Bugs and other problems with Open for Business
Over the last week I have tried to play my Sims at least an hour a night. I have one retired guy from the culinary field who I want to open a bakery. His wife is still younger (go old dude!) and working as a celebrity chef. She’s bringing in enough bucks per week that they should be able to open “The Sweet Shoppe” in about three weeks.
During the course of playing this family (they are the only ones I have played from my neighborhood since installing Open for Business), I have found a few bugs and other issues. The first (and biggest) bug is some lots will not load. The daughter in this family left for college and I loaded the University neighborhood to place her in a dorm. I had to do this in order for Pops to get his want fulfilled. Anyhoo - in the process of moving her into a dorm, the game froze. It started to load the lot, the columns were lighting up and the icons were changing colors and then nothing. I let it sit for nearly 10 minutes thinking it needed to reload all the old data into the new OFB format.
This particular lot is a 5-bedroom dorm which had previously housed some of my other neighborhood college students. They recently graduated, which causes the lot to reset. I had read the lots reset when the last playable Sim graduated, but I guess it never occurred to me that included all the upgraded electronics, furniture and aspiration rewards I had bought with the previous resident. Next time I will know to drop that stuff in inventory before they head back to the neighborhood.
Back to my problems — After 10 minutes, I decided it must be something else causing the hangup. So, I forced the game to close using my task manager and rebooted the computer. I figured I’d try again. Still no luck. After the second reboot, I went straight to the Sims 2 BBS to research the problem. I discovered this is something many players are dealing with. According to one user, the problem is the ReNuYu Senso Orb. Lots with this object will not load after installing OFB. Sure enough — after putting on the boolprop testingcheatsenabled command, I could see that darn Orb was the holdup. I deleted that error message and that lot now loads fine. Of course, close to 50% of my lots have a good old aspiration-changing Orb, so it looks like I will be using the boolprop quite a bit (unless a patch comes out sooner, that is).
Another problem I have is notifications. Last night, Pops was showing his youngest son how to use the candy machine. Each time Junior gained a skill point, three windows popped up telling me so. I don’t recall if multiple windows opened for other skills or objects, but on the candy machine last night, I had so many popups they were scrolling off my screen.
OH, I discovered you CAN lock the door and set permissions on who can access which parts of your lot. You have to put your walls up (I always play in cut mode, so this is a pain), but once up, you can click on a door and lock it for certain Sims. This is great for home-based businesses. I sure don’t want Sally Jo from down the street sleeping in my bed.
I have a notepad where I am logging the stuff I come across that seemsto be buggy. I’ll keep posting here as I find new stuff (good or bad).
