This is a sub-page of The Sims (Windows)/Unused Behaviors.

Talk Topics

Noteworthy Cases#

Other Cases#

• comeandseeme.iff (an object file that handles the majority of the Sims' reaction toward most of newly bought items) contains leftover constant data that reference in their labels an early set of conversation topics.
  • Same applies to raw string data related to missing sprites.

Personality Traits

Skills

ID	String	Comment	Context	Snapshot
Behavior.IFF — 10 December 1999 14:10
STR#232 - personality ads
13	Cleaning Skill	style="background:#FFFFBF;color:#4D4D4D | According to design documents of the game, this skill would determine how well and quickly Sims would do home chores. The "Cleaning" skill was eventually scrapped in development, possibly in the name of the "Sloppy"/"Neat" personality traits: they determine the Sims' affinity to everything cleaning. The franchise witnessed the actual implementation of a "Cleaning" skill four years after the original game's release, in the second installment.	development documents give a shy hint of one original benefit of the Cleaning skill: Sims would clean fish tanks more efficiently.]]
17	Gardening Skill	style="background:#FFFFBF;color:#4D4D4D | It seems evident that gardening was originally intended to play a more substantial role in the game. In the final product, however, the mechanics have been drastically reduced to simple watering and replanting interactions, requiring no specific skills.	that weren't, the Gardening, Art and Music skills once played a bigger part in gameplay.]]
18	Music Skill	style="background:#FFFFBF;color:#4D4D4D| While it's possible for final Sims to develop musical talents, all the artsy faculties a Sim can improve were, sometime in development, condensed into a single "Creativity" skill.
20	Literacy Skill	colspan="2" style="background:#FFFFBF;color:#4D4D4D| Leftover from the Steering Committee demo or even earlier builds. It's unclear how it would influence gameplay and the Sims' behavior. Nothing in-game checks it.
#Object Types for C&SM
16779	Clean Skill	style="background:#FFFFBF;color:#4D4D4D| Early "Cleaning" skill flag.
16781	Social Skill	style="background:#FFFFBF;color:#4D4D4D|Early "Charisma" skill flag.
16781	Music Skill	rowspan="2" style="background:#FFFFBF;color:#4D4D4D|Early "Creativity" skill flags.
16783	Art Skill
16783	Literacy Skill	style="background:#FFFFBF;color:#4D4D4D|Unused "Literacy" skill flag.
16785	Physical Skill	style="background:#FFFFBF;color:#4D4D4D|Early "Body" skill flag.
16783	Work Skill	style="background:#FFFFBF;color:#4D4D4D|Unused "Work" skill flag.

Motive

Stress#

Other Cases#

• A number of raw string data associated with missing graphics reference an early categorization of Sim motives, even Stress, as documented above.
  • Ditto with raw character data.

Personal Styles

Social Interactions

Hello - Unused#

It's an unused interaction that does not contain sufficient tree data to even cause an action, in case a player commands a character to access it via modding. It is worthy mentioning that social interactions are always written as verbs, as Tickle and Play. May be a leftover of a much earlier build, as a counterpart of the used Greet interaction.

Complimenting for Kids#

Watch on YouTubeChild Sims have a full set of voice lines for both receiving and giving compliments (the same applies to the adults), despite how neither the Complimenting interaction is available to them, nor can be detected adequate animations for this routine.

Play for Adults#

The running animation that are called during the Play (tag) interaction have adult equivalents to call their own, but are never used, as this interaction is normally only available for child Sims. It can be tested via hacking with flying colors, however it misses appropriate voice lines to accompany the interaction.

Full-House Move-In Outcome#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: In Bustin' Out, try this with 1-2 child sims, or in Malcolm's Mansion where there are no other playable Sims. Also check other languages.

A Sim of a successful adult-to-adult friendly/romantic relationship is not able to ask their interlocutor to Move In/Propose if more than 7 Sims live in their house. Hacking the player's way to both interactions (under the previously mentioned full-house context) trigger this unused text box, forgotten in the dialogs set of SocialInteractions.iff without any translated equivalents; then it's assumable that its obsolescence wasn't a mistake.

The message would eventually be used in The Sims: Bustin' Out if the main Sim in Bust Out mode tries to propose to a Sim from Free Street where their household has 3 Children Sims. This is due to the household system in that game always requiring an accompanying adult Sim, therefore having the Children of the Sim move into other houses rather than just the former.

NPC Features

Base Game#

General#

Some base game NPC's are named in a format such as job_fafitmed, suggesting that multiple firefighters, maids and mail carriers were planned to be generated live. Similarly, the Hot Date expansion pack does feature multiple variants of cashiers and restaurant staff which will spawn if the same objects are used more than once on the same lot.

Bones *Anim Test#

The game has leftover files for Bones *Anim Test an animation test NPC. This Sim causes the game to hang if you try to load it onto a lot, as the skeleton referenced by the body strings (biped) does not exist. If you change it to the used adult, the Sim loads with a missing body graphic, before walking off the lot spontaneously.

Burglar/Police Officer#

• thief.iff has the data that orchestrates the acts of the Burglar NPC. It contains two unfinished trees that are not associated with any pie menu items: Attack and Attack Test. Attack is also how are named the physical fight interactions among playable Sims, implying that the burglar was once intended to be able to get in fights with either the people who own the house he invades or the cop NPC. In the final game, no Sim-to-Sim actions exist for him.

• The police officer has a similar fighting code, explicitly referenced in officer::catch thief, however the tree actually skips over the one primitive which runs it in the final game. As consequence, the burglar automatically surrenders himself once he sees the cop. It is unknown why it wasn't implemented.
  • Editing the tree in a way that runs said primitive causes her to attack the burglar once she encounters him.

Gardener#

The Gardener NPC keeps an unused code gardener::do npc greeting. Untrue to the complexity of your average scripting tree, this one only contains one primitive: a dialog box with an unused greeting text. In the final game, no service NPC's say anything as they arrive the Sims' lots.

• This text is, in reality, a string checked as "debug" (indicating it does not show in gameplay, so translators know it does not need to be localized), making one to conclude it was never meant to be normally seen, after all.

House Party Expansion Pack#

Party Clown. Not the Tragic Clown from Livin' Large or the Entertainer Clown from House Party. This NPC appears to have been conceived as an entertainer for a children's party. Some ideas were probably rolled into the other Clown NPCs, though. This Sim will crash the game to desktop if you try to load it on a lot. No debug mode error is shown by the SimAntics engine.

Footnotes

References