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Questions on the making of The Sims 1
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Questions on the making of The Sims 1 // Roundtable
Post by tamtam // Jul 14, 2008, 2:53pm
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tamtam
Total Posts: 213
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When The Sims came out, I was younger at the time, and I had it, and loved it. It was supposed to be the next big hit on the game market, and it was. Now there's The Sims 2, and the future holds a tight grasp on The Sims 3 (according to the site, it's coming out in 2009!:))
Questions about The Sims 1:
1. Is the game entirely 2d, or did they use 2d and 3d?
2. Are the characters/objects of The Sims 1 sprites made of 3d models?
3. To make the characters somewhat customizable, were the clothing, heads, hair, arms, legs, etc. made as separate objects?
Thanks!
- tamtam |
Post by Matski007 // Jul 14, 2008, 4:10pm
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Matski007
Total Posts: 539
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hopefully can answer some of your questions.
1. Is the game entirely 2d, or did they use 2d and 3d?
2D and 3D
2. Are the characters/objects of The Sims 1 sprites made of 3d models?
the characters were 3D, but the objects and house etc were mere sprites. They rendered out 4 different isometic angles to be used for each of the four available views in the game. There were as I remember small programs available which allowed you to model your own items and convert them into sprites to use in the game.
3. To make the characters somewhat customizable, were the clothing, heads, hair, arms, legs, etc. made as separate objects?
As far as I can remember, the characters were one of two models, either male or female. You could use sliders to effect the geometry of these models to change things such as tallness, wideness etc. Hair and cloathing were all textures mapped to fit this standard object. As I remember, making your own character merely involved creating a few textures (bitmaps I think) which you could then select in the game.
If you need any more info ill try my best, at the time I did look into this game, how it worked and also was able to create content for it |
Post by tamtam // Jul 14, 2008, 5:47pm
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tamtam
Total Posts: 213
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When you are talking about the sliders for changing the geometry, I believe you are actually thinking of The Sims 2, not The Sims 1, which does not have sliders to change the geometry's size, or shape. ;)
What I think is this:
- The heads are separate from the bodies. If you've ever seen texture maps for a sim in The Sims 1 (I have), it's made up of 2 textures: a head with a face and hair, and a body with clothing and a skin tone.
I hope that some day, i'll be making virtual pets, and human simulations as games.
Thanks for all the help! |
Post by Cthulhu // Jul 19, 2008, 6:32am
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Cthulhu
Total Posts: 48
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The objects were 2D sprites. In order to make new objects, you used a program (The Sims Transmogrifier) to find a similar object for what you wanted to replace, clone and export the graphics, then render your objects and import them back in. Here's an example from the old forums:
http://forums.caligari.com/discus/messages/1580/8333.html?
For simple objects like the lamp, there was the mask (black and white image), the "on" graphic, and the "off" graphic. For more complex objects with a back and front, like a chair, you'd render the isometric front and back view. The game would then flip the graphic so that you got all 4 views.
Making custom faces and clothes was pretty easy (sort of) in The Sims. You just find the "Skins" folder, make a copy of one of the head or body graphics, and edit it in a paint program. You keep the naming convention (B004MAFitmed_WhiteTux.bmp: you would change "WhiteTux", not the first part, because that tells the game what model to map it to). I found this to illustrate the body graphic:
http://pages.infinit.net/origami/Atelier_Quebec/skn2uv.html
There used to be a site where you could download the base nude and swimsuit skins so you could really start fresh without having to erase and repaint. I'm sure a search on Google would turn them up eventually. |
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