Still from San Francisco, I'm going to give you some more information about TS2. Like yesterday I'll be writing a bit about the game. It's only a small bit though, as we did receive too much information to write about here. You can still expect the special to be put up later this week. Read more to find out about the new building options in TS2...
After you loaded an empty lot, you'll often see the typical mailbox and trashcan again. They've been redesigned a bit, and they're looking a lot better now. As told yesterday, you can change the terrain as you like. Since it's a simple tool, you'll be able to have parts of grass, and parts of desert.After changing the terrain, which of course can be edited at any time, it's time to build the foundation of your house. That foundation allows you to build on hills easier, which is now possible as well. You can place some modular stairs so you can let your Sims walk up too. Railings are added separately, so you can add railings or one side, both sides, or neither sides. It's also possible to place diagonal blocks of foundations at once, instead of having to do it all manually.
Once the foundation's done, you should build some walls. Again, you can place them pretty much any way you like. You don't necessarily need a foundation to build on, but it's useful if your terrain isn't even. Another new thing is that you can make sharp corners in the walls, which looks a bit like this: |\ (yes, it's hard to explain in words...) All this building you want to do can be done using a brand new top-down view, but also from the regular camera angles. Top-down does give you a good overview of your house though.
Placing floors and walls - especially walls - still works pretty much the same as in The Sims 1. There are some new options when it comes to floors though. For instance, if you have a big floor texture (1024x1024 pixels), it'll stretch over several tiles. That'll allow you to get a less symmetric floor with more ease.
Finally, the roof: when it comes to textures, there's still a lack of them in the version that we saw. There were 8 textures, and in a huge neighborhood you'll miss some variation. However, you can now actually create the news yourself in a much better way. You can choose what you want your roof to look like, and so gable-end roofs, as shown in the original introduction movie of The Sims 1, will now also be available for you. Of course you can also have flat roofs. On the roofs, you can place some objects like chimneys (out of which you'll see some smoke if the fireplace is on).
For now, that's the information I'm giving. There's a lot more I got to tell, including more about those building options. The version that we've seen of The Sims 2 is pre-alpha, and there was obviously still a lot to be done. It'll probably take another few months before the game's released, but there's no definite date yet. Expect a lot of more new info in the special that's coming up soon.
Written at 05:18 on Sunday, 16 November 2003 by ChEeTaH.
