More Awesome Than You!

The form I requested has been put up on the official BBS.  You can access it from here: http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?&openItemID=item.81,root.1,item.43,item.41,item.23&threadID=0c8be44518acb2647093f29576944f77&directoryID=81&startRow=1 (or more directly, here: http://thesims2.ea.com/community/qa_form.php).

You will need to be registered on the site to use the form.

Please include clear reproduction steps if possible.  To ensure that mods/hacks are not causing any of the problems, please run the game with custom content objects disabled (you will need to restart the game after changing the option).

I hate to really sound sour about the whole issue, but this is what happened after Uni was released.

The form was put up for 4 months before anything was mentioned of it again.  We submitted form after form, and apparently they went *poof* somewhere in lalaland, because nothing yet has been done...i.e. we still don't have the patch for Uni.

Part of the reason why coming here to this BBS helps you out so much Tom is that it's easier to get more detailed information that someone simply submitting a post...you can ask for clarification and get it here.

I thought with that, ya'll had finally learned something.

Guess that I was wrong.

Ivy

yes, i think you're right...

I'm not an EA employee, nor have I ever been, but I know the business.

Getting bug reports from the general public is a hairy mess.  Heck, getting bug reports from QA is a hairy mess, and the guys in QA have more training that the general public.

As a programmer, you can't fix a bug unless you can reproduce it.  If you can't reproduce it, you can only guess at the cause, and there's no way to verify if the change you've made has actually solved the problem.  There's nothing more frustrating for a programmer than knowing a problem exists, yet having no way to attack it.

QA knows this, yet they still occasionally post a bug with insufficient information.  Sometimes it's because they omit a required action to produce the bug, sometimes they submit a save game that's too late because the bug has already occurred, and sometimes they have their own private theory about what's wrong, and they filter what they say through that.

The general public, on the other hand, almost always omits vital information in bug reports.  I'd say that 90%+ of the bug reports from the public are unusable.  What's worse, they're highly emotional about it.  Justifiably so, since they paid money for the game and they've had a bad experience with the bug.  The emotional charge makes it hard dealing with them, though, and often acts as noise concealing the bug information you need.

The main thing the form is missing is a place for a contact email address.  It's omitted no doubt because they don't want to give the impression you'll get a reply as a matter of course, because they'll probably have to throw out 90%+ of the reports.  However, were I the one making the decisions, I'd want a contact email.  That way you can follow up for clarifications and/or save files.  More, I would send a reply to every bug actually fixed internally.  Most people still would never hear from EA again, but the reports that did get a "confirmed fixed" email would keep positive word-of-mouth going about the value of the bug form.  Even better, it would encourage reports from the players who are best at sending in usable bug reports.

 - Gus

Just a note on the contact e-mail address, since you do have to be registered on the site to submit a bug, they know who submitted each report and should be able to track down your e-mail address that way.

I know where you're coming from on the bug reports, Gus...I'm a tech writer and I see a lot of defects opened by development and test, and so many of them don't include enough information to recreate or fix the problem. And almost none of them have enough information for me to document the issue, but that's a whole other complaint :P

Back on topic, thank you Tom for getting this form set up. I hope you guys get some usuable and helpful information!

Jen

What I would like to see is a problem report tool for submitting errors which cause an interaction to be reset (i.e. that makes Sims 'jump') which clearly shows the user when the problem happened, which Sims were interacting when it happened, and what the interaction was.  In this way they have almost all the information they need to submit a properly-documented bug, and they will have a clear idea what they were doing prior to that particular event.

Also, rather than simply have the interaction reset and carry on as though nothing is wrong, there should be some sign that a problem has been recorded and give the user the option to pause what they are doing and report what has happened there and then.  An in-game error report tool is one sign that a developer has planned for the existence of errors and taken time to responsibly address the issue.

I have to agree with everyone, however, i must say that most bugs that ARE real bugs, are easily reproduced, since they happen 100% of the time.

examples:

01 - Teenage vampire girl body skin is a lot more bluish than her head's skin.
02 - The DJ animation for slow music is the same for fast music. the music is slow, but he keeps hopping up and down and shouting UH-UH.
03 - Make Bed action is not cancellable.
04 - Turn off the stero action is not cancellable.
05 - sims will walk as much as they need to put the coffe cup on a end table. even if they need to go up 5 floors to do it.
06 - Asking what job a sim have, return a response with "$jobTitle" instead of the atual job's name.
07 - Bowling alley don't have sounds of the ball hitting the pins even with audio settings on highest.
08 - Karaoke Machine don't play sim's voices even with audio settings on highest.
09 - Various NPCs are beeig duplicated lots of times. like the barista NPC, that is recreated everytime the game need one.
10 - the Smart Milk bug where a sim will get the bottle and place it in the fridge whenever the toddler is on the highchair
11 - The level 6 greekhouse non pledge bug

I have all the bugs in Lino's list apart from number 6 - well, I presume I don't have it.  I've only asked one Sim their job, but they replied quite clearly "I'm a Professional Party Guest".  What bugs me the most about all this is that these 'programmers' were sent all these bug reports about the missing karaoke singing and came back with "It's your audio settings", when clearly it isn't, yet someone not connected with them can produce a patch in less than 24 hours that works?  OK, it may not work perfectly in that the sounds still cut-out and don't always align with the movements, but at least the Sims can be heard now.  The bowling alley pin sounds are still missing, though. 

From what I understand, that bug does not effect the US English version of the game (and possibly the UK English version as well?) but stems from an oversite where they forgot to translate the job titles into other languages. Which I guess also explains how they missed it, since I assume they were testing the English version.

I can understand why you are upset about the perceived lack of action on the part of Maxis.  However, we did use bugs submitted through the web form to make the Uni patch that will hopefully be out soon (lest I be crucified in here).

You can turn on "testingCheatsEnabled" and error dialogs will come up.  As well, error dumps will be put in the Logs directory under My Docs.  An OETreeDelete.xls file will also be generated, listing what objects were deleted, where, and why.

The string containing that variable was not translated properly in some langauges.  It does work in English and several Asian languages.  The fix should be out in the 1st NL patch.

Actually this is one of the few NL issues I have so far, might even be the only one. (well except the watch out thing, but I understand it so it doesnt bother me so much, besides I am still trying to break the game at this point.)

The bug is not present in Yankee English and Proper English, nor in Dutch.
It IS present in German and Brazilian Portuguese.

No idea about the rest. Shaklin has a modfix out: http://shaklin.sh.funpic.org/modules/PDdownloads/viewcat.php?cid=9 ($JobTitlefix.zip)

01 - seen this one, asked for it to be fixed, but not sure if it will make it out in the 1st patch
02 - haven't heard about this, but doesn't mean it hasn't been fixed.  please submit it to the web form in any case.
03 - haven't heard about this, but doesn't mean it hasn't been fixed.  please submit it to the web form in any case.
04 - haven't heard about this, but doesn't mean it hasn't been fixed.  please submit it to the web form in any case.
05 - stupid sims.
06 - Fixed in NL patch.
07 - haven't heard about this, but doesn't mean it hasn't been fixed.  please submit it to the web form in any case.
08 - problem in non-English languages (fixed in patch).  Also may be a soundcard issue (AC97), or performance dropping sounds (put audio settings on highest)
09 - I think I remember something about this, but please submit it to the web form.
10 - I believe we fixed this in the Uni & NL patch.
11 - Fixed in Uni & NL patch.

Hey, since you understand the watch out thing, could you enlighten me? I'm not complaining about it (really Tom, I'm not), I just don't get what it's for.

Maxoid Tom about #8  (Karaoke singing not heard).

I have the English UK version, putting the audio settings to highest didn't make a blind bit of difference.  The 3rd party fix from http://shaklin.sh.funpic.org/modules/PDdownloads/viewcat.php?cid=9 did fix it though so perhaps someone could take a look at that download?  I have the Audigy 2 ZS with the ctaud2k.sys driver (version 5.12.0001.0442 (English)) running on XP Home.  I have submitted this information through the form except for the part about my TS2 being EnglishUK.

The watch out routine is simply a general rule to keep sims from idling on the driveway. The way its currently written it doesn't check to differentiate whether or not the sim getting out of the vehicle is idling on the driveway or not, or whether or not it matters since the sim is the driver of the only vehicle owned on the lot, so it simply kicks in the routine to kick them off the driveway. Now, why it kills any cued actions afterwards I am not sure about, I never understood why certain actions or cued in such a way as to not only override any subsequent actions, but to nullify them as well.

Of course I could be way off base.

Yes, I should have clarified it is a problem outside of American (Yankee) English.

You are correct.  It is a safety mechanism to make sure sims get off the driveway, because there were so many edge cases where sims dawdle and other cars or what not run them over.  Lots of edge cases...

For #4:  Turn on the stereo action cannot be cancel either if a Sim decides to do it on its own

For your #9, I resetted my game after I install Nightlife (by deleting my Sims2 folder in c:/mydocuments) and I no longer have multiple Barista created.  I have seen 3 different ones and they keep coming back (I took their name down and brief description to make sure it was always the same ones).  I don't know if it is because I resetted my game that it was fix but it is ok for me now.  I did not check to see if it would be the same ones in the college neighborhood but I am pretty sure it will be the same ones.

Be careful, MaxoidTom. Wouldn't want your job to be in jeopardy.

By the way, thanks for the laugh.

Thanks for clearing that up Maxoid Tom, perhaps someone could ask Maxoid Kane to add that part into her post on the Nightlife section of the BBS?  Looking through the Sims2UK forums it seems I wasn't the only one who didn't realise UK English would come under the foreign languages part so I'll let them know too if that's okay.

By all means, spread the knowledge.  Yes, UK English is considered different.  As you know, Americans have changed the spelling of a few words and we want to make sure those in the UK get text that is more appropriate for them (and doesn't offend).

Tom, talking of offence, were you aware that the Elder Females do a fair bit of quite offensive swearing?  I am not sure if maybe those words are not considered bad in America (bugger and wankers).   I have been in real trouble for saying damn on American sites, while here in the UK it's considered fairly mild.

Tom, when I first started having problems with University, I didn't have any errors logs show up in the  logs your form references.  I finally sent a screaming rant on my report and stopped sending anything.
If I should buy Nightlife, have bugs, and the logs show no error logs, what would the patch team need to see? Information from the cheat box? Thanks.

As far as I and pretty much everyone I've encountered irl save for nuns are concerned, it's pretty mild to us as well. Please don't take net nannies on goody goody sims sites as representative of what the average American considers mild or offensive.

We have seen that this is definetely not a performance dropping sounds situation.
Ok tom, but why do ONLY these sounds have a problem with teh AC97 soundcard chipset? every other sound in the game works fine with it, so why are these diffenrent? And while this is a problem with non-USEnglish games, will it have a fix in the patch?

From what I've seen, most bugs are not caused by what *appears* to be the cause. This is why bug reports are not trustworthy. In particular, projects like this (complex and kludgy) tend to be prone to misdiagnosis. Coders themselves are frequently unaware of the true source of a problem until they trace through the code to its problem-causing conditions.

That's what I was thinking. I'm american, and I don't know anyone who's offended by that word, or at least brought it to my attention that they were offended. That is pretty much considered tame, here, as well. I've heard my Grandma say worse.

 Pretty tame in Canada too. 

Dunno ... I've been threatened with a ban from the official site for using the word 'Damned'. In the UK it means nothing, but wanker is a very offensive word over here. In fact a few years ago, it meant that some episodes of Buffy were getting a lot of editing before being aired at 6:45 in the evening. In the UK, wanker is certainly on a par with that word that describes excrement and rhymes with spit. In fact, go into most UK pubs and call someone a wanker and don't be at all surprised if you end up wearing your drink followed by the glass being pushed in your face.

I think it's fair to say that some UK parents are not going to aprove of their kids owning a game that contains this kind of language.

You quoted the answer to your question, eh ..

Shupinola:  Well the BBS is littered with 10 year olds who probably think gosh darn is foul language and run to tell their moms about the bad word they heard.  ::)

That they threatened you with a ban over "damn" is ridiculous beyond belief, but take their opinions about the severity of words, or for that matter their opinions about everything, with a grain of salt.

DUUUHHHH, i think i've lost my mind... im going crazy

I think a better way of handling this would be "Road Waffle!". That way you'd never have to worry about a sim dawdling. THUMP-SQUISH. Problem solved.

Not sure what you mean by this.  I have the UK version and all the spellings are American.  It drives me totally insane!  I have changed what I can in SimPE, but I can honestly say the spellings are NOT UK English.  If they were, we'd have neighboUrhoods and centREs and so on and we don't.  I really do wish something could be done about this, I was horrified to discover it wasn't in TS2.  It was so bad with TS1 that my handbooks were half UK English and half US, including some words which were spelt both ways.  If you need an editor with a photographic memory and journalistic experience, I'm available at a moment's notice ... and yes, I AM serious!!!

And before anyone picks up on it, "spelt" is correct in the UK.  We can use "spelled" if we wish (our version is so much more flexible), but we pronounce it "spelt" so it's spelt spelt (as it were, so to speak, and all that) by the majority of people.  Doesn't look right the other way, anyway!

And now for the serious bit ... Inge, are you saying that elder females in the GAME are using these words?  They are actually speaking English and not Simlish?  I certainly hope they are NOT using them in the game because I would certainly be very offended, not so much at "bugger" (although I still wouldn't like it), but "wanker" is totally unacceptable.  The game may have jumped to 12+ here, but if I heard my 13-year-old using that word she would be in BIG trouble.  She'd be in trouble for saying "bugger" too, but not as much.  I, of course, would get the stock reply "But YOU say it", to which I would answer "I'm allowed to say it, I'm the adult round here" (which is totally illogical and drove me crazy when I was her age, but I disregard that fact because I'm an adult now).

Has anyone mentioned the missing shadows issue in your sims inventory what makes Beds and other Objects with Wallshadows unplaceable and looks odd with chairs and tables.

I get allway this message in my cheat console :

ERROR TSSGShadow: GUOB subset not bound to GUOB material: 'westwallshadow' in 'tableDiningFormica1x1'
.\source\TSSGShadow.cpp(1586)
ERROR TSSGShadow: GUOB subset not bound to GUOB material: 'groundshadow' in 'treeWillow'
.\source\TSSGShadow.cpp(1586)
ERROR TSSGShadow: GUOB subset not bound to GUOB material: 'southwallshadow' in 'dartBoard'
.\source\TSSGShadow.cpp(1586)
ERROR TSSGShadow: GUOB subset not bound to GUOB material: 'groundshadow' in 'computerCheap'
.\source\TSSGShadow.cpp(1586)

This Objects from my Sim Invetory are all Shadowless now it makes no sense to use the Inventory to move a Sim to onother Lot. Some Objects are only placeable whit move objects on cheat now.

OH, MY, GOD!!!! is that why i can't place my bed and dresser anymore againt the wall? i've moved my sims and placed their furniture in the inventory, now i cant put the bed or the dresser against the wall, unless i have moveobjects turned on!!!

Glad you think so too!  So.... ever going to be fixed?

How can you complain when an old lady named "Fannie" is calling other Sims "wankers" and saying "bugger"?

Or

How can you complain when an old lady named "Cunt" is calling other sims masterbatingfucktards(best I could translate to) and saying "Ass fuck"?

Now THAT is FUNNY!

Ummm, yeah.

I think that only happens with inventoried beds, but I haven't the slightest idea why.

I've been going kind of easy on putting some of the mods back in my game--checking from time to time to see what works and what doesn't, and just put them in as I go along, so I never did get around to putting back in the abortbedmaking one.

Then today I was playing with one of those Virgos, and you all know how they are about making their beds, right?  Well, about the time good old Abercrombie woke up I queued up taking care of the money trees, then make the bed slid in right behind.  I don't know whatever I was thinking at one point, but for whatever reason I decided not to have him make his bed that morning and forgot that I couldn't cancel it.  So, I hit to cancel it and low and behold, Abercrombie did NOT make his bed!

So, maybe this one actually has been fixed.  It sure seemed to work today.  :D

See that's where I wonder about cultural differences.  Bugger means anal intercourse and wanking means intercourse with self - and I was brought up that both words were as "rude" as fuck which is vaginal intercourse.   I don't mind hearing or seeing the words myself, but I was very surprised that Maxis were happy to have them in the game.   So I wondered if they heard them but didn't think it mattered due to cultural differences.

Edit: I heard some of the sound files were different for various localisations of the game, is it possible some of the voice files were different too?   Anyone else here in the UK who has also heard these words - very clearly - in the game over and again?

It's on the list for "no code changes", so it hasn't changed. However, if you cancel it *BEFORE* it lights up, it will die. Once it lights up, though, there's no stopping the sim. He'll hike (slowly) 20 miles uphill and against the wind to do it. Nothing short of complete blockade will stop him. I'm not even sure setting him on fire would stop him.

I see your point, that's a literal translation here in NZ too. I wonder if Maxis actually realise different peoples rate swearwords differently. For example, the Indian people here think 'bloody' is a very bad swearword. 'You bloody, bloody man', is extremely insulting. 'Shit' however doesn't seem to faze them.

In Spain, saying "bad eggs" is quite shocking.   And in Poland "cholera" is a swearword.

In the UK 60's (when I was a teen being told off for saying certain words) Bugger and fuck were the worst, followed by shit, sod, crap, prat, piss, cunt, arse, prick.  All the preceding would never be said in front of children.  The following could be said in front of children, but kids weren't meant to copy them: damn, bloody, blast, for crying out loud, stone the crows.   Children had to say "bother" and "oh dear" and call people "silly" as an insult.   "stupid" would have been considered too strong.

It's only in recent years cunt has risen to the top of the list, it used to be used by me and my friends to describe our parts just like men were calling theirs "prick"

One of the Toyota TV ads here started using the word bugger, there was a huge fuss, many were offended. Bugger is used quite commonly in everyday speech, I'm guessing most people don't even know what it means. Fanny is not a word in big use here but it certainly means cunt rather than bum.

Common insults here are more like arsehole, bastard, dickhead and so on, including the worst swearwords, which I won't bother repeating all over again. Oh and bi-aatch as a variation on bitch.

You know, I've had more than my share of nannies piss and moan about all sorts of things, but I don't ever remember them saying those words, or really any real words that I could make out. I don't think the sound files are any different for different versions of the game either.

I wonder if I can find the files that are being used and put them somewhere for you to listen to.  I promise you they're saying those things.  The Nanny says "bugger me!" when she's getting desparate for a pee, and the other old ladies say it while they are playing SSX and also when they want to pee.   The younger women say "I need a hammer" when they want to pee. :)

The "wankers" came in with Uni, or at least I didn't hear it before, and it was one of the phrases the old ladies say as a greeting as they pass other sims.

Well I have been accused of not always being the most observant ;) so it's possible I just may not have noticed. You could see if you can dig up the sound files. They're in Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Sound (or C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 University\TSData\Res\Sound or C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\Sound as the case may be.

There's voice1-voice6 packages. You can open them with SimPE, select all the mp3s and extract them. Of course, going through them all could take some time.  :o I imagine all the elder female ones would be stuck in one area though.

Windows media player says the file format doesn't match the extension.  I don't know much about sound files, what can I try?

 :-[ Guess I should have have actually tried playing one before I suggested it. Doesn't work for me either. I don't think it's a regular mp3 format in spite of SimPE identifying it that way.  :-\

So. What does sod mean other than grass mixed with dirt.

Sod is from sodomy, which just means anal intercourse again, from Sodom and Gomorrah.   I am not sure if there is a subtle difference between sodomy and buggery, maybe one is when it's done to a woman and one when done to a man.

To the best of my knowledge, neither are gender specific.  Sodomy is just a more technical term and can be a more polite way to refer to the old anal intercourse, while bugger is a derogatory word and so always rude.

Oh yes, and two other words have begun to lose their rudeness too:  prat and twat both meant female genitals, but people started using prat for brat and twat for twit because they sound similar.   Though actually isn't there a rude meaning to twit anyway?

It is actually up to each locale to translate the text, so there's someone in the UK you can track down and teach how to spell the English way...

I've never spotted any difference between US and UK strings other than in the names list.  I think our Townies get a few different names, but they're still pretty American.

No it happens to all Objects but it annoys me most with Rewardobjects while i cant buy a new one.

Just to make sure it doesn't get overlooked again.  Custom terrain paints or ground covers are a big problem for all stages of the game.
They attach to lots when not needed. If they are deleted or disabled they cause game crashes.
Replication is simple make some and use them or  download a lot with custom terrain paints and then delete them or one of them.

Is this for the base game, Uni, NL, or all?

Okey-dokey!  Thanks so much for the clarification!  Since it's been so long since I played without it I no doubt forgot about when it could or couldn't be cancelled out.  Oh, I so remember one sim in particular going downstairs to use the bathroom, then hiking all the way back upstairs because she had to make that darned bed!  Honestly, why on earth do these sims have maids, anyway?  :P

We need a hack so if there is a maid employed by the house all the cleaning tasks become non-autonomous for normal sims.  And if there is a nanny on the lot, all childcare tasks become non-autonomous to normal sims.  Otherwise they don't really get to concentrate on doing their own thing anyway.  Sims are useless at delegating.

Asides from the clock, I cannot find *any* differences.
I have been using a mod of my own to "fix" this for a while, and it seems to work well. But I have only tackled the UI text, as the object text is a lot more difficult to translate without extracting everything.

I run my game with "boolprop testingcheatsenabled true" running and have all kinds of error reports for my missing nanny mobile, and some of the poker table (missing animations, mostly), and still others for the game machines. The only thing I don't see a report in there for is the people leaving as soon as they get there for a date. Would it help if I sent in the a single copy of each type of error report so that they can see what is happening? I'm going to go through them one by one. Hopefully, I'll find one that mentions the leaving early problem.

You can certainly attach them, but make sure that you disable custom content when testing and submitting bugs.

Definately with Uni, but probably base game too. If you delete a terrain while on a lot, that lot will never ever package again correctly. It can be played, but can never be packaged.

Edit to add: This thread: http://forums.thesimsresource.com/showthread.php?t=282627 contains a lot of information about problems with terrain paints.

Edited again to ask: Maybe this is a dumb question, but how do I find the sound and drivers information this form asks for? It won't let me submit the form without but I can't find it, either.

Jen

Any chance that the patch (any patch) will fix the nannies showing up on time, or just showing up period?  My kids got taken away by the social worker twice before I finally just moved in their aunt (which then reset the household and the parents came home but, eh).

I've been told we fixed several issues with the Nanny.  A full list of the fixes will be available when the patch is out.

Ground covers were corrupt in the base game as I recall, then the problem continued with Uni for me. I don't own NL & won't be buying till next financial quarter, or when the Uni patch is released, whichever comes first.

Before NL, lots with missing terrain paints wouldn't package or load at all, the game would crash. I have NL and was installing lots with all custom content removed (I wasn't really paying attention to what the CC was, I just wanted clean lots) and those with missing terrain paints would load like any other lot. However, the areas that were supposed to have the missing terrain paint would flash blue. There was no way to cover the blue with another terrain paint, it would only paint below the blue and not on top. I didn't see a place to include anything other than a dxdiag log on the submission form and I don't know if this pic is helpful in any way, but this is what a lot looks like with missing paint.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v365/alli_wonderland/terrain_paint.jpg)

While I'm here, I have this weird display issue with lot thumbnails. This has happened ever since I got TS2 and I think it's just a cosmetic issue, but I was wondering if there is an explanation or if this happens to anyone else. Whenever I go into an uninhabited lot and edit it, when I save the thumbnail updates with this red streak along the right side. It almost always happens with community lots and is about 50/50 with residential lots. I don't have any problems with the lots themselves, the thumbnails are just wonky.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v365/alli_wonderland/red_thumb.jpg)

I had this happen in Uni often you could not paint over it but you can erase it like all Terainpaintings.

I feel like an idiot, I had no idea you could remove terrain paints. Thanks for telling me, maybe I can salvage a few of the lots I downloaded.

I haven't been able to erase that blue...that was left when I put NL on.  I thought I had gotten rid of ALL TPs and their Lots...

MaxoidTom terrain paints or ground covers have been a problem since Homecrafter was released and people started using them.

Very simple to replicate...make some , download some, make some lots , play with them  delete them and have some FUN. ::)
Download this file it only contains 4 terrain paints http://thesims2.ea.com/stream.php?asset_type=lot&asset_id=247370 (accident that it is the same file as pics above)
At one time I had 147terrain paints  because of them all being loaded into package files for upload/ download.  put one in a lot  they all get packaged.

Edit: I just put the above file in my game.  Running NL. Deleted Deepwater.package  and to my suprise it did not crash when entering lot.  However, it did crash the packaging process.
Edit: http://thesims2.ea.com/stream.php?asset_type=lot&asset_id=240431 is an example of how many terrain paints can come with a lot.  No warning sign for them.
Put this in a game then make another lot-  paint a small area with one terrain paint ....packagethe new lot  to file and then see how many TPs get attached in the package. No way am I gonna do it.....been there done that.

My photos are disappearing and I have read that others have had the same problem,

 I Know that they are not put into the neighborhood, storytelling like in UNI but in the regular storytelling folder in mydocs/sims2/storytelling. 

 I have a few that show up but most of the pictures I take while on a downtown lot are not  showing up in any of my folders, they just simply disappear.     thanks

I've recently discovered that children born from abduction after installing Nightlife no longer have Pollination Technician listed as their father.  Before I go ahead and fill out the Nightlife form could I check to see if this is a design issue please?  I created a thread here (http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?&openItemID=item.81,root.1,item.43,item.41,item.23&threadID=c023440e270ab46a65f1d7be5a4da5e4&directoryID=81&startRow=1) and it would seem I am not alone.

All the pictures should show up under the specific neighborhoods now (just like in Uni).  The My Docs\...\The Sims 2\Storytelling folder is used for temporary storage.

I have not seen this issue--please submit a bug using the form.

Tom, I have 2 stories in my sim house, the phone rang and Bill answered it on the 1st floor,,,the person was wanting to speak with Jane, who was on the second floor.  Bill called out to Jane she had a phone call: Jane walked right past the maxis desktop phone on the second floor to answer the maxis desktop phone (that Bill had originally answered on) on the first floor.  :-\

whats the deal on that?

Someone didn't code that ability into the game.

Try the EAsy Info tool that comes with the game. 
Start->Programs->EA Games->The Sims 2 Nightlife->EAsy Info

The driver information is listed there.

Hope this helps.
Karen

And anyway, they're *sims*!  That's the very sort of thing they do that makes them amusing for me to play with :D   I nearly went off the game with the original Sims 2, because they didn't seem to need me, they were so damned sensible about everything.   I thought why am I sitting here watching these people go about their lives?   At least with Nightlife they have become completely stupid and out of order again.

Ah, so that was the trigger. I entered a bug report last night but did not have that info. I used the link provided to the TSR explanation by cyclonesue in the bug report form as it described everything clearly. I also quoted some of your words from earlier in this thread - about how to replicate this fault. Hope you don't mind. You seem to have extra info available, why don't you submit a bug report also, maybe that will help make the case that this is a real buggy issue.


Yup, I had a gazillion of the buggers too. I have since deleted all terrain paints and use none whatsoever.

Endlessly, till I worked out it was terrain paints.

yesterday some lady called one of sims up to meet her downtown and he got in the cab and left but when he got downtown the  live mode was greyed out,

 so I had to go back to the neighborhood without saving and  there he was getting out of the cab    ???

Has the Maxoid retreated back into the Maxis/EA bunker? Perhaps the Vamp biting Mrs. C ment his services were badly needed at home.

Perhaps he's left this site out of loyalty to the users of his own BBS who have been shamelessly slandered here?  I think it's really ugly, and if saying that loses me friends I'll have to cope with it.

This is a reoccuring issue with a particular sim I am having, except not only does the live button grey out, the sim in question disappears all together. This is happening repeatedly, at Uni, but only with this one sim in particular. (I think - since he is the only playable sim at Uni right now) I have tried moving him out of his house, back in, and then onto a brand new lot. Finally I put him in a dorm until I can figure out how to unfubar him. He seems to disappear whenever an NPC arrives on lot, whether it be the maid or that gypsy lady. It didnt always happen, in fact I played him until the last of his Junior year bug free which leads into the next oddity...

I think it all started when he bought some love potion, and then requested a blind date (although it wasnt his first). He immediately drank the potion and then proceeded on his own (at home) with a tirade of questions to the blind date etc. I was looking at the cue of icons that popped up for him to initiate and about half of them were "bleh" and "be blehed". What the heck is that about? I know one of his contacts (and apparently a Uni sim) somehow got turned into a vampire (through no effort on my part) but I am not sure how that would effect my sim who has not even had contact with the vampire since the guy apparently turned into one when I wasnt looking. Anyway, suddenly the live button grayed out and he disappeared. The gardener, the maid and the gypsy plus blind date where all on the lot, I think there was also a passerby and the mailman as well. I exited and re-entered the lot, he disappeared again immediately. This time I deleted all the characters on the lot and re-entered, when I got back in the maid was in a driving position on the steps of his house, without a vehicle, so I deleted her and everyone else again. I re-entered and the gypsy lady and the blind date was gone, as was everyone else and I was able to play him again, for a while. The next day about the time the maid arrived he went mia again. So I moved him thinking a portal was broken or something. It didnt help, he disappeared when the gyspy showed up again to "welcome" him. I moved him out of that house and into a dorm, I havent played him since.

I wonder if the entire Uni neighborhood got fubared? So do I have to make a new Uni now? Seeing as how I cannot delete the current one else loose a bunch of memories or something.

I think I finally broke my game, although I broke it where I wasnt expecting it to break, in a Uni hood.

I dont know if this is just a Uni problem, if vampires are not supposed to be at uni or if the gypsy lady somehow got turned into a vampire but doesnt have the skin or what the heck is going on. I suspect my effected sim (one of the few townies with good genes incidently) will soon meet a tragic demise...

I was suggesting a sort of middle-ground between a game-halting error message and not showing errors at all.  It'll still reset the interaction and allow play to continue, but an alert message about the error will appear.  That way, if the user doesn't immediately notice that something has gone wrong (perhaps, because they aren't in a position to see it) they will still know about it.

Essentially what I'm saying is that I want the error-awareness of the debug mode, without needing to turn on everything and the kitchen sink ;)

I find the concept of that forum rather ironic.

Knowing EA/Maxis, it is much more likely a higher up said "Ok, they have shut up and stopped posting patch rants on the official boards every day. You can stop posting there now."

Marvin Kosh: what I want is a game I play.....and enjoy.
Not a game I am on alert for alerts and error messages that I have to either ignore because according to someone they don't mean anything and to someone else they mean the fireball visible for space will pervail.

What happened just Simming?

I'm still around, but my priorities are shifting to other things besides modder community support.  I'll still check in, but probably not with as much frequency as I used to visit.

I hope you don't see it just as "modder" community support. I don't like downloading anything because I'm so technically "challenged" that I can never be sure I'm installing things correctly. The bugginess of University and the lack of EA/Maxis support/response to the issues forced me to seek support elsewhere.  I was putting off buying Nightlife until I saw that EA/Maxis actually seemed to take an interest in corresponding with users (evidenced by you posting on this forum).  I will be sorely disappointed to find out that this was a marketing stunt that coincided with Nightlife's release rather than a change in attitude by EA/Maxis in corresponding with the user community.

As I was reading through this thread, I noticed a lot of talk about terrain paints.  I have had this problem as well, but decided to "delete" the terrain paint since I couldn't paint over it.  Holding down CTRL while spraying any terrain paint has worked every time for me.  I personally don't care for the water terrain's so I deleted them from my game, However, I didn't realize how much they were being used in lots that I had downloaded.  I have never had a problem deleting the blue left after the terrain paint has been deleted by using CTRL+spray terrain paint.  I thought maybe this would help someone else.

Nenechell

Tom's been communicating with players in forums since soon after The Sims 2 came out, and he says he will continue to do so.  Did you want them to pay someone just to read user forums all day?   Even Microsoft don't seem to do that.   In what capacity did you expect him to participate?   For all you know his personal interests may be boating, and he wants to spend his free time on yacht forums.   The Sims isn't a religion that you either all believe in or you're out.

I don't know if this is the same issue but check out my post here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=561.msg27374#msg27374). The original post is actually found in the InTeenimater forums over here (http://www.insimenator.net/viewtopic.php?p=22806#22806). It sounds similar, but I can't say for sure that it is, epsecially since I haven't experienced it myself, but then again, I haven't even bothered to play NL yet. :P

Don't know if that will help at all. Obviously, if you haven't already reported this with the official bug form, I hope you do so and hopefully this will be figured out and fixed in time for the 2nd patch. :P

Ste

Sony has been doing that for years and now Blizzard is catching on to doing that since the WoW burst. Extremely low cost to hire 1 or 2 full time people and several part timers (part time = low pay and no benefiets). A game that generates as much money as TS2 has no excuse not to do so. They get extremely consistent control of thier boards, communication, etc.

The reason they don't though is just bad shortsighted buisness. Simmasters are free, they can run a tiny staff, let what goes on go on and ignore it. The result, poor communication between the company and consumers, a shorthanded staff having to make up for it when there is a problem, people like Tom getting stuck taking the brunt of the criticism when it is finally decided to let someone calm the fires down. Etc. In the short term you save money (bigger quarterly bonus for the manegment), in the long term you piss off customers and lose future purchases. EA/maxis seems to have a "there are plenty more fish in the sea" attitude in regards to customer disatisfation.

Most of the big companies are going in one of three directions.

First is hire people to run your communitty. This is what seems to work best for most companies (although the third is much cooler). 100 posts by a simmaster saying "I am sure they are working on it" is no where near as effective as any single Tom post we have gotten. You also have control and consistancy you cannot get with a volunteer staff, no matter how dedicated.

The second  is to throw the community out completely to fansites. No boards on the main site, but one or two big sites that agree to abide by your rules get a link on the site. This has the same communication problem the Sims2 BBs has, but this way the company can ignore everything without ever having an employee or anyone officially affiliated make any comments. Vivendi loves these. Firaxis also does this, but when you do this you run the risk of the sites being full of neo-nazis, hate mongerers, and thousands of threads about abortion, gun control, etc  in the off topic areas.

The third is pretty rare. Small Developer driven companies are pushing towards high interaction directly with the players by the dev team. The Gal Civ/Stardock teams are the best example, although Sony seems to be trying something similar with EQ2 after they promoted all their reps but one up a level. The Vanguard team is kind of moving in this direction, if they go with it they will be the first MS affiliated group to do so. Customers love this. But corporate groups with 100 layers of manegement and marketting departments to run things by, and TPS reports to fill out, are not going to be good. No one wants to say something that will get another department or a manager pissed off, and everything pisses one of them off.

Thanks sanmonroe, interesting information. As a player option 3 is definitely the one that would buy my customer loyalty. Plus the company gets a better product, as no-one knows a game like the players. Win-win all round.

I have commented before on the irony of the contributors, to the aptly named forum, being self-selecting.  ;D
I think it is ugly too Inge.

Yes, thanks sanmonroe. You expressed it better than I did. I've only been poking around the forums for the past few months, so if a Maxoid has been on non-EA boards previously, I missed it. I had (stupidly) thought EA might be going with a concept close to your #3 example.

Maxoid Tom has been posting at MTS2 for months

My one replicable issue (so far) is the case of the missing sims after asking for a love potion from the gypsy while on a blind date. My live button goes grey and my sim disappears. This has happened every time with the exception of the very first time I tried it in game, but that could be because I was on a community lot, all other instances have occurred on home lots. If I save the sim becomes completely corrupted and continues to disappear intermittently until I move them to another city within the neighborhood (i.e. uni, downtown or the main hood), if I exit without saving I can salvage the sim to the prior state...which could be hours old.

The only other oddity I have found thus far is grand vampires often show up as the blind date, but never bites. The date goes great, makes friends with the sim, then the vampire scampers off at 6:00am never to be heard or seen from again. You cannot call the grand vampires and they don't seem to show up in my game on any lots or in any of the sub neighborhoods. I do have one vampire townie that I have no idea how he got that way as he is not a townie in play, he is also never seen at night on any lot ever.

I am not sure if my issues are related to making custom clean (i.e. delete all current characters and generate new ones so I dont get the same canned core townie and npc characters) neighborhoods or not so I will be testing that theory next.

Sanmonroe, where do you come up with these insights? Your posts equal mine for sheer verbiosity--but it's actually interesting, rather than being random ramblings. ;D A most impressive feat.

Any of those three options would be better than the current EA policy. The third does definitely sound the niftyest. I have heard of a company (off the top of my head, I think it's the half-life team. Valve? Not sure.) that actually invited a modding team to their headquarters to basically give them access to their development tools for the sequel to the game that the modders had made a bunch of stuff for. (Some Half Life mods, and those of similiar games, are basically seperate games that use the same graphics.) Roughly equivalent to Maxis saying to FFS "Hey, you've made a lot of awesome stuff for our game, how about we show you how to use Edith?"

After the Sims 2 shipped, I volunteered to be the software engineering liason to the modding community.  My original charter was for that purpose--to support the technical members in the community that came up with the tools to enable game customization and make sure that it would work happily with the game and not cause problems for end users.  We love seeing recolors, new meshes, etc.  It shows how creative the community can be--the Sims 2 is a sandbox to enable such creativity.

As of late, I have been fielding bug reports and interacting with the community mainly because I want everyone to enjoy Nightlife and the Sims 2.  We have resolved some good issues this way, but the size of the community by far dwarfs my ability to keep up with it.  That's why I requested for the Nightlife issues form be posted, so that we could gather information and deal with it in a more organized fashion.  As Pescado has complained about, my time spent here is time spent away from coding and fixing issues.  I did find time to visit more often to respond to issues earlier on when Nightlife shipped, simply because I wanted to make sure that we caught the biggest things Sims 2 users were having problems with.  However, time to do so in the immediate future will probably be more elusive as my priorities shift.

We (Maxis) are working on being more communicative with the community as a whole.  We do have some dedicated people on the official website, as well as the volunteer SimMasters.  The perceived lack of communication may stem from the fact that things are not set in stone and we do not want to make a promise or give a statement we cannot fulfill.  The community has a very good memory (weather anyone?) and is very vocal about such things.  Still, I do believe that more open and honest communication is the way to go.  Though it may take some time, we are trying.

While I appreciate your efforts I can only speak for myself in saying that going to the official website is painful on so many levels. It is huge, clunky and very slow - not everyone has broadband (or wants it). Posting on the bbs about any technical issues draws out a rash of snotty self important children that chant the same mantra over and over, "Maxis is god and how dare you speak about such things", or my favorite, "well if you didn't have custom content you would'nt have these problems", and the ever popular standard "If you have so many issues with the Sims just don't play and take it off your computer"…

Of course I personally have never bothered to post (about issues) because I have learned from everyone else; the official site/bbs is not a place to go for legitimate discussion on issues (or anything else for that matter). End of story. Taking steps to improve those issues would be greatly appreciated as well.

I also want to throw my 2 cents in the hat and offer thanks for all your dedicated efforts MaxoidTom. I think it's fantastic that you took the time to addresss our concerns and issues, and hopefully you, or someone at least, will be able to do so each time a new EP comes out. I think the most crucial period is in the first few weeks/months of releasing a new EP that the community experiences an uproar over new "features" and bugs. The response is both good in bad over improvements and unforeseen issues that come up which may have unfortunately not been caught in time before a new EP is released. I think it's great that Maxis has made an effort to actually listen to its customers about these issues. I think the biggest problem is receiving placating or patronizing responses which feel condescending at best, insulting at worst. :P

Anyways, thanks again for everything you've done thus far and hope that you continue to provide the wonderful contact and support you have, schedule permitting of course. ;) I think after getting past and catching the more flagrant, critical bugs, the community tends to settle down again, and starts to focus on more creative, personal tweaks and "fixes" for adjusting gameplay tailored towards individual tastes, and that is something I definately look forward to. :)

Ste

I have an issue where someone will call my sim to go downtown, the taxi comes, the sim gets in, the downtown screen loads but when downtown shows up it is in build/buy mode and there is no sim/taxi in sight.

I have to go back to the neighborhood. The sim is there on the lot, getting out of the taxi as if he has been downtown and his "outing meter" is still running.

Thanks, Maxoid Tom

Maxoid Tom, I also appreciate the fact that Maxis have decided to be more communicative, I hope you're enjoying your time on the forums as well. Interesting you are still referring to 'Maxis' as your employer, I'd like to see Maxis survive as an entity.

Any dates on the patch(es) release? I think for many people that will be evidence of Maxis putting their money where their mouth is.

Ditto on the official sims2 site, it's an assault on the senses. I even hate the little whoot whoot noise every time a menu option is moused over. When I had a modem, load times and access were excruciating. Don't suppose you could develop a hidden part of the site, where grownup players could crack a code to enter? No? Oh well. Seriously, the forum/board format is rubbish, non-intuitive, difficult to navigate and ugly. (IMHO ;)) Basically I just don't go there.

Anyway, hope we keep seeing you round these parts, good on ya!

I believe we've fixed some of these issues in the NL patch, but please submit these using for form I referenced at the beginning of this thread.

There is no firm date yet.  The patches are undergoing testing and hopefully will be out soon <crossing fingers>.

I have commented before on the irony of the contributors, to the aptly named forum, being self-selecting.  ;D
I think it is ugly too Inge.

I'm in total agreement with you guys, there. Glad you're mentioning it. I was wondering if I was the only one who felt that way!

I've read this posted elsewhere, but I'm having problems with cars being unavailable for use on downtown lots. I have to have my sims call a taxi to get home, then use boolProp to delete the car out of the way of the cab, otherwise the cab will remain honking forever. The sim always arrives home in his car, though.

And on the subject of uncancellable actions, is it just me, or is the karaoke action uncancellable if you don't get to it in time? If a sim autonomously sets his mind to singing karaoke, there's no way to stop it once it's begun. He has to go through the whole routine.

Shadenfreude.

The glow and shadow buttons don't appear to work for me. :(

I had to google that, LOL
Shadenfreude: Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others

Agreed.

Thanks again, will do.  :)

Alcohol + years and years of following game development + years and years of being dissapointed.

Love it!  That should become the new name for Retardo Land.

I always had the problem of removing a pool and the water tiles remaining behind.  I had to lay another floor tile on top of them and then delete it in order to remove the 'water'.



Sorry, I have never had this happen, nor have I seen it mentioned before.

I read over at MTS2 that there was a bug with love potion 8.5 (?)

Yes, he's been quite helpful there, too.  I think he's spreading himself pretty thin.

MaxoidTom said on this site somewhere, that if your sim doesn't really want the potion, don't force them to drink it, it causes the sim to disappear.

witch, you've been watching the Simpsons WAY too much!  :D

I didnt force the sim to drink it, the first time several actions cued up automatically, including drink potion, bleh and be blehed - although there were no vampire anywhere. After that the sim continued to disappear randomly on this lot even after exiting and restarting the game. I finally moved him to another lot and it continued to happen, then I moved him to a dorm and he was able to finally hang around long enough to finish college. (YA at uni) He seems fine now in the main hood, although he still has potion in his inventory.

The second sim I experiemented with simply was cued to buy the potion (by me), although no potion buying ever took place, she just up and disappeared. I exited and didnt save and she seemed fine after that (adult in main hood).

I tested other random combinations with other sims at home and at community lots, it seems that home potion drinking is not allowed, it worked without issue (for me) on community lots. I should also mention I didnt get the auto cueing at community lots like I did on home lots.

I just dl the newest SimPE QA today so I will start poking around this weekend and see if I can break some more stuff....

I only noticed this issue happening when I installed Nightlife.  I developed the remote car=no icon,blank memory, no announcement of promotion or no teenage listing of job  bug. I found a fix on the Sims2 site but I had to reinstall because in my (not the game folder) nightlife files there was no object manager file to paste into the ts data and when I reinstalled it still wasnt there-is that normal? (( I have since reinstalled 2 more times due to  an error with clicking on sims and nothing happening and then when I added a previous sims 2 folder  back onto my computer and having that EVIL NASTY remote car from hell on a lot))  Its playing fine now but I heard it will come back.  It isnt devestating but I do want to know about promotions and to see what they are thinking.

IMHO, any time spent learning from the community which issues which concern them the most, is time well-spent.  Perceptions of an application are very different for the end users and those responsible for coding it, and feedback is a necessary thing to correct any misconceptions.

I wonder why Maxis decided they had to fix everything in a single combined patch? 

Making a combined patch means everyone has to wait until each separate problem is fixed and retested everywhere, even if it's an insignificant problem they've never had, never will have and couldn't care less about.

My customers in Canada don't want to go through a whole update cycle to fix a Japanese font issue they don't have. They need a fix for a printer problem that doesn't happen in Japan. In Brazil they don't have either of those problems but want their installation issue fixed asap.

I don't have the resources to fix everything all at once, so I release fixes as I make them and let the customers decide if and when to deploy. That way I get fewer unhappy customers.  Plus, when I eventually release a combined update I already know each fix is working with all the previous ones. 

Gynarchy said:

I had that red streak issue on my brand new computer, it turned out I needed even newer drivers from ATI.

Something about having a million customers, most of whom are imperfectly computer literate.

When your audience is a few dozen, or a few hundred, you can handle problems report as they come in.  And still have time for development.  When you get 10,000 problem reports (for *each* upgrade) you start seeing... well, problems.

Keep in mind that with all the middlemen in computer retailing, Maxis probably sees less than a dollar on each copy of the game sold.  I have no idea how much EA gets, but they did a majority of the funding for development. 

I'd much prefer to have incremental patches myself, but I understand some of the realities of game development.  In the mean time, we have the modders fixing most of the bugs and many of the annoyances.  It's a situation I can live with.

Hook

Plus, with multiple patches, and the average user who visits the Sims2 website, you'll get people trying to install all of them, or screaming about which one they should pick, or something equally daft.

And that's why I'm here.  But I can't spend all my time here.  That's not my job.

Because making a patch takes an enormous amount of QA resources, even for a small change.  It has to be tested in the 20-something different languages with multiple EP combinations (currently only 2, but will get worse later), etc.  Good or bad, that's the current process.

MaxoidTom, Please, Since you say the patches are in testing or in Q&A hands could you give us a list of what they are testing?

Unfortunately, if MaxoidTom gave a list of what they were testing, many many Simmers would take it as an iron-clad contract that the fix will be in the patch, and work.  If they are still testing the fix, then there's no guarantee that it will work.

While I'd love to have a list of what fixes to expect, I can understand Maxis' position.  But you can get a lot of information by reading all MaxoidTom's posts because he mentions many things that are being worked on.  He just can't give a complete list.

Hook

A list would also no doubt reveal many problems that we don't even know exist. No need to stir the pot, so to speak.

Oh yes, then there's the Maxis BBS.  If Tom posted a list and it didn't contain someone's pet complaint, there would be threats of boycotts, class action lawsuits, etc ad nauseum.  Hopefully the posters here are more mature than that, but you can bet your last nickel the Maxis BBS posters aren't.

Hook

Well not all of us are a bunch of babies..Im from both sims boards and yes there are a lot of folks(mainly younguns) who think holding their breath till they turn blue will fix the problems.  Some of us are mature though-I come and go now because I got sick of the tirades and the new trolling that was occurring.  They still have that despite lack of off topic.

Thanks for the advice, unfortunately it didn't work for me.  :-\ The new ATI Catalyst drivers won't work with my card (I have a laptop) so I tried the newest Omega drivers and the lines still appear. Doing a complete uninstall/reinstall got rid of it for a couple of days but it was only temporary. It only happens when using my main user account, if I create another XP account the lots save with regular thumbnails. I suck at trying to isolate problems but I've tried everything I can think of and still can't get rid of it. The lots don't seem to be corrupted in any way so I guess I'll just have to deal with it. Thanks anyway, though!

HEY!!! I need a help from you guys about ATi drivers and this Catalyst thing. I just bought a new PC and the video is a PowerColor ATi Radeon x600 XT 256. i'm having some grapihcal issues and wanted to update the drivers, but i'm not sure where to download them, because my board is a PowerColor ATi Radeon and not only a ATi Radeon. I looked in the ATi site and found this Catalyst 5.9. Is this it? Do you know if this will work with my board?
I did a serch for PowerColor ATi Radeon and found this site: http://www.tul.com.tw/global/driver.aspx?folderid=1&cat1=50&cat2=120&cat3=283
In this site i can choose the board model, and it will let me download the Catalyst 5.6
Now i'm not sure wich to install. can you guys help me?

Oh and by the way, whats HydraVision?

You can use the drivers from the ATI site. Hydravision is some application for using multiple displays, you get a tray icon with some options in a menu.

Oh i have a bug, i have a bug. can anyone confirm it for me?

It's about wohooing in hot tubs with the cinematics turned on.

in order to woohoo in the hot tub, you have to make the 2 sims cuddle first, right?
So, when i click woohoo, the cinematic starts normally, however when it goes back to live mode, the 2 sims are each in a corner of the hot tub, but just for like 1 second, and then they will quickly "slide" toward each other to go into cuddling position again.

It is like the game forgot they were supposed to be in that position, but then suddenly remembered. And it happens everytime 2 sims woohoo in a hot tub, however it only happens if the cinematic plays. if it is the regular animation and no cinematics, they will be just fine.

Can anyone test this and see if this is really a bug that deservs to be submited?

Well, I can confirm it. I noticed it but didn't think much about it - wasn't sure if it was happening before NL.

I can confirm this as well. This has happened since the base game, but I haven't really thought anything of it, either.

Ditto. There are a lot worse bugs to worry about than something minor like that.

nonetheless it is still a bug and probably much simpler to fix than other bug. i woudn't just ignore it. i hate gaphical gliches

I haven't seen this mentioned but I may have overlooked it. Has anyone else had a sim's date end before it starts? I've had this happen twice. The first time it happened my sim was at home (in my custom neighborhood) and she paid the matchmaker for a blind date. Her date had no more then just landed out of the sky when a box popped up saying "uh, ok, thanks that wasn't too great" or something along those lines and the guy left. The second time was in Pleasantview, I had my teen sim call a boy she's going steady with and ask him to go downtown on a date. The taxi came and she went downtown. I saw both her and her boyfriend get out of the taxi and then that same box popped up about the date not being great and he left. I have some of JM's, Inge's and TwoJeff's hacks installed but nothing that hasn't been approved for NL. So I'm wondering if this is a bug anyone else has experienced?

I've skimmed over most of the posts and I haven't seen this mentioned yet.  I just had an army of gardeners show up in front of my house.  I counted more than 30.  I don't have any hacks affecting NPC behaviors (i.e. daily gardener or anything like that) and I've hired gardeners since adding my custom content back in with no problems at all.  Has this happened to anyone else?  Is there a specific culprit I should be looking at or is it a bug? 

It's an old, old bug. I've had it happen to me long ago before university came out and before I was using any hacks. I haven't had it happen anytime recently so I thought they fixed it, but maybe they didn't.

I just had it happen to me for the first time a few nights ago. System generated over 300 social workers before I realized what was happening. I just started messing around with hacks and custom content, so I don't know if I created this problem myself or if this bug is still unresolved in NL. :-\

Thanks for the help guys.  I manually deleted them and the next time the gardener came he behaved normally.  I had heard of the bug before but it had never affected me and I wasn't sure of the fix. 

Also I wanted to let everyone know that it was still out there. 

 ??? Well..... here's my bug... My new, fresh, made with NL nieghbourhood REBOOTS my pooter... This usually happens when i scroll the hood, sometimes it's happened when i'm placing a lot.
I knew i would have probs installing NL over my Sims2 + Uni because i changed some data files so i did a new clean install of the game plus the 2 EP's on newly partitoned drive...and since i wanted to create the hood before i started playing the game again, i left my downloads folder out and didn't alter any game files (cameras.txt, graphics.sgr).. but the larger i make the hood the more likely it reboots... but the first time it rebooted it only had 3 lots in the hood.... and sometimes when i start the hood there are wierd graphic glitches... most things white, big red pyramids, missing roads, yellow roofs, etc...
The maxis made hoods don't do this just my custom one.... But i made a large custom hood after UNI came out and never had this kind of prob... Does NL use memory or graphics differently than UNI.... I've seen other post on MTS2 describing almost the exact same prob so i can'r see it being a hardware problem i have.... Any ideas??? need help so i can play the game..

no, that happened to me too- it is irritating that I can't buy more than one love potion without having this happen either