More Awesome Than You!

"Stealth stairs" are a the result of a building technique using boolprop constrainfloorelevation false, allowing builders to make a short, one-tiled stairway to the floor above with modular stairs (rather than using the usual 4 tiles). Lots of people use this technique to create "elevators" without OFB.

I personally *love* stealth stairs, and I have used them in a number of my uploaded houses. They save a ton of space in small homes, allow you to better connect different floors by placing stairs in multiple locations (thus shortening the path the sim needs to take to reach the stairs), and the sims move from one floor to another more quickly.

I don't even mind the way they look- I think it's fine if they are in a corner, or surrounded by walls/fence, and I just imagine that they are very steep stairs (which maxis doesn't give us, since the steepness of all the stairs are the same). So in my mind they make the game a little more realistic, by allowing us to approximate crappy steep stairs of the kind you might have in real life, esp. in a small home or leading up to a loft.

On the other hand, it seems that a lot of people can't stand them, because they look like they lead into empty space and the sims "jump" from one floor to the other.

So, what's the consensus?

It all depends on how they are done. Basically, they look odd, so I don't want to see them!

If I need a one-tile 'stair', I prefer to use Targa's Ascension Tiles/Stairs.  They at least look like they should be a  teleporter-type thing.

I don't build stealth stairs but have had them in downloaded houses, I agree I like them hidden but otherwise no problems. For my own building I use Targa's teleporters, but with a CyberPunk hood I can get away with it. I might have to explore stealth stairs for my 50's hood.

I too use Targa's Ascension stairs in my sci-fi hoods. For other purposes, there are ladder-stairs (also by Targa?) that only take up 2 tiles and look like -- you guessed it -- a ladder. As a rule, I prefer not to use stealth-stairs, but when I find them in my downloaded lots, I don't freak out over it.

I'm indifferent on stealth stairs, but there are definitely situations where none of the smaller stairs (ascension, ladder, etc.) that are new-mesh objects look right for the house in question.

Sometime I should really see whether Sims will use Paladin's transporter pads autonomously, and, if not, ask him whether that could be arranged.

Sound interesting, (I didn't vote because there was no "oh, so that's what stealth stairs are" option)
Have heard a lot of them but prior to your explanation, had assumed they were a custom build item I was missing out on until I added newer EPs.

I use Targa's teleporters too, they get my Sims where they need to be without taking up the room stairs do (will not tolerate anything blocking my view) and because they only need two tiles, they're easy to box in and lock for a 'family only' upstairs.

I don't like 'em because they look weird in homes. I have used Targa's stairs, but won't ever again because my sims kept getting stuck behind them. Meh, I'm ok with using the regular modular stairs. They may take up a lot of room, but I find ways to work around it.

I love them because I can lock my staircases without taking up a lot of room. Since they're behind doors, I can't see them anyway, so they can't bother me. Most of my houses have at least one set, though in some it might be just the set going to the attic or basement.

I'm a big fan of "non stair" stairs. I heartfart stealth stairs, personally, but haven't learnt how to make them yet and they aren't a priority for now. I use the one tile "invisible recolor" stair in most of my small houses/campus houses that aren't part of a legacy. If I need to make it clear HOW people are getting up and down, I usually use an elevator.

Although.. the ladder DOES sound interesting.. hmmmm...

I use Targa's stairs.  I tent to build huge houses, so the space staircases take up des not bother me, but I absolutely hate having things block my view.

I use a couple of spiral staircases from MTS2 if my house is too small for normal stairs. There is a CW version and a CCW version which covers most occasions, and they look better.

I'm not a fan. I prefer to see the stairs or elevator that my sims are climbing (or teleporting through in the case of spirals).

Nah, I don't really like them.  Stairs just take up space, and if my big honking stairs in real life take up most of my crappy little house, then they'll take up most of my Sim's house too!  It's only fair! :)

I use the ladder if I really need space saving, because that is realistic enough.

Since there's no option to vote for the unawesome who have no idea what the heck they are, I abstain. :D

I love them, but I've been strongly warned not to use them since I used them in the building contest.  Since then I've been looking for a 12-step program.  Pescado said a 16-step program was needed, but I reminded him that stealth stairs actually have 4 steps already.  ;) I guess I can just use Targa's stairs in small spaces.  Honestly, I will probably continue using stealth stairs.  I'll just be stealthy and only use them in houses I actually play -- and not upload anymore houses with them unless I include a warning.

Yeah, I had read the description, Venusy, but still hit the wall when trying to visualize a set (too much multitasking here at work).   

Did check out Targa's stairs at MTS2.   Certainly different.  Do like her ladders, though.

Speaking of Targa's stairs.  They haven't been updated for Pets. Dogs and cats do use them, but the animations are really borked.  I'm not fond of that bit.

I like Targa's ladders a lot, too, but when it comes to uploading houses I'd rather not include them because it helps to minimize the custom content. Stealth stairs don't require anyone to download anything.

Plus, sometimes a ladder doesn't seem appropriate for a house, and the stealth stairs still seem to me like a small staircase. Either that or it's like, don't even try, and accepting that it won't be realistic, whereas the ladder is sort of a weird half-solution.

Well, I'd like to vote that I don't hate them, but I don't prefer them.  So if they come with a downloaded house, they don't bother me enough to not use the house, but given I choice I'd rather have something else.  Like Targa's stuff, or stairs that take up too much room.  They work, and all, but to me they look funny.

Though your explanation was very good, I was having a hard time picturing it so I went and read a couple tutorials on building them.
Now I'm thinking I'll vote 'love them' because even though I'm far too inept to create them, I'd definately like to try a house or two with them.

Though I do like realism in my game, the idea of different stairs matches my idea of realism and the way they'd look (or not look - be hidden away) would be more important than the animation. Watching how my sims get upstairs just isn't an important part of my play time.

I love watching my animals go up the invisible stairs.  ;D

Make a cat macro out of it :P

Dayam! Another job!  :P I'll see what I can do.

I don't make them myself, I use Targa's Ascension or Ladder stairs, but I don't mind them as long as I don't have to look at them (hide them in a closet or something, please!).

Ladders are great for basements and attics. Otherwise they look silly.

Have you guys seen this...it looks pretty awesome. It's a remake of Targa's stairs, I think, with proper animations. I would use these because I like when it looks real. The new animation makes it drool worthy! http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=241795

Are we talking really new new animation here?  Not just silly recycling of old animations?  If so, that's very interesting.
I can't wait to get home to my real computer.

Looking at the picture, it looks like a completely new animation. The sims grab the side of the ladder while they climb and the animation is for all ages, except toddlers cause they can't go up the stairs.

Agreed, though they are PERFECT for zombie shacks, no matter what level they're placed on.

ETA: Marvine's ladder stairs look awesome. Thanks for the link!

I can't stand stealth stairs but I also can't stand the normal stairs... I just use Targa's elevators. Cheaty, but I don't want to have to either wait forty minutes for my sims to walk up and down huge effing staircases that block my view OR do complicated buildy things in order for them to be able to get from level to level easily.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v730/nz_witch/Lolcats/ICanHazSekrit.jpg)

I fixed the Targan teleport pad to actually avoid that effect, too.

So are you going to share?  :P

I have never used strealt stairs, but have no problems with it stairs are partial broken anyway.

I love the new animated ladder, hope it don't make queues like the standard maxis stairs.
They are broken, if to sims are following each other the second is blocked get angry and decide to do something else.
I have found that elevators actually is easier to fit then stairs because you can place the exit there you want. Else I use the spiral stairs a lot, and the old ladder stars.
If someone could make shorter stairs, a three or even two tiles stairs would still look like stairs but take less room.

I hate these fancy building shit techniques when I want a house to play in. If I go to remodel or add rooms or whatever, I get all these weird glitchy effects because, since someone HAD to have secret stealth stairs and split levels and a fancy roof, floor "2" is really floor 53-and-a-half but only for 3 tiles after which it becomes floor 7-and-three-quarters so you can't build a room there... blech.

Yea, I hear ya -- I have a rather nice little house I downloaded somewhere for a couple that has a 'sun room' in the front.  Makes a nice dining room, at least until it started raining and the sim complained about weather in the house.  Whoever built the house made some kind of clear glass roof for the sun room that I could just not delete, or put a real roof over.  I ended up building a 2nd floor on the sun room and turning it into an atrium to solve the problem. But when those sims move out, the house gets bulldozed.

Hmmm... most people making a roof like that would use glass floor tiles and the constrainfloorelevation false cheat. That could be difficult to delete, because it is hard to delete floor tiles that are sloped or at some sort of angle. However, floor tiles should keep out weather.

Did this lot use CC? Did the glass roof look like a curved half circle, with white ribbing? In that case, I think what you have is a custom fence that is shaped to look like a curved glass roof. I don't remember the site, but someone listed it in the Best of the Best CC thread... maybe I can find it for you later. So, if that's the case, I think you can use the wall or fence tool to delete it, if you delete along the inner edge of the "roof."

Eaglezero, would you like stealth stairs if they just came with a downloaded house, and you didn't have to make them yourself?

I have that fence. Love it, but yeah, it's not waterproof, and anyone designing a house who has Seasons should know better. I believe the original fence file is from 4ESF. I use it to make half-moon sculptural thingies in some of my mini parks.

Just tried Targa's ascention pads as I have a bit of an odd 'hood I'm playing at the moment (short attention span attacks). Quite nice, but I couldn't imagine using them in anything but a mod or cyber 'hood. Mine, Crater City, is kind of mod with human townies and "alien" playables using Enayla's fantasy skins.

Yeah, I only use the Ascension teleporter things in my sci-fi hood, but within that hood I use them A LOT, because they're such great space-savers. In my normal hoods, I try to use the modular stairs as much as possible, but sometimes they don't work with the architecture (you only need three empty floor-tiles above the non-modular stairs, instead of the four required by the modulars).

I would definitely love to have some little houses with the stealth stairs nicely hidden behind a wall or whatever.   :)  I've never tried building them myself.

Max

Yeah, I've had quite a few downloaded houses that I needed to expand/fix for Seasons/replace missing custom content/etc, but the builder had heavily used techniques (constrainFloorElevation being a prime offender) that made editing the lot, short of bulldozing the house entirely, very difficult. This puts me in the conundrum of downloading houses because I suck at building, but not being able to use downloaded houses because I suck at building.  :P

No, they were flat, just angled into a 'tent' shape, with the low yard edging around and above it. The fence tool deleted the edging, but nothing got rid of the 'roof' tiles. It's a pre-Seasons house, so I can't entirely blame the builder.

Not a big deal -- I've already deleted the empty lot from my catalog, and this house will be history in the game.  I've only got one occupied in Strangetown, which is my test hood anyway.

For future reference, one way to delete sloped floor tiles like that would be to use boolprop constrainfloorelevation false, then use the floor tool (any floor will do) to flatten the surface. It's a little tricky because you can't see what you are doing, but the new floor tiles will flatten the area when the flatten terrain tool won't work (it only works if you start from an already leveled tile). Even if you can't flatten the entire area, once you get a few of the sloped tiles level, you can use control-shift to select all identical floor tiles, and then delete them with one click.

I actually don't mind stealth stairs, I just have no idea how to make them. That is to say I know they're made using a build cheat but I have no idea how to go through the process. If anyone is willing to PM me instructions / send me a link it would be appreciated  :).

Unfortunately, these ladders aren't sim/fool-proof. I had two sims who managed to get completely stuck by trying to use the ladders simultaneously. One was up, the other downstairs. Both were complaining that the object was already in use, and both kept waiting until the other had finished using it ><.
I have now reverted back to Targa's, no spiffy animations but no traffic jams either.

ETA; causes a problem with ACR too. Couple decided to have some woohoo, female reaches ladder first, male throws hissyfit about object in use, drops auto woohoo from cue. -_-'

Good info Eleonora, I've been back several times to try to download the new animations ladders but not have been very successful lately at MTS2. JM has fixed ladders he could share....

Yes, just as the standard stairs, except they allow sims to meet in the stair but don't follow, as stupid as it sound, you might not be able to meet someone in a narrow staircase in real life but it no problem for lots of people to go up in a queue.
This is a typical AI routing problem; you can see it in many games, I have used it as an exploit in RTS games, get a enemy unit to stop and block the way and the rest might try another entry while you are shooting at them.
The problem with sims is that they have zero patience and no common sense. If the access is blocked by other sims they should wait longer, they move out of way for each other but might be busy so it can take some time before they move. Also if the access is blocked by trash or leftover, clean up. This AI change would help for stairs to, I don't think the modular stars have this problem, at least it much less, probably because each module are treated independent.
 

Same thing can happen with Targa's stairs, but since using those is a lot quicker the chance of two sims trying to use them at exactly the same time is very small.
I usually always put two staircases next to each other, no matter what stairs I'm using.

The thing I despise about Targa's stairs and the reason I refuse to use them anymore is that if you are playing in 3-speed, there is a 90% chance that your sim will get stuck behind the stairs. If you enclose the stairs like I usually do, your sim is stuck there until you realize it and teleport or move them manually. It's a pain the arse, not worth the trouble, really.

I haven't tried the new ladder stairs, but thanks for the heads up...I don't really see those things as a big deal. Non-modular stairs have always had their limitations, but I think it will be good to have those leading to an attic or something.

I don't use her teleporters, but I do use the ladders, and I've never had that problem with them.