More Awesome Than You!

Anyone had this little joy of a bug happen to them besides me?

Lately when I play my favorite hood, I sometimes get this glitch where I click on the fridge and the only option I get for food is the instant meal. Even though my sims have high or maxed cooking skill, a stove, are home (I know you get only the Instant Meal option when they are at work, if you try to queue it up for them before they get home), etc etc.

I've tried deleting the fridge/stove & buying a new one, deleting the sim, forcing an error on the stove, fridge, sim, everything. I don't have any custom foods, or any food-specific hacks I can think of.

Luckily this doesn't stay broken, it seems to cut in and out - and it doesn't affect all sims in the household at once, it hits different sims at different times, fixes itself at random. I find if I tell them to go get the instant meal, let them head for the fridge, then cancel it, sometimes tthat brings back all the food options.  Happens on many lots, including ones I've been playing for months with no problem.

Is this one of those "your neighbourhood is getting too big and this is an impending sign of implosion" bug? Any ideas on fixing it?

Are the sims inside rooms with doors placed on diagonal walls when this happens? I get this in some houses but once they're outside the room they have all the options again.

Was just about to say the same thing!  It's usually caused by diagonal doors, although only since Uni was installed.  If you get them to "check supplies" first, they should then be able to use the fridge as normal.  Those diagonal doors are a pain since Uni - several of the Maxis-made houses have them and even they don't work.  I had to change all the ones in the Pleasant house when Dirk almost died using the computer in one of the bedrooms. 

Hmm, nope I don't think so - I don't recall any diagonal doors - some of these houses I've been playing regularly since at least last November with no problem. Thanks for the info though, I'll be sure to avoid that just in case!

I had this happen in the Pleasant household. Everyone had all the usual meal options except Angela. If she was in the kitchen all the meals appeared in the "pie" menu (ho ho). Anywhere else on the lot and she could only remember how to "make" instant meals. The problem only appeared after the twins became adults, and it seemed to fix itself - I didn't test anything by changing the fridge or whatever but the next time I played the household she had no problems with meals.

Academic now, since she's shacked up with Alexander Goth - I wonder which nose the kids will inherit? 

I've discovered that only the sims on the lot can access the full fridge menu.  If they are off lot (work/classes/school) then they can only access the instant meal.

Yes, I had mentioned that in my first post, that all sims were indeed on the lot.  :) So that's not it.

I went in and checked some of my houses where I have this bug happening - no doors on diagonal  in two of them. One house did. Could the diagonal door in one house create a hood-wide bug? The diagonal-door house was a new addition to the hood, right about the time this bug started showing up.

It happened to me once. The sim never got any of the other options back. I don't use the diagonal doors at all. I changed refrigerators -style, color, price etc.- and nothing worked. I finally gave up and moved it out and into another lot. Everything worked as a charm there. I bulldozed the lot - I never really liked it anyway :D -

I have this happen in Don's condo (which has a diagonal door).  It usually clears up after a minute, but it's annoying nonetheless.  I have not tried replacing the door, but maybe I should, assuming that this will "key" the lot to Uni specifications. 

The instant meal thing baffles me. I'm not even sure WHY they suddenly get the idea that the sim can't make anything else.

Well if you're baffled, then I'm screwed on this one! ;D

Idiotic Sims.  :-\*need head-smacking-on-wall emote*

It does seem like the game suddenly is unable to read the sim's cooking skill and just asssumes that it is at a very low level, doesn't it. Especially since, in some cases, it apparently rights itself, even if only temporarily.

Well your not the only one who has this problem.  I get it once in a while.  I thought it was strange that a level 5 cook would only get the instant meal option for dinner.  It has happened to me on several different lots in 3 different neighborhoods.  The most recent one was last night in Strangeville.  Previously it was Pleasantville.  The first time was in my custom neighborhood, so that ruled out it being the maxis ones.  I also changed out the fridges, and none of these lots have diagnal doors on them though I have not gone through all the houses and checked for them (I do know that Pleasantville has a few).  It seems that it affects the whole lot and not just certian sims or fridges.  I had an apartment with 4 units and all residents could only get the instant meal no matter which fridge I tried.  This lasted for about 3 sim days then cleared itself up.  Last night I was playing Strangeville and had it happen.  I quit the lot and got out of the game shortly after so I am not sure if the problem will still be there.  Lets hear it for maxis bugs, they always make the game so much more interesting.

Ive found that if you move the sim next to the fridge, and then try the options again, the whole range of food is usually back. Diagonal doors are invented by the devil, as a means to prevent you from cooking and the maid from cleaning, so you will die dirty and hungry.

Basically my sims have trouble with the menues if they are doing something where they are not in the same room as the fridge, or are sitting down. Like, studying mechanical from a book, sitting on a sofa.
Btw, humybyrd you said it affects all sims on your lots. I only have one, once in a while that can't cook, it is not affecting the whole family... yet.... :o

I don't think that it reads low cooking skill when they're behind diagonal doors, it just reads them as being off the lot.  Even a sim with no cooking skill can make lunchmeat sandwiches and cereal!  And that option doesn't appear either! 

I really think Maxis ought to have brought out a patch for this, since it was uni that caused it!  (Plus 1001 Arabian Nights of other stuff!)

How much room is there in your kitchen? Can you give us the dimensions (like 3x4 or so). Where is the fridge situated? How much empty space is in front of the fridge?

I've also noticed that on the odd occasions when guests go into a bathroom through diagonal doors, they then can't leave it unless you get a sim to call them over!  Must depend on which way round the doors are.......

I've just d/l'd Windkeeper's single sliding doors (which includes a diagonal, and next time I exit I'll install them and see if they are any better.

In my case it was the standard Pleasant house - and Angela's "problem" occured even when she was the only one awake and no one else had any actions in their queue which might have caused the doorway to be already in use, if you get my drift.

You know, due to a major septic tank backup last fall, we had to refloor our entire house and redo the kitchen entirely. Because of the diagonal entryway we added that seemed so appealing at the time, I have been able to consume nothing but SlimFast since. I now weigh 2 pounds.

I have a couple of lots where the sims are only able to serve dessert. Sometimes. Then the other options come back. I have yet to notice any common factors to the problem.

Are you using standard Maxis fridges?  Even some recolours can act peculiarly at times, I've found, so it might be worth using the basic model.

No answers here (surprise!) but just wanted to chip in and add that I've had the same problem, too - for me it happened in the Pleasant house, with no diagonal doors and no fridges other than Maxis one......  ???

It does seem to right itself fairly quickly, though....

Well, I'm glad I'm not alone anyway - misery loves company doncha know.  ;D

Thanks for all the info everyone - if you add more & I don't reply, I'm not ignoring you, I'm leaving town & won't be back til Aug. 22. Going camping - I hope a bear doesn't rip my lips off.  :P Maybe by the time I get back there will a patch to fix this and ALL BUGS!!!! EVEN MOSQUITOES!!!!111!!!!! Hahahhahaha. Ha. Oh, it is to laugh. Oy, my sides.

Make sure your tent door is on the diagonal, and the bear will just stand outside waving his paws and shouting "Erm, Woohoo!" On the downside, you will only be able to cook cereal on your stove (with a 10% chance of failure).

 :D :D :D ;D ;D ;D

(We need some more emoticons!)

That cracked me up!

Schmoopee,

I had this happen with a stove and it had to be set to a dirty state and then cleaned before the Sim could cook anything but an instant meal.  Ideally, the fridge is supposed to check for the type of cooking appliance that the Sim has in addition to the cooking skill level in order to offer the appropriated menu options.  So this error can happen with either appliance and several people have used various methods to reset the appliance by forcing some kind of error - this seems to be the primary goal.

Just so you know, there have been various experiences about how long this cycle lasts.  Mine also happened to be a Maxis condo with one of the diagonal doors, but yet others have not had this problem.

In another similar situation, I had a dishwasher that would not function, could not be used, was not broken and was replaced with a new one - Rinse and repeat.  I finally decided to try and move the dishwasher to another location.  So I moved it one tile over and next to the spot where it had been sitting.  This apparently had the same effect as resetting the dishwasher and the problem did not return.

In which case the lot debugger would have possibly helped as there could be something like a stuck kicky-bag in front of it.

True, but even with this, it seems you would get the 'noroute failure' briefly or an image of a kicky-bag in their thought bubble.

I know about the invisible kicky-bag, though, what a nightmare those are/were.  I reported to TwoJeffs a problem in the nursery where you have two or more babies present.  The little guys are born with KBs in their nappies, having no pockets you know.  I can only guess that they must play when noone is watching, like the faeries do - even with the eye in the sky.

If you remember TJ's fix was included in the Lot Debugger when it premiered, due to so many reports of problems like this appearing
in the regular neighborhoods.  Up until then, I was using his stack of phonebooks from his college package.  I was so glad when they included it in the Lot Debugger, it happened so often I was going to have to resort to recoloring them to coordinate with my nurseries.

I hope Mum and Dad didn't try to play kicky-bag with the baby!   You obviously needed the No Kicky-Bag Indoors fix!

The only non-Maxis kitchen appliances I have are Inge's apartment stuff, which I no longer use. The apartment doors and tokens made the the appliances pretty much obsolete. I almost never use custom walls or floors. My game drags with too much cc, so I limit it to the essential stuff.
After hearing of problems with diagonal doors, I checked all of my houses and straightened out all of the doors.
Still, sometimes I have problems in the kitchen. It seems, the have meal and serve meal options will disappear. Everything else will work fine. Then it will come back. Later. For no apparent reason.
I don't get it.
I blame it on EA.

I've started using christianlov's all-in-one npc in most houses because it reduces the irritations of contrary refridgerators, and also gardens, repairs, etc.
Lazy - maybe.
Convenient - YES!

It does seem to me that you have something getting in the way of your fridges.  Does the same thing apply if you click on the stove instead?

Sometimes clicking on the stove works, sometimes it does not. Sometimes using a different sim works. Sometimes it does not. Sometimes going into the kitchen, as close to the refridgerator as possible clears it up. Sometimes it does not. I have a hypothesis that none of these things ever really fix the problem, rather that what I am doing when it goes away is coincidence. However, I can't prove that; I don't even know how to test it.

I get this happening all the time in my Legacy lot.

If my Sims are in another room when I try to queue them to make a meal, it will sometimes only come up with the Instant Meal option.  As soon as they are in the same room, I can click on the fridge again and it's fine.  I can also have them check the food levels first, and then click on the fridge again and all the options are there. 

A lot of the time they are in one of the bathrooms, which both have diagonal doors, so I tested that and moved them to the bedroom which has straight doors, and I have the same problem.

I don't know what the deal is, I only know it's yet another bug for Maxis to fix.

It always happens in my bathrooms with diagonal doors, but never when the doors are normal.  Are the doors concerned by any chance new meshes?

I had this problem with Don's condo, and it went away as soon as I replaced the diagonal door with one on a right angle corner.  I also had the problem with guests getting stuck in the bathroom as well.  This was before I had the bathroom controller, and even shooing the guests had no effect.  Don had Bella living with him, and they had a couple of kids.  They would rather pee themselves than sit on the toilet in front of someone.  So they'd stand there shooing the guest and they'd just stand there with their arms folded until my sims peed on themselves.  It drove me crazy, so I installed a no privacy mod, but I didn't really like that either.  Finally I fixed the door and the problems went away, and I got the bathroom controller from JM about that time, so I haven't had any more problems with this.  I am convinced that the problem is the diagonal walls and doors.  In every house I've had the problem, I've gotten rid of all diagonal walls and doors and the problem has gone away.  In one Maxis house that had a lot of diagonal walls, the one in Pleasantview with three stories, I had a problem with JMP's sleep clocks.  The sims would just stand there when the clock called them to bed.  Once I replaced all the diagonal walls, I had no more problems.  Since Uni came out, they have caused no end of problems.  In those condos with the long diagonal wall in the front where the living room is, I usually end up remodeling those because to me it's wasted space.  I remember in Sims1 somewhere in the game Maxis said that Sims like diagonal walls.  Probably something to do with environment, but I rarely used them because you can't put anything in front of them.  So in my opinion, diagonal walls and doors are evil and must be eradicated.  ::)

You can use them to put things in front of if you use:

 boolprop allow45degreeangleofrotation true/false

The condo I have where Dina and her husband Dylan live, I have 4ESF's cheap Quadro sofas along a diagonal wall and they work fine, and so far Dina hasn't complained!

It's funny with the bathrooms, though, in some houses, as you say, visiting sims get stuck inside (if you use "call over" they will come out) but in other houses they won't go in!  Just stand there looking desperate!

I've noticed though, that Sims2 sims don't seem so keen on odd-shaped rooms as the Sims1 version - perhaps because they are more intelligent?????

I know that in Sims1 the more corners a room had, the higher the score. Diagonal walls often made lots of corners easier. I guess they found a new evaluation method this time around.

Regardless of whether my Sims like diagonal walls, I don't let them have them. I find my creativity is occasionally stifled, but I can live with that. I've heard too many bizarre stories related to diagonal doors. I eradicated them all. Diagonal is taboo in my game.

Diagonals for bay windows don't normally cause problems.

Stupid thing is, in sims 1 diagonals were useless wastes of space and what people made to go on them didn't always work very well, but Maxis obviously took the hint and decided to make diagonals usable, then made their usual hash of it!

Rainbow,

I had this appliance problem with the stove in Don's condo, too.  Those glass and matte doors are one of the ones causing the most trouble for me.  I can use the arched double door with fewest problems of the bunch.

I notice that there seems to be a difference among the two-tile (double-wide) doors when placed diagonally.  Some seem to cause problems and some do not, but I notice problems less often than with one-tile doors placed on the diagonal.  Another door that seems to have a problem is the two-tile sliding glass door.  Sometimes it will stick and stay open.

Inge mentioned that doors can get stuck in an open position if there is a light fixture above it, this is in the abscence of any obvious obstacles like drapes hanging across the door frame.  This is the only thing I thought might be causing the sliding door to remain open.

I have a theory. Well, not a theory, per se, but I noticed a few things on the two occasions that the "Instant Meal Only" bug popped up in one of my houses (none of which have diagonal doors, btw).

In a house with four adult Sims, only one got the bug. He had a very high Neatness score, 8 or 9. He was standing within the kitchen area (it's an open floorplan) when I gave him the order to Serve Dinner.

The kitchen counters are very crowded with appliances, with only two open countertops. This happened at night, so meals had been prepared since the maid had been there.

The Sim who eventually served hamburgers for dinner has a low Neatness score.

So, what I think is happening is, when this "bug" pops up it's with very Neat Sims who refuse to prepare food on a dirty countertop, when all unoccupied counters are dirty ~ not visually dirty, but "used," and thus "cleanable." When it happens again, I'll check the condition of the countertops and the Neatness rating of the Sim who's stuck with Ensure for dinner. If I remember to. I probably won't.

In the meantime, those who encounter (ha ha) the bug may want to try having the limited Sim clean the counters, and see if that brings back the rest of the menu.

Sounds feasible - or get them to make spaghetti using the food processor!

On a related note, I had a wonderful little episode with a couple of gay male Romance sims who are married and very much in love.  One got up and I told him to serve toaster pastries.  He put them in the oven then decided to go and clean the worktop.  His partner appeared to realise that the pastries would burn, so he came into the kitchen and served the meal!   Honestly, a totally autonomous action!

Except that the only option they have is "Instant Meal."

(Reminds me of my phone company's recorded message asking if I'm calling from the number with the problem when I'm reporting a NON-WORKING phone line.  ;D)

Sorry, it's very late and I'm not thinking straight!  Of course, that wouldn't solve the Instant Meal only!  Seems like, for some reason, the game thinks the sim is still at work!  Like it gets confused and sends nannies when they're home and doesn't send them when they're not there!

Just a note that it happened to me last night again. Darn annoying!!! No diag walls/doors and it was in Strange Town.

It happens to me all the time, no diagonal doors, nothing stuck, checked the debugger, its ok. But mine seems to happen if the sim is on the 2nd floor, as soon has they hit the ground floor where the fridge is, all the options come up again. its weird.

It happens to me in single-story homes. I downloaded a few starter homes, unfurnished. And sometimes it happens to one sim and not the other, sometimes both. (Most of my sim houses currently have two adults. Some with kids and some not.)

Hairfish - intersting theory. I know at least one of the houses where this happens, I have a super-neat sim. I will have to check this out when I next boot up that house.

Baddmark - Bahaha! That made me laugh. I have returned, lips unscathed by bears or other predatory beasts.  ;D

It's happening to me right now, in my e-mail lot... fortunately they had enough money to buy a second fridge or they both would have died of starvation.
Unfortunately, this is brand new to me (last week or so). I got it only after installing smartserve g and a new fridge from TSR.
One of my homes had 3 fridges that were unusable, 2 were near empty, but I couldn't restock them, the third was new but apparently only held the makings of dessert, baby formula and snacks after two meals had been served. I will get rid of the fridge (which wasn't in the home anyway) and the hack and see which (if either) is responsible. Right now, the only fridges that appear to work in any of the homes are Inge's non-autonomous and one I got from SunAir.

If one of those is the problem in your game, that will just confuse me more. I have no custom fridges, nor do I have this smartserve hack, and I have this problem in my game.

Maybe your actual Maxis fridge has become corrupted, in which case, what I personally would do is to remove the Sims2 folder to the desktop, uninstall/reinstall Uni, then move the sims2 folder back into EAGames.  I'm sure someone else has a simpler method, but this always works for me.

ooh, you're right, but it's such a pain... Delete default neighbourhoods and the 186 pictures it adds, I usually forget something (start-up, cameras, collections, lot bin, downloads...) and then I have to remember to disable the PiP, events camera, reset snapshot size... and I really don't care for having that tutorial come up each time.  Still better than a reinstall, maybe I should do that again and see.

I never delete anything, never move anything separately, just take the complete folder and bung it all on the desktop and play a game of Spider while it's doing it!  then I just move the whole thing back into EA Games, where it just overwrites all the new folders.  (If you want, you can takes them out first so you have some new copies of the neighbourhoods so you can "Play it again, Sam!")

I don't know if this is related to the "Instant Meal" bug or not, but it's certainly related to refrigerators.

Last night, I had a fridge go bad for no reason. No Sims of any kind could do anything with it. I'd tell them to go cook something, or get a snack, but the icon would generate from them and just fade out on its way up to the queue. Clicked stove and microwave to tell them to eat, and the same thing happened as soon as they headed for the refrigerator.

I tried buying a new fridge, but that didn't help.  :-\

FINALLY, I moved the damned thing over one space ~ just swapped it with a counter, and suddenly everything was fine.

Now...I've had this happen when there's a baby in the house, and a bottle is left in front of the fridge. Why Sims can't just step over a bottle, I don't know. But there is no baby in this house (two Adults, two Elders, and a Child), so no bottles. No puddles on the floor. No dropped newspapers or cups. Nuthin'.

Weird.

If it's not a stucky kicky bag, you might try the Lot Debugger.  JM's added an option to unstick blocked fridge tiles.

Thanks, I'll do that. The Debugger is one of the few things I haven't yet downloaded...  ;)

I had this happen again last night - a house I've been playing for 2 generations with no problems. Neither of them are really neat sims. Two adults now live there, and three kids, and it happened to both adults simultaneously. 

Luckily that "check food supplies" thing seems to do the trick, it's worked for me so far every time. :) I can live with it if that's all it takes to fix - keeps my pregnant sims from starving to death anyway!

I've found the Endless Buffet hack from SnootySims really useful when sims are pregnant - it means there's always food to eat, you never need to restock the fridge and the food never goes off!  I don't use it now, since most of my sims have high cooking skills and no fridge probs (yet), but it would be useful if you are having problems with the fridge!

I had this problem last night too.
I had a Maxis fridge, no diagonal walls and both sims got it.
No counters needed cleaning.
I fixed whatever could be fixed with the lot debugger, nothing changed.
On the stove I can sometimes choose serve/have dinner but this disappears from the queue immediately.
Check food levels does not help at all.
I sold the fridge, bought another different one, problem solved for only a short time.

Now it is the same again. :'(

I have TwoJeff's hack and I will try tonight to take it out...

I had a similar problem with toilets and showers.  Two adult sims were using mobile phones when the kid couldn't go to the loo, so I think they have some kind of wierd effect like that.  Were any of your sims using mobile phones when the problem began?

They don't even have any mobile phones although they keep wishing for them. :)
I strongly suspect that the hack is the culprit as I didn 't have this problem before the hack and now I have it in several families although I only thoroughly tested the one family in the previous post.

Have you tried moving the family out, then back in again?

I've had similar problems where the game tells me the fridge is empty when it isn't, but buying more food has solved that, so you could always try ordering food, then hopefully when the sim puts the food in the fridge this will unblock whatever is causing the problem.  If the food doesn't get put in the fridge, then I think you are in trouble.

No, I want to try the hack first. If that doesn't work I will move them out then in again.
They just moved into the house anyway, and it was like that very quickly after. (New lot, noone had lived there before them).

Is it a house you built, or a Maxis one?

Er....Maxis. The Craftsman.
But I do have the same problem in houses that I built too.

Well, I must admit I've never had a problem with that particular house, but I do usually remodel the kitchen as it is so small.  In fact, I tend not to use separate kitchens except when the house is big enough to have a really large kitchen, abd I find houses that big don't play well, so I usually only put sims I've finished with for the time being into such a house.  Can I suggest that you get rid of the walls and make a kitchen diner at the back of the house? If you only have the kitchen on two walls, it might just solve your problem..

If not, thre is a "mini fridge" as part of 4ESF's kitchen4, which is actually the expensive fridge revamped.  Worth trying it to see if it works for you.

Thx! :)  Will try that after finishing the communal cleaning chore tonight.
Ah...the joys of living in a socialist country!

It's actually a gorgeous kitchen, very modern, with a cooker that is out in the middle of the room.  The cooker hood is amazing, you don't seem to need any other lights for the room to have a perfect roomscore!

I had this happen recently with Leo Depiesse in a house that, admittedly, has a couple diagonal doors. I made him study Cooking for a very brief period, and the menu items came back.

I tend to think that anything related to food, like, as you say, studying cooking, can clear the blockage somehow.

Sure enough, I took out the SmartServe hack and everything is back to normal...
I'll have to pop over and tell twojeffs about this in case he is not aware.

I took the smart-serve out as well, partly because of sims other than kids not being able to get snacks, which are useful if they are late getting up and need something quick before they go to work.  Also I found the food server was not cooking food for themselves.  I've now got the serve everyone hack in instead.  (I thought smart-serve was dizzy's.)

Are you using the latest version of smart-serve? It's up to 2e, you know.

No, I got 2d only a couple of days ago, from a link at VS, I think.  I'll try the new version, as I did like the way kids could get some cereal in the morning, or make lunch-meat sandwiches.  Thanks, dizzy.