More Awesome Than You!

So, I'm playing my game as I normally do, when I hear some sort of xylophone-sounding noise. I look around to find the source. The toddler is in his crib, no one is using any kind of instrument. I gave up. I started the game again, only to hear the noise and notice another detail. There seems to be a water noise behind the xylophone noise. Naturally, I head to the bathroom, only to discover something truly horrifiying!

The noise was coming from the little boy using the expensive toilet. Every time he "got it in the bowl" the xylophone went off. Did this come with the game? This is kind of freaky.  :-X

This is normal and has been around for several expansions (it might have been in the base game).

Little boys always "tinkle".  This is nothing new, it's been this way since the game first came out.  It's Maxis's idea of a joke.  Don't worry, he'll grow out of it when he becomes a teen.

Karen

It doesn't necessarily stop as sims age...  but it does get quieter and less high-pitched so isn't as noticeable.   :P

Prima guide claims that playful male children will "twinkle" when they pee.

I can't imagine how I have never heard this... oh, I bet it is because I never stand around waiting for boys to finish in the bathroom!   :D  I usually queue up using the bathroom followed by other greening activities and then go do something else with someone else until the peeing sim catches up with me!

 :D :D

Of course now I am going to have to hover around the little boy's room... that ought to win me reputation points of some kind or other!

 :P

reggikko pointed out in her email story that they still tinkle even when they are using the money plant to pee in.

I don't believe I've read reggikko's stories. I might just do that.

Also, Rohina, I hope you get your simpage fixed up. It's a real shame what happened.

Working on moving the legacy. I'll put the link back in my siggy when it's updated.

The tone is tied to the animation when sims pee. When I added that little colorful "water" action to the tree, the sound came tied to the animation.

Is it possible to change, replace or remove the sound (or sounds in general)?

Don't know if they can be removed, but you can mute them, or turn particular ones (i.e. voices or music) way down in the audio controls.

Yes, but with sounds keyed to animations, the animation itself has to be hacked to de-sound it.

I've never observed this, but I play w/ the sims on mute and just turn on the radio, so I've yet to hear little boys "tinkling". Heck, I'm not even sure what the xylophone sounds like ingame, lol.

The first time I heard that music, it confused me greatly. I only just heard it recently, too. I couldn't understand why Maxis decided to have music play when a boy uses the bathroom. I just figured it was a happy diddy, because they actually hit inside the toilet, not on it. ::)

The only other theory I had was "those Maxis freaks really are freaks".

 There are actually things you can buy to use when training little boys to have better aim.    grin    It floats in the toilet water and when the stream of urine hits it, it plays a little tune.

Too funny, Marg - I've never seen those before! Though I wouldn't be surprised if someone from Maxis has and decided to build it into the game  :D

The effect actually reminds me a hotel lobby restroom I used in Japan. When you sat down, a little speaker behind the bowl played, like, babbling stream noises. Kind of like a privacy thing so obscure the tinkling sounds. Too cute. Though it made it kind of odd, trying to pee while I was giggling (^_-)

Liz

Speaking of Japanese restrooms, can you believe how CLEAN they are? Even the public, airport bathrooms look clean enough to sit on. Although I'm so used to nasty American bathrooms that I wouldn't dare.

I can report the same is true in Iceland -- cleanest bathrooms we've ever seen anywhere, even the public ones on the streets.