Objects with Restrictions

These objects are all hacked in various ways to restrict use to particular people, types of people, or to particular times of the day.

They are ideal for apartments or institutions, as Sims who aren’t allowed to use them don’t even know they’re there so they won’t be trying to batter down locked doors to get to them!

Most of these objects need setting up by clicking on them in play mode and using their menu. It doesn’t matter which Sim you have selected when you do this, unless you are choosing a Sim to take a share for himself. Some of the objects have just one purpose, and then they don’t need setting up and therefore do not have a menu.

NB You won’t see any actions associated with the ownership options etc. It’s all done by telepathy. The icon will appear in the Sim’s queue and then suddenly disappear when it’s been done.

Each style of object I have hacked has its picture down the left side of the page, but you click on the little buttons to download, as some styles come in more than one type of hack. The Key to Symbols below explains what each button means.

Key to symbols

	Shareable, New method can be used exclusively by up to four individually selected Sims. Can also be left usable by all at times.		For particular types of person, eg women-only etc.  Good for public places and institutions.
	Shareable, Old method. Most of the non-door objects are still old method and I hope to get round to updating them some time.		Two available and two unavailable times of your choice per day.
	Reservable. Single owner objects.  Only a family member may reserve.  Object can also be left free for all to use.  Less flexible but simpler to use than shareable objects.		Not hacked.
	Hotel. Reservable by non-family Sims plus other features.

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Click on coloured buttons to download:

			Shower does not flood (if I remember correctly!)
			The vacation shower/tub combo. Sorry about lack of picture, but you know what it looks like. Includes no-puddle menu option.
			Bath does not get dirty.
			Toilet has extra hacks as well as the restrictions.  It does not clog, and the privacy needs are subtly changed to make it more realistic – Sims still prefer privacy but become less fussy as they become more desperate.   Also has “use as priority” feature, to remind Sims that cooking a meal is not a good idea when you woke up bursting to use the toilet.
			Plain white Flush Force toilet. Base by
			Cannot be used for washing dishes
			Counter-top hand basin. No dish washing allowed. Thanks to Chris Reardon for editing the graphics.
			Does not break
			This sink has its own inbuilt waste-disposal unit, so you don’t need a separate trash compactor. It gets rid of most rubbish ok, but black sacks take a little while to disappear, try not to notice (-:
			Blue fridge
			Silver fridge comes packaged with one extra type of meal, a special 6-serving meal that can only be eaten by sharers, and won’t bring other Sims rushing over to eat. Meal choice is also done a little more intelligently. Although a player may as usual instruct a Sim to make any type of meal at any time, left to their own devices the Sim will usually tend to make a sharers’ meal if the fridge is set to sharer’s only, and a general group meal if the fridge is set to allow use by all. But first they check that there are other Sims on the lot that can help them eat it. If not, they make one of the single-serving meals!
			Has option to disable burning.
			Stove does not burn
			Has option to disable burning.
			Timed buffet.  Two open/close periods a day. Fills and cleans itself. Unlimited portions while open, non-spoiling. Someone told me this doesn’t need Houseparty after all.
			Timed canteen servery. As above but serves meat and green veg only. Someone told me this doesn’t need Houseparty after all.
			Serves normal meat and veg meals. On residential lots, household profits by 20 simoleans per meal served to anyone not in family.  Makes it useful for at-home hotels and school dinners etc.This is not the same object that is in the Prison section.  It does not have the hack that checks for cell owner.
			Summoner (not teleporter – works only on Sims already on lot) summons Sims by type into room where summoner is placed at pre-set times or manually any time.
			Laptop computer, with artwork by Mhari on a base from Sim Gypsy  Unbreakable, and no bad mood refusals for play, study, or job search.
			Also helpful for apartments because only Sims already in the room know anyone is playing it, therefore the Sims in other apartments will not be trying to get in to watch.
			Armchair
			Dining chair. Please note, reserved dining chairs can cause confusion to the Sims when they want to eat.  This means they may eat standing rather than sort out which chair is theirs. They seem to understand the system perfectly well when they just want to sit for comfort!
			Reservable chair, with sit-and-stay option which is helpful for posed screen shots. Requires Deluxe expansion pack. There is also a mediaeval throne I hacked to work like this on
			Bed
			Reservable kids bed. Added feature that strongly encourages (but does not force) children to go to bed soon after 7pm, and to go back to bed eventually of their own accord if they are woken in the night.  “Nice” parents choose to tuck their kids in most nights, and there is a selectable option to do so (option disappears once child has already been tucked in).
			Double bed.  Same as single reservable, but each side reservable by a separate Sim.  When a Sim is allocated to a side of the bed, he will not refuse to sleep with anyone who happens to be on the other side.
			Double bed.  Same as single reservable, but each side reservable by a separate Sim.  When a Sim is allocated to a side of the bed, he will not refuse to sleep with anyone who happens to be on the other side.
			Shiftworkers bed.  You can tell this bed whether your Sim works day or night, and the bed will get him up at the right time and not let him get back in until a suitable time.  It can also be used as a normal assignable bed if you set it to “no work”.  This bed does not do anything special about calling the Sim to get in at the right time.  Ideal for staff of institutions.25th April 2004 now encourages sims to go to bed at sensible time for their shift pattern.
			Click on picture to enlarge. The bed and bedside table in this picture were created by I fell in love with the bed and knew it just had to be the base for my first hotel bed hack. The table was kindly created at my request, so that you could line up the beds to make double, twin, or family rooms.
			Linking bedside table to go with bed above
			Sleigh bed. 4th April hotel version fixed bug where guest was not being charged.
			I couldn’t make this one properly targetable without it crashing, so I offer it in pre-targeted versions:  Females, Males, Men, Women, Boys, Girls  If you happen to have SimLifecycle teenagers they will count as boys and girls.   Non-clogging.

Shareable objects

All these objects can be banned to all but four Sims in your household. This is done during live gameplay by menus. Up to four Sims (or none) can each have a share, which allows them to use the object when it is restricted. Or it can be unrestricted to allow free access to anyone (cleaning and mending interactions are usually available to other Sims). You can restrict and unrestrict it without losing the share settings. Override is always available to the player via any playable Sim – you don’t have to select an owner first. You can also choose whether or not to allow visitors to use as well as the sharers (school pupils, patients etc are not counted as visitors for this type of object).

This object always starts off and resets to restricted by default.

The main differences between the old-method (SO) and the new-method (SN) are:

Old-method could only be allocated to Sims you could actually click on, i.e. family members, while the new-method provides a menu of neighbourhood Sims, including your current family, to give a share to.
Old-method objects were restricted against all when first placed, until you set them differently, while new-method are free-for-all when first placed.

Targetable Objects

These are objects that can be set for use by specific groups of Sims, but by type, not name. So you can restrict them to Women Only, or Guests only etc. Or you can only have Boys using a particular object. There are quite a lot of menu options, and you will need to press Tab when you have the menu displayed in order to see the last few options.

I did also include a “Me only”, which gives you the chance to use them for just one particular Sim, on the condition that it’s a Sim you can actually select, i.e. a resident of the lot or in the current family.

If anyone downloaded these when I first made targetable object, changes from the first version to 02 are:

1. The difference between guests and residents is now worked out by which house they live at. That means hospital patients, prisoners, event attendees and school pupils will no longer be included as residents.

2. Set to “me” now records the Sim’s permanent neighbour ID, instead of object ID. That means if a Sim gets a red cross on his icon the things will still belong to him after he gets clicked back to life. Also if you give an object to a Sim and he moves out of the house, that thing will still belong to him when he comes back to visit.

Timed Objects

The timed doors have two open/lock timed settings a day, and up to 4 Sims can have special passes. There are two security levels: Level 1 where anyone can go through the door in its open periods, but only passholders can get through in its locked periods; and Level 2 where only passholders can get through in its open periods while no one at all can get through in its locked periods. This second setting is suitable for allocating rooms to named sims, but only allowing them into their rooms at night for example.

Every hour, the door looks to see if any of the set times match. It looks at Open1 first, then Lock1, then Open2, and then Lock2 every time it checks. So, for example, if you have set Open1 the same time as Lock2, the door will be left in locked mode for the next period. To keep the door permanently open, only set one Open time, and nothing else. To keep it permanently locked, just don’t set anything (or select some passholders). However, because the door does a fair bit of processing, and uses more memory than my keyholders door or my single-user door, I recommend using one of those if you don’t actually need the timing facility.

All options are accessible by menu during gameplay. Override is always available to the player via any playable Sim – you don’t have to select a passholder first. You’ll need to be playing with the house walls up to be able to click on the door to set the options, but after that you can drop the walls again if you prefer. Each side of the door must be set separately (and can have totally different options selected). Turn the view round until the side of the door you wish to set is facing you. Tip: You’re not so likely to set the wrong face of the door by mistake if you click on the floor just in front of the door to get the menu, or the second best place is at the top of the frame.

Once in a blue moon, the game seems to reset a door and lose the settings you have chosen. I think this might be after an NPC gets stuck in the doorway, but I’m not sure. For this reason, the door always starts off and resets to locked by default. I figured that if you went to the trouble of downloading a lockable door you’d be happier if no Sims could go through it until you’d sorted it out rather than all of them.

Reservable Hotel Bed

My hack is based on an idea by Emino of Emino Sims who needed a flexibly priced bed to make money for his hotel manager Sims in his own game.

When you first place this bed, it only has the options “Charge” and “Enable reservation” on it. Charge leads to a sub-menu where you can set the amount, or make it free. It defaults to §100 to make it easier to set up on locations.

“Enable reservation” looks like it does nothing at first, because the menu just closes. But when you open the menu again, there will be a big list of people you can reserve the bed for. You can choose one of them; or if you don’t, then the first visitor to use the bed will reserve it for him or herself, and it should stay reserved until you choose “Disable reservation”. Leaving reservations disabled will mean any visitor may use the bed on any night without you needing to do anything else.

Once a bed has been reserved for a named Sim, he or she may not use any other bed of this exact type on the lot. So you can leave some free for casual visitors without finding your booked guests use them by mistake. Only Sims whose home address is not the current lot may use this bed. This is to stop the hotel owners hopping into an unreserved guest bed!

On a residential lot, each night the bed is used, the resident family will have the chosen charge added to their budget. On a location lot, the family who you are controlling will have the charge removed from their budget. As far as I am aware it is not possible as the game works to have one family credited and another family debited while playing on one lot.

Reservable by Family

These items are the simplest to set up and use of all the assignable objects, if you know you only want to reserve them for individual members of your family, and not named neighbours. Instead of the long menu of names you get on the shareable objects, these simply have a “Claim sole use” (wording might vary) which assigns the object to your currently selected Sim. Once the item is claimed, you can select a different Sim to “Take over use”, or the owner can be selected and “Give up sole use”.

An unclaimed object may be used by any other Sim, including visitors, except in some objects like fridges where they are coded specifically by Maxis to stop visitors and children cooking.

Sims will not choose the ownership options autonomously.