More Awesome Than You!

Hmmm. So, I have this community lot. It's the One-Twenty-Five Cafe, a Maxis Downtown lot that I edited soon after I got Nightlife. I've been playing this particular lot for months - it's one of my three "default" lots to send sims when they go Downtown. And all of a sudden, it's started making the game crash to desktop.

I've tried many things to diagnose and fix the problem:
1. deleting groups.cache
2. sending sims from different families to the lot to see if it's family- or sim-specific - it isn't.
3. sending sims in different modes of transport (owned car vs taxi) to see if it's transport-type specific - it isn't.
4. replacing the lot file with a backup version.
5. going into the lot in Build Mode and editing it just a little then re-saving.
6. moving the lot into the Lot Bin and back out again.

The crash happens immediately after loading as the visiting sim/s gets out of their car or taxi if it's the first time I've tried to enter the lot since deleting groups.cache, or midway through loading (on the lot loading screen) if I haven't deleted groups.cache. If I have debug mode running, the log file that's written is a Sims2Exception log that starts off with the time & date, then Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION. My local friendly sysadmin says this is a "standard Windows error that means an application is trying to access a bit of memory that doesn't belong to it". But I don't understand why it's just started happening now.

Other salient details:
1. I noticed when I replaced the lot file with the backup that the file hadn't been edited since January - neither copy had been.
2. I installed the Nightlife Patch 2 about a week ago and updated all the Pescado hacks that needed updating.
3. I haven't added or deleted any custom content apart from those hacks.
4. None of my other lots are affected, that I know of. And I have visited this lot a few times since installing the Patch.
5. This is the weirdest part, and is possibly completely unrelated... when I was looking through my lot files in SimPE to try to find the file ID number of the lot that kept crashing, I found that the house I built most recently has completely fubar-ed jpg/tga/png Images. Every single one of the 11 Images, that normally show variants of the house with walls down/up, roof on/off etc, are all the same image. This:
(http://www.wuzzie.plus.com/Sims2/foobar.png)

That looks profoundly broken, doesn't it? It looks kinda like the game camera got stuck on one of the neighbourhood decoration towers. But that file is N002_Lot148.package, a residential lot that plays perfectly well. My broken One-Twenty-Five Cafe was previously N002_Lot54.package and is now, having been lotbinned, N002_Lot150.package. So I can't see how or why the residential lot being broken would affect the community lot - especially as, despite having all those photos the same, the residential lot is playable! But the fact I built the house after the last time I could get into the One-Twenty-Five cafe, and haven't been able to get into it since makes me wonder if it could be related?

Like, WTF, people? >:(

I bulldozed my awesome house with the broken thumbnails, N002_Lot148.package. As I thought, it made no difference to the One-Twenty-Five Cafe problem. As nothing else seemed to help, I bulldozed the One-Twenty-Five Cafe, so that space of ground in the Downtown area was empty. Went into another Neighbourhood (N004) and moved that version of the Cafe into the Lot Bin. Replaced the empty ground in N002 with the Cafe from N004. Went into the lot, edited it a bit and saved. It still makes the game crash to desktop.

This is a totally fresh copy of the lot, with a totally new Lot ID number. It is furnished entirely with Maxis content. As far as I know, problems where lots crash to desktop are usually due to missing/broken meshes, but I can't see what would be missing or broken if everything's Maxis. I do have some blue-flashing recolours of Maxis objects, but they're fairly standard objects (e.g. the chess table) and haven't made other lots crash.

ARGH! Can anyone help? :-\

Maybe it's time to move your downloads folder, and see if it still crashes. If so, maybe one of the recolors is causing problems.

And without Downloads... everything is fine  :o. Have gone into the lot and played a few sim hours, without any crashing to desktop.

So now I need some program/technique for finding the broken recolours and/or orphan meshes. I know I have at least some broken recolours, because I have blue flashing objects in Buy Mode. I've heard good things about Paladin's SimCategoriser, but I'm under the impression it doesn't find Maxis object recolours, and most, if not all, of my blue-flashing downloads are Maxis recolours.

Can broken colors really mess up the way an item works?

Yesterday I had an error when a child tried to cook on the toy stove. I had just downloaded a new color for it, but wasn't using it yet. Is it possible the recolor caused the problem?

Can Paladin's SimCategorizer find orphaned meshes? I know it doesn't see Maxis recolors. I've only used it a couple of times. I get aggravated because if I try to delete something that I KNOW doesn't have any recolors, it does a search anyway and takes forever.

After a lot of wasted time and red herrings (6 hours today, and I'm not even sure how long yesterday), I have found the culprit for my lot crashing. It is:
Pescado's restaurantbarfix.package (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4949.msg137863.html#msg137863), dated 15 July 2006.

I spent several hours trying to find/fix blue flashing recolours, missing/broken meshes, orphaned meshes and GUID conflicts; but I've sorted out all of those and the lot still crashes. If the restaurantbarfix is in Downloads, the lot almost loads - it gets right to the end of the loading "blobs" across the top of the screen, the lot sounds start up, then I get the popup window about the application needing to terminate. I'm running Nightlife + NL Patch 2.

Logs posted here Sims2Exception 2006.08.22 23.30.46.txt (http://www.wuzzie.plus.com/Sims2/Sims2Exception%202006.08.22%2023.30.46.txt) & Sims2Exception 2006.08.22 23.30.46.mdmp (http://www.wuzzie.plus.com/Sims2/Sims2Exception%202006.08.22%2023.30.46.mdmp).

Yeah, that one crashed my game too.