I've been playing with the same saved game on The Sims 3 for ages. I've gone through 2 generations of this family, and a few weeks ago, the divorced mother went on one of those stupid free vacations... Except she never actually left. She was still playable and her teenage daughter was still home, but the teenager couldn't call or text her because her character bubble was like it is when they're away on vacation.
My problem now is that the daughter is a young adult and I really want to put her into university, but I can't because it tells me that the adults are away on vacation! I even tried moving her out, but it still didn't help anything.
Has anyone else had this problem? And do you have any solutions to fixing it? I really don't want to start my game over.
Comments
You could try moving the household to the bin and then back to the neighborhood. That seems to work to fix a lot of issues but I don't know if that will work with this. And I think doing so will probably make your sims lose all their relationships, so it's probably something to try as a last resort (and on a test save game in case it doesn't work).
If you have NRaas MasterController you might try resetting the lot, or the whole town before trying so drastic as moving to the bin and back.
Not always. Anyway, the free vacation is so short that if you make a backup copy you only lose a couple of simdays' progress if something goes wrong.
I've tried it twice, and both times I did a "save as" as soon as the parents were leaving. I save every simnight anyway, so if something had gone wrong, I could've just started again from the morning of day the parents left.
First time the teen party was a disaster, and the parents came back the same night, and scolded the kids, and since there was something weird about their opportunities, I decided to go back to my backup save. But now that I think of it, there wasn't really anything badly wrong with the game. I just got scared because I'd read about so many problems here.
The second time everything worked just fine. And now the son of the family is married and the twin girls at uni. So, I could just happily delete the backup save I had.
So, while there might be problems for some, it's nothing having a backup copy couldn't solve.
But to prevent stuff like this happening in the future, I'd recommend doing Save As and creating a new file every single time you save, rather than just hitting Save and making the file bigger. It helps tremendously with issues like Error Code 12 (when the file is too big to save it), and when your game inevitably goes corrupt one way or another, you'll have backups.
The way I do it is I count up with every save. For example, my current game is called Bernadette, so whenever I save I save it as Bernadette1/Bernadette2/Bernadette3/etc. I'm almost at Bernadette200 and I haven't had an issue with Error Code 12 at all. But, obviously, you don't want your main menu all crowded up with a million different copies of the same game, so when deleting old saves I'd recommend that you keep at least two or three versions of your family. It might be kind of annoying to remember to do at first, but it really is worth it to keep your precious Sim families safe.
1. Go into Edit Town mode and save a copy of your family
2. Place them in another house/a copy of their old house (I have not tested if you move them out with their home, but I don't see why it wouldn't work)
3. Begin playing! They will retain everything they had, including degrees, skills, careers, etc. Unfortunately, they lose relationships with the rest of the town, which sucks, but that's repairable.
It worked for me, but I haven't had a chance to test it on another computer. My computer is running Windows 7 (the most recent Windows I can stand using. Windows 8 is a nightmare), and I have some custom content from TheSimsResource, but nothing else that even resembles mods. Good luck to you
-The Oracle Of Quantico
Oh, once in a while they're for real but most of the time? Well as they say "no such thing as a free lunch!"
@ the oracle dude (too long a name to copy) Win 7 the latest you can stand? Ditto here. But take heart, it's why they're rolling out Windows 10 this summer-- or early Fall.
"8" is officially a bust . In spite of it emulating Smartphones which many (but not everyone) is so adept at-- that finger-swiping interface simply didn't "click" with many.
"10" is supposed to resemble "7" more than "8".
(But don't quote me verbatim.. in my line of work I deal with commercial and corporate clients who just last year gave up XP for Win 7 "Enterprise"- For many it was a large and costly undertaking, so I don't expect to be dealing with Win 10 issues on a professional level for.. years to come. Best to look it up via official channels.)
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> I've found a fix for this through a long time of experimentation (and several death threats aimed at my computer) In a moment of desperation, I tried this, which I used a long time ago when another one of my games glitched.
> 1. Go into Edit Town mode and save a copy of your family
> 2. Place them in another house/a copy of their old house (I have not tested if you move them out with their home, but I don't see why it wouldn't work)
> 3. Begin playing! They will retain everything they had, including degrees, skills, careers, etc. Unfortunately, they lose relationships with the rest of the town, which sucks, but that's repairable.
> It worked for me, but I haven't had a chance to test it on another computer. My computer is running Windows 7 (the most recent Windows I can stand using. Windows 8 is a nightmare), and I have some custom content from TheSimsResource, but nothing else that even resembles mods. Good luck to you
> -The Oracle Of Quantico
I second this - this is the only fix that ever worked for me. I really wish there wasn't such a glitch as a let's play I watched on youtube she never seems to get the glitch and she accepts the free vacation every time and the teen parties are so awesome...I mean I suppose you could throw a party and invite only teenagers and just make the parents go to the park or something but it doesn't have the same thrill. I always get the glitch and thus never accept them anymore.
So at first I tried to make the mother move out by first switching active households and having a friend invite her to move in with them (as she was a single parent when she took the vacation). I figured if I moved her out and back in the game would realize WAIT she is back from vacation! That didnt work. The game kept freezing every time she tried to move out. So since I couldn't move her out organically I went into edit town and split the house. I removed her from the house and placed her in a random neighbors house. I found that in the neighbors house the people she lived with had the option to go to University.
I then went back to my original house and tried to send her daughter to University. Still said the adults were on vacation and the option was grayed out! Seemed like the glitch was connected to the lot rather than the Sim. So I split the mother from the other house, put her back in the original house then using edit town moved the daughter onto another lot.
Lo and behold the enroll in university option was there for her! Yay! I had her enroll and she now has a degree in communications. When she got back from Uni and I moved her back into the original lot using Edit town the option was still there and everything was un-glitched as far as that is concerned and everyone in the house had the option to go to Uni if they wanted.
I know this is 2 years too late for the OP but hope this helps someone.
Step 1: Save and go to edit town (save just in case)
Step 2: Select the problematic household and click evict with home. Your household should currently be on the clipboard.
Step 3: Select the bulldozer icon and use it on your home lot (which is currently vacant) to wipe it clean and reset it as an empty lot.
Step 4: Place your household from the clipboard onto the empty lot.
Step 5: Select the lot and click switch active household
Step 6: Return to game
The only thing that was reset for me using this method was promised wishes. They still had all their relationships, inventory, skills, needs, age and lifetime happiness rewards. And the adults are no longer "on vacation" :smile:
Hopefully this post will help someone
Tried the evict, bulldoze, put back technique but am now stuck in the lot after clicking "accept change" - it's not doing anything... going to hope End Process doesn't kill the game completely...
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> I just had this glitch in my game and I found a fantastic solution!
>
> Step 1: Save and go to edit town (save just in case)
> Step 2: Select the problematic household and click evict with home. Your household should currently be on the clipboard.
> Step 3: Select the bulldozer icon and use it on your home lot (which is currently vacant) to wipe it clean and reset it as an empty lot.
> Step 4: Place your household from the clipboard onto the empty lot.
> Step 5: Select the lot and click switch active household
> Step 6: Return to game
>
> The only thing that was reset for me using this method was promised wishes. They still had all their relationships, inventory, skills, needs, age and lifetime happiness rewards. And the adults are no longer "on vacation" :smile:
>
> Hopefully this post will help someone
---
Thank you SOOOO much! This did precisely the trick to fix my corrupted lot and enable traveling again for the parents of my Sims family! It's ridiculous how many bugs/glitches/screw-ups the vanilla base game of Sims 3 has before any mods come into play.
> I just had this glitch in my game and I found a fantastic solution!
>
> Step 1: Save and go to edit town (save just in case)
> Step 2: Select the problematic household and click evict with home. Your household should currently be on the clipboard.
> Step 3: Select the bulldozer icon and use it on your home lot (which is currently vacant) to wipe it clean and reset it as an empty lot.
> Step 4: Place your household from the clipboard onto the empty lot.
> Step 5: Select the lot and click switch active household
> Step 6: Return to game
>
> The only thing that was reset for me using this method was promised wishes. They still had all their relationships, inventory, skills, needs, age and lifetime happiness rewards. And the adults are no longer "on vacation" :smile:
>
> Hopefully this post will help someone
Yes this did help. I accepted one, and didn't even realize it had glitched out. Everything went smoothly and they returned, and became playable. They acted normal and everything. Then, I clicked a computer as one, and the Uni and WA Travel options were grayed out. Hovering over them gave the message "The adults are still on vacation!"
This fixed it easily.