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's a load of images from Shared/Sys/ which they all appear to be for a debug menu(?) of some sorts, can someone upload them please? Some of the images are for HitLab, used in The Sims Online and this game for sound.

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. If one checks the credits for The Sims Vacation/On Holiday, The Sims Gold is mentioned.

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 Lot Data

The game can handle 100 lots, House00.iff through House99.iff however some lots are not used by the game in any game version. Below is a list of lot numbers (HouseXX.iff) that are not used and have something special about them. If any other unused lot is loaded the game will simply try to treat it as a residential "Sim Lane" lot. However the game engine will correctly pull a lot zone from Neighborhood.iff if one is added.

#	Info
00	NPOs and Ghosts have this house number. In Hot Date and later this is the house number assigned to the "Townies". Later EPs use this as the house number for other generated public visitors such as the Vacation Tourists and Makin' Magic Stranges.
11	Not much special other than the fact it actually has a street and a different style of crosswalk. A video tour can be seen here.
21 and 22	The game will try and treat this as a downtown lot.
49	The game will try to treat this as a Vacation Forest lot.

Lots 12 through 20 and 32 through 39 are not defined anywhere and load as described above.

Although the game can be forced to load the lots, the game simply generates and entirely blank lot for them since there is no default data available in the game files. This "default" generated lot is simply a 60x60 square with the default green grass. However, the lot generation code does include all "global" objects including the lot controller objects which means they do function correctly, to a point. The vacation lots have a Vacation Director Lana walking around, functioning properly but no payphone objects to get home.

Unused Animations

• All cars contain animation strings, which correspond to working animations in the game data, for opening the doors and sitting down inside both a seat on the left and right. The cars, however, have no door graphics which can be opened or interior graphics which a 3D animation proper door could sit in top of.

Unused NPCs and NPC Features

Some Base Game NPCs are named in a format such as job_fafitmed suggesting that multiple firefighters, maids and mail carriers were planned to be generated live. Hot Date does feature multiple variants of cashiers and restaurant staff which will spawn if the same objects are used more than once on the same lot.

NPCs

• Bones *Anim Test, An animation test sim which was left in by mistake, probably. There is no way to make him or her functional. This sim causes the game to hang if you try to load it onto a lot. No debug mode error is shown by the SimAntics engine.
• Party Clown - Not the Tragic clown form LL or the Entertainer Clown from House Party. This NPC appears to have been conceived as an entertainer for a children's party. Some ideas were probably rolled into the other Clown NPCs, though. This sim will crash the game to desktop if you try to load it on a lot. No debug mode error is shown by the SimAntics engine.

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.

UI Strings

UIText.iff contains many strings which are used and naturally some that aren't (funny how that works, eh?).

• There are no user-directed actions available - The game simply displays no tooltip for this and does not let the user do anything.
• Must be at center of tile - Objects snap to the center of the tile or to a slot. While the game can handle objects elsewhere perfectly fine it's strange to imagine the player seeing this.
• Must be in corner, Can't be in corner - The game has no flag to mandate an object must be in or can not be in a corner so this goes unused in place of a more genetic error.
• Must be on its own tile on the ground - unused in favor of the more genetic "can not intersect other object".
• Must be on diagonal - Not used by the self-admission of the notes section of the STR# resource.
• User should never see this message! - It's clear why this was unused in the final game.
• Can't effect first level from second level. - Again, unused by admission of the notes.

Hotkeys

The Hotkeys are defined in UIText.iff resource 161 - presumably so they could be changed by the localization teams easily.

• A for Anti-Alias toggling is is removed in Vacation, after Hot Date always forced it on by default.
• S for Shadows does not seem to work and was likely removed in favor of the shadow detail level setting in the UI.

Regional Differences

Note that even though UK English has a valid language entry and does contain some graphical changes (such as its own title screen, usually identical to the US one) almost all UK strings are blank meaning the game will pull from the US English strings. The game is programmed so that if a string is missing in a language it will try the language with ID 0, which is American / US English. While this is helpful behavior for other data stored as strings it means almost all UK English strings are, literally, the same as the US English strings.

Logos and Start Screens

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 the way families are referred to left the title difficult to translate and still read as a title.

The Sim People logo matched other Sim games internationally but not the stylized logo of The Sims series until the Unleashed expansion.

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

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.

Names

All of the text was translated and localized quite well with the translators taking care to make jokes work when possible, such as Mrs. Crumplebottom being fairly consistently named something to do with a wrinkled or buttoned anus. That said all of the starting sims (such as Bob and Betty Newbie and Mortimer, Bella and Casandra Goth) have different names in all versions. The Sims 2 also is not necessarily consistent with all of the translations. Mortimer's bio in German suggests that he dislikes Garlic.