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The following is an e-mail from Bil Simser about BluePrint.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bil Simser [mailto:bsimser@home.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2000 10:53 PM
To: The Sims' Neighborhood Watch
Subject: blueprint 0.99b1 released

The Sims' Neighborhood Watch - http://www.thesims.com

Hi guys,

I'm just sending out blueprint now to various websites. Should show up
shortly. Here's the release notes:

blueprint Release Notes
version 0.99b1

Hi! Welcome to the first beta release of blueprint, a tool to create objects
for The Sims. This is a quick document and by no means complete. Tutorials,
walk throughs and a complete manual will be available shortly.

Installation
Just run the install program. Pretty simple so far huh?

Acronyms
Some acronyms used in this document:

LMB - Left mouse button
RMB - Right mouse button

Orientation
All objects you create sit on an imaginary plane and can be moved, rotated
or scaled along this plane. The primary plane is along the X, Y axis and the
Z plane is used to move/size object up. Don't worry if you're not familiar
with 3D mumbo-jumbo. You'll get used to it.

Using the Program
This is a very brief document so I won't get into too many details here but
the main points are:

Click on a button (Cube, Sphere, etc.) on the Create tab to create an object
with some default properties

Select that object by clicking on it in the view window with the LMB.
Handles will appear that allow you to move, resize and rotate the object

Resize the width and length of the object with the LMB pressed, CTRL+LMB to
scale the object

Rotate the object along the width and length with the RMB, rotate along the
height axis with CTRL+RMB

Move the object along the x, y axis with the LMB, CTRL+LMB to change the z
position of the object

Everything snaps to a grid size. You can change the grid size for more
granularity in moving/scaling/rotating objects. For full control, turn off
the grid snap feature

Function keys to change the view. F2 = Top, F3 = Front, F4 = Side, F5 =
SimView

You can enter absolute values in the fields on the modify tab

To assign a texture to an object, select the object, browse through the
textures available, click on a texture then click assign. The texture
information is stored with the object so when you reload it'll be there.

Textures
Texture files have an extension of .cgi and are located in the subdirectory
"textures" under the main program. At the startup of blueprint, it searches
this directory for other directories containing .cgi files and adds these to
the texture browser. Just make new directories for groups of similar
textures when adding files. Samples textures are provided to get you
started.

Additional Programs
An additional program is installed to provide converting Windows bitmap
files (.bmp) into a format you can use for blueprint (.cgi). Just select a
directory containing the bitmaps and click on convert. The resulting .cgi
files will be put into the same directory as the original bitmaps. Your
original files will not be altered.

Known Problems
Sometimes the system will either lockup (you can't see anything change) or
the objects won't visibly update but the values (size, position, etc.) will.
This may be caused by the fact that I have a dozen or so different OpenGL
implementations and libraries installed on my system or that I'm a cruddy
programmer. Let me know if you experience this and how frequently it
happens. Usually clicking on the refresh button or selecting 'Refresh' from
the menu fixes this.

Textures may look a bit odd. I'm still working on this and will have a fix
sometime the first week in February for it.
Feedback

I know, I know. Horrible documentation written at the last minute. If you're
really stuck just email me and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Please
provide as much feedback, good, bad and ugly to me. It really helps get a
perspective on things and will enhance the program for the future. Thanks.

-Bil


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