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Inventor
Original Poster
#1 Old 24th Jul 2020 at 12:44 AM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 3, World Adventures, Generations, Pets, Showtime, Seasons, University Life, Island Paradise, Into the Future
Default Trying to add stray cat to my household yields massive problems
I've posted about this twice on reddit already

https://www.reddit.com/r/Sims3/comm...ng_a_stray_cat/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Sims3/comm...pt_a_stray_cat/

But long story short I've been trying to get my sim to adopt a cat for a while but all that shows up for adoption is dogs. But lo, a stray cat appeared in front of the house! Perfect! I started interacting with the cat and ended the stream there.

When I came back, two sims were suddenly invisible, including the one i wanted to have interact with the cat. I sent one inside and eventually he popped into being. Somehow. The one interacting with the cat though remained invisible the whole time, and no matter how high I got their friendship I couldn't get an option to come up to adopt the cat. He brought the cat inside and somehow the cat got stymied by a door and glitched out of existence.

So I turned that off without saving and read up on what to do. Today I went back, made the sim visible by having him take a shower, got the cat up to full friendship with a cheat, and STILL had no option to adopt it!

So I forced the cat into the household with nraas, and its portrait popped up, and I was able to edit the cat, give it a name and traits and everything...but clicking on the portrait did nothing. I could never have control of the cat at all. No amount of messing with any of the settings gave me control over this cat.

If anyone wants, I can show the video but I'm a bit reluctant to because I had an emotional time of it, got very frustrated at things not making sense. So you have to promise not to be judgy before I post it.

Please help me get this cat into the house normally! I'd prefer just some sort of adoption function but that option doesn't seems to exist for some reason (how are sims supposed to adopt strays then?).
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Inventor
Original Poster
#3 Old 24th Jul 2020 at 7:09 AM
There's no family tree. The sims are based on characters from a game series so I'm trying to leave them kinda as they are and get into wacky adventures with them. But one in canon dotes on his pet cat so I gotta have a cat. I suppose I could have made one when I was making everyone else but the house was big enough already.

Only one household has pets for adoption and they're dogs. I don't think that's a conflict, just bad RNG.

Yeah, what the Reddit people suggested worked...almost. I was able to add the cat to the house with those methods, but I think the error is with the portrait mod because it only centers on the pet and doesn't make it active. Everything else displays the cat as a member of the family.

Also COME ON who disagreed with my post? I'm telling you all exactly what happened. There's nothing to disagree WITH.
Mad Poster
#4 Old 24th Jul 2020 at 7:33 AM
Did you specifically use MasterController's Add Sim command to add the cat to the household? If so, sounds to me like it did just that but for some unknown reason it remained not selectable. Does this help, on the cat?
NRaas > MC > (Sim) > Advanced> Selectability > True. (if it's already True, make it False and then True again; MC Cheats add-on module required)

In case that doesn't do the job, DebugEnabler has a similar command.

If you used a different method to add the cat to the household, it might help to know what that was. What you are describing can also happen if an animal is made into a Roommate, although that's a more unusual choice for a player to make (on purpose).
Inventor
Original Poster
#5 Old 24th Jul 2020 at 9:20 AM
I did something. Not sure what. But it added it to the household. Again, I can show you the video but you have to be understanding. I'm autistic and was having a legit meltdown during it because of how frustrating it was and my chat had clammed up and I have some specific phobias that it was hitting on (specifically, being ignored, and I know that sounds like nothing but I'd REALLY rather not get into why that's a huge deal for me). So please don't judge me over it if I give the link.If you agree to that then I'll give you timestamps and everything.
Mad Poster
#6 Old 24th Jul 2020 at 3:07 PM Last edited by igazor : 25th Jul 2020 at 4:35 AM.
You can send me the link by way of PM if you prefer so that others do not need to see it.

But you might also try the MC command to make the cat selectable now (or try the similar DE command). If it somehow makes things worse, then the cat was never really part of the household even though it looked like it was and you could just quit without saving with no further harm done.


Edit:
Mystery solved. The cat is indeed actually an NPC Roommate. I explained how to undo that and make them a proper household member by PM.
Inventor
Original Poster
#7 Old 27th Jul 2020 at 2:20 AM
Ok guys seriously why do I keep being given "disagree" votes when I'm not saying anything that could be disagreed WITH? I'm also not sure what you lot find hilarious about my frustration that you keep voting this as "funny" either.

Anyway I got the cat...but now nobody will leave the lot without being dragged to the nearby bridge first! So I'll have to do the cat stuff AGAIN because I ONCE AGAIN had to quit without saving. Something is seriously, seriously wrong. Sims were claiming that work was inaccessible, that everyone in the world was inaccessible, and flat out refusing to go anywhere. Also their rides to work aren't coming! What's wrong with this lot? Why are my sims all of a sudden so isolated? They can move around find once they cross the bridge but I have to basically drag them every step of the way.

https://youtu.be/leB4L9nbxRQ You can see the issue starting at 56:04 when I notice that a sim that's supposed to be at work is still on the property, and then again at an hour and 15 minutes when a sim refuses to leave for a party.
Mad Poster
#8 Old 27th Jul 2020 at 3:56 AM
There is apparently some sort of break in the road or world lot in between your sims' house and the bridge (thus the rest of the world). That's why your sim can walk/run over to the bridge, doing so uses the sidewalk not the road itself, and then get into their car. But when routing dictates that they must drive or be driven someplace from the starting point, they may end up route failed. The impact of breaks like that can come and go, so that would explain why you have never seen this before if you have been playing the household on this lot for a while, if that's the case.

It would be best if you could ignore the (single) reaction buttons you get to your questions here. There is a member who apparently just likes to mark questions with Disagree and Funny for whatever reasons known only to them.
Inventor
Original Poster
#9 Old 27th Jul 2020 at 9:10 AM
So how do I fix it?
Mad Poster
#10 Old 27th Jul 2020 at 10:19 AM
Well, you could move the lot...if the problem follows you, then we could say that I was incorrect and the fault is with the lot, not the world.

Was that lot always on an island near the bridge or did you place it there? Or perhaps I should ask this first: if this is a custom or altered world, were you its designer?
Inventor
Original Poster
#11 Old 27th Jul 2020 at 10:52 PM
The lot comes with Barnacle Bay and was placed there by EA. I've altered the world but just by putting new lots down.
Mad Poster
#12 Old 28th Jul 2020 at 2:43 AM
Oh, no wonder I didn't recognize it. I've never played BB, so would have to defer to others as to whether the world lot is known to be broken in that particular location.
Inventor
Original Poster
#14 Old 28th Jul 2020 at 8:13 AM
"Global jigs and placeholders"? I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Mad Poster
#15 Old 28th Jul 2020 at 3:40 PM
Quote: Originally posted by BlackjackGabbiani
"Global jigs and placeholders"? I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

These are invisible objects that spawn through routine gameplay interactions and sometimes get stuck in place. We can't see them (because they are invisible) but our sims cannot route through them either and they can get in the way if left there.

But it doesn't really matter. One doesn't need a full understanding of what a jig is in order to follow Nitromon's suggestions, which were good ones.

The other way to rid a lot of these things is more intrusive. The procedure goes retreat to Edit Town, evict the entire household to the side of the screen, copy the lot down to the bin, bulldoze, replace with a copy, and move everyone back in without having left the screen. Jigs cannot survive that kind of lot reset and will be removed if any were stuck. Unfortunately that trick only works on specific lots, not on the world map itself like the MC method does if run from the Town menu on City Hall (his second of the two command paths).
Inventor
Original Poster
#16 Old 29th Jul 2020 at 7:38 AM
The bridge isn't on the lot though. Will that make a difference? The problem is that this happens on stream and everyone wants to get the cat, so everyone wants to see it happen, and I have to go through all that again to GET to the part where everyone was refusing to leave.
Mad Poster
#17 Old 29th Jul 2020 at 10:13 AM
You could give this a practice run off on the side, you don't have to broadcast or even save it. If the stray cat is animated and right in front of you, all that is involved in getting to be part of the household is issuing MC's Add Sim command. Your sims do not have to be friends with the cat or need to keep picking it up and being social with it for purposes of a test run.

Yes, we know the bridge is not on the lot. We don't believe the bridge to be the problem, the issue is somewhere in between inside the house and before the bridge as you have already shown that your sims can route by car from the bridge to elsewhere. My suggestion is to try Nitromon's idea of clearing all jigs first on the lot by using MC's Object Stats command on the lot itself and then in town by using MC's Object Stats command on the Town menu from City Hall to see if that clears up the routing issue. It can't make it any worse. And if the stuck invisible jigs were actually caused by a string of failed social interactions with the cat, which is a possibility, then they won't be there anymore.
Inventor
Original Poster
#18 Old 29th Jul 2020 at 10:56 AM
All right. I'll give it a shot. It's just a lot to take on at once is all. I'll give it a go when I can.
Inventor
Original Poster
#19 Old 10th Aug 2020 at 1:54 AM
Ugh I ended up having to move the house to a lot across town due to how prevalent this error was getting to be. And for some reason this led my sims to introduce themselves to each other and everyone with a custom career to lose their jobs, plus I needed to replace the elevator (which sims were no longer recognizing) and the coffee maker (which was acting like it was purely decorative). But now we don't have to deal with the bridge or whatever may be on it.
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