More Awesome Than You!

I have a random, serious glitch. I solved it the first time by moving to a new lot, or at least it's solved for now. But it's happened in two different neigbhorhoods now, so I'm getting concerned.

What happens is a sim suddenly loses their body, which turns into what looks like a flesh-colored paper doll, and only their heads appear. The lot then starts filling with blobs of color.

The things the lots have in common is:

1. They both used the insiminator, for different reasons. One to kill off a sim, one to change a family relationship.
2. They each had one ghost. One died of natural causes, the other was pushed.
3. Both sims wore custom clothing. However, one of them had the same clothes forever with no problem, and then suddenly she had no body.
4. Only one sim was affected on each.

Has anyone had this happen? How did you solve it?

I have a lot of downloads, but other than the Insim and Crammy boy's boy parts hack the only hacks I use come from this site. And I haven't downloaded anything new in weeks.

Do I need to reinstall? Is there a fix?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

P.S. I've had other glitches lately, but have solved them using the Lot Debugger (thanks, Pescado!). This bug can't be fixed that way. I already tried.

(http://C:\Documents and Settings\Family\My Documents\Rachel\Sims\Sim photos\glitch.jpg)

Is it something like this?
(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b7/emeirii/sims2/snapshot_b14afa86_914b2b53.jpg)
(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b7/emeirii/sims2/snapshot_b14afa86_314b2c83.jpg)

That was kind of fun to play like that, until it filled the screen, and then froze/crashed my game. Alas.

I once had weird, freaky stuff happen when a mesh went buggy on me.  I have no idea how to fix it - the mesher fixed it for us.  Don't know if this has anything to do with your issue but I'm sure someone around here has the answers.

Yes, that's it exactly. What Laylei posted.

Did you fix it? If not, can you still play your game?

Did you have to move to a new lot?

This happened awhile ago to a family I no longer have (this was on my old computer), but I'm pretty sure that everything was fine after the crash. I reentered the house, and everything was fine, and I'm pretty sure it never happened again. Mine wasn't related to a custom mesh- it started with the father, who wore a Maxis sweatsuit, and spread toa  townie walking past, also in Maxis default clothing. I think it was just a freak thing. I've never had it happen since, to any family.

ETA: Found a pic of what happened when it crashed. I stupidly went ahead and had the daughter transition from toddler to kid while this brouhaha was going on, and her kid-body wonked out and filled the screen, freezing it and crashing it:
(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b7/emeirii/snapshot_b14afa86_f14b2d90.jpg)

Um, this doesn't sound reassuring to me. ;D

Sounds like a custom mesh is overwriting Maxis meshes. You said you hadn't downloaded anything new lately, but did you recently dress someone in an outfit you haven't used?

Sort of. I mean, I used an outfit I hadn't used before in the second lot that had the glitch, but it worked fine for about two hours before crashing. Could that still be the cause?

In the other house, hmmm ... I'm trying to remember. They had two kids but I can't remember what they were wearing, or if it was new. The adults had been wearing the same outfits for a while.

Yea, it could be -- I've had a new mesh keep the game from loading at all -- it would crash to the desktop during loading.

I had that glitch just after OFB came out.  I fixed it by disabling bump mapping.  Not sure if thats whats up with yours, but thats how I fixed mine.  Same symptoms (though occasionally, mine would be reversed, where there would be a body but no head).  I used a "force bump mapping" thread I found on an internet search and simply did the opposite of what they said. :)

Hey! It's a new Teletubbie!!!

That looks like the results of an overheated video card to me.

Find out what your temperatures are. Then, if they're high, do something to lower them. My solution was to remove one side of the case and point a small fan directly at the video card. Haven't had any overheating problems since then.

The other posibility is that the outfit mesh you used is extremely high poly... which would be unusual for a clothing mesh, but not impossible. Over time the strain could have caused your video card to freak out, which would explain why it worked fine for a while before problems started. Find the mesh and check the poly counts in SimPE. Having even ONE high poly item on the lot can cause problems that spread to all other items.

I had a floating head happen in my game before too:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v29/SherryLS/other/sims/floating2.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v29/SherryLS/other/sims/floating1.jpg)
He was just a passerby so my game didn't crash or anything like that.  Although I had to delete that family because of this (he and most of his family were having this happen).

How would I do that? Put a meat thermometer on the case? I've got what I was told was a nice case with a big fan, but we run it a lot.  I'll try the fan thing. Thanks. It never occurred to me it might be something like that.

I can't imagine that the outfit has a very high poly. Besides it happened on two different lots and I'm positive no one had the same outfits because no one was the same age and gender.

Heh, no, don't go sticking any thermometers inside your computer.

Get a program like Speedfan (what I use). I haven't found any that I like better, so that's the one I suggest.

Run the game for an hour or so, then alt-tab out and run Speedfan. Don't exit the game because you won't get an accurate reading. It will show several temperatures, with (usually) no helpful labels. Basically you are looking for anything with a flame icon or any temperature over 60 degrees. Speedfan can't measure the temperature of most video cards directly, so you will most likely see temperatures for the harddrive, processor, etc. Take it to mean that if ANY component reached that temperature, likely the video card is not much better off.

I have to back up SaraMK here. I've had a lot of this happening on my lots as well, but only if my computer or my Sims had been running for a long time. Removing the sides of my case, cleaning all the dust out and lowering some settings seems to have done the trick for me (for now :-\)

Is speedfan free? Nevermind, I'll Google it. :P

I have so many fans and my puter is always cold; so I doubt that is my problem, but it sounds like a good idea for others who may not be aware of heat issues.

I've seen a few people who have inadvertantly put the back of their computer up against something so that the fan is covered. :o I told them they might want to consider moving their computer forward a couple of inches...

Yes, completely free.

The problem is, the overheated parts may either be inaccessible (you can't put your finger on them to see if they're hot) and/or they may not cause anything external (like the case) to become hot. So you wouldn't necessarily know that something is overheating.

Thank you! This is all very helpful. We've had a heat wave in Minnesota, with really high humidity, and our a/c is on the fritz, so all of that could contribute. My comiputer case has room for air to run all around it, so that's OK.

I have a large fan running. If I take off the case and point the fan at it, clean everything out, that should help, right?

I'll get Speedfan.

Thanks again.

I suggest you get one of those anti-humidity condensors and some large ice cubes. That's what we did in the old days, before air conditioning.

I had lots of freakish things happen similar to that the past couple of weeks. Then my laptop went kaput. Fried the motherboard (and the video card). Just warning you what you may be in for. Definitely look into cooling that thing. I thought I was doing a good job of cooling/ventilation, but apparently not. First thing I'm doing when I get my laptop back is installing that speedfan thing.

OMG that is so funny.   ;D   

I know to you right now it probably don't seem to funny so forgive me for laughing.   :-*

LOL at Pescado, never know if you're serious or not.

And, it's OK to point and laugh at me. I'm just really relieved that it's not my game, just my damned video card.

So, I've got speedfan and it shows one green arrow and the rest are blue arrows pointing down. The hottest temp is 37 C. That's OK, right? I've got a large box fan blowing on the open case. I blew the dust out of it first. Yeah, I know, spit is bad but I figured dust is worse. And I've heard you shouldn't touch the interior, so I didn't.

I need new drivers, I think. I've had my video card for a while and haven't downloaded any new drivers for it. My brother, who is smarter than me, thinks that could be contributing. He has a toddler or I'd ask him to come over and download them for me.

I'm a big huge chicken. Nvidia says I need to delete my old drivers first. I think I'll back them up on disk.

Does anyone else have any advice? I know it seems like a small thing but I've tried it before and really hosed up my graphics, temporarily.

Go ahead and point and laugh, but advice would be appreciated.

Speaking of being stupid, I can't figure out how to upload pictures on this site, or I'd post a picture of my elder sim with the paper doll body. I snapped a picture of her, sans head. She looks pretty creepy.

You can't upload pictures directly to the site.  What you have to do is upload the picture to one of the free photo sites like Imageshack or Photobucket, and then copy the image  link info from there and paste it into your message here.

Pick a message with pics and click on the 'quote' button as if you were going to reply, and you'll see what the image link looks like.

As far as drivers go don't necessarily pick out the most recent ones because these can actually be unstable with your installed games, unless they specifically say (in the readme) that they address certain issues with those games.  Choose drivers that were around prior to a game's release, those should work fine.

Augh. So many things to learn! Thanks.