Wonky Colored Question Mark Tiles

[Cerridwen]

It's happening in my game too. I do not have awesomemod or any other core mod.   It started happening after patch 1.3.   Happened to my Sunset Valley Art Gallery.   I do have lots of CC and other minor annoyance fix-type mods.

[tizerist]

I got this problem briefly when I started to unlock my game houses.

Lock houses? Is this the lockable door, or some other terminology? 

[aspinL]

I got this problem briefly when I started to unlock my game houses.

Lock houses? Is this the lockable door, or some other terminology? 

I think they meant possibly the way of making a house "sacred" via Awesome mod...

[Heilena]

I have no mods in my game and I get this when I remove walls tiles.  I have no other content other than "The Store" items.  I have also had this happen to some of the "portraits" that my Sim has painted. 

[saxonspud]

I've only recently had this problem which has occurred at almost the same time as I decided to play a farmer sim. I'm wondering whether this has anything to do with the memory leak problems that were supposedly fixed in patch 1.3.

that problem occurred when the fertilize interaction was used.

I tested my game without using any of the gardening interactions and the problem didn't re-occur. Also I had all the settings maxed out so I don't think its a general memory issue.

I'm just wondering if anyone who has had the problem had been using any of the gardening interactions when it first happened

[ItMustBeBunnies]

I have it too. My entire Modern Art Museum is covered in those tiles....which I guess kind of works for a Modern Art Museum lol. But then I noticed it in the graveyard and pool of the Goth House. I changed them back and so far haven't had any problems.... I also don't have any mods, just cc, which I'm pretty choosy about.... def probably the update.

[Process Denied]

i actually had the riddler paintings from a custom house i got from Mts i never seemed to run out of them, this was before any patch and i dont have awesomemod installed

We must have downloaded the same house.  I just sold them all and haven't seen any question mark tiles again-knock on wood.

[saxonspud]

I've ruled out the gardening idea as it happened again to me without touching any gardening interactions.

I've done a bit more play testing with this and I think its something to do with the lots themselves as it only seems to happen on specific lots ie goth house, art gallery. deleting the lots and replacing them with lots exported from a clean neighbourhood didn't seem to work so I deleted the lots, saved the game with the lots empty then added the clean replacement lots back in. This so far seems to have fixed the problem.

[Writin_Reg]

Hey guys, save yourself the hassle of worrying if this is something you did or something you put in the game, as  it also happens in Vanilla games with no CC, and it does not seem to matter whether you have patches or not, or how great your pc and video card is. So far it seems to affect just EA made houses and buildings in which they used VOODOO to use the stair banisters as fence and deck rails. So if you go to use an ea house and you see rails, fences, etc that perfectly match the stair rails, yet none of us have them in our game except as stair rails - this can happen. Absolutely don't try altering the house anywhere near those rails, above the rails, or below the rails, as the rainbow hued questionmark pattern tends to spread to some floor and flat roof tiles as well.

In other words EA was too lazy to make the appropiate matching rails to their stairs - even though they obviously saw a need for it and instead warped their buildings by making the stair rails as fencing and the game obviously is not liking it. I also tried deleting all those rails and discovered some of them absolutely will not delete.

How to fix, I have no clue - but it makes those houses useless if you want your sims to use them and actually see the second floors as more than useable as having several bedrooms instead of sleeping for just 2 Sims. The minute you go messing with the walls out comes those freaky walls.

[tizerist]

I downloaded a lot that also had non-deletable stair railings.
I eventually just left it.  

[gelfling]

This has just happened to my game where it has affected the same lots as has already been reported here. Affected tiles appear as normal from a distance and change into lurid question marks upon zooming in. I cannot edit the tile but I can replace it with a wall or floor covering via build mode. Previous to this I had made some changes to two EA homes: 325 Oak Grove Road and 1 Sun Song Avenue in Sunset Valley. These homes had some furnishings (a shower - can't remember what else), walls, windows and floors that had apparently been styled or created using, as Writin_Reg put it, "voodoo".

I've purged my cache files but this had no effect on the issue. My game is up-to-date as are my graphics drives and my OS (WinXP Pro, SP3). I last updated my copy of Awesome mod and Twallan's Supercomputer yesterday. I have oodles of CC installed and I also have store items in my game. I don't know what caused this to happen but I suspect it was triggered by my attempt to edit the styles in those two homes I mentioned above.

[Clampdairyola]

So if you go to use an ea house and you see rails, fences, etc that perfectly match the stair rails, yet none of us have them in our game except as stair rails - this can happen. Absolutely don't try altering the house anywhere near those rails, above the rails, or below the rails, as the rainbow hued questionmark pattern tends to spread to some floor and flat roof tiles as well.

In other words EA was too lazy to make the appropiate matching rails to their stairs - even though they obviously saw a need for it and instead warped their buildings by making the stair rails as fencing and the game obviously is not liking it. I also tried deleting all those rails and discovered some of them absolutely will not delete.

How to fix, I have no clue - but it makes those houses useless if you want your sims to use them and actually see the second floors as more than useable as having several bedrooms instead of sleeping for just 2 Sims. The minute you go messing with the walls out comes those freaky walls.

That can't be exactly why it's happening. There is a res lot in my town that I've never stepped foot on and while collecting gems the other day, saw this house had the tiles on the seconded floor siding. Never messed with rails...no no no.

[rosharley]

I just got infected with the 'Question Mark' walls for a second time, having read all the posts no-one seems to have yet come up with a solution so I decided to investigate the problem in a bit more depth myself and, although I have no idea what caused it or how to stop it happening again, I believe I have found a way to fix the corrupted lots - permanently (well, at least until the next time)

I was playing the 'Goth' lot when the game crashed whilst I was trying to access CAS via the 'Dresser' cheat, when I loaded the saved game most of my beautiful walls and floors were gone, I checked the 'Art Gallery' lot as it was this one that I had had problems with the first time I had 'Qustion Mark' disease and several of you mentioned this particular lot in your posts, I was not surprised to see that there was not a single wall or floor that hadn't been corrupted. I then checked the 'Wolf' lot which I hadn't played but was curious to see if it too had been given a new paint job after reading that this problem appears to only affect certain lots, sure enough, most of the exterior walls and several of the interior walls and floors were now a horrible shade of blue and red. After investigating all three lots I discovered the following problems:

1) The deign tool would no longer work on any wall or floor on the lot regardless of whether it had it's original pattern or the 'Qustion Mark' pattern
2) The eye-dropper tool did still work and not only could any remaining wall or floor designs on the lot be copied and pasted - so could the 'Qustion Mark' pattern (in case any-one out there REALLY likes it that much)
3) When selecting a pattern to copy with the eye-dropper the game should automatically highlight the appropriate thumbnail in the catalogue but this doesn't happen, in fact, it doesn't even show the right category anymore.
4) Although the eye-dropper tool will copy and paste any remaining patterns so you can cover up the 'Question Marks' it does not restore any functionality, the ?s have gone but the design tool will still not work.
5) If you use the eye-dropper tool to select a wall or floor which has had the pattern replaced by ? you will still get a tool tip telling you the name of the base pattern used (useful if you can't remember what was there before)
6) This problem affects every wall and floor on the lot, it makes no difference whether it is an unchanged base game design, your own unique concotion (saved or otherwise) or a download from the exchange.
7) As far as I could see only three lots are affected by the 'Question Mark' disease when it strikes:- Goth Manor, Lone Wolf Manor and Sunset Institute of Modern Art. (however I have not had time to check all lots yet)
8 The Sims 3 save game as well as its backup are affected and deleting cache files makes no difference at all, new games are not affected and nor are any other saved games

Fortunately the lots can be fixed but there is good news and there is bad news, first the good news:

If you are prepared to restore the lot to its original, unmodified, Maxis designed state, either because you haven't changed anything anyway or because you are more interested in saving the familly rather than their home then the fix is quick and fairly simple.
1) Start a new game and after selecting any familly EXCEPT Goth or Wolf go into 'Edit Town'
2) Click on either of the above families and in the pop up window select EVICT (option furthest to the left) leave belongings behind.
3) When the lot is empty click on it again and this time select SAVE COPY TO LIBRARY (just click OK on any warnings about interractions being cancelled)
4) Click on the evicted familly and get them to buy their house back again and then just do the whole thing again for the other familly
5) Save the Art Gallery the same way as the other lots (just no familly to evict first)
6) Click on options to return to MAIN MENU
7) Select your damaged game in the normal way and then go into EDIT TOWN
Change your active household if necessary and then EVICT the familly from the affected lot with or without furniture but make sure any irreplaceable rewards etc: are either in your Sims inventory or your household inventory
9) Demolish the affected lot with the 'Bulldozer tool' and then replace it with the saved one
10) Move the familly back into their new 'Question Mark' free house (repeat as necessary)

Now the bad news (and this is what I had to do)

If you have done a lot of customising of the lot and want to salvage as much as you can you are going to have to replace EVERY single wall and floor on the lot! If you just copy any of the original walls that are left and paste them over the ?s it won't work, as soon as you leave the lot or the game the ?s will return and probably in greater numbers!
1) Select the design tool and waft it over the lot to verify you need to do this, if buy and build mode objects 'light up' as you pass the tool over them but walls and floors don't then you're out of luck - read on!
2) Remember, do NOT copy any affected walls or floors with the eye-dropper, if they are not reacting to the design tool they are useless, instead, use the eye-dropper tool tip to identify the base game design used (not always obvious in-game if replaced by a ?)
3) Select the base wall or floor used from the relevant catalogue selection and paste it into the lot
4) Use any existing walls or floors as a guide to reproducing the design you want, don't forget that you may have customised objects in the room with elements from the wall or floor you are trying to recreate so use the design tool on the object and copy the pattern or colour back into your design
5) Once you have recreated your design on this new section of wall or floor then copy it with the eye-dropper tool and replace ALL the relevant sections on the lot, even if the original pattern hasn't been replaced by a ? it still needs to be replaced, and, just to rub salt in the wounds, you will have to pay for everything all over again, it's as if you are decorating bare walls!
6) When you think you have replaced all the corrupted areas use the design tool again to make sure you didn't miss any bits by repeating step '1' above. Waft the tool over the lot and you should now see that the replaced sections of wall or floor will 'Light up' as the tool passes over them, if you did miss a bit use the design tool first to make sure that the section you copy has been repaired.

I hope this will help some of you fix your games and also help someone much smarter than me to identify the cause of 'Question Mark' disease, by the way, I have the latest version of AM installed, my game is patched to 1.3 (still don't feel confident enough to re-install 1.4 after what it did to my game the first time) I have far too much custom content but can't seem to control my downloading addiction and my computer would be described as High End so, given that this problem has been encountered by others who don't use AM, have patched and unpatched games, no CC and numerous PC configurations, I think it must be something EA did - again!

Oh dear, this fix did work, but not for very long! Should have done a bit more play testing before posting. However I do have more information that may give someone more insight into what is causing this problem.
After replacing all of the corrupted walls and floors on the Goth lot I had no further problems and, in case the original save game had bad data, I did a 'Save as' and re-named it to something different so I got a completely seperate save game. When I re-started Sims 3 I loaded in this new saved game and the ?s were back! I re-installed the game and re-patched it to 1.3 in case any of the game files had been corrupted and tried again with the same saved game, the problem was still there so I deleted all of the wall and floor coverings that I could and replaced any floor tiles that I couldn't delete with an unmodified pattern from the catalogue, I then saved the lot to the library as both an occupied lot and as an empty lot.
I went back to the main menu and started a new game and I deleted the Goth lot and replaced it with my saved empty lot, there were no ?s this time but all of the new floors were again undesignable. I replaced all the floor and wall coverings for the third time and then saved the lot back to the library and moved the Goth family in, I noticed two single floor tiles with ?s but everything else was still OK so I replaced those and carried on playing without problems. After an hour or so I went to the main menu and checked out a couple of lots on an old Riverview save, then I went back to my earlier Sunset Vallry game only to find the Goth lot was once more covered in ?s.
I am going to try moving the Goth lot into a Riverview game to see if this makes any difference but I am beginning to suspect that this ? disease may be incurable once a lot is infected, sadly I may have to demolish the lot and the Goths will have to move in with the Crumplebottoms, they won't like that!   

[Writin_Reg]

Here's a bit more you can add to the confusion - by trial and error I have just decided not to play the Goth or Wolfe houses, and without playing them have had no further riddler walls, floors etc appear. I do notice though a lot of the Sims painted pictures and photographs in other houses become the riddler pictures the minute either are placed in a frame and hung on the wall.

Another thing I notice is in the 'empty of all Sims' hoods I added to my game that when ever I place any families in the Goth House or the Wolfe house, by the next game session I find either the families vanished from the game or at least vanished from their homes and listed as homeless. I first assumed it was due to a lack of family funds to handle their bills, but this fact is not the case when I installed some really wealthy families into these houses.

Not sure how this exactly coinsides with the riddler walls other than I edge closer to the belief these houses are so corrupt under the surface that even the game cannot support their use even if they are never played with a controlled family. I would be interested to know if anyone else experience the abrupt vanishment of families placed in these homes who are not played or other wise "protected" by being made sacred. I have repopulated my empty hoods with as many as 14 families on now my 7th attempt and it is always these two houses families vanish from. While families who by all rights should be vanished from the hood (like placing 6 people in a 1 bedroom house with a mimimum amount of money) - they are not vanished.

[caterpillar]

The Wolff manor in my current neighborhood has the riddler tiles, and I've never played, edited or entered it. I emptied the 'hood before I started playing it, and no family has moved there.
I do have a family living in the Goth house, I've never played them and they haven't vanished, but I named them 'Goth' so awesomemod would make them stay there. I've never played that house, but I did some fiddling with it before I moved the family in. No changes to walls, or anything involving CAST, I just added some beds & cribs for awesome story to allow them to breed. That house is now also infested with riddler tiles.
My art museum was also infested, but I bulldozed it and built my own art gallery, so no more riddler tiles for me there.

[Writin_Reg]

Hmmm, I didn't think to name them Goth or Wolfe - perhaps that helps.

I have noticed that once just one of those 3 building mess up, it seems to affect the other two. Like I said I have not touched any of them in my former empty hood, just moved breeder families in there, only to have them vanish by the next play session. It has happened repeatedly when I have retested and even used a completely new install of my empty hood. But on the other hand I have no riddler tiles on any of them. A few times I have had my Sims visit the houses to get to know the occupants - for all the good it does. I am getting the riddler sims painted pictures though in almost all occupied houses.

[caterpillar]

One of awesomemod's features is that if you name a house after a family, like Goth Estate or Wolff manor, the family won't move from the house. So you could rename Goth Manor after the family you move in, like Smith Manor, if you want them to stay. But it doesn't help with the riddler tiles. My Goth house is covered with them.
I haven't seen the Sim painted pictures get the riddler tiles yet.  The one family I played has made tons of paintings, including EA paintings, portraits of Sims, 'still life' paintings and 'memorized scene' paintings, and has kept at least one of each kind on the walls. Some of the paintings they've sold have appeared at the art gallery, and so far, no riddler tile paintings. *crosses fingers*

[witch]

Naming the house/lot after the family has not been working for me for weeks now. Ursine's lot is called Ursine. The other night I took sacred off them and within 5 minutes the game had moved them out.

[caterpillar]

It's been working consistently for me (and I do update my awesomemod). I've never made any families sacred, though, so I wonder if toggling that on and off makes a difference. I made a Goth family for the Goth house and a Landgraab family for the Landgraab house, and both families have stayed put since I moved them in. The Landgraabs have barely enough money to pay their bills in that house, but they don't move. The other families in the neighborhood move around a lot as their families grow.

[smashthecat]

The very first time I got the riddler wall paper was after the first patch 1.27 that I noticed it.Couple of nights ago I noticed the riddler struck again at my Goth house.I have since bought a new computer and this is a whole new game.I say there is a problem with the game it self or the very first patch.

[tizerist]

? says it all really.

[gelfling]

The Riddler has struck again: this time in a game in which I had only played Agnes Crumplebottom and her home is the only one that I had re-decorated. I had installed a few houses I had downloaded and some lots I have created but had not meddled with any other part of the town. I didn't notice any problems until I decorated Miss Crumplebottom's nursery and covered over the unpainted walls of the house. Agnes' home is fine, however, the Wolff and Goth homes were infested with those tiles as was the Art Gallery.

I've just changed from Windows XP SP3 to a clean install of Windows 7 64bit so will start a new game and replicate my steps to see if I can trigger this again.

[nanacake]

That is just a default texture for when the game can't
A. Load the texture
B. Find the texture
Made a purposefully borked recolor and it shows this texture in my game.

Some reasons it can't load the texture in another case:
Memory leaks- this game has a lot. It depends on your system's spec and how long you keep the client open for. A restart may not always fix it because everyone's system uses different type of memory resources, but it could help.

Using EAxis' "voodoo"' recolors- This is a fault of maxis as already stated in this thread but to recap, I think it shows more incompetence of the creators. Instead of applying the new repository system Create a style thoroughly for all objects they used the method of the Sims 2 as well. I deleted all the objects/bulldoze lots of this nature and they do not appear with ? mark texture any longer.

Missing pattern- you did not install a pattern that came with a custom house. I can only imagine the nightmare people download from crappy T$R. If you want to avoid this mostly completely, do not use any installers! Install everything manually! Learn to use your computer to save your life one day.

The very first time I got the riddler wall paper was after the first patch 1.27 that I noticed it.Couple of nights ago I noticed the riddler struck again at my Goth house.I have since bought a new computer and this is a whole new game.I say there is a problem with the game it self or the very first patch.

With the latest patch this does not appear to be a problem on my system, I do think they realize the memory problems and tried to fix it but not well enough. There is 2gb ram, and ATI card the game runs fast until the create a style is utilized. Then it became a constant crawl with the flashing ? texture appearing if I am in the middle of my town. This disappears on restart.

[aussiegirl]

I don't mean to beat a dead horse, I have had this problem too.  I contacted EA and sent them my DxDiag report and they came back saying that my graphic card the is unsupported. They are so much help (not) here is some of the the report I would like to know if all of the people that have this issue has the same card. I do see that clampdairyola has the same card. Personally I think EA is full of s--t but that's just my opinion. I am about ready to go back to Sims 2
------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 9/22/2009, 15:00:59
Machine name: DCHY5HJ1
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.090206-1234)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
System Model: XPS 625
BIOS: BIOS Date: 12/10/08 16:41:28 Ver: 08.00.15
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+,  MMX,  3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
Memory: 3316MB RAM
Page File: 976MB used, 4223MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.5512 32bit Unicode

------------
DxDiag Notes
------------
DirectX Files Tab: No problems found.
Display Tab 1: No problems found.
Sound Tab 1: No problems found.
Music Tab: No problems found.
Input Tab: No problems found.
Network Tab: No problems found.

--------------------
DirectX Debug Levels
--------------------
Direct3D:    0/4 (n/a)
DirectDraw:  0/4 (retail)
DirectInput: 0/5 (n/a)
DirectMusic: 0/5 (n/a)
DirectPlay:  0/9 (retail)
DirectSound: 0/5 (retail)
DirectShow:  0/6 (retail)

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x9442)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9442&SUBSYS_05021028&REV_00
Display Memory: 512.0 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: ViewSonic VA903 Series
Monitor Max Res: 1280,1024
Driver Name: ati2dvag.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6844 (English)
DI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 9/9/2008 20:57:48, 311296 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp: n/a
VDD: n/a
Mini VDD: ati2mtag.sys
Mini VDD Date: 9/9/2008 20:57:50, 3266560 bytes
Device Identifier: {D7B71EE2-D702-11CF-2469-0825A1C2CB35}
Vendor ID: 0x1002
Device ID: 0x9442
SubSys ID: 0x05021028
Revision ID: 0x0000
Revision ID: 0x0000
Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_C ModeMPEG2_D
Deinterlace Caps: {6E8329FF-B642-418B-BCF0-BCB6591E255F}: Format(In/Out)=(YUY2,YUY2) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,1) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_PixelAdaptive
                   {335AA36E-7884-43A4-9C91-7F87FAF3E37E}: Format(In/Out)=(YUY2,YUY2) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,0) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_BOBVerticalStretch
                   {6E8329FF-B642-418B-BCF0-BCB6591E255F}: Format(In/Out)=(UYVY,UYVY) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,1) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_PixelAdaptive
                   {335AA36E-7884-43A4-9C91-7F87FAF3E37E}: Format(In/Out)=(UYVY,UYVY) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,0) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_BOBVerticalStretch
                   {3C5323C1-6FB7-44F5-9081-056BF2EE449D}: Format(In/Out)=(NV12,0x3231564e) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,2) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_PixelAdaptive
                   {552C0DAD-CCBC-420B-83C8-74943CF9F1A6}: Format(In/Out)=(NV12,0x3231564e) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,2) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_PixelAdaptive
                   {6E8329FF-B642-418B-BCF0-BCB6591E255F}: Format(In/Out)=(NV12,0x3231564e) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,1) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_PixelAdaptive
                   {335AA36E-7884-43A4-9C91-7F87FAF3E37E}: Format(In/Out)=(NV12,0x3231564e) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,0) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_BOBVerticalStretch
Registry: OK
DDraw Status: Enabled
D3D Status: Enabled
 AGP Status: Enabled
DDraw Test Result: Not run
 D3D7 Test Result: Not run
 D3D8 Test Result: Not run
 D3D9 Test Result: Not run


  
      
  




 

[coconnor]

No.  I have recently experienced this problem for the first time, both in the Wolff house (which I had amended to include an extra bedroom for children) and in Goth Manor which I tried to redecorate a bit since I plan to marry off one of the daughters in my main family to Mortimer Goth.  It seems that there is a problem with these two houses which I've seen mentioned somewhere in this thread.

I have not actually played the game in awhile.  I have saved copies of my main family, the Goths, the Landgraabs, and Agnes Crumplebottom (along with a new potential spouse for her I created) to move to a new game once I m done setting up a new "Awesomized" Sunset Valley.  This is taking me awhile as I am downloading better houses, trying to conform them to Awesome standards, depreciating them with "wandhere" to make them more affordable, use combined community lots to create more vacant real estate, etc.  I think I'm almost done setting up and then will play test.  If it works out, I may upload a save file so that others can use it too.