Does anyone else have pets sinking into the floor or ground, and not coming up while they slowly starve?

I saw this posted a few times at the official forum with no answer - seems to happen both with and without hacks.

I'm having the same problem. Still clueless as to why. ...

Surley it has got to have something to do with the floor tiles, what do you think? Do the pets sink into all floors IE. Maxis and Custom?

yup it is happening to my pets as well, its getting annoying.

and the pets seem to have their own jump bug as well, anytime they jump off stuff they teleport to the floor instead of jumping down.

I've had it happen for a second or so at a time, when a sim was putting down a pet that I had just used stretchskeleton on, but not since, and it only lasted for a moment, in the middle of the animation. I get lots of clipping into furniture and other pets though, but that seems to have no other ill effects besides looking weird.

I did talk to someone on the site's chat that was saying he noticed it happening when the pets' needs were low. I can't back that up, but it may be something to watch out for.

Looks like we have a bug on our hands. Knew the EP would have fleas.

If it's happening to you, please give as much information as possible so we can find out if it's a Maxian problem, if there's a solution or temp fix, or if we'll need to wait for a patch...

1. What EPs do you have installed besides Pets? Any stuff packs?
2. Do you have custom content in your game (any)?
3. Do you have hacks in your game? Do you not know? If you do have hacks and you know it, which one(s) do you have?
4. Have you tried it without custom content and gotten the same result?
5. What were the pets and the sims doing before it happened?
6. Does unsticking the pet via either method listed here help at all?

With problems with new EPs, we don't have a lot of experience to go on, but we can try to narrow things down. As much info as possible will help us build a clear picture of what's happening to figure out if we, as users, can do anything about it.

Its definately caused by low needs and happens on allkinds of floortiles and also outside. It happens when pets need go low enough and then it stays sinked to floor until needs to go to red, then it comes up and goes to sleep on floor, or whatever low need was.

And moving pet with move_objects doesnt help. It just sinks back to floor.

I do still have some hacks, so might be caused by them too.

My pets havent sunk into the floor but they get stuck in the litterbox until their needs are so low they get taken from me. Hopefully I dont start expiriencing the floor sinking too! At least when your pets get taken you can readopt, but its a pain in the butt...and costs alot!

It's happening to me too. I only have custom skins installed, no objects or hacks.

Yes it's definatly to do with low needs!!! But it only sems to happen went the bladder need is low. None of my pets have actually peed yet!! lol!

I don't have sinking pets, yet but they can be pretty twitchy. Jump bug as well as walking through things.

When my sims cuddle kittens or the womrat (what a stupid name they should have just called it a guina pig) it almost completely disappears into the sims face. It's kinda funny but slightly disturbing as well. Could that be related to a custom skin? I hadn't thought of that until now as I'm writing this. God I hope not I hate the maxis skins.

I haven't played without my CC to see if the jumps and twitches are related to the custom sofas and whatnot, but I have had to remove a number of hacks. I've also notified the respective hackers (is that the right term) of the problems I was experiencing.

I do have all stuff packs an now all ep's.

I have se4en more people who had this problem. Many of them solved this problem by taking the Inteen out of their downloadsfolder. Remember, the inteen has more then one package file, so make sure you remove all of them.

After long hours of tedious experimentation, I have a possible candidate for the problem, at least in my game: Two Jeffs' Smart Beds. I was using an older version, however, and will try the newer Pets-compatible one, but I notice there is nothing in his thread about it causing this sinking problem.

Anyway, it happens in my game with Smart Beds in, and doesn't happen when it's out.

I suspect strongly that it's not as simple as one mod. My theory is that the sinking tends to happen when the pet is tired and tries to lie down on the floor or ground, and that bed-related mods may interfere at that point. The first thing to try removing may be any bed-ownership or any bed-related mods.

I am running with no 'Stuff' packs, but all four expansion packs.

ETA: My game runs fine with no sinking pets with the new version of Smart Beds.

Last edited by cmarinetti : 21st Oct 2006 at 07:04 PM.

people with insimenator have also reported this problem and removing it has fixed the problem.

From my own experience and what I've read posted, inteen just makes it so everyone is frozen and no one does anything as well as the plumbobs blinking on and off

Ok.. I found out what caused my sinking cat. File called "echo_community_sleep.package".

That is only hack I had that affects sleeping/beds, etc and apparently it conflicted with pets sleeping routines.

Thanks for letting us know about that conflict, TSN

i had the problem first too then i removed all global hacks i had and its gone now.
one of them was echo_community_sleep.package that TNS mentioned.
my advice for others with the problem is remove all global hacks. the game is more fun without most of this cheats anyway

objects/clothing and other stuff should be safe. well bathtubes could make problems because you can wash your pets inside there now. hm so practically all user made objects could make problems with pets because they interact with them. (jump on them, try to shred them, sleep on beds, etc) hope thats not the case though.

I removed all my downloads and my cat is still in the ground. :-(

Ok, after having this happen to five pets (two cats and three dogs), I went ballistic. I completely uninstalled the game, all of my EPs and Stuff Packs. After reinstalling I'm happy to report that the problem appears to have vanished. I have no idea why. Now my pets are all happy, go potty when they need to, and I've got three families with litters of puppies and kittens on the way. The only problem that does remain is that when I put all my custom content back into my downloads folder the InSiminator is malfunctioning. The main unit works when spawned on my lot, but none of it's satellite items work. Which means I can't use a goodly chunk of the InSiminator functions. Grrr, le sigh. I'm hoping there will be an InSiminator update soon. But back to the ground bug. If you are having major problems I recommend trying a complete uninstall like I did. It's drastic and time consuming, but so far it seems it was worth the effort. If the problems return in my game I'll update.
-DG

PS) Another problem I forgot to mention before... I'm wondering has anyone else experienced this? I create two dogs, one male and one female, but when I put them on a lot the female shows up as being male instead. I've had this happen a couple of times now. Anyone else?

I don't have any hacks, but I saw it once too. It was in the space themed house, when I entered the lot to cat and dog were sunken into the floor but when I had the sims call for them to come they came back out.

The 'sinking' seems to happen when there is an object error; if you switch on debug mode you'll most likely get an error message. Use this article to help find problem files:
http://www.modthesims2.com/article.php?t=139702

I fixed my sinking problem but reinstalling all the game.

After installing the Pets EP, things seemed to be just fine for me for a while even with loads of custom stuff and mods. However, it wasn't long before all my Sim-pets were stuck in the floor - even in the family creation area.

This, of course, drove me nuts. Not only were they in the floor, but the Sims themselves moved all buggy. I tried restarting the game and disabling the custom content, but it didn't help at all.

I was prepared to uninstall everything, but instead I tried simply clearing out my Downloads folder. I just moved it all to a temporary folder, then restarted the game. Everything was A-okay! Well... except for the fact that the rest of my cool stuff was gone >_> BUT! I moved it all back into the downloads folder just a little while ago, and some things are working just fine again. Genetics seem to work okay, but custom furniture-type things are nowhere to be found. I'm really noticing how much I relied on the InSIMinator XD

Plus - in reply to DeadGirl78 - I haven't had the issue of gender changes when putting pets to a specific lot, but all the pets in the adoption center are male for me. Even "Suzi". I didn't know if this was a bug or just an oversight, and I think I adopted one of these pets. At some point, I saw the option for my previous male dog to breed with this... undertermined-gender dog. I didn't try it, because it showed both as males. Also, I sent the dog-of-two-genders to work. A message popped up with a job scenario (a chance to be promoted, just like Sims) and the dog was referred to as "she" even though it has the little blue male sign.

In conclusion... @_@

Well, my pets are still remaining un-trapped by the ground, so that's good. Unfortunately now the cats are getting stuck in my Sim's beds whenever they decide to jump up there for a nap. At least using the Come command un-sticks them. As soon as any animal is added to a lot I have a Sim drop whatever they are doing and teach them that command because shooing them doesn't always work as well as that does. In other news the mailman keeps jumping and jittering all over the place when he delivers the mail. Still trying to figure out why. My litters of puppies and kittens have arrived. Too cute! I'm serious, the cute factor may make my head explode, but I digress. I've found a really interesting InSiminator bug with them. When they pee, it spawns the reproduction adjuster microwave oven from the InSiminator. There is a little blue puddle, and the adjuster is sitting next to it. The really weird part is that I removed the InSiminator from my downloads folder. Oh well go figure, and Thorne according to the official InSiminator site, they are already hard at work at creating a Pets compatible InSiminator. I love those guys, they do great work and are so on the ball.
-DG

I haven't had problems with pets sinking into floors, but I have noticed that my pets seem to stick through walls, furniture and even each other. I'm hoping there is a cure for this. It looks weird.

Can you all take a look at this thread; see if you can obtain an error log and figure out what is causing the problem.
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=198229