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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 11th Aug 2015 at 5:32 PM
Default Sims getting 'stuck' like the game is paused
Hi
My game mostly runs fine, but I've been playing this family recently who seem to get 'stuck'. I'll have told then each stuff to do, but they don't do it, they all just kind of stand there, doing nothing, twitching slightly. It's almost as if I've got the game paused, although I haven't. Weird thing is, when I go to exit the game, as soon as it's registered the save and is just about to close down, they all start moving again!
Anyone know why this is happening?

P.S Apologies if this problem has been posted before. I have tried to search and found nothing, but that could be my shoddy searching skills rather than the information not being there!
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Pettifogging Legalist!
retired moderator
#2 Old 11th Aug 2015 at 6:16 PM
Is this with our without CC? And which game version do you have?

Stuff for TS2 · TS3 · TS4 | Please do not PM me with technical questions – we have Create forums for that.

In the kingdom of the blind, do as the Romans do.
Scholar
#3 Old 12th Aug 2015 at 8:05 PM Last edited by Enki : 15th Aug 2015 at 7:32 PM.
I encountered a similar incident only today. My game is fully patched and I believe in my case McCommandCenter was the culprit.
I had a visitor over and set a relationship token for him (only enter into same-gender relationships). Several seconds after doing so, the standing around/twitching issue occured. It was resolved by deleting the tokens. I then played perhaps one or two hours longer and it didn´t happen again. The glitch has happened never before.

Other probable factors:
- The visitor sim, a teen, had decided to do homework in my house and the lady of the house tried to help him
- Another sim was at work and got stuck there. I cannot tell if he got stuck because of the glitch or if the glitch made him get stuck
- I didn´t add any new cc recently, but I have Cool kitchen stuff
- I use McCommand Center with the Careers module, no other modules

EDIT: My sims didn´t have free will. The only autonomous sim was that teen visitor.
Smeg Head
#4 Old 12th Aug 2015 at 10:23 PM
I saw a very similar effect some time ago. The reasons my sims suffered this is because, - (You're going to laugh at this) - I had locked the childs putty toy in a room the sims could not get to. Way before door locks were available, I would block access to certain doors with objects. My preferred choice back then was to place that big suit of armour in front of some doors to keep sims out, a guardian at the gates effect, if you will. In an artist studio, I was collecting all the pretty shapes the sims made with the putty toy, putting them on shelves as artwork. I blocked the door to this artist studio because the sims were obsessed with playing with the putty and I wanted to keep the putty artworks on display. That's when the serious routing problem, standing still, twitching, not being able to do anything crap started to happen. It took me a while to figure it out, but as soon as they had access to the putty once again, no more routing, standing around crap was happening.

If you do have any locked or blocked doors, check out what's behind those doors. Also, if a single bookshelf in a house is blocked beyond use, maybe though bad placement or a chair is in the way or something, sims also do this freeze up, twitching crap with every other bookcase in the house, just because one is blocked they are all blocked. I've experienced this, too.
Field Researcher
#5 Old 15th Aug 2015 at 1:37 AM
That's probably one possible reason, but I suspect there are others. Just now I saw some weird behavior in my "hotel" (I love the hotel mod because you can have this big house and watch all the neighborhood Sims come through and use your stuff, different ones every day, and experience various needs failures and sometimes die). Interestingly it was also when my teen was doing his homework -- maybe I had him ask the wrong Sim to help him. Suddenly all the toons, playable or otherwise, froze up as described. I couldn't even get my Sims to cancel their current actions. Finally when I used testingcheats to reset one of my Sims, they all sprang up out of their chairs and were free to move about the cabin so to speak.

Earlier that day, a Sim spent the entire day in the main room talking to ... nobody. I checked and she did not have the Insane trait. I have also had Sims stuck playing the violin for most of the day and night. I'd have to get one of my Sims to go talk to them to free them from the devil's string instrument.

None of this might be related, or all of it might be due to the hotel mod. However I did just notice all of this recently, mostly since the last patch as OP indicates.
Smeg Head
#6 Old 15th Aug 2015 at 8:49 AM
It's been a couple of weeks since I could find spare time to play the game properly. But yesterday I found time for a few hours play, and I also noticed this new frozen sim effect since latest patch. A teenager came home from school, I told her to go do her homework, she then went off and got her older sister to help her. The older sister kept goofing around while also helping. It was all very cute and funny and I was impressed with the level of autonomy that was going on. Eventually the homework and the pranking was finished. Older sister walks off. I then go to follow and watch other members of the household. Many sim hours go by. And then I finally notice the poor teenager has been standing in the same spot doing nothing all this time. She would not move until I finally told her to do something. Very strange.
Deceased
#7 Old 15th Aug 2015 at 10:10 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Shnorlick
I've been playing this family recently who seem to get 'stuck'. I'll have told then each stuff to do, but they don't do it, they all just kind of stand there, doing nothing, twitching slightly.

I've had this happen when the lot has a bugged object that one or more sims are trying to use or evaluate for autonomy (e.g. the "fridge" bug) and they get stuck in a loop preventing other sims from acting. This usually results in a lot of lines in the lastException file in the Documents\TS4 folder which can give a clue to what the object is and sometimes just deleting and replacing the object will restore sanity. Typically though the only way I've been able to fix the lot is to do a repair game in Origin.

Could be a completely different issue, of course.
Test Subject
#8 Old 19th Sep 2017 at 7:04 PM
I have the same problem
Quote: Originally posted by ryuusei86
That's probably one possible reason, but I suspect there are others. Just now I saw some weird behavior in my "hotel" (I love the hotel mod because you can have this big house and watch all the neighborhood Sims come through and use your stuff, different ones every day, and experience various needs failures and sometimes die). Interestingly it was also when my teen was doing his homework -- maybe I had him ask the wrong Sim to help him. Suddenly all the toons, playable or otherwise, froze up as described. I couldn't even get my Sims to cancel their current actions. Finally when I used testingcheats to reset one of my Sims, they all sprang up out of their chairs and were free to move about the cabin so to speak.

Earlier that day, a Sim spent the entire day in the main room talking to ... nobody. I checked and she did not have the Insane trait. I have also had Sims stuck playing the violin for most of the day and night. I'd have to get one of my Sims to go talk to them to free them from the devil's string instrument.

None of this might be related, or all of it might be due to the hotel mod. However I did just notice all of this recently, mostly since the last patch as OP indicates.

I don't have the hotel mod,but my sims were out in public, and all the sudden everyone went still. I had just used the extreme violence mod to murder some people, but it had gone fine before. People were standing around crying like they were supposed to until they just stopped, and stood there. Even my sim did as well, and the grim reaper! I had to exit my game without saving because a sim was dying, 4 to be exact. However, this has happened before, before I got the mod. My sims were doing their things, building up skills. When all the sudden...they stopped. It sounded like the singing sim was still signing but she was completely still. Everyone was frozen in place, as if I had paused the game. It was really weird, and I kept making sure my game wasn't paused. So IDK what exactly is going on, but ea probably won't fix it anytime soon. It only happens in sims 4, and they make no moves to patch it up, ea sucks, plain and simple. So yeah, I guess we can't do much about it except stop buying stuff from them 'till they fix the damn game!
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