More Awesome Than You!

I've tested this twice in my game, the same situation occurs at the exact same moment twice and with the same scenario. I have two brothers living on a lot, ones leaving for college class and the other is answering the phone to talk to another controllable sim on another lot. Both times I've played this log the exact same thing has happened where the game just freezes and I get an application error. The second time I ran the game in testing cheats mode and no errors came up in the game but both times I did get a sims2exception error. I'll upload the second one here if anyone can understand it and help me figure out what seems to be crashing my game.

No help for you here but it looks like we're in the same boat with the game crashing ... mine isn't for the same reason as you though :( Hope we both get help soon!

Cass ...

Phones sometimes get borked.  Have you tried replacing the phone?

There are several other things you can do to try to solve your problem.  You can check for hack conflicts with the Hack Conflict Detection Utility from Paladin's Place (www.simwardrobe.com (http://www.simwardrobe.com)), you can run your downloads folder through the Clean Installer to check for duplicate files (pink), and you can try deleting groups.cache from your Sims2 game folders - if this file gets corrupted, a lot of odd things can happen.  The game will then generate a new, clean file.

Well I'm not sure what the problem was, but I just made sure the phone call wasn't answered and every other phone call after that worked fine. I've been waiting for the sim that was part of the screwed up call to call back but she hasn't yet. If it happens again when she calls I'll know what the problem is but it hasn't crashed since anyway.

Do you know who the sim was who called? 

Yes, I'm just not sure why the phone call with her crashed my game. I was playing the family she's part of before I started playing the one that my game crashed on. Yet they've had phone calls from that sim's brother and other members of the family with no problems.

You're absolutely sure it was the phone call that did it?  Sometimes when two or three things are happening at the same time, it's hard to be sure which of those things is responsible.

Oh, and the phone is a standard Maxis phone?  I've had problems with non-standard custom phones, and this has been a problem since Sims 1, but never had the Maxis phone cause a crash.  And the sim at the other end of the phone isn't really there....It's not like the game actually activates that sim.  And sometimes they phone up and walk by at the same time, and even that doesn't seem to cause a crash. 

I'm almost positive its the phone call, I made sure the other sim was off the lot and at class before the phone was answered, crashed then too. As far as I know nothing was happening, and if it was someone coming onto the lot it still would have crashed when he didn't pick the phone up.

The phone is a maxis phone, I don't use any custom phones in my game.

Well, all I can say is, it's wierd....but if it happens again, try replacing the phone.  I haven't had Maxis phones causing crashes, but I have had phone icons simply disappearing from a sim's queue, and as soon as I replaced the phone, the problem was solved.

Don't post simexception logs, they are totally useless.

As for crashing, who are you calling, and what version of game are you using? NL based installs have been known to be very buggy, and the old "Dress As Top" meshes are also known to crash in phone-based scenarios where the wearer's thumbnail appears.

Ok, wasn't sure if it was useful at all. I've got all expansions up to Seasons and the thumbnails shows up fight, the game crashes part way into the phone call which makes me wonder if it was one of them "do you want to go downtown" calls or something.

That is consistent with dress-as-top-related crashes. The "do you want to go downtown" would generate a thumbnail image of the asking sim, and if you're using the old HP "dress as top" mesh from MTS2, BOOM. Other flawed meshes may have attempted to emulate this technique, and may create similar effects. Try removing all those strange custom meshes you obviously have.

I know of two meshes that were available as recently as mid July of this year that were based off of the flawed meshes JM mentioned. They were both by Sere from Noukie sims.  I categorize by creator, so I could have downloaded these Sere meshes from MTS2, noukiesims2, or insim. I'm not at my computer right now, so I don't remember the exact names, but if you do a search for phone+crash you should be able to find a thread from last summer detailing the original realization that the original flyingpidgeon meshes were borked. Sere's versions have the same names with _Sere at the end. Maybe Dressastophp_sere.package? And I totally forget the other one, I'll check when I get home.

I know that it sounds totally bizarre that a clothing mesh could crash your game to the desktop with a sim exception error, but that's exaclty what this mesh does. if you're curious and want to know more check out the thread from last summer, it explains the problem and the reason very clearly. If you're a gossip there's also some info that makes flyingpidgeon look like a big jerk, lulz.

I've removed that mesh from my game, but don't recall even using it... and it's very strange that the sim's icon showed up in the top left hand corner no problem, I'd assume if generating the thumbnail was really the problem it would have crashed when it showed up there, no?

Either way I still haven't received a phone call from that sim to check if its actually still broken or not.

LoveStained, you could test this by having the sim that threw the error (the one who answered the phone) look for AND accept a job, or purchase a community lot. I was also confused at first by this because the thumbnail on the left side of the screen was fine, but those are not effected by the broken mesh. I checked and the bad meshes that I had were:

mesh_dressasatopSere.package
mesh_dresstopforhpSere.package

Here is a link to the  original thread (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5242.0.html) on the broken dressastop mesh. If you care.

Zaidi, your problem has nothing to do with this. I would guess that the problems that you were having with CAS thumbnails are because you were missing the mesh for the recolor. I honestly have no idea what would cause the problems that you are describing, and I would not care to speculate. If I were you I would run an HCDU. I have also had a lot of success using the search function on this website. I've found answers to many of my questions this way.

I invited the crashing sim over to see what she was wearing, it turns out she's wearing one of these tops:http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=237871 (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=237871)

I'm curious if these shirts are having the same mesh problem then, if thats the case I'll just remove them...

Would I be right in thinking that, instead of creating a new mesh, the creators concerned are basically hiding part of the Maxis mesh in some way, and then recategorizing it?

I am now officially out of my league. I don't know how to tell how a mesh was made. Here's what I do know: the borked dressastop meshes from last year, and the ones I discovered recently, were made by taking a full body outfit and turning it into a top only outfit. HystericalParoxysm does know about this issue, but her RTFM says,


That certainly sounds like she's saying she made the mesh by taking a full body outfit and turning it into a top. Again, I have NO IDEA how this mesh was actually made, this is just a guess based on the phrasing that HystericalParoxysm used. She may have created an entirely new mesh made to look like the top from the full body outfit.
You can either wait for someone more awesome to come by and confirm or deny my hypothesis or you can ask HystericalParoxysm how she made the mesh. Or if you have the patience you can test it by having a sim who is wearing a shirt that uses this mesh take a job.

H & M Stuff Packs - LoveStainedHeart, do you have the stuff pack?

That's not the problem. I read the comments left in HP's thread and someone had specifically asked if you needed H&M stuff for the clothes to work. You don't.

Well, in that case it does sound like that's nor your problem.  However, conversion does sound to me like it's not a new mesh, but a conversion of the Maxis mesh, which I believe involves playing around with alpha channels.  I think I would still be inclined to remove the mesh and recolours and see what happens.