Big Ball of Fire Visible from Space

[Gus Smedstad]

I've heard about this before, but never seen it.  Oh, individual lots would lock up in the early years, but nothing serious has happened to me in a long time.  Until now.

My wife and I have been arguing about house colors.  I just don't care much for brown, green, or red as house colors in real life, though I'm not entirely above using them in the game.  As part of our discussion about painting our house, she wanted to see the houses I'd made in the Sims.

Unfortunately, that's when my neighborhood decided to go kablooie.  I loaded it up, and the neighborhood view wouldn't load.  Instead of loading, the intro screen (the blue one with the icons and the neighborhood name) just started blinking.  Really rapidly.

Naturally, I assumed a problem with a recent download or something, so I moved my downloads directory into another folder entirely, not under EA Games.  I tried loading the game again, with the same results.  The Maxian neighborhood such as Pleasantville loaded without a hitch.  Just not the custom neighborhood with all my houses.

I think I'm hosed.  I'm not sure how to go about salvaging anything, even.  The individual Sims are probably too much work to bother, but it'd be nice to get some of those houses back.  Except of course they're occupied, which would just lead to another BBFVS.

 - Gus

[Emma]

Blame your wife. It will make you feel better My sim died today because he was fishing, and my hubby started talking to me. I was looking at him and didn't notice a thunderstorm had rolled in...of course it was my husbands fault Luckily my sim's girlfriend saved him from G.R.

[Zazazu]

Package all lots you like (after temporarily moving the residents to the bin, of course). Then back those up separately. I learned the hard way after my uploaded copy of a community lot went bonkers and I didn't have the original neighborhood I'd made it in anymore. Now I save all my lots, with the exception of the phone booth and the cheese wedges, because they are not ones I'd use in other 'hoods and they took all of 5 seconds to build.

[Sleepycat]

Package all lots you like (after temporarily moving the residents to the bin, of course). Then back those up separately.

since the neighborhood won't load, I think it would be rather difficult to package any of the lots 

[TaWanda]

Not being at all awesome I may just be talking out of my arse here, but maybe removing the custom lots from the lot catalog using clean installer, and see if the custom hood loads? From what you're saying I don't think it can hurt. If it works you could at least try to salvage the houses.

[Zazazu]

Package all lots you like (after temporarily moving the residents to the bin, of course). Then back those up separately.

since the neighborhood won't load, I think it would be rather difficult to package any of the lots 

It would be a challenge. The advice was for the future. He's screwed for now, as far as I know.

[J. M. Pescado]

Lots devoid of sims (the lot can have sims living there, but they will not be included) can be extracted from the game even in a non-loadable neighborhood,  by copying, renaming, and pasting their lot files manually over the lot file of another lot of the same size and type in the target neighborhood. Say you have N004_lot3, and you want to move it to N005, so you create a lot of compatible size and type (3x3 -> 3x3, res->res, etc.), get its number (ex:N005_Lot34), and copy N004_Lot3 -> N005_Lot34. Lot cloned simlessly. Doesn't matter if either lot is inhabited.