More Awesome Than You!

I have read somewhere (where I can't find - I did search - truely!) that houses that were built before nightlife won't load once nightlife is installed.  Can someone confirm this for me?  Also, if this is a problem, does it affect the Maxis made characters that come with the game (eg the Capps and Monty's)?

I was given Uni for Christmas and have now purchased Nightlife and have decided to do a clean install for all three games, but I am trying to find out about this first.

Any help appreciated.

I haven't had a problem with them; in fact, when I was doing testing on the Lot Sync Timer, I loaded every house in Pleasantview, which were previously unplayed by me, and I had no problems loading them whatsoever.

Oh Goody! Thanks for the qucik reply BlueSoup.

Houses built pre-Nightlife may barf if not opened and resaved prior to moving anyone in.

I never had any problems whatsoever, and none of the houses were opened before Nightlife.

JM, does this apply to those maxis houses that already have sims living in them?

If you move Sims who have graduated Uni or have been upgraded via the Lot Debugger with 6 want slots into a pre-uni or pre-NL house, you will get errors if you have debug mode enabled relating to CAS, and the sims will be missing want slots.  Even if you add them back with TJ's college adjuster or InSim, you'll still have problems with blank wants.  I tried this with a family, and even the teens who had not been to Uni yet kept getting all blank wants.  The way around this is as JM says, open the lot in build mode before moving any sims in and save it first.

Thanks Rainbow.  I wish I'd paid more attention when I first read about this but at the time I had no intention of getting nightlife.  So, if I do a clean install and enter all the houses, go into build mode, then save - they should be fine?  I presume this would apply to houses in the lot bin also?  And the maxis sims would be okay since they haven't been to uni - yes?

I think it only affects houses that are empty, so empty houses in the lot bin would need to be saved in build mode before entering.  I have not had this problem with Maxis sims already living in houses, only if I move them out into an unoccupied house that was built before Uni.  This happened to me before I even got NL, and the sims had been upgraded using the Lot Debugger.  I have heard some people say they have problems like this with houses they built after NL, but I haven't experienced that myself.

I had it happen with a uni student that was moving back into his parents house. Had to move all of them out to the bin and bulldoze the house. That was the only house I had a problem with - and yes, I did try to move the student back home before I opened the lot after installing the expansion.

I had this happen (again) yesterday. 

It was a house I'd built just the other day, definitely post-NL.  I'd furnished the lot and set it up with alarms, phone, skill objects, and the hack objects (lot debugger, toilet papers, lot sync timer, etc), then moved it to the lot bin before I moved any sims in, to be placed in my neighbourhoods as needed.

I placed the lot in Pleasantview yesterday and tried to move in Cassandra Goth and her downtownie husband, both of whom I'd previously upgraded from pre-uni sims via the lot debugger for the extra slots & lock. 

I got errors during the loading process.  When I got into the house she had 5 want slots and he had 4, and both had only one lock.  He also had 3 blank icons, but retained the locked in 'have a baby' want.  I added back in the want slots & lock via TJ's adjuster, and he then had 5 blank slots.  Fortunately, when his slots rerolled when he woke up the next simday he didn't have any blank slots.

This seems to happen with every house I have built post-NL.  I like NL's feature of keeping a copy of the lot in the lot bin - I now find the time spent building is worth it for me, since each house will be used many times in my neighbourhoods.  I have built a small range of houses that are already set up for my play style, and permanently in my lot bin.  It's just a shame I keep running into this missing slots and blank slots thing.

I've cultivated the habit of entering a lot and saving right before move in (I'm that paranoid, and for good reason), no matter if I had just finished building/remodelling a few seconds ago.  Better to spend 5mins entering and saving than the next half hour trying to fix something. That has probably saved me from the hassle and frustration of trying to fix lots not loading and missing want slots on moving in.

There would be times when I visited an empty lot (that has been previously 'updated') to change something, decided not to and the game prompts me to save. All I did was edge-scroll, or pageup/down to look around, sometimes I exited right after entering, but the game still asks if I want to save changes. From then on, I started entering lots prior to move in because I'm suspicious as to why the game would think I had made changes when I didn't :P.

Yes, I've been there many times. Blank wants, spinning wants, stuck clock...it's great fun.
Like was said above, enter the house in build mode first and you'll be fine. Otherwise, it's a pain in the ass to fix.

Ok, well, I guess it's only me that didn't have problems.  Ignore my post then.  :P

I usually go in and drop a bright red-flowered shrub on the corners of the property, save and exit. I have gotten in the habit of checking for the shrub before I'll move a family in because I've screwed up so many promising families with pre-Uni house bullshit.

I had a problem with spinning want slots etc. with sims I'd upgraded with the debugger, and it wasn't until someone told me to enter the (new) lot and save changes first that I stopped getting the problem.  Before that, I think I had to move my sim family in and out and then in again at least once (after exiting by switching off the PV, which I hate doing, but I couldn't even alt-tab) so it really is the safest option.  And if I know I'm going to move a pre-uni family now, I don't bother to upgrade them until I've seen them safely installed in their new home.

It's not just you.  I had no issues with it happening either.  Maybe we're the lucky ones hehe

same here, never had this problem *knocks on wood* I also never give CAS sims the extra want slots, maybe thats why?

I've never given them free want slots either.  Hmmm...

Thanks all.

 
That's an excellent idea Mokey Hokey - I think I'll borrow that one.

One of my pre-NL houses did barf -- spectacularly -- when I moved a CAS sim in with the current residents.  There was so much chunkage the only solution was to delete all the sims and demolish the house.  Needless to say, I haven't done that again.  I like the red shrub idea, too.

If anyone's interested, I uploaded a house to SimFreaks Forum tonight.  It's been throughly tested in game, installed into a vanilla hood with clean installer, checked over and then tested again.  Only Maxis stuff in it, so it's only 1MB although it's quite a large house.

http://forum.simfreaks.com/index.php?s=55f8add0df904253372fe2b3f732038d&showtopic=4404&pid=42273&st=0&#entry42273 (http://forum.simfreaks.com/index.php?s=55f8add0df904253372fe2b3f732038d&showtopic=4404&pid=42273&st=0&#entry42273)

It's the part of the last post on the page.

It's a really nice looking house, although I think it's too big for my computer to actually play.  Nice job.  :)

I have nightlife but not uni, and in many cases the game actually runs smoother now that I have nightlife installed- some of my problems actually disappeared. I have only experienced the empty want slot thing since cheating to upgrade some of the sims to "uni status" with twojeffs college adjuster, and some occasional problems with former NPC's (like the paperboy)- but usually the blank want slot thing solves itself if I just fill one of the wants and cause it to reroll, and it doesn't happen often.

I've only had this issue with Academie La Tour (the whole uni neighbourhood went splat where not a single house could be opened), and only after playing for a while anyway.  Otherwise, not a single problem.

nice house ZZ.I am downloading it now.

Glad you like it!  Let me know if you have any problems with it, though, won't you?

BlueSoup, I only have 1 Gig of RAM and it plays well in my game - I think it looks bigger than it actually is in that it has spacious rooms but only two bedrooms, so it's for a smalll but well-off family.

I only have 756MB of RAM, and a craptastic video card, so I can't play larger houses.  I made a two-story Victorian the other day, and it barely runs.  I can't imagine having to actually play it, and it's not even on that big of a lot.  :-\

Gee, I like big houses - I have 2 Giga RAM and 800 MHz CPU, and I have to wait about 1 minute to save the lot. When I play small lots, the game runs very fast.

Strange, but Maxis didn't publish the System Requirements for Business EP. It sounds suspicious, and I already warned my technician to be "stand-by".

Shame!  I found 756MB was not good, mainly I think because you can't have equal pairs.  Wish I'd updated to 1.5GB though, while I still had the cash!  I think when you're short of RAM, the basement is just a waste of it - the lofts in Pleasantview never seem to have a problem even with a lot of things going on on the roof!

Well, when I first got the game, I only had 256MB, so when I upgraded, it was like a whole new world!  Now I find I'm getting dissatisfied again though.  :-\

Have you tried raising your virtual memory a bit?

I don't even really know what that is, let alone how to raise it (although I do occasionally get a pop-up saying it's low...)  :-[

"ONLY 1 gig?"  I have half that!  I can manage large lots OK, but I don't like them as I can never find anybody.  I prefer the townhouses with lots of floors, rather than long sprawling things. 

I find it just as hard to find sims if you keep having to go up floors!  But since I rarely play with more than 5-6 in a family tops it's not such a problem for me to find them.  What I hate are houses like the Pleasant house and the Goth house, with loads of dark, poky corners which are just impossible to manage!

heh, I restarted Pleasantview recently and the first thing I did (after nixing each storyline and resurrecting Bella) was to redo all the homes of the Maxis characters!

Well, I've done that before, but I'm about sick of it!  And I can't really copy an improved version because of all the terrain paints!

I just had the most awful job resurrecting Bella, I don't know if it's because this is an old hood that hadn't been played since before Uni. but in the end I had to do it in simPE twice - the second time, though, when Michael (who she resurrected the first time around) asked her to move in, she brought over 2 million simoleons with her!  Don't get that through the GR!

as soon as I discovered how bad custom terrain paints are, I ditched all my neighborhoods and got rid of all the terrain paint in my downloads folder.

I may get attached to my sims but I won't keep something so buggy/annoying as custom terrain paints in my game.


I used Inges teleporter plus shrub to teleport Bella, used InSIM to quickly make Mortimer and Bella in love before Bella disappeared with the message about dying on another lot, then had Mortimer call the reaper to get her back. She is now back "in touch" with Don  ;)  poor Mortimer dosen't even notice when his wife is woohooing with Don, in her car, in the driveway, while he is watching TV *laughs*

I never bothered with Bella before untill someone posted about how easy resurrecting Bella is now, decided I wanted to see what she looked like *laughs*

Oh, the problem was that none of the sims retained any memories of her even after she'd been in the house for hours, played chess with Alexander etc. Once I teleported her back in, though, they all remembered her again!  I think it's because it's an old hood and although I've loaded a Uni I haven't actually played it yet.

I shan't nuke my hoods, just gradually move my sims into houses without terrain paints at all, and then bulldoze the affected lots.  Or I suppose I could just move all the families into the bin and then bulldoze, remove paints, build new houses.  But houses that are free of terrain paints when built seem to remain free when you package them and install into a vanilla hood with the clean installer, so I don't really think it's necessary to do that. And premade houses which just have Maxis terrain paints aren't affected unless you open the terrainpaint folder to get rid of them!  But you can, of course, install them into a vanilla hood and do it there.

speaking of Maxis terrain paint, I find it odd (and somewhat annoying) that if I place a driveway over a spot that has been painted the driveway dosen't show up in Neighborhood view (if the terrain paint is only under part of it then only part of the driveway shows up)

Yet another terrain paint problem!  :(

I ahave no problem with large houses and i Have a gig of Ram

I tend to think it's what's in the houses that creates most of the problems, so I tend to use mainly Maxis stuff and some recolours, not many new meshes.

I use CC by the boatload when I furnish my houses and havent had issues but I tend to use cc only from creators I have used alot in the past as their meshes have never created problems in my game.I rarely ever use CC from creators nobody has ever heard of.for example I use CC objects from Cash craft all the time and I have a lot of his/her CC in game. the CC is absolutely stunning in Game from CashCraft.custom terrains i absolutely wont use because there appears to be serious problems with the majority of the custom terrains that are available.
  you are correct that many times if a lot is having trouble it could be bad meshes.recolors are generally speaking harmless

A great deal also depends when you load the lot.  At the beginning of the playing session, it's much easier to play a large lot than towards the end, when there's a lot of RAM being used.