I'm trying to think of things to google for, but here's the situation:
Sim, visiting a community lot they owned, froze up while working the cash register. Canceling the action did nothing, it never disappeared, just hung there with the red X on it. I queued up other actions, but she just stayed frozen. I think I tried leaving the lot and reloading. Whether I did or not, it didn't change the situation. So I tried deleting her with the moveobjects cheat, and reloading the lot. It loaded, but no sims! And it was in Buy mode, with the Live mode button greyed out. When I try to load the lot she lives on (with husband, who wasn't off lot with her) it tells me the family is visiting another lot and asks if I want to play that lot. Loading it that way gets me the same result, no live mode.

Any spoilers to the mystery would be mucho appreciated.

Just noticed, the option to package the lot isn't available on the 'hood screen.

Wow. It definitely sounds like something corrupted the lot somehow, so now the challenge is to get 'em home.

I've never seen a message about sims off visiting another lot. Even if my sims are on another lot, they're also at home on their home lot; and if everybody is away when I go to the lot, I can go into play mode and just wait for someone to get home from school or work or wherever.

Can you play the lot in play mode, or only in buy or build mode? If you can go into play mode, you could try teleporting them home.

Or... maybe you could try teleporting them to yet a different lot. If they come in OK, then you know the character files are good. Then maybe if you say goodbye to them they'll go home.

Greg, I guess you haven't monkeyed with OFB and owning businesses yet... The Sim-wife was at the business she owns and operates when the original glitch happened. When one or more Sims are at businesses they own, the home lot cannot be opened. For this reason, I don't save while Sims are at their business lots, and I certainly wouldn't save if something glitchy happened. Better to lose a day's play at the business than potentially screwing up a whole family.

I'm thinking of two things, both pretty powerful: 1) Evict 'em from their house and move 'em into another one. 2) Got a recent backup?

Before you do either, you might want to try inviting the wife to visit another family; as Greg said, you need to find out if it's her file, the business lot, or something in the 'hood file that's corrupted.

Good luck!

No, I haven't tried owning a business yet. Does that mean if any one sim in a house owns a business and is off minding it, you can't play the other sims in the house?

Given that situation, it sounds like the most important thing is to figure out how to get her back onto her business lot so that she can go home.

Exactly on both counts!

miros1 wrote:

Before you do either, you might want to try inviting the wife to visit another family

I invited her to another lot, and she was fine. I think I'm gonna try building the relationship till I can ask her to move in, then just move her out and see what all happens. I've seen a post elsewhere that seems to indicate the problem might be the business lot, so I might try bulldozing it.

If it were my game, I'd wait until the sim is safely moved in to another lot before sending in the bulldozer.

Greg wrote:

If it were my game, I'd wait until the sim is safely moved in to another lot before sending in the bulldozer.

I just copied the 'hood folder out, and nuked the community lot and it worked. But, that's just too easy and I'd like to see if I can save the lot. I'm going to try moving her in with another family, then back into her original home lot.

Well, she won't move into another lot. I got a message saying her home lot wasn't saved, and I needed to go play that lot, save it, and try again. Looks like the only thing to do is bulldoze the shop. And it was coming along pretty well. :-(

And btw, I solved 99% of my games weirdness by deleting some (pre-Columbian!) phone hack I'm pretty sure I picked up in one of the houses I d/l'ed here!

Yep, that's how I got introduced to JMP's hacks... caught a Uni version from someone here who shall remain nameless and had to get an updated one for my game!

Oh, darn! Mea culpa!

I still need to clean out all those houses. I'm very slowly moving downloads over to Sun Sims (extremely slowly--been busy) so I'll run everything through Clean Installer before uploading it again.

miros1 wrote:

Yep, that's how I got introduced to JMP's hacks... caught a Uni version from someone here who shall remain nameless and had to get an updated one for my game!

The thought of going through my d/l folder, even with the clean installer, is daunting. But heh, you wouldn't believe all the options I've got now! I can actually hire and *manage* emplyees! Not to mention that weirdness with phonebooks I complained about before is gone. Imagine that, my uni sims can call their parents now! Teens can call friends who are still children! Oh joy!

Yeah, without JMP's phonehack, I wouldn't play the game. Back before he wrote it, I wouldn't even put a telephone in a house. I'd just buy one when they had to make an essential telephone call and then immediately sell it.

On the other hand, for me, the really essential hacks are in Squinge's section of Insim.

LooseChanj wrote:

The thought of going through my d/l folder, even with the clean installer, is daunting. But heh, you wouldn't believe all the options I've got now! I can actually hire and *manage* emplyees! Not to mention that weirdness with phonebooks I complained about before is gone. Imagine that, my uni sims can call their parents now! Teens can call friends who are still children! Oh joy!

Delphy now has a "Download Organizer" which has received high approval scores from Zirconia, Greg, and me!