@advanceddarkness - I will need a log file to assist you. More than likely it is another mod that may have a compatibility problem with this one.

when my colonists walk an animal, they will follow the colonist indefinitely. uninstalling the mod seems to have fixed the issue. love your mod but perhaps this is a bug?

UPDATE 8/10/25:

Hi everyone! I was able to find the time tonight to look at the cause of the bug. It turns out that while the pawn was doing anything other than walking, recreational joy was not being processed. In fact, in many cases, it was going down instead of up.

It would look like this. Pawn walks up to pet, recreation goes down. Pawn starts walking to pet, recreation goes up. Pawn throws ball and watches pet fetch the ball, recreation goes down. Pawn starts walking again, recreation goes up. This usually led to minimal gain to recreation at all and probably explains the complaints about how some people were seeing little to no recreation gain.

The good news - it's fixed. I changed each of the toils (the steps of a job) to process recreational joy every tick. The change is so significant, that I am going to hold off on the recreation vs skill bar for now because it may be completely unnecessary. Lets wait a little bit and see how people feel about it.

@Chocolayte - The playing fetch job does increase the bar, but I did notice a bug while watching closely. The recreation does not go up while the animal is chasing the ball. Instead, it seems the recreation only goes up while the pawn is moving to each of the way points in between the pawn throwing the ball.

Since walking a pet doesn't pause to throw a ball, walking a pet is unaffected from the bug. I'm going to fix this bug before I create the slider I mentioned. I am still unpacking my house (irl), but I will see if I can find a solution sometime tomorrow.

If you notice that the bar is not increasing while the pawn is walking to the next waypoint, it may be another mod you have is affecting recreational jobs.

@ColossalFossil sorry, typing error, my fault, i mean pawn playing fetch doesn't increase my pawn recreation bar.

@Chocolayte - This mod does not affect the mood bar directly. It affects your recreation bar and skill bars. Mood can increase over time while your recreation bar is up. However, there are other base game factors that affect the pawns overall mood. I am not sure what you mean by animation work.

I am working on a change that will allow you to choose how much recreation versus skill should be gained while playing with animals.

@oldnewone - I believe so. This mod adds recreational jobs for your pawns, and I am assuming that Animal Touch does as well. So, they should work together. However, since they are separate jobs I doubt that your pawns will try "touching" while playing with animals.

Any know incompatible mod? playing fetch with animal doesnot increase my pawn mood, animation work.

I asume that https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3438568687 Animal Touch is compatibile?

UPDATE 8/6/25:

Hi everyone. I made a small update today that included a few internal bug fixes. When pawns are playing fetch with animals, they now start walking to the next waypoint after the animal fetches the ball a little sooner. This will help keep the animal's attention and cause them to wander off a little less while playing fetch.

Also, if the pawn runs out of the walking waypoints before the Walk a Pet job ends, the job now successfully ends without a warning.

Up next, skill gain versus recreation gain. This will take me a little while to figure out because a lot of the gain values are hard coded in the JobDef XML files and are not pulled from the customized mod settings.

Sick work!

Hi everyone. I just pushed an update that allows pawns to prefer bonded animals. By default, they prefer bonded animals 50% of the time. If prefer only to play with bonded animals, you can change this in the mod settings by setting it completely on Bonded Animals as the preference. The Must Be Cute is disabled by default. This will allow you to spend time with your non-nuzzlable animals such as wolves that you have bonded with. The Bonded Animals must be cute setting does not affect cuteness requirements of non-bonded animals (that's the normal Must Be Cute setting).

I also fixed a bug that prevented the Max Animal size slider to go above 100mm. It now goes up to 500mm. So, feel free to play fetch with any playful cows and horses you may have in the barn.

If you encounter any issues, let me know. My next update will fix an issue with animals trying to wander off mid-play.

Hi everyone. I cleaned up a few more "behind the scenes" items. By doing so, I have made it easier to support versions RimWorld 1.1 through 1.6 and will continue to do so with any new features I add to the mod. Please keep in mind that if any bugs are found, I will prioritize the latest version of RimWorld before fixing bugs related to older versions.

I am going to add support for Bonded Animal preference in the next update. Afterwards, I will allow the option to adjust how much recreation vs skill gain is applied to the pawn.

@EMENELO - I need to think about how I would like to handle that from a UI perspective. I am not a fan of mods that include a list of every animal type from the game and a checkbox. It would need to be a filterable list that allows you select animals by type or name and the ability to disallow playing with them or not.

I will think of something though. Not many people want to go for a walk with a pet slug. Unless maybe it talks.

@Cargo - I am going to add an option to the mod in the near future - Bonded Animal preference. It will be a slider with a range from "Don't Care" to "Only Bonded". When a pawn wants to spend time with an animal, this mod option will be checked.

If the setting is "Don't Care" - animal selection will occur like it does currently.
If the setting is "Only Bonded" - the pawn will only choose from Bonded animals. If none are available, the pawn won't be eligible to play.
If the setting is in-between - there will be a chance to want to only play with Bonded animals. If no bonded animal is available, the pawn will choose from any animal like it does currently.

I'll let everyone know when I have added it. I think by default, I will make it 50% in-between to start with.

@Pypor - Thank you for catching that.

@Lagii - The mod, by default, will provide the option to spend time with cute (nuzzling) animals for recreational fulfillment. Since recreation is chosen at random from a pool of activities (cloud watching, walking, playing pool, swimming, etc.), the more recreational activities you provide, the less likely a pawn will be constantly spending time with their animals.

It's a riot any time I see a pawn play fetch with their pet T-rex.

how do i disable particular animals being walked bro? my colonist keeps walking my goose around the whole base and they get stuck

This is an essential mod for me now. It seems like colonists seldom play with their bonded animals, they'll pick arbitrary ones. It would be cool if they preferred to play with their personal pets. Also, this is maybe outside of scope, but it would be cool if bonded animals spent some of their time trying to follow their master instead of Wandering.

What animals does this apply to? Certain intelligence level? Or something we can modify?

I love the idea of this mod. I'll probably use it regardless. But if I see my pawn going for a walk with a rat or playing fetch with a rabbit I'm going to laugh.

@ColossalFossil Amazing mod! Thanks! Also, just letting you know, the description still says "currently only supports version 1.5 of RimWorld"

Most important mod ever conceived, game is unplayable without it.

I love this mod; thank you very much.

Dope mod, dope modder.

Thank you all for the positive vibes!

thanks for updating!

Thank you!

Hey everyone! Version 1.6 is now available. In addition to fixing any bugs we find, I will be working on the settings for skill gain vs recreation gain next.

Mr. Krill - after looking into it, that message is a warning that I created. It happens when the time it takes to travel the walking path is shorter than the maximum time the pawn wants to spend with the animal. I plan to change it to choose another new walking path when this occurs, which the pawn will follow until the end of the recreational job. For now, this is safe to ignore as it is a warning and not an error. (yellow text, not red)

papa bless

Another thanks for your work

Thanks everyone for the support. I am spending some time this week to rewrite the pathing logic due to the 1.6 changes. I am trying my best to make sure this is ready BEFORE the 1.6 release.

Thank you for keeping this awesome mod going!

Id love to run it in my 1.6 Colony. Any ETA for the updated version? Thank youuu!

For the long term, what I plan on doing is:

* Add automated testing
* Create a new UI which will allow a searchable and scrollable list of animals you would like to override. If the animal or pawn type is in the list, you will see the ability to allow or disallow playing for each of the play types. (For example, allow walking, but not fetch)
* Add new types of play

Hi everyone. Sorry for the lack of communication and updates. I have been dealing with a few things IRL that has absorbed all of my free time for the past few months. I am forcing myself to take a break over the weekend and next week to do the things I that I enjoy doing, which include RimWorld.

Here are things that I will be working on:

* version 1.6 compatibility (the preview of the game engine is available now)
* There are a couple of hard coded settings that I will make user configurable
* Adding a setting to change the level of skill gain vs level of recreation gain
* Add protection for invalid waypoints due to mod interference
* Add option to allow masters to play with bonded animals (which will override the cute setting)

Would it be possible to allow masters to play with their "bonded animals" even if they don't nuzzle? For example, I have a pawn who tamed a Cougar (who doesn't nuzzle) but they have a bond relationship. It would be nice if they could interact!

[AnimalsAreFunContinued: PullNextWaypoint Line: 22] Attempted to pull a waypoint, but the path is currently empty.
UnityEngine.StackTraceUtility:ExtractStackTrace ()
(wrapper dynamic-method) MonoMod.Utils.DynamicMethodDefinition:Verse.Log.Warning_Patch1 (string)
AnimalsAreFunContinued.AnimalsAreFunContinued:LogWarning (string,int,string)
AnimalsAreFunContinued.JobDrivers.PathableJobBase:PullNextWaypoint (bool)
AnimalsAreFunContinued.JobDrivers.PathableJobBase/<>c__DisplayClass1_0:<CreateNextWaypointDelegate>b__0 ()
AnimalsAreFunContinued.Toils.PawnActions/<>c__DisplayClass2_0:<WalkToWaypoint>b__1 ()
(wrapper dynamic-method)

https://gist.github.com/HugsLibRecordKeeper/2be3f8dff29bb95532e9148458aa8851

@ColossalFossil did the recreation amount option ever get updated?

It would be absolutely great if we'd get a list of which animals to EXCLUDE.
My colonists keep playing fetch with chicken ("Animals Nuzzling Detect Horrors" plus "All Animals Nuzzle" make them cute as far as this mod is concerned). Right until they have a mental breakdown due to drowsiness or hunger because chicken are ... kinda slow fetching a ball.

@ColossalFossil Thank you for considering my feedback !

@Seraph - I'll make an update to allow the recreation amount, recreation time, and the amount of social xp you gain adjustable in the mod options. I believe the issue is that recreation that also gives you xp will give a lesser amount of joy compared to activities that don't (such as cloud watching).

Give me a few days and I'll add this in the mod options.

I love the idea of this mod, but the numbers need tweaking, direly, I just watched a colonist spend 3 hours playing with her pet to get 4% recreation when she would have gotten 10x that amount by just cloud watching , at this point playing fetch is just hurting the colony and that's sad.

I always have mass animals in my colony, this is fantastic!

@NicoMok14 - Yes, as long as the animal is considered cute (has a nuzzle factor in the description of the animal's statistics). You can also play with non-cute animals by unchecking the "Must be cute" option in the mod settings.

Will this mod effect animal added by other mod?

@AcetheSuperVillain - I was able to reproduce the issue. I stuck the pawn and its pet into a room and forbid opening the door. This cause the pawn to be stuck "standing" when bored. After I did the fix that I mentioned last night, when the pawn cannot access the outside, the pawn will find something else to do. If there is nothing else for the pawn to do when unable to reach outside, the pawn will now "wander" instead of showing "standing".

If you play tonight, please unsubscribe and resubscribe to this mod to ensure you download the latest version with the fix.

Thank you for pointing this out!

@AcetheSuperVillain - I think I see the issue. When the pawn starts to think about walking a pet or playing fetch, I check if the pawn can reach a pet and both are available to play. Then I start the walking pet or fetch job.

The very first step of the job is to choose a path. I should choose a path as the very last part of checking if both the pawn and pet are capable of the job. Currently, if the job starts, but the path isn't reachable, then the job stops and the pawn picks up a new job. In your case, its immediately trying to play fetch or going for a walk again.

I'll see if I can get this fixed either tomorrow night or Friday night.

@AcetheSuperVillain - Is the animal inside with you at the time or is the animal outside of the lockdown when the pawn freezes?

If a pawn can't get outside, under lockdown for example, they will freeze up if they try to play with animals.

Hi everyone. I fixed a bug where the animal cuteness was not being properly checked. This was causing pawns to attempt to play with penned animals. Since penned animals cannot leave the penned area on their own, the animal would stop playing as soon as the animal hits the boundary. However, the pawn would immediately try to play with the animal again and get stuck in a potential loop.

I have fixed the issue and moved the "Must Be Cute" setting to the experimental section of the mod settings. If "Must Be Cute" is enabled (which it is by default), pawns should not try to play with penned animals. You should be able to turn this setting off if you have very large penned in areas or the entire pen extends to the walls of your base.

@Zach77 - if you would like to help, can you turn on development mode and copy and paste the log when it's happening? Stuck pawns in any mod are usually because an error in the JobDriver. I currently have two, one is for fetch and the other is for walking. It could also be caused by a mod incompatibility which I can either try to fix or mark as something that is incompatible with this mod.