Strange Car Pool Behavior

[Magicmoon]

Been having this problem lately, but unfortunately I don't know when it started so am having trouble tracking down what is causing it. At first I chalked it up to a Maxis oddity since random things like this often happen, but now it happens every time.

A sim is scheduled to work at 8am. Carpool arrives at 7am. Once the sim gets into the car it will drive to the end of the road then stop. It will stay there with its engine running until after 8am at which time it will then leave the screen.

Same thing happens when they get home. Car arrives at 3pm and sim gets out. Then car drives to the end of the street and sits there until 4pm at which time it will leave the screen.

The times above are made up so that it would be easier to explain the problem. The same thing happens at any time of the day/night that the carpool is scheduled.

Looking through my hacks I wrote down all that I could find that had anything to do with the carpool and/or portal. The ones after the line were put into the game AFTER I was already having the problem.

antiwatchout
monique MQ Work Bring Friend Dialog_v1.0
carpoolfix.package
NL - school bus - bring friend dialog.package
Insim-Inteen- one of them has the get in car pregnant fix.
---------------------------------------
CBOY_Portal_deletion_fix2 (juggling fix)
NL - Move Away From the Portal
ownable carpool comm lot fix
syberspunk-spaceshipcarpoolbugfix

The reason that it is so aggravating is that the whole time the car is on the lot I have quite a bit of slowdown plus that aweful engine sound...especially on the low end cars. The engine sound drowns out/overrides other lots sounds such as piano playing, talking, phone ring, etc. So twice a day-for each sim-I go through an hour of this aggravation. I almost went nuts yesterday when 2 adults and 3 teens all had jobs that had different carpool times.

Any suggestions?

[starrling]

Do you have a sideways "driveway" on the street?  Because I'm having similar problems but it was the street parking so I deleted it and all is well.

[syberspunk]

I may consider the 'ownable car pool comm lot fix' discontinued since I have been unable to address all the issues that other users have had with it. The resulting behaviour seems to be funky and unpredictable at best. But that is most likely NOT the cause of the problem. Your issue sounds like the case of the blinvisible object in the road. You can see my reposting of a similar problem over here.

This particular case was due to the carpool bug caused by invisible spaceships getting stuck on the road. The syberspunk-spaceshipcarpoolbugfix is a preventative fix for this, but it will not clear up an exisiting problem. I can't be certain that is the source of your problem, but if you ever had a space abduction gone wrong, that probably is the cause.

Pretty much the only way to that I know to fix it for sure is to move the family out and back in. Alternatively, you can try using the lotdebugger (reset and delete the offending object) or stuck object remover (I'm not even sure how to use this, but I think you put it on the offending tile and it lets you delete it?), but I personally have not attempted those methods. Once you fix the lot, the syberspunk-spaceshipcarpoolbugfix should prevent any future spaceship carpool related bugs. But... if you still get problems, it would be ideal to play with debug mode on and post an error log if you can.

Ste

[Magicmoon]

Well, I'll take out the ownable carpoolfix but it isn't causing the problem because you will see that I said everything below the line were items I put into the game after the problem was already occuring.

Although the problem behaves very much like Sims1 did when something was stuck in the road, this problem is occuring on more than one lot. I want to say all lots, but to be honest I will have to go back and play more to see if that is really true. I tried to use burniator on the street but it doesn't seem to be able to be placed there. If I remember correctly (and I don't always remember things right) I even tried moveobjects on to place the burninator in the street. I see that the person in the link you referred me to used buyable fire instead of stuckobjectremover. I haven't tried that. But the poster didn't say whether it solved their problem or not.

I started a clean neighborhood awhile back and have only had one abduction since then. I had no problems at all with that scenario although I do believe that the problem started after that happened, but not necessarily right after that happened. As I said, it's been going on awhile and I am not sure when it started. But I downloaded the spaceship fix as a preventative anyway.

Also, the lot I was playing last night that was driving me nuts was definately NOT the lot the abduction occured on.

I'm getting ready to play the game in a few minutes and will try playing with testingcheats on to see what happens. But I once did that and the game got stuck in an infinate loop of errors that wouldn't stop until I chose (delete?) I think that was the option, which deleted my Sim. Of course I left the lot without saving but that has made me kind of skittish about playing with that enabled. But first I guess I'll try the lot debugger. Only thing though is I'm sure this is occuring on more than one lot.

Thanks for your help. I'll try your suggestions.

[akatonbo]

I'm getting ready to play the game in a few minutes and will try playing with testingcheats on to see what happens. But I once did that and the game got stuck in an infinate loop of errors that wouldn't stop until I chose (delete?) I think that was the option, which deleted my Sim. Of course I left the lot without saving but that has made me kind of skittish about playing with that enabled.

While the problem you had is a hairy one, having debug mode on doesn't cause errors... it's just that when debug mode is on, you aren't SEEING the error messages. If everything in your game is working the way it is supposed to, there won't be any error messages in the first place, so if you get tons of error messages when debug mode it turned on, then something is broken, and that something would be broken whether you were seeing the error messages or not.

[syberspunk]

Well, I'll take out the ownable carpoolfix but it isn't causing the problem because you will see that I said everything below the line were items I put into the game after the problem was already occuring.

Well... I did say that it most likely wasn't the cause of your problem. I was just mentioning it because I am the author of that hack and I have found that it isn't exactly reliable. I haven't been able to figure out how to fix it, and the results aren't very consistent. I hadn't realized that Pescado also made an attempt at this, but also ran into similar issues. I wasn't saying that you had to remove it. If it works for you, that's great. I was just covering my ass since it might not always work as expected.

Although the problem behaves very much like Sims1 did when something was stuck in the road, this problem is occuring on more than one lot. I want to say all lots, but to be honest I will have to go back and play more to see if that is really true. I tried to use burniator on the street but it doesn't seem to be able to be placed there. If I remember correctly (and I don't always remember things right) I even tried moveobjects on to place the burninator in the street. I see that the person in the link you referred me to used buyable fire instead of stuckobjectremover. I haven't tried that. But the poster didn't say whether it solved their problem or not.

I'm a bit surprised that your problem occurs on all lots and you've only had one abduction on a single lot? This probably means it is totally unrelated to the spaceship carpool bug... or coincidence, and you might have that bug on the one lot that there was an abduction, but some other unrelated problem(s) on the other lots.

As for the original poster, that was me. If you read the first post for the spaceship carpool bugfix, I have a link to this thread where I explained in greater detail the problem that I encountered, the various methods that I attempted to solve it, and how I ended up making the bugfix.

To sum up, burninating the road did not fix it. Only moving out of the house and moving back in reset the lot. After installing the fix, I never had this type of error again.

I started a clean neighborhood awhile back and have only had one abduction since then. I had no problems at all with that scenario although I do believe that the problem started after that happened, but not necessarily right after that happened. As I said, it's been going on awhile and I am not sure when it started. But I downloaded the spaceship fix as a preventative anyway.

Also, the lot I was playing last night that was driving me nuts was definately NOT the lot the abduction occured on.

Hrm... well I would suspect that, if you are getting the problem on the lot that did have an abduction... you might not have noticed it right away. If you Do have it on that lot, it might be related to the spaceship carpool bug. You can fix this by moving the family out and back in, with the caveat that it adds the move out/in memory(ies). If that bugs you and you're handy with SimPE, you can always delete them. On the other hand, you can try those other methods/objects, but as I said, I haven't tried those and don't know if they would be successful.

And... as the spaceship carpool bugfix is preventative, it can't fix the lot that has the problem now. But if you fix a lot, it shouldn't happen again. However... since you are experiencing this problem on other lots that haven't had spaceship abductions, the only other thing besides stuck/invisible objects in the road, is that you might have deleted portals. You probably should get the portal fix/monitor from Crammyboy section. I think it might still be available here.

I'm getting ready to play the game in a few minutes and will try playing with testingcheats on to see what happens. But I once did that and the game got stuck in an infinate loop of errors that wouldn't stop until I chose (delete?) I think that was the option, which deleted my Sim. Of course I left the lot without saving but that has made me kind of skittish about playing with that enabled.

As akatonbo says, the infinite loop of errors that you are getting isn't just because you turned on debug mode, you are most likely still experiencing the problem and just don't realize it. The game by default resets all objects (including sims, which are considered objects in the game) and this is done blinvisibly to the user. This might manifest itself in 'jump bugs' where your sim might jump out of interactions or objects there are sitting in or using, or they might seem to experience jerky, spasmy animations. Turning debug mode on helps flesh out these errors and generates error logs. If you actually read the dialog box that pops up, it should tell you where the error logs are generated. You could try posting these for someone to look at, and maybe we would have a better idea of what might be causing the problem and how to fix it.

Minor problems can usually be solved by reseting the object. The much more egregious errors keep occuring even when you reset objects. You might be able to fix this by deleting the offending object. However, this doesn't always solve the problem. If a certain object is screwed up, or if you have a bad download or bad hack, then deleting the object might just be a temporary fix. In some cases, deleting objects might cause erratic behaviour because the object might be some kind of controller or portal, which are typically invisible objects needed to run interactions on a lot, and objects which don't get automatically reset or re-instatiated can cause all sorts of problems. The only way to fix these kinds of problems might just be to move a family out and back in. I believe this typically resets the lot completely. If it doesn't fix the problem at all, then the lot is probably buggered beyond all help, and you may just have to cut your losses and break out the bulldozer.

Anyways, hope this info helps.

Ste

[ZephyrZodiac]

Would using the FFSDebugger and selecting the ForceErrors option reset the lot?  Or, possibly just deleting the car itself?

[Ness]

ZZ, I would expect that you would need to delete the giant invisible thing that is blocking the car pool - not the car pool itself.

I'd be cutting my losses and moving to another lot.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I'd probably do the same, but I just wondered, I try everything I can think of when something like that happens, just in case........

[Magicmoon]

I'm still working on the problem and haven't had a chance to try all the suggestions everyone has given me and haven't pinpointed exactly which lots have the problem and which don't. I played last night with testingcheats enabled but no errors were generated at any time, even when the carpools came and went.

The error that caused the infinate loop with testingcheats enabled was "Missing neighbor for data access." I searched the web over and never found anything about it, but that one started after attempting to get rid of townies using SimPe and evidently bungling the whole thing. (I had deleted all memories of the townies removed but the problem remained). I got rid of that neighborhood as that error was affecting several Sims and started the new one that I am using now with the carpool problem. I used deleteallcharacters on this new neighborhood rather than trying to remove townies after they were made so I avoided my previous problem.

Last night I tried burninating the road on the side where the carpool gets stuck. Nothing got deleted except for the portal. It said something like "carpool start portal" although that isn't the exact words. On the plus side Crammyboy's hack kicked in and said to exit lot without saving. Although I knew that, it makes me feel good to know that if the portal was deleted without me being aware of it, that his hack will tell me about it.

As far as the ownable car mod...I just put it in the other day and haven't tried it out yet. I took it out because you said there was some problems and the problems mentioned on the thread for the hack were already occuring for me even though I didn't have that mod in. I figured why make things worse since I'm already experiencing problems. Better to fix what's wrong first before adding another mod.

Anyway...back to the game to track down all the particulars of the error and try out a few more ideas posted here.

[syberspunk]

I'm still working on the problem and haven't had a chance to try all the suggestions everyone has given me and haven't pinpointed exactly which lots have the problem and which don't. I played last night with testingcheats enabled but no errors were generated at any time, even when the carpools came and went.

Well... if you don't get any errors on the lot that has something invisible blocking the road, then you probably don't have any deleted portals on that lot. It's probably just a case of an invisible object. What you can do is have your sims walk down the road. Try to start them at one end, and make them walk down as straight a line as possible towards/past the invisible object. If there is indeed an invisible object in the road, they will/should stop just before it, and then complain about the object blocking their path, assuming you don't have any mods that change that (possibly nowhining type mods). If you're lucky, you might even get a thought bubble that shows what the object might be. As you see in the pics I posted, my sims had thought bubbles of UFOs.

The error that caused the infinate loop with testingcheats enabled was "Missing neighbor for data access."

Well heh, there you go. You probably really shouldn't go deleting stuff all willy nilly. If you start deleting memories or tokens or anything, you also have to do thorough clean up and remove all references to that memory. Memories can get past on to other sims via gossip or witnessing events, and if you delete the source of a memory that is passed, then whenever that memory gets referenced, it probably will try to access the non-existing memory that you deleted, which can cause the missing data errors. You also shouldn't just delete sims all willy nilly without doing a thorough clean up as well. You would have to delete all references, such as family ties or friendships, or even acquaintances where other sims might have talked to them once and they now show up on their relationship panel. Deleteallcharacters also doesn't take care of everything. You might read in other threads about it, how you might have to delete the SWAFs and other references.

On the plus side Crammyboy's hack kicked in and said to exit lot without saving.

Yep, that is definitely a critical fix needed. You never know what could cause portal deleting. Before the patches, if it wasn't for crammmyboy's fix, we probably wouldn't have known that things like juggling cups and reading books could cause portal deletion.

Better to fix what's wrong first before adding another mod.

Heh, yeah definitely. The carpool fix probably won't cause any destructive behaviour, but it wouldn't hurt to err on the side of caution.

Hopefully you figure out what's wrong and fix your lot. The lotdebugger method might work. But it might be a long tedious process. You would have to turn on debugmode, then use the lotdebugger to reset all objects. Then, for each dialog box, you should read what the object is, and reset it for all other objects, until you find anything that might be related to vehicles. If you find a UFO vehicle, you probably should delete that. If you don't find a UFO... well it could be some kind of other stuck vehicle on the lot. Maybe a maid or delivery van, or a mechanic's truck? If you suddenly lost the ability to call a specific service NPC, or they don't show up when you do call, then that is probably a clue. Well, best of luck.

Ste