I suppose it could make a garbage can disappear. It would depend on how maxis made their lots. This should help in any case.

Is this going to conflict with any of Pescado's critical fixes? Does it replace any of his? I'm trying to keep up with critical fixes, but I'm not sure I understand how this one differs from his. Please explain, or at least tell me if I need both his and yours. Thanks!

I installed it and ran the game just fine, and I have pretty much everything from both twojeffs and pescado. I've run into no conflicts thus far.

and thank you crammy.

Same here. I don't see any reason for them to conflict since they do different things. This is great, a must-have for every simmer!

LIkewise. I have every fix Pescado has made and none of them have addressed this problem. I guess this is one problem Pescado has never had in his game. Wonder why some people never get the problem, some do occasionally and others frequently. Probably a very difficult cause to track down.

Ok...now I understand that you said to put this in the "downloads" folder....but they all say that.....can I put in my hacks folder? I want to make a folder just for "critical" fixes.......can I do that and it still work...
Thanks...

I have downloaded lots of hacks and all but three of them have worked in subfolders. And those three would work when placed un Saved Sims or in Config. best way to find out is to test it.

But with this type of hack, how would you know if it was working or not? I have mine in a "Hacks" subdir and I assumed it would work, but I got to thinking that this type of hack would be hard to test.

Well, no way to tell definitely if is IS working. But you would know for sure it was NOT working if you got the slowdown bug in a different house. That's how I plan to test it. And as often as I get that bug I figure a week of regular play would be pretty conclusive.

Why install if it is too late...I don't follow.

To keep it from happening to other lots, of course.

First off, if you found the source of the problem, great! However, I'm curious as to how you narrowed it down to tree 8210 of BookGlobals. We're taking a look at the tree now (our version) and although it is deleting the object based on the attribute of the "read to - subject id," we don't see anywhere where that attribute could be set to a number within the range of the portal or mailbox ids.

The portals and mailboxes are instantiated and keep their ids. The place where the attribute is set is based on the object created to put in the thought bubble. The id there should not overlap with the mailbox, portal, or any existing object.

Did you find out if the attribute is being set to some random number? Or did you put in extra checks before it tries to delete the object, to make sure it wasn't a portal or a mailbox?

MaxoidTom

The problem seems to occur after the following events:

1) A "read-to" interaction is cancelled and the book is left lying around. The point at which the cancelling of the interaction causes the problem, I never was able to determine. This leaves the book in a state where it "thinks" it is being used in a "read-to" interaction.
2) A sims picks up the book to "read". The problem manifests itself as the sim reading with a speech bubble, as if reading to another sim.
3) The user cancels the interaction while the book is in routine 0x2012 (or possibly a sub-routine. 0x2015 maybe?).

At this point in the routine (0x2012) the stack object is not the book. I don't remember exactly, but I think it was set to the sim. The code then reads attribute 0 from the stack object and deletes it. Usually this is 0 or a low number and a portal is deleted.
The problem will never occur if the sim exits the interaction autonomously, although the "read-to" error will still manifest itself (Point 2).

BTW: I was pointed to the book globals by the OETreeDelete.xls. When my monitor showed the problem, I found the portal being deleted in there.

I take it this isn't fixed in nightlife? If not, could you tell me if routine 0x2012 has changed at all since university?

I hope this helps, I stupidly didn't keep the logs.

PS. It's not you we hate.

Ah, good old OETreeDelete.xls--I'm glad you were able to catch it there! Any chance you could send that to us? Via PM or attach it here?

I think our object scripters are going to refactor the related trees a bit so that it does not need to create an object to put in the speech bubble, so in all probability the problem will go away that way.

That tree indeed has been changed in Nightlife, so I would recommend looking at the Nightlife version if you decide to roll your fix forward. Hopefully we can get a fix for this out with the Nightlife patch so people will not need to keep yours around longer.

Thanks again for tracking the problem down!

Sorry. I deleted that as well. I will attempt to re-create the problem, but it may be a while. It took 2 weeks from when I created the portal monitor for the error to show up.

EDIT: I managed to recreate the problem. Here is the OETreeDelete.xls file.

Thank you again for your invaluable help. I'm sure all the sim players will appreciate it too. We'll get our version of the fixes in the Uni and Nightlife as soon as possible (fix will probably involve not having to delete anything).

Man, I had almost forgotten about this problem...I had an incident of neverending spamming of gardeners when I first started playing TS2, but after a few hundred curses and an uninstall/reinstall/chance meeting with MTS2 it never showed up again! I'll d/l it and use it just in case, though. Many thanx!

Update for nightlife is up. If you had the fix for university. make sure it is removed before installing nightlife.

Thank you

I have just got nitelife so Ill put this in my game has been going slow for a while perhaps this will help

I don't have either NL or University. I haven't had a problem either so I'm wondering whether it was a new problem in Uni or whether I'm very lucky...
1. Do I need it?
2. which version will work for me?

Brilliant work!

I am not sure that either will help you. Your best bet is to download the unversity version, but only install the portal monitor package. This will let you know when the problem happens (If at all) and let you exit the lot without saving the corruption.

OK - I've done that - haven't tested it yet though. Do you think the latest patches really fixed all the portal problems? Are your files OK to use post patch? I know someone who needs to try the portal diagnosis out post patch........... thanks a million again....

Here's a gardener who got stuck post patch on a lot that looked to me like it had problems before - though I'm confused about whether the 2-3 nannies running around in their underwear, the dying wedding crasher and stuck grim reaper were all on this or different lots. Good for a laugh anyway - my game is never that exciting!
" Last night the gardener got stuck on one of the properties for the first time and that was after installing the patches. He just stood there by his truck all night and finally the next morning I sent a sim over to end his services. He shook her hand and left. I deleted the few flowers on the lot and there's no shrubs so I don't know maybe he's so dense he had to wait to be told to leave or he was waiting for his paycheck.lol."

http://thesims.ea.com/us/index.html...rectoryID%3D341

where do I extract this files to? Is it to the download folder?

If you look in the zip file, you'll find a readme. The last line says
"This is a critcal fix that will stop at least one code error which would result in the dissapearance of portals/mailbox.

Symptoms: maid/repairman/gardener do not appear and game slows to a crawl
or mailbox dissapears.

The zip file contains 2 packages. One fixes a maxian error resulting in the deletion of something random. (normally a portal), the other monitors portals for deletion.

Install both in the downloads directory."

I'm watching the thread as I'd like to know what the post patch situation is. Maxis fixed one of the causes of portal deletion - the one Crammyboy ID'd (hero!!!). Are there residual problems? either other error causes or left over NPCs on the lot etc etc..

It is fixed in the patch, so you can remove the fix package. The monitor package can be left in if you want to make sure. It is just an early warning system that will give you a message if a portal disappears.

If the gardener can still come and go, then you don't have a portal problem.