Here's a ladder (stairs) object I made in response to a request in the requests forum. It only takes up 2 tiles, and is a fully-functioning staircase. As you can see by the screenshot, the 2nd floor ends up with only a single used tile (with the second tile being the "landing" that's created automatically). In discussing this with the requestee, he stated that he was fully aware of the odd-looking animations associated with modified stairs (Sims walking in air, etc) and had seen them with spiral staircases, and was willing to put up with that. Well... I hate to put my name on something that would look so silly when being used, so I removed the animations from this object. Going up, the Sim appears to teleport to the top. Coming down is actually almost realistic. See for yourself.

I also changed the routing slots so the Sims approach at the proper point on the object.

I have checked off full compatibility for the time being, as I am fairly certain this will work with all versions of the game. If you experience a problem, please report it in this thread.

This is a new mesh, although not much of one: 132 faces. The original Maxis stairs had 4,148 faces.

Enjoy!

-Targa

***UPDATE***

My apologies to all who downloaded this already. Due to a faulty SimPE plugin that didn't work as advertised (and me not noticing the problem), the animations (or lack thereof) from the ladder were also being used by all stairs. This has now been corrected by hand, and the ladder should be completely stand-alone now. Please re-download this new file.