I've experimented with swimmable ponds, with varying degrees of success. But, does anyone know of a wall paint (or wallpaper/mural) that could be applied to an actual swimming pool wall that, when viewed through the blue pool water, would look more like a naturally occurring swimmin' hole? I guess something suitable for the floor would be good, too, although that seems to be easier to color nicely, for some reason. I know there are animated fish, and I can plant cattails and whatnot around the edge and cover the water with lily pads, etc. But there's just something about that water color. I'm assuming there's probably a way to change the color of the water itself, (without using overlays) but I can't recall seeing one specifically. Don't get me wrong - I love the overlays, for some situations. I just have a hard time getting them to meet correctly without overlapping or leaving gaps, for larger pools... a nice wall/floor combo would be a much simpler, more elegant solution, I feel.

maybe this mud wall covering
https://www.thesimsresource.com/dow...wall/id/417081/

Looks promising; you can never really tell, though, with pools, how it's going to look underneath the blue water. I'll give it a shot; thanks!

Maybe colored pool lights in addition to walls and floors? I've made some, they come in the colors of the NL neons. If you combine colors they do merge, like red and blue do give off purple.

I think seasons added some dirt/grass floors right? Some other more mm styles of flooring.

https://modthesims.info/d/302204/ma...e-flooring.html
https://modthesims.info/download.php?t=603202

I tried various things... the problem, as I see it, is the pool water itself... the Maxis folks went a little overboard in their water-tinting efforts. IRL, water is clear. From the air, water bodies reflect the blue sky... or the gray sky, if it's cloudy. Unmodded Sims pool water doesn't even do that. As a kid I enjoyed looking through my grandpa's camera lens filters, but I noticed that mixing light doesn't necessarily work the same way as, say, mixing paint... and I think that's sort of the issue here: the ultramarine filter of the Maxis water messes everything up. As you can see in the screenshot, things which look like they might work pretty well on the surface - like garden-soil tiles - are mostly turned a funny shade of purple under the water... except for the green wall paint (at right), which just becomes darker blue [shrug].

CycloneSue's brown clay wallpaper (arrow) suffers the same fate. In an empty pool, it'd be great, and I'll probably use it somewhere as regular wall paint. But that blue water... I thought that maybe a dark orange would counteract the blue (makes sense on a color wheel), so I tried the orange-ish ripple pattern Maxis cement for the floor, which became... is that puce? I dunno, I'll probably just end up going with the green and brown overlays - which also have a nice opacity, like muddy pond water - and hide the seams with deco plants and whatnot.

BTW - HL, in my modern hoods I definitely do use your neon pool lights, which are way better than the standard ones. Here though, I'm trying to make a swimming pool that doesn't look like one, for historic purposes. The swimmable ponds work okay, but once in a while the animations get weird, and for a community lot with potentially a whole bunch of swimmers, I was hoping to cut down on weirdness as much as possible.

Maybe these pool wall overlays could be the thing?

https://i.postimg.cc/QxR0pGFc/LFB-c...Shot365-red.png

A long while ago I downloaded a lot at all4sims that had a pool the lot creator had converted into a pond of sorts. I've always liked that one. It came with some rocky sides that covered up the pool walls, plus lots of greenery. The lot was called "Asylis cottage". I think the files are the ones named "wfs2wwpool..." from WoodForSims (pool wall cover, ladder, diving board + a few other things). It gives the walls more of a structure, so they don't look so flat. Better than just a wallpaper.

Looks to be part of this set: http://paysites.mustbedestroyed.org...ims/fishermans/

As for how the pool shows up for you - I've been used versions of Gunmod's (and dreadpirate's) lighting hacks that also add some fixes to pools and such, and the Pools in my game reflect everything, not just the sky. I think there are older versions of Gunmod's mod available.

The water is how it used to show up on my old computer, close to how it's on my new one (if using slightly different mods) - there's more reflections than what's actually showing in the pic, but for some reason they weren't showing here. Water needs shaders turned on + reflections turned on, at the minimum, plus some tweaking via mods if you want it to really shine. Yours looks like there's maybe just reflection, or just shadows showing? I don't know if reflections in the pool will properly show without shaders. Without shaders you'll get the extreme blue water). An unmodded pool should still get alright reflections and decent shaders.
(Scroll down to "shaders" for pics of pool with unmodified shaders --> https://modthesims.info/wiki.php?ti...aps_and_Shaders )

On my first laptop I couldn't use shaders (barely knew it existed), and reflections slowed down the poor thing, so I had both turned off. The pool water looked similar to what's shown in your pictures - very blue water and no reflections.
Pic, in case you want to compare: https://i.postimg.cc/KcDDc6SQ/LFBha...Shot015-red.png

[QUOTE=simmer22]I've been used versions of Gunmod's (and dreadpirate's) lighting hacks that also add some fixes to pools and such, and the Pools in my game reflect everything, not just the sky. I think there are older versions of Gunmod's mod available. [QUOTE]

I'll have to look for those lighting mods! And as for the fisherman set, the ladders alone are worth the download. In my Roman hood, some of the indoor pools have fancier stone walls & floors (although, most of them were probably lined with cement in reality). I have a wealthy stone quarry owner who decorates his home - in a gauche, new-money way that the patrician types probably snicker at - with all manner of stone types from his various sources in the provinces. His shop "lobby" is a rainbow of marble colors, a sort of Roman-era "Floor & Decor" sample display.

If I re-imagined the community swimming hole in question as, maybe a limestone and gravel creekbed (this is supposed to be a neighborhood near the Mississippi River, so maybe... hmmm. You've given me something to think about. I wonder if there are short waterfall objects that could be set up at one end of the pool, to give the illusion of something like that. I think I have a photo of a real place somewhere on my laptop...

These are the falls on West Panther Creek, in southwestern Illinois, where legend has it that a group of children on the run from an enemy war party were saved by a host of small, invisible people who came out from a cave behind the waterfall. Anyhow, prior to the incident, their grandmas have stopped at the waterfall for a breather before continuing on, and the kids go splashing around in the pool. So maybe there's some way to construct something similar.
This is the thing I live for in Sims 2 - figuring out how to do wacky stuff!

Waterfalls:
https://modthesims.info/d/237912/th...all-update.html
https://modthesims.info/d/647734/in...waterfalls.html
https://modthesims.info/d/275659/wa...of-rocks-d.html (shower)
(I've seen various edits and recolors of these, too).

I think the lot I mentioned used one or two of these, along with various plants and rocks, to mask the corners of the pool walls. I think Woodforsims also has a set of mangrove trees (the ones with long roots going down into water). They can help a bit with the pond/river feel.

This is the largest overlay I know of:
https://modthesims.info/d/630069/am...water-lily.html
It’s 11x11, I thought that way at least you’d have fewer seams to cover up.

Wow.
Can I ask which skintone and hair is on your sim in the first pic. ?
I may possibly have it already, but it looks better than the ones I have in my downloads folder.
Thanks in advance.

Ephemera (or possibly an edit by someone, but I think it's still based on these), and Peggy mesh 0042 (set 00468/0517 at the booty - and yes, I know the numbering doesn't make sense ).

Wait, whaaaaaat? I missed that the first time I read it. Just how is it that I've been playing all these years, and never knew about this? With my luck, I'll be one of those people with a video card that makes the game freeze up with the shaders on.

Thanks, I learned something new today! And thanks for the links. I'm gonna have to rebuild the lot quite a bit, but I think it'll be worth it. Among the other lots in this hood (1740s Illinois frontier), it's the one that kind of stuck out as being way too modern-looking. I'll take before & after pics.


Anyone remember where the "swimmable ponds" tutorial is located? I have one on another lot, but I can't quite remember all the steps in building it.

I have some overlays, but I'm not sure who made them. They come in two sizes, though, and this one is just one size, so I think it's probably new for me. Also, some of the other stuff in that bonus pack looks good. Thanks, Corax!

Er, whoops. This actually is the one that I have. It does come in 2 sizes; I didn't notice the screenshot on the download page. It'll cover swimming pools, but it can only be placed on terrain water... I had a boardwalk surrounding the pool on the lot, and I just dug a couple of pothole ponds under the boardwalk, so the overlay would reach. But, if I'm going to re-build the lot using a swimmable "creek", then I won't have any actual swimming pools, and it shouldn't be an issue. I can try putting a waterfall where the seam ends up, or something like that.

I might end up building from scratch, on a brand new lot, one with a bit of a slope so I won't have to create one for the waterfalls. Anyhow, stay tuned - I'll take pictures as I go.

Thanks !

I think I might have that creator in my folders so I'll go and check.
I'll look up that hair as well-- not sure how I missed it ?
I have soooo many.....

Am going to check out some of the links here for pond CC; as I don't think I have enough CC yet.
Oh my goodness.

Well, looks like the shaders won't work in my game... or at least they don't at the moment. My game didn't freeze, or crash, but the terrain on the entire lot just turned red, with some weird red stripes on the roadway. Check out the screenshot and tell me what you think the deal is... Are the shaders something that I have to install first? I have Seasons, so according to the help article, this should work. Or am I missing something? Which is usually the case...

Red/red-flashing is usually related to a problem with the shaders and/or graphic card. Usually means there's something with the graphic card settings that isn't agreeing with the shaders, an issue in GraphicRules, or a shader/lighting mod that isn't properly installed, or something of the sort. Can sometimes also mean graphic drivers need an update. Whether it's fixable depends on what the problem is, so it's a bit of trial and failure to rule out the issues one by one.

Shaders are part of the game, but they aren't always turned on by default (in your case, not). It depends a bit on whether the game recognizes the graphic card from the get-go (usually not, these days).

I've not had issues with red-flashing myself, so haven't needed to jump through all the hoops to fix it, but I'm guessing it's mostly a matter of editing the GraphicRules (and VideoCards) files to properly recognize the graphics card, at least if you haven't done this already. The game usually assumes the lowest possible settings if it doesn't recognize a graphic card, or at least does some guesswork which may or may not be correct.

I also found this - not sure if it helps, but you could give it a try: https://thesims2.livejournal.com/6671642.html (the links in the text don't work very well, but the one from Simswilki wasn't much helpful anyway, and the info gathering from the second one can be done in other ways).

(Shaders are nice, but they aren't necessary. They make the game look prettier in some aspects - but can cause visual glitchiness elsewhere, like with CC that's got poorly made bump maps or the wrong material settings. It can cause some trouble in the setup as you've seen. Depending on your computer setup it is also more likely to cause trouble during gameplay because it is more memory-heavy, such as pink-flashing and crashing. Personally, I like using shaders in my game, but I fully understand the headaches it takes to make them work properly )

Well, to my knowledge, I don't have any lighting mods installed. And... the red isn't flashing, it's just static red. It vanished as soon as I changed the cheat code back to false. Could it have anything to do with the in-game graphics settings, do you think? I usually have mine set as low as I can get away with, to make the game less jumpy. I only cranked up the quality on the Sims' settings when someone mentioned that some of the facial sliders don't work with them set low. I'll see if I can make a difference by adjusting some of those, before I start poking around in the Res files, I think. Like you said, it's not really all that crucial that I get them to work, anyhow. I like things to look nice, but I'd rather have everything work smoothly, if I had to choose between the two. Thanks for the link, though... I've bookmarked it for possible future use.

I see references in that article to "unsupported graphics cards"... wouldn't I be having a lot more trouble even playing at all, if that was the case? Also, there's something about "require a card with at least 32MB...", and the behaviors I'd be altering in that code pertain to what the game does when it finds a card with less than that... is what I'm thinking. From what I can tell about my laptop, I actually seem to have two graphics cards: one is an Intel, with 512 MB VRAM; the other is an NVIDIA, with 1024 MB. So I have a feeling it's not that... By today's standards, I'm certain my computer is fairly wimpy in the graphics department, but that article is also pretty old now... 2008 I think.

I think that Nvidia card should manage fine (I think, but not entirely sure, that I had the same card on my previous laptop), but it depends on whether your game is running on the Nvidia or Intel graphics. If you open up the "[computer name]-config-log" file in the Logs folder (same general location as Downloads) you should see a few of the graphic settings (card, memory use, and a couple more things). If it's not saying the Nvidia card, you probably need to do some changes.

That card has 1024 MB memory, so should be enough. The card itself is from 2012, so it's not the newest, but it's possible you'll have less trouble with that one than some of the newer ones.

Pretty much all cards are "unsupported" these days (too new). Doesn't mean the game absolutely won't run with them, though. Most are fine with a bit of poking around in GraphicRules.

It does say that it's using the Nvidia one. And... the red is in fact flashing red; I was building the pool on a comm lot, so I couldn't tell. I created a new Sim to live on a lot that's been abandoned for a while (one with a fish pond), and yes, I got the flashing. Quite dramatic. The gfx settings didn't do anything, except the "lighting" one put a little hiccup in the flashing sequence.

So you think it's worth it to mess with the code in that Graphics Rules file? I think I'll concentrate on building the "creek" first, and worry about trying to get the shaders to work later. I mean, my game is kind of laggy enough as it is without enabling all kinds of fancy water ripples and whatnot. But maybe altering the code would help with that, too?

I'd be very interested to see if you can make a pool look like a natural pond/creek, because I always hated that swimmable ponds required a whole foundation and diving board. I wanted them to look like a wild pond.

You can give it a try, but make sure to backup the current GraphicsRule file, as it looks to be working fine for a no-shader game. If you can't figure it out, or decide to go back to no shaders, you've got the original.

If your game is laggy without shaders (and you only have up to Seasons), it could mean the laptop is already struggling as it is. Not sure if it's a good idea to throw shaders on top of that.

The one I had wasn't bad, but only because I had a deck built deck around the outside of it, to mask the edges. Then I slapped some watery terrain paint around it, threw in a mass of cattails, tall grass and lily pads, and the odd deco beaver and ducks... it was passable. Still not sure whether this is going to end up being a pool or a pond. I've started a lot on a slope to accommodate the waterfalls, but now I'm thinking that might have made things unnecessarily complicated. We shall see.

I was thinking, this might be a situation for the "terrain paint" method of faux-pool construction. I wonder, though, if Sims are able to swim through animated water overlays... or any other kind of overlay, for that matter... I'm thinking probably not, but we'll see. In any case, I have several other tests to run, so I might have to build a mini version of this on an inhabited lot, so I don't have to schlepp Sims to and from the comm lot where it will eventually live. That's something that would've been handy for the Maxis folks to have built into the game - a community-lot test dummy, that would only be present when you entered from the neighborhood Lots tab. Do they have that in TS3/4?

Build it as a regular lot, save a copy in the Lots bin (before moving in sims, of course), playtest as much as you want, and then place a copy of the lot which you can then rezone to community. The items you need for a community lot (phone, possibly also trash bin?) are accessible in build mode, so it's a bit less meddlesome than rezoning from community to residential (needs buyable trashcan/mailbox).

I prefer using only residential lots for my adventures in simming, since they're much easier to play/playtest.
I've also started using premades and the premade hoods as crashtest-dummies, since I don't use them for anything else, anyway (saves on resources, and keeps the hoods I actually play much neater, since my crash-testing tends to be a bit all over the place)

It does seem sims don't care too much about what they're swimming around once they're in a swimmable lake, as long as there are borders they can swim within (been a while since I made a swimmable lake - don't they need fences or some such?). I've had sims that kept swimming through the grass if they found an opening, though