SimGirls

=Description=

SimGirls is a classic online dating sim game in English. The game began solely based upon the story and the characters in the manga and anime series DNA². After the first version came out (named after the anime) it was made to more loosely resemble the series and renamed. It still contains many of the characters in the series.

Historical Signifigance

SimGirls was the first known web-based dating sim, and it quickly grabbed the attention of millions of players around the world. It first appeared on newgrounds.com, a home for flash movies and games in April 2002. At that time dating sims were only popular in Japan and other East Asian countries, and the genre was something fresh to most other parts of the world. The game spread through thousands of websites and it became an instant classic. After the massive success of SimGirls, imitations are everywhere and nearly all other web-based games of this genre are built on the skeletal structure of SimGirls.

Today, SimGirls still ranks number one in popularity on newgrounds.com and it has been played over 42.5 million times since April 18, 2002. [http://newgrounds.com/portal/stats.html]

Creation in Progress

Sim Man, as the author of SimGirls is respectfully known, began working on the project in 2001. After the creation of version 2.8, Sim Man focused on his own life and abandoned the project for 2 years. In late May 2005, Sim Man created the [http://www.takeforum.com/simgirls SimGirls Forums] , and gathered over 1000 members who registered on the message boards and created a community that has actively participated in the making of the SimGirls game since its creation.

Recent History

In March 2006, Sim Man left the forums for reasons unknown. As of December 2006, the forums had resumed the project in Sim Man's place, in hopes that he would return. The forum members actively working on the game at the time included Forum Administrator Bofh of Oz (coding) and forum local Enigma (artist), as well as a number of other forum locals and administrators who were participating in the editing. As of late March 2007, only a few minor updates had been made in the scripting, and no releases of new art had yet been made.

After production had reached its top speed, with the forum thriving, an attack (suspected malicious) brought down the entire forum and caused most of the content on it to be lost. Thus, many of the people assisting in development abandoned the project.

The most recent fan version is version [http://www.takeforum.com/simgirls/viewtopic.php?t=3366&mforum=simgirls 0.2.1]

Current Work

After the infamous forum crash, only a few dedicated individuals bothered to return to the forums. Most of these were storyboard writers, and consequently actual development outside of the theoretical stage ground to a halt. Recently however, progress was resumed in May 2008, when Cpatton called for a second stab at the project. With the influx of new members and renewed work on the project, the first release of a completed storyline arc is currently scheduled for November 2008.

The features of this version can be seen below. As it approaches release, this page will be updated with a tentative release date. Expect it within no more than two months.

Current Development Team

Management

= [http://www.takeforum.com/simgirls/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=188&mforum=simgirls Project Director: Cpatton] =

Having moderated the SimGirls forum since September 2005, and having administrated them since March 2006, Cpatton was left in charge when sim man disappeared. Cpatton now manages the SimGirls project, and organizes the team to work on the game. He participates heavily in storyline production, while providing equal management to all parts of the project.

= [http://www.takeforum.com/simgirls/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=175&mforum=simgirls Project Co-Director: Get Mik] =

Get_Mik assists in project management, but is mainly active on the forums, and very involved with the forum community, noted for never being away from the forum for more than 4 days at a time since his joining. Get_Mik participates in all parts of the forum community, and is a very integral part of the forum administration and project management team.

=Storyline [http://www.takeforum.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=44&mforum=simgirls (public story board)] and [http://www.takeforum.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=1&mforum=simgirls (misc. contributions)] =

The first step in all projects is a script, and all scripting is done by the storyline editors.

= [http://www.takeforum.com/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=1973&mforum=simgirls Epne] =

Epne's most current contributions are to the Ami storyboard, but Epne has provided valuable help in many of the recent storyboard projects.

= [http://www.takeforum.com/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=1937&mforum=simgirls Dark Priest Omega] =

Working on the Tomoko storyboard arc.

= [http://www.takeforum.com/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=1076&mforum=simgirls Chewyman] =

A dedicated member of the forums, Chewyman worked closely with Cpatton to buff out the new Kotomi and Karin storylines, as well as working on other girls. Sadly, much of the work that was completed during the summer of 2007 was lost when the forums were erased in September 2007.

=Artwork [http://www.takeforum.com/simgirls/viewforum.php?f=45&mforum=simgirls (public artwork board)] =

The second step in all projects is obtaining the frames for the story arc. Our valuable artists provide us with the visuals, completeing the content needed for implementation of storyline.

= [http://www.takeforum.com/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2135&mforum=simgirls Artist Director: Dragonvalor] =

= [http://www.takeforum.com/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2345&mforum=simgirls AliceMalice] =

= [http://www.takeforum.com/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2385&mforum=simgirls Sarah] =

= [http://www.takeforum.com/simgirls/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2138&mforum=simgirls Loire] =

Loire was a dedicated artist when the project was resumed after Sim Man left. In 2007, Loire provided a vast majority of the concept art for the work now being implemented in the game.

=Coding [http://www.takeforum.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=46&mforum=simgirls (public coding board)] =

= [http://www.takeforum.com/simgirls/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2517&mforum=simgirls Coding Director: CerealKlr] =

With the addition of Joshua Cole (a.k.a CerealKlr) to the team as programmer in June 2008, progress has again resumed. His first act was to completely rebuild the game from the ground up, salvaging all of the artwork but recoding from scratch in a modular style which improved the ease of modification as well as allowing multiple people to work on separate parts of the game at once. He is also known as "GR3/- t3/-CH3R C|<" or "L33t M/-St3R C|<" Due to his addiction to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatokyo MegaTokyo] .

= [http://www.takeforum.com/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=625&mforum=simgirls BOFH of Oz] =

BOFH provided the first implementation of coding to the SimGirls fan version when the project was resumed in January 2007. All fan versions to date (preceding the pending release of 5.0) were edited and compiled by BOFH, who now acts in an advisory and morale standpoint for the team.

Trainee's

--Katems

--Faryshta

--termin8or123

=Audio [http://www.takeforum.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=47&mforum=simgirls (public audio board)] =

= [http://www.takeforum.com/simgirls/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2200&mforum=simgirls Rina-chan] =

Rina-chan is a professional voice actress, who you can find voicing many successful flash games nowadays. She'll be contributing all voice acting for Karin.

= [http://www.takeforum.com/simgirls/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=965&mforum=simgirls Katems] =

Katems our newest voice actor. She is currently working on Ami and Kotomi voices, and her role has not yet been finalized.

Upcoming Features

Version 5.0

This will be the first full fan release, and will contain very important mechanics changes to the game, as well as slightly rebalanced overall gameplay. These changes include:

--Dynamic Event Generator- A unique calendar will be generated from a pool of possible events, for each play, vastly improving replay value.

--Revamped Modelling System- Each day will bring new oppurtunities for your model, more closely mimicking reality.

--Improved Talk Feature- Girls dialogue will be less repetitive with the addition of a new speech system.

--New Ask System- This system will eliminate the need to mindlessly press the "Ask" button hoping to hear the answer to the one question you need to know. Rather, it allows you to choose the questions you'd like to ask based on a behind-the-scenes "ask point" system, which allows you to ask more personal questions as you level up with a girl, and more questions total as you talk and improve relations with her.

--Updated Date-Time Setup- Instead of choosing a day for a date, you will now choose an hour of the afternoon. This will make it easier to recall the date of the first kiss, and help clear up other issues it had muddled up.

--Tournament Style fighting minigame- Due to popular request, the fighting game is currently being revamped. The most immediate change will be a tournament-styled fight. This means that you must fight through each person in order to face the Bloody King.

--Less Date Theft- We've also been told that it gets annoying to have your date stolen after every date, so we/ve decreased the probability of this event to 1/2 of its current likelihood.

--Random Date Snatchers- Once you achieve girlfriend status with a girl, there's a chance Ryugi will come along and try to finish what the henchmen have trouble with.

--Ami's House- It's been updated with an interface to allow the mounting of a room (like the other girls have) as well as the lab. The room itself can't be entered in this version.

--Computer- The computer in the player's room will be totally rebuilt to fucntion as an actual Desktop PC, with a shortcut to the puzzle (of course) a link to the forums, and various Easter Eggs.

In Version 5.1

--More Events

--Ami's family restaurant- Ami's restaurant, well known from the Anime/Manga DNA^2 will finally be implemented as long promised.

--Karin Storyline Continuation- Rather then a dead-end as it is currently, Karin will gain a branching multi-ending stoyline. Her story arc is the first step in the revamp of all of the girls' stories, as well as the addition of more scenes, options, and endings to the existing ones. Her storyline will be completely voice-acted, have multiple possible endings, and plenty of new artwork.

Coding Medium

SimGirls is a traditionally Flash-based game, originally developed in the Flash 5 environment but in the recent Fan Versions upgraded to Flash 8. This allows for many more advanced features to be used in the game, as well as expanding the range of choices available for importation/exportation of various resources to other more modern programs. In order to improve the quality of the coding, as well as allow for a full team to work on it at once, the entire game is being recoded from scratch for the upcoming 5.0 release. Since the game was originally a solo undertaking, it was never expected that such a feature would be required, making the restructure necessary. It also allowed for the code to be tweaked to make it more efficient and help remove various minor bugs spread throughout.

In order to bolster the coding department, CerealKlr has recently been releasing 2 sets of Flash tutorials, one on the Graphical User Interface of Flash 8, and one on ActionScript 2.0. Any forum members are welcome to use these resources for whatever purposes they require, but assisting in development is much appreciated.

External links

* [http://www.99megastore.com/game/main.htm Simgirls Official Website]
* [http://www.takeforum.com/simgirls Simgirls Official Forum]
* [http://www.simgirls.info Simgirls Fan Site ~Jerome]
* [http://dna2.calculusman.com/index.php/Main_Page ~Flea the City's DNA² wiki]