Less Awesome Than Everyone

[sabra]

My son wanted to make a Christmas neighborhood, so we started by downloading a ton of Christmas objects, from the official site and a lot of other places, and a terrain paint made by a very well known TSR artist.  We built a house, decorated it, and snowified the lot with the terrain paint.

Didn't I read JUST THE OTHER DAY HERE that terrain paints tend to FUBAR the game?  

I've been extraordinarily lucky with the Sims until now, because I'm so cautious that I don't usually install anything the least bit dubious, but my luck has apparently run out.  I can't get into any lots that I've ever played before--only lots that are  brand new or that I haven't visited, like some of the existing Maxis families. The game just hangs in trying to open the lot, until I have to force a reboot.  I did disable the terrain paint (along with all of the other objects I'd downloaded, just to be safe) but no love.

Is there anything I can do short of a reinstall at this point?

Thanks.

Is there anything I can do short of uninstalling and reinstalling? 

[BlueSoup]

Hmm...sorry to hear about your troubles.  However, all of the terrain paint issues I've come across have only been if you deleted/disabled them after they were placed on a lot, and then only when attempting to package the lot.

Try enabling everything, and check the error logs to see if anything comes up that seems related.

[Sandilou]

My usual solution is Norton GoBack.  It allows me to go back to previous 'safe' points and saves me having to make back up copies of the EA folder.  I've found it useful in such circumstances.   Do you have a similar product on your pc? 

[Brynne]

Is that like system restore, sandilou?

[ZephyrZodiac]

Can't be quite the same, as System Restore doesn't change where your sims game has got to.  (Or, thank goodness) remove all your downloads that you got after the restore point).

[Sandilou]

Norton GoBack lists loads of times to choose from  - like an hour ago, 4 hours ago, 3 days ago etc.  It always picks a 'safe point'.  There's also the option to launch your pc from the last known successful launch - which in my case is crucial, as my screen driver's slower than windows and needs atleast two launches to find its feet.  I used to think that I had a virus or spyware, so I reinstalled everything from scratch - only to discover that it still did it.  

If my pc gets into a real state, then I use GoBack.  In truth, I've mainly used it when I've added a damaging download to TS2.  Rather than go through the TS2Manager tool or Sims Installer, I've used GoBack instead. It does the work while I make myself a cuppa. Lazy Sim-me.  GoBack is like a timewarp - any game play or downloads added since that safepoint simply disappear - but after GoBack's loaded, it gives you the option to salvage any of those files that were changed during the interim time (between safepoint and crashing).  I never do - because at least one of them must have caused the problem.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I use McAfee, and not Norton, so how would I get that without it costing an arm and a leg?

[Sandilou]

Norton GoBack I got 'free' with a site licenced Norton AntiVirus.  I also bought Spy Sweeper.  Needless to say, the whole lot was half price within 3 weeks of me buying it (from PC World), but I desperately needed them at the time, as my pc was running like a snail because it was overloaded with spyware.  There were over 100 cookies on my pc when I finally ran Spy Sweeper.  I thought that Spy Sweeper was making it up as it went along - but they were all listed.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I just use the Yahoo Anti-spy now, but I had to upgrade my McAfee and that does the same thing, but Yahoo only takes a minute and I can do it while I'm on-line.  So the Norton thing would only be available if I had Norton Anti-virus running?  Pity.

[sabra]

Thanks for the suggestions--I had actually backed up my game a week ago, which I forgot about, and so was able to restore it from before the point where it got corrupted.  But I would still like to know what I did in order to mess it up so thoroughly.  Next time I'll try to remember the debug function before I wipe it clean.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I've never got any help from the debug function, myself!

[Brynne]

Hmmmm...I got Norton anti virus with my laptop. Would I have goback, as well? I think I need that program!

[ZephyrZodiac]

It certainly sounds useful, and if you have downloads that you've paid for that might get lost, you could always burn them to a CD first.

Though it would be annoying if you'd just spent hours sorting out stuff, just to have it all go back to how it was!

[J. M. Pescado]

Thanks for the suggestions--I had actually backed up my game a week ago, which I forgot about, and so was able to restore it from before the point where it got corrupted.  But I would still like to know what I did in order to mess it up so thoroughly.

I'm thinking you ignored the above warning about "Terrain paints are bad, 'mkay?". That might be it.

[Motoki]

Well the annoying thing is, it's a very serious bug and they've allowed it to go on for a long time. When Tom came here after NL came out, it apparently was the first he had heard of it too, but it didn't make it into the patch. 

[kewian]

I am so glad I read this thread  as I had downloaded some terrain paints... thank you for the warnings. NO BFBVS for my game now.

[Sandilou]

Norton GoBack is a stand alone product in a separate box.  It comes with its own registration code.  I'm not on commission, otherwise I'd plug it more.  It's my safety net. 

Quite a few websites have free snow terrain downloads, but setting snow up seemed too fiddly (read messing with codes that I don't really understand) - so I've left them well alone.  JM's warning simply confirmed my suspicions. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

As I think I said before, when it's something they actually provide the equipment for players to do, along with walls and floors, the least they could do would be to make damn sure it's safe!

[baratron]

How exactly do terrain paints turn the game into a BFBVFS? Or rather, how does this BFBVFS manifest?

[BlueSoup]

Once you have a terrain on any lot, that terrain is forever in your game, and if you remove/disable it, it can crash your game when you try to load the lot (I haven't experienced this myself) or if you try to package the lot to a file or the exchange it will crash the game.  This will happen even if you reinstate the terrain file before attempting to package it.

[ZephyrZodiac]

In other words, any nice house you've made using custom terrain shouldn't be moved  or bulldozed even if you move the family out.

[BlueSoup]

In other words, any nice house you've made using custom terrain shouldn't be moved  or bulldozed even if you move the family out.

No, you can bulldoze the lot, you just can't remove the terrain paints if they're on any other lot.

[ZephyrZodiac]

You mean, basically that you would need to bulldoze every one of your houses with terrain paints, and then you could remove the blasted things from your Downloads folder for good?

[BlueSoup]

Basically.  Not only the ones with terrains paints, but even the ones that used to have terrain paints.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Which is ok for one's own creations - I mean, you'd probably remember if you'd used them, but how would you know with a downloaded house?  I mean, the housebuilder could have been playing around for ages with them, then decided they didn't like them!