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Can't Return Home From Vacation?
Serabee
Posts: 135 Member
So, time ran up on my Sims' vacation, and it was time to return home, but the loading screen just kept going and going and wouldn't finish loading. Also, I could hear what sounded like the game continuing in the background as the loading screen showed (her fishing, her singing, her complaining about being hungry, her eating a raw fish since she's a werewolf...) So I restarted and had her leave her trip "early" (like, less than an hour game time earlier since I saved then) and it still didn't work. So I went into edit town and tried to save the household, but it didn't work Her house looks really weird back in the home world... BUT I don't know if that's normal when they're on vacation? So does anyone know if there's any way to get her home? I should mention, because I'm afraid I messed up, that the sim in question is a teenager. She left on the trip with her young adult mother (as her mom had an opportunity to complete) but I sent mom home early. The teen stayed for five days since mom had a level 1 visa. Could that have caused this issue?
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If not using mods, then the only other thing you can try is to load up the game on a fresh session but with all of the graphics options temporarily turned down to their bare ugly minimum, Advanced Rendering off, the game in offline mode (not logged in at the Launcher or in-game levels), the in-game EA Store shopping experience switched off, as we as the hidden object startup game. And then try to get the teen home from there. The point of this would be to relieve the game of as much stress as possible to get through the broken travel transition.
And if none of that helps, I would have to suggest reverting to prior saves, even one before they left home for the vacation world in the first place, to see at what point the game becomes playable in the homeworld again.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
I'm REALLY hoping this will work because the only backup I have for this game is from a loooong while back, before the teen was even a teen and before the mom completed her lifetime wish.
I also hope that going forward you find a way to use Save As (and change the name of each save slightly such as by putting a number or the date on the end) frequently to make safe retreat points along the way, especially just before or after significant things like travel or age-ups happen. Playing with no safe backups to retreat to is just not a great idea unless one doesn't really care about their currently ongoing game. There are far too many ways, with our without mods, for the game to get into trouble and the player to get stuck in a position where there is no way to move forward otherwise.
There's no need to have hundreds of older saves accumulating along the way (unless one wants to), but at least four or five with the player deleting the older, then unneeded saves occasionally, would tend to be a much better file management strategy.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
I have backups now. I have one from right before she left on vacation (learned my lesson) but it'd be a shame if she could never go on vacation. Is there any way to fix this/her?
I know you don't like mods. But the developers didn't work really hard on these things so we can be annoying by suggesting them, they developed mods like Traveler so those of us who enjoy moving and traveling our sims all over the place within the same game can enjoy doing so with far less chance of things locking up like this.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
Increased playability is why EA created an easier and more stable means to fix built in glitches (via a brand new Mods portal).
Additionally the growth of the game over about half a decade of programming gave so many layers of potential conflict and problems, that the gamer community discovered and fixed the individual issues and patched them up with mods. EA started a new franchise TS4, without fixing many of the issues. This is why mods are a natural route to increased playability.
So it's up to each if us to take advantage of these facts.
Some simmers still think of mods as something alien and cheaty to the EA programming, but many find after thinking it through and accepting the clear fact that EA recognized that its community could improve playability.
I'm just trying to lay it out. We don't get sainthood, playing either way. But I paid a lot of money for what has actually become a broken game, so I want my money's worth and I use mods. It's up to you.
Either way, we all do what we believe in. I hope you continue to have success in your game however you play it. Just thought I should share some of the reality so you can give it another thought. Good luck and all the best!
ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ ☆★☆ My Page ☆★☆ ᴼ -♞- ᴼ Ⅰ ❤ TS3❣
My concern is purely about my computer, the safety of mods, and worries about memory. When I played Sims 2 I downloaded pretty much anything I could get my hands on and it totally messed up my computer. I downloaded through the official site, even, but it was just a mess. Everything ran so slow, even programs that had nothing to do with Sims. I had to uninstall everything. I also had a laptop I had to stop using because it ran out of memory. I literally could not open any programs, not even to uninstall anything. Those are the things I'm paranoid about. And why I don't download anything that isn't "official"
But... I mean, I guess if enough people use it it's probably safe. And as long as I don't go overboard with downloading things. Do either of you have a link to where I can download that? Or at least get more information on it?
Computers can run out of hard drive space, but they don't "run out of memory" permanently unless something breaks down mechanically or you just don't have enough RAM installed for what you were trying to do. An upgrade to a new version of Windows (or the Mac OS), for example, can do that since Windows or the Mac OS is what everything else runs on top of. Memory (RAM) is what is used to run programs, it gets used while programs are running. The RAM gets put back for general use as a program is quit. Some mods, even a few NRaas ones, will cause the game to work harder and increase its RAM usage a bit. Traveler, Overwatch, and ErrorTrap do not do this, if anything possibly after some initial cleanup they cause our games to run more smoothly and use fewer resources. MasterController, a very complex mod, is an example of a mod that loads up its menus (on sims, lots, in-game computers, and City Hall) at startup then sits back and does nothing at all until the players selects one of its commands to run. If adding a few mods like this puts your game into memory (RAM) overload, I would have to suggest that you didn't really have enough to be running the game in the first place or your saved games had each gotten too large to be serviceable. TS2 didn't use nearly that much RAM, it's a much older game, so I suspect it was something else that contributed to the prior mess or you really did have a full hard drive at the time.
NRaas mods in particular were originally designed by Twallan (now retired). Both he and the developer who took over since then are professional programmers, and support for the mods is provided at the NRaas site for anyone who needs it.
TS3 mods are a form of package based content.
Where to get the Framework to work with package based content, if you need this: http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Installing_Sims_3_Package_Files/Setup_and_Files
It's really just three folders nested properly, the required Resource.cfg file already in the right place, and two sample mods called NoIntro and NoBuildSparkles for testing. Download to your Desktop when you are ready to try this, unzip, and place the resulting Mods folder into your TS3 user game folder in Documents. After verifying that the setup works, you can keep or discard the sample test mods as you wish. Additional content goes into the Packages sub-folder (usually).
Where to get NRaas mods (it's also in my signature line): http://nraas.wikispaces.com
Traveler in particular, but there are links to all of the others down the left side of the page on full-sized browser windows: http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Traveler
You can ignore any messages showing up about Wikispaces shutting down soon, we know that and will have moved to our own website before that happens later this year.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
*sigh* I've had people apparently doubt I'm autistic after learning I stink at anything involving math/technology
We all have things we are good at doing or more interested in than other things. But when it comes to tech, there are those of us who just like to put ourselves out there to be helpful in any way we can. And yes, sometimes it would just be best to have someone else take a look at a computer that is misbehaving, maybe not the much older one now, or to help solve a problem that seems too complex for the user to handle. I work with attorneys (someone please send me help with that!) in the real world and many times they have brought me their personal laptops that they were convinced were riddled with viruses or just unusable. In some cases that was kind of true, the machine was just too obsolete, it was infected with something fixable, or it was breaking down mechanically and needed to be repaired or replaced, when in others it turned out they were just using up 99.9% of their hard drive space on file storage, leaving nothing for Windows or the Mac OS to work with and everything was acting goofy just because of that.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net