Forum Discussion

83bienchen's avatar
83bienchen
Seasoned Novice
4 years ago

Petition: Farm Animals everywhere

When waiting for Cottage Living to release, I was planning on what to do with farm animals. I wanted to make a petting zoo, a vacation residential with a farm for those of my Sims living in the city, adding some chickens and a cow to the National Park in Granite Falls (kind of like in many Center Parks), spicing up my community gardens with them, adding a lama to the park in Oasis Springs, ...
I was sad when I discovered that we can only buy livestock on owned lots, but first thought they might not be working elsewhere.
Then I found out that they work flawlessly when enabled on other lots with just minimum changes to the game's tuning files.

So I beg you EA, please make these simple tuning changes with an update for Vanilla players to be able to enjoy the endless possibilities farming animals on any lot will offer.

Are you with me?
Pretty please and thanks in advance!

Technical info on how to change the tuning:
Spoiler
Simply remove the line

from the following tuning files:
purchasePickerInteraction_AnimalObjects_Chickens
purchasePickerInteraction_AnimalObjects_LivestockPen
sI_AnimalObjects_HarvestFrom_Llama
sI_AnimalObjects_HarvestFrom_Llama_Yellow
sI_AnimalObjects_HarvestFrom_Cow


Disclaimer:
I know there's a workaround for this by buying animals using an otherwise unplayed Sim, putting them in his/her inventory, bringing them to the lot and never touching that Sim again, but that is tedious and will also not allow for milking cows or getting wool from lamas.
There is no downside in enabling cows, lamas and chickens on any lot.
Players who do not want them will never have to use them.
It's hardly any work to change this.
  • 83bienchen's avatar
    83bienchen
    Seasoned Novice
    @momelimberham: I had a good laugh when reading your post. God forbid, though, that was not what I'm asking for.
    On the contrary, my request is for people who do not want to maintain a farm, but still occassionally enjoy the new livestock features.

    @MZsimmer: I like your idea, though it doesn't allow for milking cows or harvesting wool from lamas. Also Sims do get dirty from interacting with animals and sheds very quickly and it is considered inappropriate behaviour to shower as a visitor on a residential lot so there are some downsides.
    I'm not requesting this feature for myself. I can just play with my buycottagelivingsanimalsmod. But there are a lot of people who either don't know about mods or for various, legitimate reasons do not want to use them.
  • AineOfMay's avatar
    AineOfMay
    Seasoned Spectator
    If the devs added this into the game, they might aswell give us a community lot type that spawns a npc that takes care of the animals. Or even better give us the npc and the ability to customize every lot to spawn whatever npc we want. Oh man that would be great.
  • 83bienchen's avatar
    83bienchen
    Seasoned Novice
    @pepperjax1230: Foxes only attack chicken when the fox lot challenge is enabled.
  • 83bienchen's avatar
    83bienchen
    Seasoned Novice
    Exactly, @SilentKitty.

    I also think the Gallery would overflow with creative community and vacation lots making use of the animal sheds, while there won't be as many uploading something like that as long as you either have to describe who to get it to actually work without mods or install a mod in order to be able to use it.

    The gallery is a very strong source of creativity, so I always welcome changes that affect the use of Gallery items positively. For instance, I was very fond of them changing debug items to be able to be transfered via the Gallery. This was actually a milestone.
  • logionX's avatar
    logionX
    Seasoned Hotshot
    I have nothing against us getting the option, but wouldn't that require sims to take care of the animals autonomously? As far as I have seen when I am visiting another farm the sims who lives there never takes care of the animals.

    I changed the park in Bramblewood into a residental area from the gallery and they had cows and chickens there already. When I visited that lot to go swimming in the lake and pick mushrooms I got messages that the animals wanted to leave because they were neglected.
  • When you say unowned lots are you saying like a petting farm type of thing where you can collect the stuff without having them on your sims lot?
  • 83bienchen's avatar
    83bienchen
    Seasoned Novice
    @logion: Not necessarily. I wouldn't visit these kinds of lots with my Sims without taking care of the animals while I was there.

    @pepperjax1230 I'd imagine using them on Community and rental lots and yes, a petting farm type of thing was one of the ideas I had in mind.
  • "83bienchen;c-17954240" wrote:
    @logion: Not necessarily. I wouldn't visit these kinds of lots with my Sims without taking care of the animals while I was there.

    @pepperjax1230 I'd imagine using them on Community and rental lots and yes, a petting farm type of thing was one of the ideas I had in mind.


    But then if you have chickens how would that work because no one would be there to save the chickens from the foxes.
  • Your ideas should have been included in Cottage Living from the beginning. I have no doubt these were discussed while the EP was in the planning stages that were dropped somewhere along the way. But I don't want EA/Maxis to make your vision a reality. Because I don't think they could do it right, in a way that makes sense. However, I believe this could be a collaborative effort with several mod creators involved in the process. And the end result would be far better than anything the teams, with their limited backing from EA, could create. The teams are buried under new projects and might not have the time to add new options to Cottage Living. With input and help from other mod creators and the players, I believe your ideas would be awesome additions to the game as it appears there are many, many Simmers who want the same thing: More control over the stories they want to tell rather than a narrative being controlled by EA/Maxis.