Post problems you've noticed,

[earthmagick]

Well I just got the stuck-on-the-lot bug. My Uni Sim has a gym and uses the pay poll thing. He dose not own a car. He took the taxi. I played for a few days on the business lot. I had him call a taxi then closed the business. He started blowing his whistle and yelling. He never stopped! Even when there was no one else on the lot. Or when the taxi showed up to take him home. I tried to exit out and told him to get in the taxi, but he was stuck in a loop. I deleted him, thinking I could just reload the lot. Well he was just standing there but the live mode is missing. It is just build/buy mode now. The lot shows him as being at his business, so now I can't play the dorm he came from. I will try the lot debugger hack and see if I can get everything working again.

Oh and I never saved the lot till after I deleted him. I don't normally save a business lot since it dose it when you leave.

[cyperangel]

When he keeps blowing his whistle, then it means hes trying to herd the customers of lot. And if there is no customers on the lot, you have got yourself some offworld loiterers.

[nectere]

Constrain floor elevation doesnt seem to produce good effects in my game, it causes a crash.

I was trying to use the the raised foundation things and create a staircase to an upper level, it didnt work, you cant use stairs leading to an upper floor with them, which in my opinion sucks so much butt it isnt funny. So I tried turning off constrain elevation, immediate crash ensued.

I cant seem to use much of anything with the raised foundations, no doors, stairs and the windows are funkified. What is the point of providing a new tool if it only works halfassed? Not cool. I feel I must rant because I like to build, its the one thing I really enjoy and I was really excited about all the new possibilites with the foundation tool...blech. So basically I got some new roofs...yeah there are new stairs and lockable doors and other stuff that talented modders were already making...so yeah, new roofs. yay. Well I do like the new roofs dont get me wrong, but if constrain floor elevation is only going to cause crashes, thats pretty damn limiting.

Anyone else getting crashes from attempting to use constrain elevation?

Apparently I had a config file still hanging out in stairs but failed to put the actual stair mesh back in game. Yes I am the dumbass here. BUT I still cant get doors to work or windows to place properly on the stages...so there.

[jrd]

Not only is deleteallcharacters apparently bugged, but the NPC/townie generator is messed up, too.

Damn Maxis.

[Batelle]

I was trying to use the the raised foundation things and create a staircase to an upper level, it didnt work, you cant use stairs leading to an upper floor with them, which in my opinion sucks so much butt it isnt funny.

Really?  I made a a house with a raised foundation and connected the second level to the foundation with the connecting stairs, so it was quasi split-level.  I have been having some funky stuff happen with windows- if I try to flip them so the arrow faces out, the window drops and the only place I can put it is between floors and it is, of course, walled out. 

I also have problems when I make multiple story homes.  Even if I have a full foundation and the walls all connect to form an enclosure, when I move up to the second floor there are places I can't place walls, some of them directly over the first floor walls.  I have to put down flooring to give me the guides and then I can place walls. 

[Sandilou]

Not only is deleteallcharacters apparently bugged, but the NPC/townie generator is messed up, too.

Damn Maxis.

Jordi, can you tell us more?

[simmiecal]

Not only is deleteallcharacters apparently bugged, but the NPC/townie generator is messed up, too.

Damn Maxis.

Jordi, can you tell us more?

Well, I was just coming here to post a problem with the customer generator.

I'm playing the Broke household and they are going broke as no customers ever come to the business. I figured out that I wasn't marking the food as a sell item before putting it into the display case. But, the first day the shop was open (before I "priced" anything for sale) two customers and a reviewer came. No one bought anything as nothing was "for sale". Went and read the Prima guide and some threads and figured out my problem.

Now, I have items for sale and the only person that comes every day is a reviewer - not always the same one - but all they do is stand there are look at stuff, pull out their clipboard. You can sometimes do a sales interaction and the meter goes up and down but never to the point of purchase. The only sale made was to a classmate Beau brought home from school.

No customers ever generate. I get this error:
An error occurred in object "Controller - CLP - Community Lot - Populator #45
Error: stack number out of range

No customers come for the lemonade stand either.

When the error has popped up, I have only tried resetting as I'm not sure if deleting a "controller" will cause a problem. Meh. That's what I'll do next.

Here are the error logs:

[404'ed!]

[simmiecal]

Update:

Next time the problem came up at the Broke household, I chose "delete" instead of "reset". Now nobody comes - not even the reviewer. There are still occasional walk-bys, but they don't seem interested in the business.

I then used the phone to close the business and then used the phone to "start a new business" thinking this might spawn a new controller - if that's what I deleted. Nope. Still no customers.

[Sandilou]

Simmiecal, did you deleteallcharacters and then put in all of JM's no spawning hacks (NPCs, Townies, SS, Baristas..whatever?   Logic tells me that this game won't work without townies.  You need them to shop and you need them to hire.  I wondered what impact the nospawning hacks had on the hire list, especially if like me, you don't create new townies.  My hire list dropped from 6 to 5 and then to 4.  So I took the notownieregen out.  But then after reading some scary stories here, I put it back in;  I haven't played the game today so I don't know what impact the mod will have on the game now.

[simmiecal]

I have the noregen hacks in, but I'm still mucking around in a test Pleasantville and I didn't deleteall characters. In fact, there are 443 of them there. I'll try taking out the noregen hacks and see if that makes a difference to the generator. But, there are definitely sims in the hood.

[miramis]

I was just reading about the 'teen shoplifters' up above and remembered something.  A couple of days back my teen sim asked a teen townie on a date at her business after hours, when he was left unattended for a while he walked up to the till even though the shop was closed and payed for items he had obviously left with before.  I thought when he first walked onto the lot at the beginning of the date that he seemed to have a shopping bag, but didn't realise it wasn't my imagination until he actually paid for the goods later in the evening.  I've never seen the 'shoplifters' in action though.

Gynarchy.  The carpool doesn't seem to show if your Servo is recharging or powered down at the time of the warning dialog (blah blah has one hour before the carpool).  Make sure Servo is not doing either of these in the hour before the car is due.

[Swiftgold]

Simmiecal, I had this same problem with NL - there was no one on my downtown lots but Crumplebottom when I visited, and with debug mode on I got the Lot Populator error. I don't have many townies, only playables, and a few townies I made in CAS and turned into townies with the shrub. I wish I could remember which hack was causing it - maybe it was notowniechildren which isn't apparently needed anymore... but it was definitely an older hack. Whatever it was, after I removed it, the lots populate fine with all my playables, and I still have the nodormie, notownie and nossregens in. Maybe check to see if it populates okay without hacks in, or at least none of the non-OFB-approved?

[miramis]

You still cannot meet a cop through normal gameplay. You used to be able to in the base game, but since University any interactions you try drop out of queue (broken since University a year ago)

You CAN meet a cop in two ways:

1) release the burglar before the cop comes rapporting back. Infuriates the cop, but you meet them. (Requires very precise timing to get this to work)
2) wait for them to walk by downtown.

3) Get them as a date through the Matchmaker (Nightlife)
4) They walk into your shop as a customer (well I've seen a maid and Gordon the burglar, the chef from downtown, Mr.Big, The Diva, Count & Countess, and Robi the exterminator so the cops are bound to turn up sooner or later right?) OFB.

[simmiecal]

My problem seems to stem from one of the prison mods. I've left a post for Inge about it. I've removed the prison files from my download folder and now the Brokes have more customers than they can handle.  Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

[gynarchy]

Gynarchy.  The carpool doesn't seem to show if your Servo is recharging or powered down at the time of the warning dialog (blah blah has one hour before the carpool).  Make sure Servo is not doing either of these in the hour before the car is due.

Good to know, thanks miramis!

[nectere]

Ok my new issue is that you cant really place any of the robots on the shelves properly without using moveobjects cheat. Then even though you can at that point get them there, it apparently causes some bizarre teleporting effects with the inventory. It teleports the out of stock sign to various places on the lot, either at the portal or at a back corner and you cant move them until they are restocked and then you can move them back to inside the store. The ones that ended up teleported to the portal simply arent there even when restocked. Kind of a pain really. So all the floor type bots have to placed on the floor - taking up premium floor space - in order to restock properly. My other issue with the display shelves is my snapdragons dont seem to work when placed on them even though they are marked not for sale - so again they must also take up floor space.

I am also having some LTW issues, folks are loosing their plat status and I am having to fullfill another LTW to get them back where they should be. Also some sims seem to be getting motive stuck, which is fine when they are all greened up but apparently some actions cause certain motives to drain and I cant get them restored because they are stuck. I have tried deleting the sims to reset them but so far no luck. Perhaps the lot is bugged now I am not sure. Shame really as its a high ranking business.

So overall as I play I am starting to run into several bugs, including the fell in love with self as I play longer on various lots. I have also run into too many iterations...seems to be a memory issue so I will try to start saving more often and see if that cures anything.

[Entgleichen]

Didn't feel like reading everything, so repetitions are likely.

A business that reached Level 10, then sunk to 9, then rosen again to 10, counts as new-built top-Level-business, and the owner gets the attached memory. This way, you need only one business to fulfill the LTW to build up 5 top-Level businesses.

Visiting a business lot results in Chaos. No one of the employees does what I told them when I was playing the owner. Instead, the owner and the manager are busy all the time by redirecting the employees between different tasks. Seems as if they intend to let no one finish their job. One might say "Hire an employee for every single task on that lot", but I have no money to waste. And when I only call the manager to run the business, there's already a mighty loss on money: Being there, I earn several thousands a day. By just calling, I get lousy 300 to 500. So I have the choice: build an imperium and switch from b-lot to b-lot all the time or just nevermind running a business. But managers aren't good for anything.

And is it just me who can't buy food on commlots even though it's given a price?

[miramis]

About the vanishing plates...

I actually saw the sandwiches disappear from the inventory right before my eyes!  One moment they were there, I grabbed a plate off the side (he'd been interrupted while making it) to add to the inventory and as I clicked to add it they went Poof! leaving him with only that one plate I'd just added.  Bloody frustrating.

[t r a c y]

i cannot even place doors on houses/buildings let alone get them to work right - every freaking time i try to place a door my game crashes to desktop.  i've started with a fresh install from the base on up to OFB and i have zero downloads installed, so there's nothing i can remove to see if it's a hack or an object interfering.   i play the game mainly for building and interior design fun so this is putting the old kibosh on things for me, heh.

this is on maxis made, in-game lots btw, not lots i've downloaded from a site.

[miramis]

i cannot even place doors on houses/buildings let alone get them to work right - every freaking time i try to place a door my game crashes to desktop.  i've started with a fresh install from the base on up to OFB and i have zero downloads installed, so there's nothing i can remove to see if it's a hack or an object interfering.   i play the game mainly for building and interior design fun so this is putting the old kibosh on things for me, heh.

this is on maxis made, in-game lots btw, not lots i've downloaded from a site.

Is there a pattern to your movements when placing doors?  Have you tried placing them in buildings you've made yourself?  Are there any cheats enabled when placing the doors?   Are you trying to place them over split levels?  You're sure you haven't downloaded a single thing - not even maxis made?

[t r a c y]

this was a fresh install from the base game on up, not one single download, on plain vanilla maxis made lots or lots i made with maxis items.  i was so frustrated last night i almost uninstalled the game, but then thought to delete the groups.cache file, and since then i've been able to place doors without crashing.  next up, installing all my custom content - should be interesting 8-)

[vector]

Also, I put in a coffee/barista machine in my furniture store and my playable sim became obsessed with it. Every free moment she either making herself one or lining up to be served.

Same here. She'll stop doing her work to hang around at the espresso bar drinking endless cups of coffee (then peeing herself because she'd rather drink more than go to the toilet). I'm not using any hacked machines.

One thing I've noticed that I don't think anyone has mentioned yet is that you can no longer get married on community lots.  Has anyone else had this?  I spent ages building an awesome chapel with some of the cool new roof tools, turned it into a residential lot to place the arch and then turned it back again in the usual way.  Sent a couple of engaged sims over there and the arch is not selectable.  Really annoying.

Oh, for Christ's sake!  This was the most fun thing to do in the game. Good going, Maxis.

I've played quite faithfully up until now, but the relative complexity with the OPB expansion coupled with the usual bugs and stupid rubbish is really making me consider binning the entire game altogether. I'm starting to wonder if it's actually still fun at all.

[angelyne]

One thing I've noticed that I don't think anyone has mentioned yet is that you can no longer get married on community lots.  Has anyone else had this?  I spent ages building an awesome chapel with some of the cool new roof tools, turned it into a residential lot to place the arch and then turned it back again in the usual way.  Sent a couple of engaged sims over there and the arch is not selectable.  Really annoying.

Oh, for Christ's sake!  This was the most fun thing to do in the game. Good going, Maxis.

[/quote]

To be fair, Maxis never did plan for people to be able to use a wedding arch in a chapel, demonstrated by the fact that it's not available on a community lot.   We had to use a cheat, or a hack in order to place an arch on a comm. lot.   So I'm expecting that sooner or later a modder will come out with a hacked version of the arch which will work again.  Hopefully before I have a batch of sims to be married

[vector]

Oh, for Christ's sake!  This was the most fun thing to do in the game. Good going, Maxis.

To be fair, Maxis never did plan for people to be able to use a wedding arch in a chapel, demonstrated by the fact that it's not available on a community lot.   We had to use a cheat, or a hack in order to place an arch on a comm. lot.   So I'm expecting that sooner or later a modder will come out with a hacked version of the arch which will work again.  Hopefully before I have a batch of sims to be married

Well, yeah. But the whole community lot wedding deal has become quite a big thing, and a lot of people enjoy doing it. You'd think they'd appreciate that instead of breaking it completely so nobody can do it anymore. But then, why care about how people like to play their individual games?

Another gripe, although not really what you'd call a problem per se - all the stupid new outfits and headgear in the catalogue are like, right at the front. Put the diver's helmet AT THE BACK OF THE CATALOGUE, along with other stupid stuff like the viking horns and the hat with the propeller. You can still have your little "made for this particular expansion pack" icon in the corner, but put them away if nobody's going to use them regularly! For the love of sweet baby jesus!

[nectere]

It might be worth looking into seeing how the catalog sorts things in CAS.