sims 2 game crashing randomly? ( and disappearing in the shower ! )

[Engram]

Not quite the same.  The shower itself disappears.  The last time I tried it the sim turned up on the other side of the wall the shower head was on, looking embarassed at being naked. 

I removed the puddle, and tried the bar without it, it works fine as far as I can see.  It's just for drunk sims throwing up with no toilet on the lot.

But the creator can't replicate the problem, so you never know, it could cause different effects than those I got.

4 people on Usenet got the disappearing sim problem (are you kat? Or are you someone else who just happens to be called something similar?) but not all the Usenet people using the tiki margarita bar got disappearing sims. It could be a combination of bar + particular mod that causes this. The whole problem has me intrigued and I might just have to install the margarita bar and see if I get disappearing sims as well.

[JacobM]

i do in fact think it was the puddle.package that was causing the problem. the reason, because don lothario was a sloppy sim taking a shower. that means he needs to generate puddles (from the whole peeing in the shower thing), but the puddles.package was making that corrupt somehow. my other 'neat' male sims did not disappear in the shower, neither did nina caliente. (she moved into his house).

[MaryH]

I have every reason to believe it was the Tiki bar and puddle, because previous to putting it in, I had absolutely no issues dealing with the "shower disappears and sim reappears in another spot" problem-it had never occurred in my game, usually very stable and reliable.
I had just put the mod into my game before this happened..so I think we can say it's 99% certain that this mod does this to the showers.

In fact, the first time this happened, I could not understand why it was happening and uninstalled all my game, and reinstalled it-then put the mod in and the problem reoccurred, with a freshly installed game. So for me, this is the cure.

But I would like to know why it generated such a clash-to make the shower itself disappear and the log file saying "cannot load shower effect" or some such message. I can't replicate it because the mod no longer is in my game and the logs are from today.

[JacobM]

so, to update you guys, there is no more shower disappearing. but my game is still randomly crashing?? outdated mods can cause game crashing, right? but which ones? that is the question. i separated my hacks from the rest of my downloads, and it says i have about 200 something hacks. there are no conflicts, but something is definitely outdated. mostly the crashing is on a community lot, now. has anyone else had this problem or know what could possibly be causing the game to crash?

[MaryH]

It depends on which mods you have and which EP's you have. If you have all of them, you have to get the matching mods/hacks for the last one you installed.
Which means in this case, you take out all of them, and d/l the latest mod/hack for each of them, and then test the game.
I will admit that this is not a fun thing to do, but it looks like the only way to truly correct the problem. BTW, also update your CEP files, if you have them, (pretty much everyone does) for the latest one.

Do you have any Community lot hacks, like "have parties" with inteen, or something? Perhaps that could be a problem in itself.

[ancienthighway]

It could be meshes that require an EP/SP you don't have.  If a townie needs that mesh for clothing or hair and is on the comm lot, the game will crash.

[JacobM]

i've been going through and deleting a lot of the possible culprits. i have every expansion/stuff pack so i don't see how a mesh could be a problem.
the game doesn't seem to crash when my 'hacks' folder is out.

i'll attach what's in my hacks folder. maybe somebody knows what it could be?

[MaryH]

Jacob, I took out all my hacks that could affect the read-out, put yours in my game and ran the HCDU on yours:

Report Start 7/18/2009 11:51:07 PM
 
*** POSSIBLE CONFLICT DETECTED ***
File Type: BHAV
Procedure Name: Interaction - Wish - Youth - TEST
Group ID: 0x7F285E93
Instance ID: 0x00001012
Packages Containing This Procedure:
\downloads\Jacob M's hacks\LBFYouthWish.package
\downloads\Jacob M's hacks\youthwishfix_arek91.package
 
*** POSSIBLE CONFLICT DETECTED ***
File Type: TTAB
Group ID: 0x7F285E93
Instance ID: 0x00000001
Packages Containing This Menu File:
\downloads\Jacob M's hacks\LBFYouthWish.package
\downloads\Jacob M's hacks\youthwishfix_arek91.package
 
*** POSSIBLE CONFLICT DETECTED ***
File Type: TTAs
Group ID: 0x7F285E93
Instance ID: 0x00000001
Packages Containing This Menu Strings File:
\downloads\Jacob M's hacks\LBFYouthWish.package
\downloads\Jacob M's hacks\youthwishfix_arek91.package
 
End Of Report
 
3 possible conflicts detected.

Mind you, this is inside my game which has only Uni and NL.
Hope this helps you out.

[JacobM]

alright, thanks. i got rid of one of the files. i just need help finding mods that are outdated. i've been carelessly downloading without thoroughly checking if they were al/m&g compatible.