's Blog

Playground Slide

I haven�t been uppdating here lately, here is a pic of my latest uppload. A playground slide I started to make over a year ago. It was hard to get it to work but finally I made it. It is still not perfekt but at least it workes!

Time for a Break..... *EDIT*

Hey Everyone,

I know i said in my previous Blog Entry that it was time for me to have a break.... but i didn't realise how much i would miss creating. It's only been a couple of days. Unfortnately though i am still having computer trouble so i'm going to give it another day or so and then reinstall. Hopefully with any luck things will go as i want them to.

Well it's just a short one from me today. Keep your fingers crossed for me that all goes well with my reinstall.

Louise

New Bon Voyage Bug

Well, here I sit after spending 28 hours cumulative this week digging through my Downloads folder trying to figure out why my newly re-installed game had taken fits.

I have been experiencing all manner of problems with my game in the past few weeks, and I finally discovered what the problem is.

Body Shop is including a whole copy of the Sims06.package from the base game with Sims packaged in Sims2Packs with some version of Body Shop. (most likely the Bon Voyage version)

I checked random Sims on the Exchange, TSR, MTS2, and InSIM. It appears to be a wide-spread post Bon Voyage bug. *oh joy! more evidence they did inadequate testing of this EP before they shipped it to market*

You will need to use Sims2Pack Clean Installer to locate the "no category" files with junk-code name (e.g., b18484e15a91c5a039d61f635d15d7c3.package), the file size will be about 6.8 MB, double check the file in SimPE, and you will easily see that this is indeed the Sims06.package.

Delphy's Download Organiser -- an otherwise useful tool -- was of no benefit in this.

I just deleted 41 copies of Sims05.package from my Downloads folder! The presence of 41 un-needed copies of the Sims06.package did NOT help my game play better! *way to go EA/Maxis*

I also ended up deleting over 300 redundant copies of meshes *a joy of the post-Pets Body Shop* (which was made more problematic by the junk-code renaming and JFade's compression thing changing the checksum number) - this is insane and wasteful! The presence of 328 un-needed copies of the meshes I already had installed did NOT help my game play better! *way to go EA/Maxis*

SO after 28 cumulative hours of crawling through 1000s of files, my game is sane again.

Frankly, after my experiences with Bon Voyage EP, I can emphatically say, it is worse than the Pets EP, and I wouldn't slap a leper's dog with the Pets EP.

After the madman calmed he thought to write:

at the moment, the bug seems to be limited to Sims packaged with the version of Body Shop that is installed by Bon Voyage EP; the file it includes (id est, Sims05.package) is one of the base game's root file for Maxis meshes that everyone already has installed (otherwise the game won't work). But as you will read below, it may spread like a virus to non-BV versions of the game fairly quickly.

The problem is one that Sim-makers need to be aware of, and a problem downloaders of Sims need to guard against. For instance, when I went to the Exchange, all of the Sims I downloaded were labelled as requiring only the basic game or those EPs which I have installed (I do not have Bon Voyage or Pets EPs installed and did not re-install any of the stuff packs on this latest re-install) - but upon close inspection of the files the Sims2Packs that contained the duplicate Sims05.package were all made with Bon Voyage EP's Body Shop and carry the Bon Voyage EP version stamp. This may be purely coincidental at this point and not a reliable point upon which to formulate a rule.

The chief hazard is that this file is almost always renamed in the Sims2Pack to some bizarre name of letters and numbers, and is not easily differentiated from a mesh that has already passed through Body Shop's renaming process. The bizarre number-and-letters name is not a way to identify the file. I had three files named b18484e15a91c5a039d61f635d15d7c3:

b18484e15a91c5a039d61f635d15d7c3.package <-- Sims06.package renamed
b18484e15a91c5a039d61f635d15d7c3_0001.package <-- a recolour of Kavar's Edge hair
b18484e15a91c5a039d61f635d15d7c3_0002.package <-- a custom object recolour

The file was renamed 41 unique names in my Downloads folder and was of different sizes and MD5 checksum numbers -- I can only assume that the various game patches and JFade's The Compressorizer! account for the different sizes and checksums.

I located 1000s of Sims in Sims2Pack files on the Exchange, MTS2, TSR, InSIM, and other sites that all have this file inside the Sims2Pack. In one instance, I found a Sims2Pack with a file size over 18 MB with 3 copies of the file in it, but otherwise was made entirely with Maxis content. The bug operates like a virus, a Trojan in fact, spreading the infection to subsequent installations of the game and raising the risk that any Sims2Pack'ed Sim you create subsequently may include the redundant file.

I think this risk may be limited to persons with Pets EP, Seasons, EP, and Bon Voyage EP, because these versions of the game install a Body Shop that includes meshes, and the Sims06.package file constitutes a portion of Maxis meshes. I checked Sims2Packs I created with my Seasons EP Body Shop and the file had propagated into the Sims2Pack from my downloads folder.

So if this bug isn't fixed with great urgency, then very soon this issue will proliferate like a virus across the entire on-line Sims community resulting in potential problems for all Simmers who enjoy downloading and sharing pre-made Sims.

Baying at the Moon

It's pretty obvious that the bug doesn't strike all Sims exported by Body Shop with the Bon Voyage EP installed. I have found that Sims with custom body meshes seem to not carry this duplicate of the Sims05.package. So that is helpful in perhaps narrowing the problem down to use of a specific Maxis mesh or set of Maxis meshes that cause the issue.

It will take more minds than mine working on this to see if a pattern can be discerned.

Further Mumblings of a Madman

Several people have asked me to put this all in layman's terms - there isn't a layman's terms version on this one, I had to visually inspect every file that Sims2Pack Clean Installer didn't give a category/type in SimPE to properly identify all the redundant files. This was not a fast process with more than 6 gigabytes of downloads.

I don't know how to make the process any less complex or less technical when the tools we would normally use to diagnose duplicates appear to be unable to differentiate between the multiple copies of the files.

In the case of the Sims06.package it is a file roughly 6.6-6.8 MB in size, and if you open the file with SimPE it will contain several 100 CRES (Resource Node) files.

I have contacted EA and was told to "install the patch" for Bon Voyage, even though I do not have Bon Voyage installed and went to considerable lengths to explain that fact in my communication. I have to say, this is typical of every interaction I have ever had with EA on a bug or technical issue since they released The Sims 2. I probably won't make many friends saying it, but I don't think they even read my bug reports nor do I believe they even read the bug reports from their own QA testers. If my complaint is ever passed along to an software engineer, I fear any action from EA it will come too late.

1 Million

Wow!! My total downloads hit 1.000.000 and it is still increasing!! Thanks to everyone who downloaded my creations!! Hugs, Simal ^_^

Draft of TC63 with Detimgi Rose Set

Actually I'm fighting with Detimgi's Rose dining to get it looking nice with the textures she served for Texture challange 63. I have to take some decisions...

Beach House Window Dressings

These come in 2 sets: I and II. Set I contains a collection of Tiebacks and Roman Blinds for Beach House Windows. Set II contains a collection of Tiebacks and Venetian Blinds for Beach House Windows. In both sets, the 'stand-alone' blinds are for the Beach House Plain Windows; and the Tiebacks are for the shuttered windows. Recolours are included too, including a transparent recolour for both Tieback sets, meaning that you can use the tiebacks in 3 different ways: the tieback with the integrated blind, the tieback on its own, or the blind on its own. See blog pic! Due to the way the files are linked, there are two master files for these 2 sets: the Short 2tile Tieback with Roman Blind and the Short 2tile Tieback with Venetian Blind. Any diagonals will require their straight version to work. I'll be releasing a set of counter-friendly, Beach House kitchen windows soon too.

Halloween Hotel

I never tried making a hotel before and with Halloween coming up, I thought this was the perfect chance to come up with something new and a bit creepy. As usual, I only used Maxis content. The lot was already tested and works fine with me, but if you find any trouble, let me know :)

The Big House

Well, here's the big house in all its glory :) It has extensive landscaping, a big swimming pool, sun porch, greenhouse, three bedrooms, two upstairs bathrooms and a downstairs half bath. There's a large kitchen and separate dining room, plus a luxury lounge with twin fireplaces to keep you warm.

Ooo Spider Lady!

I decided to do one dress for Halloween. This is my Gothic Spider Lady hanging out in her favorite cemetery. She is wearing a texture that I drew myself *not the spider though* :-). Thank you dgandy for the great dress mesh. The front of the dress has a large spider and the back is decorated with three smaller spiders. I'll upload it today and hopefully it will be published by Monday or Tuesday.

Rework of Prague Set orange done and uploaded!

Actually I'm going through my old Reflexionistin Prague sets and do some improvements. They were made with my old graphics card and with the newone some items look blurry in my game. I started with the orange set and dimmed the orange a bit down. I also corrected some unexact textures, mainly on the shoeboard and the umbrella stand. And here is the very drafty draft of my new set, an Autumn Elegance Nursary based on SimsinParis meshes again. Can't help, French style nursaries are so rare. Thisone is version 28, seems I'll end up with version 50++