Is there a mod to stop Sims from autonomously making pet food? «12...Next Go

BSIRegina

I've been looking off and on this afternoon/evening for hours now and so far aside from using Retuner (which I am not smart enough right now to delve into) I am just not finding it. My Sims are driving me insane wandering off every time I turn around to make pet food for their dog and I want it to stop.

Also, does anyone know if there's a terrarium capacity mod hiding out there somewhere? I'm looking for something to allow me to put more than one animal in a terrarium because those things just take up too much space for one itty bitty critter. I've done internet searches with more than one search engine and checked out my usual haunts and came up empty on both. I will thank ye mightily for any help anyone might be able to give.

igazor

Not that I'm aware of on either one, but the pet food thing is a classic case where Retuner will do the job and it doesn't take much delving. The mod installs like any other if you don't already have it. Then, on City Hall or an in-game computer,
NRaas > Retuner > Settings > General > By Object > Fridge > MakeGourmetFoodForPet > Allow Autonomous > False

The tricky part is not getting sidetracked by the thousands of other things Retuner can do and just focusing on the matter at hand.

SRF2015

Simple fix! Just go to options-settings-autonomy and set it to OFF on the Sim's bar. They won't make decisions or move on their own. Hope it works! Also I don't think there is such mod for that, if there is I would already have it! LOL.

BSIRegina

igazor wrote: »

Not that I'm aware of on either one, but the pet food thing is a classic case where Retuner will do the job and it doesn't take much delving. The mod installs like any other if you don't already have it. Then, on City Hall or an in-game computer,
NRaas > Retuner > Settings > General > By Object > Fridge > MakeGourmetFoodForPet > Allow Autonomous > False

The tricky part is not getting sidetracked by the thousands of other things Retuner can do and just focusing on the matter at hand.

Igazor you are such a doll! I have to learn everything by baby-stepping my way through it so this will at least get me started. (((hugs)))

SRF2015 wrote: »

Simple fix! Just go to options-settings-autonomy and set it to OFF on the Sim's bar. They won't make decisions or move on their own. Hope it works! Also I don't think there is such mod for that, if there is I would already have it! LOL.

Sadly I'm not sure exactly what you mean there. Are you referring to having Sims not being able to do anything on their own? I love them to be able to do things without my prompting, I just like to be able to decide how much I want them taking upon themselves.

cleo00

BSIRegina wrote: »

My Sims are driving me insane wandering off every time I turn around to make pet food

I wish my sims would do that! Even with the free will on high my sims never will fill the bowls themselves. They all constantly want to walk into my teen's bedroom to feed the fish though.
I guess they don't care about their two dogs or the kitten...

Okblondee7

@BSIRegina, I don't have ITF but I have the automatic pet feeding station, which is great. Also, I happen to notice in BuyDeBug mode, there is an 'endless pet food bowl'. I assume you never have to refill it.

Looks like @igazor fixed you right up there.

BSIRegina

Oh no, no, no, this is not them filling the bowl. This is them waltzing into the fridge to MAKE dog food. While I had my back turned BOTH Penelope and Battiste snuck in there and just did it, brazen as could be. They are sneaky little Sims.

igazor

Yeah, there are a number of actions like making gourmet pet food that for some hidden reason must be advertising too heavily, at least to certain sims. I don't know if that one is trait or skill related, but when there's already enough gourmet pet food in their inventories to feed an army of hungry pets for years, it's really annoying. And maybe I wanted those ingredients they used up to make people food, etc.

When you feel more comfortable with Retuner in place, you may want to take a look at some of our members' tested favorite settings for that mod. It's not one you want to experiment with too heavily without some experience though, as many of the undocumented things it can do can produce really unexpected results or be game breaking.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Members'+Retuner+Settings

And they don't all just correct annoyances. My favorite one isn't even on that list, will have to correct that, but I've got Retuner set to allow up to four sims to bowl together. Thought they might crowd up too much while sharing one alley, but it works perfectly. Just makes for a really long game, with four players x five frames each, though the number of frames can be adjusted as well.

I also use it a lot to re-allow blocked sims (pregnant, elder, etc.) from performing certain actions where the blocking never made any sense to me.

Cororon

Retuner is almost a life saver! Well, it can be if you have high blood pressure and are easily annoyed by certain things sims do!

The link Igazor posted helps you find certain settings, and if the one you need isn't on that page, just look around in Retuner, and if you don't find it or are unsure what a setting does, just ask in the NRaas Chatterbox. I love the NRaas people and the other helpful simmers there.

I almost want to jump and hug Igazor everytime I see him around, but I don't want him to use Retuner on me.

BSIRegina

@Cororon lol. I've seen the dedication Igazor puts into helping people here so he holds a pretty special place in my opinion. Most of the time I'm fairly chill with what my Sims decide to do on their own, as in if one's been working for hours on end in their garden or sculpting or whatever I'm thinking, "Yeah, sure, go ahead and play a video game for a while," and stuff like that but then there are those other things....

@Igazor I copied and pasted that info into my Book of Igazor and will use it next time I play. Last night I didn't have a lot of time to play and never got it accomplished. I will, though, because yeah, this is ridiculous because Sims have no sense when it comes to making their pet food. I make soft food for our little doggies but I also have the sense not to use my best cuts of meat to do it.

It seemed to me their was a distinct trigger to this because they'd had their dog for a few days before the action started kicking in. It was either relationship triggered or triggered by the fact one had finally refilled the dog dish. Either way they both started tripping over themselves to make dog food.

As for the bowling, yeah, why shouldn't four Sims be able to play a game? Back in the day when I did bowling (I was never any good at it, just bowled for fun with my friends) we'd have several people playing. As for blocking actions dependent on age or some such I never have understood that. I don't get why a child can't collect rocks and seeds, for example yet I can't bring myself to use mods that allow it because the resulting body stretching gives me the jibblies.

igazor

I do make a couple of exceptions for the animation stretching thing, such as allowing children to garden or play the guitar if I want them to build those skills early. I just try not to watch because you're right, it's usually not very pretty. Neither one is something I let them do every day, as they do need to have time to...well, just be kids and do more frivolous things. But I play with pregnancies extended to 7 sim days, so quite often when I see the warning "Pregnant sims can't do that" on an action I smirk and say, "Oh yeah? Watch this, then..." and get Retuner out.

It does look like EA programmed bowling to properly handle up to four slots for sims for each bowling lane because each one knows exactly where to retreat to when it's no longer their turn and no one gets in anyone's way. I still wonder why they limited the game to 2 players each by default unless again it's to prevent each game from taking too many sim hours as so many turns would be required. There aren't very many fun group activities in this game that can involve more than 2 sims all interacting with each other (shooting pool and dominoes come to mind, snowball and water balloon fights get silly after a while, not all of them are going to be into video games), so this was great news when another player found that it worked. Now if we could just get them to play cards or classic board games together -- doesn't anyone do Family Game Nights anymore?

Hugs are always welcome, I would never tune those out. But let's remember that the real gratitude should go to Twallan and the mod developers who are keeping NRaas alive since his retirement. Without those helpful and talented folks, I would be here complaining about the game's behavior without these mods as much as anyone else. Or, just as likely, have found something else to play by now.

BSIRegina

igazor wrote: »

I do make a couple of exceptions for the animation stretching thing, such as allowing children to garden or play the guitar if I want them to build those skills early. I just try not to watch because you're right, it's usually not very pretty. Neither one is something I let them do every day, as they do need to have time to...well, just be kids and do more frivolous things. But I play with pregnancies extended to 7 sim days, so quite often when I see the warning "Pregnant sims can't do that" on an action I smirk and say, "Oh yeah? Watch this, then..." and get Retuner out.

It does look like EA programmed bowling to properly handle up to four slots for sims for each bowling lane because each one knows exactly where to retreat to when it's no longer their turn and no one gets in anyone's way. I still wonder why they limited the game to 2 players each by default unless again it's to prevent each game from taking too many sim hours as so many turns would be required. There aren't very many fun group activities in this game that can involve more than 2 sims all interacting with each other (shooting pool and dominoes come to mind, snowball and water balloon fights get silly after a while, not all of them are going to be into video games), so this was great news when another player found that it worked. Now if we could just get them to play cards or classic board games together -- doesn't anyone do Family Game Nights anymore?

Hugs are always welcome, I would never tune those out. But let's remember that the real gratitude should go to Twallan and the mod developers who are keeping NRaas alive since his retirement. Without those helpful and talented folks, I would be here complaining about the game's behavior without these mods as much as anyone else. Or, just as likely, have found something else to play by now.

Of course I have huge gratitude for Twallan and all the others and in years past I was never shy about admitting it when I ran into them on various forums.

I was looking at some stuff on ATS and I did see she's cloned chess tables into various board games but I didn't investigate thoroughly enough to see if they were opened up to four players or not.

Family game night? As I was growing up we played board games but never had a specific night dedicated to it. My kids have rarely liked board games, even from the time they were young. My parents both enjoyed board games to an extent and my mom was big on things like Scrabble and Boggle. My dad always loved jigsaw puzzles, though. Every year on New Years Eve we'd break out the salami, crackers and cheese and a puzzle. Those are some of my best memories. My parents bought my husband and me one of those nice rotating Scrabble boards when we got married. It has sat mainly untouched for over thirty years because playing Scrabble by myself isn't all that much fun. Sometimes my kids will play it, just not often. I blame it on their dad's genetics. He also is a regular party poop when it comes to New Years Eve but that's not entirely his fault--if his sleep schedule gets messed up it triggers migraines. Trying to get him to play a board game even if it's not going to mess with his sleep is like pulling hen's teeth.

Chimark

My problem has been I want my Sim to make pet food, but before I can do it, they always autonomously fill the pet bowl.

igazor

Retuner can also be used to stop them from filling the pet bowls with regular food so often. The default minimum value for "food units" (whatever that means) below/above which an autonomous fill the bowl action will trigger is 20. I can't tell from the name of that field if it should be set higher or lower, so some experimentation might be in order. Actually, 0 might be a good value to try if you don't mind pets all across town that your own sims can't reach getting really hungry.

Okblondee7

@BSIRegina, sorry I misunderstood! I have very few pets and have never bought Pet Food from the store, so haven't experienced that apparent aggravation. Or is this something they make from things already in the fridge? The only pets that I do have are from a couple of sims I merged with my own sims for eventual marriage.

@igazor, thank you for your input. You are so very helpful.

SimKeats

I have never ever had my sims make gourmet pet food on their own, do they at least use it? My sims always fill it when I'm not looking, which makes me feel wasteful if I want to use gourmet food, I might have to use returner to turn the normal pet bowl filling off.

Cororon

BSIRegina wrote: »

Most of the time I'm fairly chill with what my Sims decide to do on their own, as in if one's been working for hours on end in their garden or sculpting or whatever I'm thinking, "Yeah, sure, go ahead and play a video game for a while," and stuff like that but then there are those other things....

Same here. I'm fine with many things they want to do autonomously, and yeah... My sims got that gourmet pet food obsession flu, an annoying disease. I was checking things out in the town and when I got back to the house all three in the household were making gourmet pet food. And they already had about five bowls of it each in their inventories. So I started looking in Retuner, didn't find the option so I went to NRaas to ask, and got help there.

LOL, now when I think about it, it's like OCD, and the NRaas people are excellent psychologists.

It's winter in my game now, and I'm annoyed by sims wanting to build snowmen and igloos. BUT I used Retuner to stop them from doing that autonomously before, and for some strange reason it affected the WALLS in my game. I always play with the walls "cut-through", so only the back walls are up, but after changing the settings for snowmen and igloos in Retuner, all the walls started to randomly pop up. O.o I have no idea how that could happen, and neither did the NRaas experts. But I'm not tuning the settings for snowmen and igloos again.

My game doesn't like the beautiful cars made my Fresh Prince. They make my game crash, and one time they affected the TREES in the game. They moved, and sometimes into houses. O.o I have no idea why, but my friends have no problems with his cars. Weird. I digress, oh well...

Cororon

igazor wrote: »

Hugs are always welcome, I would never tune those out. But let's remember that the real gratitude should go to Twallan and the mod developers who are keeping NRaas alive since his retirement. Without those helpful and talented folks, I would be here complaining about the game's behavior without these mods as much as anyone else. Or, just as likely, have found something else to play by now.

Oh, I've called him "the mod god" many times. But he's retired, old and frail, so we should be careful when we compliment him. Strong emotions aren't good for the old ticker. I'd rather fluff his pillow, fill his pipe and fetch him his slippers.

igazor

Cororon wrote: »

Oh, I've called him "the mod god" many times. But he's retired, old and frail, so we should be careful when we compliment him. Strong emotions aren't good for the old ticker. I'd rather fluff his pillow, fill his pipe and fetch him his slippers.

I suspect that Twallan would have been highly amused to have read this. Most of us don't really know his true identity, though he did make a personal appearance by invitation at an EA/Maxis studio to help test the pre-release version of Sim City 2013. I don't remember "old and frail" ever being used in his direction.

Guess that Adult to Elder birthday thing can be really brutal.

Cororon

igazor wrote: »

Cororon wrote: »

Oh, I've called him "the mod god" many times. But he's retired, old and frail, so we should be careful when we compliment him. Strong emotions aren't good for the old ticker. I'd rather fluff his pillow, fill his pipe and fetch him his slippers.

I suspect that Twallan would have been highly amused to have read this. Most of us don't really know his true identity, though he did make a personal appearance by invitation at an EA/Maxis studio to help test the pre-release version of Sim City 2013. I don't remember "old and frail" ever being used in his direction.

Guess that Adult to Elder birthday thing can be really brutal.

He's mysterious and a legend, and his selfsim and the Twallan statue contributed a lot to his legendcy. Yeah, those pesky birthdays can be brutal indeed! I hope he's as Epic as his mods. When I turn from Young Adult to Adult I hope to have learned if "legendcy" really is a word.

BSIRegina

@Cororon and @igazor it's a good thing I didn't have a mouth full of something when I was reading this thread--it would have been all over my keyboard and screen!

I never did get around to fixing the setting last night either. I got all wrapped up in fixing up their house then trying to get a little play time in which I'm going to regret today because I was having such a great time I broke my 11 o'clock rule and played until almost 12:30 then couldn't get to sleep until almost 3.

@Cororon yeah, I noticed that one batch of gourmet dog food makes five so each Battiste and Penelope now have what looks like bowls of it stuck to their inventories. I guess that's no worse than running around for days on end with pockets full of fish.

Neither of them have tried to make it again--yet. I think I'll let things run just a little longer before turning off the autonomy just to see what happens with it.

Cororon

BSIRegina wrote: »

@Cororon yeah, I noticed that one batch of gourmet dog food makes five so each Battiste and Penelope now have what looks like bowls of it stuck to their inventories. I guess that's no worse than running around for days on end with pockets full of fish.

Yeah, but my sims had five bowls each, so that's 5x5 for each sim, so they could fill the bowl 75 times with all that food. And they were still making more.

BSIRegina

Cororon wrote: »

BSIRegina wrote: »

@Cororon yeah, I noticed that one batch of gourmet dog food makes five so each Battiste and Penelope now have what looks like bowls of it stuck to their inventories. I guess that's no worse than running around for days on end with pockets full of fish.

Yeah, but my sims had five bowls each, so that's 5x5 for each sim, so they could fill the bowl 75 times with all that food. And they were still making more.

I'm curious now. Do your Sims have really high cooking skills or are they animal lovers of one type or another? All this kind of stuff makes me wonder. I have another Sim with a dog in another save and she tried to make gourmet food a couple of times then stopped obsessing over it. These two were more determined.

Cororon

BSIRegina wrote: »

I'm curious now. Do your Sims have really high cooking skills or are they animal lovers of one type or another? All this kind of stuff makes me wonder. I have another Sim with a dog in another save and she tried to make gourmet food a couple of times then stopped obsessing over it. These two were more determined.

Two have high cooking skills, and I think one loves animals. Maybe that contributed to their behaviour, but all three wanted to make the pet food at the same time, and all the time.

BSIRegina

Lolz. Silly Sims! And I just ran into another bit of silliness. Penelope, one of the Sims who just HAD to make "gourmet" dog food just now tried to fill Cinnamon's bowl with regular old dog food. Seriously, Penelope? You have a pocket FULL of dog food and you're still going to give them the junk stuff? (Okay, in all fairness at the buy price it most likely isn't junk dog food but still.)

SRF2015

Oh I see, well unfortunately you can't stop them from doing one thing and not others.