Nightlife EP help needed

[seatnumberx3]

I've currently just purchased my first EP (nightlife), and after I've installed it and run it, it loads fine. However, with custom content installed when I enter a neighbourhood and go into one of my  lots, it won't load at all. Is there any way to solve this without removing all of my custom content and starting all over again, or without disabling custom content and losing it all?


Thank you in advance.

[BeosBoxBoy]

Seatnumberx3 - you probably have something installed that is not EP-friendly.  Since this is your first EP, you are discovering a Little later than many players of the game.

You will probably need to check your mods and hacked items for Nightlife EP compatibility first. Sims2Pack Clean Installer will identify most of them with a red background on the listed item, although it does identify some mods as careers. Get Sims2Pack Clean Installer here if you don't already have it.

Also, custom food, coloured-lights, refrigerators, telephones, and careers will need to be Nightlife EP compatible versions.  There are probably more items than I am remembering, it has been a while since I installed the NL EP.

It is a steep learning curve, but once you sort out the conflict, the Nightlife EP is one of the two "must have" EPs and you should greatly enjoy all that it adds - except maybe the vampires, they're only fun for about 20 minutes.

Make sure to patch the EP, the EP as shipped has a catastrophic bug dealing with the vampires biting NPCs and damaging game files.  Get the update patch here if you haven't already installed the fix patch.

[seatnumberx3]

Thank you so much for your helpful advice! I'll definitely try everything you've suggested.

Edit: I'm horrendously new at all of this, but how do I tell if its NL compatible?

[BeosBoxBoy]

seatnumberx3 - there is no perfect way to test for EP compatibility.  Usually we have to rely on the person sharing the file with us to inform us of this, so that means a rather tedious and long process of crawling through all our haunts to find the original download location and reading the documentation.

We also have to keep in mind not everyone who makes content for the game is equally knowledgeable or concerned about these matters.  Even really good creators sometimes fall into a category of not knowing these little details that can make or break our game.

The items you should be wary about are the ones I list above: hacks/mods, custom food, coloured-lights, refrigerators, telephones, and careers.

With custom lights EA/Maxis made a huge change in the way the game handles lights in NL, in the base game & University EP a creator could hack and dabble with a great deal of flexibility -- but from Nightlife on, the art of making a custom light became increasing difficult.

The addition of restaurants in Nightlife meant some appliances like refrigerators needed to support the inner-game coding.  these changes meant that custom foods had to be made in a different manner since they begin life when we click the appliances.

Telephones seem to under-go a massive change with every EP, so what worked fine in one EP may cause issues in the next.  It was really pronounced in change between the base game and University EP, then between University EP and Nightlife.  The later EPs don't seem to change anything drastically in the telephones.

Custom careers are just plain flaky.  Some people enjoy a blissful absence of any problems, but my experience and that of many others made it a misery of crashes and data corruption so even though I did have some good ones, I made it a personal rule to never use custom careers (or university study courses).

Some mods work flawlessly from the base game on - others need to have constant maintenance with the release of every new EP.  InSIMenator is one of the most regularly updated and stable mods available due to Eric's tireless efforts.  Other mod makers aren't so fastidious and you may find a mod you loved in the base game has no parallel that is NL compatible.  We can blame EA/Maxis for this.

If you move your Downloads folder to the desktop and the try running the game - check to see if the problem lot can be loaded.  if you can, it will revert all the custom objects and walls/floors to weird substtutes, just do not save the lot if it loads.  If it loads, then you know it is an issue with something in the downloads folder, and you can start the process of adding things back a few at a time to see if you can locate the problem.

If the lot doesn't load, then you are most likely looking at a corrupted lot file - the "update" or "upgrade" to NL format may have damaged the lot file.

Just to make sure I understand - is this specific to one lot or all lots?

[seatnumberx3]

Its all lots. But I've followed all of your advice and now the game is running smoothly, minus some of the Custom Content that was giving me hassles. Thank you so much for all of your help

[BeosBoxBoy]

You're welcome, seatnumberx3.  I am very happy that I was able to help. Now, enjoy your game!