Hello!
I am not sure if this question belong in this forum so please feel free to move it if I posted it in the wrong place :P

I posted quite a few houses on MTS2 and it seems for the few of them people had problems with them crashing the game, althoguh for the majority of people they work just fine. I am really lost at what would be causing this. All my houses are checked with Clean Installer and I run them on 2 computers to make sure everything works fine before posting. Also they are all for University/Night Life and people who had problems with them say they have both expansions installed. I usually post both furnished and unfurnished versions, and people say both of them crash the game, so it should not be custom content. I also tried completely deleting the houses I made from my game and then put them back in by downloading from MTS2 and never had any problems. I would really appreciate if someone would lead me to an answer of why my houses would crash the game.

This doesn't sound like a likely culprit but I've found House crashing problems when custom content the lot expects is either missing or moved. Without custom content it could be there's some inherent instability in the import/lot packaging with Nightlife because this does seem to happen for no other apparent reason with Maxis only houses since Nightlife far more frequently that problems of this sort turned up prior to that.

Thank you for the reply So basically I can't really do anything about it as a creator to minimize this kind of problems?

I'm curious about this as well. I can have two people with the same EPs install the same lot, and it will crash in one person's game but work fine in the other person's game.

So that leads me to believe it's not a problem with the lot or with the packaging, but something must have happened on the user end.

There are many installer programs out there (Maxis installer, Sims 2 File Maid, Clean Installer, Q-Xpress, etc) that are supposed to extract lots. Maybe some of them are not extracting the lots correctly?

The Clean Installer cannot well install or repack files with non-English charactes like the French accent "e", the German "ue" and symbols like "&" and etc...
I don't really know much of the others coz the Clean Installer is the only one I normally use...

As for Maxis installer, I used it before having the Clean Installer, it's so annoying the installer won't let you install files that are not EP-required when only the lot file may be EP-required. There's no way to repack things or what. In my terms, the junkiest installer I've ever used.

As for Sims 2 File Maid or Q-Xpress, I'm too control-freaky to use them. The Maxis content installer is OK, but I personally prefer the Clean Installer to it.


On the other hand, it's possible that lots may still contain some "ghost memories" of deleted objects, sims or etc.
So, it's often a good practice to make a new lot to build if backing up or sharing it is one of the goals. Old default lots can be risky until someone has tested them out to prove they're just fine.

It's also possible that certan custom contents used in a lot may have some conflicts with the dl-users' ones, even if those objects might have been removed later because of the uncertain "ghost memory"phenomenon. (I don't mean this must happen, but just keep in mind that it can be a potential cause when some conflicts do happen) In this case, it takes both to co-operate to find out what they're if they bother to do so. That's one of the reasons why the more custom content a lot has, the more likely it may have conflict(s) to the dl-users.
Of course, it can be also the dl-users' dl collection or mods.
Some unstable lots can still appear stable in a neighbourhood as long as not moved to the house bin or imported. For this type of lots, another way to move or save or import is needed though not suggested to share.

Certan pre-NL lots can become messy in NL, too.

Just my 2 cents/pennies

Thanks niol! Well if nothing else, it makes me feel better that I am not just a terrible builder who makes people's games crash lol. I will pay closer attention to my lots in the future and see if I can figure out some way to minimize these kinds of problems.

Frankly, if tkdjunkie did not elaborate the question, I really couldn't recgonise what the beginning question can infer coz niol is , as his friends tell him, a slow person... Hopefully, we'll read more infos about this from many other people...

Weedie everyone of my lots there is usually one or two people who either can't install the lot file or who can install it but cannot enter it. I've had people who can't install using S2CPI or the Maxis installer but they CAN get it working if I provide a copy of the lot file from my Hood folder.

The thing is with pc's its better not to question the odd strange happening - the thing is with Sims games (Sims 1 got progressively worse every xpac) is its better not to question odd strange happenings because you wouldn't have time to do anything else =D

ps: do you use a lot of terrain paints?

So, how did they install the N???_Lot???.package file? Replacing a present lot with it? Just putting it into the neighbourhood lot folder? Or else?

Naw, most of the time I won't use any besides the default grass, or 1 at most. Most of the lots are fully furnished though.

I kind of figured that most likely its not my house thats causing the problem, since its usually works fine for everyone but like 1-2 people. Just thoguht I'll double check just in case. :moose: