Saturday 8 February 2003

The Sims Resource: Site being updated again

Written at 01:10 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

The Sims Resource hadn't had any updates at all for a few weeks now, but they've come with something again. Apparantly MGON, the company who's hosted TSR the past 3 years, is ceasing to exist. The Sims Resource will remain alive though, and they've now found a new home. You can now submit downloads to them again (which was impossible for the past few weeks), and the forums have reopened with a new design. They've lost the post of the past 2 days though, but it looks well worth it. Also, members got a small period for free to compensate for the period that the site wasn't updated. And for those same paying members, they can pay again too. Even with its new home, the site is still remaining a pay-site. Its financial situation is unknown, and with their popularity it might mean some trouble for them again... but let's hope they won't have that, and that this site, probably the most popular Sims site, will stay open.

Tuesday 11 February 2003

The Sims Online pagina.nl: New portal for The Sims Online

Written at 23:11 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

The (amongst Dutch people) famous startpagina.nl has launched a new links page for The Sims Online. This will exist next to thesims.pagina.nl that's been around for a few years now and has recently changed webmaster and is now being updated again. The new TSO page, thesims-online.pagina.nl has links to TSO fansites and pages of houses in the game in several cities. Although this site isn't in the TSO list yet, it will probably be soon. So, if you're looking for TSO pages, go there. Even those who don't understand Dutch can visit it, as most of the sites linked to are in English anyway, and it's easy enough for anybody to understand the page.

Thursday 13 February 2003

IFF Edit: Career Creator 2.2 released

Written at 23:30 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Tom van Dijk, creator of several utilities like IFF Pencil, Career Creator, Script Station, Transpatcher and Xantippe (quite a résumé), has been working on Career Creator 2 again. The result is Career Creator 2.2, which now should be compatible with Unleashed. That means you can now also edit the 5 new career tracks that come with Unleashed. Those who bought Career Creator Pro (or Career Factory, Carière Factory or Job Factory in some countries) cannot get a patch yet, but that will probably be distributed through the publisher, Abacus software, according to Tom. There's also a new version of IFF Pencil 2, with some more bugfixes, available at IFF Edit too. Happy Editing.

Friday 14 February 2003

Simplosion: Another site closing down

Written at 00:27 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Another (pay) site is closing down again, this time it's SimPlosion. They went pay some time back as the owner could not pay the bandwidth bills anymore, unfortunately. But that's not the reason the site's being closed:

"I would like to thank those of you that supported me and stuck by me, unfortunately my heart is not really into this if I want to make stuff I will do it when I want and for the fun of making it, because I want to not because I feel I have to. Where is the fun in that?"

The PayPal button where you can sign up as member will be removed tomorrow, 14 February. That means you still have a very short time to sign up for just $2.49 to get their files. They're the second site that I know of that's closing this weekend, SimFever (a paysite too) being the first one. The free downloads of Simplosion will remain available on their freebies site. The complete newspost about the closing down can be found at the updates page.

Monday 17 February 2003

SimFever: The future of SimFever

Written at 00:03 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

SimFever will be closing next Tuesday, a bit later than the date they set before which was 15 February. We already reported that earlier. However, their staff won't be leaving the community. Lucky and Dani will keep updating the yahoo group which has freebies and sends out a regular newsletter. Daboo and Ana will continue their site SimSkins. That's a free site with many skins and head meshes, but they kindly ask for some donations too. Anna has opened up a new paysite, Anna's Timeless Treasures. The site already has many downloads, including several free ones. Several other staff members of SimFever (former Exclusive Sims staff members) are joining her site. Laurie is still deciding on what to do after SimFever closes. Subscribers to the newsletter from the yahoo group will know that soon. The same newsletter will tell what other staff members will be doing in the future. Those who have a subscription running at SimFever and paid for after February will be able to get a refund. You can also get subscribed to (selected) other sites, and SimFever will then pay a bit for those subscriptions. All in all, we'll have to miss SimFever but not their team.

Tuesday 25 February 2003

The Sims Zone: Big changes coming soon

Written at 01:00 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Next month we will be changing around some things over here. We've been working hard to reprogram the whole site, and all of that is nearly finished. That will mean we'll be moving over to one server (instead of 2, which is our current solution), plus there will be a lot of improvements. What do you think of searching the news or file archives? Or do you want to see what files are the most popular ones on this site? Oh wait, you want a whole new design? We've been keeping it secret for quite a while, but I'm glad to announce that all of the mentioned things will be coming very soon. We'll be using PHP instead of ASP (two different programming languages for the web). PHP is a bit faster and more reliable. The new design looks very good too, so you'll have to look forward to it.

Because of these changes, we'll be taking the site offline for about a week starting early March, so we can move and install the necessary files, and remove dead links in our archive. The donation section and the donation files will remain available, but regular files, the news, and all the rest will be taken offline until after the move. We're planning on starting the move at 1 March, but that may be delayed a couple of days. There is still some development going on behind the scenes which has to be finished before that. When the site's offline, you will already be able to see a small preview of the new design too. We'll continue updating until the site is actually taken offline, so keep coming back to this place. If you like this site now, you'll love it later!

We won't be adding real new features yet, except for those mentioned above. There are some more slight changes but nothing real big. However, we already have plans for features we'll be launching in the near and distant future. Those will be kept secret until we're closer to the launch date of a specific feature. If you're interested, just keep visiting.