So tired, glitches, and party picspam

[profbutters]

 I didn't get any sleep at all last night.  Some glitches and errors cropped up that had to be dealt with right away.  I spent all night fixing them.  Not panicking--fixing.  I was just afraid that if I went to sleep, I would forget what I had been doing. 7 am.  I'm wiped.  

Here's what happened. I had played up to a certain point at Uni and was finally ready to do some stuff at Elroy's house.  All went well, until I had Chloris move out and build up a farm.  When I exited to the neighborhood, her lot was nowhere to be seen.  

She wasn't gone; I was able to have the family call her, invite her over, and ask her to move in.  I left her there where she was safe and tried to fix the lots.  Things were very strange; the regular lots were showing up with no buildings, and the unoccupied lots wouldn't hold anything on them.  

Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's very funny how when I have big trouble, it always seems to happen right after I've downloaded some stuff, especially lot stuff, from Parsimonious.  I have no idea why.  Walls, especially--why would wall coverings cause trouble?--but when I lost all that data last week, it was right when I was playing with some lots from there and tried to switch hoods, and got stuck.  Honestly, I think it's some innocent looking objects, like rocks and plants.  Again, no idea why, and maybe it is just my game.  

 I had to delete the Neighborhood Manager, and then that had some spooky consequences, tossed every single scrap of suspicious CC, and finally (happily) everything seemed ok.  The lots were back in.  I even had all the data saved from the last few hours of playing.  Only trouble was that the two households I'd been into now had no stories connected with them.  It's especially sad to see that on Lytton's lot: the family historian has no memory.  The pictures were there; just not the sorting and the story.  Once again, didn't panic, remembered that there must be web entry files that corresponded in my old Storytelling files, copied those over, and voila! Everything seems to be where it is supposed to be, and all the other households appear to be untouched.

Anyway, the good thing is that I think I found the trouble CC that was causing my problems and hopefully there won't be any more.  And if I ever say again, "oh, that lot on Parsimonious is SO CUTE, I'll just try it once more," hunt me down and hurt me. Again, not blaming Parsimonious in general, and I deeply regret that I can't use those gorgeous lots, but after big scale glitches like that, I don't dare.   

And because it's boring to read a Sims glitch whine without pictures, have some minor picspam!  Consider it a teaser or a sidelight, what you will.

You may remember these guys.



Elroy and Count Whoopie are Lucy and Carmilla's grandfathers.  Of course, the problem is that Elroy has been aging, and Count Whoopie hasn't.  What to do?  Well, no worries.  Evidently, they talked to Lucy and Carmilla about this a long time ago.


Lucy:  What's the shock, Milly?  You knew this was going to happen.  They even told us about it in high school.

Carmilla:  But I never thought they'd do it!  I don't want my grandpas to get old.



In fact, it was Carmilla's and Lucy's idea, and it frees Elroy and Count Whoopie to get older, retire, and in Count Whoopie's case, get to spend some of those golden years relaxing on the beach.

I was a little sad about Elroy getting older, but then I realized that while he may have gotten older, he certainly hasn't grown up.




Smustling, pranking. . .

Count Whoopie: You really haven't changed, Elroy.



Count Whoopie: And that's how I like it.



Of course, this means Count Whoopie hasn't changed, either.



And as far as they're concerned, it was a marvelous party.


 
Anyway, hope you enjoyed that!  The Uni households are in their final semester, and after a bit of dinking around, we're almost ready for some graduations and weddings.  There may be another chapter before the wedding one.  There are a few loose ends that it might be convenient to tie up separately, and a few amusing things, like Achilles doing a whole lot of makeovers. But I sure am ready for those weddings.  I can practically taste it.  

Comments

[snootcb.livejournal.com]

Yay for picspam! Sucks about the glitches though. Thank the heavens that you could fix it without too terribly much trouble. You've had way too much practice fixing game-threatening glitches as it is. Too bad about Parsimonious. Do you think it could have something to do with your having a Mac? Do you know if other Mac users experience the same problem? Or it might just be your particular game configuration. Who knows. I'm just happy you're doing good for now.

[profbutters.livejournal.com]

I know. I still don't know for sure if I dodged the bullet from those aging things, but it sure is better than when I went in and found the neighborhood pretty much gone. I don't know whether it's my Mac or what. The one I have now is much faster with much more memory, so you'd think that would be ok. I think maybe some of the hacked objects are more than it can stand, and a lot of them do seem to be specially hacked with some stuff by Numenor underneath it. And you would not believe what custom rocks have done to my game in the past.

Anyway, I built a new farm/garden temple lot, moved Chloris out, motherloded her up, moved her in, and everything seems to be ok for now. I've got some cute pix of her new home that I'll probably share later.

[smoothiesims.livejournal.com]

I admit that I was fully Team Vamp Elroy but actually, this might work better for the two of them, especially as I'm sure Count Whoopie wouldn't mind a nice vacation and some relaxing in the sun.

HI GRANDBABIES <3

...also, all these reports of glitches have me seriously worried for your game.

[profbutters.livejournal.com]

AUGH, I hope not! I'm not sure what was up with the aging glitch, but so far it doesn't seem to have affected anything. The last two were freaky, but I think those were connected with the new CC. That stuff seems to lurk in the background until you try to use it. I had some difficulties with some things from SimsDesignAvenue, too--very high poly objects actually seem to make it possible for a sim to get stuck between lots or the game stuck between neighborhoods.

I go back and forth on whether or not to mention them, but sometimes people have good advice about what to do. Saving the story content actually came from reading some posts by Orikes and Other PB, or I wouldn't have known that the web entries were still there.

Anyway, the vamp solution will probably work nicely. Lucy loves being a vampire; Count Whoopie can easily live without it. Even if my neighborhood survives just fine, Elroy and Count Whoopie have a lot of days to go. I really should send them to Twikki Island. And if I desperately want MOAR babeez, I can move them into a retirement cottage. Neither of them are even supernaturals anymore.

I'll have some pictures of your plantsim grandbaby Chloris for later.

[rosefyre.livejournal.com]

Glitches can be very scary. I haven't had the problems you've had, but my game has stopped working twice in the last few weeks, making me have to restart the computer, which wasn't so bad while it was in the middle of playing (just lost from the last save point, which was about 5 sim hours), but which was horrible while it was in the middle of saving - all six of my gen three sims ceased to exist, and I don't even know why. Luckily, I back up. Often.

I wonder why the Parsimonious stuff reacts so badly with your computer, since it always does seem to be you. I honestly have no clue.

Also, Elroy and Count Whoopie = very cute. Not used to them being old, though!

[profbutters.livejournal.com]

Backing up often is your pal, that is for sure. That's pretty much what happened to me; the game hung and I had to instigate a crash. I'm lucky that it doesn't happen that often and that 95% of the time when I have, it's had no ill effects. This time though, the game actually hung between neighborhoods. When *that* happened, I lost the hood (or rather, the data in the hood.)

It's probably just a few high poly items, maybe, though something odd is up with one of those lots for sure. You can see a red item in the background just off-lot in one of them when you download it, which to me means that something tagged along, and as you know, no Clean Installer for Macs. Luckily I always mark the stuff that installs itself with a new lot.

This time, I had backed up before I tried to fix things--deleting the Neighborhood Manager package file seemed to do it, though it's not something I'd like to have to do again. (I also had *two* Neighborhood Manager files in there at one point, which was totally my own mistake. Do not do this.)

Toast once said she had a problem toggling between hoods using the Neighborhood screen. I almost never have to do that, so in the future, I'm just going to exit the game and go back into that hood. (Going back and forth with subhoods, however, seems to be fine for now.)

Anyhoo, for now--backing up is my pal.

[rosefyre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, no Clean Installer for Macs = sucky.

I generally just don't download lots or sims, since I don't really need more of them. I don't download much in the way of walls/floors/furniture either - I find the Maxis stuff to be enough. Bodyshop items, though? Who can't use more of those?

Two Neighborhood Manager files? That sounds bad.

[profbutters.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the two Neighborhood Manager files thing was my own stupid fault--pasted one to desktop, put it back in the wrong place--anyway, I seem to have dodged that bullet, I think. The Neighborhood Manager file seems to be like the cache.file--it will regenerate when the game starts. But it's not something I want to do again.

I usually don't download lots. I'll download Orikes', of course, but that's because 1) I trust her and 2) she puts hers up free of CC, with careful labels about which EPs they're compatible with. I've got a bunch of walls and floors, most of which were recolored by Tina, and a whole lot of Holy Simoly stuff.

Bad hair files have been known to make my game throw up, too.

[hooptytrib.livejournal.com]

Whoa, PB this is incredibly scary. My understanding is that when a lot download causes problems, it can be because of a faulty recolor, but this is a much worse glitch than I had imagined possible from it. Were you able to find any reports of similar behavior?

Dare I ask: which Parsimonious lot was it? I kind of want to...

Hmm. Actually, don't tell.

Also, this talk of simsdesignavenue causing trouble is a heartbreaker. The one time I had a game-breaking cc glitch (from MTS2 of all places) I substituted a lot from there instead. Oops.

Let us never talk of cc again! Except sometimes.

[profbutters.livejournal.com]

I don't know--I think maybe some of each, a high poly item or two, a lot that looks really strange in the bin. . . I didn't really look. I have one Parsimonious lot, the Eternal Slumber Cemetary, that has given me absolutely no trouble at all. Custom plants and rocks, for some reason, are not my pal. Too bad. There are a few lots there that are very, very pretty.

SimsDesign Avenue I love very much. The main problem is that some of the stuff has a really, really high poly count and having lots of it in one place can cause trouble. And Macs have a file limit--I'm almost certainly over mine, so when I start BodyShop, I pull all the non-Body Shop CC (why do I need my walls in when I load BodyShop?--I don't.) The only troublesome lot I know of at SimsDesignAvenue, and I *know* it is not just me, is the Wedding Chapel, and it's the cool neon sign that does it. There are also some CC candles (not all of them, just a few) and some medieval stuff that cause crashes. It's no biggie with those--just mark 'em and take them out and all is cool again.

I'm not going to diss SimsDesignAvenue, though, because of the fabulous stuff Frances makes that I use all the time--the organ with the pipes, the church candles (except for the troublesome one), the tombs, the hearse, and the tapestries, plus most recently the pastries. I am a sucker for custom food, though CC food really does seem to be glitchy, no matter how clever the maker. It's the animations, I think. Also, why do pies appear under electronics in the Buy Catalog? I have no idea.

[song-sims.livejournal.com]

Yay for picspam! I love cute elders.

That's a really scary glitch. I'm glad you got it sorted out.

I've had tons of CC problems lately. My last big one involved doors on a community lot. Every time I'd click on build mode on that lot, the game would CTD.

I'm only on Gen. 1 of my new legacy, and I've already had to weed through CC three times. Why on earth did I think a historic theme was a good idea? XD

I'm using the medieval kitchen from SimsDesignAvenue and suspect that the kitchen cooking stove conflicts with other CC. The cabinets may also be the culprits. It doesn't happen all the time, but my sims often prepare food, pick up the pan and then set it back down on the counter. If I delete the stove and replace it, everything works. It's frustrating because half the time the medieval one does work. ARGH.

Like you, I really like their stuff. Despite a few glitches and high poly counts, I think they're worth it.