More Awesome Than You!

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?

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.

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. :P

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

Ste

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.

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!  :P  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.

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.

...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  :P

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?

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.

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

That sounds like a personal problem to me, soldier.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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. :)

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

MTS2 Archive (http://www.modthesims2.com/archive/index.php/f-31.html)

Custom food disappears - bandaid patch (http://www.modthesims2.com/archive/index.php/t-127957.html)

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. :P 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

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. :)

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.

Thanks akatonbo. My googling skills are pretty deficient. :P


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.  :-\

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.

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)  :)

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. :P

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. :P

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. ;D 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

Not to mention that, aside from the fact that even having Macrotastics in all the time doesn't mean you have to use it, it's also quite possible to put the hack in, use it to get the information that Pescado wants, and then take it right back out again.

Thanks Syber for the detailed info about macrostatics.  The biggest household I ever have are with 4 Sims.  Right now all of them only have 2 in each house, it is my MATY hood that I just restarted to play with. 

So you probably guess by now that taking care of 2 Sims on a lot is pretty easy and if I would need a macro for managing 2 lazy Sims then Houston I would have a problem.  :P

Having said that, I will take the time to download macrostatic tonight (I am at work) and will try to figure out how does macro clean works so I can report to Pescado.

Reproducing the problem was pretty easy for me, once I knew how it happens, i've been able to reproduce the problem 3 times so far.  So I will see if with that macro in it will change anything or simply confirm the problem.

Well Pescado even with macro-clean the Sims did not clean-up the dirty plates.

I only put in macrostatics in my game to make sure there would be no hack conflict of any sort.

I loaded a lot of a Sim I knew had problem, clic on it, select in the macro menu the "clean" option, he clean everything in the house except the dirty dish which was left on the table.

I woke up the other Sim which did not have that problem, clic on it, select in the macro menu the "clean" option and he pick-up the plate right away and cleaned it up.

So there is definitely a problem.

Hope you can solve this one.  :-\

Hrm... that suxorz... did you try turning on debug mode and seeing if you get any error logs? I think all this confirms is that it isn't just a mouse clicking problem. I would try turning on debug mode and try:

hovering over the plate
clicking on the plate
hovering over the selected sim
clicking on the selected sim
clicking on the macro.../clean option with a problematic sim

If you still have the problem and no error logs... well I'm out of ideas. Pescado? :P

Ste

I always have boolprop testing cheats on when I play and it did not give me any error report.  I did mention that already in an older reply.  :P

I did exactly what you mention before you mention it many times with the same results. :(

thanks Syber for trying but there is really a problem in Maxis game.

Did you try to save Sims while they were eating on a downtown restaurant lots to see if it would happen in your game too?

that would be really useful if you could try this. :)

EDIT:  I think there is no error report because it is happening on community lot and it saving uncontrollable character files

The matter will be looked into once my computer is operable again.

Thanks Pescado I look forward for your reply or fix for that.

You could have the same Prob at Residential Lots. I had it happen pre OFB . I canceled a Sim while eating to greet the Welcomewagon after greeting told him to eat and exited the lot and saved. After a while played the same lot the Sim was unable to clean his dish after that.

Any luck in isolating the problem so far?

I have exactly the same problem, but it's only on one lot. The only thing different about this lot is that I used the roof slope cheat. I didn't play the Sim at all before it happened, she was just plunked onto a yard with a phone, but she was seen visiting various Nightlife community lots. When I finally built her a house and played her for a day, the dishes were uncleanable, unclickable, invisible to macrotastics. I tried selecting visiting Sims with Merola's mirror and telling them to clean, but they couldn't see the dishes either.

I haven't had MissDoh's problem, and I routinely have my sims leave community lots without paying any attention to whether other playable sims on the lot as visitors are eating or not. But I have had the occasional problem recently with dishes not being able to be cleaned, or even deleted with Move Objects on. What I have found is if I let the game run for a while, the dish becomes cleanable, which I know because a sim will go clean it up. I haven't done a controlled study of this, but it appears that in my game the problem is the result of the plate being "used," in that a sim has it in queue to clean even though it may not appear in as an action icon in the on-screen queue. At least once, the sim who eventually cleaned up the plate had been given the macro Clean instruction.

It was at times somewhat comical. Because the plates can be moved, just not deleted, I moved one of them across the street from the house to get it out of the way, and awhile later a sim that was macro cleaning went and got it. Another time, before I figured out what was happening, I deleted table or counter the plate was on, which got rid of the plate, but that turned out to be overkill.

As for MissDoh's problem, someone mentioned the possibility that the uncontrolled sims' states on the community lots were being saved and transferred back to their residential lots. It makes some sense that perhaps the sims who are eating are saved with the state of sitting and eating, or, alternatively, that  they are being saved with the state of "plate in use" so that when back home, they see the dirty plates as being in use. This is just a guess, though.   ::)

This does make sense since that problem never occur in my game to other sims than the one that were still eating when the controllable Sims left the community lot.

I get something like this from time to time, but I have no idea whether it's connected to community lots.  What happens is that a particular bowl (for some reason, it's usually a bowl) is totally invisible to everyone, including the maid.  When I click on it, I get the "no action" response and it can't be deleted.  Yet it continues to buzz and drive me crazy and I end-up having to move it to the far end of the lot or something.  I have one at the moment that is behaving like this.

As for your English, it's basically fine but I had to laugh at the thought of you doing your vacuuming with a mouse.  (You said "hoover" rather than "hover", which to me means cleaning the carpet).

I have had something similar, but seems connected to the plates rather than to the sims. They will buzz, etc but cannot be clicked on by sims. (I am not positive that I tried every sim on the lot though). It doesn't occur often, but when it does it is always after I have been downtown or when sims move out of a lot using Inge's Make objects stay at moveout shrub and new sims move in.

When I use burninator to get rid of them there are 3 things that get deleted...the food, the plate and if I remember correctly an invisible object.  (Put the plates on the floor before burninating or you lose your table too!)

I sometimes have that same problem with flowers that die. They can't be cleaned up or deleted. But when burninated it deletes the flowers, the rubbish pile, and an invisible object. Even when they can be cleaned up by a sim, it sometimes still leaves the invisible object behind that has to be burninated before another item can be placed in that spot.

Well, I just had one the othr night who couldn't clean up a plate and no one on the lot had been anywhere but work or school.  In other words, it wasn't a community lot problem.

She cleaned up other plates, but I had no options show up when I moused-over that plate.  When her husband woke up, he was able to clean it up with no problem.  (Option showed up.)

I didn't have macrotastics in at the time, but I have added it since, and like Syber said, it's more of a convenience than making your sims into automatons. 

A macro is something that you can set up in some programs that allows you to set up one keystroke or mouse click on a certain menu option and have it do several functions at once.  Like for paying bills, you normally click on the mailbox to get the mail, then wait for them to put it down, then click on the mail to pay the bills.  Macro..pay bills tells the sim to get the mail and when they put it down, they pick it back up and go back to the mailbox to pay the bills.  Saves you from having to watch the sim and wait for them to put the bills on the table.

And it they're doing something like cleaning or gardening and you need to stop them for some reason, you can stop it just like anything else in their queue.

Though to others this problem might appear for other reasons, I can assure you in my case it is directly related to downtown  community restaurant lots.  No sims of mine I've lost that abilitiy any other way so far.

All the sims used in that test hood were in bed except the one I send to a restaurant community lot.  In total after my original post I sent around 100 times my Sims to different restaurant downtown community lot.  98% of the Sims that were still eating when I left the coummunity lot, upon relaoding those residential lot, have lost the ability to clean-up plates and if the other sim living in the same lot did not go there or they were not still eating when I left still could clean it.  I had at least 50 sims in total stuck that way.  So my test is reliable.  This is happening weither or not I have mods in my game, I don't have any other cc than mods and a few hack objects.

There are probably other things creating cleaning bugs.

I am wondering if any of you tried to duplicate my testing.

EDIT:  I tried the option to "clean" in the macrostatics, the one affected on the comminuty lot ignored the plates.  The one that did not go clean it up.  I report about that in an ealier post.

Lol, glad I at least gave you a good laugh  ;D Hoover is a brand of vacuum cleaner so I understand my mistake... just 1 o Missdoh, just 1 o next time ;)

It has also happened to me on more than one occasion. Last night I was playing a lot and sent the sims downtown to two different restaurants. John Burb was at one and Jennifer Burb was at the other one. Jennifer Burb happens to be pregnant and almost ready to have the baby according to her size.  Today I went to the Burb's lot to play them a bit. John could NOT clean up any plates at all. After almost two sim days of playing, Jennifer had still not had the baby and John was forcing her to do all the clearing of plates...lol

I decided to use the lot debugger to 'force errors' to see if that would fix it. Jennifer's belly went down a size and John could once again clear plates. Soon her belly grew again and shortly after that she gave birth a new baby girl. I don't know what it is about seeing your other playable sims on community lots as unplayables, but something is certainly whacky with it.  :-\