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1051. 2 Million Visitors!

Written on Monday 29 March 2004 at 18:37 by ChEeTaH - 1 comment.

After 2 years and 2 months since we started counting our visitors, The Sims Zone has reached another milestone. The counter just got to 2,000,000 unique visitors during the almost 775 days that were counted. Time for some statistics: since the launch on 17 November 2001, over 1300 newsposts were written. Almost 700 comments were made to newsposts since we launched the members area in February 2002. In the same time, over 7,300 member accounts were created, and about 900 of them have logged in in the past month. There have been more than 110 community news posts since July 2002, when we opened the community section. Members have posted about their updated sites about 230 times, while there are currently 100 links to sites by members. The 25 links on our Links page got close to 39,000 hits altogether from The Sims Zone, while our Affiliates do a little bit better. Our current affiliates are good for over a massive 70,000 (!) hits. We also started our popular Sim Brother in January 2002. Currently we're 3 series later, and during those 3 series Andy has written 244 daily reports and specials. During the history of The Sims Zone, we have posted more than 580 files, of which some also come from TheSimsFusion, the site this was before it became TSZ. When it comes to polls, we've also achieved quite a bit. Almost every week we post a new poll, and currently number 116 is running. Together they're worth close to 700 answers. In total, about 28,000 people have voted in all those polls. Finally, our most recently launched feature, the Knowledge base, has proven to be very popular. The more than 550 questions have resulted in a staggering 1150+ answers. In total, there are already almost 100,000(!) views to the questions in total. There are also more than 500 subscriptions to questions. Nice note is that there are the most questions in the Sims 2 section: it contains over 50% of all the questions! Most of the questions have been answered, but members are posting new questions and answers every day. That concludes this round of statistics. As time progresses The Sims Zone will continue to grow, and we're definitely ready for another 2 Million visitors. Keep visiting!

1052. New Sims 2 Screenshot

Written on Thursday 25 March 2004 at 18:47 by ChEeTaH - 10 comments.

Maxis is moving, but still they're providing us with new screenshots. It looks a bit messy, as if the Sims only just moved in (coincidence?). That's all we have currently though. More information about it will probably follow soon. Click the thumbnail below to see the full shot.

1053. The Add-on Handler: Translators wanted!

Written on Friday 19 March 2004 at 20:22 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

If you would like to help out the international Sims community, but don't know how yet, here's a chance! I'm looking for people who would like to translate one of my programs, The Add-on Handler. The next version, which is in progress, will have the option to be translated to other languages, using language files. That is to help all those people who are not so familiar with English to use the program just as easily as everybody else. I'm looking for people to translate the program for me, as my knowledge of foreign languages isn't too great. Read on (click "Read More" if necessary) for more information...

Read More!

1054. Sims 2 Artwork and Screenshot

Written on Saturday 13 March 2004 at 02:35 by ChEeTaH - 3 comments.

Maxis has published a new artwork and a screenshot today. The artwork wishes everybody a happy St. Patrick's Day, while the other screenshot shows how much fun Sims can have in a spring garden, complete with pool. And if you pay attention to details, you'll notice the progress bar above the head of the kid in the pool. This probably means that children have skills too, with (probably, as in The Sims 1) the body skill being trained by swimming. Maxis has not yet talked about that though. You can view the images in their full size by clicking the thumbnails below.

1055. Small SimDay [Update]

Written on Thursday 11 March 2004 at 12:33 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

It's SimDay again, but this time it's not very big. The main news is that there are two brand new screenshots of The Sims 2. Swinging and swimming Sims can be seen now, in close-up with the new camera mode. To view those shots, click here. Then there's a link to a thread on the BBS started by SimMasterKatikins. If you can tell why you want The Sims 2 using the first leters of the colors of the rainbow (R, O, Y, G, B, I, V), or want to read why others want it, click here. And although the (not so very busy) chat last night was about the SimCity BAT tool, there was one interesting question asked about how The Sims 2 and SimCity might work together:

Da_Fitz: "Is there a possibility that houses created in The Sims 2 could be exported as lots in Sim City 4?"
MaxisMyke: "There is a possibility, the Sims2 engine has the capability to do it, but it would require quite a bit of work to get it done properly. I doubt we will ship with this functionality, but its possible for an expansion."

You can read the complete transcript on this page on the SimCity website. Finally, there's a "Spring Garden Show" on the official site next week. If you think you are the best at creating gardens in The Sims, then make one using the game and expansions. Take pictures and create a family album on the official site. Submit the link to the album before "midnight Sunday, March 14 (probably in PST, which means it has to be in before 8 am on Sunday - or Monday if Maxis means the midnight at the end of Sunday - in the UK, or 9 am in Europe). The 25 best gardens will be selected and shown on the official site next week. For all the ins and outs, be sure to read this page.

[Update 12 March, 18:25] Maxis has updated the site a bit more. First of all there's the interview with Lyndsay McGaw. Maxis has posted this on their own website. You can click here to read it on the official site. The final part of the SimDay, is the Bustin' Out CD. All the music was already available for download, but now you can also download the cover art to make your CD look perfect. You can download these arts separately, together, or even together with all the music. Click here for all downloads.

1056. New Poll

Written on Thursday 11 March 2004 at 01:00 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

The Sims has been compared to Big Brother a lot, and in a way is a reality video game. But there are many reality shows on TV, too many to list. We've made a selection of popular shows, and wonder what your favourite is. Let us know and vote on the right, or at this page.

The previous poll was about the screenshots of The Sims 2. As many probably expected, the "Awesome! They rock!" option won. And big time: it got 72% of the votes. "They're looking quite good" came second with 'just' 21%. "I think they're alright, but not too great either." got 12 of the 220 votes, which makes 5%. "I don't really like them" and "I'm not interested in them at all" were tied with 1 vote each, making just 0.45% of the total amount. The "Blah, they look crappy" option got one more vote than that, and stays just under 1%. A nice overview can be found on this page.

1057. Back on a new Server [Update]

Written on Wednesday 10 March 2004 at 13:42 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Some of you may have noticed some downtime the past couple of hours. That's because the site was transferred to a new server (we're now with a host that offers more bandwidth than our previous one for the same price), and we had to take some time to make sure the files etc. on the new server were all up to date. Everything has now been transferred, and a few files which were deleted without me knowing about it have been restored as well. That means it's now possible to post comments to community news again. Furthermore, we now have a couple of subdomains so you can access parts of the site even easier. They work for both our .co.uk and .com domains, but I'll list them as .co.uk here:

Of course all the old URLs still work as well. Furthermore nothing should be different than before, except that you may notice some difference in the loading speed of the pages. If you notice any errors on the site, please e-mail me with as many details as you can give me. Thank you.

[Update 14:15] It seems that the subdomains aren't working for everybody yet, but that they in some cases show a "Default Plesk Page". That page doesn't come from us (since this server doesn't run Plesk), and I don't know what is causing the problem exactly (it could be that the DNS databases aren't all up-to-date yet). We hope that this problem will solve itself automatically within the next few hours.

1058. TSZ Improved!

Written on Sunday 15 February 2004 at 01:00 by ChEeTaH - 2 comments.

It's been only two weeks since we launched the Knowledge Database, and we've already added some major improvements. The biggest is the new rating of answers. Members can now say how helpful an answer is by giving it a score from 1 to 5. This will help others to see what the most accurate answer to a specific question is. Also, the questions in a section are now listed in tables, and you can see immediately when it's been posted, how many answers there are, and how many times a question has been viewed already. Another new feature is that you can now sort the lists any way you want: on the text of the question, when it was posted, the amount of answers, the date of the latest answer or the amount of views (default). And all that can be done both ascending and descending. Your setting will be stored using a "cookie" so it will stick the the item you chose last for sorting the lists. The same functionality has been added to the Files section. But: that section has undergone some other improvements as well! There now is the "DLs/Day" information in the table, or Downloads per Day. It shows the average amount of downloads every day. The "Most Popular" list is now using that data to determine which files are the most popular. It is now also possible for members to post their comments about specific files, just like you'd post comments to the news or community news. Finally, we've added an RSS Feed for the files section as well, so you can quickly see what's new at TSZ without visiting it!

As if those improvements to both the Knowledge and Files sections aren't enough, some general bugs have been fixed at TSZ as well. "New" items on the front page won't be marked as new for (6 hours) too long anymore. We've also improved the Sidebar, where you can now also check out the latest questions from the knowledge database. Some bugs there have been fixed as well. Finally there are some other minor bug fixes throughout the site.

We hope you'll enjoy the new and improved features here at TSZ. Of course none of the old functionality has gone lost. Instead we've only made a ton of improvements, which should make your experience here a lot better. Of course if you ever have any suggestions for improvements, let us know!

1059. SimDay

Written on Thursday 29 January 2004 at 10:35 by ChEeTaH - 2 comments.

This week's SimDay is more of the same really. That doesn't make it less nice though. First of all, there are 6 more MP3 files of Bustin' Out. These tunes, and the 12 from the past two weeks, can be downloaded from this page. Secondly, The Sims has been voted in the top 10 family games of 2003 at Daytrum:

"For those who like to meddle and micro-manage the lives of tiny, virtual people in a strategy game, there's Electronic Arts' The Sims. In the best version yet for the consoles, The Sims Bustin' Out lets players take their Sims out of the house and into new locations to play and work and interact with new characters. On the PC, The Sims Double Deluxe bundles the original The Sims game with the fun Livin' Large and House Party expansion packs to add more features, objects and places. And if you want to add some magic to your sim experience, there's the latest add-on, The Sims Makin' Magic, which gives sims magical powers."

You can read the whole article right here. Then there's The Sims 2 stuff: there are 3 screenshots, which have been posted here last weekend. You can now find them at the official site too. Finally there's a new interview with a webmaster again. This time it's my turn, so if you're one of the few who wants to know what games I play, what I think of The Sims 2 and EA and more, then enjoy the read. Remember to join the chat tonight at 11am (7pm in the UK, 8pm in Europe) tonight.

1060. The Add-on/Neighborhood Handlers updated!

Written on Saturday 6 December 2003 at 23:49 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

It's been a long wait, but I'm happy to say that I've finally released new versions of both The Add-on Handler and The Neighborhood Handler. The Add-on Handler is available for everybody right here. Nore that you do need the full version, even if you have a previous version. This is because all the DLLs have been updated because I'm using newer software now. The Neighborhood Handler is only available to members of the Yahoo! Group now, but everybody will be able to download it next week. Members received an e-mail with details where to find the new version. If you want it now, I recommend you become a member (for free) and download it. As both programs now use the same DLL files, you will only have to download the full version of one of the programs. For a list of the major changes, read more...