Very impatient dates bug

[McNum]

I think I broke something, badly.

Whenever one of my Sims asks someone on a date with the phone, the warning that I'm about to stand them up appears immediately followed by the message that I stood them up. I thought it was a hack conflict, but after a clean deletion of the Sims 2 folder in My Documents the bug persists. Annoyingly, it gives no error message, which makes it harder to hunt down unless you really know your way around the insides of the game, which I don't.

A perfect reinstall of the entire game didn't kill the bug either. By perfect I mean Base Game, patch, EP, patch, another EP, patch, and so on.

Currently I have a plain vanilla TS2/Uni/NL/OFB/Seasons with all Maxis/EA patches installed, but the problem began with a severely, and mostly Awesome, modded TS2/NL/OFB combination.

Anyone more awesome than me have an idea about what's going on? If a clean deletion of both game and save data doesn't kill it, what does? Alternatively, is there a mod around that can change the amount of time before a date feels stood up? It wouldn't be the first time a Maxis bug needs a mod solution.

Oh, might as well add that I'm running Vista Home Premium and that Sims 2 worked fine until about a week ago on that... is it overkill to invoke a System Restore Point for Sims 2?

[danicast]

Need moar ram? Is possible.
Also, check the thread "vista sucks" or something, vista is a memo hog.
You can also have a headmaster stuck, heck the lot debugger thread.

You have a lot of reading to go for.

[McNum]

It shouldn't be the RAM, the PC is pretty new and even Vista should be content with 2GB. I know some other games I have that actually had memory issues got better on the new PC. I can even run a truckload of NPC Sims on the lot at the same time without slowing the game down much. In fact, after installing Seasons, the game runs very smooth, probably better than the OFBp2 game I upgraded with it.

But I guess throwing the Lot Debugger at it is the next way to go. Are dates handled by the Scenario Controller? If so, it's nuke time. Maybe even Force Errors on everything, just to find out what's there.

If that doesn't work... I guess I'll have to look for a program conflict or roll back Vista a week or two to when the game worked fine. I really hate this kind of bug.

EDIT:
Nuking the Scenario Controller didn't work.
Running Sims 2 with the bare minimum of background processes didn't work.
Rolling back Vista until before the bug happened didn't either.

Whatever I broke, it's broken pretty good.

Looking through objects.package with SimPE could probably work, I just can't figure it out. Where are dates handled, anyway?

[KatEnigma]

You're dreaming if you think Vista only needs 2 GB. The game, with XP needs 2 GB to run properly. Vista needs 4. But I don't think this is the cause of your problem.

When you did the clean install, did you make sure it was really uninstalled by checking C/Program Files and your registry? Did you completely move the folder out of my documents?

[McNum]

I didn't check the registry, but the game files and the My Documents files were gone. I sweeped them after the uninstall had done its thing. To be sure, I deleted the entire EA GAMES folder there, just in case something from Body Shop was messing with it.

I did read the Registry entry for Sims 2 later, and it's the usual "What is the program, where does it run from, who has access to it" and such. The only odd thing was an entry specifying what EPs are installed. I guess that's for deciding what CD to ask for.

One thing about this bug that's kind of odd is that there's a post over at the S2C forum with the exact same bug apparently happening at the exact same time.

SC2 Forum

It just can't be time based, can it? That would be too random, even for Sims 2... Eh, setting back the calendar a few weeks is easy enough to test. It just sounds wrong.

I don't know, I've more or less given up on it for now. I can't find the entry for "Ask Sim on Date" or for being stood up works in SimPE. If I could find that, I'd set the stood up timer, if there is one, to something silly high and hope that would fix it. After all, annoyance is a great fuel for a mod/bug fix.

If I want to go hunting for the dating code, do I need to go for the Nightlife objects.package or the most recent one?

[danicast]

One thing about this bug that's kind of odd is that there's a post over at the S2C forum with the exact same bug apparently happening at the exact same time.

Ops, now that´s interesting. Sounds like some borked sim trying to enter the lot. Maybe you have a corrupted char or object.
Repeat the experience with debug mode on and post the error log here, please.

[McNum]

One thing about this bug that's kind of odd is that there's a post over at the S2C forum with the exact same bug apparently happening at the exact same time.

Ops, now that´s interesting. Sounds like some borked sim trying to enter the lot. Maybe you have a corrupted char or object.
Repeat the experience with debug mode on and post the error log here, please.

I've done it with debug mode on a few times myself to get an error log. However, there is no error log. The game reports no error.
I've tried in a clean neighborhood (made from clean templates found here) to eliminate any Maxis-borked Sims. No dice.

However... I discovered a pattern. I might be able to beat this bug now.

My usual routine when making a Sim ask another out on a date is as follows:
Click Phone -> Call -> Ask Out on Date
Set speed to 3
Community Lot
Car

Then my Sim would run over in fast forward, call up the target and be out of there in 10 seconds flat.

On one of my tests to flush out an error, it worked flawlessly. But how? I forgot to set the game in Fast Forward. That's right, at Speed 1 there is no bug. Well, not that I've seen yet. But if I hit speed 3 at any point from the phone call and until the load screen... "Hurry Up!" "You stood me up! I hate you!"

What exactly does Speed 3 do? Does it just let the game run at whatever speed it can do? Because if that's the case, I know what's wrong. Two weeks ago I installed a Windows Vista update that should improve game speeds, and it did a little. What if Sims 2 is using some silly way to count time before standing up a date and that get counted as fast as a Core2Duo can do when put in Fast Forward?

Preliminary results? I may have found a workaround... more testing required.

If my theory is right, it means I have an inverse performance issue. The game can't keep up with my PC. 

[danicast]

Borked graphics, game freezes. It happens that the graphic card need some time to proper render stuff. When you put at speed 3, you basically is telling the computer to render everything faster. Maybe that´s why your game is freezing.
Need moar ram cause vista is a memo hog.

[McNum]

The game isn't freezing, the date timing is just screwed up. It's not a graphics card issue, the game renders absolutely perfectly here. It looks and runs as smooth as all the Lies and Propaganda movies EA sent out for all the EPs.

Further testing reveals that Speed 2 is also working out. It's a CPU issue, I bet.

If Speed 3 is really the "Go nuts!" speed, then using a computer 4 to 8 times faster than the very high end PCs at the time of Nightlife's release "Go nuts!" speed could cause some issues. Dual core CPUs weren't readily available when the Nightlife code was written, and 2GB of RAM would have been overkill at that time, too. It wouldn't be the first game I've seen get confused by more CPU power than it was designed for.

Also moar ram? It's a 32 bit Vista. If I add moar RAM, I'm getting too near the cutoff point. At 4,294,967,296 bytes of memory, physical or swapfile, any 32-bit system will ignore the rest. 4GB memory isn't a suggestion, it's the law. Unless you go 64-bit, which has its own can of worms attached.

Moar ram isn't worth the money. Sure I could get one more GB with no problem, but the 4th would be wasted since combined with Windows' swap file, I'd be over 4GB total. So, yeah. I'll get moar ram when I go 64-bit. Not before.

[danicast]

The game isn't freezing, the date timing is just screwed up.

Babe, sounds like objects conflicts. I would check that.

[Simsample]

You said you tried with a vanilla game, but did that include a clean Sims2 folder in My Documents? I'm wondering if it's something screwy about a particular hood, or config or something.

[McNum]

By vanilla I mean uninstall the game, delete the EA GAMES folder in My Documents, delete all Sims 2 program files, and reinstall to a different location, just to be sure. I made a new Neighborhood with no Pleasantview or Seasons imports and repopulated it with the NPC and Townie maker dead tree. I made a new Neighborhood for each new test of the game. So yeah, pretty clean.

It's... not so clean anymore. After discovering the Normal Speed workaround, then I started remodding the game. It probably was a good thing to get the Downloads folder wiped, though. I had a lot of junk I didn't use there. Now every single mod is Seasons compatible, guaranteed, and any conflicts have been addressed.

But vanilla or heavily modded, my result is the same. Speed 3 means standing up the date. Speed 1 and Speed 2 means the date works. I just wonder what the hell happened to Vista two weeks ago. It's gotta be Vista, there's nothing else it could be now.

And for the record, Sims 2 is beginning to become a pain to install correctly from base game and up. All those CDs and "We think you're a dirty thief! Prove us wrong!" serial codes get old real fast. I mean it's not like serial codes prevent ARR! versions of the game. All original disks here, though. I just don't play the EPs I don't think are worth the money.

[danicast]

It's gotta be Vista, there's nothing else it could be now.

Yeah, most probably.

[jsalemi]

And for the record, Sims 2 is beginning to become a pain to install correctly from base game and up. All those CDs and "We think you're a dirty thief! Prove us wrong!" serial codes get old real fast. I mean it's not like serial codes prevent ARR! versions of the game. All original disks here, though.

Yea, tell me about it -- I spent about 2 hours yesterday doing just that, after doing a re-install of XP on my machine.  It gets nuts.

[SimGeekChick]

I have the same problem with dates. I tested it on a Vanilla game no hacks no CC too. I gave up and just had the dates come to the house then call the cab. I've got Vista and a dual core. I'll have to try the speed changing tactic.

[jsalemi]

Yea; I noticed even under XP that with a dual core the #3 speed is lightning fast.  I do have the dual core fixes in, but I haven't tried using forcecore to restrict the came to one core yet to see if that makes a difference.

[McNum]

I wonder if the speed settings are hackable? If they are, where do I go look for it?

If I could lock Speed 3 at 4x normal speed or similar that would be plenty and the game should be able to keep up.

[jsalemi]

Forcecore didn't make much of a difference -- speed 3 is still lightning fast.  1 and 2 are ok -- it's just 3 that takes off like a jack rabbit.

[McNum]

Well, considering that Nightlife has a 1GHz Pentium 3 as a minimum requirement, a 2.6 Core2Duo is at least 5.2 times faster than what Nightlife was made to run on and that's before counting the improvements made in both the P4 and Core2Duo architecture. Nightlife is getting speeds it just cannot handle and has about 8 times the RAM it needs.

If that doesn't screw up the game just a little, I'd be surprised.

[jsalemi]

Yea, but you'd think that by at least this time, EAxis would be accounting for the proliferation of duo and quad processors; even if they don't make use of multiple cores in the game, they could at least notice the system clock and compensate for it. It shouldn't be hard, but then, this IS EAxis we're talking about.

I have this sneaking suspicion that the developers are still working on 2.8GHz Pentium 4s with a gig of RAM, and don't have a clue what it's like to run the game on a modern machine.

[McNum]

Yeah, I just don't get why Developers don't speed limit their games more often on PC. CPU power more or less doubles each year. With Sims 2 probably having a 5 year strategy, it should actually be prepared to run into a CPU 32 times faster than the 800MHz one the base game needs.

If too much power can cause a a miscount, it really should have been caught in debugging. Aways inseret impossibly high numbers into the system at least once. To see when it breaks. Not if, when.

[danicast]

I have a dual core and I use speed 3 and nothing wrong happens.
Must be something else. Vista, I bet. I use XP.

[jsalemi]

I have a dual core and I use speed 3 and nothing wrong happens.
Must be something else. Vista, I bet. I use XP.

I also use XP Pro.  It's not that (in my case, any way) anything wrong happens on speed 3 -- it's just that it's SO FAST. I played the game for years on a 3GHz Pentium 4, so I was pretty familiar with how fast the game went on 3. So after moving up to a 3GHz Core 2 Duo, I immediately noticed the difference.

For example (times are not exact, because I didn't officially benchmark them) -- on the old machine, an overnight sleep period for the sim on automatic-3 would take, say 10 minutes of real time, and was slow enough that the minute changes were obvious. I used to have enough time to read a forum message or two on my other machine, knowing I wouldn't miss when the sim woke up.  On the new machine, the same period takes less that 1/2 that time, the minute changes whiz by, and the sim is awake before I have time to even read the thread titles.  

[kuronue]

I'm fairly certain this is a game glitch - as long as I can remember, pressing 3 when waiting for a cab makes me stand them up. I think speeding up the game speed disproportionately speeds up the waiting-date timer. I do have a dual core but I run XP so it's not Vista causing this.

[SlickCee]

I am almost sure it is a game glitch. The same thing be happening to me too. I also have it on speed 3 when the dates are supposedly "stood up." 

It isn't Vista, because even when I had XP I had this problem. Even before I had hacks I had to deal with this problem. But, ever since I got my new computer I rarely had it on speed 3, so it didn't happen as frequently. Now with this new computer, everything is on speed 3 (Yeah, I like my game to go lightning fast). It is all adding up now.
 
It got to the point where I just gave up on the going out on dates things and just did them at home. Nothing boils my blood more then when I go through all them loading times for no reason AND have an angry Sim who kicks over my garbage can and causes me to have roaches 

 I would've expected EAxis to have made a fix for this by now, but I guess not