Analysis - freezing/crashing when trying to check into a resort

Fairawen wrote:
Created an account so I could weigh in on the resort freeze. Starting to see a pattern - not sure if this will help out any, but if anyone else could check to see if these patterns are true for them I'd appreciate it. (I have a laptop and it's a bit terrible at running the Sims as it is.)

Things I've discovered:

- The check-in freeze is closely related to another freeze that only happens when my Sim owns the resort in question (have not yet tried to duplicate with Sim not owning the resort). After being on the lot for an hour or two, game will freeze.

- To achieve instant freezing, a Sim can try to check in. To achieve a slow freeze, Sim simply needs to be on the lot for some point in time. Sim DOES NOT need to interact with the desk at all for the freeze to eventually show up.

- These two freezes are exactly alike in type (that is, the plumbob is still bobbing, water is still moving, but the game itself is perpetually loading).

- These two freezes DO NOT occur when my Sim is classically employed (rabbit hole job).

- Both errors DO occur when Sim is self-employed.

- NEW: Both freezes also occur when Sim is employed in a job with an open schedule. This means work such as the Magician, Acrobat and Singer causes the same freeze bug as when the Sim is self-employed. If anyone can replicate this on another machine I'd appreciate it. :)

- Bug is not fixed when all other items on lot are removed. (Besides the desk, as that is required for the resort).


Now I'm not a Sim modder, and my knowledge of coding is a bit limited, but I've got theories.

Based on how the resort functions, I can see that there are a pool of employees that one can hire from. These Sims seem to be a bit like service Sims, in that they aren't "residents". When your Sim (or a Sim in the active household) has an open work schedule, it's possible that the game is trying to use those individuals in the pool of possible employees (for one reason or another... again, not sure how the coding works for Sims, so this might be a silly thing to assume, but let's just go with it). Either because A. They are technically employed with a "role" or B. They are in the active household, the code creates an infinite loop of some kind, where it's trying to add this Sim(s) to the pool of "possible employees", but can't. This is why the freeze happens both when you're trying to check in ("How can a possible employee check in?" it says to itself) or after a certain amount of game hours have passed with the resort being "active" (where the infinite coding loop just slowly overwhelms the game with info).

This might be a case of the code lacking an exception for Sims with open work schedules from the pool of possible employees. This means to fix the bug would just need a line of code to outline an exception for these Sims. Really, from my perspective, it's an easy fix for the makers of the game (or a modder who knows what they're doing). If that's the issue, of course.

But, sadly, this is all conjecture. :( Not sure if anyone could go poking around in the code and try to see if they could fix it with all of this in mind. It's a terribly restrictive bug that needs to be dealt with asap for most people to enjoy the game.

In any case, if anybody can prove any of this wrong or duplicate it, would really appreciate it! (Especially testing all Sims with open work schedule types. Haven't had time to get through all the different role possibilities yet.) Lemme know what you guys think. Meanwhile, I'll be trying to test out more things and see if I can't find any more specifics.