathed in the final game: the dresser and dining table appear in these same forms, while refined versions of the double bed, grill, and stereo system would also appear in the final.

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New Animations

adult-backrub
Keyframe	bkrubbee-start	bkrubber-start
	bkrubbee-goto-loop	bkrubber-goto-loop
	bkrubbee-refuse	bkrubber-refused
bed-getout
a2o-bed-getoutl-lazy
Keyframe	Animation
Keyframe	a2o-bed-getoutr-normal	a2o-bed-getoutr-energetic

(All Renders & Concepts but "backrub": Eric Hedman - Flickr (2003-2013))

("backrub" Concept: The Sims Storyboard Gallery (2000))

(Animations: Ripped from the game)

December

Bobo's "Swelling Itching Brain" Build

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Samantha, Mercedes and Ross meet again. Known as the build that implemented the extremely-providential cheat codes system to the simulator and a certain upside-down lady, it seems to mark a definite departure from the former tongue-in-cheek approach for the game, in exchange for a more and more mundane appeal. The first occurrences of The Sims being covered in the world's tech magazines are also derivative from this build, solidifying the idea that the game would, in fact, see a future shipping. Often attributed to Eric "Bobo" Bowman is what codifies this build: An overhauled Control Panel UI Graphic, visually subservient to a central X-Ray vision of a cranium whose brain twinkles, depending on the characters' actions. Oh!—And, of course, the debut of the game's trademark mantra Build, Buy, and Live.

(Source: LUCPIX)

(UI Mock-up: Design Document - 1998-10-01)

(Conceptual Artwork: ["The Sims' Unseen Design Notebooks - Revealing Gaming's History"])

GUI

Apr '98	Jun '98	Dec '98

(Source: PC Games Magazine, 79, 1999-04)

The UI has undergone a major overhaul from the previous demos, with its three main modes being finally renamed as Build, Buy, and Live. Now the character thumbnails appear to be generated by the engine itself, rather than being pre-rendered images as in the previous demo. The control panel now appears to support the generation of new Sim thumbnails, as it previously did on the April build. This time, only their head meshes are displayed. It offers a maximum of eight free thumbnail slots for each family in the same way as the final, even though the character's facial expressions are still sensitive to their mood here. The GUI's hierarchy and iconography are generally very similar to those used in the final version, although they are darker and have notably lower saturation. The interface features a distinctive cranium-shaped buttons, where each section represents a facet of the Sim's traits. As per usual, clicking on a section reveals information about the Sim's personality, work status, and skills. The savefiles' level titles are no longer rendered on the screen.

Personality Panel

Jun '98	Dec '98

(Source: Computer Gaming World, 176, 1999-03)

The Sim personality system underwent a significant upgrade in this version, replacing placeholder traits with those that ultimately appeared in the final release. Notably, the menu displays the string IDs associated with the "lower" end of these personality traits, a feature that was not implemented in the final version. This build first introduces the ultimately-scrapped "Selfish/Generous" personality traits. The final build sports leftover flag/string ID's associated with them, albeit entirely useless in gameplay since no objects check how "generous" Sims are. And, from this point in development onward, the Personality Panel no longer lists the active Sim's talk interests (something that later could only be done via a cheat code).

Skills Panel

Jun '98	Dec '98

(Source: PC Games Magazine, 79, 1999-04)

The Skills system has been updated:

• The "Literacy", "Social", "Physical" and "Work" skills are no longer used.
• Some of skills' names have been rewritten to smaller strings:
  • "Cleaning" is now Clean
  • "Cooking" is now Cook
  • "Gardening" is now Garden

Build Mode

Jun '98	Dec '98

(Source: SimPly Divine - The Story of Maxis Software (1999))

The design overhaul extends to other control panel segments as well, Build Mode included. Further reinforcing the idea that object thumbnails are now engine-generated, the game has eliminated empty, placeholder Build Mode slots for features under development. The objects thumbnails are consisted of a pale hue; this style has been consistently used in the game until the very last weeks of development.

Grass

Early	Final

At this point, the default terrain palette appears to have been finalized, showcasing a more realistic aesthetic achieved through significantly reduced saturation compared to previous entries.

Fire

This build marks the first appearance of group food servings (both Regular and Quick meals) and fire from poor cooking skills!

(Source: Computer Games Strategy Plus Issue 03/99)

New Sim Features

General

Despite the UI/thumbnail upgrades and other aesthetic changes, no new Sim meshes or textures were added in this build. This thought comes from the observation that all existing snapshots show the same cast of characters from earlier demos. To date, the gameplay/scenario/plot differences between this demo and Steering Committee's remain unknown.

(Source: BowsersaurusRex (Reddit))

Suit Changing

This build is notable for first introducing clothes/texture changing for the characters, when they previously did not take their clothes off before bathing.

(Image 1: Computer Gaming World, 176, 1999-03)

(Image 2: CNET Game Center Preview (March 1999))

Trailer on SimCity 3000 Disc

sims.mpg
12-22-98 00:26

The Sims sees a first promotional effort as a cryptic COMING SOON video shipped in SimCity 3000's demo files.

Three out of the pre-made Sims made up until this point in development wave at the player in a burgeoning residential zone, announcing a new game, a new focus and way of life... whatever it could possibly mean for the viewers at the time. Little had Sam, Ross and Mercedes known that, in no time, they would not be Samantha, Ross and Mercedes, but just about anything the player wanted them to be...