The FreeSO Server has completely shut down as of December 9th 2024.
After a week full of crazy events, we finally said goodbye to Sunrise Crater. It has been a wild ride, and I’m glad I shared it with all of you. The ending might have been a little dramatic, but I think after 8 years a boring sendoff would have been a letdown.
There were a few server hiccups due to how many people returned to see the ending, and because I unleashed the sim equivalent of a nuclear bomb on the crater, but with some tweaks it was able to mostly hold steady for the final hour. It was really nice seeing so many lots open and filled over the past week, but a bit heartbreaking to see each of them face the apocalypse. I hope you all got a chance to say goodbye.
The later events of the week were all livestreamed on my Twitch channel, so you can check out the VODs there to relive them or just see what was happening if you weren’t able to make it. I’ll probably mirror the vods on YouTube at some point. There are a lot of screenshots and videos of these events and more on the Discord server, which will remain open forever, even if it might eventually become read-only.
I have to again extend my thanks to everyone who contributed objects, code, properties, ideas… really anything towards making the game as amazing as it became. There are some real unsung heroes out there, like Sim who built the and maintained the FreeSO launcher the whole time the game was up, Aquila who has been managing the community since the early 2010s, and S1ndle who contributed objects and art for nearly every single event. Later on, I’ll add full attribution for all objects, animations, accessories, events and lots on a future version of this site, so these contributions can be properly recognized.
A more unusual mention now – thank you to EA for allowing this project to exist without any kind of legal battle. While FreeSO took great care to avoid infringing on The Sims IP by being 100% free, only providing new objects, delta patches and fully recreated client/server code on top of an original TSO client downloaded for free by the user… there are other companies that don’t seem to respect this distinction and bully players out of building fan projects when it is entirely within their rights to. The Sims community is sustained by content creators and I’m glad that respect has also extended to what the FreeSO team worked towards, allowing many tens of thousands of players to experience our vision for a future with TSO in it.
TSO is a unique experience that I don’t think competes with anything The Sims has at the moment, so it really deserves to stick around. That’s why the next step of this transition includes releasing technical documentation so that future developments can begin from others, and the Archive Client so that the world we built together can be explored forever.
Technical documentation and the Archive Client will release at some point in the future. I’ll put out another blog post and a Discord ping when these things happen, so if you’re interested be sure to stick around. The website may also reshape itself on the way there, to properly honour the contributions of the community and FreeSO’s new status as a technology base for future TSO/TS1 projects.
Technical Documentation
Part of the sunsetting of FreeSO includes the addition of detailed technical docs to the GitHub repository. These will be markdown `.md` files that you can read on GitHub, and each will describe its own aspect of the game and how it works. The documentation will be categorized as follows:
- Server Hosting
- Information about how to host the game server, and tools that server administrators can use to author their own city and push their own client updates.
- Technical information about the VPS FreeSO was hosted on, its cost and some learnings from previous server hosts.
- This section will be completed first.
- Technical Details
- Technical details on The Sims, The Sims Online, the FreeSO client/server and more.
- The goal is to allow developers to pick up the project and add to it in a reasonable way without breaking anything, or causing themselves any future hassle.
- Will include information on existing PIFF object patches, what they do and if they might be FreeSO event specific.
- This section will be the longest, and may be the longest to be complete.
- Issues & Future Work
- Existing issues that have been identified with the client and/or server to be fixed by someone in future.
- Previously planned features that could be picked up by someone else, as well as explanations into what they entail.
The Archive Client
As mentioned in previous Blog Posts, on “The Save Date” (December 6th) the entire server was backed up and exported to be released to the public in a playable form, and also so we could literally blow up the crater on the last two days. All of that is over, so now all that’s left to do is release the data so it can be explored at any time, by anyone. You’ll be able to do this with a special version of the FreeSO client called “The Archive Client”.
The Archive Client will allow players to explore Sunrise Crater by themselves, or by inviting other players to join their self-hosted server. Once ingame, the game will function very similarly to the FreeSO server and support all features you interact with there. Special configuration will be available when creating the server, for example one that allows the host to play the game as Admin or as a visitor, and control whether people who join them also join as admin or visitor. Other tuning, such as April Fools “features”, payout multiplier etc will also be selectable.
The client will be open source, similar to FreeSO, but it will exist in a separate repo and will NOT be network compatible. The server data will obviously be released with the client with sensitive data stripped, and converted to be compatible with the client.
All of this will take a while. I can’t give a hard deadline for this work, but the client will likely become available early next year. I worked pretty hard on all the final events, so more immediately I’ll probably be taking it easy over Christmas. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any work done, just that I won’t be going all cylinders like I did for the Finale. There is a lot to do, so it’s probably best to be transparent about exactly what needs doing.
So, here’s a rough list of all the work that needs to be done:
- UI Work
- Title screen with host/join selection
- Server configuration and server join dialogs (with history/favourites?)
- Avatar selector. Users can’t select the same avatar, so there needs to be some way to track “ownership” of any avatar someone plays.
- Networking
- New logon method without user/password, create/select any avatar, etc. May completely skip hosting the HTTP server.
- Maybe some way to use lot thumbnails from local storage instead of asking the server, since the vast majority will not change.
- Support for UPnP for easier port forwarding? A lot of network configurations now block it, so might not be worth it.
- Database Work
- Convert FreeSO database (including functions + triggers) to SQLite compatible format
- SQLite backend for the database, may need to modify a bunch of queries for this
- Remove tables and data that contain sensitive info (users, auth, ingame mail etc)
- Process lot data to determine what objects with plugin data are accessible. Anything that isn’t needs its plugin data deleted.
- Run FSOF generation for 3d lot thumbnails. Maybe find a way to do this for 2d thumbnails too, as a few are really old or broken.
- Finalize lot links on The Final Town Hall, patch up all event lots.
- Would be nice
- Automatically schedule events for certain time periods, such as the city view snow, Halloween sky etc.
- Potentially fix the event objects to work on every year.
- Optionally, the server should be able to run separately from the game, so that the game crashing or closing doesn’t disconnect your friends. It’s not appropriate as an MMO server, but it can still work as a multiplayer server for a tight group of people.
- Automatically schedule events for certain time periods, such as the city view snow, Halloween sky etc.
Hopefully it isn’t too long a wait. As I said above, there will be a new blog post and Discord annoucement when the client is ready.
The Final Town Hall
The Final Town Hall Mayors and their nominated donators were working tirelessly over the last week on The Final Town Hall… and just in time for the server save, it was in a fully complete state! They’ve done a fantastic job, especially considering it was completed in less then 5 days, and all the stuff that was going on around it. I will add lot links to the event lots, staff picks and player’s choice picks myself, once the voting on those is complete and the archive client is ready to release.
Here’s the final list of contributors:
- Natasha Nahdoe (M.O.M.I. Mire)
- CherryRose (builder)
- Metamorphic (Meta Mesa)
- Remie L (builder)
- Sparkling (Multilevel Metropolis)
- sunz (builder)
- Serinah
- Tragic Hoe (Volcanic Springs)
- morgue (builder)
You’ll get to explore this lot properly when the Archive Client releases. It’ll be the main landing spot for anyone opening the archive for the first time, so people less familiar with the game can get some direction before they begin exploring.
The End
Thank you all for playing. The Finale wouldn’t have been the same without so many players, and I’m glad that everyone got another unforgettable experience out of a game that lasted almost 8 years. Entirely off the back of hobbyists and volunteers, such a long runtime and so much original content really is a blessing – even more of a blessing that so many people played for so long. All of you are to blame for making FreeSO so unforgettable.
There’s not much I can say now that I didn’t say on the 20 year anniversary post, but I can reaffirm that I do not think this is truly the end. As long as there is someone remotely interested in TSO, the game will continue to live on, even if that’s in a smaller circle or an entirely new format. FreeSO is open source, client AND server, so anyone is free to evolve it however they choose. The only difference is that it won’t be us in charge. Be the change you want to see in the world!
Whatever happens next, I’m wishing all of you the best. I’m maintaining a list of FreeSO contributors on Bluesky so that you can follow whatever anyone who helped out FreeSO is doing now, so give that a follow if you want to know what any of us are working on in the future. I’ll be adding more contributors to it as they get bsky accounts, (or… if?) so follow the list if you don’t want to miss anyone.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ccyy7boyss37jmhol22hcgs6/lists/3lcxupwtfua2k
I guess that’s it for now – next update will be on the Archive Client and Documentation.
See you around,
– Rhys
