What Are Your Merfolk Doing Today 2.0

Something I wanted to do was have normal gameplay updates and then create the story screenshots after gameplay takes place. I think it's working pretty well, letting the randomness of what my sims do guide how the next chapter of sim lit will turn out.

I went for a bit of a mundane start of the day. The pod having breakfast. 

And, that's when one of the other merfolk families started making annoying noise that triggered a residential rental event I couldn't quite complete. The game didn't seem to let the options count. Weird, but not sure about it. Maybe I'm just unfamiliar with the Residential Rentals.

But, since Alex is working on the Friend of the World Aspiration to get the Beloved Trait so when he loses his voice later his friendships don't decay over time, I had the perfect excuse to get an organic introduction to a neighbor.

I made Makoa Keahloha a merman in my game and he's the owner of the residential rental.

A while back, I also had an encounter with Nalani Mahi'Ai.

That makes 3 out of the 10 sims for Alex to introduce himself to. I'm trying to limit the introductions to other merfolk in game. These screenshots aren't as polished because they aren't set up for the story. They just help me outline what my next sim lit chapter needs to include.

Spinning Plumbob is working on underwater venues as part of an update to the expanded mermaid's mod, and even though Alex follows the Little Mermaid story theme. He's at a point in the story that comes before trading his voice to walk on land. So, I'm spending time building underwater environments using Custom Content from Spinning Plumbob and Serinion. I think I did pretty good with the Bleached Coral appearance of a reef located in Mua Pel'Am on a lot that is in Newcrest. 

The best part, I absolutely love Alex's reaction to trying to play a guitar for the first time. I set all skills to be the maximum difficulty for leveling. So it will be a while before he sounds better. 😂 Just don't like the instant expert skills, so I used MCCC to slow down the leveling. 

Alex is like: "Isn't this neat?"

Blaaarrrgh.

Alex: "I don't think it's supposed to make that sound."

Just a nice reminder of how fun the reactions can be from sims.

I have a few more ideas for the chapter, but I've begun working on the story screenshots. Because the T.O.O.L mod by twisted mexi has negative effects on the game. I created copies of the save to use the mod in because the mod isn't broken beyond use, it's just in conflict with other mods or possibly slightly outdated.

So, I made periodic saves alongside the saves at different points of my legacy save so I can load those saves and Continue using the T.O.O.L mod for when I want to do something more refined in screenshots.

But, as you can see, it makes things a bit different like allowing my merfolk in the background to be elevated off the ground while talking, but beyond that, reducing the use of the mod so I rely on it a bit less. I still would like to continue using it, but perhaps as something separate. 

The process of creating polished screenshots for the story is a bit of a process and is probably the thing that takes the longest with SimLit, but as detail oriented as it might be, it's worth the use of energy to create the illustrations. When it comes to creative writing, trying to write a story in response to the randomness of what sims do in game is pretty fun and rewarding.

I guess moving forward, I'm going to try and share a mix of what happens during gameplay and the polished screenshots I set up for the story.

I'm also working on a sims gameplay challenge and kinda play testing things so that the challenge is optimized for others that might want to try it before I share it. I'm pretty good at generating innovative ideas, but I still need a ton more practice modding or doing anything with code before I'm anywhere close to Spinning Plumbob's level. For now, just having fun writing stories and staging the illustrations around the gameplay.

I know it's been a bit. I found myself a bit preoccupied with trouble shooting the bug involving selecting merfolk while they swim in the sea. It turns out that, at least for me, it was related to mods. I still need to do some gameplay to see how stable things are now, but the problems I was having with selecting my merfolk while they were swimming appears to be largely resolved. While doing the troubleshooting and thinking my legacy save had deeper problems. I began the time consuming process of trying to recreate my save. If the problems I had don't continue, I might be able to continue my old save without needing to recreate and redo everything I set up. If that's the case, things should move along as planned again. I'm hoping to get back to my SimLit writing routine and building the creative writing habits again.

For now, I updated the Meet the MerSims section of my story post. I made an update to the Zalrian Pod. This section is so I can share background information that would be exposition dumps that would be out of place in the story itself. Kinda a strategy for keeping the story focused but ideas that I still want to share before I can establish them in the story. Think of it like world lore and in world history of past events. Connected to the story but would be out of place in the story's current chapters.

Here's the link to that post:

Meet the Zalrian Pod

Finn got an update to clean up text that appeared a bit rougher than I could leave alone. No changes to the core of Finn's background info. Just cleaned up so it's expressed more clearly. 

I also added Serena to the section. Not the first instance of it, but our most current depiction of Kemps as a merboy and Calum as a merling. Adults in the story, but none of the characters were always grown ups. 

I'm super excited about continuing the story and thank you to anyone that has been looking forward to chapter 3. Always appreciate everyone that enjoys following my SimLit.

Because of the status update being updated, I'm dropping a copy of the previous update here. If the information remains useful for someone else, it will be here in the subsection of this post.

If you want to add to this and share your observations here with screenshots or see the extended explanations, everything I've tried is below. This is just a bite sized update summarizing what I think is happening for user friendly access. It might leave out nuances and relevant details.

Bug: Active Sims can't be selected while Swimming in the Ocean in Sulani Post Update, including observations of other interactions while swimming in Sulani.

1. PC or Console Bug: Appears to be PC only
2. Mod cause or not: Not immediately obvious. Interactions have broken after adding CAS CC, but on the PC, the presence of Mods doesn't seem to matter for Households that existed prior to game updates.
3. Working Solutions: So far, recreating the households so they are clean is the best option. If the update did something, not sure if they won't just break again during gameplay.

Additional Observations:

1. Game Repairs through App don't work. Repair of City Living hit an Error. Reinstalling City Living allowed the repair to work like normal.
2. Repairs after removing the Cache did not solve the problem. Many screenshots were taken after that and I want to say I had more sims working after that, but the bug persisted.
3. Removing the mods folder, turning off mods, and creating a new save did not resolve the problem.
4. Biggest constant is loading the households to the gallery because households saved to the gallery have their progress in skills, discovery traits, and other things from gameplay saved.
5. Current objective: Figure out a way to save a bugging household with the game as is so progress doesn't need to get reset.

On Console: Most new packs post 2023 not added. Packs Prior to 2023 included.

On PC: All expansion packs, game packs, stuff packs, and select CAS Kits.

Went to move the block of text from initial testing into the area that can be collapsed so this doesn't make scrolling difficult.

It took a bit to get the chapter together. But I finally got this up. I've started the screenshots for chapter 3, but the bug involving selecting sims swimming in the ocean is persisting and the new save and the cloning of the sims has not exactly fixed things like I hoped. I'll share my updates for that in the reply I'm using to track things. I have found some new details. As of right now, I do not know if the latest game update resolved anything.

Chapter 2: A New Home

If you read things I did checking on a bug you might notice screenshots uploaded from my pc that came from my console. If you have a Playstation, in my case PS4, you can plug in a USB to save screen captures to your USB and then from there upload those screenshots to the forums. Hopefully this helps more people share images of their Sims Gameplay.

This is a bit of a big post, but it's something I think I started encountering in January, but now, I've had the time to look a bit closer at it. So, I've encountered the issue with interactions in the ocean in Sulani, but the odd thing is that it isn't universal and doesn't seem to be mod or save related as far as I can tell. The weirdness has resulted in me revisiting the console version of the game to check on things in a setting where mods are impossible to use.

So, the version of the twins I took this screenshot of are the closest I have on my pc to the twins from the console. They were transferred from console to pc through the gallery.

As for what I did prior to this: Removed the Cache file, did a game repair, and removed the mods folder. Interestingly, City Living is the only pack that had an error repairing so I reinstalled the pack. The test is in a new save without the mods folder. And repeated in a copy of the established story save without the mods folder. In both the legacy save and the fresh save, same result. Without mods active, seemed to be the same thing. I have every pack except all the kits on my pc. I do not have every pack on the console as I stopped buying packs on the console once I switched to the pc.

First test: Can my Merfolk, in this case, merboys, interact with the ocean.

I started with Zephyr, technically the younger twin.

Zeph had options for interacting with the ocean in Sulani. This I expected given that fully modded I didn't have a problem.

Just to be sure, I did the same thing with the older twin, Dylan.

As expected, Dyl had interactions with the ocean in Sulani.

Once I got both merboys in the ocean, I checked the interactions while in the ocean swimming. While Zeph was selected, I could not do anything with him. I could not select him nor could I select his twin Dyl while Zeph was in active use. The most curious thing is the Plumbob above Zeph. It seems inconsistent in appearance.

Now, this is Dyl, I can select Dylan and use his interactions while he is selected.

I can also use Dyl to interact with his twin Zeph.

From here, this is when I enabled cheats for this save. All of the above is without cheats active. One thing I know is that resetting a sim doesn't fix this.

After cheats enabled, I checked to see if I could access the cheat menu with the selected sims. The cheat menu can be accessed when both are selected while swimming.

Once I checked things, I added the version of the sims to this household that I didn't adjust in CAS. the first set I did change their hair color in CAS and that's it. The next set are the oldest set I can access from my gallery on the pc. They have the blue hair I gave them when the final days of the console gameplay I decided to give my merfolk different colored hair.

Went through the same steps. Checked to see if they could swim in the ocean. Because of the weirdness with ghosts and how I added them to households, I want to try and see if different ways of adding them to the household produce different results. Although, this testing leaves a lot of variables that I can narrow but might accurately represent a typical User's approach to things, more or less.

Something that I noticed with both sets of twins added was that Dylan 1 can interact with Dylan 2 and vice versa but Zeph 1 and Zeph 2 seem to be bugged. Dylan 2 can't interact with Zeph 1. Not sure what the difference between them is. For those who have been in the forums a long time know that the twins were born in game without cheats as twins with Sulani Mana trait on the console without any use of mods until later.

Given how much I've done with my story save, I want to try and understand what's going on and see if I can figure out something. A few tests I didn't get a screenshot of are the tests using a heavily modded household and a version of the twins I added only CAS custom content to. Modded households have the most problems, so I'm going to have to try and narrow things down. But, when I added Custom CAS content to a version of the twins that should work on a new save from identical testing prior. The CAS content, the Neverland Tail By Spinning Plumbob and some of my own CC I was dabbling with, I had both Dylan and Zephyr bug. 

Now, I don't do anything crazy with modding myself as I'm not capable of a lot. However, the one thing I've done successfully is make the Merfolk Tail an item accessible for use without cheats to show mermaid form in their human form so I do not need to constantly cheat their mermaid form and fix their swimming when they enter the water. Most of my merfolk effectively don't have a human form and every out fit is with their Merfolk Fish Tail. So, the kind of stuff I typically do is adjust setting for items in the SIms 4 Studio, that's it. And given that the moment I added CAS items that is when they stopped working properly, I want to see what I did because this did not happen for the longest times so I had no indication that it was the cause prior to an update.

I will share my progress figuring things out in this comment or create a new thread if needed.

These are screenshots from the console. On the plus side, I was able to recover a lot of old households and builds I lost on the pc from the console. Fresh save on Sapphire Shore using the oldest Gallery Version of the Twins I still had repeating the same above test. No issues for Dylan or Zephyr. Console does not support mods or custom content so it's impossible for mods to even be a factor.

I added the twins from the console to a houeshold on my pc while in manage worlds. When I played the household, I repeated the test. Just had them go swim into the ocean and see if I could select them. Zephyr from the console made it as far as the water effects in the ocean before t posing and teleporting back to the shore before wading into the water. Dylan from the console that I know can work flawlessly could enter the water like normal. Once saved to the gallery after this, they were marked as a modded household without Custom Content added. I suspect it's the skill gained from the expanded mermaid mod that turned them modded.

I do not think the expanded mermaid mod is the cause. I still very much think it might be CAS custom content.

I recovered the Darkfin household from the console, applied CAS custom content from spinning plumbob and serinion with the CAS content I modified to re-categorize them. Only thing I didn't remove that I modified were the tails in human form. I'm not going to share hundreds of images but none of them have no issues. The biggest difference is that I added them to a fresh save independent of the twins from the pc. I suspect that doing the same with the twins from the console without merging them into a household from the pc that is older would produce the same results.

The next step, was to see if going into my legacy save with the CAS cc removed would change anything.

It didn't. I still can't select Alex once he's swimming in the ocean in Sulani.

However, the same mods in a new save after playing with genetics to create a new Alex resulted in no issues. Interestingly, there was kind of a specific order I had to make them family members again.

The first sim I cloned was Kemps, then Calum, then Alex, then Arihi, then Dylan, then Zephyr. However, to make the twins Calum's sons, I had to change Kemps and Calum to household members then make Calum the twins' father, then make Kemps and Calum brothers again and everything was accepted by CAS as valid. Makes me wonder if the things I did with ghosts could have triggered something because I tried creating the save first by piecing together the extended family that doesn't fit in one household in CAS. I wonder if my approach was flawed as these things aren't easy to do with "existing sims", but I also had my own experience with Ghosts bugging with its own interesting thing that ate up time in May and delayed updates. All of these things did start around the same time as a game update and there is still a bit of randomness and inconsistencies. I can't quite figure out what or exactly how, but I do suspect the older households that existed when the update hit, and I do think they are the modded households acting up the most. At least for me. That being said, some of the households I tested this on were not modded, they were just older households saved to the gallery without mods. So, still a bit up in the air.

Unfortunately, the only thing I've found that helps is recreating the household by cloning the sims in CAS with "Play with Genetics" which also erases a lot of stuff, and I'm not satisfied with that. I just know that removing mods doesn't really change much and the problem appears to be PC related. I do not feel like creating a new save and putting in that much work is needed at this time.

Love the idea! Merfolk post dark ages, during the dark ages, and pre dark ages are all very different. It's really fascinating to look at merfolk depictions alongside history and how they are changed. Also sounds like you might have an amazing build too.

But, it's very random cause one sim will have problems and a sim in the same household won't have problems. Even twins with identical appearances have the same problem repeating. A clean version of the sims have no problems. I do see this as an opportunity to reconfigure merfolk abilities from the expanded mermaids mod because I have some new ideas that weren't worth implementing if I didn't need to do this since removing a perk isn't something you can do in that mod if you want to remove the perk later.

I can share the screenshots tomorrow to show what I found. But, it's not the save that I think is corrupted so much as it's the household that is acting up. I don't know if the households are corrupted or just bugged.

The only thing that I think can fix this is cloning the affected households by using "play with genetics" and create twins then manually move the CAS details over. If I have a working household, I will try to add back the ghosts and may need to set up the save again, recreating the relationships. Fortunately, I have enough screenshots and this shouldn't have any impact on the story. If the save isn't broken, it's just a matter of recreating the sims and doing a bunch of stuff in CAS between writing.

In a new save on the console using sims from my Console Gallery, I repeated the same tests above. No issues.

Added the sims from my console gallery to my pc game fully modded and no issues.

What does seem to upset things are CAS items. So, I removed the CAS items I was dabbling with, and perhaps it will not show up again. If it's truly not the save, but the households, I think I shouldn't need to recreate the world and upload the builds to a new save at least. I do not know what could have upset things from CAS because whatever I did wasn't that much. Mostly changes to the outfit categories for things to make what I want for Island Attire to be easier to find without going through as many filters. I flagged them as island local items. Nothing too extreme. Since they are duplicates of vanilla outfits that are re categorized, it's not the end of the world.

For all intents and purposes, the households bugging are just that, bugged. Removing the CAS items from the mods folder does not fix it. Uploading bugged sims to the gallery and then loading them into a fresh save doesn't fix things.

I did a lot of stuff with ghosts recently, but this issue with the Ocean Interactions has been a thing for a while. Going back to January. 

If it isn't mods specifically that are a problem because people encountering issues don't have any mods, the problem could simply be the product of an update and the age of the save file when the update hit. Not much more I can make sense of.

I do not have a fix beyond simply playing with genetics to recreate the household. Not being able to select a sim while swimming in the ocean in Sulani is annoying. But, I have no problems selecting the items in the ocean in Sulani and using some interactions while swimming. I just can't select the sim I'm actively using while they are swimming half the time. For merfolk, this might be a bigger problem because certain merfolk abilities depend on being able to select the mersim while they are swimming to use abilities. More information would help, but this is what I understand so far.