Pet is destroying farm; any way to remove it?

[Rosebud]

My game has bugged out and my dog is destroying anything it touches (fencing, furnaces, gem replicators, etc.) and while I have reported the bug, it didn't get any responses. So, instead of doing that, I was curious if anyone knows a way for me to remove my dog altogether from the save file. I know there's an option to just not take the pet when it's offered, right? Surely there must be some variable I can change or erase so the game thinks I just never had a pet.

[Lurlex]

I've never heard this one ... what's the nature of the bug? Do things just vanish when he touches them?

[AvatarMan]

Bridezilla 2: The pettening.

[Hurodrik]

This sounds eerily familiar. After the last patch some players reported their spouses going on rampages around the farm, which was already reported as fixed in a recent hotfix. I wonder if there could be a connection here.

[Rosebud]

Come to think of it, I married Penny and, by coincidence, I had named my dog Penny. I wonder if that messed up the script... I doubt it, though. Surely the dog is just called "pet" or something along those lines. Anyways, things do just vanish, yes, although it also makes the pickaxe sound when he touches them, so the game is actually destroying them rather than simply making them vanish. It doesn't leave the item behind to be picked up, though.

[Hurodrik]

Автор сообщения: Rosebud

Come to think of it, I married Penny and, by coincidence, I had named my dog Penny. I wonder if that messed up the script... I doubt it, though. Surely the dog is just called "pet" or something along those lines. Anyways, things do just vanish, yes, although it also makes the pickaxe sound when he touches them, so the game is actually destroying them rather than simply making them vanish.

Actually I do remember reports of a bug involving pets/horse named after one of the villagers. It also affected your kid and would mess up the social interface, among other things. I think there's a link between both behaviors. Probably something that CA didn't consider while fixing the glitch I described. On this grounds, I think your best bet to solve the issue would be to edit your save and change the name of your dog.

Edit: If you search the forums for the name bug, you'll probably stumble upon someone explaining exactly how to alter the pet name.

[Rosebud]

Unfortunately, I already did alter my pet's name. It's just one variable, right? If it's more than one, I'll have to go back and try it again. I changed it from "Penny" to "Jenny" and for a moment I thought it had fixed things, but it didn't. The dog ran through a mayo machine and destroyed it. Honestly, I would rather get rid of the dog altogether. It doesn't do anything and I find its barking irritating while I'm farming.

[Hurodrik]

From what you described, it seemed the game was mixing the dog's behavior with regular town NPC behavior, as they will destroy anything in their way to avoid pathing issues. Also made sense considering the spouse rampage bug. I don't know if there is another variable in the save game with the dogs name, but I'd try searching for it if I were you. Can't think of anything else, sorry.

[Rosebud]

Unfortunately, without knowing much about scripting, how will I know if what I'm changing relates to Penny my wife or Penny my dog?

[Hurodrik]

Just found something that might help. I was looking on my own save file and only found one entry of my dogs name, BUT, one of the entries soon afterwards caught my eye. That being: "willDestroyObjectsUnderfoot >false<". Perhaps something went horribly wrong and that is now set to true in your file? Give it a check. I assume that if you were affected by the remnants of the "spouse rampage" bug before you changed the name of the dog, some of the code might have already been "contaminated", like this entry.

[Rosebud]

I replaced every instance of "willDestroyObjectsUnderfoot>true" with false that I could find, just to be safe (hopefully this doesn't mess up the game; I'm not sure why it would ever be necessary) but it didn't stop my dog from plowing through my fence or mayo makers. I was so sure that would fix everything.