Hi again, I'm trying to resurrect some very old saves that I've had on a backup device for quite a while. The problem I'm having is that most of them won't work. It tells me that "they might have been saved w/ep's or sp's that are no longer present" or something along those lines. I've gotten I think 2, maybe 3 old saves that work by copying over the Meta Data file to those games thanks to the help of a very good friend. I've tried copying that over to all of the old saves, but still most of them won't work. When I saved them, I don't think I had all of the ep's yet. These go back to 2009. Is there any hope for these? Thanks!

It doesn't matter that you have added additional EPs since then, what matters is that you have all of the EPs now that the saved games required back then. There was only one EP released in 2009 though, that was WA in November. The next one was Ambitions in Jun 2010 and the first SP was HELS in Feb 2010 (but Stuff Packs really don't allow or prevent games to start up). If you were playing custom or store worlds back then, of course those would also need to be installed now or the game saves dependent on them would not be able to load.

My history with TS3 only goes as far back as late 2011, but from what I understand most players don't have any trouble loading up game saves that go back that far. Perhaps others here will have different suggestions or experiences to report. It is possible that a game save that has not been played since before the first few patches came out will not be able to load in the current patched environment because the general file structure of the TS3 user game folder has changed since then.

These games were mostly in SV w/a couple of them in HS which I have installed. I don't remember when they were saved and it is impossible to tell now since the time on them is current from being transferred. It might be a patch issue in which case, they're probably history. Thanks Igazor!

i have loaded up really old saves and it works as long as Store Objects and i think some object Mods are the same and I have the right world file installed. I had a problem with an old New Sunset Valley world file, because i could not find the version i was playing in, but other than that I can open all my really old files. As a matter of fact I populated my current game by resettling families from my old save games and remaking Sims from my Sims 2 games and getting them all together into a new neighbourhood. This included saves from when no Eps were out yet and a lot of saves with only World Adventures and then all the saves I made each time a new EP came out to test the new EP. I can open all of them so I don't think it is a patch problem, there is probably some Custom Content missing.

I had a few experiences where very old saves didn't want to load at first and ended in some "serious error". I tried a few times afterwards, and every time the game loaded a bit further, until it finally got through with the loading process.
I don't really have any good explanation for this. It's as if the game loads parts into RAM, which isn't released in between loading attempts. Given I also get "serious errors" as soon as the game has loaded all my 32 GB of RAM full of stuff on "standby", I'm not too surprised though, even though that sounds more of an issue of Windows 10 and the handling of virtual memory vs. RAM.

As I've never read that anyone else had similar experiences, this may be some issue in my system after all.

Well, if this is a patch issue, I found an old unpatched base game on an old non internet comp. What I've done so far is to d/l patch 1.2.7 and would like to extract it to the game on the old comp. I'm wondering now, where do I extract the zip to? I'd like to see if this even works!

Sonshine wrote: ↑

March 22nd, 2020, 2:32 am

I'm wondering now, where do I extract the zip to?

There should be an exe file inside the zip file so just extract it to your Desktop and double-click the exe file to start the patching process.

OK, Thanks Sarah!

Well, it's looking more like these saves don't have a patch issue, but are corrupted. I installed WA on the old comp and it's up to date, but these games are still unplayable. : / I'm going to try a couple more patches and *maybe* another ep, but I'm not going to hold my breath. : /

I really don't think there is a patch issue.. As long as you have a newer and not an older pathc then when you played you should be good.
Are you sure you did not have a fixed version of the world they are saved in that you don't have anymore? Like ellacharmed's fixes?