More Awesome Than You!

I've been trying to find help for this, but no such luck so far...

-After installing Nightlife, Homecrafter Plus won't load.  Now, it just makes a nice little error log text file every time I try to run it.  I tried uninstalling/reinstalling the program on the off-chance that it could work... and still, nothing.  Except for that error log thingy.

-BodyShop will no longer cache thumbnails properly.  In other words, every time you load the program again, it has to regenerate the thumbnails anew  A couple of people suggested deleting groups.cache and cigen.package, but this didn't help me, either.

I'm about at my wit's end with these programs.  *Sigh*

Ditto for me except it's been doing this since University in my case. And deleting either of those files does not help, nor does reinstalling the entire game as that's what I did with Nightlife, backup my My documents/EA Games, uninstall University and TS2, reboot, Install TS2, Install University, Install Nightlife, then I put back my My Documents/EA Games minus hacks which I fished out. I did also try deleting the groups.cache and cigen.cache after restoring the backups and bodyshop is still not caching. :p

A running hypothesis of mine is that something somewhere got set to Read Only - but so far, I haven't been able to find anything Read Only.

Haven't tried using Homecrafter yet, but BodyShop doesn't work for me either after I got Nightlife. It crashes during the loading screen. Quite annoying.

Bodyshop works for me before and after Nightlife, I havent tried homecrafter yet as I have more than enough wallpaper, terrains and carpet currently.

Are the thumbnails working for you or does it pause every time you go to another page to generate them?

In my bodyshop it always pauses between pages to generate thumbnails, even when I only had the Sims2 with no expansions. I thought it was normal, as bodyshop is not the fastest thing I've seen.

It's been a while since I've had TS2 with no expansions mind you, but I could swear that prior to University for me it used to cache the thumbnails. It's supposed to because that's what that cigen.package (custom icon generator?) file is for.

Of course, lol, the game is supposed to do a lot of things it doesn't do. ;)

It sure did cache the thumbnails for me, too.

As for Bodyshop not loading, it's probably because you're not loading the latest version, which comes with Nightlife.  If you're trying to load it, from, say, a desktop icon, then try loading it from Start>Programs>The Sims 2 Nightlife>The Sims 2 Bodyshop.  That'll load the newer version.

Those of you who haven't tried Homecrafter post-Nightlife, could you maybe do me an eensy favor and try loading the program?  Tell me if it does or doesn't work, and what operating system you're using.

I will loading up homecrafter tonight and report back later or tomorrow am.

Yes Bodyshop does pause the first time through, but after it generates the icons I can then scroll through them subsequent times. However this regeneration lag occurs everytime I open up bodyshop. I figured it was checking for updates so I have never been too concerned about it.

Its the same lag I get when I open the collections folder icon inside the game, it takes a while to generate it the first time but then it works fine after that...until the next time I fire up the game to play, then it does it again.

I've got both University and NightLife installed, and both BodyShop and HomeCrafter work fine.  There is a long delay from double clicking on the icons to actually seeing the splash screen; about 90 seconds.  But after that, they work normally.

Windows XP Pro Version 5.1 (Build 2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519 : Service Pack 2)

Both are working fine for me as well. I have XP Home with SP2, and have both UNI & NL installed.

I have made shortcuts directly from the NL CS Bin Bodyshop and dragged it to my desktop - I use that to launch BS.
I did the same with Homecrafter..created a shortcut from the HC Bin and dragged that to my desktop.

What I do notice, that disturbs me a lot...is even though I have denied internet/server access to both programs in Zone Alarm, they both continually try to connect to the internet!

For instance, last night I was creating some bodyshop sims, and after I quit out of BS, I opened Zone Alarm and noticed BS had tried to connect to the internet over 20x in the timespan while I was in BS :-\

Zone Alarm blocked all attempts of course, but the continual pinging doesn't seem like a good thing to me  ???

Well for what it's worth I have XP. Both Bodyshop and Homecrafter do work, but the thunmbnail cache is no longer (for me since University) saved properly and every time I load up the program it has to cache all the items again instead of just any new stuff I may have added like I remember it used to do before the expansions. I'm not sure Homecrafter ever cached thumbnails, I don't think so.

And I do run the Nightlife version of bodyshop from the start button, Programs, EA Games, The Sims 2 Nightlife.

I have the same caching problem. I have xp pro sp2, and load it from the start menu (Nightlife) as well. I don't think it's ever worked properly for me, though. For this reason alone, I don't use Body Shop a whole lot, anymore. Too time consuming.

Well, I've made a post on the BBS asking people to try their own Homecrafters and report their success/failure and their OS.  I posted it in General Discussion... hopefully, nobody'll think up an excuse to delete it.   :P

We had a couple of people with the same problem on the old Sims site.  You could chip in on that threadl if you want to ask them about operating systems.  We don't visit the new BBS much....

http://thesims.ea.com/us/index.html?menu=community&content=/us/chat/

It's important to remember that each expansion pack has included a new BodyShop executable, and Nightlife is no exception.  When you install Nightlife, it should have made a new folder entry on the Start Menu, and there should be a choice for BodyShop in the Nightlife folder.  That's the one you should be using.  If you are still using a shortcut to BodyShop that was created prior to your Nightlife install, it'll be pointed at the wrong executable.

That's a really good point. :)  And that's the shortcut being used.  The problem with BS (oh what an apt acronym!  ;D) is that since expansion packs it no longer caches the thumbnails properly.  Oh, sure, they'll be cached as long as you have BS running, but as soon as you turn it off and back on those thumbnails have to re-cache.  It's a real pain in the wazoo for those of us with slower systems. ;)

Well, so far it seems that Homecrafter will work with Nightlife ONLY if you have University installed beneath it.  People with both expansion packs have it work fine for them; those who have TS2 and Nightlife only are the ones who seem to be having the problem.

Update:
I checked the post of a guy who was having trouble.  He had Nightlife but no University.

People who have XP, Nightlife, and no University seem to have managed to work around the problem by using the Run As... option.

Well... I think I've figured out why it won't work.  Now all we need to know is why it won't work - the nitty-gritty geeky details behind it all.  Were I an oh-so-talented hacker, I'd find out for myself... but I think that's beyond my abilities.   :-\

Thread bump... 'cause apparently, editing the last post doesn't do the trick.

I noticed the patch updated the bodyshop, or at least it mentioned the bodyshop while it was updating, but I still have the caching issue. I'll try the run button, but seeing as I have University (is it just me or did University introduce more bugs than the original game?) it probably won't help. :p

If homecrafter just plain doesn't work if you have Nightlife but not University, that's surely a problem for Maxis to fix. Isn't it?  As they are listening to us at the moment, please could someone pass this on. 

 :o I really need to check these things then! Argh, more stuff thta won't work! :( The only weird thign I've noticed in body shop so far is that I'm unable to view the "glasses". I don't get any, even the pre- NL's ones don't show up.... :-\

Did anyone get any further on this? If Homecrafter still isn't working for lots of people, it should go into JM's list of things for Maxis to fix in their next patch.

welll, having both EPs I find that homecrafter works fine.  So I'm no help there.

Bodyshop does cache thumbnails for me, too.  However I only use it with the base maxis stuff and the custom meshes I'm currently needing for new projects.  When I make new sims in bodyshop I use all maxis stuff and them update with custom things in CAS. 

But then I have two profiles for Sims on my machine.  A clean one with no hacks for lot building/Sim creation/object recolors and a hacked one for game play... And I only use bodyshop and home crafter from the clean side.

So I'm no help at all here...

Yes, I agree that this should go in JM's list.  So far, everything has pointed to the lack of Uni being the problem, and nothing has pointed against it.  I've asked around a bit on the BBS, read other peoples' posts, checked their profiles to see which EPs they have, and... well, here we are.

Have you tried taking the 'savedSims' file out of the ea games folder, and then load Body-shop? Often body shop crashes are caused by a corrupt sim in the saved sims folder. If it works after taking out the folder, try putting your saved sims back a few at the time, see if body shop loads and keep adding until it crashes again. Then you'll know that the corrupt skin(s) was in the latest batch of skins that you put back into the game (via the saved sims folder).

It's a pain in the neck (at least for me, body shop takes ages to load and close up), but it usually solves my crashing problem. If this is redundant, sorry :D

Post from Loflyh on the old sims board - might help someone.  The suggestion that installation order matters sounds plausible to me given what we know about Homecrafter not working NL unless you have Uni.  Wonder if it works with OFB and no other EPs which is where I will be in a couple of weeks.

"Well for those of you still having problems with Homecrafter, I finally got mine to work.

How you ask, I had to it the hard way, won't go there but I figure the easy way would be to uninstall TS2 and all expansions you have, then re-install everything in it's proper order.

I don't know if a patch may have had something to with the messed up Homecrafter but I haven't done a patch on my installs and Homecrafter is working fine. Later, I'll patch my install and see if anything changes.

I do know the order of installation seems to be important, because I got Nightlife before getting University and Homecrafter took a nose dive after that but installing things in there proper ordr seems to cleared thing up, even starts a little faster now."

stumbled over this today - some people have got homecrafter working with NL but not Uni.  Read the whole thing..  hope it helps   http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=107222

Snooty says there's a new homecrafter out.  Hope this fixes the problem for you.
http://thesims2.ea.com/getcoolstuff/homecrafter.php