The Sims (Windows)

The Sims
Developer: Maxis Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: Windows Released in US: Feburary 4, 2000 Released in EU: March 30, 2000 This game has unused graphics. This game has unused music. This game has revisional differences. This game has a prerelease article

The Sims is nothing but the Game of Life yet became one of the best selling PC games of all time.

To do: There appears to be unused lot data in the UserData folders, if one looks in the Housea folder, there's House00.iff, and House11.iff. It's possible to play them if you replace one of the other house iffs with the House00 or House11 lots. Can anyone have a look at this for me please?

Unused Music

For some reason, "Spooky 3" isn't used in the game at all. This might be because it didn't go well with other two Spooky variations. Spooky 1 can also be heard in the background as well, and it's also heard in Spooky 2.

Unused Graphics

There are some unused graphics in UIGraphics.far, which contains the game's UI images and other content.

To do: Rip the rest of the images, there's still more...

An image called Nbhd\DesignCharSkinsBtn.bmp. What's interesting is that this image shows a sim in an outfit not available in the final game.

Listed under the names Nbhd\DesignFamCancel.bmp and Nbhd\DesignFamDone.bmp. Both of these images seem to be placeholder buttons for the family creation screen. The buttons used in-game are empty, with text rendered over the button graphic.

An image called Nbhd\Marquee.bmp. It is unknown what this could be used for.

This image, labeled Nbhd\NScreen Loc.bmp, seems to be an early version of the neighborhood screen. The roads are darker, lack sidewalks and street markings, look slimmer, and are placed in different areas. Trees have been moved around as well. This is, however, very similar to the neighborhood screen which is used in non-US locales. This can be seen in the North American release if you set your language to anything other than US-English either by changing the registry or using a program such as EliSims.

This image is simply called Nbhd\SimEstates.bmp, and seems to be like it was once a clickable button judging by the outlines around the words and the color change in the middle.

This icon, called Nbhd\Smiley.bmp, is most likely a placeholder for the Friend Count icon where the budget is, since the final game has a file with this same name and a smiley face. It's unknown who the person is in the picture, maybe a developer.

Only present in the Deluxe Edition and later expansions and bundles is a setup placeholder under the name Other\setup_placeholder.bmp. The "Gold" subtitle can be assumed to be an early name for the Deluxe Edition.

To do: Check other expansions/bundles. Only checked Deluxe Edition, and it's not in vanilla.

This unused graphic labeled cpanel\CatalogUnknown.bmp was most likely a placeholder for objects in the buy menu with no icon. Later revisions of the game engine automatically generate the buy thumbnails from the sprite resources when they aren't explicitly defined in the object data. This means most players have never and will never see this in the buy catalog, although it can be seen in later versions of the game if an invention object's thumbnail can not be loaded.

This cpanel\People\UnknownRel.bmp file only gets used if a sim's portrait is missing or can't be loaded in the Relationship panel or in a speech bubble when one sim speaks about another. Some NPCs have this in their stored data, unused. The game will generate a thumbnail if it is missing so most players should not encounter this graphic. This can be seen if a thumbnail can not be generated or if a thumbnail is corrupt on generation which can happen with malformed skin files.

cpanel\People\UnknownThumbnail.bmp's purpose is pretty obvious, but this is never used. In earlier game versions a thumbnail of this size was generated but went unused. Later game revisions stopped generating this thumbnail under most circumstances.

cpanel\Buttons\UnknownFace.bmp is only used if a sim's portrait doesn't exist or can't be loaded. What's interesting that unlike the other 'Unknown' images, this one's a clickable button, which means it's used in Live Mode. Another fact is that there's emotions on the lady's face, neutral, happy, and sad, which corresponds with the sim's mood. In the final release, the plumbob shows the mood of the sim.

cpanel\Build\popuproofpattern.bmp was meant for the pop-up when choosing the roof pattern, much like the one for the roof pitch.

Unused Game Engine Features

The SimAntics engines which handles the object's code has some features which are not referred to by any Maxis objects as of the final game edition. Most things have straightforward names and most even function properly.

Primitive	Argument	Intended Function	Actually Works?
Global From Simulation...	Time Of Day	Check the time of day on the loaded lot.	Returns a string for the time of day, but is unused in favor of arguments which get the minute and second separately.
Global From Simulation...	Year	Keeps track of how many in game years have gone by.	Begins at 1997 (or on some lots 1996?) but will advance if you play a lot for 365 days.
Global From Simulation...	Last GZ Button ID	Checks for a macro button or hotkey.	Untested. Possibly rolled over from the Edith object creation environment.
Global From Simulation...	Budget Mod 10000	Adjust the budget by 10,000 simoleons.	Believed to refer to a developer mod budget cheat which was dummied out in 1.0 and removed almost entirely from 1.1 and up.
Global From Simulation...	Budget Div 10000	Divide the budget by 10,000 simoleons.	Believed to refer to a developer div budget cheat which was dummied out in 1.0 and removed almost entirely from 1.1 and up.
Global From Simulation...	Speed	Checks the current game speed	Works, but no object uses this. Note that some object do use the argument which checks to see if the game is paused.
Global From Simulation...	Held Sim Speed	Possibly refers to walking speed(?)	Untested since no one is sure what it is supposed to do, nor can an example be found.
Global From Simulation...	Lot Size	Check the current lot size	Works, but it checks the LOT size not the build able area defined in the lot's map data.
Global From Simulation...	Debug Flags	Checks for debug flags such as --Debug_Houses or --Debug_Sims.	Appears to work at least so far as checking if any flag is set. No object in the final game ever uses this.
Global From Simulation...	Maximum Day Number	Keeps a running tally of the days instead of resetting them when a new month ticks over.	While the game does track days months and years correctly the actual elapsed days does not stop when a new month ticks over (at least as of 1.1) suggesting that a full time system was scrapped early on or intended to be outsourced to a controller object.
Global From Simulation...	Free Will	Checks the adjustable level of free will.	Works, but effectively useless in the final game as most object interaction calculation is done by values set in the TTAB resource which handles free will meaning only in some oddly specific conditions would even version 1.0 of the game engine need this in a BHAV.
Global From Simulation...	Simless Build Mode	Introduced in Hot Date for building downtown.	The game sets this correctly when building on a lot without sims both community lots and for unleashed residential lots with no sims. Some object hackers have made good use of this, but no maxis objects seem to care.
Global From Simulation...	Machine Level	Checks the game's idea of the machine's specs, mostly based off of available RAM.	While this does correctly reflect the game's interpretation of the machine it is not great at handling most of today's machines so it is effectively useless.

Revisional Differences

When the game was released in Japan, the game's name was changed to SimPeople. Why this change was done is unknown, but it might have been done to keep the game in line with the other 'Sim' games. A common theory among fans is that the lack of definite articles in Japanese and they way families are referred to left the title difficult to translate and still read as a title.

Title Splash Screen for the US and UKEnglish editions.	Japanese 'Sim People' title screen.

Some expansions had different names in different languages. While are most are simply translations or similar expressions some translations are notable. Vacation is known as On Holiday in the UK and is the only time the UK had a title different from the US. The final expansion, Makin' Magic has the most unique titles, usually translated from the internal name Spellbound, being translated as everything from Hokus Pokus in Germany to Abracadabra in Dutch and Portuguese.

American English Splash and Title Screen	UK English Splash and Title Screen

The UK Makin' Magic title screen also has the expansion title rendered slightly higher than the American one, for some reason.

Makin' Magic American English title screen.	Makin' Magic UK English title screen.