Two of the households in my game contain partially broken pedestrian portals. In that Sims are unable to casually walk by those lots. One of these households has been like this since 2013. The other household has probably been like this since 2013 as well. Since I barely played this save between 2013 and now.

Here is a list of things that the pedestrian portals still do:

• They still allow Sims to walk by if they are furious with a member of the household.

• They still allow bill deliverers to appear.

• They still allow paper deliverers to appear.

• They still allow Rod Humble to appear.

• They still allow visitors to appear.

And here is a list of things that the pedestrian portals don't do:

• They no longer allow Sims to casually walk by (walkbys tend to happen around 10:20 AM, 10:50 AM, 2:20 PM, 2:50 PM, 4:20 PM, 4:50 PM, 6:20 PM, and 6:50 PM, which means that eight walkbys happen daily for most households)

• Whenever the game spawns a Sim to use in a walkby, the Sim's shadow briefly shows up for a fraction of a second before the Sim just vanishes into thin air.

I have made several attempts to fix this glitch. But each attempt has failed:

• I have tried cloning one of the lots using the lots and houses bin (this is what fixed another longstanding issue that took more than a decade to fix)

• I have tried moving the households out and back in.

• I have tried installing expansion packs to see whether it automatically fixes the issue.

• I have tried seeing whether the pedestrian portals are still there. Which they are.

One thing that might have caused the glitch to happen:

• I have a habit of demolishing the path outside each lot and replacing it with discrete concrete after spray painting the terrain with grassy growth. Because I dislike how you can see the terrain's natural colour underneath the path unless you remove the path and add it back once you've spray painted the terrain. As of 2024, I also demolish the road and put it back once I've spray painted the terrain underneath.

Are the portals in the correct orientation?

Yes they are.

That shouldn't really matter as long as they aren't moved right against the edge of the lot pointing outwards. As someone that often makes my own portals to simulate footpaths, people exiting hood deco buildings, making holes in the ground, and walking in from other lots, walkbys spawn in at a random portal, head to wherever you put the mailbox, and just path their way over to the most accessable one from where they are.

The big thing I'd look at is potential mod conflicts. Though it is odd this is only happening with two lots...

Are they lots you downloaded or lots you created?

Yes, I was thinking that it's odd the sims appear (or at least their shadows) and vanish. Strange as to why some sims can make it but others not.

Almost sounds like the sims are banned, maybe through visitor controller or some other mod? I'd agree that it sounds a bit like mod problem.

Do the sims vanish in a flash of blue light? If so, that's the Visitor Controller removing a banned sim.

No. Also this has been happening long before I started using mods. So this issue is completely unrelated to mods.

The pedestrian portal only allows Sims to walk by if they are there as a visitor, because they are furious with a resident, because they are a service Sim such as a bill deliverer or paper deliverer, or because they are a special NPC such as Rod Humble. If they are there just to walk by then their shadow shows up briefly before disappearing.

These aren't lots that I've downloaded. And only one of them is a lot that I created. The other one is a pre-made lot. But I've made too many modifications to it for it to be worthwhile replacing it.

Put down new portals. The portal revealer comes with portals. Although I have never heard of such a thing only blocked portals. I once blocked a portal on a com lot with part of a tree and that stopped sims arriving until I moved it.

I've already put down new portals. But only for pedestrians. The ones that aren't bugged have been retained. And the problem still hasn't gone away. I'm starting to get the feeling that the only way to fix this issue is by editing the lot data from within SimPE itself. But I have no idea what I'm doing whenever I'm examining lot data.

This almost seems like game or hood corruption... I'm going to assume you are fairly new because playing completely without mods is very inadvisable...

If you played for a significant time without mods, you might have had the bugs that screw with universal NPCs. You see, certain NPCs like Mrs. Crumplebottom, the Grim Reaper, the Pollination Technicians (not Mr. Smith), the hula zombies, the NPCs in charge of toy cars, robots, birds, etc while following the behaviors of sims are actually stored in the program files...

Normally this isn't a big issue because their interactions are limited, however there are bugs and oversights that can cause data to be written to them, which is very very bad. Essentially, since it's expecting the Objects.package file to be a sim, it'll write the data governing these sims to the wrong place, which will break the game in bizarre ways...

For example, Mrs. Crumplebottom can be turned by a head vampire without mods. And unless you have the mod to fix it, if you have a ghost child, universal NPCs will come to try to pick them up (since that's the family where the dead are stored and when ghosts come out is after a child's bed time) which can break them out of their script and potentially write data to them...

Then there's hood corruption, which whilst significantly more fixable is also something that kinda just happens sometimes. The game glitches while generating a piece of gossip, or a memory and it can cascade into a mess if you dkn't keep on top of it with programs and tool objects like Hoodchecker, the batbox, and the memory manager.

If I don't need to explain these things I'n sorry, but if it isn't mods it's probably something went wrong with the game or hood. I still find it so bizarre it is confined to two lots...

On the contrary. I've been playing The Sims 2 for more than a decade now. I have been making sure that Mrs. Crumplebottom isn't bitten by any of the grand vampires. One of the vampires (who wasn't a grand vampire but a former grand vampire) did attempt to use the 'Bite Neck' interaction on her. But I cancelled the interaction before she even had a chance to perform it. A lot of corruption from object NPCs can be reverted by uninstalling and reinstalling the game. But with the saved games still intact.

I'd try the Lot Cleaner. backup your game first, then load the game with this in your Downloads folder. Enter the lot, grab it from the catalog in buy mode without placing it on the lot. Save and exit, reload the lot and play. Any difference?
https://modthesims.info/showthread....417#post5530417