InfiniteSims has been keeping an eye on the various posts that Ocean Quigley, former Maxis employee, has been writing on his project blog (site contains nude drawings, so please be aware). His most recent posts contain information on how he designed the roof system for The Sims 2 as well as the graphics technique they used for SimCity 4 buildings. Read below for the full scoop!
SimCity4 was a proper 3D engine, with the view constrained to an orthographic perspective.
Buildings were rendered by projecting textures onto very simple 3D geometry. This allowed for sorting and interaction with terrain, that wouldn’t have been possible with simple sprites.
The buildings were basically imposters, a graphics technique that I’d seen at Siggraph back in 2000.
They looked pretty much normal if you saw them from this angle:
But if you rotated the view, the illusion was blown and everything looks weird.
I was hoping to use the underlying geometry to attach details like signs and water towers, but we ran out of time (and in any case, we didn’t want to create an authoring pipeline for sticking them on)
You can see what’s really going on with this view from below
My first experiments with imposters were for Simsville. In that game, we had a perspective camera, so they had to hold up to a little bit more camera motion. You can see some artifacts where the texture is projected through the roof, but all in all, it holds up pretty well.
Simsville didn’t come to fruition, but the stuff I learned while prototyping it fed into SimCity, so it wasn’t a total loss.
Probably the second hardest thing I ever had to design was the roof system for the Sims2.
The roof geometry had to be completely clean, and everything had to snap together perfectly, vertex to vertex and edge to edge without any overlaps (because we had to be able to hide and reveal different roof sections without any ragged edges showing).
And we couldn’t just solve the problem with CSG, as Irfan Zaidi quickly informed me, at least not with realtime performance.
It seems like it would be perfectly straightforward, but dealing with all of the crazy intersections and permutations felt like taking a 2 month long IQ test.
Here was a mockup I made in Maya while trying to think through the problem.
And this was just for the straightforward, rectangular roofs. The tricky problems came up when the roofs were rotated 45 degrees off of the grid.
I have been getting a few requests if I happen to have or know where a Sims 3 necklace can be purchased. Honestly, I do not know. The ones that I have shown in the past were from various EA events that were held to market / promo their upcoming games. The only way regular folks can get one is if they make it out of clay. That is what I am about to show you. Etsy, a site in which people add their hand-made crafts has a listing for a Sims plumbob phone charm for $4. Sure, it isn’t official but its all we have in the meantime unless you have a way to create one yourself. Phatloots, the person who crafted the item is also taking requests, so it is very much possible to get one made as a necklace. Contact them at the bottom of the page for more information.
Remember The Sims? Where you had the ability to basically create your dream house and control a person or group of people? Well now your can carry that magical crystal that hovers over an active Sim with your wherever you go! It can now dangle magically over your phone.
Comes with a black cell strap with a lobster clamp so you can take the charm off to make it easier to put on your phone, purse, etc.
It is made from polymer clay, baked and glazed to have a water resistant coat. The crystal is carefully shaped and cut by hand. The edges are outline in a darker green color to give the crystal a more defined shape.
Ocean Quigley, the Art Director for Spore has shared with us more of his projects from his past time working on both The Sims 2 and SimCity 4. Credit goes to InfiniteSims for the find!
SimCity 4 had this neat feature (put in by Paul Pedriana) where you could have the game advance a single frame and save a screencapture, advance another frame and save a screencapture and so on.
It let me make little movies of the game as I was working on it, without skipping any frames, which was impressive for the time.
Here’s one movie that I captured while authoring an aerobatic flying team for the game:
The airplane movement is all scripted with Andrew’s particle system, which means that there’s really no flight model there at all! Just particles attracting and repelling each other, and chasing the lead particle. It was pretty sweet! I could even have them explode if they got too close to each other or hit the ground.
The camera was just another particle parented to the lead jet.
I used that system in all sorts of unlikely ways. I think the coolest use was for the soccer games in the stadium. Eventually you’d notice that the team’s behaviour was a bit odd for soccer, but it held up to a cursory viewing.
The Sims 2 – Stairs
Here’s a design visualization I did for the Sims2 while trying to figure out how stairs should work.
It’s done in my favorite design tool, Maya. Doing visualizations like this is a great design practice for a few reasons.
First, it forces me to think through exactly how a system is supposed to work, step by step. So when eventually I ask an engineer to implement it in code, I’ve got a clear idea of what I’m asking for.
Second it’s way of expressing the problem to the other people who might care about it (designers, producers, engineers). And if it’s a good visualization, it makes the problem (and hopefully the solution) clear to everybody.
Have you ever said “Gee, these cars suck!” while playing either The Sims 3 or The Sims 2? Well you don’t have to live with those, oh no! I’m sure I plugged this website in the past, in fact you may even heard of them before – FreshPrinceCreations is the name, and cars is their game! Okay, so they don’t focus on cars all the time but a majority of their downloads are. Some of the best I ever seen – in fact even came across the following PT Cruiser for The Sims 3. Seeing how I own a red one, I was thrilled! Now only if they could offer my three favorite cars – General Lee, the BTTF Delorean and the Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters, I don’t think I’ll ever stop playing my sims game! LOL!
Live in Salt Lake City and have have what it takes to join the video game industry? Stop by EA Jobs and turn in your resume! EA has expanded their Salt Lake City Studio to take on a new, unannounced project according to Ben Bell:
“We’re truly thrilled to expand into Salt Lake City and what is becoming a growing and dynamic video game development scene,” said Ben Bell, Executive Producer at EA. “We’re looking to fill several critical leadership positions on an exciting new project.”
According to Kotaku, it states that Salt Lake City is home to Littlest Pet Shop and Nerf development teams… The Sims Team will establish a new project there…wonder if this new project have anything to do with The Sims 3 coming to consoles. If Ben Bell is somehow involved, I bet it might just be!
I feel very bad for fans and players in the Brazil community. While Brazilian fansites may have already known, it is news to me. According to WorldSims, EA has closed the doors on EA Brazil this past December, leaving the fans left in the dust and 40+ employees unemployed…Which is why we probably haven’t heard from SimVIP as he was a part of EA. Not only that, but their YouTube channel went offline and their official website has stopped being updated.
This may cause problems for the distribution of games… Dimensao Sims via twitter even stated they have yet to receive any sort of information regarding The Sims 3 High End Loft Stuff hitting their area. I just don’t understand…from all of the past events they held and as many fansites the Brazilian community has – why would they shut down EA Brazil? Was it losing that much money?
Julia Yu Tsao has quite the imagination. For his Graduate Thesis Project, he came up with the following idea of ‘Curious Displays’, a future display technology that becomes familiar with its surroundings and will point out certain aspects that the owner may not be aware of, much like how we point out things for our Sims to do in the game.
In a way it’s a very interesting idea but on the other hand, very terrifying. It just seems…creepy. Not to mention, what would happen if it would break? Hundreds of small pieces everywhere, that’s what. Thank god we’re a long, long ways off to pull off this kind of idea. I am still waiting on my hoverboard, dangit!
In a world where logic is a common trait for mankind, one company seems to lack it all – EA. Layoffs, losing money, more layoffs, lose more money, buy new studio, layoffs, lose money and close studio…when will it end? EA is putting their bets that Mobile gaming is the next big thing, thus why they have purchased the Melbourne based mobile developer IronMonkey Studios – who has worked on past games like The Sims 2 and the Need for Speed series. I wish them well, but frankily I don’t think this will help them any. But hey, just my thought…they could be doing quite well in the mobile department. It just seems like a silly move…
We all know the end of the story. Activision today is one of the biggest and most successful publishers in the world and owns the rights to some of the most popular gaming franchises, including 2009’s blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
But Kotick said that his high-level management style has proven costly on occasion. For instance, when Activision had the chance to buy Maxis, the developer of SimCity 2000. He visited their offices and spent an entire day looking at SimCity 2000, which was said to be buggy and unpolished. He thought the only reason to buy the company would be for the game and the franchise so he didn’t even bother to look at another title codenamed Jefferson in one of the back offices. It was being worked on by Will Wright and it turned into The Sims.
I don’t know what would have been better – the way it is now or if Activision had bought the company. Personally I’m kind of glad it’s at EA…It’s been a pretty good run all the way up until 2007 when EA switched CEOs. Bobby Kotick of Activision probably would have ran the Sims series into the ground faster than what EA could ever do. I mean how many Guitar Hero games did they produce last year? 7? I used to love that series, now I despise seeing the game in stores…
Here you will find programs, patches and tutorials for Maxis' created games as well as useless stuff that I enjoy or find on the internet. If you need to contact me, you can shoot me an email!
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Have you ever said “Gee, these cars suck!” while playing either The Sims 3 or The Sims 2? Well you don’t have to live with those, oh no! I’m sure I plugged this website in the past, in fact you may even heard of them before – 
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