More Awesome Than You!

*poof* just like that. My sims went to the lot in the taxi (not their car, did read about that one), had a nice day at work, earned three business levels, put an energizer in the breakroom, stocked the shelves with toys they made themselves (and some others, but those toys represented a lot of work), trained some of the gained selling skills, went home (with the taxi). Worked hard at making new toys for a couple of sim days to restock, got all greened up and ready to revisit... But where did it go? I had taken the deed from the simventory and put it on the wall of the house, vanished. Only business options on phone were to start new ones. Went to repurchase the lot, wasn't there. Exited the house, went looking for it in neighborhood veiw. Gone. The tiny toystore, completely vanished with not even a dent in the terrain.
Could be one of three things. One, taking the deed from the inventory to hang on the wall of the home. Two, a professor (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=3285.0) visited to shop. Three, I tried to assign a uniform to my now favorite sim, Mr. Big. The game would not let me assign one, it was the last thing I did before I left the lot. Well, four but I'm sure it wasn't my one and only hack (phone).

Holy crap!  Find those deeds.  I took mine out of the inventory then thought about it and put them back in.  They are the flags for ownership, as far as I can tell (not being a Simpe user or owning a Prima Guide).  Just through playing the game I realised that the person who holds the deeds in their inventory is the person who always receives new stock.  No deeds, no stock, so therefore no business?  When a Sim is ready to pass on their business to a friend or relative, they give them the deeds.  I reasoned and realised that hanging the certificates and business awards adds kudos to your business, but to remain an owner your sim must keep the deeds in his/her inventory.

If you can, locate where you put those deeds. If you locate them, get them back in your sim's inventory then check the phone or computer to see if you can still hire employees and check in on your business. It seems obvious, but if you're playing with your walls down, then make them solid and hunt like mad!

It could be a missing lot description entry. Is the physical FILE still present? Dig in your lots directory and see if you can find it. If you have a backup from back when the lot existed, you can try extracting the old lot entry and importing it back into the damaged file. This happened to me back in Uni, and I taped it back on. However, the procedure is not intuitive or easy to explain. So you're gonna have to figure that out for yourself.

Meh it was a new lot. I never backed it up because there was nothing to back up, it came with OFB. Sad, I liked the lot. Oh well, I didn't like it that much really, just nice as a starter business.
The deed is gone. I know exactly where it was, totally gone. Damn deeds. Why make them hangable if they shouldn't be?

It probably self-destructed when the lot that it was associated to was deleted. Many objects are programmed to behave this way.

Actually, I found a german page saying that "community lots vanishing from the game" is one
of the serious OFB-Bugs. Obviously, there are loads of people there and on the BBS experiencing this and they claim that even Maxis admitted  it´s happening. Maxis (hilarious) advise is to back up the lot in the catalog (however, that´s not gonna help with all the stock you lose, the business rank and so on). So far, it seems to happen randomly. Guess we´ll have to wait for someone like JM to figure out what causes it.

 ???

Same thing happened to me last night. I had Cassandra Goth purchase Just Flowers and More in Bluewater Village. She had it up to Level 7. She went home to rest and tried to go back the next day but it wasn't in the list to visit. So I exited her house and went straight to Bluewater to see if the lot was still there. It was as if the lot never existed. I went back to the Goth house and Cassandra still had the deed in her inventory. Here is my theory on what probably happened.

When I tried to set the uniform for Cassandra, it wouldn't let me. That was when I noticed that all of my previously saved uniforms were gone from the list. That was the first problem I noticed that something was going wrong. This happened right after I used Merola's Mind Control Mirror to make my employees selectable. It went all downhill from there. :-[

I heard after the fact that making employees selectable can corrupt your lot. I just reinstalled and I won't be doing that again...

Thanks for letting us know Edouble.  That's really helpful.  I use Insim and haven't selected anyone yet, and I won't risk doing so now.

May be it helps - this is written in the Prima Guide:

"
- When an owner is saved on a community lot, no other playable sim can travel to that lot. The lot's name appears grayed-out in the lot selection list.

-  If an owner is saved on a community lot, you can't play owner's home lot until you reload the community lot and send him or her home. This is so even if other members of the owner's family remain on the home lot. "

May be the owner was saved, and that's the reason the lot dissapeared.
Perhaps the solution is, to sell the community lot, and buy it again.

In short - never save a business lot before leaving.

Nice, I wish I knew about not making employess selectable because I kept doing it all day.Guess I'm in for some troubles  :-\

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!

That explains a lot.  (Lot? No pun intended.)

I tried to play a bit this morning and I couldn't have my Sim visit P.U.R.E (which Cassandra Goth owns).  Greyed out, this was upsetting because it's my favorite Sim destination...

Well, yeah, I had saved yesterday with Cassandra on her business lot.

Damn.  You really can't play this pack without the guide or a lot of friends to hold your hand.

When I play again, tonight I think, I guess I'll see if I can undo the potential mess.  Hopefully I can go back to P.U.R.E and get Cassandra out of there and everything will be okay.

Yes!! I tried to select a uniform for Mr. Big and it wouldn't let me! I figured it was because he has some kind of coding to wear that smoking jacket, before when I made him use a new outfit, he always still changed into the jacket. I didn't make anyone selectable, I bet it's to do with uniforms. Oddly enough, Cassandra is his wife.

No, thanks for trying though. I didn't save at all, only used a taxi because of some issues with people not being able to play their families once saved on a community lot. It's when they used cars instead of taxis to get to the lot, but I'm paranoid.
And it's not greyed anywhere. It's not for sale either. It doesn't exist at all.

Hm, I'm very curious to find out whether that bug can be tied to making employees selectable or whether it's happening even to people who never do it, since I fall into the 'never do it' category, and that's a very serious bug if it's not related to a non-supported behavior. (Heck, it's a serious bug even if it's only caused by mucking around with selectability.)

Deeds should be able to be placed out of the Inventory with harm.  I mean, all other ownership things are bad to put in the inventory, like beds, and all the other token administering stuff.

Sara, I mean - doesn't Cassie can visit the Real Estate lot and sell her lot? Or can she call by a phone and sell it?

Is she can, you can sell it, then it will appear again on the screen. Then you can but it again.

gaki, you can't buy or sell a Lot that dosen't exist anymore...

I never selected any employees. Never had any really, just Cassandra and Mr. Big (Alan Goth in my game). I did try to give them uniforms though.

Yeah, it's gone. Not availible through any realestate menu on phone or computer, all options for realestate for her act like she doesn't own a lot at all, business too. Like "start a home business" shows, but not "check in on business", and when going to buy or sell lots, it's not on the list of existing lots, not even greyed out.

Sleepy, lol - of course you can't. But is Casie is signed as an owner of a business? If she is, it's possible for her to sell it.

...Don't make me more dumb than I am...:)

Edit:  Sara, just tried and failed...:).

This happened to me today. It was my first ever comm lot business, too.

The lot still existed, but there was nothing on it. It was like a brand new community lot with only a phone and a trashcan.

Okay, here's what happened in no particular order... Bought pre-built comm lot. Entered the lot with one playable sim on a Friday evening and left on a Sunday afternoon. Energizer was present. Bought a lot of merchandise wholesale and placed some crafted goods from the inventory. Had trouble planning uniform. Invited the rest of her household (two servos) to come and work there.
Hired some people, fired some people. Did some remodeling. Reporter came, but didn't give a review. Got to rank 5. Hired a sim, made him a manager. Sent him home for the day because he was an idiot. Had some espressos. A professor showed up, but didn't shop and left quickly.
I never saved while I was there. Took the taxi there and back.

The next day she took the taxi to the lot to find every wall, floor, and tree gone forever. She still had the deed in her inventory and was able to sell the lot back to the community. (What else could i do?) This was a pretty nifty lot, too.

I lost one of my business lots, too.  The common link seems to be the "having trouble assigning business uniform."

I searched my lot files and found that one was missing from the sequence.  I pulled it from a backup that I had an stuck it in -- it was the missing lot, alright.  I lost some modifications I'd made to the building, of course, but still had my rank, profits, etc.  Had to reset all the business uniforms, though.

Phyllis

I haven't had this happen (knock on wood!) but yes the problems "planning uniform" seems to be the common link. I've assigned one or two uniforms without problems but wonder, what's happening (or not happening) when uniforms can't be assigned? Do you click on a uniform and it just doesn't apply, or what? I will keep this in mind!  I've put too much effort put into my little electronics/appliance store to have it disappear from existence!

In my case, this is what happened:

I hired two new employees.  I wanted them to wear the same uniforms as my other employees, but rather than page through the clothing to find the exact same suits/dresses, I clicked on the tab that had "saved uniforms."  However, this changed their hairstyles as well as their clothes, and I didn't want that.  When I went back in and tried to change one, it wouldn't accept the change -- acted like it did, but then the girl still had the same undesirable hairstyle.  I had her change back to casual attire, went in and deleted the saved female uniforms (which I immediately regretted, because I had another employee assigned to one of those uniforms), and then tried again.  It would appear to accept the new uniform assignment, but then she would not change into it, and it did not appear in the saved uniforms.  I tried the same thing with the male employee, except I did not delete the saved uniform, but had similar results in that I could not get a new uniform to save.

I don't know what triggered this bug -- whether it was my deletion of the saved uniforms, or what.  But the glitch with the uniforms definitely seemed to be the signal that the lot was doomed.

Phyllis

Entire lots disappearing just because plan uniform wants to pull a hissy fit.

Only in an EA game.

So I'm guessing the temp workaround is either to forgo planning uniforms at all or to never ever delete existing planned uniforms? Argh, this sucks. *Negative customer loyalty stars explode over head*

That's what's similar to my experience. I had an energizer in the employee break room. I wonder if having an engergizer breaks the outfit planning...
I planned an outfit on another lot with the same family with no problems, even with Mr. Big. I didn't plan his hair though, that's when it stopped working before, and when i planned the outfit the second lot, an energizer was not present. I had a professor walk by the second lot. The second lot is still fine.
I'm not going to try planning an outfit again, I'm chicken, hours of crafted work is stocked at the new lot.
Anyone have feedback on if they did or didn't have a problem with outfit planning with an energizer present?

I did not have an energizer present on my poofed lot. 

So your problem seemed to start when you tried to change the hair?  Hmm ... maybe that's the key.  As you see from my post above, I accidentally changed the hair, and that's when the problems seemed to start.

Phyllis

The deed is hangable because - according to the Prima Guide - one of the ways that you can offer your business up for sale is to hang the deed out on a wall (or place on a surface) and mark it as for sale.  If it is purchased, then the entire business is transfered to the purchaser.  Otherwise, unless your Sim is giving the business to an heir, the deed should probably remain in your Sim's inventory.

Obviously, this is not what caused the lot to disappear (the uniform thing is probably responsible for that as you and others have deduced), but I thought I'd offer an answer to this question anyway.

So far (touch wood) I have been able to

1. save my sim at her business
2. travel to work via car
3. use the mind control mirror to control employees
4 hang my sims deed on the wall of her shop

all without problems..I wonder if maybe because I chose a lot in pleasantview not downtown to create her business?

I've just seen someone else report the problem elsewhere, and when I related what I knew aobut the bug, they indicated that they'd also tried to set uniforms and had it behave oddly. Have asked whether any of it was hairstyle related.

the same thing happened to me made a house and added a shop to it decided to set the uniform but set 2 by mistake so deleted them but then it wouldn't let me asign another uniform saved game and left lot and when i went to play it again the lot had gone no sign of the family or the house it has to be something to do with the problem with the uniform was it because i deleted one ?

The plot thickens.  I deleted uniforms too -- maybe that's what triggers the glitch.

Phyllis

Yup. I left that step out. I did delete a uniform that I had saved for Cassandra. I had about 3 different saved uniforms for her (one had a different hairstyle). I went to delete one of them (the one with the different hairdo) and all of the ones I saved had vanished right along with the one I was trying to save. I was not able to select or save any new uniforms for Cassandra or her employees.

Hmm, I can't remember if I deleted one or not.

Someone else deleted uniforms and had the same problem:

http://www.sims2community.com/showpost.php?p=337686&postcount=17

"I have now reproduced my disappearing business lot problem, no idea whether its same problem as simjunkie2000 had.

This is how it happened in both times:
I was choosing custom worker uniforms, I added two clothes to uniforms. Then I selected and tried to delete another one. Deleting took long time and after that both uniforms disappeared from selection screen and I couldnt add or select more uniforms, nothing happened from selection buttons. After that I left lot and returned to my residential lot, there I called to sell my business lot and saw that preview picture for that lot had changed into white picture with grids on it. Everything on that business lot had disappeared, lot was still named correctly but its value had dropped to empty lot value.

Anyone else can reproduce this kind behaviour? I'm able to select custom uniforms, but deleting seems to have problems.."

i don't know why Maxis would do this. Is there a good reason for it?  it's just habit to save often in case of a freeze or shut down. to not be able to save in your community lot-EVER-even if you've spent three sim days there is just nuts! Especially if you're like me and are always building stuff as you play n don't want to risk losing three hours worth of building/decorating when the power decides to flicker or something.

It looks like you can save all you want.  The problem appears to be with the uniforms, not saving he game.

And if you save and exit while the owner is on the business lot, expect to have to go back to the business lot to play him again. He's not gonna go home on his own.  The fact that you can't play the rest of the house is because not everyone is there at the time; the business owner is at his business. This is what I'd expect from the game.

Hook