Question #1 - Game Limit?
I first discovered the Sims 3 a few years ago, and it was relatively recent that I started playing again since I was on a hiatus, so I would like to clarify is there any sort of limit to how many games you can create? I remember in the past something about a limit but that doesn't seem to be the case now.

Question #2 - Issue with Notifications
The computer that has Sims 3 installed is shared. Only recently have I started using mods and here is a roughly accurate screenshot of the mods I have installed: https://prnt.sc/mjl8gc. However I uninstalled all of the StoryProgression personality modules to reduce lag and installed GoHere and DebugEnabler. Since I have started using mods the amount of notifications received per game has gone up, and while I find the notifications useful, my sister finds them incredibly annoying. I reduced StoryProgression's speed from Slow to Snail to reduce some of the notifications but she still complained about it. I would like to still receive the mod-created notifications while my sister doesn't want to see any of the mod-created notifications, Is there any way to disable all mod-created notifications for my sister's towns only, whilst them simultaneously being enabled in my towns?

Question 3 - Custom Worlds
I recently discovered some people have made their own custom worlds your sims can play in (http://sims3.thesimscatalog.com/sims3-category/worlds/). My question here is how can you tell if a town has good programming or not? Or if installing the town could damage your game?

EDIT: Also, if a town is lacking the "populated" tag, does that mean it's completely empty?

1 - There is not and has never been a limit to the number of ongoing games you can create. There may have been a trial version of the game back when it was new, so closer to 2009, that had one but that was before my time with TS3.

This isn't the same thing, but there is a limit that is impossible to define as it seems to be different among players as to the number of saved games you can have in the Saves folder and still have the game selector screen that shows at startup function properly. Over that limit, which is typically somewhere above 50, newly created games and new save files will stop showing up to be selected from. The solution is to not keep that many saves there, the individual saves can be stored elsewhere out of Saves and the TS3 user game folder by using Windows (Explorer) to move the files around while the game is not running. It's widely considered a best practice to keep no more than 5 or 10 saves in that folder anyway, and move others you may wish to play in the future in and out as you need them.

2 - I take it you mean the StoryProgression story notifications telling you what the inactive (not being played) sims around town are up to as that is what most of them will be. On City Hall or an in-game computer, NRaas > SP > General Options > All Stories and select the subset of sims about which you would like to read stories from All down through Friends/Blood Related to None. Progression will still happen if the stories are disabled, the player just won't get to be informed of them. Like all mod settings, this one is specific to each ongoing saved game.

Note that changing the All Stories settings may not have an immediate effect as stories already in the queue may need to run out before the change is applied. This can take a few sim hours up to a sim day or more to happen, depending on the types of stories being presented.

There is no way to prevent mods like Overwatch, ErrorTrap, and GoHere from occasionally informing the player that something is wrong or any mod reporting that a script error is being thrown and that an error log has been or is about to be generated. Or in the case of Overwatch that its scheduled overnight run has completed and some results (like x number of cars removed, y number of elevators reset). It wouldn't be a very good idea to suppress any of these.

3 - Mostly by reputation of the world and its developer. Many of them are presented on sites that have discussion boards where players talk about their experiences with these custom worlds and what they like/do not like about them. In case you have not seen it, we offer a list of custom worlds that have become our members' favorites. Any that have been found to be truly design-flawed that landed on the list have been removed upon our receiving reports of such, but of course the list is only a very small subset of what is available out there.
Worlds-Recommended-By-Wiki-Members

How well larger worlds will perform will to some extent depend on the strength of players' systems and how much content they have in play. Poorly made or non-performing worlds may not be pleasant to play in but I don't see how they could damage anything except the games attempted within them. Unless, I suppose, they came with custom content that was also broken and attached itself to other sims and lots within the TS3 user game folder, but that would affect only the TS3 user game folder and not the program install or anything that drastic. "Bad" custom content is something to be aware of when using any kind of TS3 downloads, though.

When players share the same computer, it's common for each of them to have their own Windows login accounts or at least their own TS3 user game folders so that content installed on one is not really shared with the other. But different setups will work better for different sets of users.

Not sure about the populated tag question or where it shows up exactly. Wouldn't that depend on the site that is hosting the downloads or did you mean something other than a website listing indicator?

Question #1
Where else would you store save games? And if they are not in the saves folder you'd be unable to access them unless you moved them back in, so if hypothetically you have a lot of games you'd have to move whatever game you want to use into the saves folder before loading it, right?

Question #2
Got it.

Question #3
I decided to try testing out Evansdale but I realized I didn't know how to install custom worlds. It seems like it may be different for each site. For example Nilxis Designs worlds seems like you need to install them through Dropbox somehow, My Sim Realty worlds seem to have a more direct installation, and worlds like Sunset Island (https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.ht ... Id=7511647) seem like they can be installed the same way you install Riverview.

Also, in the catalog I linked, some worlds are labeled as populated while others aren't. My question is, am I correct to assume that if you install a world labeled as populated, there will be pre-loaded sims already populating the town, whereas if you install a world without the "populated" label, it will be completely empty just like Adventureland is?

1 - Wherever you want on which you have storage space -- on your hard drive, a second hard drive, an external, a USB thumb drive, in cloud storage, etc. I have one ongoing game that is seven years old now with over 150 saves made of it at various points in time in case I want to back and look something up from long ago. I keep around 30 of them in a different folder on my hard drive and the rest are stored and "backed up" on an external drive so if anything goes wrong with my current one, I don't lose everything.

And yes, the point is that you have to move the games you wish to play into the live Save folder before playing them. That's not the height of convenience admittedly, but overloading the Saves folder with saved games you aren't really playing tends to increase the game's RAM usage (slightly) at startup in order to build the list to choose from and you run the risk after a while of not seeing your most recent games and saves even showing up anymore even though they were saved just fine and are still in the Saves folder.

3 - Dropbox is an online file storage site, it has nothing to do with installation. It is where you would download the world to be installed from. You can skip the offer to create a Dropbox account if you do not wish to have one, that's their business model but having an account is not required to download.

All custom worlds are installed the same way, they are sims3pack files that are to be installed using the Launcher. Some will come with extra bits and pieces, files that might need to go elsewhere or suggested CC from other sources, but the designer would have to tell the users that on the downloads pages or on any documents like Read Me files that might come with the download.

Yes, to me Populated in that context means pre-populated and with it not there then perhaps not. But that's not really a strict rule that anyone has to follow so in some cases you might get a pre-populated world that is not indicated as such. Not on topic I guess, but doesn't Adventureland come with 2 pre-made sims? That world is widely regarded as a mistake, one that EA's developers were using for testing that wasn't really meant to show up for the players to see but certain installations of the Origin version of the game with WA made it appear anyway. I'm on a Steam install myself, so no Adventureland, but we have two other EA developer testing worlds showing up instead. They are interesting to look at but not really playable as Adventureland happens to be unless you like trying to deep sea dive in the middle of a dirt lot, one is apparently a small prototype for Uni World that's missing most of the campus features, and goofy things like that.

Just want to say that I'm playing in Evensdale at the moment and love that world. I have played many games there and find it runs very well. Its actually one of my favorites.

When you install a mod you put it in Mods > Packages. Is there not something similar for custom worlds? I actually installed the Evansdale ZIP, but I wasn't sure what to do after that.

EDIT: Also yes, Adventureland does have 2 starting out sims. But that's practically empty.

Uhtred wrote: ↑

February 17th, 2019, 9:27 am

When you install a mods you put it in Mods > Packages. Is there not something similar for custom worlds? I actually installed the Evansdale ZIP, but I wasn't sure what to do after that.

There are two kinds of player added content for TS3, Package files and Sims3Packs. Mods are always Package files. Custom worlds are always Sims3Packs and require the Launcher to install them; part of the install process will put the required .world file in InstalledWorlds for you. Other forms of content such as CAS parts and furniture, etc., can be either file type depending on how the creator makes them available. Some make both available so the player can choose which file type they want to work with. But custom worlds are too complex and have too many "parts" to be available as a single package file.

A zip (rar, or 7z) file is not itself content and won't do anything if it isn't decompressed -- it must be downloaded elsewhere outside of the game folder and opened up first, then the contents removed from the wrapper and handled the correct way depending on the type(s) of files inside. Package files go into Mods\Packages. Sims3Packs go into Downloads to then be read and installed by the Launcher.

It seems like having a Dropbox account is required. When I clicked the link to install Ziwa Bonde, for example, it redirected to a Dropbox page and I wasn't able to install it. Clicking Direct Download didn't work.

Also, this time I downloaded the ZIP for Plum Grove, and I right-clicked it and tried extracting it in Downloads with 7-Zip. It told me that it "can not open the file as [zip] archived - is not archive".

Perhaps it would work if I used S3Repacker or S3PackageViewer? But where do you go to install them (Google didn't find it)? And which one is better?

That is not how Dropbox works, at least not intentionally. It will put all kinds of enticements in your face to create an account and install its software, but there is always a way out provided unless the file originator has password protected the files they are sharing and they are meant to be private, not for the general public to access. I am sorry that Direct Download is not actually giving you the file, it does for me and I just successfully downloaded Ziwa Bonde on two different browsers to test. Firefox (actually Waterfox but it's the same thing in this regard) put the download save offer front and center on my screen as it tends to do. Internet Explorer did so on the toolbar at the bottom of the browser window with the usual choices, save, save as, or open (we want save or save as here).

Perhaps try a different browser?

I will point out that all of the mods and files available for download here from NRaas are actually hosted on Dropbox. Users don't always notice this because the download mechanism given here is a bit more seamless than making the user go to the Dropbox site and hit download for themselves, it's all scripted for them. But since you can download from here successfully, we know there isn't any kind of block on your end that is barring you from Dropbox downloads generally. Having said that though, might you have a security/anti-virus program in place that is being overly protective on you?

On the zip for Plum Grove, I didn't have any problems downloading that either although it did take a couple of minutes (slow server on their end apparently). We can't unzip a file while its download is still in progress, perhaps you are not getting the complete download?

Given the above and the Error 16 issues you are having with ciane's version of IP as described on the EA forum, I have to ask -- is there something wrong with your Internet connection, as in is it being throttled by your ISP? How large is the hard drive you are working with and how much free space is on it? Does the game still work and save (as) properly on your existing worlds already in play without the save errors?