If we can get Simitone to a good stage, I'll feel comfortable making an "official" release and writing a ton about it on the blog. There's quite a way to go for the game to be this complete, but it's pretty close to completion and the goal is in sight.

This goes into a lot of detail. It's likely that multiple of these issues could be covered in one day of development, though obviously very far from every day will be spent on development. ;)

This issue is subject to change, it's pretty much a draft right now. There's a lot to think about, so I probably easily missed something.

Must have for launch:

UI

• Options Menu
• Credits (OG credits and FreeSO contributors)
• UI for Spellbook and Cookbook.
• UI for purchasing clothing and pets. Implement clothes/pet chooser UI #7
• Cross-System game file transfer (ASP.NET OWIN server app + downloader UI) for transferring installations to laptops without disk drives,
• General cleanup
• Localisation support? UI strings are very different in TS1, and the ones custom for simitone are hardcoded.
• Some rearrangement for "desktop" class screens. Touchscreen targeted UI will still be present.
• Picture in Picture.

Neighborhood Management

• Lot Bulldoze (and move out)
• Lot Rezone
• Neighbourhood Bootstrap (eg. works without opening ts1 once)
• Neighbourhood Management Page
  • Copy Neighbourhoods from TS1
  • Create new named neighbourhood (from scratch)
  • Delete/Rename neighbourhoods.

Engine Features

• Promote/Demote Fame Logic
• Accurate Free Will. Need a better handle on how this works in TS1.
  • Self modification of Motive Advertisements via the test function.
• Saving the game when on Vacation.
• Autofollow sim plumbbob.
• Some way for the Simitone plumbob to show motive state. (likely in the diamond)
• Purchasable outfits and saving back to the character IFFs.
• All TS1 global calls, including the stupid ones like Pet to Adult.

QA

Note: This also includes things that should work with the current Simantics/engine feature set, but probably doesn't and may need further investigation.

• Verify Core Gameplay
  • Career Progression
  • Child. School, military school, studying.
  • Relationship cycle. Walkby -> phone invites -> romance -> propose -> move in -> baby -> child
  • Death (adult, child, pet)
• Verify Downtown Gameplay
  • Restaurant lifecycle
  • Purchasable Clothing
  • Auto-Follow, aka "invite sim to downtown" or "take sim home"
  • Find out what's wrong with those god damn cars
• Verify Vacation Gameplay
  • Saving game on vacation. Other families cannot visit a vacation lot with another sim present. Going to a vacation lot someone was in before cleans it up (removes all npcs, resets all objects)
  • Renting Stuff. Igloo, snowman kit, picnic basket etc.
  • "Vacation Score", a cross lot score that gets you a prize
  • Souvenirs
  • Hotel booking. At time of issue creation the game always thinks you are booked in... it probably dynamically switches the player sim between visitor and roommate status.
• Verify Unleashed Gameplay
  • Purchase Pets.
  • Pet AI. (shouldn't randomly starve to death, at least)
  • Pet shows and training.
  • Lifecycle for all object pets.
  • Renting stuff, like the boat. I think this is similar to vacation's.
• Verify Studiotown Gameplay
  • Fame career track
  • Fame special objects, like skydiving, aquarium, satellite dish
  • Obsessed fan, studio tours visit (at home)
• Verify Makin Magic Gameplay
  • Living in Magic Town via the houses purchasable with Magicoins
  • Quests
  • Purchasable Items
  • Spells
  • Craftable items
  • Pyrite (right now it doesn't seem to do anything autonomously?)
• Object CC. Iff and Far, with custom anims and maybe sounds
• Skin CC

Would like to have:

• Simitone Website

FreeSO Engine Improvements (can be delayed)

• 2D 2.0: Less stuttering
  • Object sprite partial vertex buffer update, rather than full regeneration every change.
  • 2D Walls rewrite, likely with same theory as above.
  • Cleaner no-depth implementation from the start? We can make nicer switchable shaders with compiler definitions and imports.
• 3D 2.0: Additional graphics features for remeshes.
  • Import normals from .OBJ.
  • Cube map and specular tools.
  • Investigate options for normal maps and specular maps (with texture compression)
  • New volcanic tools
    • Layer management. Reorder layers within a 3d drawgroup, cull mode, lighting parameters.
    • Mesh Replacements -> .far archive with texture compression. (DXT, ETC, PVRTC) Good for hitting low spec systems.

Possible future features:

• 3D Neighbourhoods (via replacement model. game can already export a base model for ngbh that creators can line up properties with)
• Family Import/Export (maybe compatible with original)
• House Import/Export (NOT compatible with original)
• Simitone Neighbourhood Import/Export (likely just a copy, though might want to verify expansions and CC)
• Lighting redux
  • Shadow mapped outdoor light with cascades. Will allow for object self shadow outdoors, sharp shadows near camera, direct outdoors lighting decoupled from light sources.
  • Smarter localized repainting for lights. When an object moves, only redraw near it. When a light appears/disappears, only redraw within its range.
  • Make lights cast from midpoint of their bounding box, rather than always the ceiling. (we have estimated bounds in 2d now as well)
  • Remove room limit for lights in ultra lighting mode. Lights will shine directly through windows, casting shadows with the window shape. Old light bleed will be made very slight so it appears like "bounce lighting".
• Hints?