More Awesome Than You!

I'm wondering if anyone else is having a problem like this.  I've got two downtown lots that absolutely refuse to load.  The Hub and The Lulu Lounge.  I'm not sure what the problem is.  It will just sit at the loading screen and do nothing.  I first noticed it when I tried to go to them on a date, and ended up having to minimize the game and killing it with Task Manager.  I even try to go into the lots in build mode and the same thing happens.

To those who probably think I'm not waiting long enough, I tried to go into one in build mode last night and went to take a shower while it was loading (and I take long showers).  And when I got back it was STILL loading.

So, lot corruption?  Bad install?  I don't know.  Any ideas?

I've read several people having problems with the Lulu lounge. It did load for me, but it did seem to take longer the first time (not nearly as long as it was for you).  Is it possible for you to throw it into the lot bin, buldoze the original lot and then throw it back into the neighborhood? That seemed to help some people who were having problems with some of the Maxis lots.

I haven't actually tried anything yet.  But that's a good idea.  Gonna see if that works right now.

Sometime in the past, have you quit the game or had a crash while on an outing or date at those locations?  That might put the lots in a bad state.  You could try overwriting the lots with the originals extracted from the NightLife CD.

Yeah, I did go to one of them on a date and ended up having to quit the game at the loading screen because of this.  But its doing this in both Pleasentview and Strangetown.  Would something like this affect them in all neighborhoods?

If it is affecting things in multiple neighborhoods, then I'd check your game directory (Somewhere around here: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\D001\Lots) and see if the lot templates got corrupted.  Again, these should be somewhere on the install CD if you want to compare them to the originals.

Well, I tried simmiecal's suggestion.  The Lulu Lounge loaded, but the Hub didn't.  Guess I need to hunt down those lot files now.  Would these be on the first or second disk?

They'll be in the last place you look for them (because you'll stop looking once you've found them, of course).

Sorry - no clue which CD they'd be on.

Just compared all of the file sizes.  (They're on Disk 2 btw.  Sims2EP_2/compressed.zip/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate/D001/Lots)  And they all match up.  I just don't get it...

I've done a lot of work on this neighborhood too.  I'm not going to do something as drastic as a reinstall for two crummy lots.

Did you try to place "The Hub" lot from another downtown area in the lots & housebin you install that works and then place it in the one that does not.

None of the Hubs in any of my neighborhoods are working.  I'll try making a new custom neighborhood later and see if it works in that.

Add Maple Springs Pool and Spa to the list of lots that won't load...

Gah!  This is frustrating.  If this keeps up a couple of CD's are going to find themselves being used as frisbees.   >:(

Wow, I thought this was a problem with my computer and not with the game itself, like the new requirements for NL somehow would only let me load 1 or 2 lots at a time (I honestly don't know what I was thinking). I had to package Maple Springs, LuLu Lounge, One-Twenty-Five Cafe, and Sim Center North (can't recall the name exactly) from a separate user account and replace the ones in my neighborhoods. I thought it might have had something to do with a bad recolor since the clean lots would load but I couldn't see any common object between them and turning on the testingcheats didn't occur to me at the time. I haven't had any problems with loading the lots since I packaged and replaced them, though.

Hi guys,

It's funny because I just ran into the same exact problem with my sister's computer. She could not enter the Hub with hacks installed. I thought that it might be a general problem, but I was able to run the hacks fine in my game on my computer. Which was strange because then I thought it might be one of a few things:

A) her computer's system specs
 - seems implausible because the specs for her computer are much better than mine.
She has a Pentium 4 3.00 Ghz
512 MB of RAM
Graphics Card: NVidia GeForce FX 5500 w/ 256MB of video ram

Her processor is much faster than mine (I think mine is only 2.something Ghz), I have the same RAM, but my video card is probably better than hers.

B) her own game/neighborhood may be corrupt
- still possible, especially according to this thread

C) hack(s) conflict/issue
- might be possible, inconclusive

I had my sister test her game by methodically disabling all the hacks with S2PCI and enabling each hack one by one. Upon cursory experimentation it looks like smart-lights2 is causing the issue. I personally cannot, as of yet, confirm this as a definate problem, since last I attempted, it worked fine for me. I was able to enter the Hub fine with all hacks enabled. The hacks in her game are identical to mine, since I pretty much take charge of updating/maintaining the hacks in her game.

The hacks that I currently have enabled are, thus far:
F.F.S. hacks approved by Dr. Boris and J.M. Pescado for NL
hacks approved by twojeffs for NL pre-patch (I haven't tested them post-patch, but they did not seem to cause issues with lots loading)
updated version of JenFlower's Teen Woohoo by jase
hacks approved by Crammyboy for NL
hacks approved by dizzy2
a few miscellaneous hacks from MTS2, simlogical, and possibly other sites that should all be NL-post patch compatible

I haven't tested any of these in game yet, as I haven't had time to play/test. I only checked if these conflicted with lot loading since my sister was experiencing this problem. According to her tests, smart-lights2 seems to prevent the Hub from loading. With this hack disabled and everything else enabled, the Hub and the Lulu Lounge load ok. It seems to take a bit longer than without hacks (1-2 minutes), but at least it loads.

I am instructing my sister to test her game and see if she still gets the problem with smart-lights2 enabled by itself and everything else disabled. I will report back once she lets me know what happens. I'll be heading home again this weekend, so if that is the case, I'll do a bit more troubleshooting and see if there are any conflicts that I am unaware of.

I will also try this repackaging and replacing to see if that solves the issue. Please let me know if, in your games, you are using smart-lights2, and if removing/disabling this hack solves your problem. I don't want to definately say it is the cause, since it is not happening in my game, so I cannot completely confirm that there is an issue with it, especially since dizzy's hacks all seem to work so wonderfully for my game in the past.  ??? I can't imagine why it would work on my computer and not my sister's. There might be some conflict that I am overlooking, but I am fairly certain that I synced our downloads folders so that they match exactly.

It could very well be an issue with her specific game/neighborhood. On my own computer, I pretty much nuked my old game and I plan to eventually start over from scratch, so my neighborhoods are currently new and essentially a "fresh" install.

Anyways, I'll be checking up on this thread and I'll keep you guys posted if I find anything more definitive.

Ste

I don't have that hack, when I was having issues my hack folder was sitting on my desktop which is what led me to believe it was a bad recolor somewhere. For what it's worth, ever since I replaced the problematic lots with "clean" copies I haven't had any further problems with any of the lots.

W/ university, I had the same problem w/ lots that wouldn't load. It turned out to be an object file that wasn't even on the lot - the lot was a clean Maxis one. Maybe this is the same problem? If you try loading a clean game, and it works, that might be what it is.

In my case, the obj was called vssofamod from vitasims...I haven't downloaded an object from there since.  :-\

I have had problems on a couple of occasions with lots being hung while loading.  The Hub was one of them and I deleted the pool lights.  They were conflicting with the more important smart-lights2.

I get this problem with downtown lots as well. Loading with the debug cheat on shows a problem with the pool lights which is connected to Dizzy2's smart-lights, his updated smart-lights2 is ok.
The first version causes the pool light problem so you have to load up each lot with debug on, delete pool lights and save.

The problem with smart-lights/smart-lights2 and the pool lights is not limited to only the first version.

Otherwise, I would not have had a problem going to The Hub with smart-lights2.  I opened The Hub for the first time yesterday and encountered the problem.  I have had smart-lights2 installed for a couple weeks now, and never had smart-lights installed with NL or the NL patch.

Unless Maxis had smart-lights installed when the created The Hub in the first place, that is...

Mmm.. Back to the drawing board. Maybe another hack?, will do some testing tonight and see if I can find the culprit.

I had this exact problem with the Goth House after installing Nightlife.

I fixed the problem by moving the family out and back in again.  To me this seemed to indicate that post-NL install, something was corrupted about the objects in the house although I have no direct proof of this.  Also, that lot wasn't a commercial one obviously.

Have you tried checking your game error logs to see if there is an object conflict coming up?

Check the "House of Fallen Trees" thread here on forums for more info.

Briefly, I also had the HSFT lot crashing on me, and these were caused by downloaded objects conflicting with Maxis made ones although this problem didn't seem to exist prior to installing Nighlife.  The resolution was to check the log file and removing the conflicting objects from the Downloads folder.  I'd be curious to know if this is/isn't a symptom of the same problem.

Same problem here both with The Hub, LuLu lounge & the large victorian residential lot in Downtown with the dead trees and vampire basement.


Grr.

It's definitely a problem with the pool lights, I've attached the error log in case anyone can make sense of it. It only happens when I put my hacks folder in, I just have to figure out which one it is.

[attachment deleted by admin]

Wasn't there some issue with Pescado's Community Lights on hack? You could try taking that one out.

I also had a problem with a house crashing on me everytime I tried to go in. I tried looking into the log folder, but there were dozens of logs in my log folder, and I wasn't sure which log I should be looking in. I told the comp. to arrange the logs by date modified, but even then, there were a whole bunch of logs that were modified at the same time.

So...which log should I be looking in?

Yup, you're right. I took that one out and they load just fine. I kept all the hacks that are on Dr. Boris' list but I have been playing without my hacks folder, which would explain why they loaded after I packaged and moved them.

I'm prety certain I have that hack in as well.  I'll go and take it out to see if things get any better.

F:\My Documents\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\Logs\AppErrors.log

You'll be looking for a message that indicates an object error with two filepaths listed.  One to the conflicting object in your Downloads area, the other to the game package file/object its conflicting with.  Remove the conflicting object(s) from Downloads and try re-entering your problem lot again.

I was having this problem, and since I always play in debug mode, I saw the error pop up about pool lights.  Dizzy2 traced this to Pescados comm-lights and his old smart lights hacks causing corruption in the pool lights.  This is what he said over at VS:

* If you used the old hack in Nightlife, you will need to delete and replace your old pool lights, as the old hack probably corrupted them. * http://www.variousimmers.net/vsimforum/showthread.php?t=2003

I think there is another thread around here where Dizzy discussed it, but I can't find it right now.

I followed these directions and removed Pescado's comm lights hack, and although it took time to go to each Downtown lot that I'd been to that had pool lights, it was worth it because I have had no more problems.  That is the common denominator between the comm lots mentioned above, even those you wouldn't think had pools.  Some use them for decoration, such as the Lulu Lounge.

The issue with the House of Fallen Trees is another issue, as AllenABQ mentioned is on another thread.  That was the strangest thing I've heard, as it was traced to a bad sofa mesh from another site!  Who'd've thunk it??

So the culprit has been found.

I went and took commlightson out of my download folder and tried to go back into the Hub, but it still wouldn't load.  So I went and made a custom neighborhood and attached Downtown to it, figuring all of the lots there would be fresh and uncorrupted.  And lo and behold, the Hub loaded without any fuss there.

Seeing as how I can't get into these lots with the corrupt lights, it seems my only solution now is to move all of the lots in the custom neighborhood to the lots bin, bulldoze everything in my existing neighborhoods, and replace them with the lots from the custom neighborhood.

That's gonna take a little while to do...   :P

Oh poor you, at leat you found a way around it.  The only good thing about this now is when you move the community lot to the bin it stays there so you only need to move them once and then you can place them over and over again.

Can you delete the downtown attached to your current n'hood and just attach a new one?

I had wondered that too...but I was concerned about existing downtownies and relationships and the creation of new downtownies...would you have duplicate downtownies?  :-\

Ugh, that sucks! I was hoping that you wouldn't have resort to replacing all of them.  :-\ At least with the new lot binning feature in NL it doesn't take nearly as long as it did before (package lot, exit game, install lot, repeat).

Yeah, seems like that has the potential of creating a BFBVFS.  Besides, half of the population in Strangetown in my game live in Downtown already.  Moving them in and out seems like more of a hassle than the mass bulldozing.

Glad I found this topic....I have had the same issue with not being able to load the Hub and the Lulu Lounge. I finally gave up and bulldozed them replacing them with custom lots.

As far as I can tell, deleting a downtown would probably work like deleting a university. I assume It would keep the downtownies since they are attached to an invisible townie household and not any particular lot. I don't think deleting the downtown deletes the sims. If you delete a University town it doesn't delete any sims and in fact they'll walk by and move into dorms if you make a new university town.

The one problem I can see is that, at least with the university town, while deleting one doesn't delete sims, adding a second or replacement one DOES create another set of townies and npcs. If the downtown does the same thing, it would generate a lot of extra characters to do this. Given that the game tends to get funky with a lot of characters and that each expansion seems to add a whole bunch more, this probably isn't the ideal situation.  :-\

I don't have Nightlife installed, so please ignore me if I'm completely crazy, but couldn't you just delete all characters in your new neighbourhood, package the downtown lots from there and replace the corrupt lots in your existing downtown neighbourhoods with them? Or is downtown different and you can't bulldoze individual lots?

I think that's what Trepie is doing, but it's not necessary to delete characters since the lots are community lots and don't contain any sims.  It's not even necessary to package the lots.  All you have to do is move them into the Lots bin and then go to the old neighborhood, bulldoze the corrupt lots, and replace them with the new ones.

I'm having this happen with any lot I try to visit in downtown - only while Sims are involved though.  I can get in just fine in editing/build  mode; just can't get Sims to travel there.  They can't get in via taxi or even using their own car.

Maybe someone smart can tell me what's up with it?   This is a sample of what was in my AppWarnings (as per suggestion somewhere above):

WARNING MaterialManager: Unknown material definition 'hottubraisedvaluelod90_materialmask_sub[hottubraisedvaluelod90_materialmask]', handle 532 -- substituting dummy material definition
.\source\GZSceneGraphMaterialManager.cpp(997)
WARNING MaterialManager: Unknown material definition 'treejapanesemaple_layeredjapanesemaplelod90_branchpurple_sub[layeredjapanesemaplelod90]', handle 573 -- substituting dummy material definition

Basically it scrolls on and on like that forever.

I can't help but think this is likely to be a bad sign...

I see that substituting dummy material in my cheat console log all the time.  It doesn't appear to mean anything serious.  Have you tried entering the lots with debug mode on?  This should allow any errors to pop up and an error log will be written to your logs directory that we can look at.  It will give you an option to cancel, reset, or delete.  Don't hit delete, at least not you have a chance to look over the logs and we can see what is going on.  Sometimes that is the only way out, but I always try everything else I can first.  In my case with the corrupted pool lights, I was able to hit Cancel, once for each pool light on the lot (so on the Spa lot, I believe it was six times), and then it continued loading and let me into the lot.  If you hit delete it will permanently get rid of the pool lights.  I wanted to see where they were so I could delete them myself and put new ones in the same place.

Just checking...so I go into debug mode while playing a Sim family, then drive them to the lot?

[edit]Um, how do I get into debug mode, btw? I did a search for the word in this thread but didn't see any instructions. Apologies for the tech-ignorance![/edit]

Yeah, actually, I play in debug mode all the time and so do several others here.  That way I know when an error occurs.  I put it in my startup cheats file.  It doesn't hurt anything.  Anyway, to enable debug mode (referred to by some as simply "boolprop") open your cheat console box by pressing Ctrl+Shift+C and type in the following:

boolprop testingcheatsenabled true

Hope this helps!

Edit:  Sorry, I spaced out and forgot the "true" at the end.   :o  Thanks for catching that, gynarchy.  I should have been asleep in bed.  (My excuse:  Busy weekend, not enough sleep.  And no, sleep is not just for wusses, it's for humans. :P)

You're missing the true/false at the end - boolprop testingcheatsenabled true to turn it on, boolprop testingcheatsenabled false to turn it off.

Here's a sample of what I got from that:

ERROR TSAudio: Duplicate resource instance id found ff93bf13 with existing 0b9eb87e:2da1f2dd:ff93bf13
.\source\TSAudioResourceManager.cpp(1064)
ERROR TSAudio: Duplicate resource instance id found ff523dc5 with existing 0b9eb87e:2da1f2dd:ff523dc5
.\source\TSAudioResourceManager.cpp(1064)
ERROR TSAudio: Duplicate resource instance id found ff17dd59 with existing 0b9eb87e:2da1f2dd:ff17dd59
.\source\TSAudioResourceManager.cpp(1064)

ERROR TSAudioMusic     : Music category (Buy) listed twice in category property set.
.\source\TSAudioMusicManager.cpp(1649)
ERROR TSAudioMusic     : Music category (Build) listed twice in category property set.
.\source\TSAudioMusicManager.cpp(1649)

ERROR GZPersist: Cannot load dependent resource with group ID = 6f0013a4u, instance ID = cbef94a7ffea5bafu, type = e519c933u
.\source\GZPersistSerializer.cpp(204)
ERROR GZPersist: Cannot load dependent resource with group ID = 6f00145fu, instance ID = cbef94a7ffea5bafu, type = e519c933u
.\source\GZPersistSerializer.cpp(204)
ERROR GZPersist: Cannot load dependent resource with group ID = 6f00071bu, instance ID = 8adf160aff82ad0fu, type = e519c933u
.\source\GZPersistSerializer.cpp(204)


Would anyone know what I have to do to make it all work again? That list goes on for ages, btw - that's just a few examples.

If I have to kill that entire Downtown lot, can I reinstall it without ruining my current game?

I've had those errors for a long time now (before NightLife and University), they seem like general debug messages rather than fatal messages. I don't think they're anything to worry about.

According to MaxoidTom these messages are harmless, and he was apparently surprised they were still in the retail versions.

My guess is that the debug flag was accidentally left to "on" by some Maxoid.