Hello folks, happy new year.

Going to do my best to keep this precise as possible. And I apologize in advance if this post goes against any rules or is in the wrong category, I couldn't find a general bugs category, but I just really need help with this from anyone.
A few days ago I was trying out the male to male pregnancy settings under the MC options to make the perfect blend of two of my male sims. Last night I saved my game, closed out for a short while, and then when I rebooted the save things... broke.

I have an annotated screenshot (that I can't seem to figure out how to upload) but here is the basic rundown of the issues:

- The bar of household sims on the left is just... missing. (8 sims in total in the household)
- The household funds are missing and displays as §0 when they had lots of money before the save
- Moodlets are missing
- All household sims are either stuck in a looping animation or are standing in place, frozen
- Action queue will not complete because the sims are frozen
- The sim panel at the bottom cannot be clicked on
- The sims themselves cannot be clicked on, when mousing over them the game acts as though there is nothing there so I can't even pull up MC to reset them

But the thing is... the game itself is not frozen - I can interact with the environment like turning the TV on and off (which my sim watching TV does not react to, he just continues to act as though the TV is still on), I can go to edit town and swap to a different household and play completely as normal, it's just this one specific household - the one I was playing as last when I saved - is bugged. I have tried splitting up the household, evicting them and replacing them into the world and it still will not fix them. When navigating to the actual file itself through Documents/EA/Sims 3/Saves I know it is not corrupted because it doesn't show me the ".bad" suffix.

This save in specific is using a new .package mod which is just outfits for pregnant men so that, y'know, they can actually have a body when being pregnant as opposed to the floating head/hands/feet they would otherwise be, but I'm certain this isn't causing the issue because I have saved the game multiple times before this and closed the game and reopened the game over multiple days and this has never happened. I have a feeling however it might have been caused by me using the "delete object" on a squirrel or two in the garden and then saving before I realized "oh schnitzel, you're not meant to use delete object for ANYTHING in this game ever", and I realized this error AFTER I had closed out of the game for the night.

Any help would be really appreciated, I just want this save file to be stable enough for me to save a few of the sims from this household into the library and then I can nuke it entirely and never look back. Thank you for reading! So much for a short post, sorry guys X_x

There is more than one kind of corruption, and not all types leave a .bad extension on the save file. The game may not "know" the save is corrupt at all.

At any rate, the best thing to do at this point is to try to load a backup copy of this save. Hopefully you have one, or rather several—Sims 3 saves corrupt often enough that it's necessary to take precautions at all times.

But even if you don't make your own backups, the game keeps the data from the second-to-last time you saved. Open the Saves folder again and find the folder with your save name plus a .backup extension. Rename the save, so it doesn't have the same name as your main save, and delete the .backup, so the folder name ends in .sims3. This version should now be available to load from the Main Menu.

Please add NRaas ErrorTrap and Overwatch if you're not already using them, and delete the five cache files in your user folder (again, if you have previously) before loading the save. These are the cache files:
.

• CASPartCache.package
• compositorCache.package
• scriptCache.package
• simCompositorCache.package
• socialCache.package

.
When you load the backup, if it loads properly, let the game clock run for a few sim-minutes, then run an MC town reset, "save as" and rename the save (so you're not overwriting the former backup), quit, delete the cache files again, reload, and see whether you can play forward as normal. Even if everything seems fine, please do start keeping backups—the fix could be temporary, but more importantly, it's good practice in general.

This approach may work if your main household doesn't load properly again, but it's not guaranteed because the game could have lost some of your household's critical data. You can of course try, either while the main household is selected or after loading a different one.

Can you explain in a simple way what deleting these 5 caches do please? It won't sabotage any of my earlier saves that aren't related to this one, right?

Also I will indeed download ErrorTrap and Overwatch, but what do those do exactly? And will running those new packages on old saves potentially mess with them? I have some saves up to 5 or 6 years old and I really can't afford to lose them.

puzzlezaddict wrote: When you load the backup, if it loads properly, let the game clock run for a few sim-minutes [...]

So after I opened my "backup" folder after loading it and let the game clock run for not even a second IRL time, my sims seemed to just... disappear off the screen and then ErrorTrap gave me Script Error notifications for all the Sims that just disappeared off my screen. I have a video of the occurrence (is there any way I can post that here?) and I'm also not sure what to do from here. I did still continue on with the instructions you gave me, but opening the new save I made, and... it doesn't even acknowledge me as having a household to play. Hrmmm.

If you got Script Errors Errortrap created files in your The Sims 3 folder under documents.
You can drag and drop the file (or files) onto the text reply box here.
So we can read them easily.

Deleting the cache files is an important procedure we all use often. It is especially needed when you add or remove mods
https://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title= ... ache_Files

It has nothing to do with saves.

Um... it seems I have 11, 6 of which all have the same time stamp? Should I send all 11, are all of them necessary? This is all greek to me, and I don't want to spam, but if sending them ALL is needed to get to the root of the problem, then I will, I just don't want to get in trouble for spamming. Also, drag and drop doesn't seem to want to work for me, unless I'm doing something wrong. Sorry about the hassle, I'm not much of a whiz when it comes to this type of stuff, I don't mean to be making this harder than it needs to be.

You can open the XML file with a text editor to see if they are all the same, then drop one here.

if they are all different, you can see in head upper part, zip them and give us a readable link via third party filesharer like Dropbox or Google drive.

Here is the google drive link with all the errors that were generated through loading of my game today. I'm pretty sure the 6 that are at the same time (and the 7th which occurred 1 minute later) were all from me booting up the backup version of the save in place of the original.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

I see a collection of script error logs uploaded to us here that may or may not be yours (judging from the time stamps). Are you playing in Sunset Valley and do you have sims with names like "Baby 5 Mayer" and "Baby 8 Mayer" (etc.)? This is why we ask for players to use the drag and drop method to perform uploads, so we can associate uploaded logs with the correct player and discussion threads.

If these are yours, you need to replace Overwatch with the newer version that is officially still in beta testing, but fine for all to use. Then clear (delete) the cache files again. The newer version contains the fix for the "NPC Party" errors that are part of what is breaking your game.

Going back a few steps, there are no MasterController settings for male/male pregnancies. Those would be under the purview of StoryProgression and Woohooer. How were these babies actually created? Another series of errors uploaded involve the inability of the game to issue new smartphones to toddlers, but toddlers can't actually use cellphones so am not sure yet what is triggering those.

Are you certain there are only 8 sims in this household or are there really more than that and if more than 8 have you ever switched out of this household as the actively controlled one and then back into it again? There are steps one must take with different mods to successfully play overstuffed households. And if SP doesn't allow for Greater than Eight, then such a household will be seen as not possible/viable by the game itself. The same thing can happen when moving sims in and out of the household when Mover is not present.

It is okay to use object delete commands on inanimate objects like pieces of furniture and doors. Just not on sims.

Yes, "Baby 5 Mayer" is property of mine, and Sunset Valley is my save. I'm great with naming kids.

Ah phooey, it wasn't MC, it was Story Progression - I'm really sorry for the confusion! I'm still getting used to which settings belong to which mod, I am sorry about that. It's under Story Progression / Caste Options / Males etc.

Sorry also for downloading the wrong Overwatch! I thought I needed to use the version that matched my game in order for it to be compatible, and I play on 1.67, so that's what I clicked on and downloaded.

I'm almost certain that I have only ever kept the household amount at 8 sims because I know from past experience that the game doesn't like 9 sims in the household. It is possible I might've switched back and forth. It might also be the possibility that one sim started giving birth and I quickly relocated a household sim to a different one to make room for the newcomer.

As for the "delete object", I never did it on a sim, unless the small animals e.g: squirrels count as sims? That was what I was using the "delete object" prompt on. I think I deleted 4 or 5 of them.

Really sorry for any confusion I've caused, and especially if it's a cause for frustration. I'll go and update my Overwatch to the newest version.

ETA: The phrase "Another series of errors uploaded involve the inability of the game to issue new smartphones to toddlers, but toddlers can't actually use cellphones" keeps tickling me. Ah, that modern parenting!