The Sims (Windows)/Unused Animations
This is a sub-page of The Sims (Windows).
The Sims has quite a few character animations that no object calls during the whole course of gameplay, unsurprisingly reflective of various stages of development, scrapped behaviors, and all of their wackiness.[footnote 1]. Modders have a history in using some of these in their objects, so they are not necessarily new to old fans.
Sub-Pages
Resources
 | Movements Go Here...or where? |
 | Needs Other ways to express one's inner struggles. |
 | Object Interactions Sims could have had more emotion crying at soap operas. |
 | Sim Interactions "Intense" or "condescending"--it's your call. |
Test Animations
25 June 1999 20ː12
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| a2o-testanimation.cmx | a2o-testanimation2.cmx | a2o-testanimation3.cmx |
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| a2o-testanimation4.cmx | a2o-testanimation5.cmx | a2o-testanimation6.cmx |
Six oddly fluid and long animations for testing purposes, indicating motion-captured animations were once intended for the game. Only referenced in strings indexed in desk and stereo objects; the latter is even able to call them via preview_anims cheat code. A notable time the player can spot these animations in game is in the opening video, pre-rendered off of a myriad of older releases than the retail build: A Sim runs "testanimation2", of course next to a stereo set, though it's impossible to happen in normal gameplay.[footnote 2]
Enthralled
25 June 1999 19ː07
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| a2o-enthralledstart.cmx | a2o-enthralled.cmx |
The "enthralled" animation series keeps two reactions: The first one, that depicts a Sim applauding someone's good punchline, musical talent etc., and... whatever its unused counterpart was supposed to mean?
Idling
25 June 1999 18ː58
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| a2o-idle1-start.cmx | a2o-idle1-loop1.cmx | a2o-idle2-start.cmx | a2o-idle2-loop1.cmx |
Early idle animations, for the transition moments when the characters have their interaction queue clean as new. As what is perceived in the test animations, these look a bit more "life-like" than the used ones.
Sitting
Seating
25 June 1999 19ː00
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| a2o-sitting-loop.cmx |
When sitting on a chair/couch, players may see Sims executing "idle-sit", "sit-relaxed" and what-not, but "sitting-loop". It's a single-frame loop, rendering it oddly stationary.
Floor
25 June 1999 19ː00
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| a2o-sit-floor.cmx | a2o-sitting-floor-loop.cmx | a2o-standup-fromfloor.cmx |
A Sim deliberately sits on the ground. They never do so in normal gameplay unless the environment negatively pushes them to (for example, when they pass out, fail at an "Attack" social interaction, etc.) which is definitely not the case, here. The second sample, "a2o-sitting-floor-loop.cmx", basically does but group the 3 animations dedicated to the unused tree interactions into a single loop.
Noteworthy Cases
Shoving
20 July 1999 00ː07
 | This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Was this from the base game, unused? Also, check whether post-Hot Date kid Sims use these. |
The game's opening video shows an old brief footage of two Sims shoving one another, which is an interaction that was entirely scrapped from the final game. The animations below, along a proper behavior code for a shoving interaction, saw the light of the day months later, when the Hot Date expansion pack featured a bigger array of things the Sims could do with their interlocutors, not without reviving a good share of pre-release leftovers as these animations.
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| a2a-shovee1.cmx | a2a-shover1.cmx | a2c-shovee1.cmx | a2c-shover1.cmx |
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| c2a-shovee1.cmx | c2a-shover1.cmx | c2c-shovee1.cmx | c2c-shover1.cmx |
Lost Animations
No longer found in Animations.FAR, yet some objects contain string data with their filenames in.
Object Cleaning Animations
a2o-floorlamp-clean
a2o-bookshelf-clean
a2o-sink-bathx-clean a2o-sink-cheap-clean
Suggest scrapped cleaning interactions for sinks, bookshelves and lamps, though such objects never need cleaning as time passes. Object cleaning was later introduced in The Sims 2, but only with the kitchen and bathroom appliances.
Turning On Stoves
a2o-stove-turnon
The cooking interactions immediately start once Sims reach the stoves. Yet, other kitchen appliances (toaster oven, barbecue grill, microwave...) contain a preparing start routine.
Carrying Items
a2o-rarm-carry
Items that can be picked up by Sims have this string. rarm refers to carrying with the right hand, as Sims do. Therefore, it must be a leftover of its used counterpart.
a2o-pooltable-switchhand
Sims technically switch cue sticks from one hand to another in their pool gameplay, as a transition method for the interaction. For such, however, a2o-pooltable-idle-start is called.
Shaking Head
a2o-shakehead
Only assigned to outdoor flower objects, bought via Plant Tool at Build Mode. It is allegedly an intended alternate for a2o-houseplant-shakehead, called by Sims who try and water dead plants in vases.
Footnotes
- ↑ The animations from the retail build obey a filename prefix convention where a stands for adult, c means child and o is a short for object. With that in mind, it gets easier to realize, for example, that cmx files with names that begin as a2o contain animation data for adult Sims to use in non-character objects!
- ↑ In fact, the motion-capture system was cogitated for the game, however briefly discarded after it was observed that such animations proved to be not as good as the ones engineered manually, as it is told via one of the game's trivia Easter egg.
