Crash on resized lots at 7PM -- any ideas?
Zazazu:
Quote from: Madame Mim on 2007 October 30, 05:01:38
with basement
The other one that has crashed...Aelflaed's...does it also have a basement?
None of mine do, and the very few people who have tested it haven't achieved crashiness. I didn't achieve crashiness with Plasticbox's, but I also had removed the basement due to the graphical glitch annoying me.
I was trying to upload the set of four at MTS2 for more testers, but MTS2 was being a bitch to everyone last night. It's prolly fixed by now.
baratron:
My student this afternoon cancelled, so I have 2 hours in which to play around with different hack configurations and see if I can locate the factor which makes Plasticbox's lot stable on my computer. (The other thing I could be doing is my invoices because it's the end of the month tomorrow, but... meh. I hate invoices!)
One thing I've been wanting to say is this: I think it is very important that the lot doesn't crash if you go into it in Build Mode before moving a sim in, and save it. Every time there is a new EP, the way the game stores data changes - which is why, if you uninstall an EP, you cannot continue to use your existing Neighbourhoods. For years, people have noticed lot crashiness when they've placed a lot created in an earlier version of the game from the LotBin, and attempted to play it. So for years, Pescado has been recommending that you must always place a lot, then go into it in Build Mode, and resave before attempting to move sims in. This updates the lot to the new file format and prevents a... big percentage of wonkiness.
The problem is that lots that are present in your Neighbourhoods get automagically updated to the new file format when you install the new EP (which is why it takes forever to go into your 'hood the first time you enter it after installation), but lots in the LotBin are suspended in time and don't get updated. This means that people have experienced crashes with even Maxis-made lots that, say, came with the base game. As these lots have been made using the base game only or base game + Nightlife, this means that anyone running a different configuration needs to update the lot before attempting to move sims in.
My recommendation is that you do the following:
1. Install the lot in the usual way from the Sims2Pack file using the Clean Installer.
2. Check your Downloads folder to make sure that any new files have proper filenames and are not called 2qwoigoi542qgkjhsrgdkljn4wroiugfd.package. If you have gibberish filenames, delete any that are 1kB or less (as these will be empty packages), and rename the others using the information you have in the Clean Installer window.
3. Load your game, go into your test Neighbourhood, place the house.
4. Go into the house in Build Mode, make one small change (can be simply putting the walls up & down again with the walls up roof on/walls up no roof/walls down toggle, you don't actually have to move or rebuild anything). Resave the lot.
5. Delete the lot from your LotBin. This is because the version in the LotBin has not been updated to the new file format.
6. Close your game. This is to make sure that when you move the resaved lot back into the LotBin, it is the resaved version that goes in, not the cached old version that's still in memory. The more paranoid should delete groups.cache, and people with Pescadoean levels of paranoia should reboot Windows too to make sure the memory is flushed out. (Personally, I wouldn't bother!)
7. Restart your game, go back into your test Neighbourhood, and move the resaved lot into the LotBin. It is now safe for use.
I hope my instructions make sense - I was writing them in my head on the bus this morning :D. Now to try moving my hacks back in one at a time to find out what prevents the crash occurring.
Mootilda:
Quote from: ingeli on 2007 October 30, 00:10:38
The only lot that I had problems with was one that got corrupted because it was too close to some other stuff when expanded. I got an error message when using LE. It was changed when I loaded the game, I could enter it but it was not a beautiful sight, lots of blue and weird stuff.
Can you explain what you mean by "it was too close to some other stuff when expanded"?
Do you have the text of the error message available? I'd like to try to resolve the issue, if possible.
Mootilda:
Quote from: baratron on 2007 October 30, 15:24:42
The problem is that lots that are present in your Neighbourhoods get automagically updated to the new file format when you install the new EP (which is why it takes forever to go into your 'hood the first time you enter it after installation), but lots in the LotBin are suspended in time and don't get updated. This means that people have experienced crashes with even Maxis-made lots that, say, came with the base game. As these lots have been made using the base game only or base game + Nightlife, this means that anyone running a different configuration needs to update the lot before attempting to move sims in.
This has not been my experience with tests done with the lot expander (which changes many, but not all, of the record types within the lot package). Here's what I've noticed:
1) Installing a new EP doesn't update existing lots. I have verified this by doing a bitwise comparison of lots within neighborhoods with various EPs installed. However, I believe that installing a new EP updates the neighborhood package.
2) When a lot is added to a neighborhood from the lot bin, the game "marks" the lot with the newest EP, but doesn't change anything else in the lot package internal structure.
3) When you modify a lot and then save, the actual internal structure of the lot is changed to the latest EP.
baratron:
Quote from: baratron on 2007 October 29, 20:53:29
Quote from: Doc Doofus on 2007 October 29, 02:27:32
What else happens at 7pm: The lights turn on.
A couple of other ideas to test:
1. Does the newly installed and occupied lot crash if you go into build/buy mode and change the view to nighttime view? I hadn't thought of trying that. In many ways, that is similar to the 7pm changeover.
2. Turn on all lights before 7pm. Or turn off all lights before 7pm. That might make for an interesting experiment. it would at least eliminate the possibility that it's something related to outdoor houselights turning on and off.
3. I can't think of anyway to change the hour by force to nighttime. Can you think of one? If you change the hour, you can only change it to an hour during the day, if it's daytime, or night, if it's nighttime. I recall, though, somebody had a mod that would allow you to move vampires into lots at night. Any leads on that? That might make an interesting experiment.
3 is possible using the Insimenator (OBJ edition). Spawn the Temporal Adjuster (or load it from the Catalog).
Right. I have confirmed that it's possible to make the lot crash using Insim's Temporal Adjuster to change the time. This should speed up the testing process considerably!
As the Temporal Adjuster only has the options of Set Hour from 01:00 to 12:00, what you do first is Set Hour to 12:00. This makes it 12 noon. If you then choose 06:00, this is 6pm / 18:00 not 6am as would be expected! Therefore, you must play the lot for a mere sim hour on high speed.
Quote from: pbox on 2007 October 29, 23:19:03
Mootilda says that when shrinking, the LE does not do any cleanup of off-lot objects -- the game does that by itself. This could explain why Base/NL lots seem to crash, and BV lots seem to not crash: different game involved. Inge just said that stuff like careers and food ("global sim objects") are stored *in the lot file* (who'd have thunk?) .. here could be a connection to CAS sims vs non-CAS sims. They might have different stuff to store, or to access?
If "stuff" formerly on the (now shrunk) lot is not handled/moved/cleaned up properly by a base/NL game, and then you expose "stuff" to a CAS sim (or: it is stuff that only a cas sim needs/has), "stuff" timebombs at 7PM .. for whatever value of "stuff" (might as well be missing stuff that the game is looking for at 7PM). And "stuff" is replaced/cleared up by a restart of the lot in *all* games (Base/NL too), hence why no crash on replay. Something like that?
Your idea is rather vague due to the whole middle-of-the-night-ness of it ;), but I do think it's related to the longstanding lots in the LotBin don't get updated to the new environment problem. Hmm.
Quote from: pbox on 2007 October 29, 23:19:03
baratron,
- you called the filled in basement windows a "privacy window bug" -- do you happen to knwo how to fix this? I hate it (I see this with all sorts of windows, but only sometimes. Would be very happy to be able to iron it out).
Sorry :(. You'll see from my post on MTS2 that I have little idea about this either. All I know is that I have experienced it since the base game, and it persists even with no Downloads. It seems to be related to houses on foundations. If I'm trying to place those windows in a basement, they position correctly less than half the time - and I have now given up on them, because that the game doesn't use them properly for calculating the amount of light in the basement. (The light level is entirely unaffected by the presence of those windows.) If I'm building a lot with a foundation and put those windows on the ground floor (first floor for North Americans), I experience the bug sporadically - between 10 and 25% of the time.
There also exist two different versions of the bug - one where the "hole" for the glass is cut through on one side but not the other, and a second where neither side has a "hole". The first version can happen on any wall placed above a foundation on any type of lot (house, community, dorm), but the second is unique to basements in my experience. I don't believe I've ever seen this happen without a foundation present - on the occasions when I've made a basement by terrain work alone, the windows will place correctly and have holes to let the light through as long as the square of ground outside the window is flat and at the same height as the floor of the basement. I hope this makes sense?
I always figured this was some sort of unique-to-me problem, because Maxis keep using those damn windows in their houses, and I've never seen anyone else complain about it :(.
Quote from: pbox on 2007 October 29, 23:19:03
- what do you mean by "overlapping lots"? Do you have a screenshot? That sounds very strange.
By "overlapping" I simply meant "terraced" - the left-hand wall of the house joins directly to & overlaps with the right-hand wall of the next house along. As opposed to placing the lots separately.
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