Stupid game. Stupid timing.

[SaraMK]

I sent a sim to a community lot. Unfortunately, his wife went into labor just as he got into the car. The Name Baby dialog pops up... fade to black as the husband leaves the lot.

And of course now I can't get into the damn lot without the game crashing.

I can't yank them out of the house either, since it crashes then, too.

What am I supposed to do now? The stupid newborn isn't listed in SimPE. I tried teleporting the mother to another lot, but she is no longer pregnant. The newborn isn't available for teleportation.

Ugh! 

*digs through backups, hoping to find a recent one*

[J. M. Pescado]

Oops. You broke it.

[SaraMK]

I figured that. I was just venting.

I think I'll try teleporting everyone to another lot, destroy any connection to the newborn (if there even is one), and bulldoze the broken lot.



EDIT: Fixed. Oh well, that house was ugly anyway. I still think this was a stupid thing to have happened.

[ElfPuddle]

*offers a snocone to SaraMK in sympathy*

[ElviraGoth]

I just had the same thing happen recently.  Sent a sim to get groceries, and just as she got in the car her daughter-in-law went into labor.  I tried to cross out the car command but it was too late.  Name Baby screen came up and immediately the interim screen came up while grandma went to the store.  She got her stuff and came back, but the lot wouldn't load. 

Couldn't do anything to get it back either, so I had to go to a backup of my hood that was 6 weeks old.  Fortunately, I play enough hoods that the rotation to that one was only a loss of three sim days, but I learned that backing up my hoods is a good thing.  I know I should backup every hood each time I finish a rotation, but I don't always think of it.

(Goes to back up all neighborhoods.)

[SaraMK]

USUALLY when something like this happens (and it has happened to me before, just not with someone going to a community lot... mostly due to bad-timing crashes), you can go into SimPE and fix it. You give the newborn a name, load the game, go to a different lot in the neighborhood, teleport both the mother and infant to that lot and move them in (using teleporter shrub), go back to the home lot (which usually won't crash anymore), teleport them in, and move them in.

This has always fixed things before. In this case though, the baby didn't seem to even exist, so this particular work-around did not work.

I make backups after each time I play, so I usually have pretty recent backups, but even playing a few hours can create a lot of changes, and going back to backup is always annoying. That's why I always try to fix the glitch some other way first.

[ElviraGoth]

Amazingly enough, this was the first time I'd had a lot crash.  And I tell myself every time I play to make a backup, but I usually flake it off.  (Bad thing!)  So that was the first time I'd had to go to a backup.

I had tried to fix it in SimPE, too, but I also was unable to locate the baby.  And I didn't know about teleporting them to another lot, so that's good to know!

Could you have just teleported the mother, if you couldn't find the baby in SimPE?  (Just wondering, in case it happens again.)

[SaraMK]

Could you have just teleported the mother, if you couldn't find the baby in SimPE?  (Just wondering, in case it happens again.)

That didn't work for me. It was one of the first things I tried. Moving just the mother into another lot didn't stop the home lot from crashing.

So, I guess if the baby can't be found in SimPE, you can't save the lot. But you can still avoid going back to a backup by teleporting everyone out of the bugged lot and then bulldozing it and starting over. That way all they lose is their money, house, and furniture, and all of those are replaceable. It's still better than trying to figure out what you've done since the last backup.

[jsalemi]

One way to avoid this in the future is to have some object on the lot that lets you monitor pregnancy progress (i.e., the insimenator, TJ's new casual romance, etc.) Sims always give birth at or very near 75 hours into the pregnancy, so keep an eye on it and don't send anyone off lot when they're at the 73rd hour or greater.  Or maybe even the 70th hour to be even more conservative.

[ElviraGoth]

I was able to move them out from the neighborhood screen and then back in again, but it was the Goth family (Alexander's son, Herman) and I really didn't want to have to replace everything on the lot.  I was more willing to replay 3 days in the whole hood than lose everything I had added to the house.

Actually, it really wouldn't break my heart if the whole neighborhood crashed.  It's the first Pleasantview, from when I first started playing TS2.  I stopped playing it after a couple of months, when I started my first custom hood, and just started playing it again.  If it had been the custom hood I have been playing for well over a year, it would have been different.  I would have said, "Screw the stuff!"  The 3-day progress in the hood would have been too much of a loss.

And I have the InSiminator on every lot, just so I can keep track of how far along a pregnancy is.  I just wasn't thinking when I had Lucy go for groceries when I did.

But because of that one time, I have started to back up my hoods after every rotation.  (I play each house in a hood for one sim day in each rotation.)  I didn't really think about backing up that often before that happened.

[SaraMK]

I don't micromanage enough to know exactly when someone is likely to give birth, although I do have Shaklin's medicine cabinet in most houses. Many of my houses have 10 or more sims, so micromanaging is not possible anyway. I usually have a couple of sims I actively manage, and the rest are sort of freerange... I pay attention to them when there's something in it for the sims I care more about.

[ThyGuy]

I've had this happen before, and if you're fast enough, and have a extra sim, immediately stop time, jump to the idle sim and hit the big red error on all button on Jm's debugger. It will usually postpone the birth for another hour, or the baby will be born with a really odd name that can be changed. Better than the lot barfing because of a fatal error.

[J. M. Pescado]

I was able to move them out from the neighborhood screen and then back in again, but it was the Goth family (Alexander's son, Herman) and I really didn't want to have to replace everything on the lot.  I was more willing to replay 3 days in the whole hood than lose everything I had added to the house.

If it's merely a lotstate bug, you can restore only the backup of that specific lot and see if that unjams.

But because of that one time, I have started to back up my hoods after every rotation.  (I play each house in a hood for one sim day in each rotation.)  I didn't really think about backing up that often before that happened.

Did you get the Lot Sync Timer? That'll help a lot with time tracking. Often times I have something really important ongoing and don't want to just leave after that one day, since I know no other houses connected to that one are going to have a timed event anyway.

[ElviraGoth]

I tried using a backup of the lot, but it didn't help.  (I may have moved them out and back in before I tried that, I don't recall now.)  Tried several things before resorting to an old backup, actually. 

But my Pleasantviews aren't really heavily populated, so it doesn't take that long to play one rotation.  I can usually get through one day and one UNI year in a few hours of play in that particular hood.  It was a bit of a pain, but I learned a lesson from it, so it was probably a good thing - for me - in the long run.  Probably the only thing that was annoying was having to get Cassandra out of the house again.  Her and Lucy (nee Burb) are really annoying together as elders!  (Never, ever, resurrect Cassandra!)

I've thought about using the lot sync timer, but I'm trying to keep myself restricted to one day in each residence in the hood anyway, so I don't have to do more than one year in each dorm/residence at UNI at a time.  (I have the buyable career rewards on my UNI lots, so I have all my YAs who haven't gotten all their skills maxed work on their skills there, or else I'd probably use rampage to speed up things there.  As it is, I put them on speed 2 so the time there goes faster.)

But if something like this should happen in my main hood, I'll definitely refer back to this thread for all the pointers everyone's listed!  I have too many sims/houses there to want to go to an old backup of that one.  I keep expected it to go nuclear at any time, but it keeps chugging along.  Probably all the great hacks/mods I got from here that keep it going.