Game Glitch: NPC College Graduates Lose Want Slots!

Game Glitch: NPC College Graduates Lose Want Slots!

Argh. Ashley Pitts dropped out of college and had five want slots. All is good. Then one day I go to play him and he has four! What gives? I moved him to a new house, nothing. He's stuck.

So, OK, I can deal, but then ... my three vampire former sorority girls, all of whom also started as NPCs, lost their six want slots! They also suddenly had four, even though they had the diplomas to prove they graduated from college.

I moved them to a new house and their six want slots came back, but this is a vexing thing.

It only seems to happen to sims who started as NPCs, at least so far, but if it spreads I will be extremely irritated.

Anyone else have this happen?

 

Ooh no! I have graduated loadsa uni NPCs and I don't want to see this affecting me. Is there any sort of time frame when this occurs? I have one college NPC who is nearing retirement and is quite important in my little soapette ... :(

 

It seems completely random. Ashley's been out of college for a long time while the three lovely ladies just graduated recently.

I haven't checked in on my other sims that started as NPCs to see if it affected them, yet. Castor Nova and Orlando Centowski are married to two of my sims, and both graduated from college ...

I wonder if it has something to do with a download, as it happened pretty close together.

 

duh! LMAO! Didn't you see my post about some dodgy cars I d/loaded the other day ... the screwed my game up in some weird and not very wonderful ways

 

I disabled custom stuff, it's still buggy. None of my college grad NPCs have more than 4 wants now, and even more worrying, some of them have no wants at all. Just 4 blank squares.

I'll try moving my downloads folder just to check ... it could be the Buffy House I downloaded. I'll try deleting that from the game next. I seem to remember everything started going kablooey when I added that house ...

Otherwise I think I'm looking at a reinstall, sans the Christmas pak ...

 

Question: If I move the DL folder and it has DL's in it that I've included in the genetic makeup or wardrobe of a sim, will that sim be permanently screwed up? Or will they return to the way I created them when I put the DL's back?

 

When you take something out that's like, say, eye color, the eye color of the Sim that had that downloaded genetic will have a default eye color like brown. I've had it happen before, but when I added the download back in, the eyes came back. So I guess it's safe to do what you're proposing.

 

SBW, it happend to me like an hour ago.....yes i am pissed that i didnt see that dodgy car thing cos thats what ive been downloading(i got all EP's now)







R.I.P Max,NZ progamer:(

 

It's not my downloads. I moved 'em all out, the problem remains.

Next thing is to try moving them out of the house and into a different one. If I save they're screwed but I saved one family by moving them out without saving as soon as I saw the problem. Ashley, however, stayed the same.

If that doesn't work I'm going to have to delete all my downloaded lots, but I've had them for a long time with no problems.

I think it must be an incompatibility issue between University and NL, possibly caused by the *^%* Xmas pack.

I don't think I should do anything tonight. I've backed up my sims just in case. If I have to start all over I think I'll just quit playing altogether. I can't believe how attached I am. I almost killed Raj today and I was very upset: can't imagine how I'd feel if everyone was gone.

QUESTION: If I reinstall and then add the saved folder for my custom neighborhood, will I be able to play it? As a last resort that's what I'm planning to do.

 

I do believe you can. I've had to do that for several reinstalls, and I've yet to lose Nirvanaville. :cross-eyed:

 

SBW ... where did you get the "Buffy House"? If it wasn't Maxis you should report the problem to the hosting website.

WARNING Downloading houses is very dangerous to your game. They may utterly ruin it by adding hidden hacks that will do things you may not have wanted and EVEN WORSE if you already have some hacks of your own the new hacks may cause conflicts producing the infamous Big Fiery Ball Visible From Space.

Reputable game modders/hackers like Pescado, TwoJeffs, Inge, Merola () but especially Pescado) take the trouble to warn against mixing your hacks. Only the Maxis exchange can relied upon to tell you if a house or sim you're about to download contains hidden custom content (READ: hacks)

SBW. You may need to go through some hoops but so long as you save your complete neighborhood folder your sims' histories should be safe.

 

Good to know. Thank you everyone for taking the time to help me. It means a lot. I can't believe how anxious I've been about this! :(

Something else occurred to me, Mirelly: Could it be that my RAM and Video card aren't up to the job? Could that cause the game to act wonky? I don't exactly have the latest video card, and only 512K RAM.

It wasn't the Buffy House. Deleting it did nothing. And now I don't have a house with a basement for my vampires ... guess I'll have to make one. (Thought it was nice and ironic to have vamps living in the Buffster's home.)

 

SBW Two points.

Deleting the house wouldn't necessarily remove hacks from the game if the downloads folder isn't also cleaned out.

RAM and video card deficiencies wouldn't cause game-play-specific problems, such as sudden aspiration loss syndrome (SALS ... no disease is respectable unless it has an acronym ). Hardware deficiencies only cause freezes, hangs, crashes and slow/jerky game-play.

 

I deleted the house, then I moved the DL folder.

Still had the glitch.

I couldn't find the house in the DL or Packaged Lots folders, so I assume NL "hides" them when they're installed.

Do I need to track down the original lot file, or does deleting it in game do the trick?

Darn. And here I thought I could talk hubby into some more RAM. You absolutely sure about that?

I think it's the Xmas package that did it, honestly.

I was able to fix one household by moving them to a new house, actually to the Buffy house, which I had recently plopped down. It had a nice basement. I moved them to a house with no basement and nearly killed them so I moved them out again. Vampires. Sheesh.

Hope all this moving doesn't kill 'em off.

The secret is not to save once you notice the glitch, just exit without saving and move 'em to the bin.

But I'd rather fix the problem, not just patch it! Grrrr.

 

Does this mean Porta De Luca is at a stand still until you get this figured out?!!

Ruth

 

Pretty much, I'm afraid. For one thing, if I can't fix this, some of the kids that were just born are going to be different people ...

AAAAAUUUUGGGGHHHHHH!!!! Now my little kids have LTWs!!

I removed all the downloaded lots, removed the downloads folder, and the game's even more screwed up.

I need to calm down and think about this for a while, but it looks like I'll be reinstalling my game.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Argh.

 

Oh NO! I hope if you do have to reinstall that you will be able to save all your characters. That's one reason why I hesitate to get a new computer, I'm afraid I would loose everything and have to start again from scratch. In some ways I wouldn't mind because now that I know how to play the game I would play the premade characters differently. But when it comes to custom neighborhoods and sims I've created and lovingly molded down through generations, I don't want to part with them.

Ruth

 

Yes, I have backup, but I may have to back waaaay up if the "bug" was saved with the latest one. May have to do some scrambling to get people to where they are now again, and the babies may change. Not to mention Porter and Jordan, since I made them later, I think.

I'm going to start backing up every night if I get through this OK.

Chee-Z, Mirelly, you listening? Here are my questions:

1. Do I have to uninstall first, or should I just install over it? I want to eradicate the Xmas pack. I assume it will go away with a reinstall.

2. If I just move my saved folder into the EA Games folder and get rid of the default one, will the game know where to look?

3. If I decide the last backup is too buggy and decide to go with an older one, will I screw up my game if I swap them?

Sorry to ask such basic questions. It matters a lot to me that I do this right.

Thank you for your help.

 

You're welcome. I've had my game mess up several times (and other things as well...computers don't seem to like me very much, either that or I'm just afraid of them ) that it's become routine to back up once a week to make sure I don't lose everything I've done.

 

Well, thanks again. I put my backup folder on my desktop. I'm going to uninstall and then reinstall soon. Just have to get up the nerve.