FreeSO/Alpha

AlphaFirst phase in FreeSO's development.

**Alpha**, commonly referred to as the **Lot Server**, **Legacy** or **"bare bones"**, was the first development phase of FreeSO and it's predecessors. It was the longest running and most complicated development phase in FreeSO's history.

Alpha allowed players to host isolated lots without relying central database or city server. It was eventually succeeded by Pre-Beta and later Beta. Alpha began as far back as TSOR, continued into Project Dollhouse and finally ended under FreeSO.

Alpha became fully playable on July 13th, 2015, starting with Build #8 during the SimAntics & World Development, a sub-project under Project Dollhouse before the fork, and continued with Road to Live. Prior releases, such as Project Dollhouse's Ra II and Kon Tiki, were capable of creating accounts and Sims but remained unplayable. Project Dollhouse used an in-house network library that was unable to scale and only capable of hosting lots not connecting to a city or central database.

## History

### TSOR

Development of Alpha began with TSOR. Due to creative differences between the developers and an unconfirmed DMCA, not much is known of the development other then it was shown. A build was never released but the source code for the TSOR client and supposedly TSOEmu was eventually revealed on Google Code.

### Project Dollhouse

Afr0, a former of developer from TSOR, continued development based on the TSOR source under Project Dollhouse name. He was never able to gain more developer following TSOR's fallout. Rhys, another developer from TSOR, returned to help by working on AI and game play. Conflicts over the networking infrastructure eventually lead forced Rhys to fork Project Dollhouse and continue as FreeSO. Project Dollhouse's development has been slow to inactive since the fork.

### FreeSO

Alpha continued under FreeSO where it received faster updates. Launchers were created in order to make testing easier. Many key features were implanted under and was later put under Long Term Support-like status during Pre-Beta and again when FreeSO's first official server was overloaded, leading to the second Pre-Beta.

## Relations to Pre-Beta

Pre-Beta was the second development phase that began simultaneously alongside side Alpha after the initial gameplay features were added. However, this version was never publicly tested in the same manner as Alpha was. Only those familiar with open source and developing in .NET knew how to run it. The simultaneous development of Pre-Beta during Alpha could considered alpha's second phase even though it was never treated as such.

## Usage

### Project Sims Ville

Due to the time project began, Project Sims Ville uses alpha as a base for recreating The Sims 1.

## Relation to TSOR

Alpha has it's roots as far back as TSOR. Project Dollhouse and FreeSO are both direct descendants of TSOR. There is no pre-alpha and predecessors due to the lack of a playable client, alleged an DMCA, and the controversy surrounding TSOEmu.

There has been a lot of confusion of what and wasn't a scam. The donations and TSOEmu were scams. The TSOR client was not a scam. The developers behind TSOR's client continued under Project Dollhouse until the two branched into different directions. Project Dollhouse was forked became FreeSO. So far it's been the only successful attempt at recreating every aspect of The Sims Online's engine.

## Major Updates

### FreeSO

* April Fools Update
* Permissions Update
* Roommates Update
* 2016 Holiday Update
* MMO Server Update