Lots that simply won't load...

[gynarchy]

Wasn't there some issue with Pescado's Community Lights on hack? You could try taking that one out.

Yup, you're right. I took that one out and they load just fine. I kept all the hacks that are on Dr. Boris' list but I have been playing without my hacks folder, which would explain why they loaded after I packaged and moved them.

[Dark Trepie]

Wasn't there some issue with Pescado's Community Lights on hack? You could try taking that one out.

Yup, you're right. I took that one out and they load just fine.

I'm prety certain I have that hack in as well.  I'll go and take it out to see if things get any better.

[AllenABQ]

Briefly, I also had the HSFT lot crashing on me, and these were caused by downloaded objects conflicting with Maxis made ones although this problem didn't seem to exist prior to installing Nighlife.  The resolution was to check the log file and removing the conflicting objects from the Downloads folder.  I'd be curious to know if this is/isn't a symptom of the same problem.

I also had a problem with a house crashing on me everytime I tried to go in. I tried looking into the log folder, but there were dozens of logs in my log folder, and I wasn't sure which log I should be looking in. I told the comp. to arrange the logs by date modified, but even then, there were a whole bunch of logs that were modified at the same time.

So...which log should I be looking in?

F:\My Documents\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\Logs\AppErrors.log

You'll be looking for a message that indicates an object error with two filepaths listed.  One to the conflicting object in your Downloads area, the other to the game package file/object its conflicting with.  Remove the conflicting object(s) from Downloads and try re-entering your problem lot again.

[RainbowTigress]

I was having this problem, and since I always play in debug mode, I saw the error pop up about pool lights.  Dizzy2 traced this to Pescados comm-lights and his old smart lights hacks causing corruption in the pool lights.  This is what he said over at VS:

* If you used the old hack in Nightlife, you will need to delete and replace your old pool lights, as the old hack probably corrupted them. * http://www.variousimmers.net/vsimforum/showthread.php?t=2003

I think there is another thread around here where Dizzy discussed it, but I can't find it right now.

I followed these directions and removed Pescado's comm lights hack, and although it took time to go to each Downtown lot that I'd been to that had pool lights, it was worth it because I have had no more problems.  That is the common denominator between the comm lots mentioned above, even those you wouldn't think had pools.  Some use them for decoration, such as the Lulu Lounge.

The issue with the House of Fallen Trees is another issue, as AllenABQ mentioned is on another thread.  That was the strangest thing I've heard, as it was traced to a bad sofa mesh from another site!  Who'd've thunk it??

[Dark Trepie]

So the culprit has been found.

I went and took commlightson out of my download folder and tried to go back into the Hub, but it still wouldn't load.  So I went and made a custom neighborhood and attached Downtown to it, figuring all of the lots there would be fresh and uncorrupted.  And lo and behold, the Hub loaded without any fuss there.

Seeing as how I can't get into these lots with the corrupt lights, it seems my only solution now is to move all of the lots in the custom neighborhood to the lots bin, bulldoze everything in my existing neighborhoods, and replace them with the lots from the custom neighborhood.

That's gonna take a little while to do...   

[MissDoh]

Oh poor you, at leat you found a way around it.  The only good thing about this now is when you move the community lot to the bin it stays there so you only need to move them once and then you can place them over and over again.

[witch]

Can you delete the downtown attached to your current n'hood and just attach a new one?

[RainbowTigress]

Can you delete the downtown attached to your current n'hood and just attach a new one?

I had wondered that too...but I was concerned about existing downtownies and relationships and the creation of new downtownies...would you have duplicate downtownies? 

[gynarchy]

Seeing as how I can't get into these lots with the corrupt lights, it seems my only solution now is to move all of the lots in the custom neighborhood to the lots bin, bulldoze everything in my existing neighborhoods, and replace them with the lots from the custom neighborhood.

Ugh, that sucks! I was hoping that you wouldn't have resort to replacing all of them.  At least with the new lot binning feature in NL it doesn't take nearly as long as it did before (package lot, exit game, install lot, repeat).

[Dark Trepie]

Can you delete the downtown attached to your current n'hood and just attach a new one?

I had wondered that too...but I was concerned about existing downtownies and relationships and the creation of new downtownies...would you have duplicate downtownies? 

Yeah, seems like that has the potential of creating a BFBVFS.  Besides, half of the population in Strangetown in my game live in Downtown already.  Moving them in and out seems like more of a hassle than the mass bulldozing.

[Braveheart]

Glad I found this topic....I have had the same issue with not being able to load the Hub and the Lulu Lounge. I finally gave up and bulldozed them replacing them with custom lots.

[Motoki]

As far as I can tell, deleting a downtown would probably work like deleting a university. I assume It would keep the downtownies since they are attached to an invisible townie household and not any particular lot. I don't think deleting the downtown deletes the sims. If you delete a University town it doesn't delete any sims and in fact they'll walk by and move into dorms if you make a new university town.

The one problem I can see is that, at least with the university town, while deleting one doesn't delete sims, adding a second or replacement one DOES create another set of townies and npcs. If the downtown does the same thing, it would generate a lot of extra characters to do this. Given that the game tends to get funky with a lot of characters and that each expansion seems to add a whole bunch more, this probably isn't the ideal situation. 

[Zeljka]

I don't have Nightlife installed, so please ignore me if I'm completely crazy, but couldn't you just delete all characters in your new neighbourhood, package the downtown lots from there and replace the corrupt lots in your existing downtown neighbourhoods with them? Or is downtown different and you can't bulldoze individual lots?

[RainbowTigress]

I don't have Nightlife installed, so please ignore me if I'm completely crazy, but couldn't you just delete all characters in your new neighbourhood, package the downtown lots from there and replace the corrupt lots in your existing downtown neighbourhoods with them? Or is downtown different and you can't bulldoze individual lots?

I think that's what Trepie is doing, but it's not necessary to delete characters since the lots are community lots and don't contain any sims.  It's not even necessary to package the lots.  All you have to do is move them into the Lots bin and then go to the old neighborhood, bulldoze the corrupt lots, and replace them with the new ones.

[Daria]

I'm having this happen with any lot I try to visit in downtown - only while Sims are involved though.  I can get in just fine in editing/build  mode; just can't get Sims to travel there.  They can't get in via taxi or even using their own car.

Maybe someone smart can tell me what's up with it?   This is a sample of what was in my AppWarnings (as per suggestion somewhere above):

WARNING MaterialManager: Unknown material definition 'hottubraisedvaluelod90_materialmask_sub[hottubraisedvaluelod90_materialmask]', handle 532 -- substituting dummy material definition
.\source\GZSceneGraphMaterialManager.cpp(997)
WARNING MaterialManager: Unknown material definition 'treejapanesemaple_layeredjapanesemaplelod90_branchpurple_sub[layeredjapanesemaplelod90]', handle 573 -- substituting dummy material definition

Basically it scrolls on and on like that forever.

I can't help but think this is likely to be a bad sign...

[RainbowTigress]

I'm having this happen with any lot I try to visit in downtown - only while Sims are involved though.  I can get in just fine in editing/build  mode; just can't get Sims to travel there.  They can't get in via taxi or even using their own car.

I see that substituting dummy material in my cheat console log all the time.  It doesn't appear to mean anything serious.  Have you tried entering the lots with debug mode on?  This should allow any errors to pop up and an error log will be written to your logs directory that we can look at.  It will give you an option to cancel, reset, or delete.  Don't hit delete, at least not you have a chance to look over the logs and we can see what is going on.  Sometimes that is the only way out, but I always try everything else I can first.  In my case with the corrupted pool lights, I was able to hit Cancel, once for each pool light on the lot (so on the Spa lot, I believe it was six times), and then it continued loading and let me into the lot.  If you hit delete it will permanently get rid of the pool lights.  I wanted to see where they were so I could delete them myself and put new ones in the same place.

[Daria]

Just checking...so I go into debug mode while playing a Sim family, then drive them to the lot?

[edit]Um, how do I get into debug mode, btw? I did a search for the word in this thread but didn't see any instructions. Apologies for the tech-ignorance![/edit]

[RainbowTigress]

Just checking...so I go into debug mode while playing a Sim family, then drive them to the lot?

[edit]Um, how do I get into debug mode, btw? I did a search for the word in this thread but didn't see any instructions. Apologies for the tech-ignorance![/edit]

Yeah, actually, I play in debug mode all the time and so do several others here.  That way I know when an error occurs.  I put it in my startup cheats file.  It doesn't hurt anything.  Anyway, to enable debug mode (referred to by some as simply "boolprop") open your cheat console box by pressing Ctrl+Shift+C and type in the following:

boolprop testingcheatsenabled true

Hope this helps!

Edit:  Sorry, I spaced out and forgot the "true" at the end.     Thanks for catching that, gynarchy.  I should have been asleep in bed.  (My excuse:  Busy weekend, not enough sleep.  And no, sleep is not just for wusses, it's for humans. )

[gynarchy]

boolprop testingcheatsenabled

You're missing the true/false at the end - boolprop testingcheatsenabled true to turn it on, boolprop testingcheatsenabled false to turn it off.

[Daria]

Here's a sample of what I got from that:

ERROR TSAudio: Duplicate resource instance id found ff93bf13 with existing 0b9eb87e:2da1f2dd:ff93bf13
.\source\TSAudioResourceManager.cpp(1064)
ERROR TSAudio: Duplicate resource instance id found ff523dc5 with existing 0b9eb87e:2da1f2dd:ff523dc5
.\source\TSAudioResourceManager.cpp(1064)
ERROR TSAudio: Duplicate resource instance id found ff17dd59 with existing 0b9eb87e:2da1f2dd:ff17dd59
.\source\TSAudioResourceManager.cpp(1064)

ERROR TSAudioMusic     : Music category (Buy) listed twice in category property set.
.\source\TSAudioMusicManager.cpp(1649)
ERROR TSAudioMusic     : Music category (Build) listed twice in category property set.
.\source\TSAudioMusicManager.cpp(1649)

ERROR GZPersist: Cannot load dependent resource with group ID = 6f0013a4u, instance ID = cbef94a7ffea5bafu, type = e519c933u
.\source\GZPersistSerializer.cpp(204)
ERROR GZPersist: Cannot load dependent resource with group ID = 6f00145fu, instance ID = cbef94a7ffea5bafu, type = e519c933u
.\source\GZPersistSerializer.cpp(204)
ERROR GZPersist: Cannot load dependent resource with group ID = 6f00071bu, instance ID = 8adf160aff82ad0fu, type = e519c933u
.\source\GZPersistSerializer.cpp(204)


Would anyone know what I have to do to make it all work again? That list goes on for ages, btw - that's just a few examples.

If I have to kill that entire Downtown lot, can I reinstall it without ruining my current game?

[radiophonic]

ERROR TSAudio: Duplicate resource instance id found ff93bf13 with existing 0b9eb87e:2da1f2dd:ff93bf13
.\source\TSAudioResourceManager.cpp(1064)
ERROR TSAudio: Duplicate resource instance id found ff523dc5 with existing 0b9eb87e:2da1f2dd:ff523dc5
.\source\TSAudioResourceManager.cpp(1064)
ERROR TSAudio: Duplicate resource instance id found ff17dd59 with existing 0b9eb87e:2da1f2dd:ff17dd59
.\source\TSAudioResourceManager.cpp(1064)

I've had those errors for a long time now (before NightLife and University), they seem like general debug messages rather than fatal messages. I don't think they're anything to worry about.

[jrd]

According to MaxoidTom these messages are harmless, and he was apparently surprised they were still in the retail versions.

My guess is that the debug flag was accidentally left to "on" by some Maxoid.