Posts Tagged ‘tsr’

Just a quick update tonight. I’ve uploaded the CMX (not complete), SKN and FAR format docs. You can find this in the Tech Data section. This will help anyone who’s interested in creating their own utilities. Hope that helps. More to come…

PS Another quick comment about our hosts, The Sims Resource (well technically MGON I guess). I want to thank them for taking us under their wing. There’s been a few people with negative comments about the whole move and frankly I find it a little rude. This site is running on it’s own dedicated server now (doesn’t anyone notice the speed??) and that’s not something that’s easy to come by in this day and age. Please take a few minutes to thank TSR and Steve Bonham for the services they’re providing us (and you) with. Thanks Steve!

Busy last couple of days for me. A few things to share with the class. Some Sim related, most not…

A service opened up last October that was going to go out and cache the entire internet, creating an internet library of sorts. Yes, Google caches pages and such, but this place was going to cache the entire internet everytime a site was updated. Didn’t matter who you were. Big or small. It would cache it for later retrieval. Okay, so now it’s February 2002 and I just find out about it. They have a funky service called WayBack that lets you surf the web as it was back then. With caching websites, they also modify the links so if you click on a link from a page back in 1996, it takes you to their version of that page. Okay, so what does this have to do with anything? Not much but I got to thinking. I’ve been spread on the net for the last 10 years or so, making a bunch of websites but they slowly evaporated from the net and in some cases, evaporated off my hard drive. So lo and behold, I entered www.simbabes.com/blueprint into the search engine and there was blueprint in 1999 staring me in the face. I also tried a few other sites like the old Simz online (anyone remember that?) and got to see what it looked like again. They also have a neat toolbar you can install in your browser that (among other useful things like looking up the stats/owner of the page you’re on) has a WayBack button which lets you see what the site looked like back in time. I installed it and started poking around on websites like TSR and The Sims.com and took a look at them how they were back in 1998. Pretty nifty. So if you’re interested in surfing the web the way it used to be, check out The Internet Archive site and plug in your favorite URL. Very neat.

Okay I’m going to discontinue FarEdit shortly with the next update to SimExplorer. I have a new FarExplorer program but looking it over, SimExplorer basically has the functionality it does. I just need to add the ability to extract and create Far files in SimExplorer and FarEdit/FarExplorer really isn’t needed. So I’ll get going on SimExplorer 2.2 at some point and add this functionality. I’m also adding new formats and resource types all the time and with the additional Far functionality in SimExplorer, this will hopefully be the ultimate Sims tool for content management. Keep your suggestions flowing in the forums too! I’m always looking for new ideas.

Lastly, just some info on my tainted comic book past. A few people have been asking or wondering what that’s all about. Basically years and years ago (about 15) I used to draw comics for a living. My work was published in some indy and low-run titles and sold at conventions. Nothing major and never got around to doing Marvel or DC work (although I was offered a job at Marvel which was cool). I also worked in animation doing some features and tv shows (okay, so maybe I’m not the best web designer but I sure can put together a wicket Conan sketch). Anyways, the last few years I’ve been heavily involved in programming and while I still really enjoy it and won’t stop, my first love has always been drawing and sequential art (comics). So I’ve been getting the itch for the past few months to get back into it. I’m revamping my personal site to house all my work, some new pieces and rekindling that old flame. I’m also setting up tutorials on how to draw comics and what goes into the making of them. On top of that (whew) I’m building a comic book studio program that will allow budding artists to create, scan, draw and compose their work into a publishable form. This all with a web based comic book organizer that lets you keep track of your collection. In any case, I’m returning to comics and once I get the site up and running I’ll be doing some contract work and maybe a few conventions here and there.

Hi guys. Got tied up in doing some comic book work this weekend so I had to put the programming off for a bit. Back later in the week with the updates. And for those of you that have nothing better to do than bitch about it, tough. It’s my website and I’ll peddle my news if I want to. If you don’t like it then don’t bother coming here. You’ll just get beat up by some of the other users. You can always grab it from TSR or something when it gets released. ’nuff said.

Hi ho. Back again after an exhaustive few days of political battles and corporate fire-fighting. Life is grand. Seems like I’m doing nothing but updates with no new content. Things should pick up and I’m glad you’re hanging in there. So let’s go down the list:

Beta Testers

Argh. I really hate this but the testers are still in a holding pattern. I’m still trying to get things going here and it’s coming along, but slowly. So for the testers, you’ll be contacted soon and we’ll get things rolling. Sorry I haven’t replied to everyone yet. You’ll be getting an email shortly but for now this is the best I can do. For the rest, lots of great things coming.

SimFreaks

As you may (or may not) know, SimFreaks is looking at a solution to the ever growing problem that all popular Sim sites are facing. Covering the costs of bandwidth. This is an ongoing problem and some sites have shut-down because of it. It’s very simple. ISPs and Webhosting services charge a fair amount of money for bandwidth (you know, everytime you load this page?) and it costs. A lot. Unlike TSR, which runs off their own servers and a part of a huge collective, SimFreaks and other sites have to pay for this monthly and the charges get into the hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars. Whoever said the Internet was free obviously needs a kick in the head. Anyways, even though SimFreaks will probably be charging for access (and frankly, it’s not a bad deal given the huge amounts of stuff they put out), I will not be charging for access to this site, nor will I ever charge for any software I write. I’ve always stood by this motto since my own feeling is that software is like sex, it’s better when it’s free.

New Software

Yes, there’s a bunch of stuff still coming and here it is 2 weeks later and I’m still talking about it. Argh. Contrary to what the Rolling Stones say, time is not on my side these days.

Sims Book Project

Still no name on the project but I’m completing the legal dance with Maxis however they’re a little bogged down with Hot Date so things are on hold until that gets resolved. The issue of releasing Edith still is not confirmed yet. Everyone wants to release it and it’ll get out to you, they’re just working out how and when.