Nightlife bugs

[MutantBunny]

All my settings are on high. Once in awhile cards will show up. Often, they 'play' without cards. But that 'won't cancel card playing' is the most annoying. I lost a few hours play because the sim would not get up and I had to 'end task' to get out.

[sanmonroe]

Between pillow fights, playing instruments, and now the card table, I think I will go insane.

[nikita]

After reading this and the other bugs post, I have to say that my problems are few and far between so far (I've only been playing for a couple of days now so I'll probably have to eat my words in a week or so from now).

My only big game-stopping problem (or at least foul-mouth inducing problem) is that I play Veronaville and pretty much only Veronaville.  When installing NL, I removed my Downloads folder, all cc, and my Neighborhoods folder.  I install, all was fine and I set up a Downtown in V-ville to make sure everything was working down there.  When I thought everything was good, I closed the game and put all of my custom content and Neighborhoods back in. 

Aside from some hack conflicts which I just fixed by taking them all out, everything was fine save for a few minor glitches and stuff that I maybe just haven't had because I haven't tried them yet (cars, karaoke booth, dancing with relatives).

I noticed that there were a lot of buildings in my Downtown and it wasn't until the second day that I toggled to day and realized that many of them were identical to my Academie le Tour lots.  Going into my college town, I realized that they were in fact those lots as those lots were now missing in my campus.  The college lots were superimposed on the Downtown lots so most of them were right in the middle of streets and intersection or covering the real downtown lots.  To make matters worse, they had been changed to Downtown lots in both name and lot size(my giant domed library was renamed the Hub and while originally a 5x5 lot was now changed and treated as a 3x3).  Because of the lot size change, I can't replace any of them back in my college.

I have another college town in V-ville which was untouched and everything there is fine.  I'm not sure whether this is a NL bug or maybe because I broke the rule of not installing eps in order.  Though Uni was already installed when I set up NL, I had removed my Neighborhoods folder and so there was no University in Veronaville when I set up my Downtown.  I'm hoping this is the problem and it's not a bug because the damn Downtown stole all my favorite and not-so-easily reproducible buildings from le Tour and I would hate if this happened again.

[Brynne]

I had something weird happen: my view distance option, after what fifty saves and restarts and it didn't save, finally saved! Out of the blue, it decided to save.

Another thing I've been looking for--is anyone having issues with sims playing poker and there are no cards?? Chips rol, bets are made, no carsd in sight. Also, last time I played, I had a sim in bladder failure, ready to pee at any moment and I could not cancel his playing. I finally had to task manager out. ?

That's happened to me twice, where I couldn't cancel out the poker-playing. The crossed out icon just stuck in the queue. I used boolProp to reset them.
I think the poker table has got to have the highest advertising level possible, because that's all my sims want to do. It's worse than the pool table. And they will keep playing no matter how hungry or tired they are. More than once I've had a sim jump up to pee on the floor. And then he'd sit back down and play.

[Hook]

I noticed one of my missing animation logs has a lot of entries for the poker table. 

MissingAnim: 2399 __no_ fn obj a  bb x 000 .... 0 Accessory - Card...o2a-cardtable-poker-dealcard-dealself 34 8238 548
MissingAnim: 2799 __no_ fn obj a  bb x 000 .... 0 Accessory - Card...o2a-cardtable-poker-dealself-rightcard 33 8238 548
MissingAnim: 3799 __no_ fn obj a  bb x 000 .... 0 Accessory - Card...o2a-cardtable-poker-dealcard-dealself 34 8238 548

Etc, etc, etc.  This might cause cards to not show up.

As for the inability to get Sims to quit playing poker, I guess it's time to edit all the downtown lots to remove all the poker tables.  I'd hate to have a great date going and have to force error on my date to get her off the table.  I suspect it would cancel the date without a score.

I still want a "Shoo, dammit!" option that would cancel anything a Sim was doing at the time.  Maybe then we could get the headmaster out of a hot tub, or get Sims off the poker table.

Hook

[HRH Posie]

Hook, I've been using the selector option of the InSIMenator to make NPCs and/or townies selectable.  I generally pause the game, change the status, cancel their queue then make them unselectable.  This works for the headmaster without cancelling the visit

[MissDoh]

As for the inability to get Sims to quit playing poker, I guess it's time to edit all the downtown lots to remove all the poker tables.  I'd hate to have a great date going and have to force error on my date to get her off the table.  I suspect it would cancel the date without a score.

I still want a "Shoo, dammit!" option that would cancel anything a Sim was doing at the time.  Maybe then we could get the headmaster out of a hot tub, or get Sims off the poker table.

Hook

Problem you have seems weird to me, I resetted my neighborhoods by deleting the C;/mydocuments/eagames/thesims2 folder, I started from there and in my downtown I can both "shoo" poker players and quit playing poker.  I don't have hacks or any mod in my game.  If you have some, could one of them be causing this problem?  Or maybe having boolprop on could make this happen?  I am just wondering why I can and you cannot.

[Hook]

I am just wondering why I can and you cannot.

Some Sims shoo just fine.  Others don't.  One possibility is that it's related to using "Ask to Join" which seems to sometimes cause unshooable actions.  I've seen this happen with performing on instruments as well as the poker table.  Normally I don't care what the other Sims are doing, but my Sim's date is a special case.

I've never had a problem with cancelling an action on a selectable Sim (except for bed making, after it's started, or putting a coffee cup down instead of dragging it all over the lot to a special table).

Some Sims will continue performing some actions and be immune to shoo, chat, admire, etc.  Sometimes you can get them out of the action by repeatedly requesting interactions as each times out.  It sometimes acts as if there are several "play poker" etc actions queued up for that Sim and you have to go through all of them before it cancels.  This is just a guess. 

I won't use inSIMenator, but I might put Merola's Mind Control Mirror on lots just in case it's needed.  Trouble is, selecting the headmaster using the mirror cancels the headmaster scenario.

Hook

[HRH Posie]

I must admit I've only recently started to use the mod.  Previously I wouldn't go near it because it has a function that I strongly disagree with.  However apart from that it does have some useful functions.  I'm surprised the select option is so different compared to Merola's mind control mirror though.

Missdoh I have testingCheatsEnabled in my startup file, have done for months.  In addition I have added a couple of hacks back to my game.  I haven't seen the poker table problem however I haven't used it that extensively yet.

[RainbowTigress]

I must admit I've only recently started to use the mod.  Previously I wouldn't go near it because it has a function that I strongly disagree with.  However apart from that it does have some useful functions.  I'm surprised the select option is so different compared to Merola's mind control mirror though.

May I ask what function that you disagree with?  I must admit you have me curious.

[sara_dippity]

I guess my mind is clogged with things like how it's ok for a family Sim to have a lifetime want to graduate three children from college, but it's not ok for a teen to have a lifetime want to max a career that's only available to college grads. 

No kidding.

[Regina]

I tried reading through this whole thread but no doubt I've missed some things.  (And oh, don't you all just love it when the game decides a superior piece of hardware you add to your computer all of a sudden is somehow inferior to what you just took out?  TS2 alone did that when I upgraded my video card!)

One bug I noticed and posted about on the BBS is that beds don't seem to work too well after they've been put into inventory.  I moved a family and stuck most of their furnishings in their inventories.  Once they arrived, I took their stuff out and started placing it.  Well, the beds wouldn't allow me to place them with the headboard against a wall--it was as if there was another object blocking its way.  Then to top it off, those beds couldn't be used--there was a 'no actions available' message on them.  After I posted this on the BBS there were quite a few people who joined in saying they had the same problem, and one had also had problems with the most expensive wardrobe.

Then last night I discovered something else that's happening.  I had a neighborhood that I decided to recycle, so I used the 'delete all characters' code and decided to start fresh.  One of my little simmies started to work on helping to generate Downtownies by visiting various Downtown lots.  So far there are quite a few sims generated so I decided she might as well see if she could find someone appealing in the mix.  So far, she can't stand any of the Downtownies (she's a pleasure seeking sim with reasonable turn-ons and turn-offs) and I got to wondering why so I loaded up SimPE to take a backdoor peek at these sims' aspirations, etc.  Out of 40 sims autonomously generated in that neighborhood (both Downtownies and Service Workers) not one of them has a Pleasure Seeker aspiration.  Does anyone besides me think there's something wrong with this picture?

On top of that, not one single vampire has been autonomously generated, although Mrs. Crumplebottom is alive and well--at least for the moment.  It's possible they won't be generated until the very last, but this seems totally bizarre, although possibly not unexpected.  I noticed that when each neighborhood gets its set of Downtownies they are the same characters with the same aspirations and the same personalities in every single neighborhood with one difference:  their names are changed (to protect the innocent or the guilty, I wonder).

And I just remembered.  I also had trouble with a gardener, but this was one hired after installing NL.  He came, he watered one out of 5 wilting flowerbeds then said he was finished for the day and left.

[Karen]

Another bug:  I just had a teen Sim transition to adult, then marry her high school sweetheart (moving into his house when they got married).  She never set foot on the college campus, but has a memory of completing freshman year.  Huh??  She was never a YA, so how could she have any college memories?

Karen

[J. M. Pescado]

On top of that, not one single vampire has been autonomously generated, although Mrs. Crumplebottom is alive and well--at least for the moment.  It's possible they won't be generated until the very last, but this seems totally bizarre, although possibly not unexpected.  I noticed that when each neighborhood gets its set of Downtownies they are the same characters with the same aspirations and the same personalities in every single neighborhood with one difference:  their names are changed (to protect the innocent or the guilty, I wonder).

I think this may very well be the "Firstborn Effect" at work. When you generate a set of sims, the generator tends to fire from a deterministic starting point in a fixed sequence, so you'll get the same results.

[Renatus]

I have one issue that I haven't seen anything about yet - sometimes when I open and save an old lot, or build and save a new lot, the ground of the lot turns bright aqua blue on the neighborood view screen. It's not the same colour as the missing terrain paint, and it also causes another strange graphical bug in neighborhood view - a bunch of dull-green triangular polygons radiate from the lot point-first and obscure parts of the neighborhood.

These lots seem to be fine when I enter them in build mode, but I haven't played them yet. I'm pretty sure they all have custom content of some stripe, usually floors or walls.

I also got the polygon problem in the default downtown, but I couldn't tell what lots were causing it, as the game ground to a halt and then crashed with a very bad video card error (it looked like the ATI infinite loop error which I had but got rid of when I used Omega drivers - I have an ATI mobility as I'm playing on a laptop). All of my graphics settings were at the lowest.

[witch]

Renatus, I think what you are describing in n'hood view sound like graphical artefacts, I had similar visual stuff playing actual lots. I was using the latest drivers for my video card. I have gone back 2 versions of my video driver and finally managed to make sims2 work properly. My tech b/f says latest video drivers generally add new features for the newest cards all the time, rarely features your slightly older card will support, if you find an older driver that works well, stick with it.

[Renatus]

witch - that was the problem; the older video card drivers didn't work. They were the first and only drivers released by the laptop manufacturer, and with them I got the infinite loop crash while playing Sims2, prior to expansion packs. I installed the Omega drivers in... hm, March, perhaps, it was definitely pre-Uni though, so the drivers are a few versions back (ATI Omega 2.6.05a). I may check the site to see if there are older ones available, but I feel all fussy when I think that I may get the infinite loop crash again! It puzzled me that the crash appeared in the default Downtown lot - I get the artifacts with the occasional lot in my custom neighborhood (including, now that I think about it, one that is all Maxis content), but no slowdowns or crashes.

I may have to try using older drivers  if it doesn't look like Nightlife is specifically causing the problem. I certainly can't find any common elements to the lots that do this.

[Motoki]

Renatus: I've had some bad experiences with those "tweaked" drivers like Omega and some others make. Game companies make and test their games based off of official ATI and Nvidia drivers and those who make the tweaked drivers don't check every game to make sure they work okay with their changes. Those tweaked drivers are generally seem to be biased towards shooter games.

[SciBirg]

I tried Omega too and it conflicted with directx for some reason. I uninstalled them and installed the stock Catalyst drivers and I was fine...

[Hook]

Renatus:  I've been getting a single lot in a neighorhood with a black ground occasionally, and not always the same lot each time.  It doesn't seem to affect game play at all, just a graphics glitch.

I've also started getting the triangles in the neighborhood view, something that never happened before Nightlife.  Sim State U is one of the offenders and it seems to affect folliage, nothing else.  While I used to get these sometimes when I entered a lot, I never got them on the neighborhood view before.

Of course, my graphics card isn't the best and I had to go back to older drivers to be able to play another game I have.  Eventually I'll be able to upgrade to a state of the art computer and I'm sure the problems will go away.

Hook

[cabelle]

As for the day-glo pee, would that happen to sims unfortunate enough to live next to the nuclear power plant?  

We are fixing some issues with the tombstones in the Nightlife patch.  The tombstone controller was being set up incorrectly if it was versioned and got reset.

I was finally able to get my tombstones to be visible in build/buy mode so I could set up my cemeteries. This is how I did it-

1. Created community lot for cemetery, named & described appropriately, save lot.
2. Go to residential lot with tombstones, choose "move grave" or "move all graves" (in the case of the Specter lot).
3. After ghosts wave "goodbye" and tombstone disappears, wait for "so and so's grave have been moved, please save etc."-save lot immediately and then go straight back to neighborhood view.
4. Go to community lot (from the neighborhood view in build/buy mode), tombstones are visible and can be moved. Set up cemetery as desired. Save when finished.

I didn't mess with putting the tombstone in the sim's inventory or move any of them to Gothier Green Lawns. I think I was messing the process up when I clicked on "move to X" by not saving immediately, sometimes I'd play the lot a few minutes longer. Not any more, that's for sure! Unfortuantely with all that messing around with the neighborhoods, such as resurrecting sims who maybe shouldn't have been (like Lyla Grunt, Creon & Willow Nigmos) I was concerned about neighborhood stability so I copied the backups I made of the neighborhood right before I'd installed Nightlife over my current neighborhood files. Lost two days play but I don't want to take any chances.

Thanks again MaxoidTom for helping us get all of this worked out. It's good to know that this will be taken care of in the patch but in the meantime hopefully what I've found will help others with the same problem.

Sorry to be a pain and bring this up again but unfortunately the problem came back today. Yesterday Herb Oldie died in platinum (I had reset my neighborhoods to my last backup right before I installed NL). I moved his grave to "Pleasantview Memorial Lawn", and the strangest thing was that his fancy platinum tombstone was now plain grey at the community lot. Perhaps I should have then realized that something was wrong. Today it was Coral Oldie & Olive Spector's time to meet the Grim Reaper. They died, I clicked "move to X" and saved but I then had the same problem with the tombstone would be invisible on the community lot in build/buy mode and visible when a sim goes to the lot. *sigh* Though I'd let you all know. I'll fill out the form at the BBS as soon as I can, right now I have the "icepick-in-my-right-temple" sort of headache.

Bummer, I thought I'd found a way to make the cemetery feature work but the problem with it is above my minimal computer knowledge. I'm going to have to leave it up to Maxis and/or the mods to figure out what's going wrong. So far it's beginning to seem like a nasty new incarnation of the undead/elder bug.

[witch]

Eventually I'll be able to upgrade to a state of the art computer and I'm sure the problems will go away.

I seriously hope you're touching wood or crossing your fingrs whilst you say that. Otherwise I should just duck if I were you, there's sure to be a lightning bolt coming your way.

[Hook]

Eventually I'll be able to upgrade to a state of the art computer and I'm sure the problems will go away.

I seriously hope you're touching wood or crossing your fingrs whilst you say that. Otherwise I should just duck if I were you, there's sure to be a lightning bolt coming your way.

Hey, I'm running 32 Meg of graphics RAM right now! I *expect* some problems to crop up.

When I say state-of-the-art I don't mean bleeding-edge-technology-that-hasn't-matured-enough-to-get-the-worst-bugs-out.  Heck, I've even been running Windows ME waiting for whatever replaces XP to be delivered.  The way things are going, I might end up with that new OS if it shows up any time soon.  This violates my no bleeding edge technology rule, but I think it will be safer than trying to run XP.

Hook

[RainbowTigress]

Hey, I'm running 32 Meg of graphics RAM right now! I *expect* some problems to crop up.

When I say state-of-the-art I don't mean bleeding-edge-technology-that-hasn't-matured-enough-to-get-the-worst-bugs-out.  Heck, I've even been running Windows ME waiting for whatever replaces XP to be delivered.  The way things are going, I might end up with that new OS if it shows up any time soon.  This violates my no bleeding edge technology rule, but I think it will be safer than trying to run XP.

Hook

What's wrong with XP?  I've heard that WinME was the most unstable version of windows since Win95, and WinXP is a lot more stable.  I am running WinXP Pro and it seems to be rather stable, more so than Win9x.  Of course that's not saying it's perfect because no software is.  But I can leave my machine running for days without the problems I had with Win98 leaking memory and having to reboot every day just to get back resources.

[sanmonroe]

Beat me to it. ME was an abortion that somehow survived and is now drug down the street and used as a kickball by XP and the new Mac OS.

Try upgrading, you will be suprised at how long you have been causing yourself problems.