Neighbourhood screen flashing to black
KellyQ:
Quote from: cwykes on 2008 January 11, 22:21:19
Halouha - Interesting that you got it first with the seasons patch same as me and the simmer one of the other posts I found..... I'll have to move a tree and see if that helps. I'm sure Eleanora will say it fits her tree theory!
Jlkeal - I don't think we know for sure that this particular problem does happen with Nvidia. You, I and Halouja all have ATI cards. Eleanor didn't say. Checking back on those links, I think the other sufferers either had old ATI cards or didn't say.
I've had the same problem for a while but I don't recall if it started before or after the Seasons' patch.
I have a Nvidia card.
speedreader:
Same problem, post Seasons, but I never installed the patch. ATI Radeon 9000 (honestly I can't believe it is still running this game at all).
I had to delete the neighborhood in which it began, but I solved it in others by disabling my firewall and internet access before I start Sims. Very occasionally it will still happen if I have had the game running for an extended period of time in the neighborhood screen while I am off doing something else. Restarting the game fixes the problem.
ingeli:
I am not sure if its the same problem I had a while a go, I figured out it was the hood camera mod, I installed a different one and the flashing stopped. In my case it was the main hood that was the problem, subhoods were fine.
cwykes:
Good news.... I actually fixed a hood yesterday for the first time ever :D . This is the one in my BGS OFB only game. I got into a lot by trial and error from a flashing 'hood screen, moved a tree on the lot, moved it back to it's original location(!), saved and came back to a normal hood screen. I then saw that the 'hood map had an insane number of trees, so I deleted trees until I got finger cramp in two fingers and now I'm hoping that hood stays fixed. I tried another hood that hadn't been loading since the Seasons patch and this time it loaded magically. Maybe BV helped somehow. That one is a big map and I can't actually scroll round it properly to check the edges for trees. Anyway, I deleted a lot of the trees I could see on a 'can't hurt' basis.
It's always been the main hoods in my game, never a sub-hood. Maybe sub-hoods are different in some way, but I suspect it's just that we don't put the effort in on those the way we do on the main hood screen.
I'm wondering if the problem with camera mods is that they let you see more of the map, thus making the screen drawing more complicated. Like Ingeli I had to change to a simpler 'hood camera mod with Seasons.
I can force everything together into the following framework, it makes sense to me, but that doesn't mean it's right! So what do you think?
The game screws up when it doesn't have sufficient memory to load a complicated 'hood screen. It gets stuck or messed up somewhere and just flashes at you. Clicking on parts of the map will let you see descriptive text and enter lots. People call this graphics corruption. Prevent the problem by adding/freeing up memory and not letting the hood screen get too complicated for your PC e.g. not too many trees! If your hood screen is laggy take preventative action by deleting 'hood decor, changing/deleting 'hood camera mods and/or turning down graphics options. You are quite likely to hit the problem for the first time with Seasons patch - hood screens got a lot more complicated with Seasons (DK why the patch is the problem not the EP itself). If you hit the problem try to get into a lot and change something to give the game a chance to redraw the screen.
jlkeal:
That could be why my neighborhood screen hasn't been flashing for some time now. I did change my camera mod a while back to another that was compatible with BV. I still get 'blackouts', both in my neighborhood and in my lots, but that's after quite a few hours of game play. That's probably due to my slow processor.
I do get less 'blackouts' by simply turning off shadows and reflections. It also gives me a few more hours of game play before my PC has had enough and crashes the game. I like the idea of getting rid of the trees in the neighborhood. I enjoy seeing a lush neighborhood and all, but I'm only in the neighborhood view for a minute or two, so it wouldn't make much difference to me with less trees. Anything to get more game play time, in my opinion.
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