#beta veronaville

[l-1-z-a]

Fly-by video of Veronaville during development of The Sims 2

[dystopianam]

Interesting 👀 So Miranda too overwritten a deleted character data

[just-ornstein]

[JK]  My first job was as an Assistant Producer for a video game company called Interplay in Irvine, CA. I had recently graduated from Boston University's School of Fine Arts with an MFA in Directing (I started out as a theatre nerd), but also had some limited coding experience and a passion for computers. It didn't look like I'd be able to make a living directing plays, so I decided to combine entertainment and technology (before it was cool!) and pitched myself to Brian Fargo, Interplay's CEO. He gave me my first break. I packed up and moved out west, and I've been producing games ever since.

[JK] I loved my time at EA. I was there for almost a full decade, and learned a tremendous amount about game-making, and met the most talented and driven people, who I remain in touch with today. EA gave me many opportunities, and never stopped betting on me. I worked on The Sims for nearly 5 years, and then afterwards, I worked on console action games as part of the Visceral studio. I was the Creative Director for the 2007 game "The Simpsons", and was the Executive Producer and Creative Director for the 2009 game "Dante's Inferno".

[JK] I haven't played in a long while, but I do recall that after the game shipped, my wife and I played the retail version for some time -- we created ourselves, and experimented with having a baby ahead of the actual birth of our son (in 2007). Even though I'd been part of the development team, and understood deeply how the simulation worked, I was still continually surprised at how "real" our Sims felt, and how accurate their responses were to having a baby in the house. It really felt like "us"!

Now for some of the development and lore related questions:

[JK] So I ended up in the incredibly fortunate position of creating the shipping neighborhoods for The Sims 2, and recruiting a few teammates to help me as we went along. 

Around the same time, we started using the Buy/Build tools to make houses we could save, and also bring them into each new build of the game (correcting for any bugs and incompatibilities). With the import tool, we could load Sims into these houses. In time, this "vanguard QA" process turned into a creative endeavor to define the "saved state" of the neighborhoods we would actually end up shipping with the game.

On playtesting & the leftover sims data on various lots:

Basically, we were in the late stages of development, and the Save Game functionality wasn't quite working. In order to test the game properly, you really needed to have a lot of assets, and a lot of Sims with histories (as if you'd been playing them for weeks) to test out everything the game had to offer. So I started defining a set of characters in a spreadsheet, with all their tuning variables, and worked with engineering to create an importer, so that with each new build, I could essentially "load" a kind of massive saved game, and quickly start playing and testing. 

It was fairly organic, and as the game's functionality improved, so did our starter houses and families. 

The thought process behind the creation of the iconic three neighborhoods:

I would not say it was particularly planned out ahead of time. We knew we needed a few saved houses to ship with the game; Sims 1, after all, had the Goth house, and Bob Newbie's house. But there wasn't necessarily a clear direction for what the neighborhood would be for Sims 2. We needed the game to be far enough along, so that the neighborhood could be a proper showcase for all the features in the game. With each new feature that turned alpha, I had a new tool in my toolbox, and I could expand the houses and families I was working on. Once we had the multi-neighborhood functionality, I decided we would not just have 1 starter neighborhood, but 3. With the Aging feature, Memories, a few wacky objects, plus a huge catalog of architectural and decorative content, I felt we had enough material for 3 truly distinct neighborhoods. And we added a couple of people to what became the "Neighborhood Team" around that time.

Later, when we created Strangetown, and eventually Veronaville, I believe we went back and changed Pleasantville to Pleasantview... because I liked the alliteration of "Verona-Ville", and there was no sense in having two "villes". (To this day, by the way, I still don't know whether to capitalize the "V" -- this was hotly debated at the time!)

Pleasantview:

Anyway, to answer your question, we of course started with Pleasantview. As I recall, we were not quite committed to multiple neighborhoods at first, and I think it was called Pleasantville initially, which was kind of a nod to Simsville... but without calling it Simsville, which was a little too on the nose. (There had also been an ill-fated game in development at Maxis at the time, called SimsVille, which was cancelled.) It's been suggested that Pleasantville referred to the movie, but I don't think I ever saw that movie, and we just felt that Pleasantville kind of captured the feeling of the game, and the relaxing, simple, idyllic world of the Sims.

Pleasantview started as a place to capture the aging feature, which was all new to The Sims 2. We knew we had toddlers, teens, and elders to play with, so we started making families that reflected the various stages of family life: the single mom with 3 young kids, the parents with two teens, the old rich guy with two young gold-diggers, etc. We also had a much greater variety of ethnicity to play with than Sims 1, and we had all new variables like sexual orientation and memories. All these things made for rich fodder for a great diversity of families. Then, once we had family trees, and tombstones that carried the actual data for the dead Sims, the doors really blew open. We started asking ourselves, "What if Bella and Mortimer Goth could be characters in Sims 2, but aged 25 years? And what if Cassandra is grown up? And what if Bella is actually missing, and that could be a fun mystery hanging over the whole game?" And then finally the "Big Life Moments" went into the game -- like weddings and birthdays -- and we could sort of tee these up in the Save Game, so that they would happen within the first few minutes of playing the families. This served both as a tutorial for the features, but also a great story-telling device.

Anyway, it all just flowed from there, as we started creating connections between families, relationships, histories, family trees, and stories that we could weave into the game, using only the simulation features that were available to us. It was a really fun and creative time, and we wrote all of the lore of Sims 2 within a couple of months, and then just brought it to life in the game.

Strangetown:

Strangetown was kind of a no-brainer. We needed an alternate neighborhood for all the paranormal stuff the Sims was known for: alien abduction, male pregnancy, science experiments, ghosts, etc. We had the desert terrain, which created a nice contrast to the lush Pleasantville, and gave it an obvious Area 51 vibe.

The fact that Veronaville is the oldest file probably reflects the fact that it was finished first, not that it was started first. That's my guess anyway. It was the simplest neighborhood, in many ways, and didn't have as much complexity in terms of features like staged big life moments, getting the abduction timing right, the alien DNA thing (which I think was somewhat buggy up until the end), etc.  So it's possible that we simply had Veronaville "in the can", while we put the last polish on Pleasantville (which was the first and most important neighborhood, in terms of making a good impression) and Strangeville (which was tricky technically).

Veronaville:

But my personal favorite was Veronaville. We had this cool Tudor style collection in the Build mode catalog, and I wanted to ship some houses that showed off those assets. We also had the teen thing going on in the aging game, plus a lot of romance features, as well as enemies. I have always been a Shakespeare buff since graduate school, so putting all that together, I got the idea that our third neighborhood should be a modern-day telling of the Romeo and Juliet story. It was Montys and Capps (instead of Montagues and Capulets), and it just kind of wrote itself. We had fun creating the past family trees, where everyone had died young because they kept killing each other off in the ongoing vendetta.

[JK] You know, I have never seen The Lone Gunmen, and I don't remember making any kind of direct references with the Strangetown Sims, other than the general Area 51 theme, as you point out. Charles London helped out a lot with naming Sims, and I'm pretty sure we owe "Vidcund" and "Lazlo" to him ... though many team members pitched in creatively. He may have had something in mind, but for me, I largely went off of very generic and stereotypical ideas when crafting these neighborhoods. I kind of wanted them to be almost "groaners" ... they were meant to be tropes in every sense of the word. And then we snuck in some easter eggs. But largely, we were trying to create a completely original lore.

[JK] Well, I think we kind of pushed it with The Sims 2, to be honest, and I remember getting a little blow-back about Bunny Broke, for example. Bunny Broke was the original name for Brandi Broke. Not everyone found that funny, as I recall, and I can understand that. It must have been changed before we shipped.

We also almost shipped the first outwardly gay Sims in those neighborhoods, which was bold for EA back in 2004. My recollection was that we had set up the Dreamers to be gay (Dirk and Darren), but I'm looking back now and see that's not the case. So I'm either remembering incorrectly (probably) or something changed during development.

In general we just did things that we found funny and clever, and we just pulled from all the tropes of American life.

[JK] The alien abduction started in Sims 1, with a telescope object that was introduced in the "Livin' Large" expansion pack. That's when some of the wackier ideas got introduced into the Sims lore. That pack shipped just before I joined Maxis in 2001; when I got there, the team had shipped "House Party" and was underway on "Hot Date". So I couldn't tell you how the original idea came about, but The Sims had this 50's Americana vibe from the beginning, and UFOs kind of played right into that. So the alien abduction telescope was a no-brainer to bring back in Sims 2. The male pregnancy was a new twist on the Sims 1 telescope thing. It must have been that the new version (Sims 2) gave us the tech and flexibility to have male Sims become pregnant, so while this was turned "off" for the core game, we decided to take advantage of this and make a storyline out of it. I think this really grew out of the fact that we had aliens, and alien DNA, and so it was not complicated to pre-bake a baby that would come out as an alien when born. The idea of a bunch of guys living together, and then one gets abducted, impregnated, and then gives birth to an alien baby ... I mean, I think we just all thought that was hilarious, in a sit-com kind of way. Not sure there was much more to it than that. Everything usually came from the designers discovering ways to tweak and play with the tech, to get to funny outcomes.

[JK] Possibly we were just testing the functionality of the Wants/Fears and Memories systems throughout development, and some stuff got left over.

[JK] I can't remember, but that sounds like something we would have done! I'm pretty sure we laid the groundwork for more stories that we ended up delivering :) But The Sims 2 was a great foundation for a lot of continued lore that followed.

--

I once again want to thank Jonathan Knight for granting me this opportunity and taking the time from his busy schedule to answer my questions.

[lionwolficemagma]

Hello, I created these genderbent neighborhoods here in Veronaville Pleasantview and Strangetown separately for anyone who wants them, I decided to go for all ancestors with data (which resulted in gay couples like Andromache and Hector, Mary Melons and Mike Steel, etc.) and all npcs and townies I inverted the gender, including social bunny, for anyone who wants the link is here

all families thumbnails

link for download is here

[yandereplumsim]

Because is 2 in the morning and I can't sleep, went into a deep dive in the Sims 2 dev thread over Twitter and found THIS:

I.NEED.THIS

At least I need info about this because don't tell me this doesn't sound GOOD.

Sadly there's no answer, and the curiosity is going to eat me for the rest of the night, but this bit of information is priceless for my sleep-deprived-beta-sims-2-obsessed brain.

Edit: a little bit of information I left out in my emotion, this tweet was answering a question about the original 5 Neighborhoods planned to be shipped in Base Game.

[dunne-ias]

The last part of Chapter 17 is now up on WordPress!

Here is a link to part 4, and you can use the category menu on the right to click your way to part 1 if you want to.

I have no idea when I'll get around to finishing the next chapter, because I have another exciting sims related project I want to do first, (just waiting on beta feedback to do last edits and then start on sets and pictures) but at least now all of 1997 is dooone. There were a lot of things happening, Cassandra's failed wedding, Mortimer dying, Goth surprise baby and I guess one or two things going on outside of the Goth family too. There is a lot of fun things planned for all of these sims and we get another year closer to adding Veronaville, which will be exciting.

Thank you, as always, to everyone who likes, reblogs, and especially comments, or otherwise lets me know what you think, even if you're mad at all the bad decisions my sims make :)

[samkat10423]

Veronaville - sort of

Well, I just got back from a trip to New Orleans and was playing in Twinbrook, but then I saw something online about Veronaville, and figured "Why not?" Now, when I played the Sims 2, I mostly hung out in Pleasantview, with the occasional excursion into Strangetown. Never really did much with Veronaville, because to be truthful I didn't really care for the builds there. So, I am NOT a hardcore Veronaville player. Which is why, I plan on changing things. A lot.

Anyway, there are - to my knowledge - currently 2 versions of Veronaville for the Sims 3, and my personal favorite is the one done by danjaley. Mostly because she has a centralized downtown. She does warn you that hers is a "beta" version, created a long time ago, and that you may have issues.

So, I had planned to steal some lots from Monte Vista to use in this town, but they were all too big. But no matter. I just started editing the ones she had - mostly because I wanted to update the town to use later ep lots. But there wasn't a lot of space. So, what to do.

Today, I decided that since she had used an edited version of Riverview for her town, I'd just open Riverview and plunk her lots down in it - after I got the routing fixes from Mod the Sims. And that's what I did. It took me a week to come to that decision, but oh well.

This first lot is called Pentameter Parkway. In her town, it's on a much smaller lot, so I made a few tiny changes to her build. In my town, I placed it where the military rabbithole was - a 44x44 lot. (That lot I put out where that crazy Cottneye sim has his bunker). The front of the lot is basically the same as she built it.

But in the back of the lot, I placed a small, soccer field. I also widened the main building a tad and added some windows to this side. I think her original lot came to where that crosswalk is on the road.

In her description, she says that this is "a good place for sims to get groceries and mags," so on the one end, I made it into a comic book store. None of this stuff was available when she created her town. Plus, I use CC in my game. Lots of CC.

In the center of the build, I made a tiny grocery store. I thought about placing the rabbithole rug here, but she also created the Veronaville Market, where she placed the grocery RH. So, this store just has the general store register.

Then on the end, I got rid of the bathrooms - I put them into that separate building you see in the 1st picture - and instead, made this into a tiny Asian cafe. I got most of the foods from Sandy over on Around the Sims 3. And viola! One lot finished! Go, me!

Then I went into the island part of town.

This is the bistro lot she created. I did flip the build - mostly because I wanted it to face the street that runs past the city hall. And when I was reconfiguring it a bit, I decided to add that one parking space for the current owner - Antonio Monty. She called it Ristorante Montecci - named after the family who created it. But I figured they all died out and Antonio bought it. If you read his bio, he's having problems keeping it afloat. Sucks to be him.

I also placed a few more lots. But I'll show them to you later. I do want to thank danjaley for all her lovely builds And her commentary on the different lots. A lady after my own heart! She did an amazing job on all of this. I prefer her street and sidewalk surfaces and that she didn't clutter the town with a bunch of streetlights. I had replaced the lights with that one from Monte Vista, but when I switched worlds, I had to delete them. Oh well.

[munchiethegnome]

Beta Mercutio, Olivia... and Viola?

[weirdnerdearnest-blog]

Happy Anniversary The Sims 2!

16 Years Later.

[rurpleplayssims]

The Capp family tree...

...as it stands in the gameplay.

The Summerdreams are the ones turning out baby after baby! I need to upload theirs! 🤣 (which means I will next time I load their household!)

ALSO, thank you to @vixsims for answering my ask the other day (found here) as I was trying to find the UI Sims Portraits that she used.

It was driving me mad that I couldn't figure out what they were called to search let alone find! 🤣

[l-1-z-a]

The DELETED Sim From The Sims 2! | Viola Monty 😱

- Viola Monty is a deleted Sim from The Sims 2, specifically from the neighborhood of Veronaville, whose existence is less known compared to Bella Goth.

- The narrative surrounding Viola includes eerie elements such as dead Sims with bios, and a character named Olivia Monty who is depicted as faking a pregnancy.

- Viola is believed to have lived at 111 Stratford Street, which is connected to her family, including her parents and siblings, indicating her intended role in the game.

- Evidence of Viola's existence can be found in the game's code, where her character number is placed between those of her parents and siblings, suggesting she was created as part of the family.

- Viola's physical appearance is speculated based on her parents' characteristics, with references to her having blond hair, dark skin, and possibly green or light blue eyes.

- The names Olivia and Viola are linked to Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," reinforcing the theme of Shakespearean inspiration in Veronaville.

- The lead producer of The Sims 2 Jonathan Knight acknowledged the possibility of Viola's connection to "Shakespeare in Love," suggesting her deletion may have been influenced by thematic considerations.

- The dynamics of Veronaville's families are analyzed, hinting at potential relationships between Viola and other characters, particularly with Tybalt, who lacks a romantic partner.

- Relationship data from SimPE indicates that Viola's grandparents recognize her as a grandchild, while her immediate family does not, hinting at intentional removal of her connection to them.

- The community continues to celebrate Viola through fan art and discussions, highlighting her enduring legacy despite her deletion from the game.

[dystopianam]

Working on early VV is helping me to understand simPe better and read the wiki much better, I'm amazed at the things I'm finding even though I think this is completely a new information? Idk maybe I haven't seen it before, but since Viola's discovery the wiki is updated from time to time with some new info from Beta VV/Europa

[just-ornstein]

WHAT THE FUCK IS THE BEAKER CASTLE EVEN - A SimPE Deep Dive

Alright, so after stumbling upon some of the Beta pics on the Russian TheSims.cc site and this analysis post about the Beaker mansion, I became deeply curious if some of this would be reflected in the lot relationships. After all, some characters like Viola, Kelly, on top of several others could be found when digging through the raw and somewhat encrypted code of lots.

By now it's pretty clear that the Beaker home once belonged to this dude and his army of girlfriends (definitely check out the post I mentioned earlier). On top of that Loki (and possibly Circe) seems to have gone through at least two iterations before eventually settling on their final forms.

And on top of that whenever you scan the mansion in a completely new game, you will find fingerprints of primarily deceased Sims everywhere!

Now to get to the Sim relationships on the lot...

712 freaking Sim Relationships, all of which are unknown. Some of which still have stats set such as married, friends, relationship scores, etc. I tried comparing this to other lots in their neighborhood and NONE even come close. Both Olive and the Smiths have around 400. The other lots have below. And the only lots that are even a tad higher in this number are the Capps and the Summerdreams which makes sense when you realise that hood went through at least one other iteration before turning into Veronaville.

Now I wondered if the encrypted code (despite being very hard to read due to being partially encrypted) had any old Sim remnants left in there. And yep, several even. Many of which even have information such as their gender, hair, clothes and age in there. So lemme go over some of them:

1. First one, a guy who's name is partially encrypted so it will never fully be visible. It's not Johnny cause Johnny also has his character file on this lot.

A male teen with brown hair who used to wear the "tmbodyhoodedsweatshirtboardshorts" + the "tmhairhatcap" hairstyle.

2. Second is another teen, this time by the name of Zeeshan. He had black hair, the bucket hat hairstyle and wore the hooded sweatshirt, except with pants this time around (and grey apparently?).

3. The third was an adult male Sim by the name of Kenneth with black hair. Based on his info he was likely meant to be a Gardener Sim.

4. The fourth was one named Kana... Possibly a longer name cause once again the code becomes a bit shambled here. She too was meant to be a Gardener as seen by her outfit and hair data. Her hair would have been brown.

5. Elle, another female Gardener Sim, this one having red hair.

6. Vasyl, an adult male Sim who wore the busdriver outfit. Sadly his hair data seems to be blocked behind the code. For funsies I like to give the name to Bald Beta Loki, since he gives off that vibe. BUT, I think this was an NPC busdriver due to the outfit.

7. Joanne, an adult female Sim with an unknown hair colour in corn rows style and the classy afbodyjacketturtlesweaterdressboots. Sadly her ID is hidden behind the encrypted code, so it's hard to fully make out.

All of these Sims appear to be NPC/Townie Sims. None of them match ANYONE in the Beta pictures. And the current Townies/NPCs seem to have replaced them. Interestingly enough, those that were NPCs are still NPCs and those that were Townies are still Townies. Making me wonder if this is a thing that translates to other Sim IDs too. That Sims that were Townies in earlier iterations are still Townies in their new form. Same for NPCs and yep, Playables. This is merely an assumption I'm making on what I'm finding here, but if anyone can help research this further, that would be greatly appreciated, especially as this could mean the Viola ID may not belong to Viola Monty.

Viola is an odd case cause no outfit, hair or other data can be found in the lot file and she's only ever mentioned once in the context of lines filled with "sleep in pyjamas". But for now I cannot say anything with certainty unless more remnants of these old Sims could be found somewhere. OR, if these files could be read in its entirety which is quite difficult.

It's very hard to get a Sim ID attached to a lot (believe me I tried) and often times seems to rather happen accidentally than intentionally. Moving a Sim out or having a Sim die usually removes the data they once held to that lot. Good example is Loki in my current Strangetown who lived on this lot all of his life and when he died he had no remnants left on this lot.

REGARDLESS! The Beaker lot is ancient and seems to have been ground for a ton of testing, Sims and many more things. No wonder the Beakers got this home with its incredibly shady history. Half of the beta town was partying here!

[rippythegrunt]

Had a dream where somebody posted early betas of Veronaville and it was called Stageland and the presentation was two sims with masks arguing while dressed as characters from Cats

Really funky huh

[atlene]

The Patterson Legacy - Veronaville News 1.1

For The Patterson Legacy, I’m using Lazy Duchess’s Story Progression Beta Mod so that the hood grows and changes and ages along with my legacy family.

I’ve decided to post updates from story progression along with the main family updates so we can see what our beloved premades and townies are up to in the background!

Education:

Tybalt Capp, Juliette Capp, and Mercutio Monty enroll in Sim State University. I’m sure there will be trouble between Tybalt and Mercutio...

A couple of days later Romeo Monty joins them. Even more trouble, no doubt.

It’s not long before a couple of Capp cousins go to university. To join Mercutio Monty. Whom they both had their first kiss with. How could this go wrong?

Romance and Relationships:

Uh oh, Mercutio being away at university isn’t stopping him romancing his own Capp sister.. Hermia and Mercutio have their first kiss.

...And Mercutio’s been busy! Romancing two Capp ladies. Hope these cousins never find out!

More first kisses happening at Sim State University! Castor Nova sure has been busy. Hope he’s not developing a lip cramp the way he’s going at it. 

Plus Heather Huffington having her first kiss with Castor but immediately turning around and giving Martin Ruben his first kiss? Drama!

There is a nice, sweet, straightforward romance at Sim State after all. Goof for Ty and Sam.

Joshua Ruben seems to be getting in on the Sorority romance action.

Aww, Puck and Hermia get to have a kiss! I’ve always liked those two together. Drama free...unless Hermia still has a thing for Mercutio?

And Oberon adopts a dog haha.

It’s strange to think of little Bottom Summerdream getting romantic but she and Hal Capp definitely are!

Birthdays:

Monty twins Beatrice and Benedick become teenagers. Watch out Veronaville!

And Hal Capp is also a teenager while his little sister Ariel Capp becomes a child.

Bottom Summerdream becomes a teen.

Desdemona Capp joins the Veronaville teens.

Aaand we have the mass townie birthdays.

Pregnancies and Births:

I was thinking the Summerdream’s had been a bit quiet but now Titania is expecting! 

And Goneril and Albany prepare to welcome their...6th child?!

Graduations and Careers:

Bianca Monty, Goneril Capp and Regan Capp begin new careers. These actually seem very fitting for all of them

Jane Stacks has finished her degree and joins the Education career. I haven’t played her much at all but that does seem to fit her.

Obituaries:

Patrizio Monty went pretty early on, leaving his wife, children and grandchildren.

I can’t wait to see what story progression has in store for them next

[cobycobsy2k]

Project: "Genie in A Bottle".

Alpinloch (BETA version)

Hood Bio:

Alpinloch is a small town inspired by the late 60s early 70s. It is a small town whose tourism is declining (Because some families are going to places like Veronaville, Desiderata Valley or Riverblossom Hills), will the local youth be able to stay in Alpinloch or spread their wings to go to other places? .

Alpinloch is inspired by places like Louisina (United States), Rye (UK), Calais (France) and Florence (Italy), which are places that I love because they are so beautiful!