Just curious, has anyone ever managed to fix the two long-time missing animation bugs in The Sims 1?

1. Where a child cannot pick up an object from the low/small table. -- Fixed -- thanks to @LUCPIX! ✅
2. Where there is a missing animation if there is something right next to the bed, preventing a sim from getting out of bed.

(These are the only two I'm aware of, but let me know if there are others.)

Oh hi friend I think I can help with the former situation

The coffee table objects in fact do not have animation strings that were supposed to call the animations for kids, even though the supposedly "missing" animation files per se exist, and they've been there since the bloody base game!


c2o-reach-seatht


bear in mind the base game has a shitload of other unused animations!!

Let's do an experiment, shall we? I can not test it in any other build right away other than the base game, so you'll download the impromptu fix I uploaded and say if it works! Suggested extacting destination is the ExpansionPack3 folder.

It does on my end!

You're a champ, @LUCPIX! 🙌❤️

For reference, so that other people can make fixes to the game like this as well, how did you accomplish this fix?

I'll test it tonight with Hot Date + Vacation, and let you know -- but I suspect it will work, no probs.

It works, but only if "tablecoffeefix.iff" is renamed to "TableCoffee.iff". Otherwise you get duplicates of the coffee tables in the object selection pane.

And it only works for the three coffee tables included in this object file. It doesn't work with the Tri-Trunk coffee table and the trunk, as we'd need to modify the IFF they're in as well, and do the same thing to it you've done here.

a) Go to the ExpansionPack3 subfolder & extract the contents of ExpansionPack3.FAR. Obviously this format is unknown to Windows if you do now have any dedicated program installed, but there are several programs made by people like us that can manage and view FAR files. My personal suggestion would be Bioruebe's UniExtract2. As the program's name kind of suggests in its own minimalistic fashion, it is an universal extractor: it can read and extract subfolders from just about any archive or installer. The Sims' FAR is no exception to its powers! And that's the tool I'm using in our case here:


b) Open the newly extracted "ExpansionPack3" subfolder, look for a file named TableCoffee.IFF and open it with the SimTool of your choice. In similar scenarious as ours, people would either choose Codex or IFF Pencil 2 to view and edit IFF files, as users can use both of them to instruct objects as to which animation files they can call. Because our fix does not require major adjustments to the object's scripting tree, IFF Pencil 2 is our go-to tool.


c) Browse TableCoffee.IFF's STR# (string) resources by clicking on STR# (2).


d) Following a very common convention among object files, users can decide which animations objects can call at any given moment by writing them down in string sets. The string set #129 is for the animations called by adult Sims*, while #130 keeps the animations called by child Sims. And that's where the thing hits the fan! The coffee tables - Lord knows why - do not have a #130 string set of their own, and that's why kids do not know what to do once they reach the objects like these.

* 99% of the times, strings indexed #129 are justly named "a2o", for it's an adult-to-object interaction. Funnily enough, we find here a super rare exception: In the coffee tables' data, it's exceptionally labeled as endtable1 skill table! Only objects found in *really* early prototypes of the game have their animation strings labeled like that, which makes me think "skill" is what the animations were called when The Sims was still in development, even prior to the implementation of child Sims. But it's okay, it's just a fun, meaningless trivia — it does not affect how the animations per se work!


e) Let's provide kids the bank of animation strings they crave, then. We could create a new string ID from stratch, but that'd be a little more of an effort than our preferred solution: Let's right-click the string set dedicated to the adult Sim animations and ask the program to duplicate it by clicking on Duplicate....


f) In doing so, a new window appears. We will want the new string to be indexed as #130 (as far as I am concerned, that is the universally assigned ID for child Sim animations). The name of the string set does not really influence its function, so you can name it "lololololololol", if you want to. A simhacker would name it "c2o" so they can remind themselves in the future that it contains the needed information related to the child Sims' animations.


g) Let's double-click the newly created "c2o" string set.


h) Notice it contains 3 strings; the latter two (#1 & #2) print the adult Sim animations for coffee tables, as the first is unused. Let's leave the empty string the way it is. We will modify the used strings by replacing the animations they contain (a2o-coffeetable-stand-getmagazine and a2o-coffeetable-couch-getmagazine) to some that belong to the c2o (child-to-object) hierarchy, as seeing children behaving like adults would be a little anti-canon. That would ideally be something along the lines of c2o-coffeetable-stand-getmagazine, except the game does not have any of these, and that's another problem. My theory is that the developers responsible for repurposing the coffee tables to the Hot Date** EP mistakenly assumed the objects would only see use for adult Sims that needed to drop the magazines they recently bought Downtown, so they did not bother creating child Sim equivalents of low table dropping animations.

** The idea of implementing coffee tables in the game is way prior to the release of the base game. Everyone already played the infamous Steering Committee prototype at this point, so you probably know what I mean. If you have the original game manual in your hands, you can see some of its Buy Mode snapshots contain coffee tables as available items for purchase, which isn't quite the case in the actual gameplay. It was ooooooooonly on the third expansion pack — our Hot Date — that they were first featured, literally unchanged since their first scrapped concepts.


i) We are awfully lucky, though, that we will not need to compromise by sorting random animations to the poor kids just for the sake of filling the blank spaces. Please remember that the concept for coffee tables in the game is as old as the base build... and the game still has a number of leftover animations reminiscent of such concept, and that includes the child Sim animations we need. Change the text of strings #1 & #2 to c2o-reach-seatht and hit "OK".

c2o-reach-seatht


j) Don't forget to save, OK? After that you can already close the SimTool and play the game.


extra) Maybe, just maybe, your ExpansionPack3 folder also contains a file named TableCoffee.stx. There's a chance you might need to repeat the steps above for this particular file, as well. Please let us know, ok?

Thanks so much, @LUCPIX, for the step-by-step instructions with screenshots -- nay, tutorial! 🙏 We need to pin this or post it on a site somewhere.

It's actually incredible that you managed to get to the bottom of this. 🦉⭐



Yes, there indeed is a "TableCoffee.stx" file in my ExpansionPack3 FAR archive (and extracted folder). 👍

Do I edit it the same way, using IFF Pencil 2?

Only if the missing animation problem persists otherwise. A test is required!

Uh do we know of any other missing anim instances in child sims?

I do know of one other one: when a child hands a gift over to another child. There's no giving animation, only receiving, for children.

By the way, if you want your child sims to be able to pay the bills, and use the full functions of the phone, there are mods for that available at the old Simania site (under the "Kid-friendly stuff" heading):

https://web.archive.org/web/2020011.../eh/sdls-eh.htm

It can even go so far as to allowing children to go to Downtown or to travel to Vacation Island alone -- although what they can do in Downtown is limited, as most objects in Downtown are not set to allow for child interaction, only the ones that appear on Vacation Island as well. Still, the option and possibility is there.

I recommend the "Bills" and "Phones" mods, along with "Payphones" for Vacation Island (if you have Vacation installed), with only the "PhonePayVacation.iff" installed. If only those two/three are installed, then children can call services and pay the bills (so they have the chance to survive on their own), but they can only go Downtown or to Vacation Island if they are accompanied by an adult. However, they can invite an adult they're friends with over the phone to go with them (which makes a lot of sense)!

This allows for full gameplay as a child character, Home Alone style. 🙂

This makes sense, because the files that contain the animations are actually named (prepended with) "xskill" in the game's file contents. So animations were indeed codenamed "skills" during the game's entire development. 👍

What I'm baffled by is that during the entire run of the game, throughout all the expansion pack updates, Maxis never bothered to fix the coffee tables glitch with the children. Seeing how simple in essence the fix is makes me think they just didn't care. 🤔 Introducing new features to them was more important than fixing existing bugs in the game.

That'd be c2c-gift-giver, man


c2c-gift-giver

So that's another miss in the IFF file on Maxis' part, then. It must be on the gift object's IFF. I'll see if I can hunt it down -- seeing as gifts were introduced in Hot Date, I believe...

While we're at it, it would be good to give child sims the ability to buy toys, and sweets, and ice cream Downtown -- but that's a different topic (involving different IFFs).

Okay, so weird thing -- completely unexpected!! My testing indicates that editing the IFF file is actually not required in this case. In order to add the child animations to the coffee tables, we actually need to edit the STX file(s), not the IFF file(s)!

If I remove the STX file, the animation is broken, but if I remove the IFF file, the animation is still there (regardless of the fact that the game default IFF for these objects does not contain these animations in its strings).

The editing procedure is exactly the same, it's just that the STX file needs to be edited in IFF Pencil instead of the IFF file.

There is also an interesting bug regarding picking up the bills from the coffee table in The Sims 1: it will play the animation you give it in the STX file first, and then, regardless of what you put in the STX file, it will play a default pick-up animation. I'm guessing the pick-up animation is either tied to the object being picked up, or hardcoded into the game.

So if what you put in the STX file is the pick-up animation, then it will play the pick-up animation twice in sequence before it actually picks up the item from the table. This happens with adult and child sims alike -- so it's a default game bug.

It only happens when the bills are being picked up from a coffee table, not when they are being put down.

Note that the game is only using the first string for the item on coffee table animation, playing it backwards and forwards to put down and pick up the item. I'm not sure what the second string is for -- if it's used at all in the game. 🤔 (It doesn't appear to be.)

Here we go, a mod that fixes all the coffee tables in the game.



All the tables work, now, but for some reason the DoubleDeluxe bonus coffee tables (the trunk and the Japanese coffee table) seem to be missing something from their structure, because, while child sims can pick up an item from them, they cannot (or do not want to) place an item on them. But at least the animations work there as well, now, and children can access all coffee tables.

The three default coffee tables from Hot Date, and the wooden Tri-Trunk coffee table from Vacation now work flawlessly for both adult and child sims. ✅

If we can figure out what the two DoubleDeluxe coffee tables are missing, then all coffee tables in the game will be fully usable by both adults and children.

Update:

All the coffee tables in the game now work flawlessly both with child and adult sims. ✅

I checked the gifts, and yes, the animations for the carrying, handing over, and receiving gifts are stored on the gift objects themselves, but man are they messy! It will take me some time to figure out how to structure the animation strings so that the game uses the right child animations for the right purpose.

Vacation's gift objects will come in handy as reference here.

The Hot Date gift objects are so messy in terms of their child animations, that is seems development on them was just halted in the early stages, and no-one ever got around to finishing this work. One of the funniest things is that if a child gives a teddy bear to another sim, the 'stomp on teddy bear' animation plays before the child hands the teddy bear over as a gift. 😂 Totally by random happenstance. So, "Here's your mangled teddy. I stomped all over it for you. I hope you like it." 🤭

After further testing, I am not sure that children giving gifts is a missing animation when it comes to the default gifts they can give: Vacation gifts. This may be something specific to Hot Date gifts. A few people complained about it, but I can't see any problem with the Vacation gifts in this regard.

I managed to make some progress today, and gift giving with the teddy bear now properly works for kids as well:



I also made some headway with kids buying toys in Downtown. I will release this as a separate mod in a separate thread. I don't want to clutter this thread with kids in Downtown matters. I'm aiming to create a comprehensive mod that allows kids to not only go to Downtown, but to also buy things and eat there. (Things that are kid-friendly, that are accessible to children, of course.) This is a bigger project that requires editing a whole lot of Downtown retail objects to make them work for children as well, including the gifts themselves.

Edit -- you can access the Downtown project thread here: https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=685069

I'll let this thread return to its focus: fixing missing default animations in the game.

@LUCPIX, could it be that the missing animation glitch with kids giving a gift to each other was a bug in the very first, base version of the game -- and that it was fixed in the expansion packs? That would explain why I can't replicate it in Vacation. 🤔

Managed to track down the issue with the DoubleDeluxe coffee tables! ✅ Maxis accidentally programmed the BHAV script for putting items onto the table for these two coffee tables wrong, and the command was not putting the item in the correct item slot (number). This is why the kids couldn't put down anything on these coffee tables.

The updated version of the DoubleDeluxe coffee tables IFF file fixes that -- and now all the coffee tables fully work in the game:

https://modthesims.info/showthread....484#post5956484

It's great to see so many people still making mods for Sims 1! I like to fix Sims 1 objects too, but I mostly deal with the custom ones. It's really strange that many, many objects by famous hackers contain errors and it looks like nobody told the creators about them in time...
Thank you for fixing this coffee tables bug.

Archived on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/coffee-tables-fix

And on Sim File Share:

https://www.simfileshare.net/download/4787411/