Posts Tagged ‘expansion pack’

Hi guys,

I was poking around on a few Sims sites and found (courtesy of the Wayback machine) this little thingy:

http://web.archive.org/web/20030418000824/www.wwasims.com/ItemsTable/Electronics/

It was a website (probably manually done) that displays an inventory of all the objects in the game, separated by the Expansion Pack they were introduced with (you’ll have to excuse the broken links as the site doesn’t exist anymore).

I was looking at this and thinking about Simventory which was a program I was creating to inventory personal objects. While its still further down on the priority list, I wonder if there’s any value in generating a report like this (with object preview, name, price, description)? Inventoring your own items is one thing, but is there value in taking an inventory of Maxis objects and when they were introduced? Let me know.

Hi guys,

Okay so things have been quiet for awhile. I’ve been working on fixing up the framework and I have to tell you my brain is much better for it.

For the last couple of years, I’ve had a real problem with some of my Sims code. It’s all tied into various other code and it makes for a very ugly mess. In the programming world there are things you can do like putting modules into separte DLL files to separate things and make your system cleaner (makes for updating the system easier too). This was the plan all along with most of the tools here. Having a common DLL that’s shared amongst all the tools and when I updated it, all the programs would update. That hasn’t become a reality as there were too many inter-dependancies that made it a nightmare to try to even build the projects, let alone update them.

This is now fixed and I’m releasing a new SimExplorer to test it out. All of the viewable types in the Sims formats (IFF, WLL, FAM, etc.) are now broken out into separate DLLs with a single DLL providing all the core Sims functionality. Okay, so from a user perspective this is nonsense and you guys are probably just screaming for the software. From an update perspective, it’s awesome. When a new expansion pack comes along or a bug needs to be fix I can just release a small DLL file that you drop onto your hard drive and voila, everything is immediatly updated to work with it. Neat huh?

Anyways, here’s the call for testers again. Nothing formal this time. Just email me and I’ll send you a copy to test. There’s a built-in bug reporting tool in the program so if you experience something just click on it to send off the bug and I’ll try to reproduce it (the reporting tool does a snapshot of your system so you don’t have to tell me what hardware you’re running or anything about your computer in the error message).

Thanks!

Hey guys. December has been a nasty month for me. I’m just coming down from some serious overtime (including a developer challenge event I put on that raked in about $10,000 in prizes) but now it’s Christmas time for those that care.

I’m packaging up the new SimExplorer after a fair amount of testing and work on it (thanks to those that did testing and sorry for those that couldn’t get in this time). The new version kicks ass and works with the lastest expansion pack. Watch for it shortly as we’re just packaging it up and putting the trimmings on now. Cheers!

Hi guys. I need a couple of people to test the release of SimExplorer before it goes out. I’m bogged down with a bunch of other things so I need a few good men (and women) to spend some time (shouldn’t take more than an hour or two) to run the new version through it’s paces. Requirements are that you must have the latest expansion pack, Makin’ Magic. If you’ve got it installed and your Sims is running then you’re all set. Please email me if you’re interested. Thanks!

Hi guys. I’m still sifting through all the additions from the latest expansion pack, Makin Magic, and getting the tools updated. I’m going to release a new version of SimExplorer first hopefully next weekend if I can swing the balance this week between Life and The Sims. It seems to be the one people use the most and the most useful (funny how that works) and once that update is done the others should fall into place fairly easily. I have a huge wishlist of things people want with the software so I’m just working out what gets in this week and what will have to wait for a future release, but now that I’m back in the programming groove I should be able to provide more frequent updates to the titles. As for blueprint, I’m still wondering what’s happening with Sims 2 but in the meantime there’s some key things I need to fix in the software right now which will get into a new release once I get SimExplorer and the expansion pack updates out of the way. There’s just so many new goodies in Makin’ Magic that are there (new animations, tons of new NPCs, etc.) I’m still going to leave the family editing features to the other commercial software titles that are out there for that but will toss in a few new SimExplorer only features. Back to the grind!