More Awesome Than You!

In Sims 1, if your sim went to the fridge you could cancel out of the action before the food was pulled out and not lose anything.

In Sims 2, however, if you cancel out of the transaction, they place the unprepared food on the table.  Are there any "awesome" hacks that would allow you to cancel out of a sim getting food on their own when you don't want them to?


Examples of why this would be useful.  Suppose your sim decides to go to the fridge to prepare food.  You were busy checking on another sim, and realized the hungry sim just opened the fridge door.  You would rather cancel out of that action and tell that sim to create a group meal instead.

I bet Pescado won't be interested in creating a hack like that, since it encourages laziness on the part of players.

However, I think a more generally useful hack would be one that allowed unprepared food to be placed back in the fridge. Consider the case where an *uncontrolled* sim, like a nanny, or any sim on a community lot with a fridge and counterspace, starts to prepare food and then abandons it. If it's a home lot and you have OFB or higher, you can either make the kitchen lockable or build a separate lockable pantry, but this might not be an option under some playstyles or challenge rules (Email, for example.) Replacing unprepped food in a fridge fixes a problem caused by both playables and unplayables, so it seems like a better solution.

Such a hack doesn't appear to be possible, or I'd have done it by now. The problem is that the entire animation is canned and by the time you could insert a breakpoint, the damage has already been done. I recommend using APO to deny autonomous kitchen access!

you could get Simlogicals...

NO AUTONOMY FRIDGES PATCH (http://simlogical.com/sl/Sims2Pages/Sims2_Eating.htm)


then you wouldnt have to worry about them cooking/making any food till you tell them too unless their hunger goes below -70

CSI for the Sims 2 http://www.geocities.com/papillonwells/Gaming/pwggame2b3c.html, and you can have total control of you sims eating habits with their No Autonomous Refrigerators. Nanny's and Servo's will autonomously use this fridge. Parents will also get bottles for toddlers if the toddler asks. Sims will not prepare food so they can starve to death unless you dictate you want them to use the refrigerator.

Ever since I installed Freetime my Sims won't eat on their own anyway.  I have to tell them to eat and I haven't downloaded any non automomous hacks either.  Just happened when I installed Freetime.

FT messed with self-feeding in a lot of people's games; other players have reported no problems. In my game, it was an issue for some sims but not for others. Sadly, those who were failing to feed themselves seemed to know the moment I'd decided just to let them stave to death and promptly began eating when necessary. Spoilsports.

I've used Inge's no autonomous fridges, which worked exactly as advertised for me. Currently I'm using Dizzy's "leftovers" array, which can be found among his various "dumps" at Laden Swallow.

Convenient (and sensible, damnit) as it would be simply to return unprepared food to the fridge, since Seasons I've taken to allowing them to proceed with cooking and then instructing them to cram the finished meal back into the fridge for later if I don't want them to eat yet or if I want them to cook something else instead.

I have issues with sims deciding to autonomously make a group meal and not serve it or eat it. They just stand there looking at it for an hour. It's like they were on autopilot and come to once they've set the plate down, then can't figure out what they were doing. If no one is hungry, I have them put it in the fridge for later, but generally someone is hungry in my survival lot. Twelve sims, two of whom are pregnant, eating only fish 24/7. Vanessa needs to grow her ass up and old Beatriz needs to kick it already and I need to finish my building so I can move them to better accommodations. Can't do that while sims are pregnant or doddering. That's one large bridge they have to cross.

For some reason, Teardrop Isle sims don't do this nearly as much, or they'll just make a single meal.

I've seen a lot more instances of sims going off to 'stuff face' since FT. No problems with regular foods, but I haven't seen so much face stuffing in ages, maybe ever.

Jeez, yes. It's like something in the FT coding disconnected the switch that tells them they're getting hungry until they need to 'stuff face' in a desperate attempt not to die. The fridge at my Asylum Challenge household was stacked 4-deep with a queue of would-be face-stuffers all on the verge of collapse. And this was with a group meal of Mac 'n' Cheese sitting right there on the fricking counter next to them! Idiots! Then suddenly - I have no idea what changed, other than my sudden and swift resolution to allow the next asshat stupid enough to pull this stunt to die where he stood - the idiocy just... stopped.

I have to agree with jsalemi - there's never been that much face stuffing before FT.  I was so annoyed yesterday when I played a "hands off" lot, that I punished every face-stuffer by pulling his hunger bar completely down (which might not be exactly "hands off", but it's no challenge lot anyway). Too bad they don't die with only one motive buttomed out. Funny enough, the nonsense stopped completely after that, at least for the current residents. The next sim to stuff face was one added to the household later. This makes me wonder if sims can actually learn by punishment. Okay, wishful thinking here.

Mine were stuffing face too but wouldn't prepare a meal so I added a hack to stop face stuffing.  I'm wondering if that stopped them from eating altogether or if you have to let one of them bottom out to fix it.

I have the impression that the tolerance regarding hunger has, well, "improved" since FT. When left to their own devices, most of my sims now only cook when they're really hungry (i.e. nearly down to desperation level), and even then only when they're not distracted by something. I've had several sims doing the Mata Hari dance of starvation but still rather chat, badmouth, share hobby tips or just lounge instead of getting something to eat.

Not with my sims. Hunger bar is still 3/4 full, and they're off to make lobster thermidor! I would have lots of fat sims, were it not for Dizzy's leftover mods and Pescado's noeatcrap. I still have to monitor the lazy sims for overeating, though.

Well, none of my sims have 10 cooking points so far, so perhaps their behaviour will change as soon as ZOMG Lobster Thermidor!!1 is available to them. As for lazy sims - I definitively prefer them to be fat, so I can distinguish them from active ones without having to call them over. Makes it easier to weed them out.

Even the ones not maxed in cooking will do this though, for other meals. However, I like your thinking about the lazy ones.

If any of my sims prepare food without me noticing (unlikely) then I get them to finish cooking, cancel out the 'eat' action and store in inventory.

Yup - store in inventory or "put away leftovers" is my method.  Personally, I hate sims preparing one serving, and my sims are all so damn selfish that they don't appear to autonomously "serve dinner" even if they have 3 starving kids home from school and doing the "I needz fudz nao!" whine.  It's such a waste of time. 

My IRL mother always cooked a cauldron of something at least once a week and stored the leftovers.  Consequently, after a while, she had pots of stuff in the freezer and we could pretty much live on that without cooking any new food (at dinner time) more than once or twice a week.  I am trying to follow the same strategy with my sims, although, considering the cooking skills level of most of my MATY sims at present, they don't get much variety - what they get is lots and lots and lots of spaghetti.

I did that before Seasons and before I had dizzy's leftover hack. Now, the sims I actually play (instead of just watching and P&Ling) are directed to cook a group meal once in a while and otherwise live off leftovers. Preferably fish because it doesn't cost anything and lasts forever when it's prepared with expensive equipment. The only thing that bothers me is that sims need to get the fish out of the fridge even if it's in their inventory.

There's nothing wrong with living off spaghetti only ;D

Millions of Italian-Americans can't be wrong about doing just that. :)

Now its gotten worse.  I wouldn't tell them to cook so they got so hungry they go eat out of the trash instead of cook.

Yeah, but that's funny :D

For those of you who just absolutely insist on letting your sims run around on their own, the upcoming FOOD EATS YOU will resolve all of your food-related annoyances. Much like Bathroom Uses You, it will detect when a sim is trying to eat, and then redirect this request to a properly macro-calculated food routine. No more Lobster Thermidor or Stuff-Face.

That sounds great.

Will it handle nannies and their habit of going into the kitchen an hour after they arrive?  I'm sick of them starting to cook something then either leaving half-prepared food on every available counter or putting something on the stove and then walking away.

Yes,  I can use APO to deny disruptive and keep them out of the kitchen, but that leaves the problem of the nanny being unable to get bottles for babies or toddlers.

I often have nurseries upstairs in the "barracks" section of the house, and have a separate fridge up there so that nannies/parents can get bottles without wasting time walking halfway across God's green Earth and back again.  The down side is that parents getting up and wanting breakfast tend to grab the pancake fixin's as they pass the bathroom on the way to the kitchen, rather than using the actual kitchen fridge, but this is a minor and somewhat amusing issue.

Didn't Surelyfunke Ellatrue [Edit: thanks, alter-ego] do a bottles only fridge or something for that purpose?  Must look.

Ellatrue did one here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,10753.0.html)

I know you hate this but this will really solve my problem and let me play like I like to play soooooooo.....baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I just use Inge's bottle. I get the random sim very rarely getting a new bottle from the fridge (typically if it is a multiple baby/toddler household and only one bottle is on the lot), but it zaps those eventually. I used to grab tons of them from the fridge and keep them in the toddler's inventory.

Pescado that hack sounds awesome.

/me is ready to push the baaaa! button

Oooooh! A new shiny coming soon. Can't wait!

I have neverending issues with sims abusing the fridge and wasting food.

My long-standing solution to this is to turn the fridge to face the wall when sims are in the kitchen unsupervised and especially when nannies are on the lot at home alone with the kids.  They can whine all they want to.  On other occasions, like others, I'd stuff anything made and not eaten either back in the fridge or, favourite for business sims going to work at their shop lot, in their inventories by way of packed lunch.

Food Eats You sounds very useful, but did you ever finish the changes to the No-20K?

FINE. Your Fat Gray Feature has been added. Now go get it and quit bugging me!

:D  Baaa-aaa-aah

awwwwwwwwwwww I thought it was food eats you!!!  I was so happy and I've been waiting soooooo patiently!

I think I figured out the eating problem with Freetime, at least for my game.

I created a new family yesterday from CAS and moved them into a previously unused house.

I noticed that as soon as the hunger dropped down to about halfway the son, who I had given random skills to and who had a high cooking skills, went to the kitchen and prepared Pescado's favorite, Lobster Thermidor!!

I was amazed.  No one had cooked in my game without me telling them to since installing Freetime.  I watched everyone eat and then they put the leftovers in the fridge.

No more cooking after that.

So I had them take all the leftovers out of the fridge and throw them away.

Sure enough the mom this time prepared food all by herself and put the leftovers away and no more cooking.

Everytime I removed the leftovers they would cook on their own again.

So I removed all my hacks from dizzy concerning putting away leftovers, but I have not had a chance to test since doing that but it seems reasonable that if I don't have the hacks for putting leftovers away and take a leftover it should work, but as soon as I test again I will post, if anyone is interested.

Isn't that to do with the hack for not making fresh food when there are still leftovers to eat?  The only problem is they can't autonomously get the leftovers out.

Well Dizzy has a hack for taking a leftover instead of preparing a new meal and I had that one in too, which I have removed, when I get home from work tonight I will test it with both out and then with put leftovers away back in, but I'm betting this has been my problem.

I have Dizzy's "have-a-leftover1c-serve" in my game. It replaces all autonomous food preparation with "get leftovers," as long as there are leftovers in the fridge. Then it'll automatically pick either the first or last leftover available. If there are no leftovers, then it changes the queue to 'serve' the meal instead of only preparing one portion.

So, it's the expected result that they aren't cooking when there are leftovers in the fridge. You might have something conflicting with it that is not allowing them to get those leftovers, and/or cook when there aren't available leftovers. Have you already run HCDU and checked to make sure you have the current version of the hack?

Yes that is the first thing I did to test to see if I had conflicting hacks and it reported none.  Also I checked to make sure I had the latest versions, but it does seem to be causing a problem in my game.  I only use a few non-awesome hacks but I always check them for conflicts.  I also removed all custom food from my downloads thinking it might be that but it wasn't.

I really like the idea behind that hack and I do have a few other hacks concerning food but again no reported conflicts so I might just remove anything food related and then replace them one at a time to see which one is causing the problem.

Yeah, sounds like binary search time. :)

Well here are the results of my testing.

First I took out all food related hacks.  They went back to the stuff face habit instead of eating.  They just want to stuff face.

Second I added hack for stuff face but no others.  They now prepare food as they use to then leave it sit until it goes bad or dispose of it but at least they eat.

Third I put in dizzys hack for auto store food and have a leftover.  They cook as usual but as soon as they put any food in the fridge as a leftover they will not cook or eat again, they will die first.

Fourth, I removed all hacks, forced them to cook and then put in as leftovers.  They would not cook again.

Tried some other variations but it all came down to leftovers.  As soon as a leftover was put in the fridge they would no longer eat.

This has only been since Freetime.

Have you asked Dizzy about this?

Have you tried the "all food hacks except the stuff face hack" variation? I have the leftover and auto-store hacks, too, and as long as there are leftovers in the fridge, I have neither face stuffing nor starving sims.

No I haven't because I think Dizzy's hacks are working for others.  I have read some posts on other boards that people are having problems with Sims eating since Freetime but it only seems to be effecting some people and I seem to be one of them.

I think I did, I have tried so many variations but I'll give it another shot tonight when I get home from work.  Thanks for the help.

I've just remembered something: Do you happen to have twojeffs' "food already available" fix? If so, you must get the NL version of this hack, or it will stop autonomous fridge use completely if there are leftovers (except for the stuff face, which you stomped with another hack). See this thread  (http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php/topic,8.0.html) over at simbology for more details.

Leftovers Schmeftovers. In Soviet Russia, food eats YOU! Now available for selected audiences in test. Requires Macrotastics. Accept no Kewian-based substitutes.

Bwuh? Moar details?

Yay!

/me runs off to test new shiny

Thank God!!! I'm so tired of testing leftovers!!!! I will test when I get home from work.  Yay Yay Yay!

Yays. While you're at it, could you add notes about how the new shiny for no20khandouts works? I moved someone out and he got the standard % of family funds (~17k) instead of the 42k I was planning on directing. I see what I did wrong, now. Need money order.

A direct link to the download would have been ace.  But never mind I guess I can clamber over the various directories for a while...

You were right on the money this was the problem!!! Thanks so much!

Nope, can't find it.  What's the filename called even?  Gawd I never had myself down as a thick person, but am I the only person who doesn't immediately know how to download these things Pescado makes?

So - as I'm surely not part of the selected audiences, I'll just report here:

Tested it in one household with 6 members, no-one had cooking points (new household only set up to test food eats YOU). As far as I can tell now (having played said lot for ~ 10 sim days), it works great. Nice to see sims with zero cooking points prepare mac'n cheese. I especially love that sims a) clear the table before cooking and b) wait for the stove instead of whining because they can't get to it.

@ Inge: it's in the FT/test directory, foodeatsyou.package

Edited to fix stupid mistake (wrote "food point" instead of "cooking point")  ::)

Thank you Sloppy :)  And what's this about needing Macrotastics?  Now I am worried I am going to get a load of other stuff changed in my game I might not have wanted - will it make the bathroom use my sims, or babies be looked after by an eye in the sky or anything?

You're welcome :) As for Macrotastics - I always have it on all lots (together with the lot debugger) "just in case", but I have several families where I only use it to "procrastinate" (to prevent them from wandering off to take a bath instead of greeting the headmaster, for instance) or not at all. The mere presence of the Macrotastics launcher in your downloads or on your lots has no influence on your game, e.g. your toddlers will continue to play in the toilets unless you install a BUY controller in the bathroom, or, the sims will not power idle unless you explicitely tell them to.

Selected Audiences Only means that you can only use if it you can find it. If you can't find it, you're not smart enough to try it and should wait until the smart people have played with it enough to make it to official release.

Oops!  Does using my initiative and asking where it is make me smart enough? :-[

Well I didnt have any problem finding it right away but after Sloppy gave me advice and I fixed my current setup I didn't have a chance to test it yet but I definitely will tonight when I get home from work.  God work really interferes with everything!!!

No. :P

Did you miss a comma there, or do you work in a religious job?

Those are separate hacks. All Macrotastics does is allow you to automate a few things: skilling, cleaning, repairing, digging trenches, and sifting sand. All have to be directed to be done. I love Macrotastics, which I largely use to keep low mechanical sims on task repairing a broken shower, or directing sims to clean the house. I almost never have maids or repairmen. This results in a higher death toll, which is yummy.

My bad!!  I missed a comma!!!  But it is funny that way, is it not?  Well, unless you consider creating huge XML files for a communications company a religious job or experience.  :-\

Edit:  To add a little

No problems for me yet, but I haven't seen anything different. Of course, maybe I'm just not letting them  run free enough. I'll set up a test household and let them care for themselves.

Not working so well for me. All EP, FTp3, H&M, K&B, Ikea. Current house I'm playing has an adult sim with 8 cooking points. She's going to the fridge to feed herself at half-hunger, but getting just a juice. She did the same thing at a quarter hunger when I first started playing the lot. Checked and fridge is well stocked.

I am going to have to wait for the Selected Audience to test this and explain it to me.  I have not worked out what the foodeatsyou does.  I take it it's not a hack to make it possible to interrupt a sim when they have just got food out of the fridge?  Like the title of this thread?   So am I right in saying foodeatsyou.package is actually the annexe to the "Eat" command on the macrotastics menu?   If so, unfortunately I don't think that's going to suit my style of play.  I need the one that makes your sims cook for the whole family if there are hungry family members present.

In my game, they make group meals, just not all the time. I guess Food Eats You is aimed at minimizing the amount of wasted food, so it will check how many sims are hungry first. If it's only two hungry sims, they will make a single meal each, because otherwise, 4 portions would go bad. If it's four hungry sims, the first to make it to the fridge will make a group meal (the other three will wait for the food), because 2 wasted portions out of a group meal is still more cost efficient than four single meals. That's just an example and in no way verified.

Plus, my observations are based on the one test household only. Over the weekend, I want to try it in a household where all members have high cooking skills, a family with children, and a greek house where some members can cook and some can't.

But with seasons installed, served food is never wasted because you can just put it away as leftovers.  And actually, it wastes to food to make fish as single meals because you can always serve it and get six times the food out of it.

JM already said it wasn't possible to stop sims from taking food out of the fridge, but I wonder if it's possible to make it so you can tell them to put uncooked food back in the fridge, by just getting rid of the food and increasing the amount of food in the fridge.

Food Eats You is meant to manage the autonomous eating behaviour of sims. Sims will never put leftovers away autonomously --> waste.


True, but this will never happen autonomously, either. Sims simply don't cook fish on their own.

So it's *not* something to do with the "Eat" command in macrotastics?

Old Macrotastics already did that, newer one improves on it. Food Eats You functions similar to Bathroom Uses You, in that if you let your sims run amok, if they attempt to make food, their behavior will be properly managed when they attempt to make food. As for interrupting the actual cook process, the way the food process is coded, plus the lack of animation breakpoints for aborting it, make this impossible. They really don't design around action-aborts. To do that, they'd have to redesign all the animations to be segmented into interruptable chunks, and that's just something that isn't practical as a mod. Food Eats You exists to simply prevent them from Doing It Wrong in the first place.

New OFB-equipped algorithm fully integrates the Make Many feature, so that rather than being a tacked-on adjunct, it will ALWAYS create 6-platters at the 6:4 rate, and then automatically withdraw them from inventory. Be sure you are using the LATEST version, not an oldversion.

I'd say, no. The "Macro.../Eat" I know only happens if a) a sim is under the influence of Power Idle, Skillinator or other Macrotastics controls or b) you launch it manually. Food Eats you takes over as soon as an uncontrolled sim decides s/he needs something to eat, so if you keep your sims occupied anyway, you won't see it at all.

Again I have to point out that this is just how *I* think it works... :D


Unless there's a newer version hidden somewhere else, I have the latest version. But to be honest, I couldn't swear that I actually saw a sim preparing a single meal. It's perfectly possible that it had been withdrawn from inventory.

Food Eats You will force the sim to use Macro-Eat in the event that it detects that the sim is attempting to get food from the fridge. This will cause it to eat the optimally efficient meal prepared using the shiny algorithm. Or grilled cheese. If for some reason your sim never autonomously eats, then it is inert.

Looking at the rtfm in macrotastics, in the Eat section, it doesn't say anything about group meals.  It seemed to indicate it was more about efficiently filling up that one individual sim?   So I thought it would give even more of an impression of every sim for himself than the game usually does?  Have I got the wrong end of the stick?

Yeah, you're forgetting that the manual is like 900 years old and was written before OFB.

Lol!  Pescado, working out your hacks, where they are, what they do etc etc is like a mini-game in itself!  :D

Well, not 'never' -- just 'never in an unmodded game'. :) Dizzy has some hacks that make them autonomously put leftovers away, or get leftovers instead of cooking a new meal.

I thought it was unnecessary to point that out, especially after having discussed the leftover hacks in this thread already :D.

Long thread -- for those who didn't read it. :)

And Macro-Eat now seems to favor inventoried food over cooking, if my play session yesterday is any indication. Previously, inventoried food was only accessed by people not capable of cooking, or if the sim was very low in hunger and the time needed for food preparation would take too long. Yesterday they were always going into inventory to get food, even if hunger wasn't dangerously low.

I haven't added FEY (new acronym!) yet, so I'll have to try it out. What happens if the sim's hunger bar is still pretty high, like 75%? Does the action cancel?

It didn't in my game, but that's maybe because no-one in this particular household can cook anything but mac'n cheese, which doesn't fill much.

Sure they do. Both single and group meals of fish. In fact, I have to watch my fishing houses closer than others to make sure that they don't make fish when I don't want to...sometimes I'm not in the mood to play the no-don't-throw-out-a-half-plate-of-fish dance.

Really? I stand corrected, then. I've never seen that in my game, though. The only fish my sims tend try to cook autonomously is salmon.

I was ready to kill one of my sims who decided to have a tasty one-plate serving of Golden Trout when I turned my back for a moment!

FOOD EATS YOU! + Latest Macrotastics = No Wasted Fish!

I'll trust you on that...did you notice what I said about the juice issue?

Was this with the sign installed? Note that it only pulses once every half-a-sim-minute, so you should be taking measures to keep them from approaching the fridge too closely to begin with. Anti-autonomy blocking is good for this, so they'd otherwise collide with the door.

I haven't installed this, because I've also installed some other hacks recently so if something unexpected happens I won't know which hack is the problem.  Can you clarify something for me, though - will FEY let sims autonomously put away/get leftovers?  Because that *would* be awesome.

No. I'm a dumbass. I thought it was an invisible plug-in, not a placeable like BRY.

What is?  Foodeatsyou?  I still haven't got my head round what it's meant to do or how to use it, let alone where to find it in the catalogue (if indeed I need to)   I know I am pretty lazy about documenting my hacks, specially while they are still in testing, but Pescado takes the biscuit :)  I suppose if I was in #grah 24/7 I might have gleaned a few snippets.

Leftovers do not exist in the Awesome game. If your game is Awesome, they simply never exist because a preexisting system that predates their invention is superior. If you are using a properly installed Food Eats You, leftovers never occur.

Got a dunce cap for me, too? I'll join you in the corner.

LOL - I'm an idiot. I thought I needed a newer version of Food Eats You. Okay, I've got the latest Macrotastics version now, and in combination with it, FEY is truely awesome. I've tested it in my greek house and my "legacy" household (no real legacy, because obviously, I'm using hacks), and it works as advertised. The only thing left to be tested is a family with children, but for that, I have to wait for the next generation.

Hmmm. Something's wrong.

I thought FEY was an invisible, too, because after I installed it, I looked through misc. objects and the various food prep sorts to see if there was a new object, and couldn't find anything. But then the comments about a "sign" forced me to go back and check the misc decorations and wall decorations sorts, and I can't find it there.

What's it look like, and which sort is it in?

JM usually does misc/misc - but you could try with fridges or stoves maybe?

It's in decorative, under wall hangings (also 'all'). Look for one of the white triangular signs with a red border. It was a few pages in; I almost went right past it.

(http://moreawesomethanyou.com/bastdawn/foodnomnomnomsyou.jpg)

I'm going to edit the Object Data fields in my copy to make it show up in Appliances / Miscellaneous instead.

I don't remember seeing anything like that. I was skimming through, looking for the custom content symbol. Don't remember any custom triangular signs.

I'll look into it later.

Appliances/Misc would be a good place for it, like the BUY is found in Plumbing/Misc. Been meaning to reset my food hacks, now I can just get this instead. :)

I've been thinking about trying FEY, but I tend to be wary of change and am already accustomed to using Dizzy's leftover hacks to handle foodly things. For anyone that's tried both, is making the switch worth it?

I keep meaning to put all my cc in misc/misc and make collection folders by creator.

The next version will appear in the usual suspects.

It depends on your play style. I have several families I play differently. For the "micromanaging" lots where I can make sure that there will always be leftovers for sims that escape my attention, I love Dizzy's hacks. For my more hands-off-ish lots, though, they're pretty much useless, because I never get any leftovers. For these lots, FEY is a lifesaver. Especially for players like me, who loathe face stuffing with a passion.

For more micromanaging lots, Macrotastics still eliminates the need for leftovers by micromanaging the system far better than you would ordinarily care for, using all the carefully calculated, terminally anal rules that I apply to my own game. Once you understand what it's doing, there is simply no substitute for Macrotastics if you are terminally anal about things.

Do you mean Macro...Eat?  I've never seen that become available when my sims actually need to eat anything.  The one time I actually used it, the sim got food out of inventory that had been bought on a business lot.  Does it only occur if someone has food in inventory?  It doesn't very useful.

I'd like to be terminally anal - I can't believe I just said that - but basically I'm far too lazy.  ;D

That's what Macrotastics is for.

I give my sims lots of time off. Just like I'd like to have.

Hm. I think I'll just have to try it out in my test neighborhood. Thanks for the input. :)

True. But for families with children/teens, I still like to have a variety of meals in my fridge for the petty "Eat [whatever]" wants to make room for "Do homework" or skilling wants. It's much faster to pull a half-eaten hamburger out of the fridge than making a friend.

By the way - yesterday, sim A (university lot, but no dorm or greek house) made a FEY conducted group meal, and sim B, instead of waiting for food, went to the fridge to prepare a single meal. When the group meal was ready, sim B left the unprepared food on the counter to grab a plate. I guess this was only an outlier, just thought I should mention it.

You probably didn't update. Single meals are never prepared under Macrotastics now if you have OFB and can Make Many. Under present conditions, such a collision would just result in extra food in the cache, which is harmless.

I noticed that. Nice feature Pescado, it is something I always wanted my sims to do without me telling them to :P

I did update, that's why I was so astonished to see that. But as I said, it might have been just an outlier. It has never happened again, anyway.

I have a question about how food stocks are managed: If several sims have several meals in their inventory, which one will they pull out in order to Macro.../Eat? Is it determined by the hunger/food value ratio? Or is it the first/last meal put in inventory? I have several owned bakeries / delis offering selfmade food, so I'd like to know if there's a way to control the access to the merchandise.

First, sims on the lot will be searched for food in the inventory. The inventory will be searched in the following order:
1. Self, if Not Current Business Owner.
2. Selectable Sims(Except Business Owner) On Lot By Order of Object Instance
3. Business Owner if Selectable

When a sim is found to possess food, the food is then pulled in the following order:
1. Single dishes.
2. Single bowls.
3. "Touched" platters.
4. "Untouched" platters.

If a platter is returned to the inventory because it contains additional servings, it will become the "last" item in the inventory. I am, after some thought, also thinking of inverting the order of 1<->2 in the next version.

Aha! Great, now I finally know how to keep my employees from stealing from the overprized chef salad instead of making a sandwich.

Not clear on one thing, Pesc -- does the sign have to be on the lot for this to function, or is it like the macro controller, where it functions as long as it's in the game?

I really like this shiny, but didn't think I would at first. I didn't notice that the sim was creating a group meal instead of a single. I like that part of leftovers...I typically have even a single sim create group meals and place in the fridge for leftovers, especially if there is pregnancy involved. Anyway, thumbs up from me. No problems so far. Granted, I don't have any large households in play but haven't had issues with a second sim accessing the fridge while a meal is being prepared yet.

I'll take the liberty of saying that yes, the sign has to be on the lot. A couple times I was playing a lot and someone went for a bag of chips or stuff face, at which point I realized that I hadn't hung the sign yet. I hung it, and then everything was hunky-dory.

Yeah, thumbs up from me, too. I have been a leftovers hoarder since Seasons, but I'm liking what I'm seeing so far. I've been moving leftovers from fridges to inventories and they're mostly just polishing them off right now. I still haven't seen how it handles hungry children if there is no inventoried food, though.

My hungry kids aren't grabbing from inventory. Morty Roth had hamburgers in his inventory and the little boy was basically starving. No macro>eat option on the pie menu. I had to get him to eat cookies or die! (okay, be taken by SS but it didn't sound as good)

I had everything on-lot that I needed, Macro and FEY-wise.

Possibly intentional, but burned cooking forces another meal to be cooked. Isabella did the cooking dance four times before she got it right, during her third trimester, and she was pretty much starved by the time she failed to burn a meal. Suggest that burned meals still be used by FEY.

Appears that the sign must be on the lot - Aggie and Pedobait did not auto-eat until I placed the sign.  Placed the sign and Pedobait immediatly headed for the kitchen to cook delicious spaghetti.

Did I miss something, or do other sims head over and pull food out of other sims' asses inventories now?  Aggie ate spaghetti (which was in Pedobait's inventory), but I didn't see how she got it.  When Pedobait needed lunch, she pulled it out of her "back pocket".  Anyway, it appears to be working as advertised in my game.

Food has just appeared on the floor in front of the hungry sim in the lot I was playing. Pretty awesome.

Ok, good -- I'm glad to hear that the sign has to be present for this to kick in.  There're some lots where it will come in very handy, and others where I prefer to control their cooking myself.

My test Sims were also able to access other household members' inventories.

Yeah, I spotted that yesterday as well.  No pulling from back pockets - food blips into existence from inventory and then blips back to inventory once plate is grabbed.  No extra clean-up necessary.

Now Zazazu does not need a fridge on her campsite (ostensibly plugged into a tree).

FEY now works for me although there was an issue where a teen kept looping instead of preparing a meal. No cooking points and he was very hungry. Does that make a difference?

Probably does, since FEY is designed to ignore burnt food, and with no cooking skills there's not much they can make.  In that case, have some type of food in the teen's (or someone else in the household's) inventory.

Probably does, because once I cancelled out the action and got someone else to make food instead he grabbed from inventory with no problems.