By: Joni Brown & Jen Denicola

1. By: Joni Brown & Jen Denicola COSC 471 Spring 2007 Professor Jeff Schmitt March 13, 2007

2. Abstract: • The Sims is a a strategic life simulation computer game where you develop a person and/or environment from the ground up. • In order to keep up the world, the user needs to do basic things like controlling the bathing, feeding, and social interaction of the people. • The Sims was programmed in an object programming language called Edith. • Behaviors involve a large number of intermediate objects. • It is the best selling PC game in history

3. Outline A. Overview • Creator • Origin B. Gameplay 1. User Input 2. Computer Requirements C. Design 1. Programming Language 2. Procedures 3. Objects D. Conclusion E. References

4. The Sims • The Sims is a strategic life simulation computer game. • The game is a simulation of the day-to-day activities of one or more virtual people (named "Sims") in a suburban household located near SimCity. • It was first released on January 31, 2000

5. Will Wright • The Sims was created by Will Wright • He is the co-founder of the game development company, Maxis. • He is best known as the original designer of groundbreaking computer games such as SimCity, The Sims and Spore.

6. Origin of The Sims • “The idea for The Sims is thought to be drawn from Will Wright's experience in the 1991 Oakland firestorm, when his house and many of his possessions were burned down in the fire.” • “As such, Wright was required to move his family elsewhere and rebuild his life.” • “These events led to Will's inspiration of creating a simulated game about life.” Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims

7. The Sims • Mr. Wright got the idea about this game from his development work on SimCity and spent 4.5 years working on it. • It is distributed by EA Games (which originally named it Project X in 1997).

8. The Sims • The Sims was published by Maxis and distributed by Electronic Arts. • It was initially geared towards teenagers. • However, over the years, it has become popular with kids and adults of all ages. • It is also described as a “Life Simulation Game,” or a “God Game.”

9. Everything from the hairstyle, gender, race, style, mood, personality, and location is up to the user. The user can also choose what type of environment the people are in, such as furniture, paint, walls, yard, background, etc.; basically, the entire world. In order to keep up the world, the user will need to do basic things like controlling the bathing, feeding, and social interaction of the people. The Sims Gameplay

10. The Sims is so advanced that it is possible for the people in the game to deal with floods, earthquakes, and even death. To make things interesting, users can exchange sims online and watch them interact. The Sims Gameplay

11. Every now and then, sims may go off and do their own activities without user input. The major negative about this game is that is a single user game. However, EA Games does plan on coming out with a multiplayer version of the game (if they haven’t already). The Sims Gameplay

12. The Sims can also be used to make your own Sim. The Sims Gameplay Brokeback Mountain Sims Sim of Britney Spears

13. “The Sims follows in the footsteps of the long-running series of "Sim" games developed by Maxis in the last decade of the 1990s. It takes the idea and concept to the next evolutionary phase -- controlling actual Sim characters down to the lowest level of detail, and their interaction with others and their surroundings.” ~ Michael L. House, All Game Guide The Sims

14. Computer Requirements • Hard drive with 350 MB min free space • 8X CD-ROM (16X recommended) • OpenGL v1.1.2 or later (included) • Quicktime 4.0 (included) • G3 at 233Mhz or faster • 64 MB RAM of space • MacOS 8.1 or later

15. The Sims was programmed in an object programming language called Edith. This language provides a virtual machine plus a development environment for that virtual machine. This is a screen shot of the behavior of turning on a lava lamp: The Sims Design

16. Every object has a set of local data and a set of behaviors. The local data provides the parameters of an object, including pointers (or indexes) to other objects it is related to. The set of behaviors consist of a procedure that implements it, a procedure that checks to see whether or not it is possible, and a set of advertisements that describe its properties in terms of what need(s) of a Sim it will satisfy. The Sims Design

17. Sims (not under direct player control) choose what to do by selecting, from all of the possible behaviors in all of the objects, the behavior that maximizes their current happiness. Once they choose a behavior, the procedure for that behavior (which is part of the object) is then run in the thread of the Sim itself, so that it has access to that Sim’s parameters in addition to those of its defining environment (the object the behavior is from). The Sims Design

18. All interactions between objects occur in this way. Sims themselves are just a somewhat more elaborate object. Sometimes there are a number of intermediate objects to implement behaviors. For instance, Social Interaction is an object that is created and used when two Sims interact. The Sims Design

19. Each Sim contains behavior calls for each of the possible social interactions (flirt, kiss, etc). When SimSam decides to run the kiss behavior (which is in SimMary) an invisible social interaction object is created. The execution of SimSam’s thread is then passed into this object (as is SimMary’s if she’s not busy). (Access to the parameters of the chosen Sim is provided through a pointer in the Social Interaction object.) The Sims Design

20. Eating is another example of a behavior that involves a large number of intermediate objects, basically one per step. Notice that this means objects can be dynamically created and destroyed during the execution of a behavior. The Sims Design

21. Although the object updates happen in a single (underlying processor) thread, animations and sounds are executed in another thread, asynchronously with Edith-level operations. That is what provides the illusion of simultaneous activity in the simulated world. This is also why there is a fair amount of setup that must be done when entering a routine that uses animation, and careful checking on exit. The Sims Design

22. There are a number of subtleties with animations. For instance, when a Sim is taking a shower, it doesn’t actually enter the shower. Instead, it is added to a “routing slot” of the shower, which offsets the location of the animation so that it seems that the Sim is in the shower. (Try executing another behavior when the Sim is in the shower, by editing the Shower Core procedure, and you’ll see teleportation in action.) The Sims Design

23. Implementing a realistic simulated world is far from easy. Behaviors are implemented in terms of procedures, called trees because of the visual programming language that Edith uses. The intent of the visual programming language is to make it easier for content developers to create objects, and perhaps someday support end-user programming. Statements in this visual language are represented by boxes. The Sims Design

24. Primitive expressions enable the Edith programmer to test, set, and mutate parameters, to run animations and play sounds, and do various other things. Integer id’s are used to refer to objects. The Sims Design

25. The Sims game has now evolved into many spin offs such as The Sims 2, The Sims Life Stories, and Sims 2 Pets. In all, the original game has sold more than 6.3 million copies, making it the best selling PC game in history, and all sim games together (7 expansion packs and a sequel) have sold more than 70 million copies worldwide. Conclusion

26. Any Questions?

27. References • Forbus, Kenneth D – Qualitative Reasoning Group – Northwestern University . Some Notes on Programming Objects in The Sims™. From http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/papers/Files/Programming_Objects_in_The_Sims.pdf • Eep2 – The Sims. From http://www.tnlc.com/eep/sims/ • The Sims. From http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/The_Sims • The Sims Center. From http://thesimscenter.com/sims/gameinfofor.php?bgkb_id=1 • Peck, Dave. Review – The Sims. From http://www.macgamer.com/reviews/thesims/thesims.html • The Sims. From http://thesims.ea.com/us/index.html?menu=about&content=about/index.html • Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims