I had this happen once, and I believe I fixed it by using the "Fix Broken Apartment Residencies" option from the lot debugger, and then deleting the sims with moveobjects - after that they didn't come back and an AL townie moved into their former apartment.

I aten't dead, etc.  New hacks, no more annoying LTA permaplat in FT!  See the first post.

No, I asked a question to find out if my issue might be related; it should not be random and incomprehensible to someone who knows the basic anatomy of their TS2 save folder and can find neighborhood packages and open them in SimPE.  I've actually thought about making a thread about this in this forum in the past, but decided to wait to see if something actually blew up first.

I don't have an answer to the problem, but are there character files in your hood's directory ending in .1.package?  Since installing FT, I have actually had a number of playables (most within the same small range of NIDs) be marked as unlinked in SimPE.  Nothing was wrong with them, so I checked out their character files, and discovered that there would be, say, a "N00X_UserYYYYY.package" file, and then also a "N00X_UserYYYYY.1.package" file, the latter containing the resources SimPE couldn't find in the first.  Like you, I didn't do anything different with them, and almost all of them pre-dated the installation of FT and were previously fine.  I haven't seen anything blow up yet, and it might be fine, since the resources are there, but if this is related and someone has an explanation, I'd be interested in hearing it.

Well, you could try the hack which is (ever so opaquely) called frontdoorhack.

It's not like modding tools and info on how not to blow up your hood are proprietary things that you have to pay for, you know - it is all freely available and easily accessible.  Why don't you just do what everyone else does, and search moar and/or download his hacks and pick them apart yourself?

I have a some questions:

1.  What determines whether customers react positively to sales socials?  Does it have to do with business loyalty, business level, presence/absence of BotB award/good/bad reviews, price, sales skill of the salesman, charisma of the salesman, etc., or is it just a function of LTR/STR like other socials?
2.  Is there a numerically determinable point (based on the above determinants) after which sales socials become impossible?  It certainly seems that way, as I frequently have one person in the store who repeatedly rejects BRY-induced sales socials, until at last, after many lost stars, I simply boot them with the controller.
3.  Is it possible for BRY to check for that eventuality, and have the salesmen stop harassing that person and/or simply ask them to pay for their things and leave?

As a follow-up to this problem, in case anyone else is still having it:

I made another attempt to play my game this weekend, and for whatever reason, this time it managed to go without crashing for long enough for me to actually load a lot and play it for a short time, during which I noticed strange graphical glitches that I had never seen before - sometimes during an animation, all the sims on the lot would disappear for several seconds, there were odd invisible vortexes that caused sims that passed behind them to become invisible or partially invisible, and sims who walked through a door while walls were up continued to appear on the screen despite being on the other side of the wall.  After confirming that the crash still happened, I loaded the game again and opened the graphics options, and turned everything down to the lowest setting, after which point the glitches stopped happening, the crash stopped happening, and performance was noticeably improved (and it has been noticeably worse since the new harddrive).  (I later turned back on high sim detail and reflections, with no noticeable changes.)  I conclude that the error is possibly just an indicator of generalized video card lameness rather than some kind of fatal directX problem.  (As for why my video card has suddenly become lame, this is a question for the people who sold me my three-year hardware warranty.)

IIRC, other than never aging, vampires are just as mortal as everyone else, and you could undoubtedly kill them with any of the numerous devices for sim murder that Paladin made.  Or you could just lock them outside during the daytime, like with traditional vampires.

Looks a bit like ESL to me, but I am no judge.

Also, for everything that is actually possible in that list, you'll probably find it at simbology.

Twojeffs' school bus mod does not fully restrict children and teens who are brought home to playable sims, but (according to the readme) does make them much more likely to be playables, and also favors those that the child coming home hasn't met yet.  It also gives you an option to reject the friend before the child gets off the school bus, if it does turn out to be a townie that you don't want them to be friends with.

Are you selecting the robot, or the stand that the robot is sitting on when you try to move it?  I don't think you can move them or use them independently of the stand, even though the robot itself seems to be a different object from the stand.

Well, they are useful for making eternally sleeping nannies in order to foil the SS.  And torturing sims, which, as noted, can be funny sometimes.

If debug mode is off, there will be no error log.  Play with debug mode on and wait for the error to occur, and then there will be an error log you can post.

Well, considering that the batbox has a "regive diploma" option, I would expect that the actual inventory object is not really necessary (as apparently the batbox can cause them to be summoned out of the ether again, like lost business deeds).

As far as inventory items go, sims that get turned into townies seem to have their inventories majorly fucked with by the game (or possibly, they're just fucked with when the sim is married/moved in, but from a player's perspective, that doesn't make any difference).  I've never seen a playable premade or non-uni townie with a "went to college" memory with a diploma object in their inventory when they moved in, either.  The only ones with diplomas seem to be the ones that were Uni-fied with the batbox, sent to and graduated from college in the usual way, or were actually former dormies who were asked to move into a lot in the main hood.

What did you do, exactly?

There should be one on GameCopyWorld, and my antivirus (AVG) has no problems with that site.  Come to that, it doesn't have any problems with GameBurnWorld either.  My impression from what people have said about Norton is that it kind of sucks, too, but meh.

This sounds like the error people were getting because of SecuROM.  Are you using a no-CD crack?  If not, start using one and remove SecuROM from your computer per the sticky in the Podium forum.

The impression I get is that it means that 3D rendering isn't available (or at least, the game doesn't think it is).  The D3DERR_WHATEVER format exists for other 3D-related errors as well.

As for your comment about computer clutter, this is a completely new reinstall of my entire hard drive.  Even if I did let my drive get that cluttered, it hasn't had any time to do so.

Ha, you have no idea, sheeple. 


Well, at least until you get canned, anyway.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure if you just find the family information resource in SimPE corresponding to the strays family and change its name to something else it will be fine.  I haven't actually done it with non-playable families yet, but I've heard of people who have changed the names of all of the NPC/townie families to something rational, and nothing blew up.

So cancel the damn nanny and hire another one.  Are your portals borked?  Can other sims leave the lot?  If it's just that lot, move the family out at some point when the nanny isn't there and then back in again.

Sorry, I renamed the file at some point and forgot to change the link.  The link in the OP should work now.

Can you not delete the van?