XandWacky
Active Member
*covers ears* Go ahead!
[ARCHIVE] Final Checklist Discussion
- Thread starter Rhys
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SophiaBaby
Member
This is pretty amazing... I have been dreaming about this game ever since it was cancelled (long time player since early 2003). Is this game available for MacBooks? I downloaded the link but can't open any of the attachments =[
mrpenguinb
Active Member
Reimplementing games is very difficult, the fact that Corsix-TH took 4.5 years to reimplement and the fact that FreeSO (Project Dollhouse) has been in development for around 4 years is where a pretty good comparison was made on the old website for Project Dollhouse.
About the projects timeline: Posted on March 31, 2012 by Afr0
"Today I was asked on Facebook when this project would be finished. I tried to explain that it doesn’t have any deadline, but the message didn’t seem to go through.
Therefore I’m writing this post to put things into perspective. One of the projects that inspired me to do this was Corsix-TH. It aims to rebuild Theme Hospital using nothing but the game’s original assets and open-source code. The difference between that project and this is that Theme Hospital is a much older game, and much less complicated to rebuild. Corsix-TH has been in development now since mid-2009, and it only just reached version 0.01.
Think about that for a minute. Between 0.01 and 1.00 you can at the least put 9 incremental updates. And if each update takes 6 months to make, that equals out to 4.5 years. Now as far as I know, there is currently only one developer working on Corsix-TH, and hopefully more developers will join as the project matures. That’s my hope for this project as well, but at least these figures should put things into perspective."
Even though this post was made 4 years ago (not by Rhys to not be mistaken) it still seems relevant in some ways and show how far things have come which is pretty cool!
About the projects timeline: Posted on March 31, 2012 by Afr0
"Today I was asked on Facebook when this project would be finished. I tried to explain that it doesn’t have any deadline, but the message didn’t seem to go through.
Therefore I’m writing this post to put things into perspective. One of the projects that inspired me to do this was Corsix-TH. It aims to rebuild Theme Hospital using nothing but the game’s original assets and open-source code. The difference between that project and this is that Theme Hospital is a much older game, and much less complicated to rebuild. Corsix-TH has been in development now since mid-2009, and it only just reached version 0.01.
Think about that for a minute. Between 0.01 and 1.00 you can at the least put 9 incremental updates. And if each update takes 6 months to make, that equals out to 4.5 years. Now as far as I know, there is currently only one developer working on Corsix-TH, and hopefully more developers will join as the project matures. That’s my hope for this project as well, but at least these figures should put things into perspective."
Even though this post was made 4 years ago (not by Rhys to not be mistaken) it still seems relevant in some ways and show how far things have come which is pretty cool!
Our timeline is quite unusual, in that I've been the only person working on the gameplay side of things since darren made a start on it a few years ago. You'll notice that there are large gaps in my github activity, which are sometimes because I'm working on very large commits (recently), but mostly because I am working on something else, or doing exams... Needless to say, these wouldn't be as much of a problem if anyone else was contributing. Most of the recent gap was made up for by Darren's fantastic work on the mmo server, which definitely kickstarted the recent work.
https://github.com/RHY3756547/
It looks like Corsix TH has a similar issue, but they seem to be recieving some external contributions now. They also still have not "finished" the project, even 7 years later, maybe even due to issues similar to ours. I'm also not comfortable with Afr0 saying that TH is less complicated, which may be true but it's certainly not a writeoff and I would bet they had their own challenges to face.
I can see us launching soon, but due to the plugins system, the game will not be "complete" from at least a re-implementation standpoint until terrain is in and all the plugins are complete, which will happen some time after launch.
https://github.com/RHY3756547/
It looks like Corsix TH has a similar issue, but they seem to be recieving some external contributions now. They also still have not "finished" the project, even 7 years later, maybe even due to issues similar to ours. I'm also not comfortable with Afr0 saying that TH is less complicated, which may be true but it's certainly not a writeoff and I would bet they had their own challenges to face.
I can see us launching soon, but due to the plugins system, the game will not be "complete" from at least a re-implementation standpoint until terrain is in and all the plugins are complete, which will happen some time after launch.
JWofles
Active Member
I just realised on the freeso github page, there's a picture of a lot I made (the church)
I'm not speaking for everybody here but I get a feeling like the sims community isn't code-savvy and that kinda sucks in cases like this where none of us can help. Plus the game doesn't get much exposure and if it does, like when kpopp covered it, the viewers too aren't exactly the people who know how code :/
I'm not speaking for everybody here but I get a feeling like the sims community isn't code-savvy and that kinda sucks in cases like this where none of us can help. Plus the game doesn't get much exposure and if it does, like when kpopp covered it, the viewers too aren't exactly the people who know how code :/
SophiaBaby
Member
I'm actually considering buying a PC just so I can play this
TheMarshmallowBear
Active Member
I just realised on the freeso github page, there's a picture of a lot I made (the church)
I'm not speaking for everybody here but I get a feeling like the sims community isn't code-savvy and that kinda sucks in cases like this where none of us can help. Plus the game doesn't get much exposure and if it does, like when kpopp covered it, the viewers too aren't exactly the people who know how code :/
I disagree, I think there's several people who'd be useful who mod the games, problem is that TSO is an old game, and FreeSO isn't really that well known (yet).
SophiaBaby
Member
It's an iconic game and I think the majority of hardcore players had given up hope of ever getting it back. I think once the formal server is released people will start flocking back for sure. I know a lot of people have been making YouTube videos of gameplay which have been getting some attention, I would assume doing the same thing once the real server is launched would be a great marketing strategy as well. Along with facebook, twitter, etc.
It is important to remember that FreeSO is not The Sims Online, it is a re-implementation of the game engine which can simply read the same files. All copyright issues lie in the game content, which we do not provide. On their own, the FreeSO client and server contain no copyrighted content, and only transmit highly derivative (eg VM state) or new content to each other (general data requests and responses).
We have not had issues streaming FreeSO in the past. This is unusual territory, as the game that you are streaming is not protected by copyright, but the objects, graphics and sounds might be. There might be quite a bit of backlash if people found out EA were taking down streams of a defunct sims game, though, and there's not really much incentive to.
We have not had issues streaming FreeSO in the past. This is unusual territory, as the game that you are streaming is not protected by copyright, but the objects, graphics and sounds might be. There might be quite a bit of backlash if people found out EA were taking down streams of a defunct sims game, though, and there's not really much incentive to.
lordrayken
Member
This game has been in development for so long because it's original project was a bait and switch. I don't know what Afr0 did but I know he was questionable in the original TSO Restoration days.
Gouda Kai
New Member
I'm glad I'm not the only who remembers that project. A lot of us donated money to that one.
RainCloud
Active Member
uhmmmm ... yeah we did ... live and learn
TSO Restoration is why I'm not taking donations until everything's finished, and I have figures for what is needed to host the server. At least then, if something happens then the complete server and client software will be out there so nothing is "lost to the abyss" like all the TSOR """server hosting money""" was. For a similar reason, we'll have a rather unusual privacy policy stating that most data will released if the server is to shut down (for any reason, obviously would like to avoid doing this), with passwords and potentially sign-text contents stripped, so someone else could host where we left off with the same lots and progression... Though they might have some issues returning the password-less accounts to their real owners.
It is true that not much happened in the time I wasn't developing this, specifically before I appeared. I have mentioned before that PD's initial resurgence seems to have come from the large amount of work ddfczm put into the UI framework, but I wasn't there so can't really explain details. I never actually knew he was involved until a little while later. I'll probably write a full account of the history of TSO projects from my perspective at some point so people partially involved get credit where it is due. It's also weird because others seem to have a different recollection of things from me, specifically Jonathan from "TSOEmu" and what his true intentions were for the project (fatbag seems to think that he was always making a TS1 mod, but that was clearly not the case from my conversations with him and the way he presented things). Needless to say, people not being truthful about their work or abilities has always been my pet peeve, alongside the phrase "pet peeve" itself, which is why I've rarely posted about future features where there is not at least some semblance of it being possible yet or partially implemented.
It is true that not much happened in the time I wasn't developing this, specifically before I appeared. I have mentioned before that PD's initial resurgence seems to have come from the large amount of work ddfczm put into the UI framework, but I wasn't there so can't really explain details. I never actually knew he was involved until a little while later. I'll probably write a full account of the history of TSO projects from my perspective at some point so people partially involved get credit where it is due. It's also weird because others seem to have a different recollection of things from me, specifically Jonathan from "TSOEmu" and what his true intentions were for the project (fatbag seems to think that he was always making a TS1 mod, but that was clearly not the case from my conversations with him and the way he presented things). Needless to say, people not being truthful about their work or abilities has always been my pet peeve, alongside the phrase "pet peeve" itself, which is why I've rarely posted about future features where there is not at least some semblance of it being possible yet or partially implemented.
live and learn
lordrayken
Member
It wasn't like you could just donate, though. The donations were nebulous and made no sense. Whereas talking about specific Dedicated Server costs and perhaps a little extra for time and server maintenance is concrete. When all is said and done, I was always curious what was actually being donated for.
The whole system was like... You had to pay upwards of 50 dollars to get founder's access and the TSO Founder's badge or something.
... 50 dollars for a project that wasn't even remotely playable or even mapped out. Or maybe it was, but it was like these phases of months that made no sense.
I think like 75 people donated to that, most likely more that didn't post, and then the PayPal was "frozen." Uh-huh. I was always quiet and kept a close eye, and to my guesstimate the donations and donator posters I was seeing would've been around 6,000 dollars or more when all was said and done. Other pages estimate the number was much lower, but I think it was much higher from my accounts.
My favorite was when they released a launcher that was literally photoshopped images of the orginal TSO loader popping up on screen that someone had assembled. No actual code. It was basically a button you clicked and that was the only interactivity. It was so obvious they didn't even use a GIMP select object tool or anything, they just cut out a box around the button image.
Oh, and I loved the Sherlock Holmes quote the main guy had for his signature. That was rich.
The whole system was like... You had to pay upwards of 50 dollars to get founder's access and the TSO Founder's badge or something.
... 50 dollars for a project that wasn't even remotely playable or even mapped out. Or maybe it was, but it was like these phases of months that made no sense.
I think like 75 people donated to that, most likely more that didn't post, and then the PayPal was "frozen." Uh-huh. I was always quiet and kept a close eye, and to my guesstimate the donations and donator posters I was seeing would've been around 6,000 dollars or more when all was said and done. Other pages estimate the number was much lower, but I think it was much higher from my accounts.
My favorite was when they released a launcher that was literally photoshopped images of the orginal TSO loader popping up on screen that someone had assembled. No actual code. It was basically a button you clicked and that was the only interactivity. It was so obvious they didn't even use a GIMP select object tool or anything, they just cut out a box around the button image.
Oh, and I loved the Sherlock Holmes quote the main guy had for his signature. That was rich.
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Too bad I don't have these available anymore... I had insider access, as I was making svg recreations of the TSO UI at the time and was in the team for a few months before calling bs on Jonathan and criticising c# tutorials that consisted of "how to press the File/New Project button", before I was even a programmer since it was that obvious... Everything from back then was on an old drive that was wiped. I was actually removed by the team due to comments from Afr0, which I'm surprised he forgot when I was working on PD.
I still have the svgs though, I thought they might come in handy.... But I could probably do much better now as I'm not 15.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4g65cssr7fju02q/HouseMockup.svg?dl=0
The hilarious thing was, after making like 4 svgs, I got access to even more information than the unfortunate people paying $50. Disappointing info that seemed like nobody was really getting anywhere because they didn't know how to start, like 3 different projects since fatbag started Niotso at that point and none of them had reached any kind of starting point. The only promising thing was TSOEmu, which was obviously too good to be true.
Yeah, he was an enigma... didn't and don't really know what was going on with his persona.
lordrayken
Member
A totally fake ringleader who sprung up to make a dollar off people who were willing to openly donate to something in the hopes they could play their game again. A scumbag guy who was willing to take advantage of and manipulate a large group of people in order to take their money and run.
No doubt in my mind, with the Sherlock Holmes quote, he had it planned out from the beginning. I sincerely wish I knew who he was, and I'm sure many others do.
bundean
New Member
Strangely enough the last post just triggered something in memory, I sold an old TSO player a wow account a year or so before TSO closed he went by the name silvershadow or something similar, couple years on TSOR appears and I add Ghost to yahoo, turns out these 2 accounts had the same 'personal messages' but I have never thought of it until now. I might go through my PayPal history and find his real name.
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