More Awesome Than You!

So, I finally got a chance to mess around with the game a bit, and decided to answer the question that's on everyone's minds: What happens when a sim dies on vacation?  To do this, I used the premade Traveller [sic] family, and sent them off to the beach resort for a three day vacation.  Upon arriving at the hotel, they checked in, and the wife immediately hopped in the water since death by drowning in the ocean seemed too cool to miss:

(http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/9701/drown1zt9.jpg) (http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/9701/drown1zt9.jpg)

I turned down the graphics a bit in order to make the 3x time fly by.  It still looks pretty decent, although the reflections could be nicer.  Anyway, as day turned to night the woman was starting to feel the burn on several fronts.  I anticipated death before dawn:

(http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/1499/drown2nx6.jpg) (http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/1499/drown2nx6.jpg)

While I waited, I sent the daughter in to the water for bladder relief.  You can kind of see the blue pee surrounding her, although a better picture is lower down:

(http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/9905/drown3ru4.jpg) (http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/9905/drown3ru4.jpg)

When I clicked back over to the mother a bit later, I knew she would be about to d...What's this?!  How is she recovering energy?!  Damn EA!

(http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/5782/drown4qq0.jpg) (http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/5782/drown4qq0.jpg)

Now I got kind of upset, and so I sent everyone in the water:

(http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/9282/drown5ey9.jpg) (http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/9282/drown5ey9.jpg)

At this point, I wondered if Yellow Pee will need to be modified.  This was on Wednesday (the second day of my vacation).  Jump ahead to Thursday:

(http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/1041/drown6lp5.jpg) (http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/1041/drown6lp5.jpg)

Now the daughter gets another chance to pee, and we check in on the dad's needs.  He is apparently not doing so well.  Thus, it comes as no surprise when noon rolls around and the mom goes to check out the family:

(http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/9183/drown7uo7.jpg) (http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/9183/drown7uo7.jpg)

Her face (and all the red need bars) clearly say, "I am not amused."  So off the Travellers go, back to their home.  Upon arrival, mom runs off to use the bathroom, while dad and the kid decide to take a nap:

(http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/1987/drown8ho3.jpg) (http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/1987/drown8ho3.jpg)

The End!

So now my question: Has anyone been able to kill a sim in the ocean (or on vacation in general)?  Just for completeness, let it be known that I am running all EPs and SPs with all patches and no custom content (including hacks).  The entire family was in energy aspiration failure for about 36 hours each, and all motives (aside from bladder and environment) were fully red for about a day.

I just want to drown some premade sims, is that too much to ask?

Obviously, yes :D

They should be dead! If only 3 of the bars go down to full red (or just the hunger bar) then Grim comes a-calling. This is not fair.

Perhaps Grimmy's on vacation, too ;D

That was my understanding as well.  It seems like the game forces sims to stay alive while in the ocean by little boosts to the various needs.  I'm wondering if this same manipulation occurs on all vacation lots.  I also seem to remember seeing a promo vid where a sim dies in the ocean, which doubles my confusion.  Clearly, more experimentation is required.   

This is a normal feature of all community-style lots: Sims cannot run out of energy on community lots. I'm not sure you can even make them pass out. Just drag their energy down in debug mode, it's much faster than actually waiting, and they still won't pass out. It's not vacation-specific, and it IS at least theoretically possible to die on a vacation...just not by energy failure, apparently.

i wonder what happen with the numenor's "sleep in community lot" hack installed  ;D
 

See, I thought about this, but I also seem to remember having dormies die at Uni from energy failure in a ladderless pool.  Since the "lodges" have a similar structure to dorms, I thought it would be possible to die in the ocean. 

are inventories accessible on holiday lots?
if so, take along a cow plant and see what happens...

Ah, but that's only possible with Pescado's 'nouniprotect' hack -- otherwise, dormies are invincible.

That would certainly explain the issue I'm having.  I guess it's time to start reintroducing my hacks.

If you remember from that video, they were having trouble getting the Reaper to show up properly.  Perhaps they just gave up and decided to prevent the deaths from happening in the first place.  Though I'm not sure that really has anything to do with it, considering Pes said it's always been a comm lot feature.

I've had a sim electrocuted to death at the Twikki secret location, so you can definitely die there at least.  Haven't had any deaths at the other comm lots yet though.  Oh, he was successfully brought back when his wife pleaded with Grimmy by the way.

I would expect that with energy and hunger both completely depleted, if Mr. Traveller and girlspawn Traveller took a nap immediately upon return home (before eating) that Grim might make an apearance at the home lot to send them off on "permanent vacation".  Or does this not happen either?

Don't know yet.  I had to go to class and so I didn't see what ended up happening.  I will check when I get home.

Dammit. That's what I was going to do with the new Goopy BV gave me as a vacation townie. No Goopies in my game, unless they are institutionalized. I really didn't want to build another institution.

I don't understand how you managed to stop them simply getting out of the water?  Presumably they don't need pool steps.

I turned off free will.  No pool steps are required, although since the drop off is rather steep it looks like sims are walking down stairs to reach a swimmable depth.

Edit for clarity (maybe)

On a tangent here, is it now possible to build lots with swimmable oceans or is that a feature of only the Maxis BV lots?

Well, as long as you got the right distance from road to coast, and the right height too, and use the specific shoreline lots, then you can do your own...

What do you mean by specific shoreline lots? Do you have to designate the lot as shoreline when you place it? Or is it only possible by building on empty lots in the maxis hood?

It would be awesome if we could get them to swim in the ocean in the base neighborhood.

I have only tried placing ocean lots in vacation hoods.  I'll experiment with a clean base hood when I next play to see if the option exists.

Shoreline lots are a new blank lot template type in the lot catalog. They can be placed in any neighborhood that has a road close enough (but not too close) to the water -- the lot must be able to touch the water, but at least half of its area must be on dry ground.

I want to see Grimmy in a bikini with a Pina Colada at the beach bar.

I should start a poll - how many other players named their test families 'Traveller' or Traveler'.
*witch puts hand up

AWESOME! My beach neighborhood will finally be complete! Joy!

Yes.  In fact, EA named the new premade family "Traveller" to spare us the inconvenience of opening CAS.

Oh shit. Now I feel like a right dick. I never even bothered to glance at the EAxis premade sims.  :-[

I feel even more embarrassed that I named my family the same name as theirs.

Lucky for you guys, it's Friday night and I'm bored. :) This is a quick hack job, so please let me know if something needs fixing.  In the motive failure functions for Energy and Hunger, as well as another separate function, I simply changed the comm. lot checks to go to the right place whether they return true or false.  In my quick testing, sims could pass out, starve to death, and drown in the pool as a result of energy failure.  I don't know if Servos could recharge on Comm. Lots before, but... well... they can now. :P Kids can pass out, but still can't starve (I think that's standard Eaxian behavior).  However, the Social Worker will not show up on Comm. Lots, apparently.  I haven't tested Vampires, but I imagine they'd die from sunlight before passing out or starving to death. (Okay, so I was too lazy to attach a Downtown to my test hood. Sue me.)  Most importantly, I don't have BV yet and probably won't get it for quite a while, so I'll need somebody to test and see if this works on vacation lots and beaches.

I saw them and the new Maxis craptastic binned lots and couldn't hit delete enough. Is it just me, or have they gotten 20 times worse at roof design? A lot of the lots in this expansion look like they belong in Sims1.

My test family is the Lyons. I randomize everything on Hook's RandomStuff widget. Names, aspirations, turn ons/offs (which I'll have to update again), individual personality points, face template base, eye color (I have 15 geneticized eye-colors), skin tone (about 23 of those), of course sex, life stage, and ..if the first roll.. number of sims in family.

I'm on it.  ;D

ETA: Yes, it works with BV. I had a Sim starve in Three Lakes (on a comm lot) and had the same Sim drown in the ocean in Twikkii Island. Interestingly enough, his wife swam out into the ocean to 'cry for him,' but once she swam out there, the 'Cry Softly' action disappeared. Grim appeared on the beach itself to dispose of the body (whose hair disappeared at his death, but whose body was gently wafting with the waves). I saw that even the tour guide himself donned a pair of swimming trunks to sigh over the Sim's demise.

Nice job!  As Denimjo said, it does work, and the Grim appearance actually works out well.  You should post this in Peasantry.