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Inventor
Original Poster
#1 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 9:05 AM
Default The Crittur Family
Does anyone know how to play this pair of pre-made dogs? I've tried twice, and failed. Each time I added them to Cyd Rosewood's lot, as he already has a dog, Porthos. I put in three kennels, three bones, three feed bowls. Porthos is fine, but the other two won't eat from the bowls, sleep in the kennels or chew the bones. Cyd is friends with both of the Critturs, but the option to adopt never comes up. They are starving, filthy and miserable. The only way to keep them alive is for Cyd to 'Give love - Feed a Treat' - four times for each dog. He cannot walk all three dogs at once; they must be walked separately. They all need a bath. Cyd is run ragged. He has given up and gone to bed.

The last time I tried to play the Critturs, all their motives sank into the scarlet, and they ran away. That was the end of that attempt. I looked in Sims Wiki, but they just said adding the family to another can crash your game. Gee, thanks!

Does anyone know how to play them?
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Lab Assistant
#2 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 9:24 AM
I can't remember where I read about it, but apparently you need to have the 'controlpets on' cheat activated and control the Critturs yourself to be able to play them - one of them (or both) will always starve at the food bowl (literally).

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Lab Assistant
#3 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 9:56 AM
I never understood why there was a crittur family in the first place

is proud not to be a fracking idiot

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Scholar
#4 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 10:21 AM
I think they come trained to eat only sim food, and possibly trained to not want to sleep in their doghouses as well. I know that Tara Kat's Samantha has the same problem with food.

You can have Cyd call them to eat out of their dish whenever you notice that they're hungry. (And it goes without saying that Samantha is a pain in the butt and I have Tara and her alien kids Felix and Sylvester work on retraining her every chance I can. Stupid cat. She nearly starved a few times when the twins were little because Tara was too tired to do the bowl call.)
Instructor
#5 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 10:27 AM
That was the whole reason why I dreaded playing Cyd, he was adorable and all (after a makeover) but I dread what that dog would have done. But to my surprise, Porthos is a well trained dog... his behaviors mostly learned. Thank Goodness.
Inventor
Original Poster
#6 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 12:00 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Aegagropilon
You can have Cyd call them to eat out of their dish whenever you notice that they're hungry.


Well, no, actually, I can't. When I point to the feed bowls, the only option is 'Call to eat ... Porthos'. It's as if the other dogs do not exist. I'll try the 'controlpets on' cheat, but it does not sound like a fun game to me. Next question: how do I get rid of the Critturs without feeling guilty? I guess they'll just have to starve.

Can I put out a general warning? On starting up a new neighborhood, delete the Critturs instantly. They are just not playable.
Forum Resident
#7 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 12:00 PM
Like Aegagropilon said, the Crittur family is trained to have the worst trained skills ever: destructive, eats sim food etc. Whenever I move them in to a household, the second thing I do is have someone make food (the first I do is get and fill pet food bowls), place it on the floor, and continually scold them whenever they try and eat from it. After a while they turn to eat from the pet food bowls, to which I praise them for doing so.

I also tend to place them in Pleasantview with the Oldies -- both no jobs and a lot of time to raise not only the Critturs, but however many puppies they have (oh yeah, within a few days you can experience the job of trying to keep up to six dogs alive in one household as the female dog is pregnant at game start).

Edit:
Quote: Originally posted by music2ologist
Can I put out a general warning? On starting up a new neighborhood, delete the Critturs instantly. They are just not playable.


No. Do not delete any sims or pets using the delete from sim bin function as this can corrupt your neighbourhood. Either delete them properly, or not at all.

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Inventor
Original Poster
#8 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 12:38 PM
Quote: Originally posted by katya_stevens
No. Do not delete any sims or pets using the delete from sim bin function as this can corrupt your neighbourhood. Either delete them properly, or not at all.


Thank you for the link. I read it as far as 'Now convert the red circled DEC numbers above into HEX', and began to feel truly incompetent. I guess the wretched dogs will just have to starve.
Mad Poster
#9 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 1:08 PM
I've never heard of them crashing your game. They're just time-consuming to train because of having to unlearn bad behaviors; unless you're willing to let them eat people food.

You should never get a pet, in real life or in sims, unless you're willing and able to put in the time to deal with them.

The simplest way to housebreak a sim dog, btw, is to Disallow Pets on all your doors, essentially shutting them in the yard. Eventually they have to pee outside. If you're alert enough to praise them for doing so, they'll learn faster. Once they're housebroken, you can let them in.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
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Instructor
#10 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 1:18 PM
Agreed, I don't deal with dogs. But I deal with cats! So much easier.
Instructor
#11 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 1:35 PM
I have played them a couple of times, and although it´s a bit tricky I eventually managed to make them eat their own food. One way is to make a sim cook some food, place the plate on the ground and scold them when they start to eat it. Everytime you scold them they are more likely to eat pet food instaed and when they do you can suddenly praise them instead. If you just have some patient these two dogs can be a lot of fun to play with.
Lab Assistant
#12 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 1:50 PM
Quote: Originally posted by RowenaLupin
Agreed, I don't deal with dogs. But I deal with cats! So much easier.


I have the opposite problem.....dogs are easier cats in my game just act like jerks.
seriously it doesnt matter how many scratching posts/toys I have the cats still go for the furniture.

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Mad Poster
#13 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 2:00 PM
And yet, I have cats who have never been scolded for anything and never destroyed anything. You're probably adopting cats who are too aggressive. Scold them a few times for destroying the furniture and all will be well.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Lab Assistant
#14 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 2:12 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Peni Griffin
And yet, I have cats who have never been scolded for anything and never destroyed anything. You're probably adopting cats who are too aggressive. Scold them a few times for destroying the furniture and all will be well.


these cats arent adopted and neither do they have aggressive personalities.

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Test Subject
#15 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 2:24 PM
All my playable pets go after the furniture at least once; cat or dog it doesn't matter. You just have to have a sim onhand to scold them for it. some will never do it again, some will turn around and start right in again.
Lab Assistant
#16 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 3:27 PM
Quote: Originally posted by music2ologist
Thank you for the link. I read it as far as 'Now convert the red circled DEC numbers above into HEX', and began to feel truly incompetent. I guess the wretched dogs will just have to starve.
If all you want to do is get rid of them, not necessarily kill them, try using Inge's Teleporter Cat. There are options there to make stray (which will turn the Critturs into those random strays that run around your hood, so you'll see them around but not have to play them), and to put for adoption (which will put them in the pet adoption pool, and from there you can just never adopt them, so they'll be indirectly out of your game).
Lab Assistant
#17 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 4:15 PM
Why not call the Pet adoption_remove pet and when both dogs are taken away (they will appear in the pet adoption pool) you call the agency and adopt them. that should fix the problem I think.
Mad Poster
#18 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 7:23 PM
Ditto-ing everyone who mentioned training!

There's no trick to dealing with pets; just understanding how the system works. With the Critturs, knowing that they were created with bad habits is half the battle. From there, it's simply a matter of Scolding undesired behaviours and Praising desirable behaviours, as with any other pet. Just takes a little longer with the Critturs because of bad habits already learned. (Strays are always "neutral" on the learned behaviours, by default.)

Calling pets to the food bowl requires that they be trained to Come Here, I think. Not 100% sure.

DieKristina's idea of putting down sim food then scolding them for eating it is essential to getting them moving toward eating pet food. Won't need more than a couple Scolds for them to start eating pet food, even if only reluctantly at first. But at least you can stop Scolding (hard for pet lovers like me) and switch to Praise.

Of course, feeding the Critturs sim food all the time is a perfectly valid alternative, if one is so inclined. In Apocalypse Challenges, players often actively train pets to prefer sim food, because that may be all that's available to them. Thinking outside the box...

Ditto also to using the SimBlender to Make...Stray in the case of unwanted playable pets. Or, surrendering them to animal control. Deleting = bad!
Field Researcher
#19 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 8:25 PM
I think calling them to the food bowl is a combination of learning the command come here and the behavior eat pet food.
Inventor
Original Poster
#20 Old 11th Feb 2012 at 8:45 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Darby
Ditto also to using the SimBlender to Make...Stray in the case of unwanted playable pets. Or, surrendering them to animal control. Deleting = bad!


Hey! I have a Simblender on every lot. I can just make the dogs into strays? Whoopee! Away they go.
Lab Assistant
#21 Old 12th Feb 2012 at 1:48 AM
You know, this is making me want to play them. (And take the idea of using the Oldies as their owners.) I have yet to really play with the pet aspect of the game.
Instructor
#22 Old 12th Feb 2012 at 3:03 AM Last edited by esmesqualor : 12th Feb 2012 at 3:23 AM.
I give them jobs. They eat when they're at work. The mom dog (can't remember her name) started eating pet food right away. Danny was a pain, though.
Mad Poster
#23 Old 13th Feb 2012 at 3:38 PM
They do need a stay-at-home dog trainer for the first couple of days--add them to a family with a kid on a Saturday and that'll help a lot--the kids in my game always roll wants to interact with pets and be friends with them.
They have bad personalities--being doofuses, it takes forever to teach them anything. I threw them in with the Albany Capp family over the weekend to playtest a house, and they worked out okay--eating leftover cooked fish and getting scolded for it (mostly by Hal), peeing on the front porch and sleeping on the ground outside because the doors were locked. They tried a few times to take out a flowerpot but Miranda was handy and on top of that, and they're now chewing on their bones. (Not eating pet food yet, but getting closer.) I only get pets jobs if they are Apocalypse pets because the pet jobs are pretty absurd, so they have plenty of time to entertain the homeschooled Capp children. The game decided that Hal would want to be Danny's Master and Desdemona would want to be Sarah's, and that's working out pretty well for everyone.
Theorist
#24 Old 13th Feb 2012 at 5:54 PM
Maybe it's a glitch. I sometimes have a glitch with random pets who can't be called to eat from the bowl and even with the cheat they can't be controlled to eat from it. There seems to be no apparent reason for it: one pet on the lot can eat from that bowl, and another will not. Check that there's enough space around the bowl just in case.

The only way I found to deal with it is to place fish on the floor to be eaten (a few per day is a must), or just give them sim dishes. Maybe moving out and back in can help, too, I never tried that but it sounds like a good idea.
Lab Assistant
#25 Old 6th Apr 2012 at 3:11 AM
Hmmm....I moved the Crittur family in with my CAS family and didn't seem to have a problem other than the female dog was a little crabby during her pregnancy
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