The Sims Steering Committee

This is a sub-page of Proto:The Sims (Windows).

Object ListQuasi-diagonal chairs, ugly flamingos and some other stuff. Floors & WallsNot so smooth and thin cutaway walls!

General Differences#

• There is no title screen, instead being a basic-looking splash screen as seen above.
• The HUD, while containing most of the finalized elements, has a drastically different appearance, sporting a sketch-like aesthetic rather than the final's bevel aesthetic.
• Create-A-Sim did not exist, instead using a set of premade characters with names.
• Children did not exist as of this build.
• The game has a story mode, which would not be implemented until the console versions.
• Many of the animations are incomplete and/or broken.
• The music played on stereos are cut down samples of music from SimCopter. There exists an unused second audio file for each of the genres which is an extremely short sample of Spike Jones & His City Slickers' "Der Fuehrer's Face."
• Almost all of the audio samples are completely different.
• Some controls are different; Tabulator key for moving camera, 1 is half-speed.
• Sims can be moved around in Buy/Build Mode.
• Sims' mugshots originally changed based on their mood, a feature that would later find re-usage in the console port.

Sprite List#

Coverage includes the largest available zoom for each graphic. Half of these can be found in the final product as leftovers.

Sprites.iff#

Terrain.iff#

The engine has a terrain feature that is disabled by default in the prototype. Grass and flower graphics are evenly placed across the terrain in the game world, one sprite per tile. Might refer to a terrain rendering system used exclusively in previous prototypes. In this build, like the final product, the grass pattern is more realistically drawn as a large number of pixel-perfect blades, and does not include flowers.

Audio#

Background music constantly plays when on a lot in this build, including when in Live Mode. There are only two full music tracks present in the game;

According to the music filenames, it appears that this build only has a fraction of the music that was composed at that time.

Happy Acres#

A jolly sample of suburbia where rich kids find a sense in their lives at.

• Here, one takes a visual note of the oldest Neighborhood Menu iteration known to date. Its notable by sporting a landscape and overall feel — as well as the name proposal "Happy Acres"— that very little relate to its final design, leading one to conclude that they are entirely different canon areas, instead. Summed to that, a more fantastic vegetation that won't be saturation-shy, which won't help but sustain a sense of self-ironic humor still borrowed from older, odder builds.
• UI-wise, it is a normal Simulation game campaign menu. Mind you, the apple did not yet fall far from the tree: This particular build's approach as a DEMO for an idea in probation made it wiser for it to have scripted scenarios for each and every one of the available house files, hence the inexistence of any signs of interactive menus that allow one to design families and stories from the scratch. A commonly explored dynamic in these scenarios involves teaching players how to pursue the characters' happiness & wealth, and what to do with them. It's The Sims, first and foremost.
• Moving the mouse pointer to the static lot thumbnails causes to pop but illustrated boxes descriptive of each scenario, instead of Bobo's formidable roof-fading SFX that the final menu runs¹.

Scenarios#

There are four scenarios that are included in the game, in the form of an apparent story mode. Such a feature would not appear until their console games.

Scenarios Brief#

The Characters#

Unlike later prototypes and eventually prerelease media of The Sims, Create-A-Sim isn't included. Instead, this build has a set of original characters that don't appear in later titles.

References#