TS1-based adventure game

aidancheddar

aidancheddar

Active Member
This is just some random idea after watching Space Quest videos and playing a little bit this morning. XD

I had an idea of maybe, one day, making an adventure game based on the TS1 engine. Seems like it'd be kinda fun considering you could do almost anything with the engine. I'd prohibit build mode, though, unless you buy your own plot of land, and limit buy mode to certain areas, like in the mobile games, but, unlike the mobile games, expand beyond just a simple town and maybe even explore SimCity or the Arcologies from SC2k and 2013.

With a bigger, more relatable but bigger bad guy, then simply some rich due. Make Simoleans simply a means of trade and not the end goal of buying a bigger house. Ya' know, really flush the Sims universe beyond Bella. Though, still stick to it's roots with buy mode stuff. Since the storytelling seems possible without interrupting the core game play.
 
You can do at least some things with sims 1 engine, but be able to explore all sim city is not possible, becuase in the sims 1 engine, the neighrhood size is limited, by the way you talking about this, is even more easy make it using sims 2 engine, becuase you can build your own custom neighborhoods cities and sim can explore them all with some kind of modding...

Pd. i have tried creating sims 1 quest system, but is so tediuos becuase you need to add a large ammount of modded objects...
 
heat33330 said:
Maybe you could take a look at The Sims Stories series? But it's based on TS2.
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JWofles said:
So kind of like a sims bustin' out or urbz for PC and kind of more serious?
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I never thought of them as adventure games, to be honest.

francot514 said:
You can do at least some things with sims 1 engine, but be able to explore all sim city is not possible, becuase in the sims 1 engine, the neighrhood size is limited, by the way you talking about this, is even more easy make it using sims 2 engine, becuase you can build your own custom neighborhoods cities and sim can explore them all with some kind of modding...
Click to expand...

Well, this would be using our custom engines based used to recreate TSO, not the original. Since TSO uses the same engine, otherwise it'd be known as Sims 2 Online. That would give us more freedom and able to create an adventure environment similar to stories without hacking the daylights out of the original game.
 
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But i think youre forgetting that theyre are not creating new engine, only have made the vm machine to reproduce all the content that already exists from tso, as i see the only diference is that theyre creating server stuff that user never seen, but that will not allow to change game, becuase for that you will need tools like edith cracked or something to mod the game objects.... I said about sims 2 becuase i think you have noticed it will allow more freedom to create a world exploration envorinment...
 
francot514 said:
But i think youre forgetting that theyre are not creating new engine, only have made the vm machine to reproduce all the content that already exists from tso, as i see the only diference is that theyre creating server stuff that user never seen, but that will not allow to change game, becuase for that you will need tools like edith cracked or something to mod the game objects.... I said about sims 2 becuase i think you have noticed it will allow more freedom to create a world exploration envorinment...
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If you're gonna rewrite TSO's client, you're gonna need to rewrite the engine too. :B
 
aidancheddar said:
If you're gonna rewrite TSO's client, you're gonna need to rewrite the engine too. :B
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Well, to be honest, mapping out the interface for the cTSOSimulator object in TSOSimulatorClientD.dll seems like it could be feasible, thanks to the -NoNetwork flag.

So you could probably write a new client, renderer, and so on, that still makes calls to TSOSimulatorClientD.dll. But then your client would only work on x86, unless you run the TSOSimulatorClient.dll code in an x86 emulator.
 
Fatbag, can you give me a hand, im trying to make a map editor for sims 1 neighborhoods, but what i need to know is how to show the bmp_ images files with transparency, becuase theyre are not png looks like this, but cannot figure out what is his transparency colors:
 

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You can clearly see that magenta (#FF00FF) is being used to represent the transparent color.

Open the IFF file of the house you want the thumbnail for, and read the chunks with chunk IDs 0x0200 and 0x0201; 0x0200 is the mouse-over version (with roofs invisible), and 0x0201 is the mouse-out version (with roofs visible). Both chunks contain a single BMP file with 24-bit color and dimensions 380x199. #FF00FF is used to represent the background color. For each pixel in the image, if its value is #FF00FF, set its alpha to 0. Then you can display it.
 
Thanks for your information, also you know how to make read those chunks never analyzed like houses, nhors, and fams...
 
No, we haven't studied those formats yet, but you might be able to view some stuff about them using The Sims Transmogrifier, IFF Pencil 2, and Edith (in TSO Pre-Alpha and EA-Land).

The website for The Sims Transmogrifier has been down since the beginning of 2014, according to archive.org, but you can view the archived version here: https://web.archive.org/web/20131210044546/http://www.thesimstransmogrifier.com/

Some other The Sims 1 stuff that doesn't appear in The Sims Online is also documented by SimTech: http://simtech.sourceforge.net/tech/info_resources.html
 
Thanks for suggestion, but there is no official documentation about it, from simstech i get:
Code: 
The number after "unknown" is the number of occurrences in a typical installation. Decoding a resource with a larger number would probably be more useful.
    Arry     unknown 1536 (array of items on lot)
    CATS     Only in Fire.iff; contains strings
    FAMI     unknown 38 (families in neighborhood?)
    FAMh     unknown 15 (families in neighborhood?)
    FLRm     unknown 133 (floors in house?)
    HOUS     unknown 196 (house)
    NBRS     unknown 8 (neighbors in neighborhood)
    NGBH     unknown 8 (neighborhood)
    ObjM     unknown 98 (in house)
    objt     unknown 98 (in house)

and the only program that show it is iff pencil 2, and is only hex editing, i hope that you ever have tried to research about those...
 

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francot514 said:
But i think youre forgetting that theyre are not creating new engine, only have made the vm machine to reproduce all the content that already exists from tso, as i see the only diference is that theyre creating server stuff that user never seen, but that will not allow to change game, becuase for that you will need tools like edith cracked or something to mod the game objects...
Click to expand...

...What? We are definitely recreating the game engine. This includes the UI engine, the SimAntics VM, the HIT VM and all game logic that is not dealt with by objects, like the group job objects. The whole point of doing this is so that we have full control over every aspect of the game and can therefore make drastic changes to the gameplay and rendering. (for instance, the game will support a full 3d view at some point, and I'll be experimenting with new gameplay ideas as well)
 
Ok excuse me for that, it was a interpreatation mistake, but can you help me about last thing i posted ??? those unknow chunks of iff files, that contains houses and neighborhood data...
 
NBRS is a format describing neighbors and presumably all their relationship matrices. (The Sims Online uses a system like this except with persistent avatar data, which allows relationships to sync across changing lots, where simulator sends relationship matrix back to server after sim leaves, then another simulator can retrieve it). It will be very difficult to decode this format.

FAMs is of STR derived format and gives each family a Family Name. FAMI and FAMh have the same indexing as FAMs (FAMs 13 relates to FAMh 13) though I'm not sure what kind of data they contain at all.
 
Good info you give me, i have seen some programs that allows you to modifiy sims relationship and skills outside game based on the NBRS, by now the only chunks that i want to descifrate are the OBJM and OBJT(object map) that is like blueprint files, but with different encoding and also those Arrys from houses files....
 
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