THE SIMS ™: A WORLD UNTO ITS OWN Romance. Jealousy. Destruction. Intrigue. All the elements in an Elizabethan tragedy. you might think? But no, this is another world entirely, and rather a vivid one, at that! Welcome to the world of Settle back, get comfortable—there’s a lot going on here. This isn’t just a computer game, you know.
CONTENTS Tutorial: The Newbies stretch their legs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Welcome to the Neighbourhood! . . . . . .7 Getting Acquainted Build Mode: Building Your Dream House (or Surveying Your Nightmare) . . . . . .71 Tools of the Building Trade . . . . . . .72 . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Terrain Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Water Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 The Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Play the Newbies (at 7 Sim Lane) in the tutorial house to get a feel for how to play. Then check out the rest of the manual for how to design your Sims and their houses, and for gameplay hints. The section on The Soul of a Sim gives you a little more insight into their motives and behaviours, which, as with people, can sometimes be puzzling. The Daily Life material within The Soul section puts the milk on the cereal of daily concerns.
You can repeat the tutorial at any time by clicking on the Options button in the Control Panel, clicking on the Play Options button and then clicking on the Reset Tutorial button. The tutorial game resets back to its original conditions. WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBOURHOOD! The Neighbourhood is where you go directly after the game loads. Play the tutorial game there to get a feel for gameplay basics. Check the manual’s tutorial section (page 4) for details.
Clicking on an unoccupied house only gets you a dialog box telling you nobody lives there and you need to pick a family to move in. That’s where those buttons at the top of the Neighbourhood come in. The left-most button is the Select or Create Family button; clicking it takes you to the Select A Family window, where some Sim souls are itching for the chance to stain some Neighbourhood carpets. You can choose one of the crews here to man (or woman) your house, or you can create your own.
Clicking on the Live mode button in the midst of your building does give you the chance to get your Sims reaction to their unfinished house. But once they find out there aren’t any cold cuts in the fridge—in fact, there is no fridge—you’re likely to find them none too pleased. Better complete at least a few basic rooms first before you test their tolerance. Then review the Daily Life section (page 37) to get some Sim sense—or at least to get a sense of how to tame these unruly Sims.
Live Mode Views The Live mode icon rests at the top of the mode selections because it’s the big daddy of all modes. In Live mode your Sims do what you want them to do—or not, depending on just how cantankerous they are at the moment. Live mode is just that, live: The game clock is ticking, the Sims plans are clicking, and moods might be swinging.
Also within the Zoom diamond are the Rotation buttons, giving you a different perspective on the action, or a different angle for better object placement. Clicking on the right-pointing arrow rotates the view 90 degrees to the right; clicking on the left-pointing arrow rotates the house 90 degrees to the left. Four successive clicks on the same Rotation button returns you to the original view—at least that’s what our geometry teachers told us.
Buy Mode Finally! A chance to go on a spree! Who cares if the living room is full of exercise equipment and computers when you can bring in a model railroad? You can get yourself in a lot of budgetary trouble here, but heaven knows, it’s fun. Clicking on the Buy mode icon reveals a subpanel of category icons. Click on a category icon and the purchasable items within that selected category displayed to the right appear.
Options Mode Click on the Options mode icon to open the Options panel. Here you can set some gameplay and file management options. • Interface Effects – Enables slick interface dissolves • Terrain Detail – Enables progressively higher detail level for your Sim lawns. • Character Detail – Enables higher degrees of light shading and filtering on your Sims.
• Edge Scrolling checked makes your Sim world terrain automatically scroll in the direction of the screen edge where you moved your cursor. • Sim in Background checked lets your Sims’ lives carry on if you’ve Alt-Tabbed out of the game to go check the value of your stock options on the Net. Unchecked, the game pauses; checked, while you’re away, The Sims will play. • Quick Tips checked displays tooltips and information panels for all of the relevant game areas just upon mouse rollover (no clicking needed).
You know if your Sims need to be fed, watered or coddled by the ever-updated condition bars that track their tender feelings and bodily urges—from glaring red emergency states to the friendly green of purring satisfaction. Dynamic red and green triangles to the left or right of the bars indicate current negative or positive changes to those emotional states, with subsequent changes in the bar’s colouring.
There are a host of career tracks your adult Sims can pursue (or neglect), and they are detailed in the Soul of a Sim section and in the game’s Reference card. It’s critical to bring in needed cash to a household’s coffers with a good job. Your Sims need better household objects to move along more efficiently in the game. So, pay attention to the basics: Get your Sim to work on time, keep them practising and studying in their chosen profession, work on making friends and they’ll move up the ladder.
Each family slot on the window lists the family surname, family pictures, net worth and the number of friends that household has. Clicking on an individual in a slot brings up a small window listing their personality traits and biography, if one’s been written. Double-clicking anywhere on the slot takes you to the Neighbourhood, with that family loaded into your cursor. That’s when you get to plop them into a house, and all the chaos begins.
The appearance window itself has some nice tricks for transforming your Sims. Clicking on the top directional arrows cycles through a set of heads to adorn your selected Sim body. The bottom directional arrow cycles through a number of outfits to make your Sim the fashion plate (or plate of leftovers) that best serves your inclinations.
Once you put together the angel or demon of your desire, click on the Done button to return to the Create A Family window, where you can consider designing a counterpart for the original householder you created. While there, you can also click on the icon for the character you just created, and send him on to character actor’s hell (never to return) by clicking on the Delete Selected Sim button.
Motives Fun Here is a list of Sim needs, and some of the means to fulfil them. You can get basic information on fulfilment by clicking on each need category’s text (and indeed text and bars in all of these Control Panel subpanels) to see an information box. Experiment with your Sims to see how their behaviours are affected by current mood, environmental conditions, and the tasks to which you set them. Patterns develop that you can use to fine-tune their progress.
Sims get the most gain from “high-quality” objects: That is, a small TV is less efficient at entertaining than a large TV. To put it in more analytical terms, in order to maximise the efficiency of each Sim; it’s necessary to find out how to make them happiest in the least amount of time. Some interactions with objects result in very different Needs effects, or reactions, from Sims of differing personalities.
The Devil Made Me Do It Skill Method of Enhancement The autonomous Sim does not always choose the wisest lifestyle choice from moment to moment. Sometimes it’s a choice between potato chips or the exercise machine, and who’s kidding who? You, of course, know better than that darned Sim, so be ready to take action when a Sim starts to slack.
Since relationships with Neighbours are the means to many ends, such as lifting social moods, starting romantic relationships, and potentially adding that neighbour (and their assets) to a household, it’s very inefficient to hinder relationship growth by promoting it at an unfavourable time. Of course, if you think your Sim is in the mood to insult the neighbour, that’s another matter. Your Sim’s mood counts too, inefficient as it may be.
And a couple of other clickety-pops: If you click and hold on a character, the character’s bio, which you composed in the Create A Sim window, or which was composed for you by the sensitive geniuses at Maxis™, appears. If you think the bio needs a little refreshing, just Control-click on the character in question, and get that bio in an editable dialog box for your red-pen pleasure.
Needs Arrows You can see a real-time (well, a Sim-time) tracking of how your selected Sim is feeling in regards to current activities. The best interactions or actions display five green right-facing arrows on the affected motive, the worst, five red left-facing arrows. The arrows remain onscreen for a delayed amount of time after the end of the interaction so you can go to the Needs subpanels to see the results.
And don’t just let a ringing phone ring—your Sims can get all kind of special offers if their feet are fast and their ear willing. Sims don’t have an answering machine—tell them to answer that ringing phone. Service Calls Some of your Sim’s appliances can just give up and stop working. Or maybe you designed some Sims that are cussedly sloppy, and you’re tired of having to tell them to flush. There is a solution: Let your mouse do the walking.
These differences in Relationship values make for intrigue, because a romantic interaction may be reciprocated (if the Relationship points are approximately equal) or may be flatly refused. If a refusal or rejection drives the selected character’s relationship with the refuser to plummet, there is no more opportunity for romance until the Relationship value is kicked up again, and that can take some smooth talking by your rejected Sim.
MARRIAGE Proposing Your Sims do have some traditional romantic leanings: They can propose to one another, and if the mood’s right, they can get married. In fact, they like it so much, they can get married to more than one Sim! (Remember now, this is the Sims’ world, not ours. You might think these multiple marriages are an advantage, but think of all the additional junk-mail credit card offers you’d have to throw away).
BABIES AND SUCH Interactions with Baby If you give your sexy Sims’ batteries enough charge on the Romance scale (think passionate kisses), a dialog box appears letting you choose for them to have a baby. If you do play the stork, the resulting baby needs to be taken care of for three Sim days in order for it to mature into a child. That means some Sim in the house must put the baby to sleep and feed it in a regular fashion.
Lose the Baby If baby gets extremely hungry, this is a failure state. See the Failure States section (page 62). If the baby’s hunger reaches this state, a social worker comes into the house and takes the swaddled baby away—shame! This situation can happen anytime (day or night) during the three-day babyhood period. The social worker is introduced with a dialog describing why she is there as she walks into door, but if your Sims are any kinds of parents at all, no explanation is good enough.
JEALOUSY Just as in our tangled world, jealousy can occur between Sim characters who are living together or between Sims and their Neighbours. The adults in the love triangle (one “love object,” loved by two others) experience jealousy if they are in the room when certain social interactions take place between their love object and the other lover, and we’re not talking about someone asking for the remote to be handed over. Check out this spicy example: Sim Suzie loves Sim Cliff, but so does Sim Penelope.
Carpools Your Sim needs to be up and at ‘em when the carpool comes—and if you send them off to work hungry and with a full bladder, they are pretty ornery (and more hungry and more bladdery) when they return. Give them a break and get them up early enough to be ready when the carpool arrives. (You might notice that the shabbier jobs have some real beat up cars—wheels have more polish with promotions).
A Sim’s Logic skill can improve with chess playing. Playing the piano kicks up the Creativity levels. Eating pizza, well, eating pizza boosts the cholesterol levels. An onscreen dialog appears when your Sim has earned a skill point, and it is reflected in the Control Panel. Skills won’t decline, unless your sorry Sim happens to get a random bad luck announcement onscreen. Sims can, being the contrary creatures they are, work on any skills they want, even if their career doesn’t call for it.
4. Life of Crime 9. Science Pickpocket – Entry-level two-bit thief—but you are your own boss. Dexterity and physical speed are obviously important. A certain amount of charisma is helpful, too, if you are going to charm those marks before you dip into their coats. Test Subject – While earning a science degree, you’re picking up a mediocre salary as a human guinea pig at a local kinetics lab.
Fires No Energy Ah, isn’t a fireplace a nice way to light up a living room? Well, it’s also a nice way to BURN up a living room, as you might see. Some of your clumsier Sims aren’t too swift with a pack of matches, and even asking them to light a fire is a risk. Fires can be VERY serious (see Failure States, page 62), so get those Sims to extinguish a fire immediately. You can double-up your adult Sims to put out a blaze, but kids can’t handle the extinguisher.
DELIVERABLES WINNING THE GAME Here are some items from the daily life of the Sims that help round out your information picture, and that let you know just how rich a life these ungrateful electronic mongrels—er, we mean, gentle creations of your creativity have. Don’t be absurd. This is a Maxis game! What’s to win? You and your Sims can play unto perpetuity, getting them into all kinds of entanglements and trying to get them out. Before you know it, it’ll be 3A.M.
Once in Buy mode, a series of icons appear that represent the eight item categories, and to the right of that, specific items within the selected category. All of the objects are sorted in two ways: By Room and by Function. Buy mode items sort by Function as a default; if you click on the Buy button again, items are sorted by the suggested Room of their placement. If you roll your mouse over the categories, an identifying tooltip pops up.
Put It in its Place Purchase Pointers Say you did want to put in a grandfather clock, or anything else—where to place it? As we said, you just move the cursor, click, and it’s placed, but there’s more to it than that. You don’t want to place items that block doorways or inhibit the free movement of your Sims. Besides the budget-breaking possibilities, you have to consider which amenities might suit your Sims.
FOR SALE, BY HOOK OR BY CROOK As mentioned, there are two sets of item category headings. Items arranged by Function, and items arranged by Room. The same items are found in either, but simply arranged under a differing category within each set. For instance, all manner of couches and chairs can be found under Seating when you are using the Function category, but they are found assigned to various areas, such as Living Room, Dining Room and Bedroom under the Room category.
TOOLS OF THE BUILDING TRADE Even if you can’t drive a nail without chipping a nail, you’re a master carpenter in The Sims. Here are all the tools you need to put together your Sim Shangri-La. TERRAIN TOOLS You can change the slope of your property with the Terrain tool, whether you want to dig out a gopher on a single patch of yard or lift your land in one long click and drag.
Wall Tool Column Tool To place sections of wall, just click and drag from one gridline to another; release the mouse and you see a lovely wedge of unfinished wall, primed for wallpapering. You won’t be able to place walls outside your property’s gridlines. You can build out a closed rectangle of walling by holding down the Shift key while you drag. You can also build walls (and roofing and second stories) on a diagonal.
Fireplace Tool Door Tool The definition of cosy, and yours for only 600 Simoleons and up—your Sims could always jog to warm up instead. Fireplaces come in four flavours, and must be placed against a wall. Sure, you could put one near that bed on the balcony, but remember that some clumsy Sims have a tendency to start fires on some combustible objects.
Hand Tool If you put that fireplace too close to where you hang your garlic, you can always move it. Click on the Hand tool to reposition and rotate placeable Build (and Buy) objects. Move an object by simply clicking on it (it now shows a yellow tile highlight) moving it to the right spot and clicking again. If it’s properly positioned, it settles into place. Rotating works the same as it does in Buy mode.
TROUBLESHOOTING YOUR FAMILY: ASK AUNTIE SIMONE You might find a bit later on, that in giving a friend a call (if your Sims have a phone—and you must buy one) to see if they want to visit that they might suggest bringing over a friend of their own. It could be the start of a nice cult, or perhaps a sewing circle. You know, you really can’t turn your back on a Sim, at least not for very long. They are always up to something—even when they’re sleeping, they’re dreaming about being up to something.
Once the love muffin is in the house and friendly, your pie menu gives you some opportunities to pitch some woo toward your potential sweetie, but make sure you’ve thrown some warm-up pitches first. Make sure they think you’re quite a tamale yourself, and that they’re in a good mood. If you can go from pleasant pecks to passionate kisses, you just might find a proposal asking if you’d like to get married.
• Can Sims drop out of school? Is this one of those questions that starts with “I have a friend that…”? Well, no matter if you only cracked the books to slip in notes to your classmates, your kid Sims have responsibilities, and one of those is to attend school and study hard in order to attain good grades. If they don’t do these things, there can be serious consequences.
You can’t actually directly throw out a kid, but with some creative thinking and actions on behalf—your behalf—of the kid’s academic performance (think duncecap), you might be able to bring about a significant change in the child’s wherewithal—and whereabouts.
APPENDIX 1 APPENDIX 2 BUILD YOUR SIM SKINS AND OTHER SIMS WEB WONDERS RECOMMENDED READING Some of you Sim-manipulators can tamper with the trappings of the game in a way that’s even more direct than telling your creations when it’s time to clean the toilet. You might want to make sure that the bathroom walls are just the colour and texture that you like, and that the Sim wielding the brush looks just like your little brother.
CREDITS WARRANTY Art Director: Charles London Peter Trice, Kinh Williamson, Duane Gundrum, Aaron Bennion Compatibility and Technology Lab: Michael Jung, Dave Koerner, Jay Miller Customer Quality Control Lead: Micah Pritchard Customer Quality Control: Tony Alexander, Benjamin Crick, Jacob Fernandez, Darryl Jenkins, Dave Knudson, Andrew Young Simulation Engineer: Jamie Doornbos Online Designer: Michael Perry Graphics Engineer: Eric Bowman Online Producers: Darren Futa, Marti Holguin Development Direct
Software and documentation © 2000 Electronic Arts Inc. All rights reserved. The Sims and Maxis are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts in the US and/or other countries. Maxis is a division of Electronic Arts™ Inc. Selected 3D models based in part on 3D ENCICLOPEDIA by DE ESPONA Infografica™. This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
