About
FreeSO is a full reimplementation of The Sims Online built with MonoGame. While aiming to stay faithful to the original, it adds quality-of-life changes such as hardware rendering, custom dynamic lighting, higher-resolution output, and buildings taller than two floors. Since the official FreeSO server was discontinued, the project now mainly serves as an engine base for other TSO servers, and it depends on the original game's object, avatar and UI files (available from EA) to run.
How it differs from the original
Adds features the original TSO lacked — hardware rendering, dynamic lighting, higher resolution, buildings over two floors, and an optional 3D mode with runtime-generated 3D geometry for walls and floors — plus a companion tool, Volcanic, for viewing and editing game objects live against a running instance of the game's virtual machine.
Getting started
Place the original game's object, avatar, and UI files (downloadable from EA) alongside the client to run it. An optional 3D perspective mode can be toggled with the -3d launch parameter.
Additional notes
- Related project
- A related project, Simitone, reuses FreeSO's engine to reimplement The Sims 1's gameplay with its own UI, though it's described as largely incomplete.