simshow.png

"SimShow Must Go On" 1.3

by: Don Hopkins

Publication date: 1999-08-12

Topics: the sims, ts1, 1999, maxis, electronic arts, don hopkins

Language: English

A reasonably forgotten, older version of the well-known The Sims skins/animation previewer SimShow, compiled on August 12, 1999, meaning it has been available for many months before the fans could, technically, view how their custom content creations would look in the actual game. With SimShow, fans had, after all, the earliest experience with real-time rendered Sims... although the handling of their lives still wasn't up to them (if not by asking them to run a couple of 60FPS animations in eternal loops)!

The 1.3 build had the good peculiarity of fetching kid Sims to the characters' fiesta.

Each one of the official pre-release tools made available for download at the time presents resources that are consistent to the last The Sims build compiled prior to the tool's completion. Since SimShow 1.3 came out nearly 6 months before the game's final, one can assure that the program comes with a few proto-related oddities, like a few slightly-differentiated textures, meshes, and entirely unique animation files.

Down below, Sean Baity's official SimShow 1.3 announcement at SimWatch, The Sims' official pre-release discussion maillist!

*Date:*	Aug 14 1999 01:58:24 EDT
*From:*	"Baity, Sean"
*Subject:*	\/\/\/\..-... MAXIS NEWS FLASH!.......New version of SIMSHOW available.. ..-..-../\/\/\/\/\

>  <<...>> http://www.simcity.com/thesims/luc/SimShow1_3.zip
> Earth wonders at MAXIS' gift of SimShow1_3
> It was an event that left few in its path untouched. 
> The weeks' final MAXIS upload gave people across the globe the chance to
> know in a most spectacular way that, whoever walks the Earth, can be
> duplicated in SimShow 1_3.
> Starting off the American coast, the available zipfile raced across the
> wires at speeds approaching T1 access in some areas. 
> A thousand people had traveled to Cornwall, south-west England, so they
> could stand in line at an internet cafe to download the file. For them,
> the first contact with the new application came shortly before 10.00BST. 
> "I can't believe it! This thing actually has kids in it this time!",
> exclaimed one British gamer.
> "I swear I saw some new textures in there somewhere...", claimed an
> anonymous bystander who quickly melted back into the crowd.
> "All the info you need is in the readme file in the zip. There's a word
> doc, a text file, even an html file. Check it out dude.", said Maxis' own
> Sean Baity in a non-telephone interview.
> While others in Europe waited, across the UK outside the zone of download,
> people left offices and stood outside to meet friends who had played with
> the skin viewer tool.
> Buddhist monks gathered at the Eiffel Tower to exchange texture tips.
> The phone lines of Ramnicu Valcea, the south-central city in Romania where
> downloads are the longest, were crammed. 
> In Egypt, Muslims shut themselves away to play with SimShow1_3 on the
> orders of clerics. 
> "We must see the new code of Franck Le Ouay..he is like a prophet to us.",
> sobbed one emotionally stricken man.
> Jordan and Syria declared a national holiday. Russian TV found many
> Muscovites more concerned with domestic difficulties. One woman said: "I'm
> not really interested in that tool." 
> In some Indian villages, priests rang temple bells and took turns beating
> steel plates with sticks to celebrate. 
> Cheers and tears had followed the download. On the Cornish beaches, people
> kissed, some danced, others sensed an eerie calm as the lights went out
> and they turned their computers on.
> And considering the truly astronomic chances involved in seeing a tool
> released long before a game is ready, it is perhaps no wonder. 
> 
> 
> sean baity
> assistant producer
> the sims
> http://www.thesims.com
>