Sims swarming outside City Hall, no one to congratulate?

[tilted_logic]

When my sim rose to the top of her investigator career she was invited to City Hall for a 'ceremony'. Most if not all the sims in my town showed up to watch her.

Anyway, while playing a different household for a while I noticed the town seemed quite empty. It was rare for anyone to show up at the gym when I visited, and no one seemed to be simply wandering around the streets. Zooming over to city hall it seems almost ALL of my towns' citizens were there, doing absolutely nothing.

They weren't picketing or doing anything of that sort, they simply stand around displaying thought bubbles of whatever seems to be on their mind. (They do however stand in a semi-circle formation, which led me to believe they were waiting on someone to receive recognition from the mayor akin to the ceremony my P.I. received). Problem is, they stand there for ages! Only time any of them seem to leave is when they have work.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? Seems rather bizarre. O_o (Running on patch version 4.0.87 if it helps)


And I'm very sorry if this is posted in the wrong area >.< I seem to be unable to post in the help section, and I don't believe it's a technical issue, maybe my sims just like the brick work of city hall? :rolleyes:

[kittielickie]

well, they will probably direct you to the help forum, but i have the same thing happen to me. I ended up trying to delete one of the sims, and they all left and went home. but that's when all my big problems started to occur. i couldn't go on adventures. my sims icon wouldn't appear. so i ended up deleting that whole town and started fresh. i have no idea what caused this. it happened after my sim met the mayor for firefighter career. then i switched households too.

[bettybrant]

I don't think it's a good idea to switch households while everyone is still at city hall even if your Sims have collected their awards. I think the award ceremony can cause the other Sims in the town to get stuck sometimes. For instance, my architect-designer got some kind of award at Level 10 of her career and had to go to the city hall to get it. After she had received the award and I had sent her home, I kept the camera on city hall for awhile, and noticed that quite a few of the sims seemed to be stuck there even though the ceremony was over. They were starting to complain of hunger, with red starving moodlets, and I began panicking because I didn't want them all to die and decimate my town. I ended up systematically typing resetSim and then the name of each of the stuck Sims in turn. That apparently sent them home one at a time. When I had sent the majority home by using resetSim, the last few ran off by themselves.

[ToRnado]

oh this is the most annoying bug in the game it has happened to me twice! the only way to get rid of the sims is to go into map edit mode, click the city hall and choose save to bin, than BULLDOZE IT! once all the sims are gone you can put it back. resetsim doesn't work they just come back eventually. once you've BD cityhall it deletes the event and they will finally all leave. but beware they may return later!

[frillen]

I don't think it's a good idea to switch households while everyone is still at city hall even if your Sims have collected their awards. I think the award ceremony can cause the other Sims in the town to get stuck sometimes. For instance, my architect-designer got some kind of award at Level 10 of her career and had to go to the city hall to get it. After she had received the award and I had sent her home, I kept the camera on city hall for awhile, and noticed that quite a few of the sims seemed to be stuck there even though the ceremony was over. They were starting to complain of hunger, with red starving moodlets, and I began panicking because I didn't want them all to die and decimate my town. I ended up systematically typing resetSim and then the name of each of the stuck Sims in turn. That apparently sent them home one at a time. When I had sent the majority home by using resetSim, the last few ran off by themselves.
I haven't experienced this myself, but it is good to know that the resetsim cheat will send them home :)
BTW such things calls for a resetALLsims cheat, EA should consider adding such a cheat.

[Jasumi]

I haven't experienced this myself, but it is good to know that the resetsim cheat will send them home :)
BTW such things calls for a resetALLsims cheat, EA should consider adding such a cheat.

If you don't mind using mods, Twallan's Super Computer has a "Reset Everything" cheat which does just that.

[HarlequinnRomance]

I had this happen to me just tonight. I was so frustrated and then remembered this thread and tried the reset sim thing.I reset a few and they didn't leave,then all of them and THEY ALL CAME BACK! No idea what to do next and I don't have any mods and I don't particularly wanna download them.

[goyahaslegs]

HarlequinnRomance - I have had this annoying problem for two days and just noticed this thread. What about ToRnado's suggestion about saving city hall to the bin then bulldozing it. It sounds plausible but would it work with putting in a new city hall from community build instead of having to save the old one?

[BeechWell2]

HarlequinnRomance - I have had this annoying problem for two days and just noticed this thread. What about ToRnado's suggestion about saving city hall to the bin then bulldozing it. It sounds plausible but would it work with putting in a new city hall from community build instead of having to save the old one?
I did the same as ToRnado when I had this problem: Bulldoze and replace the whole city hall lot.
But it might be enought to just delete the City Hall object and replace it from community build. Why not try it out and tell us of the results?

[goyahaslegs]

BeechWell2 - I'll save just in case, knowing my luck, but Ill give it a go and see what happens. It's such a painful problem it's worth investigating any option. Thanks again.

[ToRnado]

tip: after you've bulled it an empty community lot will appear in it's place. bulldoze this too the city hall won't let you place it unless there is absolutely nothing at the spot to place it. You can not replace it but than you miss out on rewards and other stuff your sims can get from professions.

[goyahaslegs]

I've just successfully gotten rid of the cheering crowd! Thank you, thank you ToRnado!
-Basically what I did was save the city hall to the bin [essential unless you're super builder] and bulldozed the site.
-If you zoom into the location you'll see all the 'stuck' crowd of sims lined up on the road [mine were on the left hand side of the town hall],
-I went back into the game and sent a sim from the household I am playing to the park adjacent to the town hall.
-I let the game play and watched each sim catch a taxi/car whatever to return to their homes. I waited till everyone did that on their own.
-One sim Juan Darer got stuck so I did the resetsim cheat. I waited a little while and sent my household sim home.
-I went back into edit town to build a new town hall but soon realised it was a pain with foundations etc so I did what ToRnado suggested and just placed the originally saved Town Hall back in the same spot.
-After I saved the game, I lurked around the location of the Town Hall and during three sim days saw only two sims go into the building for a short time, briefly stand at the steps and leave.
-No cheering crowds whatsoever!!!
-I assume a crowd will reappear at another ceremony eventually and I'll be careful when changing households that all family members receive any awards before I move on to the next household.
-If I get the rent a crowd again, I'll just repeat the process which so far has eliminated the problem.
All credit and much thanks goes to ToRnado because this was a really annoying bug. Hope this helps others.

[ToRnado]

glad it worked but you need to keep an eye on it like when your sims are in bed just do a quick scroll over to check on it now and than. hopefully EA will fix this god damn bug IMO it's the most annoying in the game worse than invisible gnomes, ghost hunter careers getting stuck, the disappearing and distorted baby in firefighting (see image below!) it's worse cos all the sims there slow your game to a crawl..
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/4199/lolwtfl.jpg

[goyahaslegs]

Thanks for the tip - I'll be be watching them like a hawk! The baby pic ...lol - this game really has some problems. I've lost my launcher even though I've tried all the fix it suggestions and whats with the stupid running thing the sims do now! I was about to give my sim the ghost hunting career but after what you've just said I might re think that one. I'm just happy that the town hall's clear for now.

[Scorpy_CFS]

oh... my... god. I just spent four hours making an awsome firehouse. Having been a firey myself in real life I wanted to add a bit of realism... took forever. And when I'd finally finished I proudly saved and went to play my firefighter. She was at the town hall... with the rest of the town celebrating... then the game crashed. All that work lost. :(:(:( Who is a happy camper? not me

[ToRnado]

if you saved why did the firehouse vanish?

[HarlequinnRomance]

I did the saving the city hall and bulldozing thing. I haven't checked to make sure it's worked yet,but I'm pretty sure.I wouldn't go to sleep last night until it was fixed.
I haven't had any problems with the ghost hunting career either,just the job tracker bugging out and not giving me credit but that was fixed just by restarting my game.

[werismyki]

In theory, you shouldn't have to bulldoze the lot, simply going into Edit Town and then Build/Buy on that lot boots sims off the property. Which should allow them to leave. In theory :)

[Scorpy_CFS]

if you saved why did the firehouse vanish?

It won't allow you to save whilst in build/buy mode and says 'go back to edit city mode to save' which when you do that saves the lot but having only just so much time as to change household (which in theory should also save) and scroll to town hall before the crash... Then it just reverted back to a point before I began editing the firehouse.

[ToRnado]

i think i figured out how to stop this finally: go into map edit mode, click the city hall and change the community type to NO visitors. i haven't had it happen to me ever since doing this!

scorpy have you tried this? it worked for me http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=408800

[goyahaslegs]

Originally Posted by werismyki

In theory, you shouldn't have to bulldoze the lot, simply going into Edit Town and then Build/Buy on that lot boots sims off the property. Which should allow them to leave. In theory


I did that but the crowd just came back and were stuck again whereas the bulldoze trick worked. I've played the game for about two sim weeks, keeping an eye on the Town Hall, a rally has appeared but they come and go and interact with the 'household of the moment' sims. This is just my experience as everyone's computer, mods, cc varies. Not saying your idea wouldn't work werismyki just thought I'd add my observation - if it helps.

ToRnado - Sorry I didn't see your comment, too busy editing this one, that sounds like an excellent solution. Thanks again for all your help.

[Scorpy_CFS]

scorpy have you tried this? it worked for me http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=408800

Ta mate, I rarely get a crash but at the same time was unaware that a modern game such as Sims 3 is 2 gig limited but it makes sense to overcome that limitation to limit the possibility of future crashes. It's all done but don't have the time to check how it went for the next week or so. (Be nice to see a performance increase as well)

[alyria80]

In theory, you shouldn't have to bulldoze the lot, simply going into Edit Town and then Build/Buy on that lot boots sims off the property. Which should allow them to leave. In theory :)

Tried that, they come back the next day.

[nyadang]

This has been the most annoying bug I've ever encountered. So annoying that i actually gave up on it, and decided to wait for EA to fix it because I didn't want to bulldoze the lot. Ironically I'VE FIXED IT!!!

My exact steps:

1. 'resetsim *' - to reset every sim.
2. 'fixall' - to to fix any bugs. (requires awesome mod)
3. 'restartmotives' - self explanatory. (requires Twallan's The DebugEnabler and testingcheatsenabled)

The first 2 steps may not be necessary as this worked on my first try so there was so way for me to see which step did the job.