More Awesome Than You!

After playing a while, I have come to the conclusion that we need a "dogs stay off"  catbed and a "cats stay off" dogbed. I had it set up for dogs to sleep outside and cats to sleep inside (small house -- no room for both inside). But there was no way to keep dogs outdoors and cats indoors. They randomly chose beds in etiher place.

Hrm... sounds like a job for twojeffs Smart Beds. A Smart Beds the sequel! You could call it Smart Pet Beds or Son Pet of Smart Beds. Hehe. :D

Ste

By the weekend there should be an editable TTAB 54...

But what about assignable pet beds? Perhaps someone oh, someone who has made assignable beds in the past, can make those.  ;D

Bed Nazi For Pets?

Sounds good to me, keeps pets from getting attacked by each other for daring to sleep in their beds.

The whole pet object ownership system needs to be redone. What I huge pile of doodoo.

*twojeffs lifts leg on EA/Maxis.

You can say that, again. I have four dishes of food, that I keep full all the time. But my pets sink into the floor next to the dish currently in use, rather than go to one of the other available food dishes to eat. Wouldn't you think they should be coded to each own a unique dish?

Oh, well, if they are sunk into the floor, at least they are not yelling at me about wanting to use an object already in use .... ::)

[I only have pet approved mods in my game, so I don't think it's a mod. Has anyone discovered the cause for the sinking? I've seen it mentioned, but I don't remember it being identified.]

Has anyone tried doing the controlpets cheat on Inge's assignable beds and then seeing if they can be assigned to pets? They may not let pets interact with them since they are based on pre-Pets beds, but perhaps they can be run through Jfade's converter program in Peasantry?

Unfortunately, since Inge's beds probably use a custom pie menu option for the assigning of a bed, my program would break them. It should only be used on regular custom objects, as any objects with special behaviors will be broken by it. :(

There would be a lot of things to think of in making assignable pet beds, like adding to the attribute count as the owner ID is held in an attribute.  ISTR I also use the NID to identify the neighbour, and I don't think Pets have a number in the NID continuum I think there is another field for Pet ID.   The same type of coding could be used, but it would have to be tailored to the pet beds seperately.   Also it would be more practical to have a human sim selected to assign the pet, leaving the pets to simply test their owner ID against the object at the time of choosing an interaction.

It won't be easy to add this method to the pet beds until we can edit the menus properly.  I am strongly encouraging Peter to get this working over the coming weekend!  :)

That sounds like the way real cats and dogs act. Or to be specific, the dogs choose whichever beds the cats deign to leave for them.

I did notice that pets sometimes favor certain beds, I guess like regular sims do. I have one cat who always goes to this (human) bed on the 3rd floor, even though there are ones on the 2nd floor and one in the basement that are closer. One of the 2nd floor beds has higher energy and comfort than the 3rd floor one too.

It might have something to do with the fact that I once praised her for sleeping on a human bed when she used that 3rd floor one. Or maybe she just likes it. *shrug*

Now *that* is interesting. I think I did praise one pet for sleeping in the pet bed they all seem to prefer. Hmmm. Maybe I'll delete that bed, place a couple in new spots and try praising different pets for sleeping in different beds (using controlpets on to tell them to sleep in different beds). If that helps solve the problem, it would be way too easy. LOL

Cats sleeping in separate beds from humans is silly anyway. Actually, in my family, dogs sleep in human beds too  :P. In Pets, does a cat or dog sleeping in a bed prevent a human from sleeping in the same bed, or what? Because that is silly, unless it's a very large dog.

Single bed, yes, double bed, sorta. One one sim can sleep in the bed if a pet has taken over one side.

I agree. I just let mine sleep on the beds. When I did live with cats that's what they did anyway.

Besides, even if you buy them a pet bed, they'd rather sleep in a box or an open drawer than use the pet bed anyway.

I do think they cats should use the sofa and bay windows a little more than they do currently. I know our animals were ALWAYS lounging on the chairs and sofas and windowsills, and on the radiators in the winter time. ;) I feel like the sim pets don't really use the furniture for lounging that much. At least mine don't.

Oh and I agree. It's silly that a tiny cat or chihuahua takes up a whole side of the bed. ::)

I would prefer that dogs stay off the human beds entirely.  Dog are stinky.  Phew.  :P

My dad always had to sleep on the sofa downstairs for years because the dogs HAD to sleep with him and if he tried to stay in the bedroom and shut the door the damned dogs with scratch and bark and whine at the door all night.

I can relate to that.  One of my cats used to sleep with me, but he decided that the whole queen size bed was his.  He would flake out on it all stretched out in the middle of the bed.  I couldn't sleep because he kept pushing me and what not. 

He cried and clawed at my door for about two weeks after I booted him and closed the door.  He finally gave up.  :D

I think the problem with the # of occupants in a bed, or any object for that matter, has to do with the limitation of how slots work in the game. As far as I can tell, most everything is sort of an object based "binary" interaction, that is to say that things sort of have a one to one relationship. Floor space is separated into a grid of squares, and each square can pretty much hold one object and four walls along the edges of that tile. You might be able to put other objects that seem to occupy that same tile, but really that object is most likely interacting with one of the walls. You might be able to put another object like say a ceiling light, but again that object is really interacting with the ceiling tile.

Then, each object themselves can seemingly at most, interact with one other object, depending on what that object is to begin with. Like a surface can allow an object to rest on it in a passive manner. In turn, that object can be actively interacted with another object, i.e. a sim, since the game treats all sims as objects. With beds, afaik, there are two slots, so you can only have at most two sims on a bed. So you can't have threesomes and you can't have pets sleeping on a double bed that is already occupied by two sims. It may be unrealistic, but hey at least they actually allowed pets to sleep on beds period, which I'm quite suprised Maxis EA went that far. :P

Objects can facilitate the interaction between two objects in this way. In my limited understanding, socials spawn hidden objects that facilitate the interaction between sims, determining the outcome, adjusting the relationship as appropriate, and triggering other events, such as jealousy or furiousness. Other sims don't actually Witness other events happening, but rather react to things because a social is creating yet another object that is an emitter. Emitters kind of broadcast in a general area to the sims around, saying hey, check out this event, you might be jealous or furious or whatever because of it. This is sort of why some sims might not react to the event or have a delayed reaction. If a sim was otherwise preoccupied at the time of the event, interacting with some other object, because sims can pretty much only interact with one object at a time (or several objects as facilitated through one object), there is sort of a "window of opportunity" for them to react to something. If that window passes by, they might ignore events all together, unless an emitter is strong enough or persistent enough that it either overrides whatever interaction they are currently locked into or alerts the sim about the event once they complete that interaction, even after the initial event has long since completed. That's why you may see sims run over to public woohoo even after the particpants have left the area. :P

Anyways, it might even be possible for them to enable multiple docking/stacking of sim objects, but they would probably have to add new types of slots on sims, and create different types of mesh models that allow for interlocking between sims. Like the way a bed allows for two sims to spoon, or the way a couch or hot tub allows for two sims to cuddle. Additionally, since sims are objects, they also have slots, which allow for the occupation of other objects such as remotes, books, and hats. If they had thought of it, they could have made pets sort of be able to interlock with each other to cuddle and/or form piles. But that would probably require too much work or too much of an overhaul of the game engine. *shrugs* Or maybe they just didn't have time to implement it. Who knows? As it stands, I don't think it would be possible to have more than objects interacting with each other without adding slots and models and what not. You may be able to force sims to overlap, say using cheats like moveobjects on and what not, which pretty much overrides the sims type of "collision detection" but this collision detection isn't quite as sophisticated as say in most action video games, where two bodies touching kind of forces one or the other or both to move appropriately. The "collision detection" in the sims mostly just serves as a visual correction, to prevent sims from clipping through things or overlapping in ways not intended. :P

Anyhew, enough of my non-sensical, amateurish, babblign analysis. Heh. We used to let our dog sleep on the bed all the time. Even if we kicked him off the bed, he'd lie next to bed for a while, but by morning you could usually find him back on the bed snuggling next to us or by our feet or where ever he managed to find space. Heheh. But we had our ways of getting rid of him. All we had to do was get um really snuggly ourselves and that was pretty much his cue to leave the room. At least he respected our privacy that way.  Hehe. He was a very smart dog and we miss him a lot. If I ever get around to it, I'll probably make a sim version and post it. :D

Ste

Woah, I think that post might set a new record for post length - even for you. ;)

Can't you just put the dogs outside, the cats inside, and then lock the exterior door(s) to disallow all pets? As long as you have enough pet beds, food dishes, etc. in the right places, this should work.

There is another thread about door locks that don't work. So, no, that doesn't seem to be an entirely feasible solution.

It's easy to make a dog or cat only bed already, just clone one and put a species test in the test BHAV.  Soon I hope (hurry up Peter!) it will be as simple as putting zeroes in the cat or dog columns of the TTAB.

Ohhh, Inge, you give me hope! I'll be looking forward to your handiwork as soon as the tools are available.    :D

I've made a reservable dog/cat basket over at dinnerbell now

*Hears the bell ringing and runs to come and get it*  ;D

Yes! Thank you, thank you!!!