Does this only happens to me? Clean-up dishes problem.

[MissDoh]

Since Nightlife I have this problem and I try to isolate it and finally did tonight.

When I send 1 Sim on a restaurant downtown community lot and leave that lot before uncontrollable Sims (that I normally control but can't since they are visiting the community lot) have finished eating their meal, when I reload their household to play them they have lost the ability to clean-up dishes.

I tested that with 5 sims, 4 out of 5 lost the ability to clean-up dishes, the only one that still could was eating from a bowl the other 4 were eating from plates.  I normally reset them using the "testing cheats" but I find it really annoying and they should not loose this ability in the 1st place.

It does not seem to affect Sims eating from the BBQ, it seems to be a side effect of eating in restaurant only but I am not 100% sure.

Does this happens to you too?  Is there a fix for this somewhere and if not, can it be fixed?

[Simlover]

There was a lot of talk about this earlier about sims loosing their ability to clean plates although no one seemed to be aware as to why.  You may have found the trigger.

[MissDoh]

There was a lot of talk about this earlier about sims loosing their ability to clean plates although no one seemed to be aware as to why.  You may have found the trigger.

Serious, somehow I miss that post otherwise I would I've posted what I notice in it.

I've been searching for the trigger for a long time and it hit me tonight and I tested my theory right away.

I sure hope someone can fix this since I am assuming a lot of us are having the same problem as I do.

Eventhough I have the "testingcheats" at on while I play, I have no error popping when this happens neither when I reload the lot.

[syberspunk]

Hrm... that sounds like an odd bug. Are you sure you don't have some kind of hack that has to do with plate cleaning? I could have sworn I read something... possibly related to an Inge plate-cleaning hack...

Alternatively... I had Crammyboy's Let Slobs Be Slobs hack... which prevented my sims from doing a lot of cleaning. I didn't realize it at the time... but what happened was, even though I directed them to clean stuff... they would stop in the middle of it, almost abruptly. At first... I just thought it was weird that they had the option, but then would stop, and then I remembered I had that hack. It was a neat idea to actually let slobs be sloppy, and I liked other features, such as slobs/sloppy sims not caring about a sloppy environment and what not, but if I wanted to punish my sims and make them clean up, then I should be able to do so if I wanted to.

If you have any plate-cleaning related hacks, try taking them out and see what happens.

Ste

[akatonbo]

Was it Inge that had the plate-cleaning hack? I swear I used to have something to stop either cleaning up plates on comm lots or serving food on comm lots before OFB, and I've been wary about picking up another one post-OFB unless I find one that says it was specifically written for OFB and won't screw with businesses. I know Squinge has something along those lines now, but whatever hack I had before OFB was someone else's.

[MissDoh]

Syber when this started to happen in my game I didn't even know what a hack was and I was scared of them like hell!    Thanks for trying to found an answer it could have been what you mention but it does not seem like it is.

Now, I have some of Pescado, Crammyboy, twojeffs and Squinge mods but none are related to dishes.

What I mean by loosing the abitlity is that when I hoover my mouse on a plate there is no option to clean it though the other Sim living in the same house that did not appear on the community lot still have the option available so I don't think it is an hack doing this otherwise it would probably affect the complete household not just one member.

I don't have let's slobs be slobs.  And I don't have any of Inge mods in my game.

I can definitely try to reproduce this and remove all my hacks to see if it will happen again if it is really needed.

[MissDoh]

Well I decided to remove all of my hacks to make sure 100% it was not hack/mod related.

I don't have any custom objects in my game, anyhow I completely removed my downloads folder.

While I was on 2 different restaurants lots, 4 Sims in total were still eating while I left and all 4 of them cannot clean dishes anymore.

So this is definitely a core game problem, it is not related to mods/hacks.

[J. M. Pescado]

...and why are you trying to clean dishes up on a community lot in the first place?

[MissDoh]

...and why are you trying to clean dishes up on a community lot in the first place?

I am not trying to clean-up dishes on community lots.  The sims are loosing this abitlity AFTER they visit a community lot and I play their household.  And the one loosing it are the one eating while I don't control them.  Pescado, did you read all of my posts?    Ok my english is bad but is it that bad lol.

The waiters are doing a great job at this, I don't want them to get fired 

[J. M. Pescado]

The clickpoint for cleanup can be blocked by the invisible food object on the plate (which remains even after the food is eaten). Is the plate completely uncleanable, even if you try Macro Clean?

[MissDoh]

Well it must be invisible food that are stuck I think, again I will explain in details when and how it happens.

I send 1 sim on a community downtown lot so they can meet new people.  I send it to Bernard's restaurant.

I left the lot before 4 Sims had the time to finish eating their plates (meaning they were still eating and yapping to other sims when the Sim took its car and leave the community lot).  Those 4 Sims were ones I normally control since I created them in CAS and they all live with another Sim.

After the sim come back from its trip to Bernard's restaurant, I saved the lot and go to the household of the 4 testers Sims that were still eating when I left the community lot.  All of them lost the ability to clean-up dirty dishes in their house, the way I check is by hoovering my mouse on the dirty plate and no option are showing.  I select the other Sim living in the same house (which did not appear on that community lot) and hoover my mouse on the dirty plate and that Sim have the option to clean it up.

Do you need more info?  Or is this a bit more clear now?  I remind you I remove all my hacks when I did this second test.

I don't have macro clean by the way.

[J. M. Pescado]

Do you need more info?  Or is this a bit more clear now?  I remind you I remove all my hacks when I did this second test.

Well, you haven't answered my question yet, so no, I don't need more info.

I don't have macro clean by the way.

That sounds like a personal problem to me, soldier.

[MissDoh]

Any idea of what could be causing this then with or without mods I have the same problem and it is in a freshly install game.

EDIT:  From what I read Simslover said, it does not seem I am the only one with this ussue.

[akatonbo]

Pescado, the problem is Sim-specific, not plate-specific -- she stated that she has certain Sims who cannot clean ANY plates, and in the same household as those Sims, other Sims have no problems cleaning the same plates.

She also stated the circumstances she believes to cause the problem -- when she sends Playable Sim A to a restaurant alone, and Playable Sim B appears as a non-controllable visitor eating at the restaurant, if Sim A leaves the lot while Sim B is still in the middle of eating their meal, then when she goes into Sim B's lot, Sim B cannot clean plates, but Sim B's housemates(s) can.

[MissDoh]

If by macro clean you meant if I check if Sims that clean-up their plates (meaning they ate all of their meals and almost lick their plates) ended-up with the same problem...

Then the answer to this is no.. only sims that were still eating were having this problem, the one that finished their plates were all ok, I took note of who finished and who did not and checked both type of lots before I posted about my problem, sorry I did not specify that before.

You know my first language is French and Macro clean does not mean a thing to me, could you please explain more clearly to me what you mean by that if my answer is not what you were looking for.

[akatonbo]

He's referring to a function of Macrotastics, which is one of his hack systems. (Specifically, it's the one that lets you tell a Sim to do a task instead of interacting with an object. Instead of clicking on a dirty counter and selecting clean, then clicking on a dirty toilet and selecting clean, then clicking on a dirty bathtub and selecting clean, you just use Macrotastics to tell the Sim to clean, and it'll direct the Sim to clean up all that dirty stuff for you.)

Macrotastics is here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=208.0

(I don't actually use it myself, although I have been considering it. I'm not using any of the more complex hack systems right now.)

[MissDoh]

Well I don't use macro in my game and Pescado knows that already (well I think he does).

Pescado, can't you do a seperate hack that would fix this only instead of having us install the macro.  I am not interested in macro at all I am sure there is other ways to solve this.  I am not the only one not interested in macro, I don't want to turn my sims into soldier.

Thanks Akatonbo for the details that Pes did not provide me.

[syberspunk]

Ok. I definitely remember reading about this somewhere. I did a quick search and found these links:

MTS2 Archive

Custom food disappears - bandaid patch

I don't know if this could be related to your problem, but it seems likely. In my search, google provides a link to the archive above, which text 'Can't clean up dirty plates. (Tons of info!)' but I didn't find the specific thread yet. It's annoying that it links me to the entire archive and not the specific thread. If someone else manages to find it first, maybe it has answers to your problem. *shrugs*

Ste

[MissDoh]

Thanks Syber, though I don't have custom food in my game I could give it a try in case it would solve the problem who knows.

[akatonbo]

I feel like I'm playing interpreter here. MissDoh, it doesn't sound like he was suggesting that Macrotastics would necessarily solve your problem -- he wanted to know what happened if you use it and told the Sim with the problem to clean up dishes, probably to see whether his routine could find any dishes for the Sim to clean up. On the other hand, I'm not sure how well he understood your description of the problem. The information about what happens when Macrotastics is told to find dishes to clean could still be useful for debugging, though.

syberspunk, here's the thread you saw on Google (I used the cached version of the page): http://www.modthesims2.com/archive/index.php/t-150145.html

Very detailed -- lots of info is right. It's not exactly the same problem, but it is at least partially related to being interrupted in the middle of a meal, it's a post-OFB issue, they have a temporary fix (but not a preventative), and the only reply doesn't really add much to the discussion.

[syberspunk]

Thanks akatonbo. My googling skills are pretty deficient.

Fixing it:
I have figured out how to fix it. With MoveObjects on, picking up the affected Sim and deleting them, then saving the lot and reloading (Sim reappears as if they just moved in.) makes the problem go away. I should note, I had a meal I prepared BEFORE I did this, which I could not clean up, which the same Sim after being deleted and reloaded, could clean up that same meal they could not before.

It looks like something screwy must be happening with the sim itself... perhaps something gets messed up with the sim's data? Certain interactions check the sim's state, and prevent them from doing something if it is set in a particular way. For example, a lot of code checks if a sim is swimming and if so, disables several interactions, since obviously they aren't supposed to be able to do certain things while they are swimming. Others might check if a sim is sitting down, lying in a bed, or currently occupied doing some other interaction. Maybe... the state of your sims that are on the comm lots gets saved in a certain state that prevents them from interacting with the plates properly.

Try the method above, deleting the affected sim, and see if this restores their ability once they are reloaded. If so... then it seems to be a similar problem as above. I'm not sure how one could permanently fix it. Have you done anything in particular to your sims? For example, did you do a delete all characters and what not? Sometimes certain files aren't completely cleaned up. I think there's another current thread about this which affected Pegasys' sims LTWs.

Ste

PS. I also agree with akatonbo. Even if you don't want to use macrotastics, you can temporarily install it, turn on debug mode, and see if you get any errors while trying to use the clean function. IIRC, just click on the selected sim, and there should be a Macro... option. Under that, if there is anything to clean, it should have a 'Clean' option. If the clean doesn't show up, even though there are dirty dishes, And you don't get an error... then I'm not sure what else to try. 

[MissDoh]

Akatonbo, the way I read what Pescado wrote was more like this:  "you don't have macro clean than sorry I cannot help you" type of answer to me.

Maybe this is not what he meant but it is the way I read it...

Syber what I do instead is since I have the "testing cheats" on while I play is I force an error an reset the sim.  It works too.

But this should not happen in the 1st place.  I don't mind keeping doing this but I find it annoying and I love sending my Sims downtown on every type of lots.  I will probably restrain them from visiting restaurants until a real fix for this problem is made.  I think it is the best solution for me right now.

[J. M. Pescado]

Akatonbo, the way I read what Pescado wrote was more like this:  "you don't have macro clean than sorry I cannot help you" type of answer to me.

I'm trying to see which part of the clean process is short-circuiting. If Macro-Clean can't see the plates either, that would mean it's not just a pinheaded MissDoh clicky problem.

[MissDoh]

Akatonbo, the way I read what Pescado wrote was more like this:  "you don't have macro clean than sorry I cannot help you" type of answer to me.

I'm trying to see which part of the clean process is short-circuiting. If Macro-Clean can't see the plates either, that would mean it's not just a pinheaded MissDoh clicky problem.

Lol Pescado... You should know by now that I am not pinheaded, my only problem according to some is that I speak French hum hum (and this is not directed to anybody who tried to help me in this post, I felt I needed to specify it).  I did remove all my hacks/mods which was awful because without them the game act so silly.

Sorry for the bad comments but this is just showing how unaware I am of what macrostatics can do (I hope my lips does not get more rip off then they already are), I am grateful you are taking my problem seriously and that you are looking into it  

EDIT:  If you do find a problem and you need assistance for testing I will gladly test anything to solve this. (except for Macro (unless it would be the only solution) but I am sure you figure it out already that I prefer not to use macro lol) 

[syberspunk]

Hrm. I wonder if you understand what macrotastics does...

I get the impression that you think it will automatically force your sims to act as automatons. It doesn't do that at all. It simply adds more options to the pie menu, which you as the user are still in control of. Your sims will not automatically behave any differently unless you the user tell them to. I think the 'Power Idle' option makes them act as 'automatons' in the sense that they will stick to a 'programmed' routine of only dealing with their needs when necessary and what not. To be honest, I actually don't know much about 'Power Idle' because I don't use it myself, and you don't have to.

As far as I can tell, macrotastics will not change how your sims act, with possibly the exception of including other modules, most significantly bathroomusesyou, which 'processes' your sims as they enter the bathroom, 'using' them appropriately to relieve bladder and improve hygiene as needed. However... I think that feature of bathroomusesyou works regardless of whether you have macrotastics installed or not. I think you can even turn off the search feature completely. I don't know if this effectively renders it 'off' in the sense that it won't process your sims as usual, since I always have it on.

Anyways, I hope my explanation makes sense. Macrotastics will add new options which basically cuts down on the manual clicking. It definitely is a time saver, but it won't forcibly change your sims into robotic automatons. You don't even have to use it at all. I play with Free Will on all the time, and I only use Macrotastics on certain sims when I play in a large household, and want to assign 'smart tasks' for some of them to do while I focus on other sims that I want to micro mange, because I am an obsessive freak that tends to oversee every detail sometimes. I really think that you should try installing macrotastics, even just temporarily, as a way to help debug or investigate your plate-cleaning problem. You can easily remove macrotastics afterwards once you figure out whether or not you are able to generate an error log. Macrotastics will not permanently alter your game. At best, it might permanently alter your gameplaying style if you try it out and like it.

Believe me, I was pretty stubborn in the beginning as well. I felt that it was kind of cheaty to rely on something to do everything for you... but I definitely saw the error of my ways. It just makes sense. It saves time and makes the game a lot more enjoyable. Instead of having to worry about other sims doing idiotic, stupid things like burning the house down, wasting food, or pissing off other sims and ruining relationships by telling bad jokes or having bad conversations, I can occupy my sims with 'smarter' and much more useful tasks, such as skilling, cleaning, repairing, gardening, and what not, while I focus my attention on other specific sims. When you plug in all the other modules, such as bathroomusesyou, the sleepclock, etc. it helps you out a lot, so you don't have to worry so much about passing out or bladder failure with sims you weren't paying attention to.

Ste