SOLVED. Mysterious Hut Lot from Bon Voyage (BV) crashes game during load

[KnightSkyKyte]

Hi guys,

The problem I have is that whenever I try to get a sim and his friend to walk to the Mysterious Hut (hidden lot), the game crashes while the Mysterious Hut is loading. This is reproducable.

I have removed ALL hacks and custom content (nothing in the downloads folder, and nothing in the SavedSims folder where I've created my own content). Still crashes.

I cannot get these sims to go to the Mysterious Hut.

As far as it gets is: the loading screen for the Mysterious Hut manages a partial load, but then crashes the game completely, and the lot fails to load.

I have not done anything with that lot - never touched it.

No sims have ever been there, so I cannot say that this lot has ever worked.

Any suggestions?

I could do a re-install, but I'm really not keen on re-installing The Sims 2, University, NL, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Rudolph.

Any advice would be most appreciated - I'm happy to take advice without arguing and post up what does/doesn't work for other people to refer to in future.

Cheers

* Edit to add more info:

I have all expansion packs except the Stuff packs.
The latest patch for BV on the Maxis website as of 1 Dec 2007 is installed.

[J. M. Pescado]

Hmm. How odd. Does this occur in all neighborhoods? Create a test junk neighborhood, delete all characters, THEN install vacationland and create a test sim and try to visit the lot. Does this work?

Other questions: How old is your neighborhood and how long have you played under BV? Did this ALWAYS occur, or is this a recent phenomenon/first time you've ever tried? If the new fresh neighborhood works, does it work to copy the lot file corresponding to the Mysterious Hut over the file in the "bad" neighborhood? If a lot file splice from a "working" test neighborhood does not salvage the hut, then it sounds like there's a problem with corrupted sims, perhaps. In this case, you can try deleting the SDSC of the Witch Doctor (Don't use Deleted 2, just delete the SDSC in SimPE).

Basically, I don't have an answer for this, so I'm just giving you the stabs in the dark, in order, that I would try.

[KnightSkyKyte]

Wow, you're *fast* ! (Thankyou.) Yes, it is odd... very mysterious.

OK, I have only tried one neighbourhood - the Twikkii neighbourhood, which is associated with Pleasantview.

When you say, "Install vacationland", you mean associate the holiday destinations to this new junk neighbourhood, right? (From the context, that's how it looks, but, sometimes I misunderstand.) I will do that tomorrow (when it isn't 11:30 pm my time) and report how it goes.

To answer the other questions, the base neighbourhood (Pleasantville) has been played for a long time, but, I don't have many playable sims (less than 10) and my computer has 2GB of memory (which solved the lot crashing problem when I had a beautiful house with LOTS of CC in it).

Under BV, I have not played long - got the game on Friday, and had the sims visit all the Twikkii vacation lots - the Mysterious Hut was the last desination the sims had left to see.

The crashing on loading of Mysterious Hut has always occurred in this scenario - I have not tried other sims, or other neighbourhoods.

I'm a bit lost when you talk about SDSC, but then, Google is my friend.

Thankyou for your suggestions, I'll give those a try in the recommended order, and report how I go when I find out. (I quite like the splicing idea - I wouldn't have thought of that.)

Cheers!

[KnightSkyKyte]

OK - reporting back now on suggestions since I had a little time to try them out.

I created a new test neighbourhood, no sims, created a sim, and then got him to go to this hut after finding the map. Mysterious hut will not load.

So, I uninstall vacation land, revert back to a pre-BV saved game, and then re-installed BV and patched the game. Created new hood, create new sim, get him to find the map, send to Mysterious Hut... and still, the lot will not load. *shrug*

I don't really know what else to do, other than try a complete fresh new install with no CC and no backup game and then install BV and see if that works. If it doesn't, maybe I got a crummy set of CDs...?

I will report back once I try this. But I'm open to any other suggestions, since I won't have time to try this any time soon.

Thankyou for your suggestions, JM.

[J. M. Pescado]

Try typing LOADLOT "Mysterious Hut", or maybe "The Mysterious Hut", whatever it's called, and seeing if it loads in manual override/no sims mode?

[KnightSkyKyte]

OK - I will try that (LOADLOT Mysterious Hut) tomorrow on my saved, well-played game and see what happens (now it's 12:33 am my time - for bed! Goddammit, not enough hours in the day...).

I did actually squirrel away a "clean install" version of the EA Games folder some time ago, so was able to perform a "clean install, no CC" version of the game with all expansion packs (no stuff packs) in the game.

SUCCESS!!! Mysterious Hut loads. So I conclude that the CD is fine, and the installation of the game was fine (because I did not re-install, I simply re-named the currently played (contains CC, has been played for ages over a number of expansion packs) EA Games directory to something else, and re-named the "EA Games Clean Install" folder and contents I had created as a last resort emergency backup quite some time ago to "EA Games" and ran the program.

Therefore, there must be something wrong with the saved game I had been playing for quite some time over a few expansion packs... I wonder what it is, and I'm determined to find out.

Will report back on how I go with your last suggestion when I am able to make some time to get at the game and tackle it again.

[J. M. Pescado]

So, the Mysterious Hut crashes only when you attempt to visit it with a sim, even in a fresh, clean neighborhood? Did you DAC that neighborhood before, or after, installing Vacationlands?

[KnightSkyKyte]

OK, if I am playing the game I have had for ages, then, even if I create a brand new custom neighbourhood that does not have any lots or sims and I had to create a lot and a sim so I could send one to vacationland, then yes, the Mysterious Hut would still crash when attempting to send a sim there. I confess, I did not DAC in the custom test neighbourhood I created because when I created a brand new custom 'hood, it did not contain any characters or lots at all, and I had to create a lot and a new sim so I had someone to send to vacationland (was I supposed to DAC anyway? It just doesn't seem logical to DAC in an empty 'hood, but if it's necessary, I will go back and do it exactly as suggested.)

The fresh, clean neighbourhood was created after installing Vacationlands EP.

What we know is this:

* All EPs installed (no stuff packs!) - with clean install EA Games folder (never been played), can send a sim to Mysterious Hut, no crashing and no  problem.
* When replace clean install EA Games folder with EA Games folder containing my old, well-played game, then crashing of game occurs when send sim to MS, even if a custom test neighbourhood is created and a new sim is sent to a newly created Twikkii holiday desination for that hood. Removal of the DL and SavedSims folders does not solve the problem.

These things lead me to think that the problem:

1. is not due to any faulty installation of the BV EP - the installation is fine
2. is not due to any custom content or hacks


About the loadlot cheat - I tried the

loadlot "put the name of the lot in here if there are spaces in the lot name"

cheat, but, it did not work for me; this is what happens:

this is what I entered into the cheat window on one occasion:     
loadlot "The Mysterious Hut"

The result:
ERROR TSCheatSystem: ERROR IN CHEAT: Unknown command
      in command 'loadlot "The Mysterious Hut"'. OnErrorClearParserTempState called.
 with command loadlot "The Mysterious Hut"
.\source\TSCheatSystem.cpp(68)

LOADLOT, LoadLot, loadLot and Loadlot do not seem to work either. Also tried the same command for a lot that I knew the name of in a different neighbourhood. Still no joy. Tried without quotation marks. Wish I knew what I was doing wrong, darn and buggrit.

I'm sure I will think of something else to try, but right now, the wheel is spinning and the hamster is dead. Tomorrow morning I get a new one delivered.

Thankyou for persisting with me through this J.M. - I appreciate your help.

[J. M. Pescado]

It is odd that loadlot is not working for you, because it definitely works for me as given. Perhaps debug mode must be enabled inside your userstartupcheat? SimPE can do this for you.

However, if the EAGAME~1 folder replacement creates a noncrashing Mysterious Hut, have you tried the obvious culprit of purging all cache files (groups.cache, etc.)?

[KnightSkyKyte]

OK, I'm a dickhead. Go point and laugh. But now the answer is closer.

I removed the DL folder and the SavedSims folder again, went to the test n'hood, created a new lot and sim (obviously no cc in it, given he was created from scratch with no access to cc content), sent this sim to the Twikkii Island, got him to find the map, and YES, *he* can get to the hut - note, this is my well-played game, not the clean install version.

Now this was a little different to the last time I removed the DL and SS folders in that the sims I sent to the Mysterious Hut *still had their cc in them* even though those folders were removed. Maybe those sims - still containing potentially offending cc - was the problem on sending them (which is one of the things you said in the first place - maybe it's a corrupt sim or sims).

I'm going to go back to those "corrupt" sims and change their appearance to no cc after removing the DL and SS folders, and see if that helps.

[J. M. Pescado]

* J. M. Pescado P&L

[KnightSkyKyte]

OK, I know how to work around this problem - so it is in effect solved. Just in case anyone else runs into this problem, here's the work-around in sufficient detail to solve the problem:

The problem was CC on the sims I was sending to the Mysterious Hut.

The workaround was this:

* Take out the Downloads folder and the SavedSims folders
* In the game, before sending the sims to the Mysterious Hut, I did two things:
                            1. Changed the clothes to Maxis clothing (because they were still wearing CC even though I removed the folders named above)
                            2. Changed the sims appearance to Maxis hairstyles/makeup/accessories etc. (This action changes the face and eyes of the sim so that custom content left over is removed.)
                            NOTE that if you do not do 1 and 2 above, you will still get the problem, even if you remove the DL and SS folders! (This is where I screwed up.)

The Mysterious Hut then loaded when sending the sims to walk there.

Once I finished with the Mysterious Hut, I returned the sims to Home (temporary home at the hotel) and then saved the game.

Exit game.
Put DL and SS folders back in.
Restart game.

To restore the sims back to their original beautifully decked out custom content forms, I simply:
- changed their clothes
- changed their appearance in the mirror.

Just in case this is important, at no stage did I disable custom content through the Maxis "enable/disable custom content" option during this whole operation.

I know this is cumbersome, and it would be more thorough to remove the CC files causing the problem, but, I really am too fond of all the CC those sims were wearing to remove any of it from the game and said to myself, "stuffit - I'm not planning on visiting the Myserious Hut more than once for each playable sim".

**** Here ends the sermon****

J.M., thankyou for your feedback, patience and helpful suggestions, I appreciate it.


* KSK goes back to lurking and staying out of trouble

                       

[J. M. Pescado]

I still don't know why CC would crash the game entirely, unless it's fundamentally corrupt CC that will crash in other things as well, like the old buggy "dress as top" meshes.

[KnightSkyKyte]

Sounds quite possible that I might have CC meshes that crash the game to the desktop (obviously, SOMETHING in my CC does it).

There were... 4 custom meshes (all male) on my sims - two hairstyles, one clothing and one accessory. I'll check next time I send them to Twikkii.

It wouldn't really be too much of a pain in the arse to find out which of the cc was causing the problem nowdays (the game loads much faster now - 8 minutes vs. 30 minutes since I now have a computer with 3 GB RAM and a new 3D graphics card with 500 MB memory). When I find it, I'll remember to report back on what the CC was. But, I imagine that it won't be for quite a while though.

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, it's pretty easy and fast to isolate it by binary search. Assuming 8 minutes to load your game with a full CC load, you will isolate the crash in O( minutes, as everytime you load the game, it would be loading with only half the previous CC load and thus booting in half the time. Don't underestimate the power of the Dark Side. Even if you had 30000 items, you would still find them in only 15 game loads, each with half again the previous load.

[KnightSkyKyte]

* KSK laughs

The loading time is not the problem! The problem is that I am lazy! Now that I have a satisficing method of dealing with the problem, my desire to invest any more time in this issue in the near future (within this week) has diminished.

So, roughly about an hour or two to find the sucker for a DL content of about 5,000 files then. Although the load time will reduce with less CC, there is still a finite amount of time required to load the game in any case.

But, your point is well taken, and binary sorting is definitely the best method for finding dodgy content, I think - particularly when the method is used along with a little thought (e.g. narrow down to 50 files, and if one is a mesh file and the rest are recolors - I'd take a risk on potentially wasting time and just remove the mesh file).

Anyway, I will find it when I have a nice chunk of time to myself.

[kuronue]

..how is your sim still sporting custom clothes and hair after you've removed the downloads folder? Shouldn't he be wearing some sort of maxis default from which it was all cloned? You did quit the game before removing the downloads folder, right?