More Awesome Than You!

I tried to take the spectral cat with me to a comm lot and the game didn't like that at all.  After a crash, I reloaded and now the cat is gone completely..no memories of it or anything...and I can't resummon.

Any ideas?

[edit]Including error files that may or may not be related to the vanishing act, but they happened shortly before the crash.

[edit2] Oh, that's just fantastic.  The character file is missing.  I didn't delete it so I'm guessing some kind of save glitch....this means I have to reset the neighborhood, doesn't it?




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The cat should just auto unsummon when you leave the lot.  You're supposed to re-summon it at each new lot if you want it around.  What do you mean you tried to take the cat with you?

Sorry I can't help about glitches with game eated-ing cat character files.  It does sound like a hood-currupting thing.   :-\

I mean I went to a community lot, the cat showed up in the "Who's going with" list and just to see what would happen, I included the cat. 

I've reset the hood now, though, so...who knows.

I don't have a solution to your problem.  But perhaps I can cheer you up - at least it's a sim cat that is broken.  My RL cat is broken.  For some reason, she can no longer meow.  It's terribly sad, as she always had this tiny super sweet sounding "mew".   :'(

That can't be good. Vet time?

   Bliss, you reminded me of a book that I once had.          The Silent Miaow: A Manual for Kittens, Strays, and Homeless Cats     by Paul Gallico
 
   I have one cat that loses her meow whenever she is producing a particularly large hairball.  She's a Himalayan so if she meows at me and no sound comes out I usually give her the carob paste.   Later I have a mess to clean, but she can meow again.  Not necessarily what is going on with your cat, but just a thought.  Hope she feels better.



While I was searching for that book that I no longer have, I found this and thought that you might appreciate it as a fellow cat staff member.
http://www.thecatsite.com/Behavior/229/The-Silent-Meow.html

If I may re-hijack my own thread:

This is a legitimate problem now.  I summoned a cat, saved and exited and when I came back, the cat was gone and cannot be re-summoned.  This is on a completely new install.

I didn't think anyone would care to comment on my post, so apologies for the unintended hijacking.

So when you summon a cat, save and exit, you are doing this on a home lot, correct?  And is it with only one particular family/lot or all of your families with cats are having this problem?

No worries.  Hijacked threads don't bother me in the slightest.


Home lot, only one family because I'm only playing one, but both are witches, one good, one evil...neither cat can be summoned.

Well, I'm not the best person to help you, but I'll try since no other geniuses have come along.  I would suggest playing another lot/family that has a witch and see if they have the ability to summon.  See if the problem happens with that sim too.  If it's only happening with your currently played fam, I would probably move them out and into another house.  I know it's a pain in the ass, especially if you built that home specifically for them and took ages doing it.  (One of the reasons I make a copy of each house I build in the unoccupied house bin).  Again, that's just what I would do.

I guess I should also ask if they are missing any other magical abilities... are they still flying to lots, can they still cast all the spells they have learned, etc. 

I have had no problems having a spectral cat coming to a community lot with a witch.   I just did it tonight in fact and it was fine so maybe it is a conflicting hack?

Weird, I didn't know the spectral cats could ever come to com lots.  The only witch I ever summoned a spectral cat, her cat just unsummoned everytime I had her 'fly to lot'.  There was never an option, "who's comming along" I guess since she was living alone.  And the cat always unsummons when I save and exit the lot too.  But I have never had any problems re-summoning, so long as I have all the required reagents.

Well, as I said, it happened before on a completely different install of the game.  Whatever the problem is, it's a reoccuring issue.


Nah, everything else works fine.


Yeah, but summon your cat at home, save and quit while the cat is still out and then reload the game and see if the cat is still there.  As far as conflicting hacks...the only conflicts I have are the poolhack and vacationfixes from using the nudist hack.  Those have nothing to do with anything involving cats, afaik.


The spell animation fires, but the cat doesn't appear. 

OK, I know what is happening, but I don't know why or what causes it.  But the character files for the cats are not being saved, so when I try to resummon, they're linking to a nonexistent character.

I'm at a complete loss here...I have no idea what could be causing this and I don't know enough about SimPE to find out how the familiars are linked to the owners.

[edit] Here's some more error logs generated when I made Brandi Broke a witch and summoned a familiar, then immediately saved and exited to neighborhood and tried to reload the lot.

Sounds like tightpants.  Have you tried pulling all hacks out to see if this has any affect?  Although Zazazu is also having cat related troubles, but I haven't read the post.  I doubt it's the exact same problem.

That's some seriously fucked up code if hacks that have absolutely nothing to do with pets is affecting them.

I have a theory, but I haven't been able to test it yet...but I had one lot where the cat worked fine...I think if I summon and dismiss the cat, it'll force a save, but as I said, I haven't had a chance to test it.

I was about to pull my hacks when I saw that the one lot had actually worked...so I don't know what the hell is going on.


[edit] Also, re: tightpants: 

The cats worked fine back when I first installed AL and the only things I've changed since the last time they worked have been updates from the DC.  But again, every time previously that I used them, they were unsummoned (either by me or by motive failure) before I left or quit...and I only did it a couple times...but they did work.

I'll find the time to do some more testing and post the results.


[edit] Eureka!  My previous theory was wrong, but I found the solution.  I'd forgotten that I switched no reagent hacks a week or so ago.  "noreagentsdocumented" found here in the peasantry breaks the cats.  Treeag-NoStupidReagents found at MTS2 does not.

That's also why the cats started working...earlier today I switched them back out and then forgot I was going to test that because blahblahblahlifehappensblah...anyway, that's the scoop.

Annnnnnnnd, this morning it's not working again.  Also, when I loaded a new neighborhood, it loaded two magical worlds...I'm going to assume a corrupted install (there was weirdness going on when I installed anyway, but the game seemed to work, so I ignored it...) and reinstall.  I'll also load my hacks piecemeal once I get it running, just so I can purely rule out tightpants...but if the damn game is being this fickle on working or not, I don't really have a guaranteed way to test it...

I cannot track this problem down at all.  It seems to work fine when I'm just testing, but as soon as I say "Ok, good, it's working" and start playing normally, it stops working.

Are you trying to save the game with SimPE open? According to FOJ, that can cause errors like that, because the game can't save the new information because SimPE has the data locked.

I never run SimPE and the game at the same time, so unless SimPE has a hidden TSR, then no.

I think after further experimenting that choosing to save and quit or save and exit to hood is what causes this, because saving manually and then quitting seems to keep the cat around.

My game seems to do this, too. It does not save any newly created sims/servos/pets on the lot when I exit and save at the same time. Also, it will not save age transitions completely. I had kids who looked like toddlers but could go to school etc. When I save manually, this has not happened. Is my game going splodie, is it AL or just a stupid random glitch which I have to deal with?
(Also: this ruined my legacy family because the puppies weren't saved and now everybody has corrupt memories. Is there a way to safe the family or should I just start over with a new family?)

 ::) If they have corrupt memories, couldn't you just use the Lot Debugger to clean them up?

I did, but they still cause want-tree errors related to the two dog which were absorbed by the game. And they keep getting blank want slots which annoys me and makes me afraid that the lot will just get worse and explode.

In that case, I hope you made a backup of that neighborhood sometime before the puppies were 'eaten'...you're going to need it.