Body Shop Freezes

Greg · 02-17-2008, 02:49 AM

My shiny new computer seems to working well with The Sims 2, but when I page through the catalog of adult female tops in Body Shop, it freezes when I get to a certain point.

I suspect the problem is a corrupt file somewhere. Does anyone have any idea how to find out which file it is?

I could just resort to the old binary division method but with bazillions of clothing articles in the game and a half hour to load Body Shop each time, that could turn out to be a new career!

Hokieman · 02-17-2008, 04:05 PM

You've probably got a corrupted file from a crash or copy error - maybe more than one. That's what happened to me when I copied my download folder multiple times when I was having my system problems last year (I ended up with over a 100 corrupted files - It took forever to get rid of all of them. Finally found Delphi's program and that did the trick.

Try Delphi's Download Organizer - it has a feature to show broken bodyshop files. It'll nail most of them but not all.

Another thing you can try is going into buy mode on a lot. I did it that way before I got DDO.. Warn you now, it'll probably cause a crash if you actually try to buy a bad file but what I found was that if the thumbnail was weird - sorta blacked out, that was usually my bad file. If you can get it to display in buy mode, usually the next time you go to CAS or bodyshop it will usually show up and you can delete it that way.

Hope this helps.

Greg · 02-17-2008, 04:23 PM

Thanks, Hokieman! I took your advice and ran Delphy's Download Organizer. It found more than 1400 orphan files, but they are all meshes, mostly by Warlokk. Oddly, it didn't find a single broken Body Shop file.

I tried using DDO to move some "unknown" files out of the game but the move failed. And now that I write that, I think I might know why. I probably have all the game files set to "read only." Silly me.

Now I'm day-dreaming about a new clothing manager utility. I think that idea deserves its own thread so I'll see if I can get my thoughts organized and start one!

Meanwhile, I just might collect all the clothing into one spot and try the binary-search trick. The idea is to divide the herd into 2 equal parts. Try one part. If it fails, you know the bad file is in there somewhere. If it does not file, the bad file is in the other set. Continue to divide and test.

It's incredibly time-consuming because Body Shape takes so long to load but it's the fastest way I know of to do an exhaustive test. If you have 4096 downloads to test, you should be able to zero in on the target in 12 iterations. So even if it takes a half hour per test, that's only 6 hours; much less time than I would spending trying to find the culprit by eyeballing file names.

Miros1 · 02-17-2008, 08:42 PM

Actually, it won't take half an hour per test. If your full complement loads in half an hour, half your files will load in about 15 minutes, a quarter in 7.5 minutes, etc. Prolly a little more, since Body Shop needs to load all the Maxis clothes first.

I might even run a quick test with no Downloads just to be sure it's not something freaky in the Maxis files.

Greg · 02-18-2008, 12:02 AM

Aha! Good point!

I don't suspect it's the Maxis files because they always come at the end of the parade in the catalog and this happens on the 4th or 5th screenful.

Miros1 · 02-18-2008, 05:28 AM

I still remember doing a binary divide-and-conquer in Sims1 and it wound up being the stupid Maxis cuckoo clock!

Sita · 02-19-2008, 02:13 AM

oh yes, most times I had to do this with Sims 1 it was one of "their" objects. That flipping vase of roses in particular... Good luck Greg. Not a fun job.

Greg · 02-19-2008, 11:19 AM

I haven't dug into it yet because I haven't yet assigned a high priority to making a new adult female top, but I'm sure I will eventually hunt down the culprit.

Y'know, maybe I should try running with zero downloads just in case it does turn out to be a Maxis outfit.

Hokieman · 02-20-2008, 01:36 AM

Ok, let's try this again - Last time I tried to post, it went to never never land so if this gets duplicated, sorry.

On the divide and conquer approach, been there, done that more than once and it does take a lot of time. I'm surprised you found no broken files though. I found a bunch.

Here's another trick I use that might be a little faster.

Try the clean installer. Put all your clothing files in a directory by themselves. 1st check for dups and clean them out (for some reason, DDO picks up some that Clean installer doesn't and vice versa - I use them both together to clean my directories). Then select the 1st file (hopefully the graphic window will open cause it's not one of the weird files) and just arrow down the list letting the little graphic window change with each file.

When one of few conditions occurs, you've got a wierd file, not necessarily bad, but one that was put together in a way that isn't quite kosher and that may cause problems. The conditions are:
1. The graphic doesn't change between 2 files. Close the graphic and select one of the files, close it again and try again.
2. The graphic window closes on it's own or no graphic pops up for a file (embedded meshes will do this sometimes).
and 3. (this is the real give away) the program locks up when you select the file (with the graphic window open).

Then isolate those files and try to load them in CAS or Bodyshop. (Bodyshop will load files that CAS won't * vice versa) and see if you've found your troublemaker(s). I usually just take them all out unless there's something I'm really attached to. For those, I remake them (export then reimport them) in Bodyshop if I can or go to SimPE if that doesn't work.

Couple of things I learned cleaning my downloads up:

Remember when Maxis changed Bodyshop with Pets - They had to do a patch for backwards compatibility. Some of the files created with the unpatched version of the Pets Bodyshop are still out there and can cause problems even now.

Also, files created or edited with SimPE can be problems (moreso with those done with earlier versions) - usually these are the ones that Bodyshop errors on when you try to export them. Have to use SimPE on them to extract the graphics. If it isn't a singleton mesh, then I reload them through bodyshop. Otherwise, try it in SimPE.

On the clothing manager, check out the Wardrobe Wrangler over at DJS Sims. Really saved me a lot of time cleaning up my bodyshop files. Nicest features are the sorting and ability to recategorize the clothes and tag them. I tagged all of my custom bodyshape clothing so it's at least easier to pick out clothes in CAS although I wish EA would allow collections in buy mode. Has a lot of nice features. It takes a bit to get used to the quirks and the clothing graphics aren't as nice as clean installer but it really is a pretty decent program.

Sorry to be so long winded. Hope it helps.

Greg · 02-20-2008, 12:09 PM

I hadn't thought to use Clean Installer to check files. That's a really good plan!

Wardrobe Wrangler is new to me. I'll have to try that one out, too!

Sita · 05-17-2008, 08:34 AM

Wardrobe wrangler seems to do something wierd when sorting hair colours? After sorting them with WW, when selecting a hair ingame, or in CAS it seems to drop back from the custom bin to say the blonde bin, or vice versa, every time? gets irritating if you have as many hairs as I have. Rose seemed to hint above that she had a similar problem. So using WW to sort hair might not be the best idea?

Oh and in WW when you quarantine orphan files, I found out where they land - but the folder seems to contain most of Dr Pixel's clothing files....

why?

Greg · 05-17-2008, 11:37 AM

We're outside my expertise but my first guess would be the compatibility of expansion packs.

Hokieman · 05-17-2008, 02:56 PM

Sita, for some reason, WW doesn't get rid of the old thumbnail in the custom bin for some reason. It did create a new thumbnail in the correct bin so you end up with two thumbnails. I ended up rebinning with SimPE cause it didn't do that.

Miros1 · 05-17-2008, 04:32 PM

jFade is pretty receptive to bug reports, so you might want to send him one.

You can always delete all the thumbnails if necessary and let the game regenerate them.

Anyone wanna write a rebinning with WW tutorial?

Sita · 05-17-2008, 11:15 PM

reinstalled all DrP's stuff - and it seems to work. So I must have been missing the meshes, not surprising with all my uninstalls and reinstalls.
I don't want to rebin with SimPE, find it impossible to use.
Can I delete thumbnails with WW?
Don't know why EPs would affect it Greg, I have all EPs and stuff packs - yes I know, very sad....

Miros1 · 05-17-2008, 11:30 PM

Just open up the Thumbnail folder, select all, and delete.

Greg · 05-18-2008, 12:15 AM

Oh! If I do that, will the game generate all the thumbnails so that I don't have a mixed-up mess in Body Shop?

Miros1 · 05-18-2008, 06:06 AM

Fix your orphans first, and your thumbnails should all be correct.

Greg · 05-18-2008, 01:32 PM

Does that mean I should (1) check for orphans and fix them if there are any, (2) delete thumbnails, and then (3) start up Body Shop so that it will regenerate thumbnails?

The file in question is CASThumbnails.package, right?

Hokieman · 05-18-2008, 05:51 PM

Sita, the rebinning tool in SimPE is very simple to use, unlike other parts of the program. It's actually a plug in written by someone else.

Rose, it's been reported. He had issued an updated version but I haven't tried it yet to see if that has been fixed. I found the SimPE plugin easier to use regardless. WW's strong suit is the ability to see whats what with the clothing and that works pretty flawlessly although the texture displays are not as good as what's in clean installer.

02-17-2008, 02:49 AM	#1
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	Body Shop Freezes My shiny new computer seems to working well with The Sims 2, but when I page through the catalog of adult female tops in Body Shop, it freezes when I get to a certain point. I suspect the problem is a corrupt file somewhere. Does anyone have any idea how to find out which file it is? I could just resort to the old binary division method but with bazillions of clothing articles in the game and a half hour to load Body Shop each time, that could turn out to be a new career! __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

02-17-2008, 04:23 PM	#3
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	Thanks, Hokieman! I took your advice and ran Delphy's Download Organizer. It found more than 1400 orphan files, but they are all meshes, mostly by Warlokk. Oddly, it didn't find a single broken Body Shop file. I tried using DDO to move some "unknown" files out of the game but the move failed. And now that I write that, I think I might know why. I probably have all the game files set to "read only." Silly me. Now I'm day-dreaming about a new clothing manager utility. I think that idea deserves its own thread so I'll see if I can get my thoughts organized and start one! Meanwhile, I just might collect all the clothing into one spot and try the binary-search trick. The idea is to divide the herd into 2 equal parts. Try one part. If it fails, you know the bad file is in there somewhere. If it does not file, the bad file is in the other set. Continue to divide and test. It's incredibly time-consuming because Body Shape takes so long to load but it's the fastest way I know of to do an exhaustive test. If you have 4096 downloads to test, you should be able to zero in on the target in 12 iterations. So even if it takes a half hour per test, that's only 6 hours; much less time than I would spending trying to find the culprit by eyeballing file names. __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

02-18-2008, 12:02 AM	#5
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	Aha! Good point! I don't suspect it's the Maxis files because they always come at the end of the parade in the catalog and this happens on the 4th or 5th screenful. __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

02-19-2008, 11:19 AM	#8
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	I haven't dug into it yet because I haven't yet assigned a high priority to making a new adult female top, but I'm sure I will eventually hunt down the culprit. Y'know, maybe I should try running with zero downloads just in case it does turn out to be a Maxis outfit. __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

02-20-2008, 12:09 PM	#10
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	I hadn't thought to use Clean Installer to check files. That's a really good plan! Wardrobe Wrangler is new to me. I'll have to try that one out, too! __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

02-17-2008, 04:05 PM	#2
Hokieman Solar Max Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Las Vegas Posts: 520	You've probably got a corrupted file from a crash or copy error - maybe more than one. That's what happened to me when I copied my download folder multiple times when I was having my system problems last year (I ended up with over a 100 corrupted files - It took forever to get rid of all of them. Finally found Delphi's program and that did the trick. Try Delphi's Download Organizer - it has a feature to show broken bodyshop files. It'll nail most of them but not all. Another thing you can try is going into buy mode on a lot. I did it that way before I got DDO.. Warn you now, it'll probably cause a crash if you actually try to buy a bad file but what I found was that if the thumbnail was weird - sorta blacked out, that was usually my bad file. If you can get it to display in buy mode, usually the next time you go to CAS or bodyshop it will usually show up and you can delete it that way. Hope this helps.

02-17-2008, 08:42 PM	#4
Miros1 Goddess for Life Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: NY State Posts: 3,303	Actually, it won't take half an hour per test. If your full complement loads in half an hour, half your files will load in about 15 minutes, a quarter in 7.5 minutes, etc. Prolly a little more, since Body Shop needs to load all the Maxis clothes first. I might even run a quick test with no Downloads just to be sure it's not something freaky in the Maxis files.

02-18-2008, 05:28 AM	#6
Miros1 Goddess for Life Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: NY State Posts: 3,303	I still remember doing a binary divide-and-conquer in Sims1 and it wound up being the stupid Maxis cuckoo clock!

02-19-2008, 02:13 AM	#7
Sita Solar Max Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: England Posts: 371	oh yes, most times I had to do this with Sims 1 it was one of "their" objects. That flipping vase of roses in particular... Good luck Greg. Not a fun job.

02-20-2008, 01:36 AM	#9
Hokieman Solar Max Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Las Vegas Posts: 520	Ok, let's try this again - Last time I tried to post, it went to never never land so if this gets duplicated, sorry. On the divide and conquer approach, been there, done that more than once and it does take a lot of time. I'm surprised you found no broken files though. I found a bunch. Here's another trick I use that might be a little faster. Try the clean installer. Put all your clothing files in a directory by themselves. 1st check for dups and clean them out (for some reason, DDO picks up some that Clean installer doesn't and vice versa - I use them both together to clean my directories). Then select the 1st file (hopefully the graphic window will open cause it's not one of the weird files) and just arrow down the list letting the little graphic window change with each file. When one of few conditions occurs, you've got a wierd file, not necessarily bad, but one that was put together in a way that isn't quite kosher and that may cause problems. The conditions are: 1. The graphic doesn't change between 2 files. Close the graphic and select one of the files, close it again and try again. 2. The graphic window closes on it's own or no graphic pops up for a file (embedded meshes will do this sometimes). and 3. (this is the real give away) the program locks up when you select the file (with the graphic window open). Then isolate those files and try to load them in CAS or Bodyshop. (Bodyshop will load files that CAS won't * vice versa) and see if you've found your troublemaker(s). I usually just take them all out unless there's something I'm really attached to. For those, I remake them (export then reimport them) in Bodyshop if I can or go to SimPE if that doesn't work. Couple of things I learned cleaning my downloads up: Remember when Maxis changed Bodyshop with Pets - They had to do a patch for backwards compatibility. Some of the files created with the unpatched version of the Pets Bodyshop are still out there and can cause problems even now. Also, files created or edited with SimPE can be problems (moreso with those done with earlier versions) - usually these are the ones that Bodyshop errors on when you try to export them. Have to use SimPE on them to extract the graphics. If it isn't a singleton mesh, then I reload them through bodyshop. Otherwise, try it in SimPE. On the clothing manager, check out the Wardrobe Wrangler over at DJS Sims. Really saved me a lot of time cleaning up my bodyshop files. Nicest features are the sorting and ability to recategorize the clothes and tag them. I tagged all of my custom bodyshape clothing so it's at least easier to pick out clothes in CAS although I wish EA would allow collections in buy mode. Has a lot of nice features. It takes a bit to get used to the quirks and the clothing graphics aren't as nice as clean installer but it really is a pretty decent program. Sorry to be so long winded. Hope it helps.

05-17-2008, 08:34 AM	#11
Sita Solar Max Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: England Posts: 371	Wardrobe wrangler seems to do something wierd when sorting hair colours? After sorting them with WW, when selecting a hair ingame, or in CAS it seems to drop back from the custom bin to say the blonde bin, or vice versa, every time? gets irritating if you have as many hairs as I have. Rose seemed to hint above that she had a similar problem. So using WW to sort hair might not be the best idea? Oh and in WW when you quarantine orphan files, I found out where they land - but the folder seems to contain most of Dr Pixel's clothing files.... why?

05-17-2008, 11:37 AM	#12
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	We're outside my expertise but my first guess would be the compatibility of expansion packs. __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

05-17-2008, 02:56 PM	#13
Hokieman Solar Max Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Las Vegas Posts: 520	Sita, for some reason, WW doesn't get rid of the old thumbnail in the custom bin for some reason. It did create a new thumbnail in the correct bin so you end up with two thumbnails. I ended up rebinning with SimPE cause it didn't do that.

05-17-2008, 04:32 PM	#14
Miros1 Goddess for Life Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: NY State Posts: 3,303	jFade is pretty receptive to bug reports, so you might want to send him one. You can always delete all the thumbnails if necessary and let the game regenerate them. Anyone wanna write a rebinning with WW tutorial?

05-17-2008, 11:15 PM	#15
Sita Solar Max Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: England Posts: 371	reinstalled all DrP's stuff - and it seems to work. So I must have been missing the meshes, not surprising with all my uninstalls and reinstalls. I don't want to rebin with SimPE, find it impossible to use. Can I delete thumbnails with WW? Don't know why EPs would affect it Greg, I have all EPs and stuff packs - yes I know, very sad....

05-17-2008, 11:30 PM	#16
Miros1 Goddess for Life Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: NY State Posts: 3,303	Just open up the Thumbnail folder, select all, and delete. __________________ A game that horrible Odessa-person introduced me to: http://www.puzzlepirates.com/?affili...163251&lang=en I'm spreading the addiction by corrupting all my friends (and attempting to make in-game money when they try the game).

05-18-2008, 12:15 AM	#17
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	Oh! If I do that, will the game generate all the thumbnails so that I don't have a mixed-up mess in Body Shop? __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

05-18-2008, 06:06 AM	#18
Miros1 Goddess for Life Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: NY State Posts: 3,303	Fix your orphans first, and your thumbnails should all be correct. __________________ A game that horrible Odessa-person introduced me to: http://www.puzzlepirates.com/?affili...163251&lang=en I'm spreading the addiction by corrupting all my friends (and attempting to make in-game money when they try the game).

05-18-2008, 01:32 PM	#19
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	Does that mean I should (1) check for orphans and fix them if there are any, (2) delete thumbnails, and then (3) start up Body Shop so that it will regenerate thumbnails? The file in question is CASThumbnails.package, right? __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

05-18-2008, 05:51 PM	#20
Hokieman Solar Max Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Las Vegas Posts: 520	Sita, the rebinning tool in SimPE is very simple to use, unlike other parts of the program. It's actually a plug in written by someone else. Rose, it's been reported. He had issued an updated version but I haven't tried it yet to see if that has been fixed. I found the SimPE plugin easier to use regardless. WW's strong suit is the ability to see whats what with the clothing and that works pretty flawlessly although the texture displays are not as good as what's in clean installer.