2174 results found.
Displaying results 1841 to 1850

<< Previous | 180 | 181 | 182 | 183 | 184 | 185 | 186 | 187 | 188 | 189 | Next >>

1841. The Sims Online Shipping Confirmed [Update]

Written on Saturday 7 December 2002 at 17:31 by Steve - 3 comments.

The date for The Sims Online being shipped has been confirmed as the 17th December (providing there are no manufacturing problems). This will mean you will be able to purchase The Sims Online very soon!

If you want you can still become a play tester for The Sims Online by visiting The Sims Online Site. Or you can go direct to the order site at: https://secure.dotcomdist.com/maxemail.htm. Shipping is free if you live in the US or Canada, if you live outside the US or Canada shipping is $10. Please note that in certain countries you will not be able to sign up for the play test.

Update 8 December, 0:00 by ChEeTaH: This means The Sims Online has gone gold, i.e. production (pressing cds and manuals, boxing the packages etc) has started. As TheSimsResource says: "The Sims Online has been approved for production": the 'master cd' is ready and went to the companies for pressing. Note that this is only for the American edition (USA, Canada). Exact European release dates are unknown but it probably will be the first quarter of 2003.

1842. SimDay Update: another chat

Written on Saturday 7 December 2002 at 00:30 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

The SimDay news got updated a bit late again, with the news that there will be a SimCity 4 chat again next thursday (12 December) at 3pm PST (11pm GMT, midnight in Europe). The chat will be one where you can ask your questions to MaxisJoseph, designer of the SimCity 4 team. Go to chat here at that time to submit your questions. The same goes for the TSO chat later tonight (it's just a few hours away!). Have fun chatting!

1843. SimDay: TSO Chat tomorrow

Written on Thursday 5 December 2002 at 22:03 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Tomorrow a chat with the TSO team will be hosted at the the official site. It will be held at 6pm PST, which is is 2am in Great Britain or 3am in the morning in Europe. It says the "TSO team" but it's probably just a part of it, as the whole team is bigger than 100 people. A transcript will be available sooner or later for those who miss it, for instance because it's too early in the morning. Besides that, there are a few new skins available from SSX Snowboarding. To download them, click this link. Make sure you are logged in at the official site. The file is 220kb big. That's all again for this week, another SimDay next week.

1844. Poll #50 is up!

Written on Thursday 5 December 2002 at 01:32 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Yes it's here. We've reached our 50th poll at this site. We've done them weekly, with exceptions when we had just launched and weren't so popular yet, and one other time in May during the server move. Poll 50 is about The Sims Online: if you're going to get it, how will you pay to get play time? Will you pay with your credit card ($10 monthly), or by using the game time cards ($30 for 90 days, available in stores)? Vote on the right, or on this page. As for poll 49: it's obvious most people run The Sims in a 1024x768 resolution: 69 of 112 people (61.60%!) said they use that screen resolution, of which 29 (25.89% of the total) wished it could be even higher. 'Just' 33 people (29.46%) use the 800x600 resolution, and 4 people (3.57%) didn't know what it was about. In total, 6 people (5.36%) said they don't play the game anymore. For a nice overview of the results, and the results of all 49 previous polls, visit the archive.

1845. Server Trouble Update

Written on Tuesday 3 December 2002 at 23:48 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

There's some news about the server trouble we're having with our .com server again. As you might have noticed, images are loading again which means the server is back up. However, due to the severe speed problems downloading files will remain disabled until at least tomorrow afternoon/evening. It could even be thursday afternoon before downloading will be re-enabled. The whole problem is that the server was put on a T1 connection (which is 1.544 mbit/sec or about 200kbyte/sec in total, for all connections). In other words, all users of this website and other websites on the same server had to share 200kb/sec, which often resulted in downloading speeds of about 0.2kb/sec per user. In that way, even downloading a small file of 100kb would take 5 minutes to download (where it should be under a minute even on a 56k modem connection!). Due to these unacceptable speeds, downloading will not be enabled again for now as we rather want to keep downloading on hold and make the site load slightly faster than make the whole site slow.

Our thesimszone.com server will be moved again probably tomorrow or thursday afternoon, but then to a 100MBit connection (12.5 MByte/sec in total, about 66 times as much as the current 'speed'). This should solve all the recent problems with speeds and downtime, and everything will be working again properly at normal speeds. Once the server has been moved, downloading will be enabled again, and our (still secret) new (and necessary) feature will be set up as well. We apologise for all this trouble, but hope you also understand that it is out of our control. Just remember we'll be back in two days time!

1846. GameSpot TSO Feature

Written on Sunday 1 December 2002 at 01:28 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

As mentioned before, GameSpot has added their "Behind the Games" feature of The Sims Online. It's a long but interesting read. One thing that's talked about, is the original idea for TSO:

"'Originally, our idea was that you'd set up your house and it would act as a server,' recalls Wright. In essence, you would build your house offline and then open it up for online players to come and visit. 'It was going to be a lot like the matchmaking service on [Blizzard's] Battle.net,' says Wright. In other words, to visit someone else's house you'd actually connect directly to that player's computer. The idea seemed like a good compromise: It would be quick to develop, but it would also give the game online functionality."

The whole article is basically a big interview with Will Wright, designer of SimCity, The Sims and The Sims Online (amongst others). With its 13 pages, it's probably the longest feature about The Sims Online ever written so far. It even tells some things that Will is afraid of in TSO - "people spending too much time playing the game and about the illegal activity that could happen in his world". The development of TSO from the beginning until the play test and the launch of Alphaville is described. That play test was scary to quite a big part of the team, as it would show the consumer's opinion. People not pleased with the play test would base their opinion on that even though the game is still in decelopment. The result could be fewer consumers for the final version. Anyway, you should just read the whoe thing as it's too big to summarise here. A must-read for everybody: "The Endless Hours of The Sims Online". Enjoy the reading!

1847. More server trouble

Written on Saturday 30 November 2002 at 01:00 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Just like last week, our .com server has been taken down. Because there were serious speed problems at some times of the day for the last week (0.3kb/sec per connection sometimes), the host has decided to move us to a new server again which hopefully will be more reliable. We hope that the new server will be back up before monday, but at this point I cannot guarantee anything. At this point, downloading files has been disabled again until further notice. We hope this will be fixed very soon as well, but unfortunately I do not have control over this. You will be informed in the news here when the server is back online and can be used again - hopefully without problems then. We apologise for the inconvenience, and hope that you understand that we want to bring you a service that's as good as possible. Very slow downloading is unacceptable and and although it means some complete downtime it's better to have it serve at acceptable speeds so you don't have to wait hours to download a few files.

Once the server is back, we will be adding one new and necessary feature to the site. More details will be here soon, so keep checking the news! We should be back completely within a few days.

1848. SimDay: PS2 video

Written on Thursday 28 November 2002 at 23:39 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Besides the announcement of the announcement of the German site launch, there's a SimCity 4 Fansite Kit (15.5 Mb) to be downloaded. Having said that, there's one final more interesting thing: a QuickTime video of The Sims on PS2. You see the biggest special features of The Sims PS2, like creating your Sims, the 3D neighborhood, the story mode and 2-player challenges. Definately worth a look for those interested in this game (or perhaps even in The Sims 2, as some features might/will be seen in that game as well). You need a QuickTime plugin for it. To check out this 25 seconds video, go to this page. Last week's chat with SimCity 4 Producer Sean Decker about the Region Play feature was also quite a success, and the transcript can be found here. That's all, more next week.

1849. Unleashed on Mac

Written on Thursday 28 November 2002 at 23:04 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

As expected, Aspyr is converting the latest expansion pack of The Sims - Unleashed - to the Mac. The current date is set to December 2002, so it should be coming very soon. You can follow its progress a bit at their project status page. It will be pretty much the same as the PC version. This are the minimum system requirements:

MacOS 8.6, 9, 10.1 or later.

G3 processor at 233 MHz or faster (450 MHz recommended)

192 MB of Memory (additional 128M recommended if running OSX)

2 MB VRAM (8 MB recommended)

Hard drive, with 750 MB of additional free space

Quicktime 4.1.2

More info is at Aspyr.

 

1850. New poll

Written on Thursday 28 November 2002 at 01:04 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

We've had another poll again (number 48 already). To be short about it, here are the results of the question 'What operating system do you use the most?':

Windows XP 58 (55.77%)

Windows 98/98SE 23 (22.12%)

Windows 2000 11 (10.58%)

Windows 95 4 (3.85%)

Other Linux Distribution 4 (3.85%)

Mac-OS (Macintosh) 3 (2.88%)

Mandrake Linux 8.0 Gaming Edition 1 (0.96%)

That makes a total of 104 votes. This week we want to know what screen resolution you play The Sims in. Is this 800x600 or 1024x768 (and do you maybe wish it could be even higher)? Tell us on the right or on this page. Old poll results can be found here.