Welcome to The Sims 2! Part 3

Hi everyone,

Thought I would check in with you all, say hello, and let you know how things were going this week at Maxis.

Makin' Magic went Beta this week (tiring...), and a few of our best and brightest SimCity community webmasters came to Maxis to see and actually play Rush Hour. We had a great time with them. Hopefully, we will soon be able to get most of you to Maxis to see and play The Sims 2.

Below are answers to questions that I have received from you in the last few weeks. I hope these will clarify your concerns:

• Yes, it is okay to post the images I have sent you on your websites. I encourage it!
• Yes, you will be able to have Sims 2 user created content on your pay sites.
• The recommended 3D program for custom content is Maya. That's what we all use here at Maxis.
• The tools we will release prior to the ship of the game have their own 3D engine. This will enable you to view the content.
• I hope that Maxis' hosting capabilities will pertain to all kind of existing websites. Further details will be provided regarding this later this month.
• There is a design mode in The Sims 2 to change the color and fabric of objects in the game. There will still be a HUGE opportunity for custom content above and beyond the "Design mode".

I have a short report this week to give you some details on our current plans for the minimum platform required to play The Sims 2 and have a good play experience. Because the PC is a complex platform, there are quite a few details involved. I will try to be clear in describing it:

Memory requirements:
You will need at least 128MB if you have Windows 98, 2000, or ME. You will need 256MB if you have Windows XP.

CPU and Graphic cards requirements. There are 2 basic cases:
1) If you have a 3D graphic card with "Geforce" or "Radeon" in the name you need a CPU of 600Mhz or faster.
2) If you have no graphic cards, or another kind of graphic acceleration you probably need a CPU of 1.5Ghz or faster.

Screen resolution:
The game will run in 800x600, 1024x768, and higher resolutions. Lower performance machines are advised to run in lower resolution as usual.

Overall:
The more memory, the more speed, the better. Duh!

We believe that when we release The Sims 2, 75% or more of the original Sims active players and over 90% of the core gamers will have compatible configuration.

The above specs represent what I currently believe will be required. Nevertheless, it is subject to change. Right now, we have two teams working on improving the graphic performance of the game. They are working on delivering the best graphic quality at the lowest performance, and at the highest performance of the PCs.

Since all of this system information is a bit complex, it would really be helpful if one of you in the community actually wrote a tool to help users figure out if they have a machine that is able to run The Sims 2. Later this fall, I hope Maxis will provide such a tool, but I'd rather keep The Sims 2 programmers working on the game and the custom content tools at the moment! If you get something running that does this please contact me immediately!

That's all for now!

Thanks,

Luc