Welcome to The Sims 2! Part 13

Hello everyone,

Happy 2004! We hope that your holiday season was enjoyable and that you're set for another exciting new year. The team has been hard at work adding new features to the game, which you might have already started to read about in the most recent Designer Diary. But of course we saved the best info for our community members:

- Cameraman mode: The new camera in The Sims 2 is huge. The freedom to rotate, zoom, and scroll your camera as you play the game really lets you dive right into the Sims' 3-D world. With the new cameraman mode, you can take it a step further and get even more intimate with your Sims. Move around the environment as if you were a Sim, and get in the thick of the action at the most detailed level. In cameraman mode, you have complete freedom to set up the scene according to your imagination.

- Movie Recorder: We know that telling stories with The Sims has always been a fun and creative aspect for players. With the movie recorder, you can now capture footage straight from the game. By pressing "v" as you play, the game will begin creating avi's of your Sims in action. A complete video control panel is provided that allows you to optimize the settings for the movie recorder, ensuring that your machine is providing the best footage for your stories.

Here is a movie of these new features in action. With new cameras and the recorder to capture all of the action, you are now the director of your own movie. The stories you can create will be more dramatic, more cinematic, and we're willing to bet more creative and entertaining than anything we've ever seen.

Stay tuned for more info from the team next week!

Luc Barthelet

Movie Director, Maxis