How can i prevent visitors ringing at the back door?

[Doc Doofus]

I have had this annoyance many times.  They either skip the front door and head straight for the back door, or they do the front first, and then go to the back. 

Are there any hacks that can make visitors stay away from the back door?  Building a fence around the back door with a "household only" lock on it doesn't seem to be reliable.  For instance, dates returning with flowers aren't kept out.

[Sleepycat]

Pescado made a "frontdoorhack"

[Inge]

Normally homes have a fence round their back yard.  If you do that and lock the gate to "family only" that might help.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Also get the "Bamboozle" doors from MTS2 - they are Maxis doors which are modded so visitors and delivery personnel won't notice them.  Just be careful to only install those which are compatible with your game.

[Gwill]

The frontdoorhack works for most situations, but I've found that if I build a house on a foundation with a basement backdoor there is just no way to keep dates from waltzing in through the front door, walk through the house and put their flowers at the rear entrance.  In the end I just decided to stop building like that.

[J. M. Pescado]

Also get the "Bamboozle" doors from MTS2 - they are Maxis doors which are modded so visitors and delivery personnel won't notice them.  Just be careful to only install those which are compatible with your game.

The "Bamboozle" doors strip the category flags from the door so that they are not fully recognized as doors. This can potentially have negative side effects, and this approach is not recommended.

The frontdoorhack works for most situations, but I've found that if I build a house on a foundation with a basement backdoor there is just no way to keep dates from waltzing in through the front door, walk through the house and put their flowers at the rear entrance.  In the end I just decided to stop building like that.

Potential workarounds for this will be looked into. I already added a kludge to the hack so that it will avoid side doors to garages ages ago, will look into how to identify basement doors in code.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, JM, I never had any problems with the Bamboozle doors, and I have the front door hack in as well.  In fact, where I had a back door (Maxis) that my sims were ignoring for some reason, often they would use the Bamboozle door when it meant a shorter route.  And it did seem to stop visitors from going through the garage and then being unable to get to the front door because the garden gates were locked!

[Gwill]

Jordi's Antipedestrian doors are a must for me:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=193128

[neriana]

A while ago, I read that Sims will be drawn to the first door you put on a lot. Since then, I've always made sure the front door is the first door I build, and in combination with Pescado's frontdoorhack, this seems to work for me.

[ZephyrZodiac]

So if you remodel a Maxis house, you should remove all the doors, then replace them, starting with the front door?  If you just replace the front door, then they'll be drawn to the back door instead?

[KatEnigma]

Normally homes have a fence round their back yard.  If you do that and lock the gate to "family only" that might help.

No, then they just stand at the gate and stomp their feet. 

I always thought they wanted to go in the door closest to the mailbox.  I will have to test this "first door placed" thing. It would be Eaxian to do it that way, since that's the way the One Desk works. (And yes, in that case, you HAVE to delete all other desks and place the One Desk first again)

[ZephyrZodiac]

Very annoying piece of coding, seems like if your house needs a porch remodel and a new front door, you have to replace all doors every time!  And no doubt the problem with Maxis houses is they don't always have the front door placed first.....

Personally, I hate the "one desk" thing, it's a pity they didn't make desks ownable like they did beds, which even without TJ's Smart Beds are slightly ownable....  I used to find tired kids would take themselves off to their own bed, and very lazy YAs will do the same - one or two of the Maxis students will do that.  And since in Uni students will use any available desk that's not behind a Myne Door, (or any table) why can't kids do that with homework?  If you place the kid's homework on a table, they'll do it there with no problems, so why can't THEY put it there?

[neriana]

So if you remodel a Maxis house, you should remove all the doors, then replace them, starting with the front door?  If you just replace the front door, then they'll be drawn to the back door instead?

That would probably be a good idea, yes. I haven't extensively tested this or anything; I just read it somewhere like mts2 a long time ago, and it's worked for me since.

[notveryawesome]

Very annoying piece of coding, seems like if your house needs a porch remodel and a new front door, you have to replace all doors every time!  And no doubt the problem with Maxis houses is they don't always have the front door placed first.....

Personally, I hate the "one desk" thing, it's a pity they didn't make desks ownable like they did beds, which even without TJ's Smart Beds are slightly ownable....  I used to find tired kids would take themselves off to their own bed, and very lazy YAs will do the same - one or two of the Maxis students will do that.  And since in Uni students will use any available desk that's not behind a Myne Door, (or any table) why can't kids do that with homework?  If you place the kid's homework on a table, they'll do it there with no problems, so why can't THEY put it there?

Dizzy (I think -- could be someone else) has a 'homework on desk' hack, but it only seems to work on teens and YAs (at least in my game it works this way, but my Downloads folder seems to have become corrupted, and many of my hacks no longer work how they're supposed to). Once the kid/teen/YA sim has slept in its own bed at least once, then the sim will start placing its homework on any desk or table in its room. I think locking the door to 'Allow Me Only' also has the same effect.

Inge has a homework-placement mat that you put on a desk or table and assign to a specific sim, which causes the sim to always place its homework on that exact spot.

[Doc Doofus]

Normally homes have a fence round their back yard.  If you do that and lock the gate to "family only" that might help

Don't I wish.  I have had them blow right past the locks over and over again.  Not every time, or even most of the time, but frequently.  I already mentioned the flowers on the back porch thing.

No, I don't have any lock hacks or door hacks.  This seems to be just an inherent flakiness in the locks ever since OFB introduced them.  In fact, it's a real problem at times because a customer Sim will sometimes walk right through a locked door on a business lot to get to a refrigerator or hot tub, and then not be able to leave without manually unlocking the door. 

Maxis locks are just flaky.

What I would like is some doormat or something you can place in front of a door to block that door to non-family members who *have not already been greeted.*  Even if that causes problems for the maid.  The block would have to interfere with routing so the visitors don't waste time walking all the way around the house just to stand there waving their fists.  That's just as bad.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Inge has a homework-placement mat that you put on a desk or table and assign to a specific sim, which causes the sim to always place its homework on that exact spot.

Yes, I use that, though occasionally it has the effect on custom desks of making the homework seem to disappear - not a great problem with macrotastics, but annoying when you want the kid to ask for help.

Normally homes have a fence round their back yard.  If you do that and lock the gate to "family only" that might help

Don't I wish.  I have had them blow right past the locks over and over again.  Not every time, or even most of the time, but frequently.  I already mentioned the flowers on the back porch thing.

No, I don't have any lock hacks or door hacks.  This seems to be just an inherent flakiness in the locks ever since OFB introduced them.  In fact, it's a real problem at times because a customer Sim will sometimes walk right through a locked door on a business lot to get to a refrigerator or hot tub, and then not be able to leave without manually unlocking the door. 

Maxis locks are just flaky.

What I would like is some doormat or something you can place in front of a door to block that door to non-family members who *have not already been greeted.*  Even if that causes problems for the maid.  The block would have to interfere with routing so the visitors don't waste time walking all the way around the house just to stand there waving their fists.  That's just as bad.

I think the reason for the flowers on porch thing is the same as Mortimer or whoever attacking the telescope peeping tom - they cannot be greeted and are outside the normal walk-by, visitor behaviour.

I must say that normally I have found no problem with Maxis lockable doors, unless you lock them once a visitor has already routed towards it, then they do get in and get stuck.  I tend to lock up gnomes and chickens in the back garden, and visitors then do the wild animal thing and then give up and go and do something else.  I think you must have something that's preventing them from working as they are intended (the doors, that is), as the problem you have with customers in OFB was never one I noticed either, even when I first installed it and hadn't yet upgraded my hacks and was playing without any.

[Doc Doofus]

Oh, they work most of the time.  Just not all the time.  My "over and over again" phrasing was perhaps not the best way to explain things.  They fail often enough to be a real pain in the ass.

On most of the business lots I played, I had a private area with a refrigerator or hot tub or something else I didn't want the visitors to get to.  Yet, every once in a while, they would get in there.

A good example of a time when they would get to it -- and this is not an exclusive example -- is right after you close the store.  Townies that are just entering the lot as you close the store will ignore you shooing them, walk right through the locked door and plop into the hot tub.  You go in there, you try to "shoo" them out of the room, and they can't leave.  It seems there also may be an open door effect, where sometimes, just as you are leaving a locked room, a customer will walk through the not-yet-closed (but still locked) door.

Play with the locks more, and you'll see what I mean.  It's been like this since OFB.  They work, but they are flaky.

[Orikes]

I always thought they wanted to go in the door closest to the mailbox. 

My observation has been that they tend to go towards the door that they deem on the 'ground' floor. So, if I build a house on a foundation, but have a door coming out of the basement at the back of the house, that's considered to be on the lowest floor, therefore must be the main entrance. Every single time I've placed a door out of a basement, that's where the delivery folks try and go. Also, the one time I built a separate garage, the delivery folk would go to the side door on the garage, because that was lower as well.

I'm going to give this frontdoorhack a try. I like having walk out basements, especially when I'm building on a slope.

[J. M. Pescado]

The basement case is unresolved, but the garage case is covered: Doors opening into a garage will be excluded as front doors.

[Gwill]

Every single time I've placed a door out of a basement, that's where the delivery folks try and go.

Yay!  You've got yourself a service entrance!

On most of the business lots I played, I had a private area with a refrigerator or hot tub or something else I didn't want the visitors to get to.  Yet, every once in a while, they would get in there.

I have that problem too, and as you say; especially just when you close the business.  Customers have a really annoying tendency to want to go stand right behind the cash register after they've paid, so I always lock off that area (as well as the employee rest area), but at closing they still sneak through the locked door one by one to stand behing the cashier for a moment before they leave.
I used to try to add extra security with APO, but then I had problems with employees getting locked in when you closed the business (probably because they're no longere employees once they're off duty).
Not a major issue, but certainly an annoyance.

[Strangel]

Also get the "Bamboozle" doors from MTS2 - they are Maxis doors which are modded so visitors and delivery personnel won't notice them.  Just be careful to only install those which are compatible with your game.

The "Bamboozle" doors strip the category flags from the door so that they are not fully recognized as doors. This can potentially have negative side effects, and this approach is not recommended.

The frontdoorhack works for most situations, but I've found that if I build a house on a foundation with a basement backdoor there is just no way to keep dates from waltzing in through the front door, walk through the house and put their flowers at the rear entrance.  In the end I just decided to stop building like that.

Potential workarounds for this will be looked into. I already added a kludge to the hack so that it will avoid side doors to garages ages ago, will look into how to identify basement doors in code.

Will this also work with third-child-off-the-bus syndrome? A large family in one of the "attached garage" AwesomeSpec houses from the building contest has this problem. Whoever ends up third off the school bus whips out their homework, pauses for a milisecond, and goes into the garage to enter through the connecting door. Nearest I can figure, it's because either the front door & back door are blocked or because some idiot hasn't cleared the space in front of the gate fast enough.

[Inge]

Inge has a homework-placement mat that you put on a desk or table and assign to a specific sim, which causes the sim to always place its homework on that exact spot.

!! Are you sure?  That's not what I designed it to do.  It's just meant to have a menu to generate some work for the kid to do to get their grades up.  I had no idea it was also making them put their homework down there.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Inge has a homework-placement mat that you put on a desk or table and assign to a specific sim, which causes the sim to always place its homework on that exact spot.

!! Are you sure?  That's not what I designed it to do.  It's just meant to have a menu to generate some work for the kid to do to get their grades up.  I had no idea it was also making them put their homework down there.

Well, it seems to have that effect, but then it's a desk.....although I think it works with a table too.

Will this also work with third-child-off-the-bus syndrome? A large family in one of the "attached garage" AwesomeSpec houses from the building contest has this problem. Whoever ends up third off the school bus whips out their homework, pauses for a milisecond, and goes into the garage to enter through the connecting door. Nearest I can figure, it's because either the front door & back door are blocked or because some idiot hasn't cleared the space in front of the gate fast enough.

The front door hack is for visitors, residents just choose the quickest, or the unblocked, route.

[jolrei]

Every single time I've placed a door out of a basement, that's where the delivery folks try and go.

Yay!  You've got yourself a service entrance!

I noticed this in one lot I was playing - in the end I created a "butler" (tuxedo, top hat, etc), named him Jeeves and added him to the household so he could interact with the delivery folks.

Locks on the front and back doors tend to keep visitors out, I find.  I have given up on interior doors and use arches instead, because of routing problems (sims would go out the back door, walk all around the house and go in the front door to use the kitchen, even if they started from a position 3 squares away from the door to the kitchen - changing the "direction" of the doors did not noticeably help.)

I don't really care where delivery people go, but visitors walking halfway across a lot to get to a lower door on the garden shed (which apparently has a doorbell) only to come all the way back to the main house tends to mean that by the time they arrive, walk all that distance, and make it back to the actual house, it's time for them to say "oh gosh, look at the time".  I tend to get someone to lurk in wait for visitors now on houses with front door identification issues.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I use the transporter which comes as part of the Workers Set from Valdea, which has a default setting of autogreet visitors as well as an invite setting that you can enable to invite without using the phone (unfortunately it doesn't satisfy the "Invite someone over" want, but you can't have everything).  You have to install the complete set, but the workers can be safely removed if you don't want them, leaving just the transporter (which has a number of other useful options which I make myself consider as "Emergency" measures!  The autogreet function means visitors just go through the motions of ringing the doorbell and then walk in, which saves chasing them round the lot!