Gah

[katrisims]

Good thing I just took a backup. I played last night to the point where Nicholas graduated and moved in to the main house. There was an odd flash on my screen (actually, the game screen disappeared for a few moments and I was afraid the game had crashed) during my final save before I left the Greek House and went to the main house, but since the save did eventually finish and I got to the neighborhood screen okay, I didn't think much of it at that time.


When I moved Nicholas in, I was wondering why he was not wearing his transition clothes but his young adult clothes instead. Also, he had the want for a party locked, even though I'd given him a graduation party and thus he'd gotten the want. But since his memories and life meter looked like he was properly aged, I didn't think much of it, just gave him a makeover and quit for the night.

Now today, when aiming to play the other college house, it just occurred to me to check that everything was okay at the Greek House first. Good thing I did. On the neighborhood screen the house looked inhabitated, and the inhabitants box for the house showed both Nicholas and my replacement placeholder, but when I entered the Greek House, it was empty. No placeholder, no objects, just bare walls and floors. No nothing. And there were light blue tiles where the jacuzzi should have been, and on one side of the lot, dunno why.

At that point, I exited without saving and decided I did not want to deal with a missing placeholder and possible aging problems. I pulled my backup from the external hard drive, only switching my newer downloads forlder in place of the backed up one. Then, in the hopes of checking that the old hood looks to be okay and re-nuking gossip, I fired up the game and entered one of the houses. Only to find that my custom stuff was flashing blue. After a bit of headscratching, I restarted the game and found out that my custom content had decided to switch itself off when I inserted the backup. Well, switch cc back on and restart again. Only the game wouldn't start at all at this point. Thankfully deleting the cache files helped with that.

So as of right now, I'm starting up my game for the umpteenth time tonight, so if nothing else decides to go wrong, I could re-nuke the damn gossip already and then re-do the neighborhood replace operation. And after that I'll take a second backup, since I will *not* do it a third time.

And after that is all done, I get to play Nicholas' last semester again, and move him in the main house again, and give him a makeover again. Unless anything else goes wrong, of course. And *then* I might actually get to playing something new I haven't done yet.


So yeah, I'm just a tiny little bit pissed at my game right now. Good thing I just took a backup, I shudder at the thought of what everything I would have needed to redo otherwise. Sorry about the whining, and thanks for listening. Needed to vent.

Comments

[mzyra.livejournal.com]

O.o That's... weird and not fun. Fingers crossed everything will be okay... :/
And, out of interest, what's nuking gossip and how does it help?

[docnerd.livejournal.com]

Nuking gossip is an option on the Lot Debugger. It's either under the Memory menu or the Nuke menu. Clearing gossip deletes all the gossip memories in the 'hood, including any that might be corrupted, and it's not a bad idea to nuke the gossip periodically just to cut down on the amount of neighborhood information your game has to keep track of. The Sims will generate new gossip fairly quickly. Le gasp! Someone burned pork chops! Le shock! Someone kissed her husband!

[katrisims.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the sympathy, I hope so too. I'm thinking and hoping it was just that the save went somehow wrong and everything will be okay once I replay the semester. At the moment things are looking a bit better, my game loads, there are no flashing items, and I got the gossip cleared. Now I'm re-loading after the first round of HoodReplace, so so far so good. *crosses fingers*

Ah, and apparently Doc just beat me to your gossip question. :) (The batbox told me that it had nuked over 22,000 gossip memories, so I suppose it was about time.)

[docnerd.livejournal.com]

Ouch. Good thing you had a really recent backup! If you don't feel like playing Nicholas's last semester over again, there is an option to set the semester timer to right before the final in InSim. Sim Blender has a similar option, I'm sure, and there's the Semester Tester you can spawn in Debug Mode to do that too.

[katrisims.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the sympathy, that was quite an ouch. I'm extremely relieved that I had the backup handy when this happened, otherwise I just might have cried. Now I'm re-flattening the hood, so far so good... *crosses fingers* Thanks for the tip! Nicholas has some goals to (re-)achieve during the last semester, but if I get those done early, I might just use that.

[esmeiolanthe.livejournal.com]

Oh, poor Katri! *hugs*

Hooray for backups, though! This is why I backup early and often. If you have the Director's Cut, that includes the College Clock, which will also allow you to decide when to have Nicholas take his final.

PS: Good tip for if you're really frustrated: If you hold a pillow tight against your face, you can scream really really loudly before the neighbors start complaining.

[katrisims.livejournal.com]

Thanks! *hugs back*

Indeed, hooray for backups! The message to take home from this is clearly "backup early, hard and often". *nods* Thanks for the tip, if I get Nicholas' goals (re-)done ahead of time, I might just use that.

Heh, thanks, I hope it doesn't come to that. :D Thanks for making me smile. :)