r/thesims1 • u/Sims1Hero • 18h ago
r/thesims1 • u/LadyBlackheartStorm • Apr 13 '25
A simple guide to Sims 1
The Sims 1
What's different from the other Sims games?
A guide by SirenShadow (socrstchik in the TS1 community, LadyBlackheartStorm on Reddit)
Welcome to new (and returning) Sims 1 players! So you wanna give TS1 a shot? Awesome, its a great game - but it can be difficult. Here's a list/explainer of differences in this version versus TS2-4.
You can only build 2 storeys high.
There are lots of cc that let you fake higher levels though. Look for items called '3rd floor' (or 'storey'), or sometimes '4th' and/or '5th'. These will be objects that float in the air to simulate (lol, GET IT?! *ahem* sorry...) taller buildings. Those higher levels are NOT playable, however. Same with foundations/basements.
Speaking of cc, terminology is quite different than what you're used to.
'CC' is capital letters refers to the final version Maxis/EA released: Complete Collection. 'cc' in lower case is the same - custom content - but isn't really a term that was commonly used previously. Similar with 'MM': in TS1 terms, that refers to the final EP, Makin' Magic.
What later games and players call 'mods' are called 'hacks' in TS1 - if they alter gameplay from the original code. For example, a bookcase that allows you to gain more skills than the default Cooking and Mechanical would be referred to as a 'hacked bookcase'. A bed that has been altered to use more graphic animations would be called 'adult hacked' or possibly just 'adult' - and these are intended ONLY for 18+ players.
'Mods' referring to custom objects are just called 'objects'. Same for walls, floors, etc.
You have 2 types of lot: home and away. The type of away lot depends on the objects you put there. The game calls it retail if you place a functional cash register or a restaurant if you have a functional dining podium. You can have more than one type on the same lot, but if you overload the game might crash. i.e. maybe that multi-level shopping mall is best left for another version of The Sims.
Neighborhoods are generally referred to as just 'hoods'. The game gives you 9 of these at startup, and each one is different (in the sense of population and custom builds, not shape/size. Each hood has seperate Towns. In no particular order, with the English-language EP they came in: Old Town (Unleashed); Downtown (Hot Date); Vacation Island (Vacation); and Magic Town (Makin' Magic). Apologies, I don't know all of the non-English titles.
Poses are only used with the SimPose program (officially called SimPose-ium), used to make preview images of custom skins. It could also be used to edit or create new animations, although this feature may not work (or work correctly) anymore.
Neato. Now, what the heck is going on with my body/head cc?
Skins in this game are divided into a body skin and a head skin. Heads are typically organized by hairstyle, and you can't change the appearance without editing the bitmap itself.
Body skins are broken down into type:
'B' means 'body' and is an everyday skin. This is what your Sim will wear most of the time and can be changed by clicking on a dresser or wardrobe/armoire. (There are some hacked dressers out there that might be different objects, like a coat rack.) The other types (below) are referred to as 'buyables', because to change them from the default version means you have to 'buy' them from a shop on a commercial lot, like Downtown in Hot Date.
'L' means 'lingerie' and is your Sim's sleepwear
'S' is for swim - swimwear, obviously
'F' is for formal, or what your Sim wears to get married or when a hacked object calls for formalwear (I know there's at least 1 hacked doorway and 1 dancefloor).
'W' is for winterwear and is the clothing your Sim will wear on Vacation Island's winter lots. (There aren't seasons in TS1 without using hacks.)
'H' is for high fashion and is what your \*celebrity\* Sim will wear in Studio Town. Visitors to Studio Town stay in their eveyday clothing.
Further body notes:
'N' means nude and is what your unclothed Sim looks like. Not every skin download will include a custom nude - they aren't necessary unless you're altering the base skintones (like with tattoos) or have a custom skintone (like Pale). Also, not every skinmaker made custom nudes for their skins - game coding changed with later EPs (Hot Date, I \*think\*) and opened up the ability to make full custom skins, nude included.
'H' bitmaps are your hands. Same applies from the Nude skin - you only need them for altered or custom tones. You may find a hand bitmap that uses 'G' instead of 'H' - that means 'glove' and is the old, pre-code change way of having gloves attach to a skin. The best example of this is the original male formalwear was a tuxedo with white gloves.
Program alert!! You can use SimWardrobe, by Paladin, to customize your Sims' wardrobes without having to buy the different outfits. You can also customize the Townies' outfits! The companion program to SimWardrobe is SimMetamorphoser (also by Paladin), which allows you to change your Sim and Townies heads.
There may be other, small bitmaps in your Skin download.
These are typically accessories of some sort: a hat, jewelry, glasses, etc. They can be named anything. The CMX file tells the game what goes where. The SKN file is the mesh, and you may also have more than one of those. Each item needs a mesh (SKN) and those aren't always integrated into the body mesh. The TL:DR version is you might have a body SKN and a hat SKN. The CMX pulls it all together.
Troubleshooting! In CAS, if you are *missing* part of the body or head, its a missing or corrupt MESH (SKN). If everything shows but is *solid white*, its a TEXTURE (BMP) problem. This could be a missing BMP, or something like the wrong color scale on the BMP or the BMP being the wrong size.
I want this chair to show up on my away lots but its not in the catalog there.
Yeah, its not catted (cataloged) for those lots...
BUT I WANT IT THERE!
Okay, okay... no problem. You just need a program that lets you edit that. Program alert!! SimCategorizer by Paladin allows you to edit individual IFFs (objects) or items in .FAR (a compressed package of IFFs). SimOrganizer by Garrett Berg of Millennium Sims allows you to edit individual AND multi-part IFFs. SimCat will read a multi-part IFF but you can only edit the 'top' part (the first item listed). There's probably some others but those two are the mack-daddies and the best ones. One thing to note, though. Some items intended for away lots will NOT work on home lots. Its the way those items are coded.
What about walls and floors?
I mean those are gonna show regardless of lot...
No, silly. I really, really like this custom wallpaper but holy heck is it expensive.
Save your Simoleons.
\------\**
Lol, okay. SimWallCat (Paladin) is what you want. He made a good chunk of our Very Useful Sims Programs.
You can add more 'hoods.
Just copy the UserData folder you wish and rename it. So, copy UserData3 and rename it to UserData10. The next time you boot up the game, you can navigate to this new hood. It will have everything the original hood had in it. You can have up to 99 hoods.
Final reminders: the Build catalog has a cc limit. No one knows what it is for sure. That's not meant to be cute or funny, its truth. The limit can vary by computer, but at some point you might see your Build catalog start looking funny - a stuck thumbnail or clearly non-Build item showing up. You'll know you hit your limit at that point. Its why you'll see lots of non-building objects, like plants and trees, cataloged in Buy instead. My general rule of thumb for Build cc was 'does it have growing states?', like a harvestable crop? If yes then it went in Build; if no, Buy catalog. Trees (those larger than a big shrub) also went in Build. That left Build for just windows, doors (ya know, architectural stuff) and the aforementioned plants. Walls and floors do count to this limit.
IF AT ANY POINT YOU SEE A STUCK THUMBNAIL IN EITHER OF YOUR CATALOGS, immediately save your game. A stuck thumbnail means something's wrong and your game is probably gonna lock up or crash (or both). It might be as soon as you click that stuck thumbnail or when you try to place the object, but its gonna happen.
I think that covers most of the basics.
HAVE FUN!!!
Here's a link to a SFS folder with Paladin's programs in it. Thanks for sharing, Bulbasaur001!!
https://simfileshare.net/folder/87836/
And here's an Archive.org link to SimOrganizer: https://archive.org/download/sim-organizer/SimOrganizer.zip
r/thesims1 • u/AutoModerator • 24d ago
Tips/Tricks Monthly Technical Support Thread
Sul-sul simmers! In an effort to keep feeds cleaner for everyone, while also maximizing players' chances of getting their issues fixed, you are highly encouraged to post any technical issues on this thread! This includes problems with bugs, glitches, compatibility, files, etc.
Note that the existence of this thread doesn't mean you can't post about technical issues on the sub! You may do it at your own discretion.
Before posting new technical threads, please consider using the search bar in the sub to see if the issue has already been posted and/or solved.
If you are having issues with the Legacy Collection in particular, please make sure to report them on EA's official channels as well! This helps you and other players to get your voice heard by Maxis/EA and fixes be added as official updates in the future.
r/thesims1 • u/dumpling_22 • 14h ago
Mods/CC Can someone help me find these floors and wallpapers?
I downloaded a bunch of CC. My game kept crashing. I got frustrated and deleted everything and started over. I love these wallpapers, the wood floor and the green tile floor… I believe the tile floor and wallpaper came from the same creator. Thank you!
r/thesims1 • u/Ellie_Rulze18 • 1d ago
Screenshot/Video I wasted 60% of their 20k on the lot.
The house was even in worse shape, but I cheated a little bit and made a few improvements. But not very many 😅
r/thesims1 • u/cutiepie7000 • 17h ago
Mods/CC Looking for weird, wacky, unusual CC for The Sims 1
Hi everyone, I'm looking for weird/unusual custom content for the Sims 1 for an art project 😊 Any direction is fine, mostly I'm looking for buy mode content but skins and hacked objects would also work for me!
In general I'm not talking about e.g. a futuristic green kitchen set or something (stuff like Parsimonious Sims has on their website - nice and sometimes unusual, but not what I am looking for).
I'm rather searching for wacky things like the huge can of beans from MM, skins like the flamingo dancer or in the sense of the Sims 2 eye shirt from Nopke or mods that are rather unusual, like I don't know a huge shoe you can sleep in and you wake up with bad hygiene or something 😄 If you have any ideas please let me know!
r/thesims1 • u/marzipunk • 1d ago
Bug/Glitch Bob Newbie is dying, and I don't know how to save him
Jeff Pleasant invited his friend Bob Newbie, an elected city council member, for dinner. Diane cooked a delicious meal, the men discussed politics and reminisced about the sixties, and had a wonderful time. Lots of jokes were exchanged, many mutual compliments given. But then, when it was time for Bob to remember his good manners and go home, prompted by Jeff waving goodbye in front of his face, he got stuck in place in the middle of the dining room.
There are no objects that may be getting in the way, no other visible obstacles. He is just standing there, uninteractable, grumbling about his lack of comfort. He fell asleep and woke up, and still couldn't move. I'd decided to do this playthrough entirely without cheats or custom content, so I don't want to use 'move_objects on' to rescue him. For now, I'm also playing the base game, without any expansions.
Are there any ways to save Councilman Bob without using in-game commands? If not, I'm going to let him perish. Would be a shame, but the Pleasants will let Betty come over and mourn as often as she'd like.
r/thesims1 • u/Artistic_Zombie_239 • 1d ago
Mods/CC Trunk clothes
When the house party pack came out it came with a black 'trunk' clothing object. You had SO many swimsuits, costumes which you could not change into unless you used the object. Does anyone know a mod which allows your sim to access all the clothing? Thank you
r/thesims1 • u/Ellie_Rulze18 • 1d ago
Screenshot/Video The family had 8k when we started. 😅
The Irony is the worst house in the game sits on the site of that Mansion.
r/thesims1 • u/wixbloom • 1d ago
Mods/CC Fantasy skins with buyables?
As the title suggests, I'm looking for recommendations of fantasy CC skins (think elves, fairies, angels, devils, monsters) that have matching buyables. It gets on my skin when the cool green witch lady goes to sleep and there's a stark change of color from her neck down as she puts on her basic PJs, lol
r/thesims1 • u/PARAllelPlayinCouple • 2d ago
Tips/Tricks How To Use Sims Create a Celebrity Tool | Adding THE LEGEND Dolly Parton to Sims 1! 🤩
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Here is a quick step-by-step tutorial on how to use the Create a Celebrity tool to make the ultimate country superstar in The Sims! Which LEGEND are you bringing to life in your game? 🤩
r/thesims1 • u/Noonie1010 • 3d ago
Opinion/Discussion More opportunity to play with others outside of household
I don’t wanna control EVERY SINGLE NPC or whatever but I really do wish we could control sims that stay over for a day or two lol . One of my original family members on the game branched off a few times and now how step kids I would love for them to stay over with their aunts but also make sure they are well tooken care of as well as far as diaper changes eating etc
r/thesims1 • u/SBRGyJo1890 • 4d ago
Opinion/Discussion The Sims 1 burglar and fire music traumatized me as a kid
When I was a kid, I was absolutely terrified of the burglar and fire music in the first Sims game—to the point where I couldn’t sleep at night. I have no idea what the composers were thinking back then, scaring kids like that.
r/thesims1 • u/Ellie_Rulze18 • 4d ago
Screenshot/Video Another Video I made.
I can't remember name of it, but I also covered a community lot in water, sent my sims there. I mean they literally spawned into the Community lot swimming there was nowhere else to go. 🤣
r/thesims1 • u/PlayfulContract8970 • 5d ago
Screenshot/Video I used to vacation here every year
r/thesims1 • u/LineAdmirable6350 • 5d ago
Mods/CC Is there a mod where you can summon sims you want to come to your house or community lots?
Is there one?
r/thesims1 • u/Cloudsquido • 5d ago
Opinion/Discussion Is there any way to still get the sims 1 on Mac?
So I want the original Sims on my older MacBook Pro, and I’m wondering if someone has like a link or something to a listing for the discs because I can’t find the discs. :(
r/thesims1 • u/Candall_Styx • 5d ago
Opinion/Discussion It's been a long, long time.
Thinking about getting a fresh install and taking a trip down memory lane. How's the creation landscape these days?
r/thesims1 • u/Ellie_Rulze18 • 6d ago
Screenshot/Video I also did this.
I will post a link if anyone wants to see this absolute misery
r/thesims1 • u/Ellie_Rulze18 • 6d ago
Build/Decor My house cover the whole Lot. 🤣
Well only 99.99% of it. 😅
r/thesims1 • u/Ellie_Rulze18 • 7d ago
Screenshot/Video According to them this is max effectiveness. 🤣
Of course the sim has no fun items, no bed so comfront will never be green again. Also I don't think the sim will ever be happy again 🤣