Hi everyone,

I found what appears to be a neighborhood-specific bug in the Hood Building Group recreation of Arbor Falls from The Sims Pet Stories, and I'm trying to determine what causes it.

I have tested this extensively by removing mods and fixes one by one until I isolated the problem.

The issue only occurs in Arbor Falls. I have tested the same setup in Garden Heights and in other converted Life Stories neighborhoods such as Bitville and Four Corners, and the bug does not occur there.

Steps to reproduce:

1) Play any household in Arbor Falls. (In my case with the Tomasino's and the Stanton's)
2) Have a Sim earn the Gold Toy Making Badge.
3) Craft the basic kite at the Toy Bench.
4) try to use the kite.

What happens:



The Toy Bench itself works correctly, and all toy crafting functions appear to be normal. The problem only affects actually flying the kite. The sim stands frozen and then put the kite on the floor. No animation executed.

I spent quite a while removing hacks, fixes, and other mods from ModTheSims, and everything points to Arbor Falls itself. Since the exact same Downloads folder works perfectly in Garden Heights, Bitville, and Four Corners, even basegame hoods, it seems that something inside the Arbor Falls neighborhood or subhood files is interfering with the kite interaction or animation.

One thing that may be visible in my screenshots: I use a slightly modified version by myself of Hood Building Group's conversion. My edits are purely cosmetic. I replaced some walls and floors with the Life Stories Bundle by Lord Darcy to make the neighborhood look closer to the original Life Stories game. These edits do not affect gameplay resources, BHAVs, objects, or animations at least, never did it in my gameplay experience.

Has anyone seen this before, or does anyone know what neighborhood resource could interfere with the kite interaction? I'm specially interested in knowing whether this could be caused by something embedded in the neighborhood package itself rather than by global mods.

Maybe you don't have a 5 by 5 tiles of free user editable (excluding sidewalk) space on this lot? I see that this lot is small at least in the front of the house, but I can't see what is on the back.

In your round of eliminating mods/hacks, did you
1: Try witout any at all (maybe except mods that would be considered "essential" fixes, but also without those if the issues persisted)
2: Try without other CC?
3: Delete the cache files between each round of testing?
(and of course save a backup from before testing, because removing mods/CC can cause issues in the hood)
4: Turn on debug mode, so you get error messages instead of sims freezing/jumping? (The error log might tell you which mod is causing the problem, using what caused this)

I can think of a few things that could be potential issues here, some of which could depend on which mods left in, so eliminating all of them would be the easiest in determinating whether it's mod related or something else (traits-based mods could for instance cause issues with one sim but not another depending on which traits they have, so make sure you test with multiple sims, or simply move out all traits-based mods while testing. Any mods that edit badge behavior, toy behavior, unlockers, etc. could also be potential culprits.) Mods might not seem to cause problems other than during very obscure circumstances under spesific conditions, which is why it's always best to first test without mods + deleted cache files if you want to check if mods are the cause of an issue, or you start looking for trouble in the wrong spot.

Thanks for the suggestions! It turns out you were right to point me in another direction.

After doing more testing, I found that the problem wasn't caused by a mod after all. The real issue is the terrain in Arbor Falls. Many of the residential lots have very uneven terrain or very little flat, editable space. If there isn't enough flat ground, Sims simply can't fly the kite.

I was finally able to get it working with the Tomasino family after finding a suitable flat area. I also noticed the same issue on several other lots, such as the Caldera and Stanton homes, and it seems to happen on pretty much any lot with irregular terrain or limited flat space.

I also enabled `boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true`, but no errors or warnings appeared, which confirms that it isn't a mod-related issue.

I think the main takeaway from this thread is that, in Arbor Falls, you generally won't be able to use the kite unless you flatten the lot terrain first. The Elliot family lot worked perfectly because it's already flat and doesn't have any terrain irregularities. That also explains why the kite worked normally in every other neighborhood I tested.

So fortunately it doesn't seem to be a bug or a mod conflict after all. Thanks again for the guidance and the troubleshooting suggestions—they helped me narrow down the real cause, and now I can stop worrying that one of my mods was responsible.

To answer your questions:

I didn't test with absolutely no mods, but this is a relatively fresh installation and a new save, so I don't have many mods installed. The only gameplay mods I currently use are InSIMenator, SimBlender, Gussy Up, a few mods that adjust the speed for studying and writing novels, and a mod that allows recovering Sims' urns and gravestones. Most of my fixes are unrelated to Open for Business.
I don't have much custom content installed either, since I recently started over from scratch.
I did delete the cache files between tests, and I never saved the game during my testing, so every test was done without permanently affecting my neighborhood.
I did enable boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true, but no error messages appeared at all.