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661. WarCry Interview Part 2

Written on Friday 9 July 2004 at 02:49 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

WarCry has posted part 2 of the interview with Lucy Bradshaw. Part 1 was posted last week. This time there's one little bit of news, namely how you can change the clothes, hairstyle, etc. of your Sim during gameplay: you just pick a mirror or visit a community store, and get a new outfit with that. Also, it's said that you won't be able to change the face of your Sim during their life, so no plastic surgery for your Sims:

"There are some reasonable limits set to the player customization of their Sims. For example, Bradshaw mentioned that, 'Their facial features are set at the time of creation, whether in Create A Sim or via a birth in the game.' Once these are set, there is no turning back, 'but you can choose new hairstyles, colors, accessories and clothing at any time in the game, by using any mirror in the game or by visiting a community store that sells clothing (or magazines, video games etc.) This is pretty important, since as your Sim grows up, you probably want to help them select styles that are fitting to them. Another fun thing in regards to a Sim growing up, is the use of the Design Tool, in the Build and Buy modes. You can outfit a child Sim's room in all pink and stuffed animals but when they become a teen, you can simply re-decorate and not have to buy all new furniture.'"

Furthermore there's some talk about The Body Shop and going through the life of your Sims. Just read the entire article for all the details. Thanks to David for the tip.

662. SimDay [Update]

Written on Thursday 8 July 2004 at 15:08 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

This week's SimDay is small compared to last week. There is a bit of news though. First of all, Maxis is still asking people to join the Focus Group 12 July, about The Sims on the consoles. See this page for more. Furthermore there's a Sims 2 piece about installing custom content to The Sims 2. It was included in Lucy's Email as well last Saturday, but you can now read it again on the official site. There's also a new preview of The Sims 2 by Yahoo! Games. It once again goes over all the new things like aspirations, genetics and graphics. Just read the preview for all the details.

On to the URBZ, Maxis has posted 8 shots of the game on the GBA. They've been seen here before though. Brand new are the 11 sketches that have been posted though. They show some objects and places in their very first stage of design. Finally, the blog this week is about the "First Playable" version that was talked about last week, but also about an upcoming annual event called "Camp EA". It will be held next week, 15 July, and Scot Amos will tell some more about it then. This is a bit of what he has to say about the game this week:

"On the game-side, we have three districts packed with new characters, new micro-game jobs, tons of new objects to play with, and stunning new social interactions with new in-game 'action cameras'; they make the game feel like you're in control of a living sitcom!"

You can find the screenshots, the sketches and of course the blog on the official URBZ Website.

[Update 18:25] By playing an online game, "Poppit!", between 20 and 30 July, you can win The Sims Mega Deluxe or any of the Sims expansion packs. You can find the game on EA Pogo. You need an EA.Com account to sign in.

663. More Urbz GBA Shots and Movies

Written on Saturday 3 July 2004 at 20:41 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Games site IGN has posted 9 new screenshots and 5 new gameplay movies for the Urbz on the GBA. Although the movies are currently available to IGN Insiders only, everybody can see the screenshots, which are posted at the bottom of this post. If you're an Insider and want to see the videos, go to the video page. You can also find their list of screenshots on the screenshots index.

664. Will and Lucy to talk about Sims

Written on Saturday 3 July 2004 at 15:34 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

In a couple of days, on 7 July, Maxis co-founder Will Wright, who designed the Sims and SimCity, and Lucy Bradshaw, producer of The Sims 2, will hold presentations about the history of Sims and The Sims 2. The IGDA, Internation Game Developers Association, organised the event which will be held at the EA Campus in Redwood City, California. It'll start 7pm with "Refreshments and socialization". At 7.30, Lucy will have her say about the Sims 2 for 30 minutes. After a 10-minute break, Will Wright will present the "History of the Sims", followed by a Q&A session. A limited amount of seats is available, and the event is open only to EA employees and IGDA members. Those people can still sign up for a seat. See the IGDA website for more information.

665. Lucy's Mail: Custom Content and the puck

Written on Saturday 3 July 2004 at 04:51 by ChEeTaH - 5 comments.

Lucy has sent her weekly e-mail again, and this time she introduces Darren Futa, who talks about how custom content enters the Sims 2. In the new game, custom content will be much easier to find, as you can easily categorise it into several collections. You can give your collections a name and icon, and of course make as many as you like. Of course, as customisable as The Sims 2 will be, you can import custom icons for those collections. All custom content will be marked with a snowflake (as you can also see in the Body Shop), so you can easily distinct Maxis-made from user-made content. Also, you can download and install new content straight from within the game, so you can keep it running 24/7 and still get new stuff for your Sims. Although the information isn't really new since it was already talked about at The Sims 2 University, some of the graphics are. Darren doesn't mention the option to enlarge the catalog when buying stuff so you see more on each page, though that's probably still in the game. Finally there's also an extra artwork made for the 4th of July, which you can see below this bit (click the thumbnail to enlarge). The other graphics have been put between the text so you know what they're talking about exactly. The text can be found in the "Read More" bit or below.

Read More!

666. Chat Transcripts

Written on Saturday 3 July 2004 at 03:07 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

The chat with Neil Young, the new General Manager of Maxis since March, was quite a success. It's over though, and many questions have been answered. A few interesting things are that the first expansion for The Sims 2 will be released early next year, and there are currently 5 designs for expansion packs, with one being released approximately every 6 months. When the game itself is released in September, you can get it in either a 4 CD(!) version, or all on one DVD. The current plan is that the DVD will be for pre-order customers only, which means it won't be available in regular stores. However, that's subject to change, and of course we hope it'll be a stayer. About the release date: as everybody knows it should be in stores 17 September almost worldwide, but it may be a little earlier in some countries, depending on their usual release days for games. The release date for the Mac version of The Sims 2 has not yet been announced, but there definitely will be a Mac version. MySim pages on the official site will be enhanced for The Sims 2. New tools to create custom content will also be released, but most likely only after the release of the game itself. Something that should definitely be highlighted is that in some way we can expect multiplayer options to come to The Sims 2 next year, which will probably mean in the second expansion pack. It's not sure how that will work out exactly, though it's said it won't be a "Persistant World" (PSW) like The Sims Online is. Unfortunately that's all there's being said about it, but we should get more info about that next year.

About the Urbz, there's the news that it's currently planned to be released 16 November. Very interesting was the news that Maxis is planning to make Sims games (possibly the URBZ) for PlayStation Portable (PSP) and the Nintendo Dual Screen (DS). Finally there's some talking about SimCity 5, which is supposed to "go back to its roots" and Will's upcoming game. We'll probably hear the first official word about that game early next year, or at least "after the holiday season". You can read the entire transcripts, with also some personal information about Neil Young, on the Sims 2 site or the Sims 1 site.

667. Urbz News and Screenshots

Written on Saturday 3 July 2004 at 01:51 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

As our affiliate SimsZone.de reports, Maxis has made the name "The Urbz" the final name for the new console Sims game. That means it's no longer a working title, but you'll see it in stores under that name. It's the first Sims game without "Sims" in the title, though the subtitle, "Sims in the City", is still there. The first name, "Urban Sims" won't be spread anymore. It's not been confirmed if the logo is final too or not. Furthermore, we have some brand new screenshots from the GBA version of the game for you. Watch and see how creating your Urb (Sim) works, what Darius has to tell you and what an urban basketball court looks like. Just click the thumbnails below for (slightly) bigger versions.

668. SimDay - Lots of Sims 1, Sims 2 and URBZ news

Written on Thursday 1 July 2004 at 13:52 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

This week's SimDay is quite big. The lots of info brings stuff for The Sims 1 (New download), The Sims 2 (Enhanced ShowCase and new trailer), and the URBZ (BBS, Screenshots and blog entry). Besides that, the chat tomorrow has been rescheduled to be at 2pm to 3pm PST, an hour earlier than normal. That means in the UK and Portugal it'll be held tomorrow at 10pm-11pm, while it's from 23.00 (11pm) to midnight in most of Europe.

There's a new bedroom set available for download this week. The "Green Bedroom Set" was originally given away in a McDonald's Promotion (probably the LidRock Promotion CD). You can download this set now from Get Cool Stuff.

According to Maxis, the features we've all been waiting for are here. You can now log in and download Sims from the Showcase, but you can also download the showcased Sims to the Body Shop now. Searching options have also been improved, all at the Body Shop Showcase. Further news is that a new The Sims 2 trailer has been posted on the video page. This is the extended version of the E3 trailer that's been released earlier. It highlights some of the main features of the game in over 2 minutes of film. Definitely worth watching if you're only slightly interested in the sequel.

Finally there's the URBZ. There are three new things to watch out for. First of all, you can now login to the site using your EA.Com account (login at the right top of the website). That enables you to view the brand new BBS which can be found on the website. Behind the Flash site, it's similar to the other BBSes, and you can access it directly at this page. It's not very active there yet at the moment, so get there and get talking. Besides this BBS, there's another load of screenshots for the URBZ as well. The 16 brand new shots and artworks should keep you gazing at the new graphics for a while. Finally Producer Scot Amos talks a bit about the progress of the game again in the latest blog entry. Biggest news from there is that Maxis has a major milestone today, the reaching of "First Playable" state. That means the game is now filled just enough to be playable. One of the major locations that's currently been done are the rooftops of 125th Street. Scot tells how amazing they look from within the game. Next week Maxis will give a little update about that, as well as some information about the next milestone. You can see it all on the URBZ Website.

669. Pop-ups for Members

Written on Wednesday 30 June 2004 at 00:00 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Due to disappointing results from the advertising campaigns at The Sims Zone, we've decided to enable pop-ups by default for members. Until now pop-ups wouldn't show up while you were logged in, but as we need more income to pay the bills, they now will. Members still have the option to turn them off, but of course we encourage you to keep them showing. It's no more than one pop-up per pageload. And even due to the lack of new donation files, we hope you can make a donation. Without donations and advertising income, we simply won't be able to pay our hosting bills. So please keep those pop-ups enabled, and make a donation to help us out! We appreciate it.

670. TSO Trial Available Again

Written on Saturday 26 June 2004 at 18:53 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

The TSO trial that recently became available is put back. It was taken offline earlier, causing "server errors" when you were trying to download the trial. That's now been fixed. However, you now need a credit card to be able to play the trial. It won't be charged for the first 14 days, but you have to cancel the subscription within that period to prevent it getting charged. The reason Maxis has done this is because the trial was abused in some ways. People could easily get multiple trial serial numbers, resulting in neighborhoods ran by one or just a few people. That disturbed many players. It seems that now the credit card is verified so that there's no more than one trial account per credit card. Go right here to sign up and download the free trial. Note that it's a massive 1.2 Gb download, so broadband is highly recommended.