All About Puddles
Date Posted: 1st Dec 2008 at 10:48 PM Views: 617
When the Nightlife Expansion Pack brought us "Thirsty" the bath mat I was very happy. "It's about time there was something like this," I thought, since my sloppy Sims were making a real mess of their bathrooms and, of course being sloppy, they generally don't take too kindly to being told to mop up their mess afterwards. If they just left the puddle where it was and another, probably Neat, Sim mops it up for them, then there's the problem that they will be annoyed at having to clean up after their Sloppy housemate. I was so dissappointed when I realised that this bath mat was an imposter - it didn't drink up the puddles at all - it was just a decorative rug!

So I made a bath mat myself that does suck up puddles - if you're interested you can download it here. In creating it I learned a lot about puddles which I decided was a little too much information to put into the object thread - so I have gathered my thoughts here instead.

A Study in Puddles
Depending on the design/layout of your bathroom, sloppy Sims can create puddles in all directions. Remember that puddles beget more puddles, and until a puddle has evaporated, if the Sim keeps showering that puddle may well spread into a second and subsequent set of puddles.

If your Sim lives in the lap of luxury you may have so much bathroom space that you can have a shower sitting right in the middle of the room. Beware however, that this means a veritable flood in all directions from a long-showering Sloppy Sim.
Placing the shower against a wall will help of course. Many objects don't allow puddle intersection, so some clever decorating can ensure that your puddles always go in one direction and then you can put a bath mat on that square to evaporate the puddles.

Sloppy Sims also create floods when they take a shower (but not a bath) in one of these combined shower and bath tubs. The floods starts as if the shower end of the bath is the only end.

Of course there is nothing to stop you carpeting your entire bathroom with various bath mats to ensure you catch the puddles wherever they spread to, but that's not particularly realistic.

Puddle Edges
When I first started looking at puddles, I considered just removing them directly, but that left you with a neighbouring puddle with a straight edge which didn't look hugely realistic, so I looked into the update adjacent puddle functions that the puddle uses when you mop it up, but discovered they really didn't like to be used when puddles were changing in themselves. Probably not threadsafe to remove a puddle and it's neighbouring links as they are just being created. So in the end I used the Force Evaporate attribute of the puddle, and let it deal with updating its own neighbours.

Recent Comments for: All About Puddles
All About Puddles
By d4nny (23rd Dec 2008 at 9:36 PM)
Enougher journal idear
Why not include sims who playin the bath in your studys?
and small request/idear
it may be extremly hard to make/ impossible but why not hear it
because you like puddles what about drain pipes on side of sims hosues when it rains rain goes in them down the drain pipel and causes puddles at bottom, unless u have a drain
All About Puddles
By d4nny (23rd Dec 2008 at 9:34 PM)
A*** about puddles
Love the object thanks alot
But i have thought of one thing many simmers probly would love
An INVISABLE puddle drinking mat!

also not from my sims children that now put the homework on the desk (thank alot for that aswell) they dont like the facted that the mats drink the puddles befor they get chance to splash in them, o well theres still rain

anyway thxs alot
All About Puddles
By elvekongjen (23rd Dec 2008 at 1:11 PM)
I know I get water everywhere when I get out of the tub after bathing. It's strange a messy sim wouldn't create puddles from that. AND (real)toddlers bathing make a mess while in the tub! I certainly get wet when they bathe. :P
All About Puddles
By leesester (8th Dec 2008 at 8:28 AM)
interesting entry on puddle theory - what next I wonder?
All About Puddles
By lexi. (6th Dec 2008 at 10:18 AM)
Wow! this is really interesting stuff. My Sims are almost always sloppy, so have a lot of puddles, but i didnt know all the dynamics of the puddle formation as i was always making them clean the puddles up straight away. thanks!

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