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Mad Poster
#51 Old 13th May 2018 at 2:13 AM Last edited by Rosebine : 13th May 2018 at 4:50 AM. Reason: added 2 pictures
Of course, my game crashed again after hitting print screen, so I'm sorry, i have only one (now 2 more)picture to show. This is my old Bushville 'Hood, and my community lot pool that drags everyone and their cousins IN the pool no trouble. (remind me to package this lot, so i can use it in my new 'Hood)
As you will see :
Entrance leads to everything, mostly a pond for fishing, a playground to play, some sitting spot if tired, even some tents to sleep in. Out of sight, is a photobooth and a grill.
Sims must all pass by the public toilets/showers, to go to the actual pool. There is only one entrance/exit to that pool, yet, no sims seems to care.
Please forgive me, I did this quick and typed areaR...hehe
I added 2 more pictures of the pool area, after I packed it up and placed it in my current game. (then game crashed again...lol I must reboot)
Screenshots

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
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Undead Molten Llama
#52 Old 13th May 2018 at 5:01 AM
Random replies to things in this thread.

@cows
I'm going to hazard a guess that your diving boards are too far away from the entrance. They have the strongest advertising of the types of pool entrances, but you've got them in the corner farthest from the entrance, so it's likely that Sims are getting distracted by other things before they "notice" the diving boards. Every object has an "advertising radius," the size of which can be modified in the TTAB/autonomy settings. If a Sim is outside of an object's radius, they won't "hear" that object.

If everyone's congregating in the bathroom, I'd suggest making it smaller. Say, just enough room for a couple of stalls. I know it's unrealistic, but sometimes realism has to be sacrificed for proper/logical functionality in this game.

And yeah, like Peni said, I've never seen a lot-visiting Sim sit in a recliner/sun lounger unless they're using them to sleep. And to do that, you have to have a "sleep on community lots" mod. And if you have that, they're still far more likely to pick a very uncomfortable-looking park bench, if any are around. I should check the Comfort advertising for recliners/loungers vs. park benches... Gah, so many things to fix in this game! :p

@Sunrader
Awww, you're sweet! And yeah, I like lots of autonomy, too, especially when it comes to things that build skill. I'd rather that my Sims choose to skill rather than force them to do it.

And are you saying you're having trouble finding the slide in SimPE? If that's the case, it and the other pool objects and a whole bunch of other stuff are in the "Unknown" category. The items in SimPE's Object Workshop list alphabetically, other than the fact that it ignores the "don't include the word 'the' when alphabetizing" rule.The slide is called "The Kronkelhorn," so you'll find it in the "T"s in that list. From there, to sum up the tute I made, you make an "empty" clone (with none of the options checked), then delete everything but the TTAB, then fiddle with the TTAB as you want, then save your mod, then test it, then fiddle with it some more if needed, then test again, etc.. Basically, you're making default replacements for the object's TTAB. There's no need to extract anything.

@Peni Griffin
Like Rosebine, I've already adjusted the pool slide for my own use, but haven't tested it yet. I didn't make it more attractive to children, though I probably will after testing it to see if it works. (Sometimes it doesn't, if there are other things affecting autonomy besides the TTAB. Like BHAVs, for instance, which I don't grok.) I just made the slide equally attractive to the diving board. I can make one that does both, though, and pop it up here or PM it to you or whatever. One of these days I'm going to do a "Misc. Things I've Screwed Around With" upload on my Tumblr, but I don't have enough things yet that would likely be useful for the "general public."

@AndrewGloria
In the "guts" of the game, there are a few categories that apply to advertising that exist but that were, so far as we know, never implemented/programmed by Maxis. For instance, there was apparently at one point going to be a Generous/Selfish personality "slider," which maybe became Nice/Grouchy, but the "Generous" and "Selfish" categories were never removed from the "guts" of the advertising programming. And there are "Literacy," "Gardening," and "Music" skill categories as well. Gardening became a badge instead, of course, and music just got lumped in with Creativity skill. (Which is very dumb, IMO; you can be very good at singing/playing an instrument and/or understanding music and its theory without being especially creative. In fact, outside of maybe composition -- which, frankly, is almost more mathematical than creative -- I'd call it more of a logic-related activity than a creativity-related one. :\ ) I dunno how "Literacy" might've worked or what it was intended to be, but...Yeah, apparently Sims with high Literacy Skill will really like the pool slide.

@Rosebine
I'm going to guess that the vending machines are drawing Sims into your pool area, since they're programmed to arrive on lots hungry. Those things are pretty attractive. Then, once they're in the area, they're caught by the advertising radius of your diving boards.

One general thing of note: Sims visiting community lots -- playable and otherwise -- are also programmed to go look at the last-placed object on the lot. This is so that they move away from and don't clog the lot portals. So, if you particularly want a Sim to use something on a lot, make it the very last object you place before you save the lot.

I'm mostly found on (and mostly upload to) Tumblr these days because, alas, there are only 24 hours in a day.
Muh Simblr! | An index of my downloads on Tumblr.
Undead Molten Llama
#53 Old 13th May 2018 at 6:27 AM
Sorry for the double-post, but for nerds like me who are interested in this sort of stuff, I solved the "Mystery of the Sun Loungers." The problem is two-fold. The biggest problem, when it comes to community lots, is that it's not visitor-enabled, which means no non-playable (human) Sim will ever sit in them. (Strangely, they ARE visitor-enabled for pets to sit on. Whatever, Maxis!) If you want to poke at this sort of stuff in SimPE, you can tell whether or not something is visitor-enabled by looking at the object's TTAB here:

This is the Adirondack-style lounger, but a quick glance at all the others showed the same settings. If the lounger was visitor-enabled, that box outlined in red would be checked. But even if it WAS enabled? Here's it's advertising, which is the other half of the problem:

The number in the red-outlined box is the "base" advertising that is transmitted to all Sims. The number is hexadecimal, but 4 in hex is also 4 in decimal...which is a very low number. (I'm not sure, but I believe the scale is 0-100, or 0-64 in hex.)
The number outlined in the blue-outlined box is the advertising "boost" that Sims of a certain "type" get, and that "type" is defined by the number in the green-outlined box. (There's a list of known types here.) In this case, the lounger is giving a 35-point boost to Shy Sims, which is a pretty significant boost, and I would've picked Lazy Sims to give a boost to if I was going to give a boost to anybody, but...Well, Maxis logic. :\ But for community lots, that number is only going to apply to any of the Sims you're controlling on the lot, not to any of the visitors. For the visitors, the loungers are essentially mute in terms of advertising because the fact that they're visitor-disabled trumps any advertising.

I also checked out the Maxis park bench. It has about the same advertising levels. The difference is that it IS visitor-enabled. So, visiting Sims will sit on them but not loungers. Which I really need to fix, especially because I put loungers on beach lots, too.

Speaking of beaches...What's also not visitor-enabled that should be? Relaxing on the hammocks that came with BV. Playing on one is visitor-enabled, but since that can't happen until a Sim is relaxing on one, that's kinda useless. Kind of like how Maxis is completely useless when it comes to setting proper/logical advertising on stuff. I mean, seriously, this isn't rocket science or anything!

I'm mostly found on (and mostly upload to) Tumblr these days because, alas, there are only 24 hours in a day.
Muh Simblr! | An index of my downloads on Tumblr.
Alchemist
#54 Old 13th May 2018 at 12:16 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Rosebine
This is already what I see being done. The entrance seems to have nothing in front, besides a few potted palm trees..then the pool to their right. Unless I missplaced the entrance?
Oh, and I made a slide package, as Icad linked to her tutorial earlier in this thread. I have no tested yet, as i have no played since. But it is the easiest thing to do, once you know how.
@Sunrader are you still interested in the extracted slide package? I can extract a new one, ready to be edited by you and experienced with, and sent it if you want. Just let me know.


Oh, thank you! I read this after I saw iCad's info that it's under Unknown in the T's. (Well, of course it is! How silly of me not to know that!) I am tweaking as we "speak." Honestly, I would love a more in depth discussion of all this autonomy stuff. Maybe we need a new thread?
Undead Molten Llama
#55 Old 13th May 2018 at 1:20 PM
I'm not sure there's enough to talk about for a whole thread. It's more like, "Don't like how no one uses "X"? Or how "Y" gets overused? Then fiddle with it!" sort of thing. It's kinda one of those things that it's really best if people do themselves because while I might want one object to be really attractive, another person might hate that object. And vice versa. It's also something that's relative and that you kind of have to be careful with. It's very easy to make things so "loud" in advertising that they drown out everything else. Which CAN be good or awful, depending on how you, as an individual, use that object in your game. So, while I can make mods until the cows come home, they're never going to please everyone. That's why I advocate doing it yourself, if you can run SimPE. (And not everyone can, since it doesn't work on Macs) because it's really a very easy thing to do. And that way, you get exactly what you want. I am systematically going through the catalogs, off and on, and jiggering things for my own purposes, but what I set may not be what anyone else would want for their own game, unless they're of like philosophy to me, a person who likes to play "hands off," for the most part.

I'm mostly found on (and mostly upload to) Tumblr these days because, alas, there are only 24 hours in a day.
Muh Simblr! | An index of my downloads on Tumblr.
Scholar
#56 Old 13th May 2018 at 2:32 PM
Quote: Originally posted by iCad
Sorry for the double-post, but for nerds like me who are interested in this sort of stuff, I solved the "Mystery of the Sun Loungers." The problem is two-fold. The biggest problem, when it comes to community lots, is that it's not visitor-enabled, which means no non-playable (human) Sim will ever sit in them. (Strangely, they ARE visitor-enabled for pets to sit on. Whatever, Maxis!)

I haven't checked the lounges but chairs have a sit function which is what sims use when they need to use a chair autonomously, the sit function is independent of the menu.
Mad Poster
#57 Old 13th May 2018 at 5:07 PM
Quote: Originally posted by iCad
Like Rosebine, I've already adjusted the pool slide for my own use, but haven't tested it yet. I didn't make it more attractive to children, though I probably will after testing it to see if it works. (Sometimes it doesn't, if there are other things affecting autonomy besides the TTAB. Like BHAVs, for instance, which I don't grok.) I just made the slide equally attractive to the diving board.

This is exactly what I have done, and there must be some BHAV's interfering, because no changes were noticed...@Sunrader PM me saying the same thing.

Quote: Originally posted by iCad
Rosebine
I'm going to guess that the vending machines are drawing Sims into your pool area, since they're programmed to arrive on lots hungry. Those things are pretty attractive. Then, once they're in the area, they're caught by the advertising radius of your diving boards.

I would have love to take pictures yesterday, as I sent my couple to my Family Park (the one I posted pictures of). But I need to reboot for this to work, as it will crash as soon as I hit prt scr. I cannot reboot now, I have too many unsaved images in my paintShop pro! lol
All sims would go directly to the pool area, but not to the vending machines. They went to grab some munchies, but way later. I had about 6 children, more or less (I have the mod that allows children and teen on community lot) and they all went for a swim. Most of them, used the diving board. None used the slide (global edit) I had some elders too, most of them used the ladder to get it, only one or 2 went for the diving board. In short, the pool area was full of sims, at all times. I was not directing anyone, not even my own 2 sims.
At some point, a child went to play on the playground, i was surprised.
So I am not sure the vending machines are the reason. They would have at least browse, or grabbed something to eat. Some went to the bathroom too.

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
Alchemist
#58 Old 13th May 2018 at 6:54 PM Last edited by Sunrader : 13th May 2018 at 11:03 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by iCad
I'm not sure there's enough to talk about for a whole thread.


Honestly, I think there's tons to talk about. Even in this thread we've talked about layout, routing, your tute. I even tweak my sims' interests and personalities with that in mind. It's a very different style of play to design for autonomy.

As for the slide, Rosebine is right. I can't get it to attract any sims at all. I've followed the tute and been successful for a number of objects, so pretty sure I know how. I've tried many different tests, but sims don't go near it on their own. I did look at BHAVs, but I only know enough to change very obvious things and I didn't see an issue. @iCad, does yours work?

A thread would be good.
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#59 Old 14th May 2018 at 1:15 AM

My non-playable Sims are getting in the pool now! Thank you all, I learned lots of new things from this thread! Special thanks to @Peni Griffin & @iCad :D
Mad Poster
#60 Old 14th May 2018 at 12:28 PM
Ok, I have to ask what happened to that sim with a lampshade on his head? XD

Also, deco objects advertise fun?
Theorist
#61 Old 14th May 2018 at 12:32 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Charity
Ok, I have to ask what happened to that sim with a lampshade on his head? XD


That's the Pleasure Aspiration Failure Animation.

Avatar by MasterRed
Taking an extended break from Sims stuff. Might be around, might not.
Forum Resident
#62 Old 14th May 2018 at 3:32 PM
Speaking of objects advertising to visitors- what do the bathroom stalls advertise as?

No matter what I put on a lot- pool tables, vending machines, bars- inevitably, the sims all walk straight to the farthest, darkest corner of the lot to stand around in the bathroom first before moving on to an activity. They don't even use the bathrooms, they just stand there. "So glad we came to this cool club with DJs and fire dancers. I wonder what's in the bathroom!"
Turquoise Dragon
retired moderator
#63 Old 14th May 2018 at 4:25 PM
Something in the bathroom was placed last?
Field Researcher
#64 Old 14th May 2018 at 9:11 PM
Mine all seem to go to the bathroom on community lots to stare at the mirror. They must be very vain Sims.
Mad Poster
#65 Old 17th May 2018 at 10:16 AM Last edited by AndrewGloria : 17th May 2018 at 10:37 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by gdayars
Something in the bathroom was placed last?
It's not always the last object placed that they go and look at. The last object placed at the community centre in Pleasantview was a CC vending machine that I added myself. But that wasn't what Lilith went to look at. No, she went into the Ladies Room to examine a toilet! ("What's this?") Somehow, with Lilith, that doesn't surprise me. I wonder what she'd have done if the fascinating WC had been in the Gents.

------------oooooooooooooo------------

Quote: Originally posted by Charity
Also, deco objects advertise fun?
They do! Or at least viewing deco objects can increase fun, so I imagine they advertise fun too.

I got Johnathan (sic) Ogden in Baldrair Bluffs to buy the painting of the single daisy and then to view it. His fun level increased slowly as he looked at it, but then he started to laugh at it, and his fun meter shot up to almost full.

------------oooooooooooooo------------

This thread has me thinking about a similar but different problem that I had. In my very early game I built a very large outdoor swimming pool for Veronaville (the Veronaville Swim Centre). It was (still is) a 4x4 community lot and the pool took up most of the lot. In its original form there was really nothing there but the pool itself (which did have ladders and at least one diving board), an unfinished and completely unusable toilet block, and a bit of tarmac meant as a car park but in completely the wrong place. (It's on a road going up the side of the lot, rather than at the front -- I was a total newbie.) Those Sims who came did get in and swim -- there was nothing else they could do there. My problem was that they just didn't come. Or at least hardly any of them came. The first Sim I sent there was Garry Mackay, Gloria's boyfriend to be (they hadn't met yet). The only Sim there was Trista Shaw, the Veronaville townie. She was already in the water swimming when Garry arrived, and, when I clicked on her it said, "There are no actions available." Nobody else arrived the whole time Garry was there, and he went home with his social meter going into the red, still not knowing a single Sim in the neighbourhood. Next to go there was Andrew. Again (if I remember rightly) there was only one other Sim there, and she was swimming. Andrew didn't even try to interact with her -- he had put weight on and he was there to lose it. He just swam lengths until he had worked all the calories off. ("Swim here", "Swim here", "Swim here", etc.) When he did get out of the water, Andrew lost his pot belly all right, but (as he'll never let me forget!) as he was waiting for his taxi, he got caught short due to my failure to provide a working toilet.

Before I sent anyone there again I made some improvements. I completed the toilet block (by looking at how Maxis had built the toilets at Stratford Strip), and added a self-service kitchen so Sims could prepare food for themselves. I also added paving and lighting. When I next sent Sims there (Julian and Andrew on their first outing together), it was considerably better, and they had a reasonably good time, but there were still almost no other Sims there.

Finally, a few weeks later, I added a poolside restaurant, turning the former self-service kitchen into the kitchen for the restaurant. Since then, plenty of Sims come, but the vast majority come to dine at the restaurant. Nowadays I use the Visitor Controller to make them arrive in swimwear, but still not many of them choose to swim. Here are a couple of views of the Veronaville Swim Centre as it is today:


Can anyone tell me why Sims wouldn't go to the Swim Centre in its earlier forms? The 'hood was vanilla Maxis Veronaville. In addition to the 3 Sims I has created in CAS at the time, there were 12 pre-mades living in Veronaville (not counting those in the Family Bin) and 30 townies, so there were plenty who could have come. At the time I thought it was because my lot wasn't interesting enough to attract them. One thing my lot didn't have was a grill, but in its intermediate form it had a fully functioning kitchen instead. The lot was of course (and still is) unowned. I don't have any pictures of it in its earliest form (because I hadn't yet discovered the in-game camera) but, if it would help people, I could load up my earliest backup and take photos of it there.

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Mad Poster
#66 Old 17th May 2018 at 10:23 AM
Since you're using an underpowered laptop, one reason they might not have shown up was the lot size. Of course, it's still that size, and has more on it, so it ought to use even more processing power now.

Put out more diving boards, and take out the restaurant in favor of a picnic area, with just a grill and some tables, and I bet they'll swim more.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Mad Poster
#67 Old 17th May 2018 at 11:18 AM
Thanks Peni. But as you say, there are far more things on the lot now than there were to begin with, and it's busy now. Maybe if I'd just added a grill (rather than a fully functioning kitchen) more Sims would have come to swim.

But I can't remove the restaurant now. The poolside restaurant has become a Veronaville institution -- a favourite place for Veronavillians to meet up. I wouldn't dare to show my face in Veronaville again if I closed it! Besides, Remington Hurt, the regular NPC waiter at the restaurant, has become a real local character. When the restaurant is quiet, he'll change into his swimming trunks, swim across the pool to the street, and walk off into the night. Maybe an hour later he'll reappear, swim back across to the restaurant, and resume serving customers, still dressed in his swimwear. All of this entirely autonomously! I think he's nipping home, or to a nearby all-night shop.

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Scholar
#68 Old 17th May 2018 at 3:32 PM
The Community Lot Populator sets the Population Cap according to the number of items on the lot. It is one sim per 4 items that have a Community Sort value above 0, plus one sim per 4 shrubs, plus one sim per 8 flowers, plus 1 sim per 2 trees.
Mad Poster
#69 Old 17th May 2018 at 4:04 PM
Interesting...so how does this mod works exactly? Does it just change the number of sims per items?
http://modthesims.info/d/606146

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
Scholar
#70 Old 17th May 2018 at 4:15 PM
I don't know, it's a .rar file and I learned over a decade ago not bother downloading .rar files from here.
e3 d3 Ne2 Nd2 Nb3 Ng3
retired moderator
#71 Old 17th May 2018 at 4:17 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Chris Hatch
I learned over a decade ago not bother downloading .rar files from here.

*simsample wonders why but doesn't like to ask*
Mad Poster
#72 Old 17th May 2018 at 4:48 PM
K. Just taking a chance, in case you would have heard, know about the mod.

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
Mad Poster
#73 Old 17th May 2018 at 7:21 PM
I had never heard of the Community Lot Populator before, but Googling it suggests that it's part of the Maxis game engine, rather than a mod. People report Community Lot Populator errors in a vanilla game. So it seems clear that it must be the part of the game engine that selects which non-controllable Sims get sent to a community lot. And Chris's post indeed seems to confirm that my initial suspicion wasn't far off the mark. In its initial form, my lot just wasn't interesting enough to attract more Sims. I'm a little surprised that it didn't do better in its intermediate form (with toilets and a self-service kitchen added), but I suppose that the items I added then weren't all that exciting -- cooker, counters, fridge, toilets, sink -- they're all things that Sims would have at home anyway. I'm not sure what Community Sort value is, but it might be zero for those items for all I know. It may have been more than one other Sim that came at that time -- I really can't remember, but it certainly wasn't many. From what I know now, I should have added more diving boards and planted trees, shrubs and flowers. I'll know in future. I think I shall add them to the Swim Centre, but I won't close the restaurant -- it's just too popular.

Meantime, inspired by this thread, I've created the little Transaqua Restaurant on a 2x2 lot in Baldrair Bluffs:
Screenshots

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Scholar
#74 Old 18th May 2018 at 3:02 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Rosebine
K. Just taking a chance, in case you would have heard, know about the mod.


The Community Lot Populator or CLP (real name = Controller - CLP - Community Lot - Populator) is a controller the runs in the background and controls the number of visitors at a community lot and owned home business. By default on initialization it sets a population cap for the lot depending on the number of items. It has a range of constant tables for the visitors per hour so the number of visitors depends on the time of day. The constant table chosen for the hour depends on neighbourhood type, holiday lots, downtowns and shopping districts can have a different number of visitors to each other at various times of day.
After calculating the required number of visitors for the hour it'll cut that off if it exceeds the 'Global Max Visitors' value or the population cap.

That mod overrides all of the normal values with one random number between two constants that the end user can easily adjust to suit themselves. It is incompatible with A&N so it's not plausible for me to actually test it.
Mad Poster
#75 Old 18th May 2018 at 12:44 PM
Thank you Chris. No testing needed! Just curiosity from my end, after your explanations. I do have this mod I linked.

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
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