Crash on resized lots at 7PM -- any ideas?

[Madame Mim]

Really? Sure - you can have a link to 14 Dry River road - I've not actually been trying to crash it, but a fresh version of it always does for me (5 out of 5). It also (one attempt) does not respond well to the change and save to prevent crash move. I'll just go upload it to my site and then come back here with a link.

http://www.genensims2.com/guest/MadameMim/temp/14 Dry River Road.rar

This is a 1x1 lot made in base game. It has Marvine's animated ladder and Numenor's coal stove - both of which have not been stripped from the Sims2Pack

Dang - copy and paste the link. The spaces in the file name seem to have bodged the auto-linky-thingy.

[J. M. Pescado]

I have a different question: Were these lots shrunken BEFORE, or AFTER, somebody attempted to build something on them in any way? Perhaps the shrinking process imperfectly updates the lot's structure and geometry, and if one were to shrink the lot while it was still simply a green square, or methodically stripped it of all objects, including invisible controllers and portals, this problem would not occur post-construction?

[Madame Mim]

After, in my case, and I'm pretty sure in most (if not all) of the other cases. It is (after all) an attempt to circumvent the games prohibition on building to the edges of the lots. So we build to where the edges will be and then shrink.

[Doc Doofus]

I have a different question: Were these lots shrunken BEFORE, or AFTER, somebody attempted to build something on them in any way?

AFTER.  It has been done BEFORE quite successfully, and not just with the latest Lot Extender.  The original Lot Extender (was that for Nightlife?) was able to shrink empty lots quite well.  There is a package that has been around for a LONG time, now, of pre-shrunk empty lots by Andi.  After OFB, Lot Extender became flaky and wasn't updated for new EP's, so I, and probably other people, just used Andi's pre-shrunk empty lots in the bin.

One work-around for the crashing problem that I have found works for me (perhaps for others...) is to actually OCCUPY the *unshrunk* version of the lot, let it get past 7pm, and THEN shrink it.  The relevant threads suggest there can be risks to this, but I have tried to keep things simple when doing it and it worked for me on the Backdoor 42 lot that others are crashing on.

[pbox]

Perhaps the shrinking process imperfectly updates the lot's structure and geometry

This is exactly what we want to know .. is this so? And if yes, in exactly WHAT way does it break the lot? Do you think there might be any clues in the crash logs, and/or in the shunk lot packages?

FWIW, I'll also second/third/fourth what everybody else has said .. building on pre-shrunk lots obviously works fine, but we can't build edge to edge on those, which in this case is the entire point of the shrinking procedure.

Also, have you seen this post? baratron claims that noteleportpuddles is preventing the (otherwise consistent) crashes for her .. any idea why this could be? What is noteleportpuddles actually doing? (apart from "moving puddles", obviously)

One work-around for the crashing problem that I have found works for me (perhaps for others...) is to actually OCCUPY the *unshrunk* version of the lot, let it get past 7pm, and THEN shrink it.  The relevant threads suggest there can be risks to this, but I have tried to keep things simple when doing it and it worked for me on the Backdoor 42 lot that others are crashing on.

Did you try this with only one household in the lot, or also with moving out the occupants after shrinking and then moving in a new CAS sim?

[Doc Doofus]

Pbox, I actually posted about this before, but not in one chronological narrative, so let me do that now.  And remember that I have BV.

I installed Backdoor 42, plopped it down in my downtown neighborhood (not a special test neighborhood.)  A CAS created Sim (Linus Schubert) was moved in, the game saved before 7pm.  At 7pm, he crashed.  Rebooted, restarted, crashed again at 7pm. 

I UNshrunk the Backdoor 42 lot  (Schubert still living there) on three sides using Lot Extender.  Went back to Backdoor 42 with Linus Schubert still waiting.  Let it run past 7pm.  No problem!  Ran it a few more days.  No problem!  Went back, *re-shrunk* the lot (Schubert still there, just a few days older), resumed play... No problem!

That's an awful lot of steps for anybody to have to go through just to play one particular lot.  Hopefully, you'll find something simpler. 

My own designed shrunken 1x1 lots work fine every time with CAS and non-CAS sims.  I think Ikbod said she got a crash with it in her game, which if true, makes me wonder again if there might not be some inter-EP conflicts.

[Zazazu]

I finally got one of mine to crash! Now why....  who knows. One of my 1x1 brownstone corner lots (there's a sort-of pic in the thread about interior foundations). Rear and left walls on the edge, right wall two spaces from edge. I decided to use long-term testing as my impetus to start the rehash of a legacy challenge I've been planning. Made a CAS sim based off my partial unreleased set of face templates. Made a dog for her. Plopped them into the lot. On a lark, I went into buy mode and switched to night view. CRASH! Went back into the game and repeated, no crash. Gah. Now I'm playing the lot as I normally would to make sure that the initial crash isn't followed by more. I've gone two more days and so far no more crashing.

[pbox]

I UNshrunk the Backdoor 42 lot  (Schubert still living there) on three sides using Lot Extender.  Went back to Backdoor 42 with Linus Schubert still waiting.  Let it run past 7pm.  No problem!  Ran it a few more days.  No problem!  Went back, *re-shrunk* the lot (Schubert still there, just a few days older), resumed play... No problem!

Yes, I remember that. But from what katenigma said, it sounded like the *sims* were fine after a crash, but not necessarily the lot .. she moved her sims out, moved in a fresh cas sim, and it started crashing again. That's why i was asking, have you tried the same lot with different sims?

If this is the lot you describe here:

The game went to the blue BV screen with the blanking squares across the top and the Sim posing on-screen, as usual for a move-in.  However, it never finished blanking the squares and, instead, crashed to desktop.

then it is actually not a solution, for obvious reasons.

[kuronue]

I've been lurking in this thread for a few pages, and my first inclination with errors in shrinking lots (I've not tested anything, mind) would be that the game is trying to access something that is no longer there- because it's outside the new lot size. for instance, the portals where walkbys appear - aren't they usually on the edge of the lot? But I assume the LotAdjusterthingummy handles that, since people have walkbys just fine on adjusted lots.

But the no teleport puddles thing has me suspicious - if puddles are randomly teleporting, and the game thinks it has an extra row of squares that have been chopped off, could the puddles be teleporting outside the bounds of the lot, causing them to write code into weird spots in the game, causing it to crash? Could the adjacent bit of memory be something happening at 7pm, so it's causing a buffer overflow, so to speak? And if so, maybe the people who are crashing with noteleportpuddles are having something else try to write to the now-chopped-off spaces, therefore, they're still getting the issue, just not with puddles?

[J. M. Pescado]

My suggestion is that you should stop the lots first, THEN build on them. Maybe if you didn't insist on doing things in the wrong order, you wouldn't have these problems. Horse before cart and all.

[Inge]

Silly fat grey Pescado   You have completely missed the point.   The reason shrinking was asked for in the first place was to make row houses.  Where you can have walls right up to the edges of the lots.   If you shrank the lot first, you would still have those two last squares that would not allow walls to be built!

Ok here is another idea of why some lots crash and others don't:  Did the people with crashing lots ensure that the gradient of their lot between each major vertex was absolutlely even along the line that would be the new edge?   That means either starting with and keeping 100% flat terrain, OR flattening the lot to road level and shrinking on all three non-road edges, OR doing maths to make sure your intermediate vertices create a completely regular slope between each 10th (terrain-stitched) vertex.

If not, it is just about possible the shader didn't know what to do with the unstitched edge as the light changed.

[Doc Doofus]

Ok Pbox, you got me to do some more testing.  I have a Backdoor 42 village in its making.

(By the way, this would be a lot cuter if we could have a neighborhood terrain with circular cul-de-sacs:  A tight circular loop of road big enough for about ten houses facing inward and a single road leading into it.  It would be quite attractive.)

Here's what I did.  I plopped down a brand new instance of Backdoor 42.  I moved in Linus Schubert, who seems to have no problem with these kinds of lots anymore.  He lived there for a couple of days, no prob.  Then I moved him out and back into the Sim bin, cashing out the furnishings.

Now I created a new CAS Sim.  I tried to move her into the lot (now unfurnished), and BLAMMO -- the game crashed to the desktop before it could even do auto-save.

As you recall from the previous post, this happened to me before,  but we discounted it because there were too many variables.

I restarted the game and opened the now unpopulated lot in build mode.  Interestingly, it was night time.  Linus Schubert had moved out at night, so that might explain that.  Perhaps the initial nighttime condition had some bearing on the instant crash of my new CAS Sim.

I got the lot to work.  I simply repainted it in build mode, left the lot, moved the CAS Sim back in, and it worked perfectly, even past 7pm.  End of that experiment.

I decided to try it all over again with ANOTHER brand new instance of Backdoor 42.  I moved in Schubert, played past 7, moved him out.  Now I tried to save a step by editing the empty (and now unfurnished) lot in build mode before repopulating it.  I repainted it, laid down a blank piece of wall in the middle of the room, saved and exited.  I SAVED AND EXPORTED a copy of this lot, in this state, and you can download it below.

I created a brand new CAS Sim, moved her in and... tada, no crash!  Played her past 7pm and the next day and the next, no problem. 

[One very curious incident occurred, though.  When she put a leftover in the BRAND NEW refrigerator (remember, the furnishings were cashed out by Schubert), she found that the refrigerator still contained Schubert's leftovers.  Is this unusual for a new lot?  I don't usually reuse lots, so I have never had a chance to see this happen before.  I'm going to guess that it's an EA thing.]

The slightly diddled post-Schubert lot is here:

http://webpages.charter.net/ronunderwood/BDL42%20fixed.Sims2Pack

Also, I have a question for you about Backdoor 42.  The stairs.  What stairs are those?  It says "Steadfast Empty Underneath" when I mouse over it in build mode, but I can't find it in my stairs build mode catalog.  When I choose Steadfast Stairs, it always fills it in underneath.

[Doc Doofus]

Ok here is another idea of why some lots crash and others don't:  Did the people with crashing lots ensure that the gradient of their lot between each major vertex was absolutlely even along the line that would be the new edge?   That means either starting with and keeping 100% flat terrain,...

The answer is yes, everything flattened by a previous bulldozing.  That was in the instructions.  Backdoor 42 is definitely flat on all edges.

[Inge]

One very curious incident occurred, though.  When she put a leftover in the BRAND NEW refrigerator (remember, the furnishings were cashed out by Schubert), she found that the refrigerator still contained Schubert's leftovers. 

EWWWW!  That's gross  

The answer is yes, everything flattened by a previous bulldozing.  That was in the instructions.  Backdoor 42 is definitely flat on all edges.

And that's a crashing lot, yes?

[Madame Mim]

Ditto on the 100% flatness of lots before and after creation/shrinkage still resulting in a crashing lot. As Doc Doofus said - it's in Mootilda's instructions and I (for one) am one of the very sad people who read the instructions first.

[Inge]

My backdoor42 7pm crash seemed to be audio rather than graphics errors, according to the logs.  What happens soundwise at 7pm?  Crickets start chirping?  Wolves start howling?  I suppose the person who said they had a hack to make it get dark at 6pm only has their lighting affected, not the time the crickets start?

[J. M. Pescado]

Silly fat grey Pescado   You have completely missed the point.   The reason shrinking was asked for in the first place was to make row houses.  Where you can have walls right up to the edges of the lots.   If you shrank the lot first, you would still have those two last squares that would not allow walls to be built!

But the walls can't be put up against the edges of the lot for a REASON! If you did this, things which overhang the edges of the walls, like the ROOF, would hang over the bounds of the lot! This is why fences are permitted on the edges of lots, and walls are not: One cannot put a roof on a fence. Perhaps all the crashing lots have roofs, which are thus illegally extended off the bounds of the lot?

[Inge]

My shrunk lot has all those things, and it hasn't crashed anyone's game so far.  And if it was what you said they would crash all the time those things were still true, not just the first day at 7pm.

[ladykat]

Silly fat grey Pescado   You have completely missed the point.   The reason shrinking was asked for in the first place was to make row houses.  Where you can have walls right up to the edges of the lots.   If you shrank the lot first, you would still have those two last squares that would not allow walls to be built!

But the walls can't be put up against the edges of the lot for a REASON! If you did this, things which overhang the edges of the walls, like the ROOF, would hang over the bounds of the lot! This is why fences are permitted on the edges of lots, and walls are not: One cannot put a roof on a fence. Perhaps all the crashing lots have roofs, which are thus illegally extended off the bounds of the lot?

I thought of that last night and built a little house with concrete flooring for a roof, rather than an ordinary roof.

It crashed.

I've been using it for testing since then, but that's still in progress.

I also made a pair of semis where on the adjoining side the roof is straight up/down.  That worked ok 3 times out of 4.

kat

[nil]

Lol, my tests in BV all work like a charm, and I had only 1 exception for the base game in which I had a crash for long-played lot.  updated:
 just got a lot made with LE 1277 to crash . by clicking to the build mode and night mode after moving in a family.
The lot has only walls and a roof, except the hidden objects.

So, this shows that there's at least a problem when a shrunken lot has walls and roof.
Note I"m not saying other objects won't cause a problem even if they existed.

[Emma]

Also, I have a question for you about Backdoor 42.  The stairs.  What stairs are those?  It says "Steadfast Empty Underneath" when I mouse over it in build mode, but I can't find it in my stairs build mode catalog.  When I choose Steadfast Stairs, it always fills it in underneath.

They are these stairs by crocobaura

[Zazazu]

Ditto on the 100% flatness of lots before and after creation/shrinkage still resulting in a crashing lot. As Doc Doofus said - it's in Mootilda's instructions and I (for one) am one of the very sad people who read the instructions first.

I do and I don't, but I did for these. The 'hood I'm building on over on my test account was created from the .png on up... flood filled the same color so as to create a completely flat region in SimCity4, then added roads to one of the cities and imported the terrain file to Sims2. That's where I ran the tests on everyone's lots as well. My terrain in Queen's Cove is far from 100% flat, but Hummingbird Court, the urban section, is flat within the blocks I've got the townhomes placed in.

So I played my 1x1 corner brownstone a good five sim-days before I moved Brooklyn Ridge (gotta love the Randomizer, sometimes I get the best names) and her new hubby into their permanent house, the 2x2 next door. The 1x1 never crashed after that first time. I did the buy/build toggle and clicked on night view immediately after moving her into the 2x2. No crash. It is on the right and left edges, and the final 10 spaces are sort of house-free (there's a little 3x3 treehouse, but it was built after shrinking).

Additional difference: The 1x1 was plopped down and left. Not built on or saved after being taken from the lot bin but before moving in the sim. She also was technically CAS at that point. The 2x2 was plopped down, the back yard modified (I like decorating the complexes), saved. Then she (no longer fresh and CASy) was moved in.

[Simsample]

My backdoor42 7pm crash seemed to be audio rather than graphics errors, according to the logs.  What happens soundwise at 7pm?  Crickets start chirping?  Wolves start howling?  I suppose the person who said they had a hack to make it get dark at 6pm only has their lighting affected, not the time the crickets start?

I was getting those Audio errors too, Inge- and a Sims2 exception in EP6.exe. The only other Sims2 file mentioned is Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Bon Voyage\TSBin\ijl15.dll (I don't know if that's relevant).

[nil]

Exception module:  D:\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSBin\Sims2.exe.
Exception address: 0x008d3fd5. Section:Offset: 0x01:0x004d2fd5.
is what I got .

Blank lot won't crash after a new CAS sin moved in when night mode is selected in the build mode,

Quite likely it's the wall and /or the roof.

But after all, this problem can be "avoided"

[pbox]

But the walls can't be put up against the edges of the lot for a REASON!

Pffft .. if we only did things we "can" do, according to EA, we'd all still be playing with vanilla Maxian games. You "can't" have custom objects either, and yet we can. I want to know what this "REASON" is you're speaking of -- why does it only crash at nightfall? Why only with CAS sims?

Inge, good point about the sound -- I don't play with sound on (I'll admit I don't even know how to turn it on in general), so here's a question for those who do: does the sound change with a build mode day/night toggle too? Or only when it really becomes day/night in-game?