Does anyone know why this happens, how to avoid it or better still how to fix affected 'hoods? I thought this was a post-seasons patch problem, but I hit it again yesterday running OFB only with Numenor's base game starter. I also did a search on MATY and found a post from someone who first hit this problem with Pets.
I am pretty convinced now that it's the trees (or really all neighborhood decor and roads).
This happened to me a few weeks ago in a Uni subhood, using this lovely but ridiculous map:
http://hideki.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=252232Seeing Eleonora's tree theory, I checked the NHTR bit and there were
fourteen thousand fucking trees on that map. (It was also stupidly lumpy, but that's a story for another day.) However, it was exactly the shape I was looking for, and so, after about eight attempts to get it loaded, I set out deleting trees. It's actually not so bad if you do it in front of TV, and since they're so close together, you can just tape down the delete key and click randomly.
After the trees were obliterated, everything worked perfectly.
Then today, I finally got my shiny package of "Sims 2 Season Story." Immediate borkage of the main hood. Luckily I had backups, but even these did not work.
I tried everything else, because the memory of those 14,000 trees was still fresh. "Please, not the trees again!"
I tried removing downloads, deleting *.cache files, swapping in the Seasons stealth suburb from a working hood, and even somehow managed to load up said suburb in game (it's boring, didn't even have the decency to be broken), but no fix. The only thing that made a shred of difference was the "dontmergeNHflora" cheat, which, let me see my 'hood after I had brought up the Neighborhood switcher. The problem was that it was so incredibly lagged that there was no way I would be able to nuke enough trees to make a difference.
*whew* Sob story over. The fix, as I did it:
0. Get a camera mod so you can see the whole neighborhood. I know some people have said these caused their problem, but trees lurk in the far corners of your 'hood. Most of the 14,000 trees mentioned above would not be visible with the standard neighborhood camera.
1. Make a new neighborhood with the same map as the problem 'hood.
2. Obliterate all trees and whatever else you can. It is helpful to use a contrasting terrain.
3. Open new neighborhood in SimPE. Check NTHR bit to make sure treeicide is complete. Extract NHTR.
4. Open affected neighborhood and replace NHTR with shiny bare version.
5. Load in game. Trees gone! If a road is floating or sunken, try placing a new lot along it and it should level out.
6. Keep bare NHTR file for future use of affected map.
I have blank NHTRs for maps "Bonito" (above) and "Rushburg Heights" (
http://hideki.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=191484). The Bonito one might be a little weird as I tried to use the SC4 Terraformer to flatten the map; not sure how that will affect use of the NHTR on an unflattened version. Anyway I can send either of those to anyone who wants them,