Sims Can't Go Home!

[skoop]

Whenever I send my Sims to a community lot, I can't get them home. If I click on the phone booth, or try to get them to walk to another lot, the game goes into pause mode, and I cannot unpause. The save button is greyed out and the only way I can get back to the game is to exit to the neighborhood without saving. I only have MATY hacks and ACR in my game. I have all EPs. I am too unawesome to be on top of the details...for instance, it happened with a challenge sim from TSR before I installed Free Time, but I never tried with one of my regular families. Now it has happened with one of my regular sims. But, I did move my sims to a new neighborhood, so I suppose that could have borked them. I can still play, just can't have any useful time on community lots...can't save when I leave. Is there any hope of salvaging my neighborhood?

[gynarchy]

How did you move your Sims to the new hood? Unless you cloned them and recreated them in CAS, your best bet is to burninate and start over.

[skoop]

Yeah, I was afraid of that. I was too lazy to clone them. I guess my next question is, what files do I save so I can recreate them when I burninate? It won't be a tragedy if I can't resurrect them, I don't have any trouble nuking my neighborhoods and beginning again. Funny, I don't like to have them die in-game, though.

[gynarchy]

There are a few tutorials out there on cloning Sims, but I use the steps jolrei outlined here. Moving occupied lots from one neighborhood to another is a Very Bad Thing™ and should never be attempted.

[skoop]

Thanks for the clues. I am soooo not awesome. I think someone in another thread said they were dangerously unawesome. Uhh, yeah.

[Tchan]

This has happened to me and I haven't moved my sims. None of my sims can go home after visiting a community lot, usually (but not limited to) one on a lot they themselves own.

[Alexx]

It cannot happen without any reason,play with cheat enabled and try to "catch"some error messages.Also remove all custom objects from comm. lot and try again.

[Tchan]

The first one to complain had absolutely 0 custom objects. It was a pre-created Maxis shop (flower shop Downtown) that my sim had just bought. The second one, admittedly, was full of nothing but custom content. When I went from Buy Mode to Play Mode, my sims were unclickable, in both cases. I'm almost positive I had no conflicting hacks, too. I haven't tried it since installing FT, though, so it might have been a problem that's fixed itself. I'll see.

[Strangel]

Also, for the OP, TSR's "challenge" lots ARE a VBT. They are, as far as I remember, just like any other occupied lot. Transference is the same as moving sims to a new neighborhood without cloning.

[Alexx]

When I went from Buy Mode to Play Mode, my sims were unclickable, in both cases.

How can you have Buy Mode enabled for community lots without appropriate hack?Or you mean that you use dormspecifictool cheat?
If you have any Buy/Build enabled hack surely remove this one,it may cause your problem.

[Invisigoth]

I'm pretty sure that Tchan was talking about owned business lots that the playable sim owns.

[Tchan]

Yeah, I was. These are the businesses that my sim owns. It works fine and I can get home from ones I don't own. It's usually when I click on the mailbox that the option to control my sims goes, but last time I switched straight back from Buy Mode and didn't have the option to do anything.

[cwykes]

Also, for the OP, TSR's "challenge" lots ARE a VBT. They are, as far as I remember, just like any other occupied lot. Transference is the same as moving sims to a new neighborhood without cloning.

good thing I made a separate hood to put all of them in then!  They looked OK with CI when I installed them - no extra character files.  Are you saying that some builders used CI to clean out the extra character data, but didn't clean out the "family segment"?   That would give us unlinked memories and relationships to the deleted sims.  Would it also give us stray bits of swaf and genetics data for the deleted sims?

Maybe I ought to have a look at the 'hood in SimPE, not sure if it's worth the effort though. By it's very nature it's not a long-term proposition! Do the challenge - move on.   It's actually the SWAF bit that would be worrying - doing a challenge where the kids acquired "used" swaf files would be annoying!  The hood is too big now to crawl through the 'hood memory sim by sim (any sims in particular I should look at?) - I've used the lotdebugger clean up options which gets rid of some bad stuff.   Unlinked relationships are easy to delete - just wish SimPE didn't still call some real things "unknown".   

I confess that I'm making a challenge family for them.   It may not be a great challenge, but best I know, my file is clean.  The two sims were made in CAS and went straight into the lot - they've never met anyone.  Anyone wants to check it over, PM me and I'll send the file.  I want to fiddle with the genetics in SimPE before I finally submit.

[Kyna]

Cwykes, some of those challenge families have memories of dead relatives for whom no grave exists on the lot, so they are memories of non-existent sims.  A couple of examples: Robin Banks' lot had a place which looked like it might be where his parents were buried, but their graves weren't on the lot.  Ann Chovie had dead parents, memories of them, and a family tree showing her connection to her uncle through her father, but the graves of her parents weren't on her lot.

[cwykes]

Thanks for the examples.  I guess the Looney family have got a few problems as well then.   The original package for the lot would have had files in for the dead family members wouldn't it, so I guess somebody deleted them in the interests of cleaning up the download.  Ooops!

[Sigmund]

This has happened to me and I haven't moved my sims. None of my sims can go home after visiting a community lot, usually (but not limited to) one on a lot they themselves own.

I had this problem when I had TJ's visitor controller in my downloads folder.

[jsalemi]

This has happened to me and I haven't moved my sims. None of my sims can go home after visiting a community lot, usually (but not limited to) one on a lot they themselves own.

I had this problem when I had TJ's visitor controller in my downloads folder.

The painting version stopped working as of BV.  You have to get the beta of the new version (you have to register at the inteen site to see his beta forum) for BV and FT.

[J. M. Pescado]

Once again, I point the blame squarely at tight pants. If you're stuck and can see your sim, try waving the Magic Wand around.

[Nec]

This happened to a sim on vacation. I sent him to a community lot, then back to the hotel. It hood view it showed that he was there, but it was in buy mode every time the lot loaded. I used the magic wand to no avail. I ended up restoring a previous backup as a result. I had to, because he was the only one in a household of 7 to go on vacation, so that rendered the other lot unplayable as well.