Routing !!!

[Inge]

What is the matter with these ghastly pixel people?  I have a sim who insists on ignoring the door from the hall where he is standing into the kitchen where he wants to go.  He will go into the living room through the *same* type of door, then out through the living room french door, then in through the back door to the kitchen taking 20 mins instead of going straight into the kitchen the obvious way.   I could understand maybe if it was different doors with different route penalties, but at least one door of the same GUID is involved in both these journeys!

[lordrichter]

Yeah, routing sucks wind.

I have similar problems with bathrooms.  Sims will always choose the closest bathroom, but not necessarily the one that they can get to fastest.  They will ignore a bathroom 3 squares away, 3 steps away, and will tromp across the house a bathroom 2 squares away, but 20 steps away.  I also think they will see bathrooms above and below as preferred to "farther away" ones on the same floor.

Seems to me that at one time there was a fix for that and I had it installed, but apparently not anymore.

[J. M. Pescado]

Sim-pathfinding always has a tendency to be obstacle-ignoring. There may also be an invisible obstacle in the way that has a large routing penalty attached.

[Magicmoon]

I've also found that sometime the Sims don't particularly like the direction a door is facing. I had Sims in one house go out the kitchen door to the back porch to grill. But after the food was done, they would go around to the front of the house, routing through 2 other rooms to get back into the kitchen to put it on the counter.

Changing the way the door faced fixed the problem. I've looked over the area and can't figure out why though. Either way they should have been be able to navigate it.

[dizzy]

Route blockers don't always work the way you think they should. Inge, you should know that. 

[J. M. Pescado]

I've also found that sometime the Sims don't particularly like the direction a door is facing.

This can happen if the act of opening the door would cause the doorflap to block the passage. Sims do not understand how to pull doors, they can only push doors. Doors, for their part, seem indifferent to being pushed or pulled and can open in both directions, which is extremely unnatural if you think about it hard enough.

[ZiggyDoodle]

The maid at one of my lots always walks around the house and enters a back door leading into the master bedroom.  She leaves through the front door.  Everyone else enters the house through the front. 

[SaraMK]

In one of my houses I had to put a fence with no gate around the entire backyard, because for some idiotic reason sims insisted on walking out the backdoor and around the humongous pool to get to the carpool or school bus, even though the straightest and shortest path was out the freakin' front door!

I also had a house where sims who were sent to the garage from the second floor would go down the stairs, then the opposite way from where the door to the garage was, through the kitchen and through a bathroom, then back to the same hallway they had been in when they came down the stairs.... I deleted that house very quickly.

Anyway... routing is so screwy that in some houses I tend to give a lot of "Run here" commands before actually giving a command to do something or interract with an object.

[miros]

I just built a house where the Sim will insists on going through the garage to get outside instead of using the front door.

[Inge]

The sims just bring out the murderous instincts in me.  Just as I have managed to count to ten over some stubborn routing ritual they turn round and pull stupid faces at me.  It's the smirk that really does my head in.

In Sims 3, I want them to understand reward and punishment and learn from it.  I want them on their knees begging for mercy when I teach them they went the wrong way or into someone else's bed - and I want them to be grateful when I put the pool ladder back, not just go and do it again.

[jsalemi]

In Sims 3, I want them to understand reward and punishment and learn from it.  I want them on their knees begging for mercy when I teach them they went the wrong way or into someone else's bed - and I want them to be grateful when I put the pool ladder back, not just go and do it again.

Ah yes, the 'god syndrome'.

[dizzy]

In Sims 3, my wish is for Edith to be a bad dream. 

[eaglezero]

In Sims 3, I want them to understand reward and punishment and learn from it.  I want them on their knees begging for mercy when I teach them they went the wrong way or into someone else's bed - and I want them to be grateful when I put the pool ladder back, not just go and do it again.

Did you ever play any of the Creatures games? That was pretty much the entire basis of them. If your Norn (Or Grendel, or Ettin, or BONEY GRENDEL [which was by far the best species]) was good you scritched its head and if it was bad you could slap it. You could also type commands into a line and then if your Norn did what you wanted it to do, you rewarded it. If you didn't like your Norn, you could shoot it up with arsenic and it would die. Or you could let a Grendel kill it. Some Norns were really effing stupid, but eventually you breed all the stupid genes out and have smart Norns. Creatures 2 was pretty much my favorite computer game ever. (Of course, there weren't routing issues in Creatures because it was 2-d, hah!)

[Strangel]

I agree with Inge.. I want to slap my sims silly with a rolled up newspaper, a la Black & White when they misbehave.

[ZiggyDoodle]

Just as I have managed to count to ten over some stubborn routing ritual they turn round and pull stupid faces at me.

They sure can be spooky.  Funny as hell, but still spooky.

Probably a good thing they speak only Simlish or they'd be hurling insults at us.  On the other hand, maybe they are.

[Magicmoon]

Sims do not understand how to pull doors, they can only push doors. Doors, for their part, seem indifferent to being pushed or pulled and can open in both directions, which is extremely unnatural if you think about it hard enough.

Ok. That helps quite a bit to understand a few routing issues. All doors are being treated as swinging doors, but Sims will only push them.

But then what is the arrow for that shows up while placing a door?

[GayJohnScarritt]

But then what is the arrow for that shows up while placing a door?
[/quote]

   thank you for asking that, i've wondered the same thing myself (and the same question goes for windows also).

[miros]

With windows, it helps you line them all up the same way.

To make all the windows with the keystones on the outside only, you put all the arrows pointing into the house.

[dizzy]

I nearly always put in two doors right next to each other. One with the arrow pointing in and the other out.

[J. M. Pescado]

The "arrow" that shows up on doors and windows is completely meaningless. All Sims objects have a direction designated by the game as "front", and that is which way the arrow points, but the arrow itself is independently meaningless, and there is no established convention of which way the arrow should point to when placing an object. In the case of doors and windows, it does nothing, although bloody wars have been fought between the "arrows-in" and "arrows-out" factions that have caused the deaths of thousands of sims.

[dizzy]

I think the arrow basically means "South" FWIW.

[J. M. Pescado]

Let's not go there. This is one of those holy wars of simkind, much like Windows vs. Mac, Little-End vs. Big-End, etc., etc.

[Gwill]

It does matter with dorm doors, but for everything else I think it's just a way for you to know which side the doorhandle is on whithout zooming that close.

[jrd]

It can matter for openable windows, and windows with shutters. These should normally point outwards.

[J. M. Pescado]

It can matter for openable windows, and windows with shutters. These should normally point outwards.

There aren't any openable windows by default, and Maxian windows do not adhere to any rigid convention of pointingness, so the arrow is not the indicator of which way a window should be facing.