News / TSR News

Author: Thomas|TSR | Posted Jul 5, 2009 | 0 comments

This coming week we will spend some time to try and clear out a lot of pending support tickets. It's been a hectic few weeks since the release of Sims 3 and you'll all soon see the reasons for that as we prepare the public beta testing of 2 new exciting tools. More information to come shortly!

Author: SteveB | Posted Jun 24, 2009 | 33 comments

We have just added a new feature to the Details page of Sims 3 creations which will show any EA Store or Expansion Pack content required (you can also click "Show Requirements" in the listings). For Store items we show each one with a thumbnail (hover over it for the name). For EPs we plan to list just the packs needed rather than all content but we could also list any TSR downloads required too, and maybe even a link to grab them all if users feel this a great benefit to them.

It's a work in progress so please give your feedback and let us know if this is useful or not, and how it could be used further. Would you like links to the EA Store content directly for example? Maybe you would like to exclude all creations that require EA Store stuff?

We decided to allow them by default because many people have used their free points from game registration and might well have the items needed for a Lot or Sim (hair, clothing etc.). You might also see that a Lot only requires a Store bought fridge or lamp, something easily replaced in game, so we aren't excluding them by default.

We're looking forward to your feedback as we constantly try to improve our user experience on the site!

Author: Thomas|TSR | Posted Jun 23, 2009 | 52 comments

We are proud to present the winners in our big "Sim a Lot" competition. There were hundreds of entries to choose from and very hard to determine the winners. The top 20 list was very close indeed and the following entries finally made it into the top 6:

1. senemm for The Goldcrest
2. Alyosha for Oceanview Rise
3. Trecicy for Wisteria Lane
4. Liugao for The Vittoria
5. duce for Luxury Heaven
6. kbradley03 for Mediterranean Mansion

Incredible work from the winners and everyone else participating. There are so many quality creations no mentioned here so by all means check them out and enjoy!

Winners, please contact Thomas via PM and provide your shipping address and e-mail address (for certificate winners).

Author: Per|TSR | Posted Jun 19, 2009 | 4 comments

It is now possible to upload a new revision of the file of an already published Sims 3 creation, for example if you have fixed a bug or done some other improvement.

You do this by clicking the Edit icon for the specific item in the list of Published items in the submissions area. Above the images you have the option to browse for a replacement file in your Filestorage. You also need to enter a short description what has been fixed in this new file revision. After having updated the item it will now be placed under the "Pending Updates" tab, waiting for the TSR submissions staff to approve the update (meanwhile the item will still be published with the old file). Once the update has been approved, the item will be moved back to Published status with the revisions increased by one, and the new file will be the one which is downloaded.

As we are aware of some problems with patterns (materials) created with the first version of Sims 3 Workshop (S3W), where the pattern simply does not show up in the game, we recommend submitters of patterns created with that version to upgrade to the latest version and redo the pattern there. Once that is done, upload the file to your Filestorage, and use the new file replacement feature to submit the new file.

Author: Thomas|TSR | Posted Jun 17, 2009 | 7 comments

This release has the following changes/fixes:

• Compression bug workaround, please remake any patterns made with v2 of the tool (info below)
• Automatic addition of correct category when uploading to Filestorage from within the tool, this makes the submission process faster and more accurate.
• Automatic tile previe added to the site. This is to make sure your creation does tile properly and also gives a nice preview of how it looks when tiling (other then in the game). We consider this a quality insurance.
• Minor bug fixes
  

Info regarding updating: Those of you that needs to update patterns created with v2 of the tool will get the chance to do so sometime tomorrow (wednesday). Until then feel free to submit new patterns using the new version of the tool. More info about this will be posted tomorrow.

Go here to download

Author: Thomas|TSR | Posted Jun 12, 2009 | 15 comments

We've entered a new game era with Sims 3. This also means we are establishing our Artist Teams for the new game. All current Sims 2 SA/FA will remain listed as such for Sims 2 and still enjoy the benefits that come with being a Select or Featured Artist here at TSR. For Sims 3 everything starts over and everyone submitting here are potential candidates.

So what does it mean being a TSR Select or Featured Artist? Here are the benefits in short:

Select and Featured Artists have the following benefits:

• You'll have your own minisite with all options available (if you don't have one already) to promote your creations, blog, galleries and more.
  
• You are listed on the Select/Featured Artist lists, making it easier for visitors to find you and your minisite.
• Your creations can be filtered out in our downloads archive by viewing SA/FA creations only.
• Your creations will be featured more often on the frontpage than regular Artists. There is also a frontpage spotlight that randomly feature an SA/FA every day.
• Free Access to the site. As an active SA/FA you will always have full subscriber access to TSR.
• A shiny unique SA/FA badge on your minisite, indicating your status and which game you create for.
• The option to choose a publication date for your creations and no need to wait for approval of your submissions, they are already approved and will be published automatically on the site.
• The ability to edit all your creations at any time without having to go through us.
  
• Access to private forums where Select and Featured Artists can socialize and share ideas, get feedback from other Artists and more.

Select Artists have the following SA only benefits:

• Select Artist minisites will receive unique features in the near future (a work in progress).
• You automatically participate in a Monthly Contest and can win great prizes! Every month three creators will be picked and awarded $50, $40 and $30 Amazon Gift Certificates.
• All your work will always remain free to download here at TSR, and will be better promoted.
• You may be considered for a Featured Artist position if you continue to submit high quality creations regularly. Becoming an SA does not automatically mean you will become an FA, please remember this, but we will keep an eye on your work and your progress as an Artist. To become an FA you must (in most cases) become an SA first, so this is the first step towards becoming a Featured Artist.
• Access to an SA only private forum where you have direct access to TSR staff.
  

Featured Artists have the following FA only benefits:

• An incentive based reward system which gives you the opportunity to earn money for your work submitted to TSR. The more popular your creations are, the more money you will earn. You can at any time withdraw the money available in your incentive account and it will be paid out to your Paypal account. Due to this, most of your work will only be available to subscribers. You will have the option to set a number of creations in a free rotation each month.
• A unique minisite with advanced options that lets you create your own unique look and feel - much like your very own website. See an example here: http://www.thesimsresource.com/artists/shakeshaft/
• Even more promotion of your work in selected spotlights throughout the site, such as the frontpage upcoming items pod, today's releases and more (a work in progress).
• Private FA only forums where you can interact directly with the staff here on TSR as well as other Featured Artists.
• Weekly FA-only chats together with TSR staff to discuss the latest News, plan Collections/Themes, Select Artist candidates and more.
• Early access to our tools as they are developed and become available for beta testing.
• Additional benefits such as FA-only competitions, monthly bonuses and much more.
• Last but not least, the honour and respect that comes with being chosen a Featured Artist here on TSR!

So how do you become selected you might ask?

It's quite simple: submit your work to TSR. We've been looking at Sims creations for the last 9 years and we know what is and  isn't good enough to make the grade. Initially we will invite Artists to both teams starting in July. After the first teams have been announced, the Select Artists will be handpicked by the Featured Artist team (during the weekly chats) while Featured Artists are handpicked by TSR staff. Invitations are sent out by mail and private messages. It does happen on rare occasions that we go outside of TSR and invite Artists to our teams at both levels.

What are we looking for?

We will be looking for all types of Artists as Custom Content creation evolves. Initially we will invite a handful of exceptional Pattern, Sim and Lot Artists. Further down the line there will be positions open for Clothing, Hair, Objects, Make-up and basically any type of Custom Content you can create for the game.

When we review an Artist's potential we look at several factors. A good creation that works well in the game is essential of course, but it is also important to create beautiful previews for your creations - this is overlooked by many exceptional Artists, so please take your time with this! Having your own unique style as well as a popular style is also important - there is room for both (take Cyclonesue's original Rust and Industry series or Cashcraft's massively popular Victorian series as good examples). Last but not least it is also important to present your creations with a proper title and description - understanding what your creations are in a search result should be obvious, not hard.

All in all, consistently submitted high quality creations that are presented well with beautiful previews, meaningful names and proper descriptions are what we will be looking for - are you up for it?

How do you apply?

Simple. You don't! By submitting to TSR you've already started the process and we have already begun reviewing the many quality uploads pouring into our databases,. If you are good enough, you will be noted. So don't hesitate to submit your own quality work today, tomorrow or whenever you feel ready for the challenge :)

Good luck everyone!

/Thomas and TSR Staff

Author: johan | Posted Jun 12, 2009 | 11 comments

We have released a new version (1.0.0.1) of the plugin.

Changes include:

• Compression of data files
  
• Tiling preview
• Support for PNG and BMP mask images (limited to 3 channels)
• Optional DXT compression 
• + some minor bug fixes

Please note the support for PNG and BMP files changes the requirements on your images, we'll post an additional tutorial soon covering this.

We'd like to take this opportunity and thank the following for their help: Delphy, Rick, Inge_Jones, Peter Jones, Karybdis and jfade. Thanks!

Author: Thomas|TSR | Posted Jun 11, 2009 | 9 comments

With the launch of our patterns tool we've also opened the floodgates for custom patterns submissions. Mind you those are new and unique patterns, NOT recolors of the standard EA patterns. So head on over to our patterns section and take a look at what you will see a lot of in the coming days! Or why not head over to the Workshop site, grab the tool and submit your own patterns!

Author: Thomas|TSR | Posted Jun 10, 2009 | 17 comments

Our first plugin to the Sims 3 workshop tool in development has been finished and is now available for a public beta.

• For the download, go to this page, you find the link to download under the files section.
  
• For a user guide/manual, see this page.
  
• For related tutorials, see our user guides section.
• Here is the EULA for the tool.
  

We have a forum set up for this here. This is your place for support and troubleshooting (do NOT use TSR support for this, you will not get a reply).

Author: Thomas|TSR | Posted Jun 7, 2009 | 24 comments

We have just launched our Sims 3 "Build a Lot" competition to celebrate the availability of Custom Content here on TSR. If you feel like winning a $100 Amazon gift certificate, 6 month subscriptions, TSR USB sticks or mugs - check out our competition page for details! Everyone is welcome to participate and the competition starts right now! Show off those architect skills of yours :)

Author: SteveB | Posted Jun 5, 2009 | 11 comments

Sims 3 submissions are now up and running - Both Lots and Sims. We will be posting Submission Guidelines for Sims 3 content over the weekend along with our first help pages for getting stuff out of your game and onto the site. For those of you willing and able already, you can upload your Sims Submissions which are exported directly from CAS now. At the moment we only accept Lots that don't contain any Sims. Submissions of Sims that have been exported out of the game will follow soon.

This order of additions might not make much sense on the surface, but the technical processes of drawing all of the data from the uploads follows naturally this way. You will soon see that we have made the process of submitting content much easier for the submitter and more accurate for the downloader. We take the images, traits, favorites and all manner of other details right out of the Sims3Pack file so that you don't have to do it manually, giving the downloader a true picture of what they might be getting. See this example. We also rather cleverly take all of the clothing type images and combine them in one. Neat eh? You can still upload your own artistic previews though.

I have also posted my first Screenshots from the game and now invite (and encourage) you to do the same! Just be sure to choose the Sims 3 category when uploading.

Finally, I have published the first two of my Strategy Guides. I always do a Food Guide for the Sims games as it's an aspect I always explore to the full. This time I also did a Fishing Guide as it very much runs alongside Cooking, as does Gardening which might well follow. Be warned that there are many spoilers in there, but if you need a leg up, or want to see what's on offer, check out the Strategy Section.

Author: Thomas|TSR | Posted Jun 1, 2009 | 36 comments

We are happy to report that our Workshop tool is progressing nicely. Much of the necessary research has been completed and we have begun the process of putting it all together and to make some magic happen. In an effort to speed things up and make sure the community gets to see custom objects in the game sooner rather then later, we have decided to make the backend part of this project open source. Together with the likes of Delphy, Inge_Jones, Peter L Jones, Echo, jfade and Karybdis (to name a few, others to follow) we will pool our knowledge together and solve the challenges ahead of us as a collaborating team. More updates to follow :)

Edit to clarify: The Open Source team are working on the code that will allow us and other websites to develop software to support Sims 3 Custom Content. They aren't working on the TSR Workshop directly, they are working on the generic libraries that as Open Source, anybody can use. /Steve

Edit no 2: Those names mentioned above was a list of modders supporting open source in the past. All have acknowledged their participation in Sims 3 and this project with the exception of Mootilda and Atavera (thus their names are removed). We're sorry for the confusion!

Author: Thomas|TSR | Posted May 28, 2009 | 63 comments

There has been quite a few questions regarding this, so I'd like to clarify our plans for The Sims 3.

1. Will you provide custom content for The Sims 3?

Yes, we will continue to provide/host custom content in the same way as we do now for The Sims 2. Once the game ships we will accept submissions for lots and patterns. Once our Workshop tool is ready we will accept submissions for all other type of custom content that you are used to (new mesh sets, clothing, hair etc). We will begin a new team of Featured/Select Artists focused on The Sims 3 (not all will jump onto the The Sims 3 bandwagon) - look for this announcement once CC is fully enabled. This also means we will continue to provide both free and subscriber content, like we do now.

2. What about subscriptions - will the subscription I buy now also give me access to The Sims 3 content?

Yes it will. There will always only be one subscription type and it gives you access to all our catalogues of content. There will not be a The Sims 3 only subscription.

3. What about Screenshots, Stories, Challenges etc?

Our ambition is to provide this as well for The Sims 3. The official site will focus a lot on movies and machinima, but for those hooked on writing stories the way we present them we will continue to provide this feature. Challenges the way we do them now will require some more time, we'll see what happens.

Hope this clears up some of your thoughts and concerns regarding our future plans for The Sims 3!

Author: SteveB | Posted May 27, 2009 | 53 comments

The TSR team have been developing a Custom Content tool for Sims 3 for some time now. We have all been spoilt with the level of customization for Sims 2 and want the Sims 3 CC experience to be even better. This time around we have decided to publish our own set of tools.

Many people are aware of our CC tool for Sims 2 which is used by some of our FA’s and invited creators, but we never made a public release. This time around we plan to release a freeware tool for the whole community!

To find out more and to follow development, check out the dedicated pages for the Workshop at www.thesimsresource.com/workshop.

Update:

Just to clarify some questions:

1. The tool will be free for everyone to use, no limitations.

2. Content produced with the tool can be uploaded anywhere you want, there are no restrictions such as only uploading to TSR.

3. We will not claim any ownership over any content produced with this tool, the EULA is there to protect the artists. Hope this answers some of your concerns!

Author: Thomas|TSR | Posted May 25, 2009 | 6 comments

Summer is here and we want to take this opportunity to release a slew of new material for a previous TSR Collection, now renamed Sims Summer. There are lots of high quality content available for download in this Collection so check it out and look for several high quality releases coming out this week.

Author: SteveB | Posted May 22, 2009 | 2 comments

Many of you are aware that we have been on the receiving end of some pretty nasty attacks recently, one of which included hacking our Chat Server. Our IRC Client had been running quite happily for some 3 years without update or restart but I guess that was its downfall in the end, so we have reconfigured with the very latest clients and up to date security fixes.

Anyway, the TSR staff, moderators and chat room regulars are hanging out ready to welcome you to their domain! Join in the chat anytime day or night using any of the methods described on our Chat Page. See you there!

Author: SteveB | Posted May 21, 2009 | 28 comments

Our 17th Kudos Lottery Draw took place today with 3 winners being DiamondSim who wins The Sims 3, tambriah who wins a 2 month TSR subscription, and ancsie18 who will receive one of our new TSR 2Gb USB Flash Drives. These are great for storing Sims downloads on, so be sure to try and win one yourself next time!

Thanks to everyone that bought a ticket (or many tickets), and you'll be pleased to know that a new Kudos Lottery has already been posted for you to spend some of your hard earned Kudos points on. Once again we are offering up The Sims 3 so it has to be worth a ticket or 3!

Author: SteveB | Posted May 19, 2009 | 47 comments

Our recent Hunt the Booty competition has closed and I am pleased to announce the following winners:

1st Place: Elut
2nd Place: WandaJBowen
3rd Place: simromi

Congratulations to them and a huge thanks to the hundreds of people that took part. 86 people successfully found all 13 chests! Look out for another cool competition soon!

Author: Thomas|TSR | Posted May 18, 2009 | 39 comments

First off, here are the winners for April:

1st prize $50 Amazon gift certificate goes to Sosliliom
2nd prize $40 Amazon gift certificate goes to Qaen
3rd prize $30 Amazon gift certificate goes to missy_sceeter

PM Thomas with the e-mail you want those certificates sent to.

Secondly, we are happy to introduce the following new Select Artists:

- cippa1982
- ginebra

Give them a warm welcome and check out their great work!

Author: Thomas|TSR | Posted May 13, 2009 | 23 comments

We have now given out 7 free days to all who subscribed or had a subscription from April 24th until now. Those days are useable when you want to use them (you can activate them at will). You can access them by either clicking on the calendar icon on top (if you're an active subscriber) or by going straight to http://www.thesimsresource.com/mytsr/status. You will find the number of days at the bottom of this page along with activation links.

Soon we'll also offer everyone within this time period a 30% discount if you choose to renew your expired subscription.

Once again, we are veery sorry for the hardware problems and we hope this makes up for some of your lost time. :)