For those BBS-phobics....there's a new patch out.

[ZephyrZodiac]

You mean post patch I can sling ALL my custom terrain paints into the recycle bin if I want?  without causing a BFBVFS?  if so, that's fantastic!

[MissDoh]

I installed the patch 2 days ago after I previously removed JM obsolete fix + crammyboy juggling portal fix.

My game runs well so far.

[BlueSoup]

I didn't actually delete the terrains that I had downloaded, I only disabled them.  When I looked in the terrain catalogue, they weren't there, so I imagine it works the same way.  But I didn't test that specifically.

If someone wants to test it, be my guest, or I can do it when I get home from work later.  I still have the test game loaded.

[myskaal]

Things I've noticed after installing the patch:

Voice to Animation is still screwed up when there is more than one sim talking.

If a uni student starts to Go To Class and I cancel the action, the At Class icon remains on their thumbnail until I allow them to go to class and return again.

A very strange drag walk ...looks like it's happening where that strange stuck in motion animation would have before, now though they drag themselves through the animation in slow motion.

"Jumping" to another action. Example: I had one sim eating dinner at the kitchen table. She finished and decided to play some chess. Stood up, pushed in the chair and then warped to the chess table where she was already pulling out the chair to sit down.

Didn't have much time to play last night but will today and will probably come back with more findings.

[gali]

I deleted on purpose all the downloaded terrains, to see if the game will explode. Nothing happened - the game runs smoothly as always.

But, I don't recommend others to do that - they can do it at their own risk....

[BlueSoup]

Yes, Gali, but did you try to package the lots that had terrains?

[maxon]

Maxon, I had a trojan on my pc account the day before yesterday, which I got rid of.  That could have done some damage prior to this install.  Others here have downloaded the patch without any problems.

It may not be the patch, as I had a trojan on my pc the day before yesterday.  I got rid of it, and the game had been working ok.

Ah - ok.  I'm sorry to hear about the Trojan grief.  I think I'm going to try patching the game now.

I'm going out now and may be some time....

[Sandilou]

The Trojan was trojan-downloader-toolbarbiz.  Spysweeper seemed to remove it.

The spyware was MSMSGS which came with an MSN toolbar update.   It updates everytime you log on and attaches itself to your start up menu.  I removed it from Regedit/currentuser/windows/run  (or thereabouts).  Spysweeper picked it up and deleted it, and I did a disk clean up to remove any bits held in temp. file.

Subsequent sweeps with Spysweeper have been clean.  Norton didn't pick up any of it.  It usually does, so I was surprised.  I guess I'd better update Norton.

I don't update  MSN because this is a known issue.  Each time I've had spyware, it's been attached to an MSN update.  This time, I got caught out with a #select all# option when adding to favourites, so it slipped through.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, if it's getting in that way! - I guess we'd all better watch out!  And they have the nerve to offer anti-spyware software!  (Probably all a trick, they install the spyware, then when you download the anti-spy, it finds them!  I know I tried it, it found a few the first time, but after that Yahoo beat it every time!

But I would suggest that if you have a registry cleaner, you use it just to make sure the damn things didn't damage anything important!

[witch]

Yep, I corrupted the lot every which way I could think of pre-patch.  Then I installed the patch, and tried every which way to get it to crash and it wouldn't.

I also packaged the lot after going into the terrain tool and painting the entire lot with a Maxis terrain, with custom terrains enabled, and the only thing that packaged was the lotsegmentforupload.  The only thing I haven't tried yet is packaging the lot with a custom terrain painted, to see how many terrains come with it, but that'll be next.

I'm confident it's fixed. 

Edit:  And it only packages the terrains you actually use.

YAY!!

Bluesoup, thank you. This has been one of the biggest nuisances of the game for me. We tried telling Maxoid Tom and he never responded on the board to that issue, I wasn't hopeful we'd get a fix anytime soon.

I think this issue is so important, I've quoted all just to bring it to people's attention again.

This will add enormously to the stability of the game for all those players that exchange houses, particularly on the bbs. There must have been such a mess...

And lastly, I will be able to download lots again. Although I think I'll wait for OFB rather than install the patch. Cheers Bluesoup for doing that testing.

[BlueSoup]

Oh I know, I'm extremely happy about this as well...it was probably my biggest pet peeve and I didn't even have custom terrains! (anymore)

I'm looking forward to being able to download lots again, I've been really limited in that, and even lots I thought were safe turned out to have a couple of terrains.   They hit the recycle bin faster than you could say recycle bin, lol.

I'm still going to test the deleted terrains later this afternoon, and I'll post my results.

[BlueSoup]

Okay, sorry for the double-posting, but I wanted to be sure of the thread being bumped for those interested in the terrain testing results.

I've deleted all the custom terrains from my test game with the Clean Installer, then loaded the game and saw the lot that I had previously painted with one of the terrain paints.  In the neighbourhood view, the terrain is still visible.  I packaged the lot to file with no problems whatsoever.  After I packaged the lot, I entered the lot and the ground was default grass, as it should be.

TERRAINS ARE FIXED!

[Sandilou]

ZZ I don't have a registry cleaner.  One of my brothers works in IT.  He has alleged that MSN used to flag up a particular piece of spyware (a cookie counter), however MSN couldn't get rid of it, so they struck a deal with the firm and no longer flag it up, but use it as part of their own intelligence gathering systems.  He's a Firefox user, and uses Yahoo rather than MSN.  I'd have to ring him to find out the name of that particular spyware.

[ZephyrZodiac]

You can download trial versions of registry cleaners.  they won't actually clean up your files, (well a token few, perhaps) but they will at least scan your registry and you can see what is corrupted. I use both PCDocPro and Registry Mechanic.  I think of the two, Registry Mechanic is more thorough, but just having a trial costs nothing, although PCDocPro is very persistent with email attempts to persuade you to buy.

[Sandilou]

Thanks, ZZ.

[jrd]

Or you can use the (old) free Regcleaner. http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/index.html#RegCleaner

I don't see the aditional value in the new version (payware jv16 powertools).

[Sandilou]

Thanks, Jordi.  I'm off to try it, and the Registry First Aid as well. 

On a separate note, I figured out that my game is probably messed up anyway, because I haven't been able to use EA's Management Tool for months.  It crashes while loading.  I thought it was because I had too many downloads and it just cardiac'd and collapsed from the sheer effort of scanning them all, but upon reflection, it's more likely that I've got corrupt files somewhere.

I'm sorely tempted to do a manual uninstall, but that would mean losing Matyville, unless I decide to save it on CD.  I'm still not convinced that EA have fixed the remote control car.  They were supposed to have done it with the Uni patch, but people were still getting blank icons.  I so want to test this out.

[Paperbladder]

Two days ago I installed NLp2 and it works fine for me.  I even kept in all the MATY hacks that were in the package that day, and I believe that included the obselete ones.  I don't think it resetted anything like it did on NLp1, but I'm thinking about Nuking my neighborhood anyway because I removed an eye that affects about 40% of my playable sims.  They'll probably end up going to default or something like that if I don't nuke it.

I wouldn't doubt them including NLp2 in OFB, heck it's been a practice since TS1 to include patches and install them even if you didn't need them (You got the Deluxe patch if you installed Superstar even if you didn't have that expansion).  Most of their "fixes" back then actually came from the patch, in Superstar they didn't even attempt to fix anything and the things they claimed to fix were already fixed by TS1:Up1.  I believe that since the cores were divided that if you don't have the expansion it won't install the patch for it, but If you've got Nightlife it'll install NLp2 and install Unip2 for University.  It'll install TS2p3(Is this correct?) no matter what though.

[RainbowTigress]

When you install a new expansion pack, it will automatically check your game and see if it is up-to-date.  If it's not, then the patch will be applied.  It will actually contact the EA server and see if there are any patches that need to be installed.  It did this when I installed Uni and NL, because I had trouble installing Uni with the first patch.  I uninstalled and reinstalled TS2 only, then when I installed Uni, it applied the patch.  I didn't have the problem when I installed NL, but it said it was checking for updates.

Sandilou:  You shouldn't lose Matyville if you uninstall TS2.  As long as you save your neighborhood folder to another location on your hard drive, it will be safe, and you can copy it back over after you've reinstalled.  I think the installer asks if you want to keep your saved games, but I'd back it up somewhere just to be safe.  Also, you'll want to save your Downloads and Saved Sims folders somewhere else as well.

[witch]

Okay, sorry for the double-posting, but I wanted to be sure of the thread being bumped for those interested in the terrain testing results.

I've deleted all the custom terrains from my test game with the Clean Installer, then loaded the game and saw the lot that I had previously painted with one of the terrain paints.  In the neighbourhood view, the terrain is still visible.  I packaged the lot to file with no problems whatsoever.  After I packaged the lot, I entered the lot and the ground was default grass, as it should be.

TERRAINS ARE FIXED!

YESSSS!

Woo Hoo!!!

[Emma]

Thankyou Blue for testing that out for us!

[agcons]

I installed the patch yesterday, first unsetting "read-only" on all the objects.package files, and removing my hacks folder to desktop.  The installation was trouble-free, and I moved the hacks folder back into the game.

So far I've logged about 3 hours of game play on three different lots, and no problems.  I haven't tried to package a lot yet as I will have to build new:  all the others (occupied or unoccupied) use a Maxis terrain which was applied before the patch.

[Sandilou]

I did use the Registry tool - there was no obvious damage, although I did chuck out a few dodgy looking folders with % in their titles.  I didn't use the First Aid tool, because it tried to access the internet and my Norton Security flagged it as high risk; I've been there before where I've ignored Norton and subsequently got spyware.

I couldn't resist the urge to purge;  I did an uninstall on each game, then deleted the EA folders manually.  I must say, it felt good.   I did save my EA folders from each user account with my favourite hoods, including Matyville. Later on today I'll reinstall the games and the new Patch.  Then I'll run EA's Management Tool to see if that works properly now.  After that I'll try and run my old EA folders and see what happens.   But I still think that my Program File/EA/TS2/Uni/Nightlife was damaged, rather than there being a problem with the Patch.  The Patch seems to be working fine for others with all their Maty mods in place.

[RainbowTigress]

Yeah, I'm willing to bet that was the case.  I'm looking forward to hearing how your game runs with the new install.

I don't think folders with % in them are necessarily bad.  Sometimes system files use that to signify a type of variable to the operating system or a spaceholder in a filename or web address.  So just be careful when you delete stuff, and always have a backup! 

[ZephyrZodiac]

I tend not to delete anything that belongs in Windows folders - too nervous, I guess!

Sandilou, once you've reinstalled everything, including the patch, make sure you change all the objects.package files to read only.