More Awesome Than You!

I swear, I'm ready to burninate this entire apartment building. It is a comedy of errors. The most recent one being: I moved all families out in order to make some major construction changes. Changed lot to residential. Made changes, changed lot back to apartment and saved. Started moving in sims. One entire apartment has entirely invisible furnishings. I'm talking, 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, and a living room/office. ARG! All other apartments and common areas are fine. Help?

Current Mods:
InSIMinator
InTEENimator
Toddler stairs mod
SeeThem2
Skaarjy_Scooby-Crammy mod
A slew of Medieval vehicles for NPC, Carpool, and PC use
Medieval Townie Names
marriage-lastnamedialogue-AL

Don't change an apartment back to residential.

So is it completely borked now? Or fixable?

I wouldn't know. In your case, I'd call it a wash. In my case, I'd probably be able to salvage some of it with my voodoo skills, but the nature of voodoo is such that it is not a documentable procedure, you just have to know how to mash buttons.

You know, this sounds strangely like what happened to me recently.  Well, the problems and errors were different, but what I mean is that in both cases we had changed an apt to residential and back to apt.  Apparently, my apt is a wash too.   :-\

One simply does not just Tankcat into Mordor.

If I could just simply find a nice castle-shaped apartment building, this wouldn't be a problem  :-[

Don't do apt -> res -> apt. Make up your mind.

The reason we do it, or at least the reason I do it, is because we suck at building apartments I guess.   :P  Goes something like this:

Build apt.  Move in sims.  Uh-oh, that's not working like I wanted.  Move sims out.  Fix problem (and break lot in process).  Move sims back in.  Ooops.  Lot is now broken and unplayable.  Crap.

Solution: Build it as residential, then lot-bin that version. Keep that around, even if you doubt you'll need it. Pull it out of the bin to make it an apartment lot, whenever you need an apartment lot.

You won't lose the alterable version, and you'll still be able to have apartment versions.

Or, you know, you could just make the alterations to the lot WITHOUT CHANGING IT BACK TO RESIDENTIAL. Novel concept, I know.

Can you make structural changes to an (uninhabited) apartment lot? I've never tried.

Well, you can with the "boolprop aptsublotspecifictoolsdisabled false" cheat, but THAT certainly got me into some trouble on this same lot, which was the first error in this tragic comedy (full details on the MTS2 board). Mr. Pescado advised me of the apthack there, which is what led me here, since he clearly knew more about that error then the people attempting to help me there.

Lot-binning is a good idea. One which I wish I had thought of last week.

Yeah.  Me too.   :-\

Lotbinning is "not a great idea". It tends to lead to lot instance inflation. While at this stage in the game, it's not going to cause anything to EXPLODE, it's still not a GOOD thing. On occasion, there remains dangling detritus left behind, so this approach is not considered the best plan.

Would building in a separate hood avoid that, or is it the sort of thing that follows a lot around? (I already do have a hood I use just for building.)

I've tried the don't change it back to residential version. I lost both the hoods that I did it in. I lost a three more hoods doing the change it to residential method and now I always lot bin the damned apartment before I move people in. They're the only hoods that I've ever lost. They were just no longer visible from the hood selection screen and even though I searched down some methods for trying to recover them. I haven't lost anymore hoods since.

I always delete the copy of the lot from the lot bin after I have it placed - does that make a difference?

You should not turn it back to res after moving in the sims, better do all changes before that.
Otherwise use the boolProp aptSubLotSpecificToolsDisabled false cheat and then do not forget to shut it with
boolProp aptBaseSpecificToolsDisabled true

Hmm. I think I'm going to take it right back down to basics. I will  make the lots in another hood. I will keep a residential version of them prior to them ever being an apartment in that hood. I will use a copy to convert to an apartment and if I find that something needs to be changed I will go back to the original residential hood and make changes to it before again converting a copy.

I don't want to loose any more hoods.

I tried every possible combination: do not touch apt, change to res, lotbin, rebuild from scratch, etc. The lot ends always borked after a maximum of 2 or 3 game sessions.
As much as I would like the apt gameplay, I gave up; I like to play sims, dammit, not to nanny a game.

Fuck you, EA.

Before M & G, my apartments were in good shape. I could visit other apts and the way I had the furniture was visible and perfect.

After M & G, my playable sims visit the neighbors and you see 3 toliets in the livingroom, chess table and telescope in the kitchen, piano and chair in the bedroom, easel in the bathroom. No TV, radio, or sofa and living chairs. Oh yeah in the spare bedrooms, the stove and refrigerator. The wierd thing is when I play the neighbor (also playable) the household is the way I decorated it.

I have been so disgusted that I moved all my sims out of apartments to residential lots. EA you suck!

Ha!  So M&G screwed up the screwed up apartments.  I was wondering why my furnished apartments kept losing the furnishings!   I also lose my fireplaces on residential lots.  Is there any correlation?

Yes. Exactly.

I do not have M&G.  However,  I have had this same crap happen when visiting neighbouring apts.  Not every apt and not all the time, but still, it looks so dumb.

No problems with the residential lots. Fireplaces are in place, but cannot use custom recolors for my residential mailboxes. Guess I have to wait for an updated CEP?