More Awesome Than You!

OK.
Since installing the damn patch I've started having problems with my game that I didn't have before such as;

- blank dialogue box when asking a sim what they do for a living (I know this was a prob for some folk before but I never experienced it til patching my game)
- my graphics are screwed. I mentioned in another thread that I'm having trouble with the walls/floors/sim created paintings/sim's faces spazzing out. Now the control panel keeps breaking up, and more bizarrely becoming entirely covered in 'skin' files. (If someone can tell me how to take a screenshot and post it I'll do so next time it happens).
- buying clothes is next to impossible as the panel showing the clothes keeps breaking up and streaking, and for some unkown reason some of the custom clothes show up as a kind of distorted black catsuit when on the clothing dummy. Also the young adult icon doesn't show up in the clothing panel on university lots. Basically body shop seems to be screwed.

Is there anything I can do to sort this out? I'm pretty sick of it. Especially as we put in a brand new graphics card (GRForce 6800 GT)a month or so ago. I'm currently playing with my graphics turned down below what they were before the new graphics card. Is this happening to anyone else?

I get that sometimes. I know there was an issue way back with clothing made from the pre-release bodyshop meshes that caused that. I started downloading a fair bit of stuff again and am seeing that again recently and not sure if it's related to the pre-release bodyshop meshes or not.


Where are you running the bodyshop from? The one that came with the original game still exists, but each expansion also has one. If you have just University you want to run the one at this path: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 University\CSBin\TS2BodyShop.exe and if you have both University and Nightlife you want to run the one from this path: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\CSBin\TS2BodyShop.exe

I'm not sure what you mean. Doesn't each expansion update the body shop location automatically? I've opened body shop independently of the game to see if that makes any difference.

No, each expansion installs another version of the bodyshop.

My theory is that you have a hack installed that might conflict with the patch?  There were several things that the patch finally fixed that the modding community had already created hacks for months ago.  Didn't we need to remove some of those?  And I can't think of any to name right at the moment. 

It actually doesn't matter which bodyshop you run, as the registry overrides make sure only the last version (ie NL) is loaded.
You can launch NL by clicking the original sims2.exe.

That wasn't the case for me - I was tearing my hair out back when University was released because Bodyshop decided it didn't want to work properly anymore - I'd only have something like three items of clothing in each category (three everyday adult female outfits, one adult male undies, three elder male everyday etc). Custom clothes wouldn't load, although custom makeup and hair etc would, and even most of the maxis stuff was invisible. Pain in the ass, and I couldn't figure out for the life of me why it was broken. Eventually I discovered another version of Bodyshop in my University directory and used that instead - and it all worked perfectly again.

Indeed, the Nightlife shortcut to BodyShop should be used, not the old one.  Even so I'm not so sure this sounds like it's related to that.

One thing I've noticed is that installing expansions, patching, etc. tends to like to change graphic settings so since this seems to be a graphics problem I'd check those.

The only time I had a problem even remotely similar to this one was with a house in the neighborhood view.  Every time I would get that house on the screen to where I could even barely see it, the graphics would start going wonky, sort of like the house was a beacon and the distorted graphics were lights panning out from it.  I'm still clueless as to what that was all about and finally dozed the house because nothing I did would fix it.

For some reason i got the "jump Bug". Teens would reset in mid make out, kids would jump off chess board leaving books on seat......................., I had to take it out (well had to re-install)-It was fine without it-so I'll not bother with it

Foxybaby, are you playing with any mods?  After installing NL I went and got an updated mod for one particular thing.  It had problems causing my sims to jump out of many of their interactions: toilet, phone, dining, etc.  Mostly I'd rather blame the game than the high quality mods the users create, but once in a while it seems something's a bit wonky. :)

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try and catch screenshot of the funky control panel malarkey next time I play. Also whilst playing last night I too seemed to be encountering the dreaded Jump Bug again, but I had been mucking about with the mailboxes on various lots so that may have been responsible for that. I reckon I'm gonna remove all my mods and see if that makes any difference. The graphics problem means the game is virtually unplayable at the moment. But it's all a massive pain in the arse really, and I am rapidly losing interest in the bloody game.

I truly feel for you because I know how frustrating that is.  A while back I ended up upgrading my graphics card because with the one I had I couldn't get a driver that would work with both TS2 and SC4.  My old card ran SC4 just fine but wouldn't run TS2 right so I updated the driver.  Then it would run TS2 and not SC4.  Then after I put in my new card and installed its drivers, both games had graphics that worked, but it lowered a bunch of the graphics settings in TS2, with no option for putting them back up!

I had a problem with graphics breaking up when I had upgraded my computer. It was caused by overheating of the graphic card.

I don't know if it is the same as your problem, for me it would look like the pixels had been moved around. In the end I got coloured stripes all over the monitor. Replacing the fan on the graphic card and adding chassi fans did the trick.

Aah, now, there is a little problem with the fan (too old/noisy/other half keeps fiddling with it and making it worse). Could be it. The graphics problem you describe sounds similar. One thing I don't understand though is how skin bmp files (? I'm not too good with tech terms) end up all over the control panel. I'm still working on getting a screenshot of it. It's really very weird.

I had an overheat problem a while back and as anyonr knows an overheated pc wreaks havoc with graphis in my case the game wa suddenly swaying back and forht like ocean waves. so I sshut down the game and shut pc down and spring cleaned my computer. removed dust bunnies from my clean freak computer . hooked my computer  back  up rebooted and went online and downloaded speedfan. My pc now maxes out at 106 F. with HDO temp maxing at 94 degrees F. when the PC gets to much dust in it speedfan lets me know in a hurry when I see HDO temps above 100 . I know its time to spring clean again. speedfan is effective at regulating case fan speeds and is totally free.  my main fan whirs away when the PC is actively being used at 3500 rpms  and more depending on what Im doing at the time it slows  the fans down when the PC is in Idle mode as well. I have noticed that The Sims 2 games heat up the pc in a hurry  but even with that being said the max temp Ive seen is 108 with hdo reading at 97 and thats after literaly 12+ hours of playing the Sims2 nightlife

I have finally taken some pictures/screenshots of some of the graphics problems Im having. And despite showing up fine in game, for some reason the pictures are not showing up in the actual storytelling folder. So Ive collected together a few examples and packaged them as a story to the exchange. Itd be much appreciated if someone could maybe take a look and hazard a quess as to wtf is going on. If I cant get it sorted out Im going to give up altogether!

Link (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=59343)

Edit:

This is what I mean about the control panel spazzing out anyhow. If you look closely you can clearly make out teeth, eyes, ears and nostrils. Clicking on the 3 dots and back again usually corrects it. Weird though.

(http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d35/sonofajoiner/ControlPanelEdit.jpg)

I'd say it's either a video card/driver issue or else some corrupted install files. Have you tried backing up your neighborhoods and doing a reinstall? I know it's a pain in the ass but sometimes it does fix things.

If that doesn't work, try different versions of drivers for your video card. If you already have the latest, see if you can find an archive with some older versions of the video driver. In some cases older versions actually work better for some strange reason because they tweaked something that a particular game doesn't like in newer versions.

Try searching around too like big sites like MTS2, The Exchange, TSR and try different keywords to see if you can locate someone with the same problem and maybe they'll tell what they did to solve it. Also you could try large boards based around your video card manufactuer (ATI and Nivida have loads of fanboys  ::) ) and search those boards for "sims" or "Sims 2" and see if anyone else mentions the problem. It might be something particular to your card and/or driver version.  :-\

That's pretty cool, though. To think that you have literal skins in your UI "skin" textures.  :D

Whoa, that is bizarre! Your "storybook" cracked me up. I'm sorry, but I'm still laughing. "suddenly the boys have stopped calling"! I have tears in my eyes from laughing so hard at that one. And "meet random skin"...

But, as for the problem goes, I agree with Motoki. Check the forums for your video card. I've had to consult those forums many times, with less-interesting problems than yours, of course...

I am sorry about your game, but that is just hilarious.
Have you tried loading up your game without the download folder (yeah, I know your sims will be butt-ugly but maybe they will actually have a face...)

I finally stopped laughing long enough to post. I also would look in the error log and easy Info at lest easy info can pinpoint  you to the spes the game is currently reading ie get new drivers etc for the graphics card.

Thanks for the suggestions folks. And glad you liked the story. I thought the mildly humorous approach would work better than using the torrent of expletives I originally planned.
The weird thing though is the game had been playing relatively ok (as far as TS2 goes ie a minimum of weirdo graphics thing) until I patched it. I'll definitely ask around the forums you mentioned but I cant work out why updating or rolling back drivers would affect the craziness with the control panel. ??? Ive had all kinds of other freaky stuff happen to my game since patching it (blank thought bubbles, blank message boxes, can't ask anyone what they do for a living etc etc....) And there would definitely appear to be some issues with body shop.
Bangelnuts, what's easy info? And where would a computer retard like myself stumble across such a thing as an error log? :-[

You can find error logs in your my documents/ea games/the sims 2/logs folder
 EZ info will be in your program list. EA Games and the Nightlife. You'll see EZ info listed first, I think. Click on it and it will do it's thing.

One more thing...have you tried dxdiag?

May I refer you to my earlier 'retarded' comment  ;D.

go to "run" in the start menu and type "Dxdiag"  in the box to access dxdiag.

oh, sorry... :D
go to your start menu. Click start, then click "run". Type dxdiag in the box.  Hit "ok". Then dx will begin it's diagnosis...you can also test certain graphical things. It's pretty self explanatory. When you see it, you'll understand.

Beat me to it because I insisted on rambling...

What about deleting Groups.cache from the MyDocuments/EAGames/Sims2 folder? I could be way off base, but from the reading I did last night, it can be really helpful to delete it.. especially after making major changes to the game. It could be that her/his game was on the brink, and the patch knocked it over the edge. The way I see it, if it can't hurt, why not? MaxoidTom himself said it was perfectly safe to do so.

Sometimes the craziness of drivers just doesn't make sense--it still doesn't to me and I've seen some pretty weird things with some of my games.

When I first installed TS2 none of my created sim's icons would show up in the family bar--they were simply blank.  All previously created sims (the ones that shipped with it) showed up fine.  Also in the neighborhood view the houses I built had no walls while in the default neighborhoods everything was there.

So, I updated my video drivers and possibly had to re-install my game (can't recall for sure) and voila!  Everything was fine on that end.

At this point, my CivCTP wouldn't run and it had run just fine before updating those drivers.  I updated drivers again and this time TS2 and CivCTP ran fine, but then my SimCity 4 game's graphics went wonky, whereas before the last driver update it was doing excellently.

Finally, I threw my hands up in despair and bought a newer and supposedly better video card.  I installed it and now both TS2 and SC4 work, although I've yet to attempt CivCTP.  Oddly enough, this new and improved video card gives TS2 less graphic options than my old one did.

So you see, in my limited brain capacity absolutely none of this makes any sense. LOL

Don't be too hard on yourself, Misty - often computers just don't make sense. Too often it seems more like an art than a science, and computer repair was my job for two years. I don't call it 'digital necromancy' now for nothing!

Thanks for that!  I only wish I had saved screenshots of some of those pretty weird things.  I just went and looked through Sonofajoiner's album on the Exchange and while I haven't seen that same problem in my game I did have something odd happen with a house in the neighborhood view which that reminded me of.  As long as that house wasn't in my viewing area everything was fine.  As soon as I'd scroll toward it, oddly colored graphical images started taking over my whole screen, sometimes red, sometimes yellow or green.  In this case, dozing the house solved the problem.  Sometimes the graphic weirdness looked like it was coming out of the house, sort of panning out like a search light.  Other times it'd just take over the whole screen.  Unfortunately, I don't think sonofajoiner's problem would be solved by dozing, but it might be solved, as suggested, with a different set of drivers.

I know one of the first recommended things to do after installing a new graphic card is to get online and look for updated drivers and I think most of us try to do that.  I decided after my last fiascos that for the time being I'm leaving well enough alone and not going after any updates. ;)

I forgot to take a screen shot of an odd error that occured in my game tonight. I had a hooker over at Bella Goth's house tonight to satify a want she had about woohooing with 5 different sims when the woohoo was done  and she got the aspiration points and the want fulfilled I told her  to dismiss the hooker went to the DMA Panel to refresh Bella's needs so I could have her call her fiancee and ask him on a date   I look and her Icon says she is chatting with the hooker the only problem was  he was invisible! Im thinking ok Bella has lost her mind and is talking to thin air a second or two later I see the tv remote appear in thin air I finally figured out that there was a sim there he was  simply invisible.so I tell Bella to dismiss him and as soon as she did that he materialized. I then sent her to the phone to call her fiancee which she did and had a great date with him  .

Looking at your album was like deja vu - I had identical problems with weird textures appearing on walls, floors, clothing, faces, etc, and the control panel breaking up (mine never developed teeth though! :D ).  I'd made sure I had the latest video card drivers as instructed, so I was convinced my game must be broken... until my partner (who's a lot more techy than me) suggested going back to an older driver, which completely fixed the problem.

Well, having applied a mixture of various folks advice, I seem to have finally fixed the problem more or less. No more teeth and eyeballs all over the control panel, and a dramatic reduction in sudden sim ugliness. Now there is only a momentary graphic distortion in the neighbourhood view once the game is loaded but thats it. It would appear that the other half's insistence that the drivers were completely up to date was based on complete and utter lies.

Drivers are only up to date for a few days now, it seems.

77.77 (or something) seems to be the most stable I've found :)

thats true  as soon as you download and install the driver it seems like its obsolete already

if it ain't broke, don't fix it. sometimes older versions of drivers are better than the shiny new ones

edit : just looked at your story, damn funny and scary at the same time watching the girl with the screwed up face! gave me a fright there. so how is your game now? any better?

That's what I learned.  As above, if it isn't broke, don't fix it.  I'm planning on building a new PC here in the next few months and when I do I'm not updating any drivers unless something just doesn't work.  It's entirely too scary otherwise!

Yeah, you know, I used to use 77.77 successfully--then I read after NL that object specularity (which as I understood it, it is basically what makes my countertops and schtuff  look nice and shiny and REAL) was gone.  We wound up restoring our hard drive and my husband insisted on using drivers recommended for WOW--nVidia 6.1.7.7--and not only do I have bumpmaps without Rivatuner, I seem to have got shiny countertops back.  Among other pretty things. :D  Methinks I'll stick with this extremely outdated driver until I am forced to give it up.

I cant blame you there  my PC is going in for a new hard drive with more capacity and a new video card system .the computer expert is also going to up my processor speed  at the same time. I am lucky  his wife plays the sims2 and ep's so he is very familiar with how to get the bumpmaps etc... in game and to get my special events camera enabled

i'm not sure but it's only a guess.. have you tried deleting the floor tiles? like pressing ctrl while in build mode?