More Awesome Than You!

So, my hunt for this bug proceeds with some success. How many people actually have a lot that's stuck in this state? So far, I had one lot that jammed in such a state, where when driving off the lot, the game never went home and just hung there disabled. I was able to "exit" the lot by by using the Lot Debugger's "Reenable UI" to unjam the save/exit buttons, and thus perform a save and exit.

On return, the lot was unplayable and live mode was grayed out. The owner and employees were present on the lot even though they weren't when I left.

Does anyone else have a similar experience? If your lot jammed in a similar state, it may be possible to crowbar the lot the same way I did.

How are you planning to re-enable live mode? (I haven't tried using cars since installing OFB so don't have problem lots).

Well, I was able to crowbar a lot back to live mode being reenabled no problem, so it's not so much a "How are" as it is a "how did", but I'd like to see some more test cases to see if this is generally applicable, or a specific thing.

I had a prob in Matyville.  I went to a community lot with a sim to have her  catch up with her friends and I took control of this other sim cause I felt like he might leave so I had him macro-socialize her.  Well, in a couple of mimutes,he got a message that a taxi was coming for him.  I de-selected him and the taxi still came for him and suddenly I was on route to his house.  When I got a screen,it was the community lot that I just came from and It was in build mode.  Nobody was there including my sim.  I left the game and was too afraid to go back to Matyville to assess the damage.  I had that happen in Veronaville after that, but when I got the message, I actually deleted him and all was well.

Unrelated.

I think I had this problem.  I was at a community business with my owner sim and 4 playable sims from the family, they had used a family car to get there.  I can't remember if I ever saved and exited with them on the lot, but I'm thinking I probably did.  When I went to have them leave, they all got into the car, but it just sat there, nothing happened.  I thought maybe I had a few stragglers who hadn't gotten the memo it was time to go, but there was no one on the lot, everyone was in the car, but it wouldn't move.

Force Error: Reset only made the car drive up again, it was still stuck, no one could get out, and it wasn't going anywhere.  Force Error: Delete, however, fixed the problem.  The car and the owner (who was driving) were deleted, and my 4 playable sims were standing on the side of the road.  They were able to call a taxi and go home.  When they got home, they came home in the family car, with the owner driving it.  So all was good.

I had the owner go back to the lot, and all was fine.  Live mode was enabled, and everything looked normal.  I had him get back into the car and go home, and it worked fine.  Although, he went alone, I didn't have him go with family members that time.  If I encounter this again, I'll report back, but that's been my experience.

I have this happen every time I use a taxi. The cars work fine for me. But yes, I did the same thing as FatedCircle. I did a Force Error on the taxi then hit delete. I was then able to call a new taxi and go home. I have been to this lot since and played my business and all is well if I use my sims car.

I am starting to think this has to do with the open/close sign. Someone on the BBS said that their sim was stuck in the closing loop at their home business lot after they closed. Couldn't get them to stop blowing the whistle and shouting for people to leave.

I haven't so much had the problem at work but on my sim returning home from work (in taxi at time) her stepfathers carpool was stuck and the taxi kept ramming it up the bum (which I have to admit was kinda funny) however force error> reset worked in this case.

I've come across a couple of posters who've had problems.  I can ask them to try things - what do you want/need?  My own game is still stuck in London with my daughter who has never mastered the art of posting things Aaarrggh!  Here's the only post I can find right now.  I told her not to touch the lots, but wait for the patch.

Author:      daddysgirl1990 - 
Date:        Mar-07-06 04:24 PM PST
Subject:     Please Help! Family disappearing
 this is awful! My sims adult female and male own Amielas Store or something like that on OFB (the only expansion pack i have) I called the taxi and had the taxi come to take them there from there house and i had to run downstairs so i left the game going so that the game would load to Amileas and everything when i came back the screen was still on there place but it had switched to buy mode and the live mode was like marked out so i left the house and went to amielas lot to see if they were there and they wernt its like they disappered but the game saved when they left so i cant go back help what do i do? ive worked hard on this family ande lot please help me thanks

As she had a taxi maybe it's unrelated.  But the other post I can't find was also about a taxi.

What steps need to be taken to get this car bug JM?  I've been playing in my test hood sending the twins back and forth from the community lot to their house, and to other community lots but everything is normal so far.  Am I supposed to save at their business lot or something before sending the car home?

In Pleasantview my sim drove her car to her community lot business.

All played fine. I saved the game and exited whilst she was still on the lot with her car. I went to bed, got up to play the next day and then everything went weird.

Her house was there in neighbourhood view but no car in the driveway. I clicked to enter her home lot but the game said the family was out visiting her commercial lot where I had left the night before. Fine. So I clicked on her commercial lot and it loaded but only in build mode.

My sim was not where I had left her. She was in street clothes and heading up the stairs to her shop. Pointless anyway as I could access game play. I eventually bulldozed the lot and everything seemed fine after that. My sim's flat mate though has had blank wants/fears ever since though.

I might add that I have never had this problem using taxi's and I can save, exit and re-enter without anything going wrong.

The problem seems to exhibit no consistency, which is why it remains elusive. I'm looking for the specific condition where the lot is frozen with live mode disabled, so it is impossible to apparently leave, and yet also impossible to play the home since it will insist on rerouting to the community lot. Screenshots of this, including notes with whether or not the owning sim or any of his family are present, would be helpful.

This is exactly the condition I was looking for, and matches my single observation. I was able to successfully crowbar the lot, though. If this happens again, refrain from destroying all the lots involved and you can try the Crowbar solution.

i tried this bug out as soon as i first read about it and it happened just like had been stated. i sent a sim to work in their car, closed the business-sent the employees home, and tried to leave. she left-i stayed there. i had saved prior to doing this. i tried other stuff just to see what would happen-like summoning her to another sims house with insiminator, making her selectable, calling a taxi to go to a community lot, n then having her call a taxi to go home. when the taxi left with her-she left-i was stuck at the community lot. i never tried the crowbar thing. i didn't want to risk making it worse. hmmmm
oh- i tried it with a different sim and didn't save and got home fine. i tried going to work with a taxi, saving and leaving and everything was fine. so for me-it seems to happen with the saving at a communityl lot and a personal car only.

Shezoe,

I think the critical point here is that when you leave the community lot and your sim IS STILL THERE, when you try to go back to that lot you enter sure enough, but only in build mode. The lot is no longer playable, only buildable.

Stormy

Yeah, I think that the crowbar will work, then.

well on this one-i can still play the community lot, cuz the sim is still there. she just never makes it home when i have her try to leave. i have to ctrl alt del to get out of the game and of course-that brings me back to where i last saved when i re-start. So i can play the community lot-just not her home lot. it sounds like if i used the crowbar-the community lot would be inaccessible, but she'd be back home?

By "left and you stayed there", you mean your sim was off the lot, but the game didn't leave, and you were simply stuck staring as time scrolled by? Or did the game go to build/buy only, with no live mode? That seems to be the early symptom.

Well, you couldn't. Because I made the Lot Crowbar for this, and I never released this object. :P

@Pescado:
Your description matches word-for-word what happened in a business lot of mine.
In the "oh-no" second following that action, I thought that maybe the Lot Debugger's "Clear Offworld Loiterers" option could somehow solve the lot's locked state. Has anyone tried using it? Upon reload, only the buy/build tools were available.

That's what happened to me. The debugger immediately sent me to the loading screen for the home lot; my sims were there as they should have been and I've not had any problems since.

I purchased a community lot and drove the entire family to the new business, and saved as soon as I reached Rank 1.  I then quit the game.  The next time I started playing, I clicked on the business to keep playing, but it wouldn't let me load the lot, saying something like, "This is a Community lot and you need to use the phone with your Sim to visit."  I then clicked on the family's house in the neighborhood and it said they were still at the community lot.  After reading about the car bug, I decided to start from scratch and recreate a new Bluewater Village.

Now I'm only using taxis to go to the community lots, and I'm occasionally getting the "owner doesn't stop whistling and won't leave the lot" bug.  If I Force Error on the owner, it solves the issue, since the cab then drives home with everyone inside.

Question? Is this only happening to shop owners in Bluewater village?  I have not had any problems with my shop in Pleasantview!

I'd love to know this too-I am sure Bluewater is bugged! >:(

I played my sim family in Bluewater that owned a home business and they never had a problem closing shop, but then again, they don't own a car.

No. It happened to me on my own personally built community lot in Pleasantview.

I have a wild theory that it MAY be triggered if you send a single sim alone to a business in a car, then save and reload it later. Somebody test, and if their lot jams, DO NOT DELETE IT. Inform me immediately if this reliably triggers the problem, and if the symptoms I listed above match. Perform the Reenable UI, then save/exit, and I'll post up the Lot Crowbar.

When I first got OFB and had my sim go to her Pleasantview business in her car and i saved and exited with her at the shop. When I went to load up the next day everything was normal.

It happened to me, except the Sim went to his community lot in a taxi, not owned car. I saved and exited to the neighborhood screen.

Now his community shop is in "pause" with only build/buy mode available. Debug mode shows no errors. I can't load his home in the neighborhood, since he's stuck in his store.

I did try Inge's teleporter; he can be brought to another lot and interacted with, but he can't move in, etc. I even had another Sim work up a relationship so they'd fall in love and perhaps move him in via marriage, but no go.

 >:(Hell...atleast you guys can get to your business lots...everything I touch in the game gives me that damn "cancel...reset...delete" menu.  I can't use my cars...it pops up...I can't use my phone or cell phones...it pops up...I can't even call transportation...it pops up!

I took my characters out of the home and put them in the "family bin"...that usually fixes any reset menus once I move them back in...but this, if I'm not already...is drivin' me to drink.

Any suggestions JM...somebody...anybody?

Thanks in advance.   sleighill

I'm happy to back up my files and try it tonight for you.

Ditto. At work at the moment but tonight I am more than happy to give it another go.

When you load his store, does he visibly appear there, perhaps on the sidewalk or some similar location, or is the lot devoid of frozen people?]

JM, yes, the Sim is visible (heading inside the door to his shop, to be exact). I can move him around like a mannequin, but he's completely frozen.

Lyric, sounds like the same problem JM and I experienced. My sim was heading up the stairs to the main door to her shop and her flatmate (the only person she shares a home lot with) was there too. I could move them around too but only as an object.

Okay, so here it is: Unsupported Lot Crowbar (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ofb/test/lotcrowbar.zip).

It is deployed by community lot collection, since the mere action of clicking on it is dangerous, so I have hidden it from the normal panels. Both files must be installed, one in downloads, one in collections. Once used, it should "crowbar" the lot stuck in such a manner, enabling you to try to depart again by taxi or car and get home. Let me know how it goes.

So should we put the crowbar in our folders before we try to replicate the error or after we have succesfully recreated the error?

It worked! The moment I placed the crowbar down, the lot unfroze and live mode enabled. The Sim got a taxi home, saved and all is well once more. I did a quick perusal to see if any of Bluewater or the neighborhood was fubared, and everything seems fine.

JM, you're brilliant. Thank you.

I'd much rather have your fixes than a damned Maxi patch that destroys 10 things for every one it *might* repair.

I have this problem occuring this very second in my minimized game right now!  Owner is going into shop, except live mode is grayed out.  The employees are at their "battle stations" doing their jobs even though they weren't there when I left.  Time to employ the crowbar.  I was futzing around, TRYING to create this error, and the game obliged!  Anyway, I was looking at the shop console, and I think I found something!  The owner was appearing as a "customer," apparently shopping.  It was weird.  I think might have to do with the bug.

Right, and does the crowbar unstick your game?

Jm while you are here can you answer my ?? Do you want us to put the crowbar files in our game before or after we simulate the problem???

Anytime. The crowbar can be inserted or removed anytime after you encounter the problem. It's a crowbar, it doesn't prevent the problem, it merely lets you pry the lot loose if it gets jammed.

Ok so far no go! I copied the crowbar pkge into the appropriate places and started up my game.  I chose John Burb from Pleasantville as my victim and loaded him up with simoleons, bought him the arcade in Bluewater and bought him the cheapest of the cars.
I tried.....
1.  saving and then exiting to neighbourhood
2. exiting the game and saving in the process
3. going back and forwards to his home a few times and have even changed his car to the pickup truck.

The only strange thing I noticed was when I had previously exited from my girls flower shop I got a message saying I would have to play her from there next time (which I did with no problems) but there was no such message for Mr Burbs business.

Tomorrow i will try a different type of business I guess with maybe a cas sim and yet another type of car and see what I can do.

l
well that would explain why i wasn't finding what you'd said in de-bug mode-ROFL! i thot it was something i'd missed  :D  as far as the first thing-the sim left and i was left at the lot with time rollin on, but unable to access anything at all. Couldn't save or exit or anything. Everything was greyed out. it happened just like that when i went the round about way of teleporting her to a residential lot and sending her to an un-owned community lot.  she left the community lot  when i told her to drive home and i was left there with everything greyed out.

my stuck business is in my own neighborhood i created way back when

Would anyone who has been stuck like to list

a. the business they got stuck on
b. whether their sims were cas or maxis made
c. what car were they driving

Crowbar worked for me!  It took a few seconds, but then the crowbar smashed it's way in through a window.  What is its coding, Pescado?  How does it work?

I don't suggest using it when the Live Mode is not grayed out; it froze my game.

well i was wrong about not being able to get into my build n buy mode-that made me hopeful! This time live mode was still there and her icon didn't disappear though she did drive off the lot so i couldn't select anything. i don't know what made that change.  Anyway- i tried the elusive crowbar ;) and both times my game froze with the object clutched desperately in the cold, dead lil hand  ::) second time-i waited at least half an hour-doing other things to see if it would come back to life, but it didn't. i couldn't get out with cntrl alt del either n had to shut down altogether :-\

on mine:
a. a business i built from the ground up several months ago
b. the sim is cas made-sims2 base game maxis made clothing, custom skin tone, hair, eyes
c. she is driving the convertible sedan cabrio made by supertramp

 jinx!  ;)

Ok just spoke to a young friend who had this happen, car & sim left the lot but she couldn't, she

a. had a custom made business in Bluewater
b. had a cas sim with custom hair/makeup
c. was using the black sportscar
d. at no stage saved her game, thereby loosing everything

Well, my game has once again been saved by El Presidente!

Just to let you know exactly what happened:

1. Quit without saving a community lot.
2. Entered the lot from the shopping district.
3. Live mode was greyed out.

I hadn't had any problems until I went back into the lot from the shopping district instead of going back to the house and using it to re-enter the community lot. So, I'm thinking maybe this could have something to do with it?

Well with what I was trialing last night and this am it doesnt seem to matter so far I have entered the lot directly form the shopping district last night and from his house this am.

I had this bug, but apparently solved it by exiting, turning on the testing cheats, and re-entering the lot (since that fixed the Orb problem, I figured it would be worth a try). 

Well I cannot get it to happen!! After going back to John and buying him a sportscar and trying saving/unsaving etc still no good.  So I
* went to CAS and made a new sim with custom hair, eyes and clothes
* bought sports car
* Bought Amelias closet (someone mentioned getting stuck there)
* made custom content uniform

Tried various methods of leaving and rentering to no avail So I then tried

* bought an open / closed sign
* installing a car alarm in her car
* saving after she closed store but before she left

Nothing seems to work....

My Sim was leaving a community lot with his wife which he owned and ran a business from, upon leaving in his car, the lot hung as time ticked on, the car never fully left the lot. I used the InSiminator options 'Other'-'Enable Save' and the car happily went back to the Sim's residential lot. Upon visiting the affected business lot again in a car, there seems to be no bad side-effects and the lot plays as normal.

1.Tykes Toy Store
2.CAS Sim [husband] Hybrid CAS/Maxis Sim [wife]
3.Custom car- Vampcat's Audi

Husband and wife arrived and left together with gamesaves in between.

Do you have christianlov's All-In-One and Nanny NPC? The same happened to me and I suspect it could be related to this, ie kind of stuck in pause mode, but like the pause button is being clicked on and off.

Something similiar happened to me the first day I played OFB. I had my character drive to work, and at the end of the day I told her to drive home, and the car drove off the lot.... and thats it, nothing else happened. I waited a minute or two, then clicked on the debugger and selected "retrieve missing sim" and she came back to the lot, sans car. I had her get a taxi, and when she got home her car was there waiting for her.

Hasn't happened since though.

i can't believe it! this WORKED. i didn't even remember insiminator had this option-woooo-hoo! it went right to the home screen-like you said. i went back to the lot, saved and left-no problems  ;D  after all this time of being stuck there-geesh! i tried the lot debugger, to see if it gave me the option to retrieve missing sim, as someone mentioned, but it didn't. i guess it didn't think she was missing-lol! Anyways-thank you VERY much for saying this. Hopefully now my sims can drive to work again. :)  i don't know if this would work for everyone since the bug seems to act differently for different people, but it's definately worth a try. Now i'll see if it does it on ALL my lots or just a few or just this one...

The debugger should also have an enable UI option that does the same enable save. You can then see if the lot transitions on its own, and if not, try saving and exiting, then applying the Crowbar.

I have a neighborhood that is pre-OFB.  This kind of problem happens quite a bit.  There are other little "bugs" in the game, one is detailed in the QA discussion forum about old townies crash my game.  My work around is this I go into debug mode after entering the neighborhood and before entering any lots. 

It would appear that for some reason this entire neighborhood wasn't updated by the OFB expansion pack.  Any new neighborhoods I make have no problems so far except for that restocking fridge bug that is complained about a great deal at thesims2.ea.com website.

Pcgeekri

for some reason the enable ui option never came up for me  ???

It's probably a shift-click option because it's not something you want to always see around, since 99% of the time, it'll be useless and just take up space.

aaagghhh-lol! i didn't even try it >>bonkin' forehead on desk<<

I haven't had this problem, but I never save and exit at business lots. I did notice something, though, that may have something to do with the problem.

My sim was at his business, which is across the street from his house. I noticed that his lot showed his car returning to the home lot even though he and his car were at his business. So it seems to me that perhaps by default since the home lot is saved as returning and the sim is actually not returning home, but to their business, the game can't load either since they can't be in one lot and return to a different lot at the same time.

I am probably way off here, but it makes some sense to me so I thought I would share it.

My experience with this has been that if I had  my simmies sleep on the community lot, I was not able to drive my car back home...I was just stuck looking at the empty lot and exited the game.  When I re-entered the game, I could play the lot and everything was normal...

When I drive back after closing the business, I did not have any issues.  I drove back home and everything was normal...but now I'm afraid to try to drive to the lots with all this "bug" talk...

It seems that if you drive to the lot and drive home in the same 'day', there's no problem.  The bug crops up if you save while on the community lot, and sometimes if you stay there more than a 'day'.

Well, I took my Sim to a community lot.  I pressed Pause just a moment too early, and everyone disappeared.  I've heard this could be caused by the NoTownieChildren hack, but I'm fairly sure I don't have it - I am going to check, though.

I was forced to exit to the neighborhood, and immediately attempted to take this Sim out again.  She sung a bit on the karaoke machine and I told her to go home.  Every time, the action dropped out of her queue.  Again, I exited to the neighborhood without saving.

I'm going to check and see if I have an errant hack - I shouldn't, but y'never know.

-Nope, no NoTownieChildren hack.

This is also a non-owned lot - a restaraunt.

Ì wonder if the patch really fix that issue.  I was lucky and did not end-up with that problem but it would be nice of the people that did and install the patch if they could report if it is fix or not.

Had sim drive to business. Everything was fine until I had him drive home. Off he went, and there I was staring at a clased business as the hours ticked buy. Not able to exit, save, go back to neighborhood. Had to reboot system to get game to stop running. When I went back into game, the only place I could go was the business lot which was at a point earlier in the day. Again, when he went to drive home, he left, but I didn't =/

I am afraid of the patch as it has caused problems with a friends game, such as going to the games loading screen (blue with the hourglass) and then crashing.

Unfortunately I didn't come read here 1st, and I deleted the entire neighboorhood as this was the only family in it, and it seemed fairly broken.

to answer some questions:

It was in my own shopping neighborhood
It was my own business
He was a second generation sim from a CAS and townie
He went solo with no other family members, but I could not play the home lot that still had 3 people and a servo on it. Was sent to the business lot.
Sim closed business, sent employee home, restocked, got in the car, and he went bye bye and game went ka-boom.

I seem to have had a slightly different problem and this is with patch installed.
 
My sim went solo in the family car to the business she owned and at some point as she was returning home maybe I must of had to stop playing and saved and quit the game.  When i restarted and went to thier house she was mia but I didnt realize it at first.  I thought that she and Dad were going to work at business so I sent Dad to car where I saw her plumbob sitting in drivers seat and sent them off on what i thought was thier merry way. 

When the car arrived at business only Dad got out ( thought this is wierd but...)  so when Dad finished with store,  I sent him home.  Got to family home and realized ohhhhhhh now Dad and Daughter are both MIA and the game was  running, mom was at work. After  a few hours of sim time, the car came home empty. 

So I used the lot debugger and tried to retrieve missing sim and that did not work and thought well maybe if i leave and return so tried that..... nothing. Came here and read and thought well this isnt exactly my problem let me see what happens if i try and enter business and it told me i needed to load a family and bring them to lot.  So my sims were not stuck on business lot. 

So after not so careful thought which happens at 2 am I used the lot debugger to force an error on inworld  and it brought my sims back but the car wasnt playable so i deleted that and everything SEEMs fine right now but I don't know only time will tell  now I guess.

I have had car problems but not this one.  I have my sims stay days on end to catch up with their friends and have always been able to go home fine.  I know that some games will get bugs that others won't--been on the wrong end of that.  i just wanted to put my 2 cents in.