Feed the baby somewhere else!

[sudaki]

This has been bugging me forever: when Sims "feed bottle to" a baby, they take the bottle out of the fridge, then stand directly in front of the fridge feeding it to baby, blissfully thwarting everyone else's attempts to eat. If they'd just take half a step in any direction....

Is there such a thing as a "shoving the baby-feeding moron out of the way" hack?

[J. M. Pescado]

It's never quite that simple. Kitchens are usually pretty small, and for a sim to go anywhere else tends to mean he'll probably end up blocking something else, unless he performs a dramatic relocation to some distant spot, which gets even more silly.

[Tgdrysix]

This has been bugging me forever: when Sims "feed bottle to" a baby, they take the bottle out of the fridge, then stand directly in front of the fridge feeding it to baby, blissfully thwarting everyone else's attempts to eat. If they'd just take half a step in any direction....

Is there such a thing as a "shoving the baby-feeding moron out of the way" hack?

Or how about a "Feed the baby somewhere else and put the dange bottle in the trash and not on the floor you moron! hack....that would make me blissfully happy and keep me from thinking bad thoughts about the offending sim! (You know like a thought bubble with a big red X over the stupid sim).

[BlueSoup]

Or how about a "Feed the baby somewhere else and put the dange bottle in the trash and not on the floor you moron! hack....that would make me blissfully happy and keep me from thinking bad thoughts about the offending sim! (You know like a thought bubble with a big red X over the stupid sim).

The baby controller (found in Pescado's section) has an option to disintegrate the baby bottles which is really cool.

[katemonster]

No way to make the sim get the bottle out and take it to the stupid baby, rather than the other way round?

[Zeljka]

It's never quite that simple. Kitchens are usually pretty small, and for a sim to go anywhere else tends to mean he'll probably end up blocking something else, unless he performs a dramatic relocation to some distant spot, which gets even more silly.

even if the parent just stepped one tile ahead of the fridge, that must be a fairly universal 'free spot'?

[Tgdrysix]

Or how about a "Feed the baby somewhere else and put the dange bottle in the trash and not on the floor you moron! hack....that would make me blissfully happy and keep me from thinking bad thoughts about the offending sim! (You know like a thought bubble with a big red X over the stupid sim).

The baby controller (found in Pescado's section) has an option to disintegrate the baby bottles which is really cool.

I keep looking at that but haven't gotten around to putting it in my hacks folder...other than the bottle thing I really don't have any other issues with the babies ....hey they pretty much just lie there anyway for the most part! That is until a stupid moron sim comes to pick it up to shove a bottle in it's mouth when it clearly just needs a diaper change .... hint hint it's the green cloud coming from the baby's butt that needs the attention....I thinks sims must be color blind and have their noses turned off....guess it's part of what keeping us going back to play....with the hope that one day that they (the sims) will actually do something they are suppose to do...I keep my fingers crossed everytime I fire up my game!

[RainbowTigress]

Inge's bottomless bottle is pretty cool too.  I just wish that the baby controller recognized it instead of sending the parents down 3 flights of stairs to the kitchen.  Then they could feed the baby right there in the nursery instead of standing in front of the fridge.  I like that with the smart milk dispenser, they bring the milk back to the toddler instead of dragging the kid with them.  I think that is because of the no smart milk drag hack, isn't it?  It's too bad that the mini fridge that came with Uni doesn't have baby bottles.  That would be perfect to stow in the nursery.  But then I'm afraid we'd have the same problem, because when I've put a cheap fridge in the nursery, the parents will still go down to the kitchen to get bottles, and everyone will pull food out of it and drag it down to the kitchen to fix!  Grrr!!!

[SaraMK]

I took care of this using a very sloppy hacking method. First, I downloaded Targa's SuperFridge (mini fridge with baby bottles) and made it so THE ONLY thing you could do with it was get a bottle out of it. The fridge goes in the nursery. Then I hacked the pie menus of all the other fridges so that you CAN'T get a bottle out of them. Problem solved.

I know hacking pie menu strings is just about the sloppiest type of hack, but so far it hasn't caused any problems.

[J. M. Pescado]

I took care of this using a very sloppy hacking method. First, I downloaded Targa's SuperFridge (mini fridge with baby bottles) and made it so THE ONLY thing you could do with it was get a bottle out of it. The fridge goes in the nursery. Then I hacked the pie menus of all the other fridges so that you CAN'T get a bottle out of them. Problem solved.

That last step wasn't really necessary, since the sims will preferentially target the closest fridge, which, if it's in the nursery, will be that one.

[RainbowTigress]

I would like something like this.  Would you be willing to share, SaraMK?

[TreyNutz]

I took care of this using a very sloppy hacking method. First, I downloaded Targa's SuperFridge (mini fridge with baby bottles) and made it so THE ONLY thing you could do with it was get a bottle out of it. The fridge goes in the nursery. Then I hacked the pie menus of all the other fridges so that you CAN'T get a bottle out of them. Problem solved.

That last step wasn't really necessary, since the sims will preferentially target the closest fridge, which, if it's in the nursery, will be that one.

If only that were true.  I've had sims bypass the nursery fridge to go down a flight of stairs to get a bottle from that fridge.  And the other one wasn't more expensive or anything.  I had to cancel and click on the frigde that was closer.

[cheriem]

I agree with Rainbow.

[gali]

I took care of this using a very sloppy hacking method. First, I downloaded Targa's SuperFridge (mini fridge with baby bottles) and made it so THE ONLY thing you could do with it was get a bottle out of it. The fridge goes in the nursery. Then I hacked the pie menus of all the other fridges so that you CAN'T get a bottle out of them. Problem solved.

That last step wasn't really necessary, since the sims will preferentially target the closest fridge, which, if it's in the nursery, will be that one.

That's what I am doing all the time. I put in the nursery one or two fridges, according to the number of the born babies, so the parents don't have to go to the kitchen, and block the fridge. Very comfortable, when you get twins.

[SaraMK]

I would like something like this.  Would you be willing to share, SaraMK?

I don't know how useful the fridges I made would be. They are not cloned objects. They replace the Maxis fridges, and you are not able to take bottles out of them AT ALL. Your sims can't do it, and you can't tell them to, because the option just isn't there. This works for me, since of course I'm the one who made them for my own use...

If you do want them, I can certainly upload them. They don't actually conflict with anything that I know of, except that there's a glitch if you attempt to bypass the bottle-ban by choosing "feed bottle" on a highchair and the only fridges available in the house are the ones that don't allow bottles to be taken out. You can still feed toddlers mush and serve them food, if they are in a high chair.

I don't think it would be right to upload Targa's fridge anywhere, but I can send the file privately or I can tell you how to alter it yourself to stop sims from being able to do anything else with it.

Download the fridge at http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=96010
Open it in SimPE.
On the left, choose the line called Pie Menu Functions.
From there you will see options for things like "Serve Meal" and "Have Desert."
Click on each one and you will see some checkboxes for things like "visitor," "adult," "elder," etc.
Uncheck them.
There's a small box on the right that is labeled "Autonomy," which has a number in it that starts with 0x.
If the number ends with 32, change it to 64.
After each change, click the Commit File button on the left.
Do this for everything except the lines that have "bottle" in the name, like "Get Bottle."
And "Restock." Don't touch that.
When finished with all of them, save the file.



If you use custom fridges more often than Maxis ones, then maybe it would make sense to make one of the custom fridges a bottle-banned fridge. That way the Maxis fridges would not be altered, and you could pick and choose which type of fridge (regular or bottle-banned) to use in which house. You would do it exactly the way I just explained, only this time you would only change the parts that deal with bottles. You could also change the GUID and have two copies of that fridge, one regular and one altered. I did that with Targa's fridge since I do like it the way Targa made it.

EDIT: saw an error (in bold now).

[ZephyrZodiac]

If you have a fridge in the nursery and always tell your sim to feed the baby from that fridge, and cancel any autonomous baby feeding, that should solve the problem!  Or, if the kitchen is big enough, simply have two fridges there.  One big advantage of having two expensive fridges in the kitchen is you don't have to restock them so often!

Sometimes, in a fairly wealthy family house, I have a barbecue area which includes a fridge.  Of course, sims will traipse out there in order to get themselves a meal, but at least it's available if the other is being blocked!

[SaraMK]

Sometimes, in a fairly wealthy family house, I have a barbecue area which includes a fridge.  Of course, sims will traipse out there in order to get themselves a meal, but at least it's available if the other is being blocked!

Ha! Thanks for reminding me. I had been meaning to see if I could clone a fridge and make it Grill Only, and completely forgot to do it. LOL.

[RainbowTigress]

Thanks, SaraMK.  This looks interesting.  I will try messing around with it when I finish my current project.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Hey, I like that idea!

I just wish someone would come up with a foolproof way of getting your sims to serve grilled food OUTSIDE!  Really annoys me when they trek back and forth tho the dining roo(At least in Sims 1 your sims could eat anywhere on the lot and still chat to each other, unrealistic but good for social!

[Hairfish]

A realistic hack (or patch by Maxis) would have Sims get the bottle from the fridge, then take the baby to the nearest chair, sit down, and THEN feed the baby. Sims carry plates, and books and newspapers to chairs and sit down. Why not babies? Hell, they even do the crossword sitting down, with no table.

I doubt that whomever wrote that bit of programming ever actually fed a baby. I never fed my kids standing up when they were babies. Even the bottle-fed one. 

[Kristalrose]

Amen, Hairfish!! 

A friend of mine and I were brainstorming on another board about having a "Family" themed EP.  One of the things we suggested was to be able to feed the baby in a rocking chair.

We also wanted more toys that built skills, more interactions between parents and infant/toddler/child, and more styles of clothing and nurseries.

And I want a million dollars, but that's not happening, either. 

I thought of an interaction last night while playing UNI.  I had a graduation party and invited the entire clan, including young cousins.  The four cousins began to play "cops and robbers" and "tag" in the middle of a crowded living room.  With four roudy children running about, I thought to myself, "I wish I could take one of the parents and click on a child and have "Scold" or something like that.  To be realistic, the parent would then walk over, grab their child by the hand, scruff of the neck, ear, whatever, and then kneel down to their level and appear to say, though gritted teeth, "Settle your hind-end down right now, young man, or I'm going to give you a major spanking, comprende?"

Yeah, okay, not that I've ever had to do that to one of my angels before.   

[Swiftgold]

I found my old Sims 2 preview disc that came with Makin' Magic (though it wasn't the one I'd seen the tattle-on-cheating thing) - and they weren't actual game movies of course, but I noticed that just about all those promo animations mixed in with the game footage featured someone sitting with a baby or toddler. Soo unfair, Maxis. As much as I love what we can do in TS2 that I had to beg for hacks for in TS1 ("Do you want to have a baby" with a visitor!), some things make it all too apparent that it's a matter of 'docking' and 'object interaction' instead of a feeling of personality and life.

[Hairfish]

I bought the Holiday pack largely because I thought Toddlers and/or Children would be able to sit in Santa's lap. No such luck; they'd fall off every time he got up to pee.

[RainbowTigress]

These sound like great ideas.  I would love something like this.  The toddlers are so cute and I hate it when they have to grow up.  The kids just aren't as cute to me.  But there isn't enough parents can do with toddlers.  Except for playing in the toilet, toddlers really don't get into much trouble.  They aren't that much trouble to take care of, unlike real toddlers.  They never pull things off shelves or open cabinet doors and pull out all the pots and pans.  That's why you could leave toddlers at home by themselves in the Sims, if you have a social worker hack.  Nothing bad is going to happen to them.  I have Inge's bottomless bottle, and if they are potty trained, they are just fine.  Even if they mess in the diaper, they cry, but they are fine until the parents come home. 

Even teens don't seem to do anything bad except for sneaking out, and they get scolded if they get caught, but that's about it.  I quickly learned that the setup in the Pleasant house was only a perception, the way Maxis had preconfigured it to happen, and not the norm.  It is possible for Lilith and Angela to get along if you know how to get them talking.  It is hard because Maxis only gave them one or two common interests, but in regular gameplay, a situation like that is not likely to occur unless you force it to happen.  Otherwise everyone always gets along with everyone else for the most part.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I found similar Maxis intervention in Veronaville, where any number of Capps and Montys were shown as "Family" to either each other or one of the summerdreams!  For ages I had real problems with poor Kent Capp and Bianca Monty - they were fine at first, got engaged, woohoo'd etc. but then I got Kent to propose marriage, and both froze.  Tried three times, same problem.  Then decided to try playing them as unmarried, but  now they kept jumping out of bed at the hint of a romantic interaction, couldn't flirt or anything!  Checked in simPE, and they were flagged as related to nearly every darn sim in the game, including each other.  Once I removed the flags, they were fine, got married and finally had a baby (although there were problems with that too!)

And I now want to know why every darn sim in the game gets a lightning bolt for either Oberon or Titania!  Guess I need to check their turn-ons!