[PS4] [S] Utterly Unbearable Unproductive Umbrella
Product: The Sims 4
Platform:Sony Playstation 4
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Often (50% - 99%)
What is your current game version number? Unknown, fully patched as of date of post
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? Seasons, Cats & Dogs, City Living, Get Together, Get to Work, Vampires, Vintage Glamour, Dine Out, Cool Kitchen, Parenthood, Toddler Stuff, Spooky Stuff, Romantic Garden, Fitness Stuff, Bowling Night.
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Place an umbrella stand, have a Sim that's in school (child or teen) retrieve an umbrella, then when it's raining try to have the kid go to school. It won't.
What happens when the bug occurs? The Sim will attempt to leave like normal, and may disappear for a second only to reappear either to walk back inside or just appear inside. It keeps canceling the order to go to school.
What do you expect to see? The kid to go to school.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? On console - never used.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? No
This is a bug that I discovered and not found on the list, which is surprising as I'm sure it's common.
You got the seasons pack, and why? Actual seasons? Holidays? Events? Nope. You wanted umbrellas, and you got 'em, along with all the heartache that goes with it.
I have only seen this with teens trying to go to school, but I suspect it also works with children and even adults trying to go to work. It's time to go and it's pouring rain outside. You have an umbrella, so you send your Sim off to work/school, and they get to the road, cancel the action, and run back in the house. Why? Because it's glitched. Somehow the action of the auto-command telling the Sim to open it's umbrella is interfering with the command to go to work/school, so both commands are getting cancelled. It's a confusing bug, especially with children/teens that have phases so you might not at first realize you're dealing with a bug. I have also seen the umbrella interfere with adults spraying plants for bugs when it's raining. Once again, the auto-command to use the umbrella is interfering with the command to tend the garden, so both get cancelled, but in this case the Sim keeps getting told to spray the plant until it doesn't need to, so you enter an eternal loop of the tend garden command starting, cancelling, and starting again.
Once this is realized as a bug and what is causing it, it's actually a rather easy bug to work around. So, until it's fixed the easiest method is to simply not have an umbrella. It sucks, believe when I say that I know it sucks, because I am also umbrellaless. I am without umbrella. I am the physical embodiment of all that is not an umbrella. I could go on in life to create a great work of art, like the Mona Lisa, and people would refer to it as, "that painting made by that guy who has no umbrella".
Another option is to have your Sim leave the area you're in to another area that's not raining. This will allow your Sim to then go to work/school. Much more time consuming than not having an umbrella, but you do get to keep your umbrella, so there's that. As long as you have an umbrella, having your Sim tend a garden in the rain may be a pain.
Some ideas that may fix the bug...
1. Disable the auto-command to use the umbrella when it's raining and make it a simple item in your inventory you need to activate yourself when you want to have an umbrella opened/closed. Attempting to perform any action outside of talking will first give the command to close the umbrella and then the action command the player asked the Sim to do. By separating these two commands, we should be able to bypass the bug that is cancelling out both.
2. Turn off the auto-command to activate the umbrella when it's raining when a Sim is given the command to attend work/school.
3. When a player chooses "tend garden", the command to close the umbrella will first occur and will not open the umbrella until the player is notified that noting in the area needs tending.
Now, when it comes to the umbrella interfering with gardening, it's a bit weird. It only seems to be a problem when the Sim attempts to spray a plant in the rain. It will cause the two programs to execute at the same time (spray plant for bugs and open umbrella), which seems to cancel both out. In the event the Sim is spraying for bugs in the rain due to the player choosing "tend garden", this will conflict with the umbrella as before, but the "tend garden" option will keep causing the Sim to attempt to spray while attempting to open the umbrella, which causes an eternal loop. This loop can be cancelled by clicking on the action icon, but it's still a bit of a pain.
