Sims 2 Bubble Blower for Late Night

UPDATE 19th OCTOBER 2011: Updated with new file fixed to work with patch 1.26/Pets, thanks to Grant Hess's RigFix. The new file is on the Download page, with a filename beginning with PETS. The new file is NOT backwards-compatible, so if you don't have Pets or are not going to update with the 1.26 patch, please use the old version.


I was pleased to see that a bubble blower was included in Late Night, but was disappointed in its looks - I didn't like the style very much, thought it looked a bit cheapo and plain, and strongly preferred the colourful and exotic Hookah-style version in The Sims 2.

So after a lot of effort and toil, here is a modified version of the TS2 Bubble Blower to give you a bit of variety. A lot of modifications had to be made to adapt it for LN, but I hope you'll still find it authentic enough.

It's found in the Functions/Miscellaneous/Party category and the Dining Room/Bars section, and costs 1550 simoleons.



The modifications consist of having to make it shorter to fit the bubble animations coming out of the top, making the middle sphere wider so that the new hoses/mouthpieces that appear out of thin air have somewhere sensible-looking to attach to, and removing the seats so that it can be used with the barstools it needs to be used with in LN. I left the original hoses/mouthpieces in place because it just didn't look right without them, but they are of course not functional. (You can pretend they're there in case four more sims want to join in.)

There are three recolour channels, as shown below, and as also seen below, using patterns on it can create some quite pretty and/or psychedelic effects:


Good for having a few puffs while enjoying a concert:



Or for behaving like an irresponsible parent in front of the kids:


Issues:
1. Because the LN Bubble Blower has the animation of small white bubbles steaming away in its big lower section as well as the big coloured bubbles coming out of the top, it was difficult to know what to do with that. The converted blower displays them as small bubbles escaping out of its lower section, and I would say that we can think of that as being due to the blower being several years old now since TS2 and it has become somewhat leaky both through old age and heavy use by 'overindulgent' sims, ha ha.

2. High poly warning: As is often the case with Sims 2 objects, this was a very high poly item. The original item was a whopping 6000 polys, which is considered very high for a TS3 object. By reducing the overall polys I got it down to 3870, the furthest I could reduce it and still look reasonably OK. My own system is pretty cruddy, with a dual 2.5 processor and an extremely outdated graphics card, but the blower doesn't cause any worse slowdown than I already had, so hopefully it won't be a problem if your system is reasonably good.


Thanks for looking, hope your simmies will enjoy this object responsibly!


INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS:

Unzip the .zip file and copy the .package file to your Mods\Packages folder. If you don't have a Mods\Packages folder and/or don't know how to install .package files, please see full instructions here: http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php...g_Package_Files


Hair in concert pic is by XM Sims http://www.xmsims.com/sims3/ehtm/fhair/fhair007.html

'American McGee's Alice' and 'Gordon Freeman' sims (and their clothes) depicted above are by me, but are not uploaded anywhere.

Polygon Counts:
3870

Additional Credits:
Made with s3oc, S3PE and Sims 3 Object Tool.

Tested with Delphy's Sims 3 Dashboard and came up clean.

And thanks to Maxis for their great TS2 creations.