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

[Zazazu]

Perhaps utilizing some of the same methods in which the new BV rocks are able to be placed on lots?

I've taken my lots off my thread at MTS2. Some silly bum said they were going to use them for their new 'hood, showing the complete inability of people to read warnings.

[pbox]

dizzy,

overlapping lots is already possible (by sticking two lots next to each other and expanding one of them) -- but the flickering is unbearable in-game. Unfortunately.

(Not sure if you know what I mean -- it's the same kind of flickering that occurs when you put e.g. a fence and a hedge next to each other and look at the lot impostor when moving the camera, or when you moveobject two meshes into one that almost match but not quite .. or when walls and halfwalls meet, etc.)

[Doc Doofus]

I went back to testing on Backdoor 42 again... and decided that this might not actually be the best lot to use as a test case.  While tinkering with it, I finally took a closer look at that backyard car driveway, which I had just assumed it was a non-issue because nobody else was bringing it up.

I'm not so sure now.  When you grab at it with the hand tool, you can see a lot of squares that are going off the lot.  Was this placed on the lot BEFORE the shrinking process?

I also tried to remove the parts of the foundation and walls on the edges for another test.  Unfortunately, you can't do that because it's impossible to remove foundation at the edge. 

What I think might be a better testing situation with fewer variables would be a lot that has no custom items on it, no foundation, no driveway, fewer advanced tricks.  I can make a lot like that for myself, but the lots I build ALWAYS work for me.  This new test lot would have to be made by somebody who can make one that crashes.  I would gladly test such a lot, if I knew it crashed under the usual circumstances.

Unless I am totally misunderstanding what dizzy said: the problem we're facing is not that it's crashing. The problem is that the game is trying to write stuff where it shouldn't, or read stuff that doesn't exist, and the only thing stopping it at the moment is the OS. This is REGARDLESS of whether or not you see any crashes.

...

Right now, I don't see what we could learn from more in-game testing. Because if he's right, the goal is not to prevent crashes -- the goal is to prevent things going wrong like this in the first place. And you can't see that from within the game.

Well, I assume he is right, and that there's a register being blown somewhere with uninitialized data.  However, I think we all guessed that there had to be some reason EA took those precious two-extra squares away from us, and that they weren't just trying to dicks.  It would seem very likely just on the face of it that there may be an important problem associated with using those squares that EA never bothered to code for because it couldn't happen without a third party tool like LE.

However, part of the fun of hacking anything has to do with finding the boundary conditions (software-wise) of what can and can't be done.  I have experienced several crashes now, but none of them were corruptive.  MORE IMPORTANTLY, to me, I never experienced any visible on-going corruption during the game, which would be the really frightening prospect. 

Total crash to desktop -- fine.  Little glitches that accumulate and destroy the game database -- not so fine.  The bug in the Ottomas family is an example of the latter.  Two different types of problems, and this seems to be much more benign, really.  I haven't heard of anybody else having a catastrophic failure.  In a way, I'm kind of hoping for one. 

It would be cool.  Sort of like the way watching the comet hit Yucatan 65 millions years ago would have been cool.  Sure, you're a goner but before you croak, you're like, "Whoa, dude, do you see what I..."

[pbox]

What I think might be a better testing situation with fewer variables would be a lot that has no custom items on it, no foundation, no driveway, fewer advanced tricks.

I did that two days ago. Which was what dizzy replied upon. You don't need to bother testing those anymore .. they very clearly are broken.

I have experienced several crashes now, but none of them were corruptive.

How do you know that?

[Doc Doofus]

Quote from: Doc Doofus on Today at 00:40:35
I have experienced several crashes now, but none of them were corruptive.


How do you know that?

I suppose you never really do until you see evidence of it, which could happen quite a ways down the line.  But I have been playing with these for several nights now and I have seen no suggestions of on-going corruption.  And I'm going to continue playing it for the foreseeable future, so I'll report back if anything unusual comes up. 

Have you had reports of any corruption?  You have been posting these on the net for a while now (I haven't been following the MTS2 thread) so you would know if anybody has experienced that.

[dizzy]

dizzy,

overlapping lots is already possible (by sticking two lots next to each other and expanding one of them) -- but the flickering is unbearable in-game. Unfortunately.

(Not sure if you know what I mean -- it's the same kind of flickering that occurs when you put e.g. a fence and a hedge next to each other and look at the lot impostor when moving the camera, or when you moveobject two meshes into one that almost match but not quite .. or when walls and halfwalls meet, etc.)

So, skybox and non-skybox blends in a funky way depending on the camera angle? I don't know because I haven't tried this, but maybe there's a way you could reduce the flickering.

[Inge]

In my opinion, it would be far better if we could determine a way to overlap lots rather than put walls right up to the edge (given the flakiness of build mode).

That's how I used to make row houses.  The graphics look horrible like that though, and it's hard to stop the sims using what is meant to be their neighbours' land.

So, skybox and non-skybox blends in a funky way depending on the camera angle? I don't know because I haven't tried this, but maybe there's a way you could reduce the flickering.

No, it's the graphical fighting of the lot imposter mesh next-door with the lot terrain and objects of the current lot.

[ladykat]

All this focus on roofs being on the edge being the issue feels wrong. The only lot of mine I've gotten to crash consistently is my 1x1 brownstone, unreleased. It doesn't have a roof in the traditional sense. I never used the roofing tool. It's a multi-level floored surface.

If anyone wants to test it, here's the link: http://www.4shared.com/file/28206022/94ab3616/Corner_A.html  (requires all EP)

I crashed it the first time, the next 5 times it was fine through a save and a day/night toggle.

kat

[nil]

baratron,

Also, may make a back-up copy of the neighbourhood,package file @ the \Neighborhoods\ folder.  You'll need that if anything goes wrong.

In my opinion, it would be far better if we could determine a way to overlap lots rather than put walls right up to the edge (given the flakiness of build mode).

There're already a couple of fallback alternative ways to accomplish this pretty stably in some early testings.  What really matters is if the most "ideal" and "easiest" way to work (for users) can be made.  "flickering" caused by graphical competition between the lot terrain and the imposter terrain can be fixed with null floor tiles on the extra lot terrain pretty well while sims can be blocked by invisible fences.

...
I also tried to remove the parts of the foundation and walls on the edges for another test.  Unfortunately, you can't do that because it's impossible to remove foundation at the edge. 
..

May delete them by ctrl-drag from the inner lot regions.  And if in your cases it fails, mod the wall.txt for the foundation to be deletable by the wall tool.  The tile can then be deleted by staircase with the moveobject on cheat.  Please attach a pic if the above suggestions didn't work in your cases.

...
What I think might be a better testing situation with fewer variables would be a lot that has no custom items on it, no foundation, no driveway, fewer advanced tricks.  I can make a lot like that for myself, but the lots I build ALWAYS work for me.  This new test lot would have to be made by somebody who can make one that crashes.  I would gladly test such a lot, if I knew it crashed under the usual circumstances.
..

This is also actively in testings, too.

...
Well, I assume he is right, and that there's a register being blown somewhere with uninitialized data.  However, I think we all guessed that there had to be some reason EA took those precious two-extra squares away from us, and that they weren't just trying to dicks.  It would seem very likely just on the face of it that there may be an important problem associated with using those squares that EA never bothered to code for because it couldn't happen without a third party tool like LE.
..

Yeah, the reason is that EA messed it up in the first place and "didn't have the time" to fix it because of an "efficient" and a "pragmatic" scheme and a whole bunch of rushing alpha-buyers.

[pbox]

Have you had reports of any corruption?

I have no evidence that it happens, no. But, more importantly, I have no evidence that it does *not* happen -- and until I do, I'll have to assume that it's a possibility, in the light of what dizzy said yesterday. I'm not in a position to draw my own conclusions here.

No, it's the graphical fighting of the lot imposter mesh next-door with the lot terrain and objects of the current lot.

Exactly, thanks Inge. Words were failing me yesterday =).

[Zazazu]

I've been playing the 2x2 version of my brownstones for about a sim-week now. The family is up to the founder, hubby, a child, and twin babies, as well as a mastiff & mini-mastiff. Just had a crash on me at lot-load, which is actually the first crash on the lot. She wasn't fresh and CASy on move-in. Very, very rarely I have that on normal lots, so I'll see if it happens again.

EDIT: Didn't repeat. 

[ingeli]

To remove stuff out-of-reach after shrinking, did you try to use the demolition tool? I demolished outer walls with that, didnt try it on foundation, yet.

[baratron]

You dont have to make another windows xp  account- just rename the sims2 folder in documents - for example to sims2-realgame - and then restart the game - voila, game created new sims2 folder, and that one can be used for testing. When I want to play my real game, i change the name of the new folder to sims2test, change sims2-realgame back to sims2 and go play.

THANK YOU!! *hits Thanks button repeatedly and listens to the cacophony of bleating*

I knew this really, it dropped out of my head because this is the first time I've ever done "dangerous" testing. OK, problem solved . Will move N005 over to a spare version of the game, where any amount of crap can happen to it .

My absolute vanilla-game folder takes up 512MB (I have all expansions and I use the Clean Templates, so I dont get any extra hoods/character files and such.) The test one has the needed downloads added, atm building stuff.

I suspect I'll delete all of the unnecessary parts of the other Neighbourhoods. Hrm. If, after creating a vanilla game folder, I delete all but one of the Neighbourhoods, am I right in thinking the game will spontaneously recreate them again? So it's necessary to use the Clean Templates to stop 101 random sims from spawning?

[Zazazu]

Yup. Actually, I believe that number is over 200 if you have BV. I know that in Queen's Cove, I have one uni attached and one downtown, plus all three vacation 'hoods. Just generated townies twice and the downtownies once. I have 25 playables (including pets), 1 tour guide, no charlatans, and a total of 378 character files.

[Doc Doofus]

Flickering and other graphical problems...

One problem with the shrunken lots (not overlapping lots) is that you will get some minor glitchy graphics from the next door impostor in the winter time.  White loopy lines on the floor inside the house that, I guess, outline the shape of snow drifts from the impostor next door's two-square border. 

Another interesting test case idea:

Has anybody tried shrinking a lot that DOESN'T have walls at the edges?  I would like to know if those crash at 7pm.  I can't test it because lots I create don't crash, only lots by others. 

Many of us have all played with Andi's shrunken empty lot package for a long time now, without problem.  Those were created with the oooold LE program.  I wonder if the problem might be in the new LE itself, and unrelated to the actual placement of walls.  I remember using the oooold LE a couple EP's back.  I managed to bork a couple of my lots with it before I decided it was unsafe to use with OFB.

[baratron]

When I was talking about this on irc last night, Hook pointed out the problem is probably to do with the way the game displays shadows. Based on real world physics rather than knowledge of the game, wouldn't a shadow normally extend past the edges of the lot? This isn't something that would even normally occur to me, because my default graphics setup has shadows off. However, I wouldn't put it past the game to do the computations for displaying a shadow even if it then goes on to not display it!

In my opinion, it would be far better if we could determine a way to overlap lots rather than put walls right up to the edge (given the flakiness of build mode).

My partner Richard came up with an idea which may help. Please forgive scanned-in bits of paper, I couldn't figure out how to create an image quickly enough using Adobe Photoshop Mickey Mouse Edition (a.k.a. Elements - it came free with my computer).

Richard suggested that we should not build lots with an overlapping or party wall shared between the houses. Instead, we should build the wall 2 squares in from the edge of the lot as usual. However - we could then use either a real wall or a fence that looks like wall along the front edge to give the idea of continuity.

Top-down views:



Corresponding front-on view:

The black lines show what the player sees, the blue line shows the true start of the house. The green shaded area is "limbo". It is probably ok to place objects into this area as we have done so for years, but players should be warned not to try to move the true walls. Also, placing windows into the true walls would spoil the illusion of terracing.

It definitely seems worth trying this idea, because it might avoid the problem. Consecutive lots would share only a vertex, not an actual edge of wall, and this might make the difference. Someone could try this with the Base Game Starter and the Lot Adjuster, and put their lot up for testing. Even if it doesn't work with real wall, it could be possible to do it with a fence that looks like wall.

Do we have fences that look like walls yet?

[dizzy]

The problem with fake walls is that you'd also need a fake roof, and that would probably be beyond the scope of this project. 

[Zazazu]

So far, I've never had a crash on one of my lots with a space on every side, and I've never heard that anyone else has had a crash on them either. They don't look like a true townhouse set-up, but do look very much like what we have going on in my subhood (well, in most subhoods) in Chicago. And, of course, there is no graphical oddity on the shared walls. My next set will be a bunch of pseudo-colonials all with at least a 1-space cushion.  Hummingbird Court/Queen's Cove is becoming very ecclectic:

[pbox]

Do we have fences that look like walls yet?

Yes, fake walls do exist. See sticky in mts2 Build Mode forum for link. If you're happy using fences, you can completely ignore the whole shrinking business and do that, since they're allowed on the edge of lots anyway. Reasons I'm not happy using fences:

* You can't recolor them -- you'd need a clone for every single wallpaper you're using
* Fence colours are very difficult to match with wallpapers
* You can't stack them -- you'd need a separate clone for 1-, 2-, 3-, etc story houses, plus variants for every possible foundation height
* You can't put windows/doors in them -- this makes realistic building impossible; what kind of row house has a 4m party wall?
* Plus, what dizzy said .. roofs would still not work  (although I believe there are some fake roofs at mts2, from the base game era)

So, yeah. Not really an alternative for me, personally, but ymmv.

Eta, another point: they don't collapse with the walls .. so they'd be horribly in the way during gameplay.


With "Consecutive lots would share only a vertex, not an actual edge of wall" you mean when the front and back walls go all the way, but the side walls are 2 tiles in from the border? That could be worth a try, yes. Then at least we could do something that *looks* like a row house.

Has anybody tried shrinking a lot that DOESN'T have walls at the edges?

This has come up in R+D a few times -- empty lots don't pose any problems it seems. But since, as you say, we already have Andi's mini lots, there's not much of a point in shrinking empty lots is there? (Actually, if I recall correctly, Andi created those more or less manually though, not by shrinking with the LE .. there is a post in the old LE thread @ mts2 that explains how. Hang on. Here: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1376196#post1376196 -- I see no mention that he ever released a version with a shrinking feature. Pointer?)


Eta:

When I was talking about this on irc last night, Hook pointed out the problem is probably to do with the way the game displays shadows.

That might be a good point. Do you happen to have any idea whether turning shadows on/off in the options might make a difference? On the builder's side, the user's side, or both? Or does the game calculate them regardless (and fall over its feet), just not display them when they're turned off?

[Doc Doofus]

Ah.  I thought Andi made those with LE.  At the time, people were saying you could skip the download package and just use LE. 

I tried doing that, with mixed results.  I ended up with one lot that had a huge gaping blue hole in the expanded side (as seen from neighborhood view), where apparently you could see the sky underneath the hood.  Another one just borked the whole neighborhood.  I had to manually delete the lot and keep my mouse cursor away from it thereafter.  Those were commercial lots -- at the time OFB had just come out, and smaller lots were very attractive for people setting up very small businesses.

Andi's package works great.

[nil]

Until someone can make imposter and neighbourhood views of fake roof and fake-wall fences, these won't give out the graphical illusion as wished even for NL or above EP.

To confirm that oneself, may use 11dot arch-fences or others to try this approach out. But, I'm sure it takes more for this to work.  I've read that lod 90 may be a key to it.

But, this won't allow more usable space for building on a 10x20 or 20x10 lot.  The buildable area left will be "6 full grid wide plus 2 half of the diagonal grids" wide times the 8 to 9 full grid long/deep.  Lol, it's the last 2 lines and the grid row that are not buildable.  The diagonal walls and perpendicular walls can form on the last second grid rows to the edges.



pbox,

...
You can't put windows/doors in them -- this makes realistic building impossible; what kind of row house has a 4m party wall?
...

Actually, they can as long as the graphical parts are well adjusted.

As for the fake roof, I think if it's just the walls that can't be on the edge, how about just floor tiles at the edge to act as roofs?

As for blank lot stability, testings on the shrunken blank lots can help support the point that the newer LE/LA are actually working well probably except the usages breaking the build tool limits.  And that's why there were tests on that posted in the MTS2 R&D thread.

I've not read any info about Andi had released any shrinking code before a person claimed to be his daughter announcing his death.


All,

I've got a few 1x1 lots for testings if anyone is interested. This series has all 4 directions for both the residential and community for lushy neighbourhoods.
http://www.modthesims2.com/showpost.php?p=1791006&postcount=291

[Inge]

If anyone wants to use fake row houses made with fake walls that's been available for some time, and you can make them on a small lot template such as Marylou offers.  The whole point of asking Mootilda to give us shrinking is so that we can have real row houses.

A compromise is to have the front and back walls stretching the whole width, but to set the side walls into the lot by one tile.  The house will be narrower inside than it appears to be from the front, but its appearance once set into the row will be preserved.

[pbox]

...
You can't put windows/doors in them -- this makes realistic building impossible; what kind of row house has a 4m party wall?
...

erm, actually, they can as long as the graphical parts are well adjusted.

OK, so you could have yet another huge set of fences with window cutouts I suppose .. one set per window type.

As for the fake roof, I think if it's just the walls that can't be on the edge, how about just floor tiles at the edge to act as roofs?

No floortiles above level 0 at lot edges, unfortunately. For that you'd have to shrink again.

[ingeli]

For me the risks involved are worth it. I am having a blast constructing houses that fit together, for the realistic look and to make playable small lots of all kinds. Fake walls/roof dont do it for me, I am sorry.

[Zazazu]

For me the risks involved are worth it. I am having a blast constructing houses that fit together, for the realistic look and to make playable small lots of all kinds. Fake walls/roof dont do it for me, I am sorry.

Ingeli, I'm getting a crash on load every other time with my 2x2 brownstone (on right and left edges) now. As much as I'm all for living dangerously, there's just a point where it gets too damn annoying to play the lot. I was playing it for about 9 sim-days before it started doing this, and I'm one who has barely gotten anyone's lots to crash. So now all my on-edge lots will just be deco. Which is fine, in the long run...there's no way I'd ever fill all the lots in the now four built blocks out of eight I have to do. Anyways, I wouldn't play them unless you like throwing things. I'm moving the Ridges for the third time in a generation to the new colonials I made last night, all of which have a 1-space buffer and are 2x1's and 2x2's. Which means that they will now have a 5-bedroom house big enough to support the 10 kids Randolph wanted, but Brooklyn's too old to have more than a couple more. I don't do elixir.