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From Home to Wherever?

Hi Fellow Simmers!

I am a bit confused at the moment and need your help.

As you recall, are active household sims who are out in the world programmed to go wherever they like? Or, do they always return to their home lot when not instructed to do or go anywhere else? In my memory, I recall when a sim is left alone on a community lot or just out in the world, if they have nothing to do or there isn't any object or another Sim for them to interact with, they always return home. Is that the correct behavior or am I mistaken?

Recently I was looking back through some of my old recorded in-game videos when I noticed something odd. I don't know why I didn't notice at the time but then again, I often miss things which are right in front of my two eyes because I am busy focused on something else.

Anyhow, my 'active household' sim was out picking flowers in the world (at my direction) in a field near his home. I didn't give him any further directions to follow after he was done because I knew he would return back to his home lot. But he didn't return home, he chose to go elsewhere. In fact, he chose to go to a rooming house which is incomplete and under construction, to watch a bit of TV. That's where I found him, just relaxing on a bed watching TV. He was enjoying himself, so I didn't stop him. The lot is marked as a 'No Visitor' community lot to keep randomly generated Sims from moving in.

In another video, a different sim (who was also my active) was reading a book on a lone bench at the top of a hill (in Hylewood). Once she had finished her book, she decided to go fishing instead of returning back to the home lot. The beach she chose was nowhere near the hill she was on. She chose to walk to the beach instead of taking a taxi.

In both cases, I had to direct each of them back to their house once it became late. Although I suppose they would have eventually gone home on their own once they became tired or hungry enough. My sims operate on 'High Free Will' if anyone was wondering. So, is this behavior of choosing another place to go instead of returning home normal? Am I mis-remembering their initial programming?

What do you recall?

Comments

  • ts1depotts1depot Posts: 1,438 Member
    edited May 2023
    mw1525 wrote: »
    So, is this behavior of choosing another place to go instead of returning home normal? Am I mis-remembering their initial programming?

    I remember when I came across this behavior myself and was confused. However, I only noticed this thing that you're talking about happening if I switched households.

    For example: I play Household A. I switch to Household B. The members of Household B are scattered all over the town map. I zoom in on one of the sims (let's call her Zsa Zsa), and see that she's walking towards the library. Then, all of a sudden, Zsa Zsa decides to go to the public pool. I think this is what you're talking about, where sims seem to make a decision to go somewhere else instead of going straight home. What you call an "active sim" changing its mind might've been from a non-active household that you switched to.

    I think the reason why this happens is that non-active households are programmed to act as townies, going where the game tells them to regardless of free will. (Let's call this "Townie Mode.") Townie Mode is what makes it so that when you take your active sim to a venue, other sims show up on their own. They didn't show up because of free will. They showed up because the game decides how many sims are to show up there and then hand picks them.

    When you switch over to another household, and it turns out that some of those members are in Townie Mode, the game is still in control of where they're going. So, they are stuck in that mode until you reset them or there is some other trigger.

    I think this programming accounts for what is known as the "energy bar bug." This is the bug where, when you switch over to another household, the sims have a frozen energy bar at full. I think they made it so that non-active sims could have enough energy as "townies" to hang out on community lots and walk from place to place without starving to death or collapsing, but that the kinks in this system were never ironed out. The sims that were in "townie mode" continue to have these frozen bars, but the sims that were in rabbitholes are unaffected.
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  • mw1525mw1525 Posts: 1,214 Member
    @ts1depot - I'm aware of how formerly active Sims behave when they become townies. This isn't that.


    My version of Hylewood is still being developed as a non-rabbit hole world. This type of world takes quite a while to develop. The sims I am seeing this behavior from are the only two Sims who reside in that world. They live in the same house on the same lot and are always my 'active' household.

    These sims are used for a variety of things related to world development. I play test my builds with them, have them upgrade whatever needs upgrading, plant and maintain gardens to build food stock for the town, create medicines, tools and pretty much anything else which is needed to get the town ready to be populated.

    All objects for learning and entertainment are kept on their home lot. There are no parks, stores or any public buildings except the town's school for them to visit. The school is also set to 'No Visitors' but I have had a couple of 'world crasher sims' sneak in to use the objects there.

    Being that there is literally nowhere to go, nothing to do (besides fishing) and no one to currently visit in Hylewood, I don't understand why under these conditions my sims wouldn't just go home even if they weren't programmed to do so (which I think they are).

    Also, I'm not a cruel simmer, these Sims are not chained to their home lot. They do have a large number of friends thanks to WA and NRaas' traveler mod.
  • ts1depotts1depot Posts: 1,438 Member
    edited May 2023
    @mw1525 In that case, then something unusual is going on there. (Mods? Game has bugged? Maybe being rabbit hole-less is playing a part?) You're right that active sims, once they're done with a lot, go home. At least that's how they've been behaving for me with all the EPs except ITF and SN. I mention those EPs because I have no idea whether they changed something.
    Post edited by ts1depot on
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  • mw1525mw1525 Posts: 1,214 Member
    @ts1depot - I'm also wondering if this behavior is a conflict of a mod. While I do play with NRaas' Story Progression mod, it isn't currently installed and hasn't been for a while. If it was, I would blame their behavior on that. Unless there is some residual effect from Story Progression removal, I can't think of what other installed mod could cause this.

    The actual 'game modifications' I do have installed are designed to either promote things which enhance realism through choice like icarusallsorts 'Cook with Any Ingredient' mod or stop TS3 coded things which I don't want from happening such as bluegenjutsu's 'No Zombies' mod. Outside of NRaas' SP mod, I don't have another mod which opens their autonomy further.

    A head scratcher this one is.
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