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Instructor
Original Poster
#1 Old 29th Jul 2016 at 3:09 AM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage, Free Time, Apartment Life
Default Flashing Purple Objects
Last week I decided to set up a community lot for weddings. Since I am running a medieval game I added Marhis Wedding Arch and Exnem's Invisible buffet medieval with recolors for both. I entered the game, set up the lot and went back to the neighborhood to get the participants. WHOA! All the trees in both residential and commercial lots were flashing purple. I assumed it was due to one of the new items I had installed so left the game and deleted them without trying to figure out just which one it was.
Back in the game the neighborhood was normal. [ I made a few changes in the lot then proceeded with the wedding. It's been a loooong time since I did a wedding on a community lot and apparently I forgot how. I sent the groom to the lot in the normal manner then teleported in the bride and the guests and put everyone in formal dress. The wedding began and trouble began. I got a popup asking who from the bride's family would be moving. I indicated her children. But I kept getting a popup for her mother. When the ceremony was over, a carriage pulled up. Still getting popups for the mother and saying No. Bride got in and carriage pulled away. Another carriage pulled up and mother got in and drove away. I had the groom go home and left the lot. No bride when he got there. ] I don't know if any of this aggravation is relevant to the ensuing problems or not, but thought I should include it in case.

I redid the marriage on the groom's home lot and everything was fine. I returned to the community lot to check on it and got an object error concerning the population controller but the rest of the play session was uneventful. The next game day I began the next round with the first residential lot as usual. I got another object error as the teen son prepared to go to work at the community fields. I continued to get frequent Object Errors as long as he was there, all saying Bad Family ID. Once back home everything was fine until today. (I know that has nothing to do with Flashing Purple but thought it might all stem from a common source.)

No more major problems until today. I was playing the fourth home in the round. The teen son and his younger sister went to a community lot to forage. When they returned home I noticed flashing purple in the garden. It was three of the garden plots. It was time to begin harvesting tomatos and as that was done, two more garden plots began to flash after the plant disappeared. I also noticed that there was a ragged purple arch behind the boy's head, as though part of a hood. I finished the day on this lot and went directly to House 5. Everything OK there. For a while. the family did their morning work and had lunch. As the table was being cleared I thought I saw a plate flash purple very briefly. A little while later I saw the water in the laundry tub at the side of the house flash purple. Only the water. I turned the viewpoint and next time I saw the tub it was normal. A short time later a neighbor from House 2 walked by. Her body was purple and with arms straight out at the sides and she was not animated. She just floated from one side of the screen to the other and left a ribbon of purple behind as she exited. when I moved the screen it disappeared. At that time the children wanted to go fishing. I wanted to make some adjustments to the community lot they were going to so saved and went to neighborhood. THE TREES WERE FLASHING AGAIN. Not all of them but a few on each lot. I entered the Comm lot, made my changes and went back to neighborhood. Not flashing. That's where I left it. I had not added any new CC before today's game session.

I thought before I went through the whole 50/50 CC dance I would ask if anyone had seen this before or ever heard of it. Thanks for reading.
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Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#2 Old 29th Jul 2016 at 3:15 AM
Sounds like a graphic card issue, have you recently updated drivers? Are you on a graphic card? If you are using a laptop is it run on a chip and is it getting over hot? Have you tried dusting it out?

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#3 Old 29th Jul 2016 at 11:54 AM
It might be worth checking the objects.package hasn't been overwritten as well. Plus delete cache files.

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Mad Poster
#4 Old 29th Jul 2016 at 12:24 PM
Memory issue. I'm still not entirely sure exactly what happens, but the game probably can't access the required amount of memory, and dumps memory randomly, causing random items to just not show the textures or animations properly. Don't save your game, but quit, let the computer cool down a bit, and if you have a lot of CC, particularly on the lot itself, try to get rid of some. The less CC your game has to load up and read, the less likely these issues are going to happen. Large lots with a lot of sims, high-poly CC, CC with heavy textures, a very long play session, and anything that can potentially cause a drain on the system memory and/or graphics card can cause pink/purple-flashing. My computer throws this at me from time to time, almost from back when I got it (It's now 7 years old, still functioning relatively well, but in need of an upgrade) but I've learned to just live with it (until said upgrade can happen).

If you're on a computer or laptop with duel graphic cards, make sure your computer is running on the best one. If you only have an integrated card not meant for gaming, you should be careful with your game, and not run it too hard.

If your game the next time starts flashing purple from the get-go, you probably need to restore from a game backup (it's always a good idea to do those regularly). I had to do that once. I think I accidentally saved the game while something was flashing purple, and it corrupted the game (everything flashed purple from the start, instead of a slow upbuild after a long play session). And yes, even EAxis items can flash purple, if the problem gets bad enough. Pretty much everything except walls and floors.

It can of course be an issue with the graphics card itself, if the computer is getting a bit old and the issue has never happened before.

Oh, and it's not an issue a 50/50 can solve - unless you remove 50% of your CC, that is...
Instructor
Original Poster
#5 Old 30th Jul 2016 at 6:06 AM
Thanks for all your responses. I see I forgot my computer stats. I have windows 7, 32 bit. AMD A8-3850 (quad core) . 4GB Ram 3576Mb available OS memory. ATI Radeon HD 3600 gpu. which I know is not very good. It's a desktop computer which I built in 2010 to run TS3, which it does with not too many problems. None of the innards are the original ones. due to an accident a couple of years back when the components got wet while I had them out doing an upgrade.

I did have a problem with crashing a few weeks back due to memory overload. I fixed that with the CCF utility.

@simmer22 - I only have 4GB of CC and I am not currently using all of that so there are things I could take out. And there are objects on the lots that are strictly decorative, but not a lot of it. I wouldn't think it would be a memory issue since it had been running with that CC for weeks before it started happening. Unless that last bit of CC I put in was the last straw on the camel and taking it out wasn't enough. If it happens again I will make note of how hot the computer is and how much memory is being used. I have noticed lag at times recently. And I check task manager and see that one core of the CPU is running at 100% while the other three are doing hardly anything. I've thought for a while that I need to upgrade again, especially a better card. Guess it is time to order one.

@joandsarah- dusted the insides just last Saturday. I do it fairly often since I run it with the side off and an outside fan due to not having air conditioning. And looking at the inside of the fan grill I see I need to do it again tomorrow. There is already quite a buildup of dust and lint on it.

@maxon- I assume you mean the objects.package in the program installation? How would it get overwritten? Deleting cache files is a good idea. I used to do that every time before I started the game because it wouldn't load otherwise if I had added any new CC. Need to start doing that again.
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#6 Old 30th Jul 2016 at 11:11 AM
Quote: Originally posted by hedgekat
I assume you mean the objects.package in the program installation?

Yep
Quote: Originally posted by hedgekat
How would it get overwritten?

The game does that sometimes.

It's probably not that and is graphics card related but it's always worth checking that one because it's an easy fix.

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Mad Poster
#7 Old 30th Jul 2016 at 4:30 PM
Quote: Originally posted by hedgekat
@simmer22 - I only have 4GB of CC and I am not currently using all of that so there are things I could take out. And there are objects on the lots that are strictly decorative, but not a lot of it. I wouldn't think it would be a memory issue since it had been running with that CC for weeks before it started happening. Unless that last bit of CC I put in was the last straw on the camel and taking it out wasn't enough. If it happens again I will make note of how hot the computer is and how much memory is being used. I have noticed lag at times recently. And I check task manager and see that one core of the CPU is running at 100% while the other three are doing hardly anything. I've thought for a while that I need to upgrade again, especially a better card. Guess it is time to order one.


Every computer has its limits. The computer I use has 4 GB of RAM, but the graphic card has 2 GB dedicated memory, so that probably helps a lot on the performance. It's probably when the game starts hogging more memory that my game goes into full purple mode. My game usually throws it at me if I play around on very big lots with a lot high-poly objects, have a lot of sims on the lot, play around with heavy weather (snow for an extended period is a sure thing), or have played for several days in a stretch (I occasionally have to leave the game running for 3-4 days, because of long loading times). So it doesn't happen all the time, and I can more or less predict it.

The game has a 2 GB memory limit as default, so it doesn't really matter if your computer has 4 GB or all the way up to 16 GB+, because the game simply can't take advantage of all of it (may depend slightly on your OS, though). There are steps you can do to go slightly beyond that limit, but without you're kinda stuck with the game not accessing as much memory as it should be able to. It can also struggle with multi-core processors and a few other things. It's probably because the game was meant for a 32 bit system, and the basegame is around 12 years old, so there are bound to be limits. I'm not sure if any changes were made to the game engine in the later EPs, but if not, we are kinda stuck with a game engine that isn't optimized for the (in comparance) insane specs of today's computers.
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