There is a blank line on the Supreme Commander pulldown when in vacation world.

In the Collection section, there are lines for Bugs, Rocks, Seeds, then a blank line followed by Everything.  The line is blank, as is the popup help.
It is the one that auto excavates.

This is the most serious problem that I have encountered in the last few hours.  Well, at least that I am sure is AM.

Nope.

However, do you really think that EA decided that you, and apparently you alone, should be punished for not having a CD?

That is not what caused the delay.

I have Ambitions and the latest AM installed.  I can hear the "tick" as the Main Menu dialog is opened, but the Mods Found dialog box and the "whoosh" that comes with it do not happen.  No problems using the main menu dialog.

I do no think they care about how you are playing to that level of detail.

I think that the user profiling and in-game ad capability are two parts of the same EA strategy.

So she got a +40 mood boost from being "victorious" over the vibrating washer.  Uh huh.  Yup.  Sure.  You betcha.

I have had bad luck on all save games where AM was once installed, but is no longer installed.  I have not really given it much thought.  I do not know whether this is because of AM changing something that is subsequently required or because of EA preventing people from accidentally damaging their game.

I can say that if this persists, it will make it more challenging to isolate AM problems from other problems when using passive methods to isolate.

Just an update from me on Motives.  After being able to recreate at will across several different saves, the systematic investigation that I did to make sure it was AM that was causing the problem and not something else has resulted in me being unable to reproduce it anymore.  My investigation involved not only removing AM and cache clearings, but removal of any possibility that a stray mod could be loaded, starting new games, and cycling through several different save games, and trying to come at it from different angles.

After restoring the Sims install, mods, and everything that I thought to save, to original, the save games that previously showed the motive problem are no longer failing.  One of the save games that exhibited this now does a Sim reset immediately upon being unpaused, which is curious.  This makes me wonder if something was in an invalid state prior to the motive crash.

I have now upgraded to the latest AM, so I consider all prior testing on this issue invalid.  If I see it again and can capture it, I will.

On the new version, I still am plagued by occasional hangs during loading of worlds and save games.  The green lozenge bar will get to 99.9% and stop permanently.  The game itself is still running and occasionally changes game tips, but the loading itself has frozen.  I have not experienced this outside of AM and often retrying is successful, usually the next time it is tried.  

Edit: I can report that the 06/06/2010 02:15:17 version of AM does not have a problem with Sims going to work in save games I had where this was going to happen.

Well, I did something to fix the motive problem, now I just need to figure out what it was.  While trying to isolate the problem, I went back to do a sanity check on my failing save game and the problem did not resurface.  I have been unable to recreate it since then.

Yes, it does.

No script error.

I got into the vacation location on the third try.  I did get an access violation in MSVCR80.dll, though.

I took the first adventure that presented itself, which had a "report in" step first.  Took it.  As soon as I completed the report in, Hunger, Bladder, and Energy tanked.
I have saves.  I will see if it repeats.

Edit: It does repeat.  It only happens with AM installed.  I tested for potential mod conflicts.  Link to save sent to Pescado via PM.

I am curious, too, because I have trouble even getting to a vacation location with AM installed.  The location never finishes loading.

New version of Awesome Mod now has the correct package version information, so the game no longer complains at startup.

Awesome Mod touches a lot of stuff and EA has touched back.   It would not surprise me to find out that EA has looked over AM to see what it is up to and that may have caused them to put fixes in areas that AM makes changes.  I would not attribute this to malice because AM does fix bugs and may make changes in areas EA might find interesting.

One thing we now know they did was put in a version identifier so that they can detect when a core mod is out of date.  AM already includes a similar function but such function is not required for core mods.  EA has made it a little harder to run old core mods.  Once AM gets this set straight, that version mismatch dialog at the start will go away.

I got the wrong version dialog at startup.  I do not get this with my own core mod that makes changes to UI.dll  (removed for AM testing).

Either that message is triggered by changes to the Objects.dll or Systems.dll files or my build process does something that makes the game happy.

Despite the title, the mod does not say that Ambitions is a requisite EP to use the mod.  The mod says is that it works for "any game versions 1.12/2.7/3.3/4.0 and above".

If you have Ambitions, you will need it.  If you do not, my guess is that using it will not hurt anything.

What makes you think this?

If it makes you feel any better, the only bug I ever see is that the Mirror does not save settings between game sessions.

I run Win 7 x64 and NVIDIA with no problems. The only freezing I see is related to items I have previously discussed.

To me, those screen shots do not represent lighting "working as it should".  The third picture is particularly bad.

The only correlation between the freeze and Supreme Commander is that SC is often a victim of this same bug.  SC does not cause this.  Finding a Sim using SC that is blocked or looping is merely a means to check for an easily identified condition that can be easily corrected.   Unless the underlying situation that caused the problem is identified and fixed, something that is not always easy to do, it will likely happen again.  A freeze not caused because SC is looping is merely harder to find.

I also want to be clear that SC looping does not seem to cause a freeze unless the attempted action is one that will cause an actual long delay in the game.  If SC is blocked because a Gnome has moved to block Sim access to the refrigerator, the game does not freeze.  Instead, the symptom is jerky Sims animation that is best described as "on and off" action by the Sims, who behave in a move, stop, move, stop manner.

Because blocked routes can cause game lags, it is not unreasonable to theorize that routing calculations that get out of hand can cause more serious performance issues, like freezes.

Not all freezes need to be caused by the same thing.  A freeze of any noticeable length is merely a symptom of something going wrong, namely some part of the game going off to do some work and never returning, or taking an extreme amount of time to return.  There is no rule of programming that says that this can only happen in one place or for one reason.

Well, for starters, any Sim in transit somewhere or hiding in a rabbit hole is unlikely to be a problem, so you can ignore them.  Likewise, any Sim in a house that you are not playing (where none are running in high res) is unlikely to be a problem. 

Start by checking your own Sims and any Sims in other households that might be running Supreme Commander, then check all the Sims out and about in the world on foot in the vicinity of your active Sims.

Uh.  If you have Sims running Supreme Commander in the background, I think they are running in high resolution mode.

It seems to me that could contribute to a lag or freeze problem.

Stop downloading from TSR?

Yes.