Attempting to upload one lot crashes the game

[BlueSoup]

I've been trying to upload a lot in my game for awhile now. Every time I try to upload it, it tells me that the application has terminated and the game crashes.
I've previously uploaded the same lot before (different house on the lot) and it worked fine. I can play the lot just fine.

Tonight, I tried to upload the lot again, and I put all of the Sims back to default make-up, hairstyles and clothes first. I tried it again - no dice.

Then I removed the downloads folder, and tried again. Still not working.

Any advice you could give me would be awesome, as I really want to upload this lot

[BlueSoup]

I have that hack in my lot, but I am a little unsure as to which option I should be using. I only downloaded it the other night, so I have yet to really play around with it.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Problem with using the debugger is you have to get into the lot first.

Was the house on the lot either a downloaded house, or a house that hadn't been used since before Uni?  I believe a house like that can cause your game to crash, and if it had been initially saved for future use by packaging it and then reinstalling it, it wouldn't contain the necessary updating and would therefore be useless.  The same, obviously, could apply if the house is a download which you've had around for a while but haven't used.

If that is the case, only option i would think is to evict your family and build them a new house.  DIY is often safest!!!!

[witch]

Can you package the lot to your own hard drive? If you can, then what happens when you try to re-install the lot in your game? Check with the 'Clean Pack Installer' what files are included. As a lot builder, I've had terrible trouble with the ground paints or terrains. If you have deleted any ground paints out of the downloads folder, this might cause your game to crash. There seems to be something terribly corrupt about them. I have stopped using them in lots altogether, if you use just one terrain paint or ground cover, all the ones in the game seem to be included in the packaged lot.

[ZephyrZodiac]

That would certainly explain why some lots seem to have an awful lot of MBs!

[witch]

Yeah, the whole terrain cover thing is weird. Bissela on MikeInside forum found that the ground cover folder only had to be opened, no cover need even be used, for all the covers to be included in the lot.

When installing the lot if the ground covers are unticked, the house often fails to load and crashes the game. I'll see if I can find the thread...

Here it is...

[ZephyrZodiac]

OK, read the thread, but now I'm confused!  If I've got terrains which are working fine in game, but I want to remove them, is it safe to do so, or should I simply use a Maxis terrain and go over everything with that?  And how do I know whether it's all terrain paints, or just one or two iffy ones?

[BlueSoup]

The house is one that I built, after the Uni installation. I play the house all the time and I can enter the lot with no problems. 

I set all of the Sims hair, clothes, etc. back to Maxis-made, still didn't work.

I tried to package the lot to a file and the game still crashed.  It was indicated to me that it was a problem with custom terrains (a known bug from Kmlough's list - #94 or #98 I believe), and in my situation not repairable.  I did remove all of the terrain on the lot (it was a custom, gone over with a Maxis terrain) and tried again - still no dice.

I eventually moved the family to a different lot and uploaded them fine.  The point wasn't to get the lot uploaded, it was for the family, and now I begin the long process of rebuilding the lot and resurrecting the dead for the gravestones.

[witch]

Bummer BlueSoup! I hate all the extra work when the game craps out. What's kmlough's list?

ZZ don't know which terrains or how. They seem to be linked in some odd way. I cleaned the all of them out when I made a new n'hood and I don't import them as part of downloaded lots. I had endless trouble with them, even after using a cheat command to remove all ground cover from a lot. I also went over them with a Maxis ground cover, but the custom ones were still there afterwards.

If you're not having trouble now, I wouldn't worry about them and just don't use them if you are lot building is about the best advice I have.

[BlueSoup]

Kmlough's bug list.  I just reinstalled the entire game anyway.  And I definitely won't be using custom terrains anymore - it seemed to cause nothing but problems from the time I used it.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Thanks, Witch.  Luckily, on my PC which I use for building any lots I intend to upload I don't have any custom terrains at all, in fact, very little downloads of any description!

[Brynne]

Yikes! I have tons of custom terrains in my game from downloading houses. I had no idea they were a problem, so I didn't untick them. Another bomb waiting to go off, I guess...

[ZephyrZodiac]

Why on earth Maxis made making custom terrains part of the HomeCrafter package when it's so full of problems has me beat!

[veilchen]

I didn't know that either about the custom terrain paint. I have bunches, downloaded with lots. I don't even use many of them, however, some are rather nice. I guess I should just delete the ones I rarely/never use, or will that be causing problems as well?
Maybe I should just ignore them and make sure that from now on I take care to untick them when downloading houses.

[witch]

Trouble is even unticking terrains before install can make a lot become unstable. Now I just don't install ones with terrain cover.

At one point my game created doubles of every terrain! I first saw a problem when I went to clean them up and delete a few, the lot I was on was a write-off. They seem to operate as a bunch instead of individual files.
 
I just don't use terrains when building a lot at all now. I don't think it really affects the game unless you're using them.

Ta for the link, I'm off to browse this list of bugs, maybe that will tell me more about these damned terrains.

Hey, I just wondered, you don't think this might be linked to the 'pre-uni' house bug?

[ZephyrZodiac]

I think I'd suggested that before the terrain-paint prpblem was mentioned.  Now, I've got several houses using terrain paints - my own houses, I think - and I've not had any problems, but these are all post Uni houses.

[ElviraGoth]

I don't have any custom terrains and I had a lot that wouldn't load and would crash my game.  Not sure, but I think it may have been because one of the sims on the lot was using a cell phone when I last saved it.

Things you learn when you make a mistake by assuming the game should be fairly bug-free.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Oh yes, saving while using cellphones is a no-no!  I did it once, and had to evict my family and build them a new house, but the lot had got bugged anyway, so it was time to move them on.  I actually wonder, thinking about it, whether that is the problems with downloaded house, not the terrain paints, as I've got houses where I've used them and they work just fine.  But if a downloaded house had sims still living in it, you'd have to be sure to delete the red phone line in the clean-installer, I think, as it's definitely seen as a hack.

[hedgekat]

I was having the same problem with several lots.  I had some families with newly adult children that I wanted to  move to a new neighborhood.  I  moved  these sims out into bare lots.  No house, to terrain paints, nothing.  Then I tried both moving them to the lot-house bin and also packaging them.  Some lots would perform normally,  others would crash the game.  The only clue I got to what was wrong was a couple of notices about not being able to package the custom clothes, etc.  But they weren't things the sims on the lot were wearing.  It was things their relatives and friends in the rest of the neighborhood were wearing.  So it seems that it was related to the problem that Pescado is always warning us about.  I guess if you want to upload sims,  you need clone them with sim surgery,  recreate the family in CAS and package them without any memories.   That is what worked for me. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

Sometimes when you send a sim downtown to buy clothes there are clothes checked that they haven't bought, no-one in their family has bought, but maybe one of their friends or acquaintances has bought!  The game doesn't always remember things correctly.  (And this used to happen in a hack-free game with no downloads!)