Unoccupied lot went poof - wtf, wtf.

[philote]

Hey guys, my husband has discovered the Sims 2 recently.  He thinks it's a crap game, but loves building houses.  Different strokes for different folks.

Anyway, the problem.  He spent a few hours today building a house, exited the game a couple of times (after saving both times).  He was finally done, and he exited to neighborhood view to see what it looked like from afar.  All we saw was a black square; sometimes the square changes to light blue depending on the angle.  The lot can't be clicked on, can't be bulldozed.  It is basically a black hole of doom.

Any ideas on what is causing this?  Could we possibly get the house back, or at least remove the black hole of doom?  I found one other thread about this on TSR but there were only a couple of replies and they were like "yeah, what."

A few details:

- Husband used no downloaded/custom objects.
- No hacks were used in the creation of the house.
- I have several JM and twojeffs hacks installed, but nothing to do with building as far as I know.
- House was built in a (fairly unoccupied, white bread) custom neighborhood.  I have used SimPE to edit the Sims in this neighborhood, as far as deleting corrupt memories and the like.  No other funny business has occurred here.
- I have the base game and the nightlife expansion.
- Our video card is a geforce 7900 GT.

Thanks!

[Eleonora]

Your lot is doomed, simple as that. This happened to me several times, and there is no way to repair it. You'll have to remove it, either by deleting it from your LotCatalog folder, or with SimPE.

[jrd]

Can it be seen from within SimPE? Copying data from an uncorrupted lot over it can sometimes help.

[Gwill]

I've never heard of anyone managing to save a lot like that.  And the only way I've heard to delete it is to identify which lot it is in the Neighborhoods\N00x\Lots catalog and removing it.
(Correct me if I'm wrong here: my bug searching and support mostly comes from MTS2).

For the record, it has a tendency to happen if you delete the mailbox and trashcan from a lot, but it's not the only way it happens.

[Emma]

This is why it is best to have a dummy neighbourhood just for creating lots, once you are done you can just put the completed lot in the lot bin, and use it for all neighbourhoods. Then if a lot screws up like you mentioned, the neighbourhood can be deleted, and a new one created, without losing any lots, or your playable 'hood.

[philote]

I guess I will just delete the darn thing out of the Lots folder and see if that at least gives me the lot space back, unless anyone has any pointers on how to examine the house in SimPE.  (I have only played around w/ Sim files previously.) It's probably not that worth it, though 

From now on we will be building in a dummy neighborhood for sure! Thank you for the detailed responses you guys

[Simsample]

There have been a few indications that this could be a memory problem; a few people have reported that this happened with large/ complex lots that they had been working on for a long time without saving. Perhaps the game/ computer goofs out on saving, corrupting the lot?

[cwykes]

This is why it is best to have a dummy neighbourhood just for creating lots, once you are done you can just put the completed lot in the lot bin, and use it for all neighbourhoods. Then if a lot screws up like you mentioned, the neighbourhood can be deleted, and a new one created, without losing any lots, or your playable 'hood.

Are you saying you have to delete the whole neighbourhood Emma, if one lot gets screwed like this?  That sounds drastic!  Doesn't deleting it out of the lotcatalog fix it?  I had an NL lot in my game and don't have NL - that was another that couldn't be clicked on.  I deleted it out of lotcatalog and thought no more about it.

I guess packaging versions of the house as you go might be good practice - one of them might be OK if the current version is gone.

[Emma]

No cwykes, I'm just saying don't build on your playable 'hood just in case you need to delete the whole 'hood. I always package my finished lots too-just in case. Sometimes things screw up, is all I had a neighbourhood which I used just for building, and it suffered terrible slow-down for some reason. Because it was not my main playable 'hood, and all the lots I had built were safely packaged, I had no qualms about deleting it and starting a fresh one.

[cwykes]

Thank goodness for that!  Build in a separate hood just in case is a good idea.
I was suggesting packaging work-in-progress on complicated lots just in case.  Not just finished lots.

[Emma]

Thank goodness for that!  Build in a separate hood just in case is a good idea.
I was suggesting packaging work-in-progress on complicated lots just in case.  Not just finished lots.

Yes, you can do that. I tend not to though I don't do a lot of huge complicated lots so I usually finish it in one sitting. I just save the lot often.