The Sims will forever be one of those magic games to me; one that inspired me to learn MAX to get my own items into the game, non-perspective rendering, sprites, z-buffer, iirc. I still play and work in 3D to this day, game modding has taught me the best way to interact with a computer... create vs. consume!
It has this quality that I'd describe as toy-like, you can pick it up in so many different ways and let your imagination fill in the experience.
Personally I'd spend weeks just building, paused, filling up my account §§§ as I need, ignoring my sims at the curb. Other times I'd give it an honest play-through roleplaying as myself in a different world. Eventually I'd be mean and lock my Sims in a- (maybe I'll not document my war-crimes today.)
I'd reinstall and build up a fancy house, but I fear it'd grab me like a Factorio drip and I'd disappear into the Sims for a month. I think I'll give this a read instead, I haven't done the design-document thing since I studied Game Design in college many moons ago.
Thanks so much for posting all the tidbits and insight into another true gem of a game.
Wow, incredible. Reading these brings back so many memories. I remember spending so many hours in architecture mode designing houses, reading these makes me realize how well designed the whole thing was.
These design documents are incredibly rich. I would love to work at a place that had such clarity and vision before sitting down to actually write software…
Thanks for sharing! So great to learn more about this iconic game. Just recently there was a discussion about the Video Game History Foundation library — this feels like it could be a nice addition to it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42926076
> This is the prototype for the soul of The Sims, which Will Wright wrote on January 23, 1997. [...] This code is a interesting example of game design, programming and prototyping techniques. The Sims code has certainly
changed a lot since Will wrote this original prototype code. For example, there is no longer any "stress" motive.
The Sims Game Design Documents (1997)
(donhopkins.com)443 points by krykp 16 February 2025 | 60 comments
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If you want to download all quickly:
curl -s https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/ | \ grep -o 'href="[^"]"' | \ cut -d'"' -f2 | \ while read -r file; do # Skip parent directory and query strings if [[ $file != "../" && $file != "?"* ]]; then echo "Downloading $file" curl -O "https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/$file" fi done
It has this quality that I'd describe as toy-like, you can pick it up in so many different ways and let your imagination fill in the experience.
Personally I'd spend weeks just building, paused, filling up my account §§§ as I need, ignoring my sims at the curb. Other times I'd give it an honest play-through roleplaying as myself in a different world. Eventually I'd be mean and lock my Sims in a- (maybe I'll not document my war-crimes today.)
I'd reinstall and build up a fancy house, but I fear it'd grab me like a Factorio drip and I'd disappear into the Sims for a month. I think I'll give this a read instead, I haven't done the design-document thing since I studied Game Design in college many moons ago.
Thanks so much for posting all the tidbits and insight into another true gem of a game.
The Sims Steering Committee - June 4 1998
A demo of an early pre-release version of The Sims for The Sims Steering Committee at EA, developed June 4 1998.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs5QGN-zhwM&list=PL538B8AD43...
These design documents are incredibly rich. I would love to work at a place that had such clarity and vision before sitting down to actually write software…
Common sense approach to AI in game, no buzzwords, or resume driven development!
So they are basically drugged?