Sign in to Mod The Sims
Build-a-Playground: 5 hills for children and toddlers [TESTERS WANTED]
Build-a-Playground: 5 hills for children and toddlers [TESTERS WANTED]
MTS has all free content, all the time. Donate to help keep it running.
img_Jasana_PG_thumbnail.jpg - width=600 height=600
img_Jasana_PG_all_default.jpg - width=800 height=552
img_Jasana_PG_all_Bambi.jpg - width=800 height=552
img_Jasana_PG_closeup.jpg - width=800 height=645
img_Jasana_PG_sliding.jpg - width=800 height=600
img_Jasana_PG_placement_top-view.jpg - width=580 height=510
placement hints
img_Jasana_PG_placement_side-view.jpg - width=700 height=450
placement hints
Uploaded: 31st Jan 2009 at 9:41 PM
Updated: 22nd Feb 2009 at 9:33 AM - placement hints added
Updated: 22nd Feb 2009 at 9:33 AM - placement hints added
Kids Challenge came right in time - I wanted to make this set ages ago, but couldn't find the time 
If anyone wanted to see it, please enjoy it with me 
General Information
Here's a set of 5 hills which your children and toddlers (who learned to walk) can ride and have fun.
The set is modular - you can use any hills you like, and place them however you like. Building process is simple - place floors (foundation, walls or columns and floor on them), and pick a hill that can 'tie' two floors together.
Hill height1 ties foundation and ground.
Hill height3 ties 2nd floor and foundation.
Hills with height4 in name tie 2nd floor and ground.
You would need to put stairs to allow sims to reach hill start point. And, for toddlers, you'll need Rebecah's mod that allows toddlers to use stairs.
Note: this set uses repository technique, hill_height1 is the master. Which means, you must have hill_height1 in your Downloads for other hills to work properly. A good side of it is that any recolors of master hill are shared by all other hills (but not fence).
Hills are located in Hobbies/Recreation.
There are 2 interactions available on hills:
- Slide Once - slide exactly this hill once
- Slide - slide this hill, then pick closest hill and slide it; continue until motives allow or user cancels command
Hills work in base game, and with addons up to FT (don't have AL so don't know - please report if problems occur).
Also, since it's much of a test set, hills' shapes are rather simple (and, therefore, poly counts are insanely low). I'd love to make a prettier-looking ones, but I'm afraid I wouldn't have time - so, if anyone else wants to try, feel free to (as long as result is a free object), I'll try to explain what to change. (Keep in mind, though, that it's not a beginner task - if you wouldn't change significantly pieces where sim hands touch the hill, then just object meshing skills are enough, but the more you change, the more complex it gets - animations, slots, and other headache
)
More decent recolors could be nice, too - be aware, though, that I used a bit insane mapping (it doesn't fit the usual square) to make textures smaller.
Placement hints
Since hill placement may be tricky, I added two screenshots explaining it - see in attachments.
Different heights are represented by different tile colors - blue for ground, orange for foundation, red for floor. Purplish (or how that color is called?) tiles (semi-transparent on top view) are tiles on ground level that must be empty for hill to be placed. Nothing should be there, including foundation in case of hill3.
Technical details
1. Hill_height1 stores all textures, and child's 'stand up' anim; individual hills contain only meshes, sliding anims, and also BHAV 'CT - Can Slide Me?' which is used when selecting next hill. Currently, all of them contain the same rule - allowed are child and toddler who can walk - but it's possible (and planned, but wasn't implemented) to have hills slideable by different ages.
2. In Slide interaction, first closest hill is picked to continue (hill which was just used doesn't count); depending on hills placement, sims may end using just 2 hills in loop. Suggestions how to do it better are welcome - I was thinking about building array of slides and choosing randomly of them, but wouldn't it be too 'heavy' solution?
3. Different floor level is determined by OBJD raw data, 0x0038 'level offset' - value 1 for 'high' tiles and 0 for 'low'. There's tricky moment here - the game considers both foundation and full floor as 'level 1', so it's possible to put hill of height 1/4 to hang off 2nd floor I didn't found a solution to this.
4. The hills didn't look right with default thumbnails, so all of them have custom thumbnails.
5. I was too lazy to add all the covered tiles - just minimum needed to avoid walking through. Footprints for bottom tiles do work, but, since lead tiles are not (0,0), numbers in footprint array don't match numbers in OBJDs.
6. Meshes were made in 3ds Max.
7. Anims were done in Milkshape and exported with AniMesh.
8. Hills are visible in neighborhood, but without extra resources - it happened by itself
Thanks
To Wes_H, for AniMesh plugins.
To Peter Jones, for PJSE plugins.
To Numenor, for explanations how to add custom thumbnail camera.
To Rebecah, for toddler-stair-using mod - so I didn't need to bother with making 'walk up' anims.
To Simsky, whose toddler-training painting I used for testing toddler interactions.
Policy
Feel free to recolor or clone, as long as result is not posted as donation or pay items, and don't forget to credit me.
You may include these into your lot, as long as they are not pay or donation items, but please link back to the thread for possible updates. (And be aware that master hill has to be included if any child hills are on lot - even if master itself isn't.)
Polygon Counts:
hill_height1, hill_height3, hill_height4 - 140 faces, 178 vertices
hill_height4_cw, hill_height4_ccw - 204 faces, 242 vertices
fence - 142 faces, 99 vertices (post) + 24 faces, 34 vertices (straight/diagonal railing)
Custom Content by Me:
- Playground Fence, default color
- Playground Hill, Height 1/4
- Playground Hill, Height 3/4
- Playground Hill, Height 4/4
- Playground Hill, Height 4/4, bent counterclockwise
- Playground Hill, Height 4/4, bent clockwise
- Recolor 'Bambi', for all hills
- Playground Fence, 'Bambi' recolor
If anyone wanted to see it, please enjoy it with me 
General Information
Here's a set of 5 hills which your children and toddlers (who learned to walk) can ride and have fun.
The set is modular - you can use any hills you like, and place them however you like. Building process is simple - place floors (foundation, walls or columns and floor on them), and pick a hill that can 'tie' two floors together.
Hill height1 ties foundation and ground.
Hill height3 ties 2nd floor and foundation.
Hills with height4 in name tie 2nd floor and ground.
You would need to put stairs to allow sims to reach hill start point. And, for toddlers, you'll need Rebecah's mod that allows toddlers to use stairs.
Note: this set uses repository technique, hill_height1 is the master. Which means, you must have hill_height1 in your Downloads for other hills to work properly. A good side of it is that any recolors of master hill are shared by all other hills (but not fence).
Hills are located in Hobbies/Recreation.
There are 2 interactions available on hills:
- Slide Once - slide exactly this hill once
- Slide - slide this hill, then pick closest hill and slide it; continue until motives allow or user cancels command
Hills work in base game, and with addons up to FT (don't have AL so don't know - please report if problems occur).
Also, since it's much of a test set, hills' shapes are rather simple (and, therefore, poly counts are insanely low). I'd love to make a prettier-looking ones, but I'm afraid I wouldn't have time - so, if anyone else wants to try, feel free to (as long as result is a free object), I'll try to explain what to change. (Keep in mind, though, that it's not a beginner task - if you wouldn't change significantly pieces where sim hands touch the hill, then just object meshing skills are enough, but the more you change, the more complex it gets - animations, slots, and other headache
)More decent recolors could be nice, too - be aware, though, that I used a bit insane mapping (it doesn't fit the usual square) to make textures smaller.
Placement hints
Since hill placement may be tricky, I added two screenshots explaining it - see in attachments.
Different heights are represented by different tile colors - blue for ground, orange for foundation, red for floor. Purplish (or how that color is called?) tiles (semi-transparent on top view) are tiles on ground level that must be empty for hill to be placed. Nothing should be there, including foundation in case of hill3.
Technical details
1. Hill_height1 stores all textures, and child's 'stand up' anim; individual hills contain only meshes, sliding anims, and also BHAV 'CT - Can Slide Me?' which is used when selecting next hill. Currently, all of them contain the same rule - allowed are child and toddler who can walk - but it's possible (and planned, but wasn't implemented) to have hills slideable by different ages.
2. In Slide interaction, first closest hill is picked to continue (hill which was just used doesn't count); depending on hills placement, sims may end using just 2 hills in loop. Suggestions how to do it better are welcome - I was thinking about building array of slides and choosing randomly of them, but wouldn't it be too 'heavy' solution?
3. Different floor level is determined by OBJD raw data, 0x0038 'level offset' - value 1 for 'high' tiles and 0 for 'low'. There's tricky moment here - the game considers both foundation and full floor as 'level 1', so it's possible to put hill of height 1/4 to hang off 2nd floor
I didn't found a solution to this.4. The hills didn't look right with default thumbnails, so all of them have custom thumbnails.
5. I was too lazy to add all the covered tiles - just minimum needed to avoid walking through. Footprints for bottom tiles do work, but, since lead tiles are not (0,0), numbers in footprint array don't match numbers in OBJDs.
6. Meshes were made in 3ds Max.
7. Anims were done in Milkshape and exported with AniMesh.
8. Hills are visible in neighborhood, but without extra resources - it happened by itself
Thanks
To Wes_H, for AniMesh plugins.
To Peter Jones, for PJSE plugins.
To Numenor, for explanations how to add custom thumbnail camera.
To Rebecah, for toddler-stair-using mod - so I didn't need to bother with making 'walk up' anims.
To Simsky, whose toddler-training painting I used for testing toddler interactions.
Policy
Feel free to recolor or clone, as long as result is not posted as donation or pay items, and don't forget to credit me.
You may include these into your lot, as long as they are not pay or donation items, but please link back to the thread for possible updates. (And be aware that master hill has to be included if any child hills are on lot - even if master itself isn't.)
Polygon Counts:
hill_height1, hill_height3, hill_height4 - 140 faces, 178 vertices
hill_height4_cw, hill_height4_ccw - 204 faces, 242 vertices
fence - 142 faces, 99 vertices (post) + 24 faces, 34 vertices (straight/diagonal railing)
Custom Content by Me:
- Playground Fence, default color
- Playground Hill, Height 1/4
- Playground Hill, Height 3/4
- Playground Hill, Height 4/4
- Playground Hill, Height 4/4, bent counterclockwise
- Playground Hill, Height 4/4, bent clockwise
- Recolor 'Bambi', for all hills
- Playground Fence, 'Bambi' recolor
More Downloads BETA
Here are some more of my downloads: