TSOEmu

TSOEmu was a project led by Jonathan Gorard (CodeMonkeyJonathan) attempting to add online multiplayer support to The Sims 1 as a game modification.

Initially, TSOEmu was announced on March 13, 2011 on the TSO Restoration website as an attempt to reverse-engineer The Sims Online and create a server emulator. Over the course of the summer, he eventually decided to switch to reverse-engineering The Sims 1 instead.

In September 2011, Jonathan created a design mock-up for the first modification he wanted to make to The Sims 1: the modification would attach a terminal underneath the game window and allow the user to type commands to control characters loaded in the lot. If this modification could be completed, then the next logical step would be to allow commands to be received from remote computers over the internet, and then allow the game client itself to send these commands to other clients in response to the player's actions. Unfortunately, Jonathan did not complete this modification, and he decided to end the project around the time the TSO Restoration website shut down.

Jonathan was also a contributor for the TSO Restoration project.

Jonathan's design mock-up was a simple 1fps video created frame-by-frame in Photoshop by combining a screen-recorded video of his gameplay of The Sims 1 with the user interface of The Sims Online and a user interface he created in Visual Studio. Jonathan first shared the video with Ghost on TSO Restoration. Ghost was the first person to share the video publicly, posting it on the TSO Restoration website. Ghost claimed that TSOEmu was a hoax, by claiming that it was a progress video rather than a mock-up video, and then closed TSO Restoration within 2 weeks and disappeared with the project's donation money. (See: TSO Restoration.)

His design mock-up video can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3Xr1AF6HPw