So far I've been one of the lucky people whose game really never crashed.
But since I moved into a different town with my family, some weird things have happened to me.
First...my game suddenly starts crashing. Without reason, without any sign.
It runs smoothly as always and then the sound suddenly goes away and then it crashes. I haven't installed any new mods, I've been using the same mods for years. I also use the same PC as always , so no hardware conflicts.

Then I get no more error messages from ErrorTrap. I'm used to getting notifications about every ingame hour from the mod about things it fixed. These "errortrap recorded" messages. Suddenly they don't appear anymore, and I'm afraid that the mod stopped working somehow and that's why my game suddenly crashes.

And then there's something that other players would find handy, but which really irritates me.
Whenever I moved into other towns, my Nraas mods were reset and I had to redo all settings at the city hall.
Suddenly that is no longer the case. All the mod settings from my old save and old city are still there when I move to a new city.
Except story progression.
But Master Controller, Saver, Register, Traffic, Overwatch and Woohooer´s Settings are still the same as in the old save.

I find that irritating because it wasn't the case before. Whenever I started a fresh save (a fresh town), I had to redo my mod settings as well.
I'm desperately looking for a reason why my game is suddenly starting to crash, so I'll mention anything that strikes me as odd at the moment. Can anyone please help ?

Chaleara post_id=92936 time=1674502574 user_id=14356 wrote: Whenever I moved into other towns, my Nraas mods were reset and I had to redo all settings at the city hall.
Suddenly that is no longer the case. All the mod settings from my old save and old city are still there when I move to a new city.
Except story progression.
But Master Controller, Saver, Register, Traffic, Overwatch and Woohooer´s Settings are still the same as in the old save.

I find that irritating because it wasn't the case before. Whenever I started a fresh save (a fresh town), I had to redo my mod settings as well.

I must ask, but how did you move? With Traveler or by really starting a new town from main menu and place your family from the bin?

You can use Overwatch in your old save -> Immediate -> Export choose All nraas mods to export all settings
In your new town let the clock run a few sim minutes, then
Overwatch -> Immediate -> Import the settings of all your mods you have saved befor.

It is normal that when starting a "fresh" game/town from main menu that NO previous settings will be there, only the defaults of each mod.

About your crash - I don't know the answer, maybe someone else knows.

When your existing game (not a new one started from scratch) lands gameplay in a new world and the NRaas mods are "seen" by that world for the first time, that world picks up mod settings from the world traveled from. This is by design. From that point forward, the mod settings remain independent of each other.

Which worlds are you playing and yes, how did you move from one world to the other? Was this by way of EA's built-in Move to New World function or by way of Traveler's vacation first then Change Hometown method? And which two worlds are we talking about here?

igazor post_id=92944 time=1674518584 user_id=6716 wrote: When your existing game (not a new one started from scratch) lands gameplay in a new world and the NRaas mods are "seen" by that world for the first time, that world picks up mod settings from the world traveled from. This is by design. From that point forward, the mod settings remain independent of each other.

Which worlds are you playing and yes, how did you move from one world to the other? Was this by way of EA's built-in Move to New World function or by way of Traveler's vacation first then Change Hometown method? And which two worlds are we talking about here?

So, if I understand this correctly, if I move from one world to a fresh world with an already played family, all mod settings will be preserved, and the settings will only reset if I have Sims I've never played before move to a new world?

I've played in Isla Paradiso (I haven't had any problems with that world, never had) and I've also moved back to a fresh Isla Paradiso world.
The thing was this. I played my save in Isla Paradiso for several real life weeks, let my sim start a family and let the family get rich because I wanted to see what descendants they would have in Oasis Landing.
When I went there for the first time after my family was rich, there were no descendants, although my Sims are married, have 3 children and all traits are suitable. That was a bummer for me because, as I said, I worked towards it for several weeks.

I didn't want to put up with that, so I tried to put this family in a fresh Isla Pardiso world. And when I traveled there into the future, there were suddenly 13 descendants.
Fine, but in the new world I suddenly have these weird crashes. I still have no lag or other issues, the only thing I noticed is that ErrorTrap won´t give me any notifications anymore, although it did this in the old world.

I moved the way I always do. I saved my sims in the library and loaded the new world and placed the sims on a lot there.

Chaleara wrote: ↑

January 24th, 2023, 6:20 am

I moved the way I always do. I saved my sims in the library and loaded the new world and placed the sims on a lot there.

This isn't what we call moving to a new world, this is starting a new game with library copies of existing sims. Moving, to us, implies it's the same game and the same sims in play.

Is it possible that you took the step of loading the new world from the game's Main Menu rather than quitting all the way to the desktop (or Origin if relevant) and reloading the game from scratch in between? Due to a bug in the game, the contents of RAM are not always emptied out in between when doing this and the data from one game/world can get superimposed on another thus leading to all kinds of strange game and mod behavior, including possibly the crashes and ErrorTrap rendered useless that you are suddenly experiencing. We very strongly recommend not doing that, if this is the case.

Isla Paradiso being the particular world on both ends complicates the troubleshooting here because, regardless of your experiences with it, the world is routing-flawed unless steps are taken to remove some of the worst of the badly designed lots in town. If the Main Menu theory above holds no water (no pun intended), you may want to try a different world for the destination just as a test to see what happens with both the mods and the game's stability.

igazor wrote: ↑

January 24th, 2023, 8:41 am

This isn't what we call moving to a new world, this is starting a new game with library copies of existing sims. Moving, to us, implies it's the same game and the same sims in play.

oh ok, but that's how I always do it. I just call it "moving" because I don´t play NEW sims with zero skills and without jobs but already played sims.

igazor wrote: ↑

January 24th, 2023, 8:41 am

Is it possible that you took the step of loading the new world from the game's Main Menu rather than quitting all the way to the desktop (or Origin if relevant) and reloading the game from scratch in between?

No, I never do that. I know that sims 3 is a little bit sensitive so I am overcautious. I always quit the game completely. I saved my sims to the library, then quit the game, shut down the pc and went to sleep.
The next day I even created a whole new user folder (just copied the mods, library and saved sims folders there) and then loaded the new Isla Paradiso world and placed my sims there.

igazor wrote: ↑

January 24th, 2023, 8:41 am

Isla Paradiso being the particular world on both ends complicates the troubleshooting here because, regardless of your experiences with it, the world is routing-flawed unless steps are taken to remove some of the worst of the badly designed lots in town. If the Main Menu theory above holds no water (no pun intended), you may want to try a different world for the destination just as a test to see what happens with both the mods and the game's stability.

Yes, I know that. I've been playing Sims 3 for years, I know that Isla paradiso is very bitchy and I also know what I have to do to make it stop. I've been editing the city the same way for years before starting a new save there. I delete all houseboats and ports, some problem families, I edit all houses so sims can't get stuck, and then of course I have Register, Traffic, and Overwatch to do the rest.
In this way, Isla Pardiso has been running smoothly and without any problems for me for years. Until now ....

I just don't understand why ErrorTrap suddenly doesn't want to work anymore. And why my mods weren't reset. You said that would be normal when you move with a family that has already been played.
But now we know that when we said "move" you and I meant different things.
Since I copied my family to the library first and then from the library to the fresh world, do they count as completely new Sims? And shouldn't the mods then be reset at the new city's town hall?

Okay, this is (a lot!) more information than we had prior. But now I'm officially stumped. Or at least a bit confused.

Mod settings are game save and world specific, and are saved within the saved games, in the worlds' nhd files. By creating a whole new game folder, and thus not re-using a saved world, caches, even DCCache and DCBackup files, you are leaving nowhere for mod settings to even live so unless you have some kind of altered tuning files in play for the mods, they should indeed all snap back to generic settings.

So that leaves me with two questions, really the only ones left I can think of to ask:

1 - Is it possible that you have another user game folder somewhere on your system, such as in OneDrive, that the game may be trying to read from as opposed to your newly created game folder?

2 - I don't think we've established this, but what kind of install are you working with? Is this Origin/EA App, Steam, retail store discs (and if this one, that what patch level), or something else?

First of all I would like to thank you for taking so much time for my problems. I really appreciate that

igazor wrote: ↑

January 24th, 2023, 2:51 pm

Mod settings are game save and world specific, and are saved within the saved games, in the worlds' nhd files. By creating a whole new game folder, and thus not re-using a saved world, caches, even DCCache and DCBackup files, you are leaving nowhere for mod settings to even live so unless you have some kind of altered tuning files in play for the mods, they should indeed all snap back to generic settings.

Yes, that's exactly what irritates me. It had always been like that before. Whenever I started a new town, I made a new user folder and just copied my mods, library and savedsims folders into it. Always, without exception. And every time I had to redo ALL mod settings (which is absolutely no problem for me, I know my settings by heart). And suddenly all the settings were still there, except StoryProgression. This is the only mod that has completely reset itself, like all other mods should have done.

igazor wrote: ↑

January 24th, 2023, 2:51 pm

1 - Is it possible that you have another user game folder somewhere on your system, such as in OneDrive, that the game may be trying to read from as opposed to your newly created game folder?

2 - I don't think we've established this, but what kind of install are you working with? Is this Origin/EA App, Steam, retail store discs (and if this one, that what patch level), or something else?

1- No, I checked my computer again. There is only one "The Sims 3" folder, the user folder that I newly created.
I have an older backup of a sims 3 user folder but it is on an external hard drive that was not connected to the pc.

2- I am on origin. patch, 1,69

The last thing I can think of now is that when I created and edited the fresh Isla Paradiso world, there were still 3 save files from my old game in the old town in the saves folder at the same time.
Because I first loaded and edited the new town, and then I loaded an old save from the old world (without quitting and re-loading the game in between) to copy sims and houses from that into the library so I could then place them directly in the new world.

So my saves folder looked like this.
1. Isla Paradiso new
2. My Family 1
3. My Family 2
4. My Family 3

The "My Family" folders were from the old Isla Paradiso world and at the same time as the save file of the new world in the folder.

But could that have anything to do with it? I have a hard time imagining it. I only copied the sims/houses and no mod settings.

A last attempt on my part could be to redo Isla Paradiso again. So restart the game with a new user folder again without any save file in the saves folder, then load and edit the new Isla Pardiso again, place my Sims from the library there and see if the mod settings are all reset and the error trap works again.

Chaleara wrote: ↑

January 25th, 2023, 1:04 pm

The last thing I can think of now is that when I created and edited the fresh Isla Paradiso world, there were still 3 save files from my old game in the old town in the saves folder at the same time.
Because I first loaded and edited the new town, and then I loaded an old save from the old world (without quitting and re-loading the game in between) to copy sims and houses from that into the library so I could then place them directly in the new world.

If you never saved the new world after poking around and doing library related things with the older saves, only before doing so, this doesn't sound like the cause. But is it at all possible that the sequence you took after having done this so many times was not exactly the way you remember it now?

igazor wrote: ↑

January 25th, 2023, 2:06 pm

Chaleara wrote: ↑

January 25th, 2023, 1:04 pm

The last thing I can think of now is that when I created and edited the fresh Isla Paradiso world, there were still 3 save files from my old game in the old town in the saves folder at the same time.
Because I first loaded and edited the new town, and then I loaded an old save from the old world (without quitting and re-loading the game in between) to copy sims and houses from that into the library so I could then place them directly in the new world.

If you never saved the new world after poking around and doing library related things with the older saves, only before doing so, this doesn't sound like the cause. But is it at all possible that the sequence you took after having done this so many times was not exactly the way you remember it now?

I'm starting to get confused as to whether I'm remembering correctly or not.
I just do it like I said. Today I'm too tired, but tomorrow I'll start a new Isla world again without any save files in the folder. My Sims are now all in the library, so I don't need any more save files in the folder.

I'll get back to you afterwards and let you know if anything has changed. Thanks again for all your patience and help.