Adoption Problems

[Shupinola]

I've been having a recurring problem with adoptions since installing Nightlife. It's something that never happened prior to this. I have found a way around it, but it would be better if someone knew a way to cure it.

All goes well, right up until the point where the social worker takes the kid from the car. At this point the game crashes. If I have the 'boolprop testingcheatsenabled true' cheat running, I get an error message instead. Clicking on 'Reset' makes the car disappear and then I get another error message and the social worker is stuck holding the baby/toddler. I have now installed InSIMinator and that allows me to teleport the toddler away from the social worker (doesn't work with babies as you can't select them and if you use the Selectable function from InSIMinator on the baby, the game locks up and crashes). Because the social worker is now stuck on the lot, Buy/Build and all save/exit/quit functions are greyed out. I get around this by using JMP's Lot Fixer. I then have to have someone interact with the adopted child, or it's still linked to the social worker and will disappear with her during the next step. Then another Sim uses the InSIMinator feature to make the social worker selectable and finally, I have to use the teleporting shrub (I think it's by Merola) to get rid of the social worker.

So far, this has worked OK in all cases except for when the adoptee (is that a proper word? I guess it is now) is a baby, but it's still a long process and it's made even worse when you don't like the child being offered because it looks like it's been thrashed with an ugly stick and you have to keep quitting and trying again.

Has anyone else had this problem? Is there anything that can be done to reset the faulty car and social worker without one disappearing and the other becoming stuck?

[Brynne]

Did you look at the error log?

[Shupinola]

I tried to attach one to this reply, but it was far too big. I can't see anything obvious, but then again, I wouldn't know what to look for even if I had a copy of 'Understanding Sims 2 Error Logs For Dummies'. Please take into account that when I was at school, you operated a computer by poking little holes in cardboard strips and if you did it right, you got a print out that read, "Yoor a twat!" repeated about 200 times. 

Anyway, here's the first section of one of the the error logs. Don't know if this sheds any light.

Build: 1.2.0.337
at Sep 30 2005,18:18:13

Object id: 263
name: Car - Social Worker - 0,8
Stack size: 2
Error: Object referred to must be a person.
Iterations: 47
  Frame 1:
    Stack Object id: 555
    Stack Object name: Driveway - Concrete - 1, 5
    Node: 42
    Tree: id 4130 name 'Adoption - Family greet' version -32750
    from Car_SocialWorker
    Prim state: 0
    Params: 236    Locals: 231 555 0 0 555
  Frame 0:
    Stack Object id: 263
    Stack Object name: Car - Social Worker - 0,8
    Node: 20
    Tree: id 4096 name 'Functional - Main' version 90
    from Car_SocialWorker
    Prim state: 0
    Params: 245    Locals: 0 0 236

[Brynne]

Is it just the one child that crashes the game?

[Shupinola]

Nope.

It's every time I adopt any child, anywhere, on any lot. It's always the same. The car arrives and I get to choose the age of the child. The car pulls up and the social worker walks round to let the child out. Then I get the error message. As soon as I click on the 'Reset' option, the baby or toddler jumps into the arms of the social worker and I get the next error message. I click on 'Reset' again and then the social worker is stuck on the lot. The baby or toddler is being held at an awkward angle. If it's a toddler, I teleport it away from the social worker, but it's usually hovering in the air, stuck in the pose of being held. A family member can interact with the toddler which makes it jump to a sitting position in the middle of the road.

When I make the social worker selectable, she is stuck standing on the far side of the road where she was when she removed the child from the car. 'Force Error' doesn't free her up. So my only option is to use the teleporting bush to get her to leave. When I select this option, she disappears from the lot.

I'm beginning to wonder if the driveway for buyable cars could be the problem, as that appears in that paragraph of the error log I posted. I say this because I've had problems with buyable cars too. If a Sim takes a car to a community lot, all is fine until they go home. Then I can hear the car trying to return, but nothing happens. The portrait of the missing Sim is there, but they can't get back onto the lot and the Buy/Build buttons are greyed out. No one can walk over the driveway where the car should be parked. I've experimented with loads of things when this happens. I even tried having a Townie move in and she replaced the missing Sim, effectively wiping out that Sim. The only way I've found of curing this is to go to another lot, invite that Sim over and then have them move in. Then I go back to the previous lot. The moved out Sim appears in the loading picture, but is missing after the lot loads up - as is the car. I can then move the Sim back into the house, but a copy of him/her remains at the other lot. If I move that Sim out, I can then delete it from the Neighbourhood screen.

Because of the way driveways need to be placed, they always end up being located to the left of the lot (looking at it from the street). This means that various NPC cars tend to park right opposite the driveway, or the area it takes up to allow for cars to reverse onto the street. I'm trying to remember if I've adopted kids on lots where they don't have cars/driveways.

I think I'll have to try adopting a kid on a lot where they don't have a car. If it works OK, then it narrows down the problem and maybe someone can do something about it. I'll try it now and get back to you, but it could take a while as I'll have to create a family just for this purpose. 

[Shupinola]

OK, so I can rule out driveways as being a potential problem in the adoption problems. I went to the Calente house and had Nina adopt a toddler. They don't have a car, but I had exactly the same problem with the social worker and her car.

[Motoki]

Do you have any custom cars or hacks that deal with cars? I know Pescado let accidentally let an early unfinished car hack out recently.

[gali]

I never had this problem, but I never adopted a toddler - only a baby.

May be you should try to adopt a baby, and see if the game crashes too. If it doesn't - something in the adoption programming  is wrong.

I mean, may be the game is programmed for adopting only a baby?

Just a thought....

[KellyQ]

I don't have any words of wisdom to help you but I just wanted to let you know I had the same problem with adoptions before Nightlife. I had tried to have Don and Cassandra adopt a baby and the same thing you described happened with them. Social Worker was stuck across the street by her minivan holding the baby and no one could interact with her or the baby; buy and build options were greyed out. If I used the moveobjects cheat and deleted her, Cassandra would have the "adopted baby" memory but no baby. For the life of me I can't remember how I worked this out. I *think* I ended up having them adopt a child instead of a baby and the kid walked onto to the lot and then I deleted the social worker. Anyway, the whole point is, I don't think it has anything to do with cars or the driveway since this happened before NL.
Sorry I don't have anything really helpful to offer.

[cwykes]

I've got a similar problem on a lot.  The social worker doesn't turn up in my case, but I get an error message saying vehicle error.  Cancel doesn't work and when I reset the social worker doesn't come.  I have Crammyboy's wonderful portal detector and it's not giving me any error messages.  I have base game only and it is patched.  This hood is not overcrowded either.  There are only a handful of occupied lots, though I have moved people around a bit with the tombstone of L&D. This is the first bit of the error log - does anyone recognise the problem?

Build: 1.0.0.999
at Jan 20 2005,10:59:56

Object id: 143
name: Car - Social Worker - 0,8
Stack size: 3
Error: Illegal owner field in data reference.
Iterations: 1
  Frame 2:
    Stack Object id: 143
    Stack Object name: Car - Social Worker - 0,8
    Node: 0
    Tree: id 512 name 'Soc&Rel: Test - Either Sim a Resident' version -32760
    from global
    Prim state: 0
    Params: 1536    Locals: 0 0
  Frame 1:
    Stack Object id: 143
    Stack Object name: Car - Social Worker - 0,8
    Node: 0
    Tree: id 4108 name 'Adoption - Create Baby' version -32698
    from Car_SocialWorker
    Prim state: 0
    Params: 103 143    Locals: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
  Frame 0:
    Stack Object id: 143
    Stack Object name: Car - Social Worker - 0,8
    Node: 14
    Tree: id 4096 name 'Functional - Main' version 90
    from Car_SocialWorker
    Prim state: 0
    Params: 103    Locals: 0 0 0

[Process Denied]

I had that prob pre NL on two lots. Both times the maid and the gardner were both there not leaving room for the social worker to park in the usual place. I used the Insiminator to restore family and I believe that I enabled save using it also.  The first one I tryed a lot of things and the lot became corrupted and I lost it.  The second lot,it produced errors everytime I tryed to adopt.  It didn't spread to other lots --I don't believe.  There must be some corruption more in a global sense or a mod conflict of some sort for it to affect all lots.

[questar]

Hmmm
Have you thought about cleaning out your saved sims folder?  The source of your problem could be a bad download.  At one point my game was crashing  everytime I tried to create a family.  I discovered that the create-a-sims module loads all possible skins and saved sims into memory.  If anyone of those files are corrupt or defective, then the game will crash.  It's probably the same for adoption because the game is probably loading the same material necessary to generate a new Sim.  You may have a bad skin (or clothing or whatever) file loaded.   What I suggest is - try running Content Manager on your download folder.  I don't know if you have it already - if not,  it can be found on the EA site (under help, I think). It's the equivalent of Files Cop for the old sims I game.  People make the mistake of only running Sims2Pack Installer.  That tool is great for many things but it can't detect corrupt files.  CM is not the most sophisticated tool ever made, but by trial and error and a little elbow grease I think it could help you  solve your problem.  In my case, I had downloaded two dress files.  The files were tiny but they were crashing the game in Create -a-Family mode.  When I took these 2 files out, the game returned to fnormal. Let me know how it works out.

Q             

[cwykes]

Questar - thanks a lot - I'll go try that. My Savedsims folder was crashing the game after I messed with the files in SimPE.  I restored the backup and it is loading fine now.  I run them through cleaninstaller regularly and it's not finding any problems.  That solution hadn't occurred to me as I know there are ready made kids are in the adoption pool.

process denied - there aren't any maids or gardeners - but good suggestion - thanks anyway.

EDIT - moving out the saved sims folder fixed the problem thanks.
I moved in the kid I knew was in the adoption pool, only to find he'd been lobotomised!  aaarrgghh