Cheap and Silly Transport for Eccentric/Inappropriate Sims: The Bathroomobile

UPDATE 23 AUGUST 2013 - One of EA's patches since I made this item did something to change the position of the headlight glow, and this vehicle started displaying two 'ghost' car headlights out in front of it which it didn't have before. Please redownload this item if you are patched up to date and having the headlights issue. Just let it overwrite your old version. Be sure the version you're using is dated 8-23-2013. Thanks to coolspear1 for letting me know about this issue!

(UPDATE 18th March 2013. Sims 2 players: Following several requests, there is now a Sims 2 conversion of this vehicle here: http://www.modthesims.info/d/498696 )

I was in the mood to make some sort of just plain silly vehicle, and was thinking along the lines of my old Sims 2 favourites such as DBCAB's 'Toilet Car' (http://www.modthesims.info/d/351573 ) and Fresh-Prince's 'Couch Car' (http://www.modthesims.info/d/203254 ). At the same time, I was thinking of motorcycles with side cars, which I tried but could not get to work for various reasons. Then I thought, why not combine the two ideas?


The result was the Bathroomobile, sort of a 'toilet bike' and 'bathtub sidecar', and the name being sort of a play-on-words of Batmobile, only with added toilets.

My Eccentric inventor sim and his Inappropriate beardy buddy scraped together the 400 simoleons needed to purchase a used bathtub, a used toilet, four used trolley wheels, an old steering wheel, a rickety old garden chair, a small but powerful 2-stroke lawnmower motor cleverly hidden inside the toilet tank (for what fuel the engine uses, see here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-10881080 ) and a bunch of wooden poles to put it all together on a chassis, and this is now their ride. They even threw in a rubber ducky as a hood ornament.

It's found in the Vehicles category and costs 400 simoleons, a mere snip at just the cost of the parts. It has four recolour areas, as seen below and in the tiling pics among the thumbnails at the bottom of the page. By default it comes up with a lovely pink bathtub and baby blue toilet, but you can change the colours of both those two items plus the wheels/steering wheel (all one channel) and the garden chair.

Regarding the tiling, this was a very complex creation with a lot of different parts and therefore a very full UV map, so using patterns on this vehicle will stretch them quite a bit (the tiling pics below are using the smallest possible tile pattern in CaST). But this effect can actually look quite attractive, according to which patterns you use. I only tried it with EA patterns, no custom ones, and most of them look pretty nice in a big colourful way, as in the pics in this thread.

Looks cute around town, whether just cruising around, or prominently parked in front of the local junk yard.


For night driving, there are a couple of salvaged headlights tacked onto the front, and likewise a big red reflector on the back.


One minor issue: I could not get functional turning wheels to work on this 'unusual' car, hence I gave them a texture that would look the same whether they were turning or standing still. Therefore, it's best to only recolour them with solid colours and not use patterns on them, because patterning them will cancel out the illusion that they're turning.

This vehicle is classed as a sports car so that it will only show two sims since there are only two seats. You can put a whole household of sims in it, it's just that any others beyond two will just simply not show.

Please note that you must be updated to at least 1.26 patch level (Pets level) for this to work properly, because patch 1.26 and Pets changed the way most objects work.

Thanks for looking, hope you'll find this a bit of fun.


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


Polygon Counts:
5441

Additional Credits:
Made with s3pe, s3oc, and Texture Tweaker.

Bathtub, toilet, rubber ducky and chair are TS3 base game items.