queue interrupts some tasks, why, can it be fixed?

[verdaeni]

ive noticed that when someone is taking out the trash or cleaning up dishes, if you queue something else, instead of sensibly letting them finish the task and then perform the next,  they drop the trash or dish and rush off.  its very annoying, especially if the trash is unnoticed outside and then brings cockroaches.

sigh, im trying to reload old favorite hacks and now my pets are resetting with motive out of limit.  i have to take some out now..  i wish those stupid logs would actually tell me WHAT subprocess died.  on the rare occasion they actually have, but mostly i just a stack trace i cant read without the code.. which i couldnt on a stupid pc and not a unix machine anyway.

[cwykes]

If they were autonomous actions, they should drop out onless the Sim is in the final stage of the action and using the sink or bin.  I guess you're saying, you queued them and they still drop out.  All I can say is that if I've put those two in the queue, they don't drop out in my game (base+OFB) or not that I've noticed.  However one of the social wants drops out in my game and always has.  It hangs the queue for a moment and just drops out.  I've lived with it so long, I can't even remember which one it is!

[verdaeni]

okay i see what you mean about manual or autonomous.  but wait, even when the game gets them playing punchyoupunchme, it doesnt drop out when i queue something else.  i remember because im always having to kill it.  im pretty sure i have to kill the tv watching too.  the trash one is so annoying too because it takes them so long to finish taking the trash outside and i have to wait wait wait to queue anything up.

[Ness]

use macro clean?

[verdaeni]

i dont know what that is.  can you explain please?  does it make my drain run faster?

[idtaminger]

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,208.0.html

Basically you queue up macro clean and they clean up all that needs to be cleaned on the lot. Very useful. In my experience they tend to go to the counters and sinks and things first, though. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have the plates spewing toxic fumes cleaned up first. Kinda kills the atmosphere...

[dizzy]

The real problem is that the game doesn't distinguish between a user-level priority task and a true emergency-level priority task (which should be higher). For example, if the sim is on fire, they really shouldn't be cleaning dishes or carrying garbage in a non-interruptible fashion. Unfortunately, fire has the same priority as a player-queued command.

Basically, this is a design flaw that has been in the game since the base Sims 1.

[miros]

There's a Macro->Concentrate on the Macrotastics hack.  If you do want them to finish up what they're doing before doing what you told them, maybe that would let them finish?

[J. M. Pescado]

Being *ON* fire has a higher priority than user-commands, but the problem is, a sim can only halt his present action at specifically designated abortable points in the action. He can't simply stop in the middle of something. Note how a sim always has to carefully put all the chess pieces away, instead of simply skipping that and aborting.

[Ivy]

Speaking of chess, is it just my game but why is it that when two people play chess, you can hear them talking, but their mouths don't move?

I don't know when it started happening, but it's been that way for a long while now, and I have no idea why...

[jsalemi]

It's always been that way (at least since NL), but you're not supposed to see it -- unless of course you have a camera mod that lets you zoom in real close.

[syberspunk]

I've noticed something about macrotastic options. I had to completely reformat my machine this weekend. It may possibly still be a hack conflict... although with what, I'm not sure. However, as I mentioned in chat, sometimes when I queue things with macrotastics, the last option I queued stomps all over the other ones. At least this seemed to be what was happening before I reformatted. After, I noticed that I was able to queue things up with macrotastics and it seemed to stay on queue. I thought my problem magically vanished. However...

I noticed the options falling out of queue, again. I did a little testing, and it seems that if I pause the game and queue up several actions at a time (i.e. eat, use bathroom, kick stuff) there is no queue stomppage. However... if I leave the game running, and I queue several options in a row while game is in play, I get stomppage and whatever I queued last is the only action that my sim performs. I do play with Free Will on. I am wondering if anyone else has this, or if it may possibly be hack conflict related. I do not remember this happening before. I was pretty sure I could queue things up while my game is in play.

Anyways, now that I've completely reformatted, I can't imagine this being a result of a borked installation, since I basically have a completely new install. I guess I will make a separate account without any hacks except for macrotastic related ones, and see if the problem still persists. But I was curious if anyone experienced this so perhaps I can at least narrow down what hack(s) may potentially be conflicting. FYI, this doesn't really happen with regular interactions that I queue up manually. It just seems to be isolated to macrotastic ones.

Ste

[verdaeni]

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,208.0.html

Basically you queue up macro clean and they clean up all that needs to be cleaned on the lot. Very useful. In my experience they tend to go to the counters and sinks and things first, though. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have the plates spewing toxic fumes cleaned up first. Kinda kills the atmosphere...

oh oh, i get it now.   thank you.   yes ive used macrostatistics clean before.  i stopped using it because i just use the testing cheats to heighten my sims clean levels.   and when i'd have someone clean, the whole computer would hum and the disk would spin, and no one else seemed to have any cpu time until it was done.  i might have to start using it for my robot 'servants'  though.  i had TWO  for the richguy whatshisname in bluewater village or whatever its called. sorry since my diaphram was mostly paralzyed i have low O2 and i can hardly remember any names now.  landgrab, i guess it was.  well my two robots didnt want to clean at all.  they'd spend all day chatting,  or maybe run out and pick weeds while i had filthy dishes on the counter.  then they'd start goofing off again...  i put in two or three other robots but they didnt seem any better.  i miss the sims1 robot, now that was a robot.  if only we had the butler back too.  i tried the dma servants but they didnt seem that good either. 

[jsalemi]

Try the Christianlov All-in-one NPCs; they're a lot more configurable and a whole sight smarter than the DMA ones.  I have the DMA ones in my game, but I pretty much only use the woohoo sims to set up bordellos, and every lot gets the DMA Transporter because I love the caller ID function.

Anyway, you can checkout Christianlov's NPCs here: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=62777

[notveryawesome]

The reason why the servos at the Landgraab house don't do much cleaning is because Malcolm Landgraab is a slob, and the servo takes on the characteristics of whoever initiates it. That's why I only have neat sims initiate servos.

I also find the queue interruption annoying. Some tasks don't get aborted, but others, like taking out the trash, seem to get stomped even if they're user-directed. I've learned to just wait until sims are finished doing these things before queueing other actions.

[Ivy]

It's always been that way (at least since NL), but you're not supposed to see it -- unless of course you have a camera mod that lets you zoom in real close.

*blink* *blink*

Doesn't everyone have a camera mod these days???

lol

Thanks for letting me know.  Yes, I do have a zoomer of a camera mod (a camera mod + Ivy tweaks on top of it...lol).  Didn't realize that was the root cause of not seeing the animations though.  How very odd, I really hate it when that happens...they must be dandy ventriloquists is all I have to say!

I can't imagine not playing with the cameras modded.  The default camera is lacking on so many levels. 

[jsalemi]

I can't imagine not playing with the cameras modded.  The default camera is lacking on so many levels. 

You got that right...

[miros]

<snip>they must be dandy ventriloquists is all I have to say!<snip>

Maybe they're talking out of their butts?  Kind of makes sense because that's where they carry all their accessories...

[jrd]

Accessories are kept in Hammer Space.