Yes, you can definitely do that. You can also make slides more attractive to, say, children than adults, if you want, since you can apply different advertising levels to different age groups.

What's not obvious is the Type..see, playful is 7, and so is Active + lazy! lol

Nah, the types aren't additive like a lot of categories. 3 is active, 4 is lazy, and 7 is playful, but it's not because 3+4=7. They're just category numbers.

Oh I see. So Types aren't combinatory. Or if they are, we do not know their values...

No, they don't add up to anything the way that, say, clothing categories work or "which hairstyle can be used with which clothing category" works. There's a list of known types, as they pertain to TTAB settings, here: http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=TTAB#Settings

Maxis stuff often gives boost to Type "23, though, which is 35 in decimal, and I have no idea what that means, and it isn't on the above list. :\

Yep, I saw this page a few minutes ago. Though it is kind of broken and you need to..do this for everything to show.

Weird! It doesn't do that for me. But it looks like you're using Firefox, whereas I use Chrome.

AH! It's the flaming pet's fault then.

Oh, the diving board explains it. I was so confused by this thread and wondered what was so magical about my game. I have 2 community pool lots and visitors are always swimming, and the lots have a bunch of other activities. But the pools have diving boards, so I guess that's why I didn't have this issue.

The ladder (as well as the diving board and slide) is a portal, sims use the portal function to get out which is independent of the menu. That's the same as doors or stairs, all sims can use them to route somewhere. I once tried blocking egress to a community lot using a pool and some fencing to force sims to have to swim across the pool to get to anything on the lot and it worked, all visitors happily swam to get to what they want. It did lock out servos and quite funnily Mrs. Crumblebottom who ended up standing out on the footpath yelling at everyone across the pool for wearing swim wear.

Beach portals work the same but they are worse as by default they have no autonomous use for visitors, I made the raft from Castaway autonomously playable in an attempt to encourage sims into the water and although the raft works brilliantly sims still don't autonomously get into the water at a beach very often.
CS_NativeRaft.zip (700kb)
Bon Voyage EP Required
Must be placed in the ocean at a beach. Sims can play on provided Seasons EP is installed (uses pool jump in spot animations). Sims can climb up the ladder on one side and jump back into the water on the other side. Find in Hobbies -> Recreation for §186

This makes sense, and I've done similar "to get to that thing over there, ya gotta swim through the pool" things, too. But, Crumplebottom is banned in my game, so I don't have that hilarity. Whatever the case, though, I wouldn't feel comfortable messing with the ladders because while there're all sorts of ways to get INTO the pool, the ladder is the only way out.



Are you certain about this? Because at my beaches, visitors swim in the ocean all the time. I could be wrong, but I don't THINK I have any mods that affect this -- I certainly haven't fiddled with it, myself -- but, yeah, I get plenty of ocean swimmers on beach lots, especially if there's not really anything else to do on the lot besides the standard beach activities. Generally, those who aren't obsessed with sand castles end up in the ocean.

But, if my situation isn't the "natural" one, the other thing you can do is build a pier out over the ocean and put a diving board on it. Then Sims will happily dive into the ocean.

The raft is awesome, too, though! Totally nabbing that.

Sims swim autonomously in the Swimming Hole at Widespot all the time - and they use the pool ladders as well as the diving boards.

The diving boards are practically the first things they see, and the only things that advertise fun, on the entire lot, so that explains part of it. For the rest, since the ladders are portals, the routing protocols cause sims who need to go around the pool to get to the restrooms or picnic area to swim across the pool to get to them.

So I strongly suggest putting the pool in the forefront of the lot, and any facilities behind it.

This is all very interesting because one of my main play goals is always more autonomy. I run my community pool totally autonomously. The pool is at the front of the lot (near the entrance/street) as Peni Griffin says. I have VC set to swimwear so everyone there always looks ready. I also have music playing, grills, showers, drink machines, a merry-go-round, and a snowcone machine modified to be autonomous. All my sims, both playable and townie, definitely use my pool autonomously on my community lot and they definitely use the ladders to get in as well as the diving board. I don't think I've ever seen them use the slide on their own. (I also have ankoyume's in and out spot which has really good animations, but I'm not sure I ever saw them use it on their own before I modified the autonomy on it. Now they use it by themselves and it's a really great addition.) I usually send the whole family to the pool and then just leave them alone and they and all the other visitors run totally autonomously for hours using the pool and all the other stuff. Does the season make any difference at all? It's summer year-round in the hood where I have my favorite public pool.

@iCad, I have a huge autonomy crush on you! <3 If you are going to work with the slide, I'd be totally in. I've used your tutorials and site to mod a couple things for personal use, especially the campfire (drove me nuts they wouldn't light it - now they do). The hard part for me is finding and extracting/cloning the object. Would you, or anyone, be willing to extract/clone the slide info so we could play with it?

Not anymore!

http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=608173

I think this is the first time I've ever heard of slides being more exciting to literate Sims...

And where did you get that? They aren't... Diving boards are, and for all sims. Unless i do not get what you just said.

You can view the whole list if you hit Ctrl+A (select everything) and then in Word or Notepad or whatever text editor, hit Ctrl+V (paste).

Yes, that too.

In post #22 on page 1, iCad posted:
"Slide: Is both autonomy-enabled and visitor enabled, but it's advertising is so weak as to be non-existent. (It has a base advertising value of 3....on a scale of 1-100, I think) with a 25-point boost...to Sims of a non-existent category ("Literacy.") So yeah, that one's screwed up all to hell. :\"

I've no idea what Maxis were trying to do there either! Anyway Sims seem to be literate as soon as they become children. Little Hans Moltke grew up from toddler to child on a Saturday evening, and in the Sunday (i.e. before his first day at school) he sat on the sofa reading the SimCity Chronicle.

Oh! I see. thank you Andrew.

Hey, I'm sorry, I've been busy with some other thing, but I appreciate the interest!

Since a lot of you asked...

I sent a family with kids the other day and managed to get the children to lure visitors to play Marco Polo. Both my controllable sims and the visitors could get in/out the pool just fine, but visitors still showed no interest in the pool whatsoever. Of those sims that the children lured, I got them to get in the pool for a little while (20 game minutes or so?) and then they were out... at least then they all chatted in their swimsuits.



My to-do-list:
*install a pool lot by some other user and test out if the problem persists.
*try my pool lot with no mods.
*try a downloaded pool lot with no mods.
*find the culprit if it's a mod problem; I don't have too many (it's mostly clothes and objects and hairs) and I have no idea what it could be tbh.

Thank you cows First of all, this is a very pretty lot you got there! Wow.
I cannot see anything that would stop visiting sims from wanting to get in the pool though...
You even have 2 diving boards? Though we cannot see them well, I think this is what I see, opposite side of the slide on your first picture.
Everything seems in proper place.
Check your mods and hacks.

Looking at that layout, I'd say shifting the position of the pool on the lot, so that sims encounter it before they encounter anything else, and switching the positions of the slide and diving boards are your best bets. Nobody ever sits in the lounge chairs - I don't think they advertise well, either. You might want to replace them with a picnic area - on the far side of the pool from the entrance.

It's a pretty lot and I know rebuilding it is not something you're eager to do; but I think it's the solution.

@Icad, I trust you intend to share those tweaked pool slides? Because kids especially ought to be lining up to use those things.

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.

It appears to me that there's two entrances, both leading onto a large open space. The non-advertising slide is the closest thing to the front entrance. Sims will mill around in that open space distracting each other. To get to the portals of the pool ladders, which don't lead anywhere, you have to pass several deco plants, which advertise fun. Before reaching the diving boards and their satisfactory advertising rating, the sims and their lowish bladder motives will be deflected by the portals of the restroom building calling them to take care of that, and then they encounter each other at the restrooms and that's that.

Simply swapping the positions of the diving boards and slide may be enough; but moving the pool to the center instead of the side of the lot and putting something on the opposite side - restrooms or a picnic area would increase traffic more. Also, consider having diving boards interspersed with the pool ladders; or diving boards on the long sides and the ladders only on the ends.

A smaller lot and pool might be called for, too. The bigger the community lot, the more sims wander around aimlessly. A more compact lot with the resources more evenly distributed usually works better for me.