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.