Birthday Cakes: Horribly and Unexplainably Buggy?

[J. M. Pescado]

For no particular reason I can yet find, whenever I make use of a birthday cake, horrible things start happening: Sims begin to error (of no particular thing that makes any sense), skate around the lot when they move, and stand up while sitting in chairs and couches, clipping through the couch and rendering the couch inoperable until errored replaced.

When they try to pick up the cake, many times the entire cake plate simply disappears (with no error).

Anyone else encounter anything like this?

[Sandilou]

No! But I'm deeply concerned...are YOU asking for help?  The rest of us lipless wonders had best move away from our pcs before they explode.  There is no hope.

[schmoopee]

The only problems I have with the cake is when I try to age a baby to toddler. And that's more of a baby problem than a cake problem, I think?

[J. M. Pescado]

No! But I'm deeply concerned...are YOU asking for help?  The rest of us lipless wonders had best move away from our pcs before they explode.  There is no hope.

No, I'm asking if anyone else has experienced this particular problem. That way I know whether this is a real problem that people have actually seen, or just a bizarre quirk that specifically afflicts my system.

[reggikko]

I generally have no problems with birthday cakes and I use them for practically every age transition. Every now and then, the grow-up doesn't take for some reason and I have to repeat the process, but that's it. My regular practice is also to delete the cake afterwards with move_objects rather than have the Sims clean it up.

[cwieberdink]

I generally have no problems with birthday cakes and I use them for practically every age transition. Every now and then, the grow-up doesn't take for some reason and I have to repeat the process, but that's it. My regular practice is also to delete the cake afterwards with move_objects rather than have the Sims clean it up.

My problem with birthdays and cakes is that usually I'm trying to make sure everyone is all set for the transition, and the child is over in the corner, acting like they have sparkly ants in their pants and aging without me.     I need to get those bday parties started much earlier in the day.

Chris

[Ancient Sim]

The only odd behaviour I've noticed with the cake is that sometimes when I place it and click on it, the only option is "Clean Up".  I think that's more a problem with babies ageing to toddlers than anything else, seeing as that's when it happens.  Sometimes I need 3 cakes to get it to work.  And, of course, I am only using the cake in the first place because the stupid baby refuses to grow-up any other way.

As for this:

No! But I'm deeply concerned...are YOU asking for help?  The rest of us lipless wonders had best move away from our pcs before they explode.  There is no hope.

This is the second time I have seen the Lip Collector ask for help.  When it happens a third time I will think about worrying, because things that happen in threes are generally not good omens in my book.

[Syera]

I haven't used birthday cakes that much - mostly because I find them such a fuss - but I've never experienced a problem like that.

[gali]

I think your FFS Lot Debugger causes it. I have in my inventory, but when I put it outside, a lot of weird thing happen. One of them is non-stop rolling of the wish panel, and lose of one wish rectangle. When I put it back in the directory - all returns to be normal.  So I play with it "in and out".
Perhaps you chaeck it? It's very complicated mod, and can cause many weird consequences.

[SimsHost]

I've had quite a few anomolous incidents because of birthday cakes but I haven't seen a pattern to it yet.  There might be a pattern related to the infant-to-toddler transition and the teen-to-adult transition because that seems to be where I encounter these problems most often.

The glitches seem to occur between the initial noise-making and the action where the sim shakes a bit and then grows up.  That must be the point where the game is setting up whatever it sets up for the sim's next stage of life.

In the teen-to-adult transition, they fall out of love with their teenage lovers.  That's a clue that it might be a "too many sims" or "unknown sims" kind of problem because the game would have to be reviewing the list of people that the sims knows before it can change those relationships.

In the infant-to-toddler transition, the adults will quite often simply abort the action so that the infant doesn't grow up.  Then it's a Keystone Cops routine until finally somebody helps the child grow.  That might be related to waiting for the other sims to show up at the cake and make noise.

Based on my experience, I'd say that the Lot Debugger is not the smoking gun.  I have it in every house in my game, and in the past couple of weeks I've had a run of at least a hundred successful birthday cake sessions in a row, including more than a dozen infants. 

University precluded using the birthday cake for the teen-to-adult transition (because I always send them to college) so I don't have any recent data on that one.

[TreyNutz]

Nope.  I haven't had any such issues with the cake.  It's usually problematic because every sim has to watch when you use it - an issue I think you dealt with in your noswarm hack.  I used to have the whole household just sit on couches (no action queued), right before the birthday sim blew out the candles.

For infants, it's just difficult to age them.  I was using the tombstone of L and D (AGE baby option) to try and age 2 sets of infant twins, and it just wasn't happening.  Then I used the Make All Happy option on the mailbox and everything started to work like a charm.  Next time I have to age an infant I going to make sure the kid is as green as I can get 'em before using the cake.  I don't know if that will help, but it's worth a try, I think.

[jrd]

I haven't seen those problems, JM. The only issue with birthdays is the aging swarm, and the general bugginess of parties.
And I have just about all your released mods installed.

[reggikko]

For infants, it's just difficult to age them.  I was using the tombstone of L and D (AGE baby option) to try and age 2 sets of infant twins, and it just wasn't happening.  Then I used the Make All Happy option on the mailbox and everything started to work like a charm.  Next time I have to age an infant I going to make sure the kid is as green as I can get 'em before using the cake.  I don't know if that will help, but it's worth a try, I think.

One thing is that the infant won't age if it's about to soil its diaper. That is one constant which will cause the action to abort. Tired and/or hungry don't seem to affect it.

[SimsHost]

One thing is that the infant won't age if it's about to soil its diaper. That is one constant which will cause the action to abort. Tired and/or hungry don't seem to affect it.

Aha!  That would explain many of the infant-to-toddler anomalies I've encountered.  Lately I've been using the Testing Cheats to check up on the babies, especially just before their birthdays, which might explain my unusual string of successes.

[yetyak]

yetyak thanks reggikko for this helpful post 

I do seem to get a lot of "help with birthday" icons fading while the sim stands there with a smelly baby, now I know why.

[Sandilou]

I think your FFS Lot Debugger causes it. I have in my inventory, but when I put it outside, a lot of weird thing happen. One of them is non-stop rolling of the wish panel, and lose of one wish rectangle.

I have the constant rolling wants on lots with teens and mobile phones.  If someone uses the phone while their there it seems to set it off.  I'm not entirely sure whether the rolling stops when the mobile phone call ends.  I'm still monitoring this.  I thought it might be due to a clash of hacks; I have the inTeeminator installed as well.

[clem]

I have the constant rolling wants on lots with teens and mobile phones.  If someone uses the phone while their there it seems to set it off.  I'm not entirely sure whether the rolling stops when the mobile phone call ends.  I'm still monitoring this.  I thought it might be due to a clash of hacks; I have the inTeeminator installed as well.

Funny you should mention this--I had the Wants rerolling every hour in houses with the cell phones, and that was before I had any hacks at all. The hourly rolling goes away eventually, but I haven't paid attention to the pattern.

[PresentTense]

The only odd behaviour I've noticed with the cake is that sometimes when I place it and click on it, the only option is "Clean Up".  I think that's more a problem with babies ageing to toddlers than anything else, seeing as that's when it happens.  Sometimes I need 3 cakes to get it to work.  And, of course, I am only using the cake in the first place because the stupid baby refuses to grow-up any other way.

This happens to me too, not just with babies. Toddler to child seems to cause a lot of problems for me as well. I usually end up having to use the Insimenator to grow them up. 

[Darkstormyeve]

Oddly enough, I have problems with the Insimenator growing my sims up...it doesn't happen.

[fff]

I have random buggyness with my cakes - sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. When they don't, it usually means I end up with a bunch of Sims standing around looking at each other, nobody doing anything... but then all this happened before I installed the Awesomeness that is the Lot Debugger.

[dizzy]

I have seen lots of weird random bugginess in the game that simply goes away if you quit and restart the game. This is what I normally tell people to do.

My theory: Maxis coders rely far too heavily on unpredictable uninitialized variable values.

[nothingbutsims]

I have never had any problems using the birthday cakes - no quirks or oddities or anything strange.

[nenechell]

I have seen many of the issues that you have with Birthday cakes.  Including them disappearing or just being unclickable.  Most of the problems seem to occur with baby to toddler transitions, however, that is really the only time I use the cakes unless it is for a popularity sim.  Even with your noswarm hack, if I use the cake, they seem to wait forever for everyone to come watch the transition, and if everyone else has been cued to do something else, the transition seems to fall out of cue before everyone can get there.

I have never known whether it was the cake or the transition causing the problems, so I have never worried about it, but now that I know it is happeneing to you, perhaps it is something that will now get fixed.

Nenechell

[Now&Then]

I once, and only once, had the stand in the chair while sitting down thing. It was really werid. The sim was sitting at the dinning room table eating. Suddenly stood up, was frightened by a ghost. and then rather then sitting back down, he contined to eat as if he was sitting down. But in fact he was standing right in the center of the chair. Very odd. But I haven't seen it since then.
But than again, this is the same lot where I had the frightened by object thing going on, so it really didn't surprise me to see this happen.

[phyllis_p]

I use the birthday cake for almost every transition, whether I have a party or not, and have never encountered any of this.

Phyllis

For no particular reason I can yet find, whenever I make use of a birthday cake, horrible things start happening: Sims begin to error (of no particular thing that makes any sense), skate around the lot when they move, and stand up while sitting in chairs and couches, clipping through the couch and rendering the couch inoperable until errored replaced.

When they try to pick up the cake, many times the entire cake plate simply disappears (with no error).

Anyone else encounter anything like this?