Lot loading screens not updating - solved.

[Frick]

I moved one of my sims out from the dorm lot she was living at to the sorority lot and have played both lots since then, but she is still present on the dorm lot's loading screen and is absent from the sorority lot's. It doesn't interfere with gameplay, but it is a little odd and annoying. What would cause those screens to stop updating, and is there any way to force an update? I have all EPs up to Pets and my hacks are mostly awesome (+ InSIM).

[phyllis_p]

Did you have your Sim go through the pledge period with the sorority and get accepted to membership, or did you just move her in?

[jsalemi]

I don't think you can move a sim into a greek house who isn't a member.

[Frick]

She is a member. I had her invite several members of the house to a party at the dorm and befriend them, and she was accepted into the house immediately upon asking to join. The next time I played the dorm lot, I clicked on her and selected "Move to Greek house," and she moved to the house normally. The loading screens for both the sorority lot and the dorm lot haven't updated, though I've loaded, played, and saved both lots a couple of times since.

[BastDawn]

Try changing her everyday outfit.  That's triggered a change for me sometimes.

[Frick]

That didn't work. I've even recruited a fifth member from the Dormie pool to live at the sorority lot and I've changed the everyday outfits of three of the five lot residents, and the loading screen still only shows the original three.

[Emma]

Does the additional members show up on the lot information panel, where there are just the lot members' heads and you click on them to see their aspiration score etc?

[Frick]

All of their heads show up there, yes.

[jsalemi]

Try regenerating her portrait with the lot debugger, or just by changing something in the mirror.

[Frick]

I've done both of those. I've also deleted my groups.cache file and my neighborhoodmanager.package file, and enabled testing cheats to see if some error was getting generated. No dice. I've put up some photos to better illustrate the problem:

[link expired - problem solved]

I had another idea, though. This is the default Pleasantview neighborhood that I've been playing since day one, but I did recently move it from the N001 spot to N002 so I could put the merged neighborhoods in as N001. Could that have had this effect?

[seelindarun]

Try looking inside your Neighborhoods/N002/Thumbnails/ folder.  Is there a file properly named 'N002_FamilyThumbnails.package', and is the modified date the last time you played?

I've occasionally had an odd lighting glitch that makes the family portrait really dark.  Usually, it resolves itself when I save and load the lot again, but sometimes it gets stuck.  I've had good luck taking this file out and letting it re-generate.  Since my 'hoods are pretty large, it takes a bloody age to load the game when I do that, but it might work for you.

Let us know if it works, but in case it doesn't, back up your 'hood first! 

[Frick]

That file hadn't been modified since 9/14, and it was set to read-only for some reason. Huh. I wonder how that happened. I've made it writable again, and it's updating properly. Thanks, seelindarun. I feel dumb now.