Underwater Lots in Island Living

More pushing the boundaries of an underwater build.

Here's a look at all the different rooms and floors.



Unfortunately, toddlers don't have a merform, so I created a separate room for them. In my mind, a merfolk family would require every life stage to have a merform that lets them live underwater. Even a baby would need a merform. A baby with a merform could also come with any needed baby imporvments. Toddler merfolk wouldn't be expected to be able to swim as well as older merfolk, but it would be something that develops similar to the way the movement skill develops.



Merfolk are able to sleep in the water, but the time does not speed up. I also noticed an issue with my sims staying asleep, and they would regularly wake up to do anything queued up whether or not their energy was filled up. I found this frustrating, and I think the sleep option should be different from back floating and trigger the speed up like it does when they are in beds. I added the beds to the build because the option to sleep in the water wasn't working as well. For an underwater build, a merstyle bed would be great if sims need a bed for the game to do everything as it should. And, Vampires have a coffin, so why can't merfolk have ocean themed beds like a giant clamshell or something.



There really should be corals in build mode that could be found either under rocks or one of the other outdoor plants. It should be possible to place corals in a pool or on an underwater lot. They could add more variety to the Water Objects and Fountain Decorations in a merfolk pack or update to Island Living that was supposed to introduce merfolk. They missed a lot of opportunity to add more depth to merfolk.



I use different pool water types to implement story progression. The idea is that the water started out green and mucky and gradually becomes closer to the best looking water type like the ordinary chlorinated water that comes with the base game. I think this would be an opportunity to include a new water type, something like clear, tropical-blue seawater. There is an option for murky brackish water. I'm currently using the hot springs water.



The combination of Windows and the Sea Plus Aquarium from the Dine Out Pack make for some interesting designs. This aquarium is sea through, so you can look through the aquarium and see into the pool while playing as your sim. Merfolk Sims can view and talk to fish without leaving the water, and I assume ordinary sims should be able to view fish without leaving the water. The inclusion of an Aquarium with a stone frame or something that might look better with other stony wall materials would be awesome. In general, a variety of aquariums, even fish that can be placed in a pool, like designing a pool that acts like an aquarium would be so cool.



Using the Testingcheats True
Using bb.showliveeditobjects
And finally searching "Coral" or "Reef" on the console I found the coral reef included in the game. Searching "**DEBUG**" on the console did not work for me.



To place the Reef underwater I entered the cheat.

bb.moveobjects on