Bathroom Controller: In Soviet Russia, Bathroom Uses You!

[RainbowTigress]

That sounds exactly like the problem I was having with NL when JM updated BUY and Macrotastics.  It shouldn't be happening with the latest version though, because I was using it before I installed OFB. 

[Magicmoon]

Well, I can't reproduce it either in a vanilla game running just the 2 items. So I'm going to have to look harder.

I added marriage traditional, anti redundancy, aspertweak, the last restaraunt bar fix, SS hack, and no 20k handout.  And upgraded Macrotastics on the 22nd.

Then I ran the game, but just played one lot. The 2 adults had 7 children and they kept getting stuck in the bathroom. I have one huge bathroom with no privacy installed. Several very neat sims were trying to clean bathroom messes as soon as a previous sim got done using a facility, and several were using the bathroom.

One sim had been stuck for quite awhile. There were so many icons next to his name that it took me close to 2 minutes just to cancel all of them out. I didn't know that many could even queue like that! The boy was standing in front of the toilet, his path wasn't currently blocked and he couldn't move until all the icons were canceled. Several other sims got stuck in the bathroom similarly, but I caught them quick enough not to have to cancel more than 20 icons.

After that, every time I switched to another sim, instead of their queue being up in the left corner as usual, the queued item would start at the right side of the screen and zip across to the left until it landed where it usually sits.

I quit the game without seeing if other lots were affected. I had played this lot before with this family without bathroom problems.

Then today I got the latest BUY today and ran the game. The game crashed when the sims tried to wake.

I'm going to poke around and see if I can find the problem. I'll try some other lots.

[J. M. Pescado]

Could just be a freak incident. The game sometimes just crashes for the heck of it.

[Magicmoon]

I'm narrowing it down. It is crashing on every lot after about 15 seconds of gameplay.

At the moment, the suspicious mods are romance mod, CBoy easel fix, & phonehack (I forgot I just updated these because they were in a different folder).

I've got most of the items added back into the game. A few more game loads and I should have it pinpointed.

[J. M. Pescado]

I'm going to preemptively update a possible random suspect in the romance mod right now, while fixing a different issue, as a possible workaround for the ongoing unexplainable NL engine glitch.

[Magicmoon]

I pinpointed it and it was definately the Romance mod. It even crashes a completely vanilla game.

I just downloaded the new one from the Index. Thank you.

[jsalemi]

I noticed some oddities in the new version of this when I was playing last night.  First, it didn't kick a kid out of the bathroom when she autonomously went in to play in the tub -- prior versions used to do that. I didn't have any neat sims try to go in and autonomously clean the tub this time, so I don't know if that kick-out function is still working.

It also seemed to have some problems with multi-stall bathrooms.  I was playing a dorm, and even though there's a controller in each stall and the showers are in the same room (it was the 9 room one level u-shaped dorm), it sometimes wouldn't let more than one sim into the bathroom at a time. From what I could observe, it always kicked other sims out of the bathroom and made them wait when one sim went to take a shower.  If a sim was on the toilet, it usually let another sim in to use the other stall.

I'll be playing a different dorm later today with a similar setup, so I'll check to see if the pattern holds.

[Magicmoon]

I noticed some oddities in the new version of this when I was playing last night.  First, it didn't kick a kid out of the bathroom when she autonomously went in to play in the tub -- prior versions used to do that. I didn't have any neat sims try to go in and autonomously clean the tub this time, so I don't know if that kick-out function is still working.

Kids have always (since I've been using BUY) been able to clean in the BR without being kicked, although adults were always kicked for trying to clean. I haven't seen much autonomous playing with bathtubs lately, but usually the kids get by with that too. But I actually like that. In fact, I would rather adults didn't get kicked for cleaning either because when they get kicked, they keep going back in there over and over trying to clean, until I tell them to do something else. But I play the mod the way it comes so allowing kids to clean is a nice compromise. (I didn't have any autonomous cleaning yesterday either so I don't know how that is going.)

It also seemed to have some problems with multi-stall bathrooms. 
...it sometimes wouldn't let more than one sim into the bathroom at a time.

I saw that in several houses yesterday. I was tracking down a different problem, so didn't worry too much. I have No Privacy bathroom and use one BUY controller for every toilet/shower duo.  So far this has worked great for me. But yesterday only one sim was being controlled in the bathroom at a time and the others were made to wait outside the door even though there were plenty of available facilities in the bathroom.

[jsalemi]

Well, up until last night I never had a kid successfully play in the tub on their own -- they've always been kicked out (it of course worked if you directed them to do it).  And I have been using BUY since I discovered this place in January.  I don't mind it, actually, though I see where it could be a problem in a house that only has one bathroom. But if it interferes with other sims using the bathroom, then I can continue to live without it as an autonomous behavior, and send them off to kick stuff instead.

But I have seen the 'get stuck in loop trying to clean' behavior before.  Though I would like to see neat sims satisfy their OCD, I usually just put them on macro/clean when they get into that loop, and everyone is happy.


Update: Tried replacing the BUY controllers in the dorm bathrooms, and it didn't have any effect.  As long as one sim is taking a shower, other sims get kicked out and forced to wait.

[RainbowTigress]

Previously, I've seen high neatness kids be able to go in and clean the bathtub without getting kicked out while older sims would get kicked out if they attempted this.  Perhaps this is because children aren't allowed to macro clean?  Hopefully Pescado can shed some light on this. 

I use TJ's no playing in bathtub mod, so I don't ever see that behavior.

[jsalemi]

No, it's still kicking out anyone who's trying to autonomously clean the tub, so that part is still working. I confirmed in another dorm that it kicks out anyone else in the bathroom when someone uses a communal shower.  Two sims using stalls at the same time seem to be ok.

Edit: OTOH, it looks like the 'kick sleeping dormies out of the bathroom' code is working fine.  I had 2 or 3 dormies pass out in the communal showers, and they all got up moments later and left.  Good stuff!

[GayJohnScarritt]

I also would like to know the proper set-up of BUY for that particular Dorm bathroom/shower combo.   It's a 3-stall unisex toilet with 2-double showers (one male, one female) in adjacent rooms.  You have to go thru the toilet section to get to the showers.   I've tried with 1 BUY for each toilet, 1 in each shower room, all set to room radius.   Tried with 2 BUY in each shower room.  Tried with a 10 radius.   I either get only one sim able to use the facilites if in the shower,  or multiple sims using the toilets but the females unable to shower.  (Had put a BUY in the male shower first, if that makes a difference).  I have the showers set to exclude the opposite sex in each section.  So far, i've yet to find the perfect set-up.

[J. M. Pescado]

I don't think such a setup works. If you're makin a Unisex bathroom, where the BUY controllers will thus be in that bathroom, the shower areas must be similarly unisex, especially in radial mode, or the controller will try to punt a sim through an inaccessible door.

[Kyna]

A while back I had a lot of trouble working out how to redesign the bathrooms in the Maxis dorms to suit BUY.  Moving walls, moving the showers and toilets around, etc.  Testing it in play, redesigning again, rinse and repeat.  Until the very simple answer occurred to me ... now I just take the wall out so the showers are in the same room as the toilets.  Additionally, sometimes the only way to get it to work is to set the bathroom to accept both genders, and replace the gender specific doors with regular doors.

[GayJohnScarritt]

Thank you, that fixed the problem with that particular Maxis dorm, now if i can just stop them from passing out from lack of sleep everywhere.   lol.   Everytime i send my kids off to Univ, i suddently remember why i hate those dorms and have them move into rental homes of thier own as soon as they have enough money.   

[jsalemi]

Thank you, that fixed the problem with that particular Maxis dorm, now if i can just stop them from passing out from lack of sleep everywhere. 

Sounds like you have Pescado's 'nouniprotect' hack in your game.  Take it out and the dormies will behave like normal, and never pass out anywhere.

[J. M. Pescado]

Sounds like you have Pescado's 'nouniprotect' hack in your game.  Take it out and the dormies will behave like normal, and never pass out anywhere.

I dunno if the behavior that results without it is "normal". Having them invulnerably play the instruments for 4 days nonstop is not "normal". Their behavior becomes downright weird like that.

[dizzy]

The alternative is for dormies to drop dead every now and then, and to get puddles of urine and passed-out dormies all over the place nearly all the time. This will come in handy in my extremely goth and morbid neighborhoods, but not in my current one (where I'm testing out my 4 story dorm equipped with elevators).

[jsalemi]

Sounds like you have Pescado's 'nouniprotect' hack in your game.  Take it out and the dormies will behave like normal, and never pass out anywhere.

I dunno if the behavior that results without it is "normal". Having them invulnerably play the instruments for 4 days nonstop is not "normal". Their behavior becomes downright weird like that.

Well, 'normal' for Maxis original programming, anyway.   I can't imagine playing uni without it now...

[RainbowTigress]

Why won't the dormies go sleep in their own beds?  Why do they always try to sleep in my sims' beds?  If my sims leave their door unlocked (because they invited another sim in to woohoo), the sleep clock will keep sending them to the mailbox until they pass out on the sidewalk or inside the front door.  If they lock the door, they still keep passing out everywhere.  I tried putting stereos outside and in the kitchen and in the hall, but they still keep passing out on the floor instead of going to their room and sleeping.    And when they aren't passing out everywhere, they stand in front of the stereos dancing.  I finally ended up taking out nouniprotect.  I didn't give my sims instruments at the dorm anyway.  I just wanted the dormies to stay out of my sims way until they moved out.  And make enough friends to get into the Secret Society.

[Avalikia]

When I started using this mod, I also started using the "Vanishing Room" method that AncientSim mentioned in one of her posts.  Then I make dorms with regular doors, but use the OFB locks to mark the rooms that my playables are using for household only so that the dormies have to use other beds.  I've had no problems with dormies not being able to find a bed to sleep on using this method.

[RainbowTigress]

The dormies have beds in their rooms.  I don't understand why they don't use them. 

[dizzy]

Maxis disables the objects in a dormie's room. This makes it more of a "dorm" experience for the player, but it also means that the FBA() for dormies is essentially broken. So, by design, Maxis really cannot rely on the motive values of dormies nor can dormies behave in the normal way a sim would.

A more sophisticated approach would have been to make dormie objects simply disappear (like the Social Bunny) and allow the dorm controller a little more leeway for directing things like doing assignments, assigning bed ownership, etc.

[RainbowTigress]

Thanks for explaining that, dizzy.  I think I'll just leave out nouniprotect for now.  I don't play dorms that much anyway.

[Avalikia]

I suppose I should have explained myself more.  What I meant to say is that the dormies won't find their beds because they don't recognise the fact that there is a bed in their room when it vanishes.  That's why I was talking about the vanishing room thing, because it neatly lets you get around that problem.