[Progress] FreeSim

Hello everyone!

This is my very first post on this forum as I have very rarely resorted to the public. However, my next project is a project I'd like to make open source (once complete) and very open to modifications. This is why I'm hoping I can get feedback from you people, as well as any help I can get on-board!

- The Project -
I'm willing to bet a number of you tried modding the Sims one day - and after realizing the poor options and limited mods - probably resorted to OpenSim. I've been working for some time now on a "The Sims" clone that would be very open to modding. The core concept is still the same: create a character, build a house, buy stuff, play with life.

- Modding -
All of the games I have built with my 5 years of Unity Dev experience have always been pretty linear, and intrinsic. They have never relied on external content (i.e. Mods). Therefore my knowledge on this is very limited. However, I have planned to have everything set as a mod initially: meaning that all base content would be a mod too that can be edited/disabled/enabled at any time. This would allow to add/remove different needs, clothes, furniture... Also, the ability of creating a 3D model and importing it as a piece of furniture (/clothing) with custom actions/properties.

- Current Progress -
I have been working on this for the past couple of weeks, and so far, here are the available features:
-Building walls (clunky)
-Buying / Placing furniture
-Currency


- Features in Progress -
Once these features are implemented, I'll release an Alpha Version
-Moddable content
-Pathfinding for the Characters
-Character creation
-Clothes
-Character interactions
-Furniture Interactions
-Needs

- Future Planned Features -
These will be worked on once the base game is done:
-Jobs
-Friendships / Relationships
-Day/Night Cycle
-Community Sharing
-Cities / Towns / Communities
-Businesses

- End Note -
Given my busy schedule, this will most likely take time. I have been playing The Sims since the first one through Sims 4, and I've always been a huge fangirl! This will be completed one day. Plus, who doesn't want to play "The Sims" without EA's bullshit?

- You -
I will take any help I can get. And since this is to be Open Source and free released, you'll be able to enjoy the entire game in its completion!

 

Seems cool! If it's free...don't make it P2W pls ;-;

 

Very cool initiative for sure, more open source stuff to the people! : )

 

Absolutely!
I'm all about free and open source. I believe that if something is open to everyone for modification, then it can only grow bigger.
Thanks for the enthusiasm!

 

Sounds like a great idea. I look forward to seeing more of it.

I don't have a ton of free time, but I could see possibly creating some objects, maybe with behaviors, once it gets to that point. I did a fair bit of hacking on the original Sims game and have quite a bit of nostalgia for that. Keep us updated here!

Oh, 1 thing I'd like to see: Some sort of campaign mode. I'd like there to be some sort of set list of events that happen after certain milestones and the player can do things to advance the story in different directions. While I liked TheSims as it was, the ones that have a story were much more fun for me. This would be a completely optional thing, and should be something that can be created by anyone as a mod, so that many stories are possible. (Only 1 should be active at a time, though, I think.)

 

@wccrawford Sort of like a story line? Like Sims Medieval or Sims Castaway!
Yes, I can see how instead of being Open Ended it would have a set of goals to accomplish (or both)!
Or, for instance in The Sims 3: World Travels, where different locations have different goals to accomplish (i.e. solve the pyramid puzzles...)

As for the current progress, walls can now be built correctly! Both straight walls and diagonal walls. I'm trying to find a way to automatically detect rooms and "label" them. That way you can apply wallpapers to entire rooms instead of single or whole sections.

The Modding part is trickier than I thought, so far mods would be placed in the root in a "mods" folder. Several subfolders such as: Needs, Traits, Furniture, Clothes, Regions, Sims... Each would have a "Base" mod that include some basic objects. This would also be useful as a template to create new mods. In a mod folder, there would be: mod.fs, model.obj, texture.png. Using Runtime Model Importer, the model and texture would be loaded in the game, and the object attributes would be set in the *.fs file (for example: name, cost, simReq, genderReq, maleAnim, femaleAnim, children?, action[1], result[1], action [2], result[2]... objectProduced?, etc.) Or, as in Kerbal Space Program, have another Unity Application that would serve as a "Mod Creator", but I have no idea how to accomplish this.

Thoughts?

 

Like those, or like the console Sims games. But without sacrificing the open-ended nature of the PC Sims games. It'd be an optional add-on that gave the player things to strive for, instead of just doing whatever they wanted. It'd be important to implement it in a way that anyone can create their own story module, though. It might involve pre-made houses and families set in an existing neighborhood, or entirely new neighborhoods created for the story. It's a pretty ambitious task, obviously.

Can I suggest using a standard file format such as JSON to store that information about a mod? That way, there are already programs out there that can help people create and edit the files, and it'll be easier for third parties to create their own editors for them.

OBJ is a fine mesh format for static objects, but they can't have skeletons or animations. To really do it up, I think you'll want to find a way to hook up one that has animation support, such as FBX. I'm not sure how well animations could be imported at runtime anyhow, though. I don't know if they'll integrate with Mecanim, for instance. OBJ is a good start, though. It's simple and pretty much every modeling program supports it.

You might be able to use some kind of pathfinding algorithm to figure out the floor plans. That might be overkill, though. It may just be as simple as following the walls around and finding the shortest path of walls that surround the points on each side of the wall. Or even just using the right-hand-rule to follow the walls around until you get back where you started, once for each side.

Hmm, I somehow missed Sims Castaway. Will have to look into that one.

 

Hi Ivy! I am a huge Sims fan too and loved modding my sims, although not usually with artwork, but by adding little mods that changed behaviors and new careers, etc. I commend you for doing this. I lost interest in the The Sims when Sims 4 came out, the first one I didn't buy and have no desire to buy. I started with one and ended with 3, own all the EPs and still have 3 on my computer although sadly, I have no time to play it. I do go to MTS website at times and sigh over all the new mods. What a great community!

Glad you see this as a long term project so less likely to give up. It is a huge endeavor but I think it would be well received. My times spent on the big Sims forums (I talked too much there at times like I do here) made me realize that a lot of people have not been happy with the direction of the franchise.

So count me in as a future tester/player. I would love to help but I am ultra busy with our own project! It is not at all like the Sims but it will have some familiar features in it because I just love the creativity and freedom of The Sims.

Keep me posted though on the progress! It is a project that is near and dear to my heart.

 

This is the current progress: you can build walls (horizontal, vertical or diagonal) and place furniture (placeholders for now). Building / Buying costs money.


Right now I'm trying to fix a bunch of stuff:
-have a working camera
-"ghost" the walls to have a preview before building
-"ghost" the furniture before placement
-highlight walls red before deletion

Lemme know if you feel like helping me out, I'm going nuts with my exams! If you're willing to contribute, PM me

 

Looks good!

 

Yeah, it looks like you're off to a good start. I've dabbled a bit with Sims 3, it's good fun. I have no idea how to handle your modding stuff in Unity though, so wouldn't be of much help there. Good luck!

 

I was thinking of using Asset Bundles to handle external content

 

Whatever you do in the end, it'd be nice if you keep us posted on some of the details. I'll refer to it some day

 

Oh i was planning to do something similar haha, well i think i only can motivate you so keep up the work! ^^

 

In fact, I give up a making sims like game.. but I hope you succeed
If you sell sisms like game .. I will buy directly from Asset Store

 

It looks like it's coming along really well. Keep up the good work!

 

New features coming soon, in the meanwhile I'm creating databases for all the furniture. Here's a pic of a fridge made by @thethieme



The camera system now works, you can pan, zoom and rotate the camera with mouse clicks, you can move the camera with WASD, or by moving the mouse to the borders of the screen. Also improved the Buy UI to implement more info on MouseHover of the item you're about to place:


Also, working on a "Create a Sim" feature... but that's still bare bones on the sketch pad *chuckles*

(btw, I'm using Unity's Character Creation Demo models for this, just FYI)

 

Great work, keep it up!

 

wow great

 

This is really awesome! Great idea with a lot of potential. I'd love to contribute to this project if you plan it to be opensource.

 

Absolutely, once complete, the whole source will be available on a repository, probably GitHub
And I'll take any help I can get!

 

Here's an update from me! I've spent the last few hours modeling, baking normals and setting up a material for some kitchen cabinets. I used Substance Designer to make a customizable material to allow the player to choose from some preset materials and any color for the different parts (base, countertop, doors). This allows for greater customizability (is that even a word, ), but at the cost of material size and performance when the material is updating. It probably won't be possible to have this kind of material for every single object, but for the big ones that take up a lot of room I think it would be great. I made a short screen capture where I demonstrate how changing the materials work and how fast it is at updating. Please note that this is in my own test scene, completely separate from what Ivy's currently working on.

Edit: The cabinets are 4 separate objects, one with 3 drawers, one with 2 doors, one inside corner and one outside corner. All built to fit a 1x1 unit grid perfectly.

 

Great work!

If someone else wanted to make objects for this, what specs would they aim for? Are the floor units 1 unit by 1 unit? Does that come out to 1 meter in scale? What's the wall height?

Are you using PBR?

I'm not very good with modeling, but I could see myself trying to make some objects. With any luck, they'd at least be decent placeholders for the project.

 

Currently, the wall height is 3 by default. The base unit for the grid is 1x1, making it 1x1 meters.

Yes, I'm using PBR, but that's because I'm currently only focusing on the mechanics. I'll leave the aesthetics for later!

The wall ghosting and building now works, although it's really clunky and I'm not sure how to fix it yet :/ I can code just fine, but I feel like this is a math problem and it just hurts my head >.<



Download the wall building demo and lemme know!

 

@wccrawford I'm using PBR for all the stuff I make. I could never go back to using the old shaders after working with PBR for a year or so. And since Ivy's building the game in Unity 5 I can't see any reason why we shouldn't use this deliciously beautiful new shader system

@ivyroxy Looks great so far! The diagonal walls aren't working that well, but I'm sure you're aware of that. The camera controls feel very natural and smooth, love it! I ended up filling the hole lot with walls and going $15000 or so over budget

 

I'll be interested in how you do the wall connecting. I made something like this a couple months ago and realized I would probably have to come up with some ingenious coding to have all the wall type pieces fit flush.

I was going for a small online sandboxie type game but now i'm scaling back and having structures more premade if I continue with my project.

 

@Slaghton Right now, the walls are built as one piece (one scaled cube). I'm working on each fragment to be built separately to allow things such as doors, windows, wallpapers or destroying segments only.

 

Great! I was hoping the project would be PBR. I'm firmly convinced it's the future... At least, for the foreseeable future. I'm sure someone will come up with another new tech eventually.

Thanks for the dimensions. I'll see if I can use some of my free time for some assets, even if they're just placeholder quality.

You're doing great work on this project!

 

Hey everyone!

Sorry for the long and silent 2 weeks, I've been REALLY busy... But don't think for a second that I've been slacking!

THE GOOD:

Welcome to SIM ISLAND:


It's still very basic and rough, needs lots of polishing. But for now, as long as it's functional, it'll do.
Here's some screenshots of your friendly Sim Neighborhood: (white planes are house lots)

 

As for the rest, I've made a couple of few updates.

THE BEAUTIFUL (not ugly):

The textures are now all hand drawn - and CONSIDERABLY more beautiful than the previous ones.


I've also decided to make a very cool feature! Following in the footsteps of The Sims 3: Island Paradise, I've made boathouses! The principle is exactly the same as a house, though. The only thing is that it can be built on water.


THE BAD:
Unfortunately I'm heading into Finals Week folks so I'll be unable to make ANY progress whatsoever for the next two weeks.

YOU:
I'm flashing my Bat-Game-Dev-Signal in the skies folks! I need your help! Here's what I currently need:

• Someone to help me out with coding. I'm drooling like an idiot trying to figure out my flaws.
• Someone to make some nice UI graphics for the game.
• MODELS, LOTS OF MODELS
• Characters / Clothes / Animations

That's it for this update everyone!

I'll see you in a couple of weeks.

Love,
Evangeline

 

P.S.
Oh! And there's this too!

 

Did you consider to use some already exsisting system for characters like for example UMA2 thats free on the store?
Would fit in quite good i think since it allows for a lot of modification both to the character itself and its clothing.

 

I want my peeps to live on the cruise ship.

Great work lately! I've been wondering if anything was up for a few days now. Glad to see you got more done!

Sadly, I haven't had any free time lately. I had hoped to model up some rudimentary models as placeholders, but even that small goal met with failure. (Plus, I'm really a novice modeller, so I'm not sure how they'll turn out anyhow.)

Keep up the good work!

 

Good to see you've made more progress on your sim!

 

Hey all!
Sorry for the lack of response... I've been really super busy, I promise.
Anyways, thought you guys and girls might be able to help me out without any Unity knowledge: http://goo.gl/forms/O8TnIa9aeS (It's a Google Form).

Here you can submit your own ideas for any furniture / item you'd like to see in game. If you have a 3D Model, great! Just PM me and I'll send you my email address for you to send them to me.

Cheers!

 

Hi, is this project still being developed?

 

Sorry to bring back a dead thread but Ivy if your still around Id love to talk with you. I've been doodling with the concept of a networked mmo like sims environment with live towns of live and ai people. I'd love to have you on board if your interested. I'm one of the developers of a game called Black Flag Online. I'm well familiar with Unity and making MMO like enviroments and servers.
- Jordan

 

I dunno why bother asking that on a thread that is obviously dead lol