Meadow Lawns - a new 'hood to play with - OFB required

[J. M. Pescado]

Thanks for explaining - another thing to add to the "known errors".  Glad it's sorted & hope you think Philip's dream house is a suitable bachelor pad for a layabout romance/party sim.  It was very hard getting Philip to adulthood (more or less) with no skill points!

I am unclear how you managed such a thing short of either cheating to skip your way through, or intentionally torturing him. That you have managed such a torture without leaving any scars, like when you lock a sim in a doorless room to pee on itself, is pretty disturbing. I didn't even manage to torture the Kewians that much.

[cwykes]

I did play the household propertly and didn't cheat, as far as I remember anyway.  I just ignored all skilling opportunities.  Philip was perfectly happy with romance/popularity and pleasure sim kind of activities all through school.  He didn't need to work of course being a spoiled rich kid.  It was an amusing challenge.

Mootilda's blog has lots of things I've never seen, so I'm going back to read it more slowly.  The catastrophic lawn ornanment is a problem I didn't know about.  Several lots would crash without the driveway though and there is a used car lot, so the mustang is also needed.

[Mootilda]

Several lots would crash without the driveway though and there is a used car lot, so the mustang is also needed.

Would you know which lots these are?  Even one lot name would help, since I haven't been able to get any other lot to crash, even when running just Open for Business.  I'm trying to make sure that I know the minimum EP and CC requirements for each neighborhood.

The catastrophic lawn ornanment is a problem I didn't know about.

I suppose that's why they call it catastrophic; it will crash your game unless you have it installed.

[cwykes]

I've been guilting over the problems you found and what I can do about them.

Re crashing lots -  I'm actually pretty pleased you can't get any of the lots to crash!  I was thinking them through in my head last night as I went to sleep and Philip's is the only house I remember with a driveway.  I'd have to do what you're doing and go back to every lot to be sure of my facts.  As to community lots, I can see from the pics on the website that there are ford mustangs on the car showroom and probably a driveway too.  I can also see a catastrophic cat on the flea market.   I'm now wondering if the crash problem with Philip's lot was always the cat and not the driveway.  hmmmm

Re the Monty's.  I think all the Monty ancestors are stubs, so they aren't going to be running around as ghosts spreading gossip if that helps.  I think also that they were the first, or among the first families I placed.  I tried very hard to keep the 'hood clean.  Isabella Monty is  one I remember doing a lot of work on and I did that in another 'hood before putting her in Meadow Lawns.  Most families were kept clean from the start.  I put for more effort into the backstory of the living sims than I did with ancestors.  For me, the albums are the back story, not the family tree.  Hope you like those.

Staines family - somebody reported that they were getting flirt wants in that family.  I couldn't see anything wrong with the family relationships, but it was a worry.  It was intended as a dysfunctional family anyway so a bit of incest would be in keeping.  Let me know if you see anything odd with them.  They were pretty much the first family I ever made (in CAS).

Camera hack required - it's noted on the website, but you can't get to the edges of the 'hood if you don't have a camera hack.  The secret army base becomes a lot more secret without one!  I give a link to Dewshine's update of Gunmod's hack, http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?p=1647071#post1647071but I had trouble with it in an all EP game and took it out.  Do you have an expert recommendation. http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?p=1647071#post1647071

Extras - I built seven cottages using Seasons which are much nicer than some of my base game efforts plus roller rink & skating rink lots.  If I were playing the hood myself, I'd replace some of the cottages with these and add the community lots.  All the Willow lots are free on TSR http://www.thesimsresource.com/members/cwykes/downloads/details/category/sims2-sets-lots/title/willow-lane/id/689231/   Yes, I know they come with added sypware... Putting them on my site is another job that's been on the to-do list forever.  I'll mail clean files to you if you like the pics.

Unless the Monty problem is fixable, I don't think it's worth doing a v7 of the 'hood.  I should update the website though to say the catastrophic cat is required and note the Monty problem.  Even updating the website is a pain because I haven't even got an ftp package installed on my new Win7 PC and there are probably passwords I've forgotten/lost; plus SimPE crashed on me both time I tried.  If I were to update, would it be worth going round the lots to use that lighting fix you mention?  I'm not clear if they'd stay fixed if downloaded by somebody without the fix.  

Well I have more things on my to-do list now...   Let me know if the list grows.

[cwykes]

I got SimPE to show me the dead Monty character files; there are 5 stubs (Bianca, Kent, Patrizio, Antonio and Claudio).  I can't seem to get into the actual family tree.  Clicking on family ties doesn't do it.  I've either forgotten how or SIMPE has changed since the version I knew. 

From in game, these 5 names are the only dead sims in the Isabella's family tree.  I see their names but no pics.  While that's clearly messed up, I don't see how it could cause corruption.  The game isn't trying to do anything except show you a pic.  The names are right, so it's looking at the right characters, but not finding pics.

Meadow Lawns got looked at pretty hard when it was new.  I had a couple of people test drive it as well.  If you think it's potentially corrupt you should say so, but if it were true, I would have thought that MATYians would have gleefully and loudly pointed it out to me a long time ago.  Not sure what else I can do....

[Mootilda]

Re crashing lots -  I'm actually pretty pleased you can't get any of the lots to crash!  I was thinking them through in my head last night as I went to sleep and Philip's is the only house I remember with a driveway.  I'd have to do what you're doing and go back to every lot to be sure of my facts.  As to community lots, I can see from the pics on the website that there are ford mustangs on the car showroom and probably a driveway too.  I can also see a catastrophic cat on the flea market.   I'm now wondering if the crash problem with Philip's lot was always the cat and not the driveway.  hmmmm

Thanks.  I'm going to check out those lots without Nightlife and without the downloadable driveway and cars, just to see whether I can make them crash; I'll let you know the results.  I suspect that the cat was causing the crashing all along.  If you do a V7, you might want to think about removing the cat, so that you can honestly say that the neighborhood doesn't require any CC (except the camera hack) or extra EPs.

Meadow Lawns got looked at pretty hard when it was new.  I had a couple of people test drive it as well.  If you think it's potentially corrupt you should say so, but if it were true, I would have thought that MATYians would have gleefully and loudly pointed it out to me a long time ago.  Not sure what else I can do....

I'm not really an expert on this sort of thing.  Most of what I know about these problems is from things that I've read here at MATY.  I can't figure out why the Monty family tree behaves so oddly, but I've been writing down anything that doesn't look right to me.  That way, people can make up their own minds.  My understanding is that this kind of thing can take a long time to show any outward signs of corruption.

Perhaps Pescado (or someone with more experience than I have) could take a look at the internal structure and see what's going on.

[Update:]

I hadn't looked at the car showroom before, or any owned community lot, because I didn't want to actually play the owner.  However, I just realized that you can edit the lot using the LoadLot cheat.  The car showroom doesn't crash without the cars.  However, the bargain bazaar crashes without the cat and at least a couple of the other maxis downloadable objects... I haven't narrowed down which objects are required.

[Another update:]

Looks like it's the three lawn ornaments: Cat-A-Strophic, Four Dead Guys, and Jack-O-Hattern.

[cwykes]

Thanks for the update on the maxis objects.  Why on earth don't they just disappear like normal objects?   .....GRRR ..... 
So what else did I use and where...  I know I used things like the Christmas decorations; the bar certainly has them.  Other than that, I just don't remember. 

I'm glad the ford mustangs behave normally.  Any word on the driveway?

I've worked out how to get into the family tree in SimPE, but it doesn't help.  The dead sims have thumbnails in SimPE, so I don't know why the game is defaulting to the last pic it had in memory rather than showing the actual dead sim.  If all that's wrong with the 4 character files is that the thumbnails are messed up, then it's not a biggie because they won't be wandering around and can't be resurrected.  It's that word IF.....

btw I went and downloaded some of the other hoods.  I LOVE the N099 project with Jfade's controller.  Hours of fun to come.  Thank you.

[Mootilda]

If I were to update, would it be worth going round the lots to use that lighting fix you mention?  I'm not clear if they'd stay fixed if downloaded by somebody without the fix.  

It's probably not worth updating for other people, because the lighting for a lot will switch back the next time that the lot is saved.  So, the only lots which will retain their proper lighting are unowned community lots, which are never saved during normal game play.

[cwykes]

So it would be worth changing the lighting on community lots in v7; the fix makes things look so much brighter.  

However, I'm pretty much decided against updating the 'hood for the moment.  There are too many practical problems.  Apart from the things already mentioned, I now find I can't get AnyGameStarter to run because my game is not on a standard path.  AG operates by moving the 'EA Games' folder around and I renamed mine during the install.  If/when I can do something about the Montys, I'll bite the bullet.

I thought about coming at the crash problem from the other direction, creating a new hood with 10 lots, placing Maxis downloadables and seeing which lots crash.  But it's not a quick and easy method as I have 138 package files in that folder: sims, their clothes and face paint as well objects.  I know Philip has the teen vamp outfit in his wardrobe and that lot loaded OK, so maybe the clothes aren't a problem.  However it then occurred to me that all the townies have been shopping and have a random collection of things in their inventories.  One of the townies might have bought a Cat-A-Strophic along the way and deleting items off the lots won't fix that.  

Is there anyone in the sims community who might already know or could find out easily which maxis objects are a problem?

UPDATE - I realised that the 3 problem objects you've found are also part of the Festive Holiday Stuff Pack and anyone who has that doesn't need to download duplicate items from the exchange.  The snowman construction set, the 'a touch of cornocupia' horn and two menorahs (Kwanzaa Kinara and Chanukah Kinara) are also in this category.  I'd have to uninstall the Festive Holiday Pack to test whether they cause crashes as well.  I haven't looked at the clothes etc, but have proved that most maxoid exchange items do behave nicely.  I'll update on this tomorrow.