Why are all the photos blank/grey in my game?

Parka12

I probably have around 100-200 photos in my sim's family inventory and in her personal inventory. Most of them are from when she and her two siblings were growing up, a few of their parents, and a few of her new son Bradley. I noticed that the photos on the wall and in the inventory are now grey and are blank. What happened? I checked in my other games and all the photos are fine, not grey.

I've tried deleting the cache, moving family in and out of home, re-starting both computer and game, etc. Are my photos gone forever? I mean I take screenshots so I do have photos of the kids growing up but I really liked all the pictures they took They can take new pictures though so I've been having them do that and there are about four pictures that have survived.

LaBlue0314

I forget which file it is, but if one of those files get deleted, it will cause this to happen. Also if they are saved to the bin, this will happen as well.

Parka12

LaBlue0314 wrote: »

I forget which file it is, but if one of those files get deleted, it will cause this to happen. Also if they are saved to the bin, this will happen as well.

I didn't delete anything myself, could this have happened randomly? Is there any way I can recover those pictures? I have the family in my save file because I moved towns, do you think those pictures will be affected as well?

LaBlue0314

If you moved your family to another town the way EA has it set up, you will loose the pictures. If you move them the way of the NRass Mods this won't happen. Do you have a back up copy of your game, before things went wrong, would be the only way I know how to get them back.

Parka12

LaBlue0314 wrote: »

If you moved your family to another town the way EA has it set up, you will loose the pictures. If you move them the way of the NRass Mods this won't happen. Do you have a back up copy of your game, before things went wrong, would be the only way I know how to get them back.

I do. It has all the pictures except for some that were taken after I moved the family. I moved the family by saving their household and creating a new save file and deleting the old one. Could that be why my pictures are messed up?

igazor

Hi there. The file being talked about, strange though it may seem, is the TravelDB.package file. When you start a new game with existing binned sims, or move them to a new world the EA way, you are possibly without realizing wiping that file out. Therefore, pictures and pictures frames in-game will blank out from that point backwards. The sims don't seem to realize it, but we players can't see them anymore.

There is a way to extract the data from the old TravelDB file and insert it into the current one using tools like S3PE, but it's a really fussy process and there is no reason to expect the right pictures to end up displaying in the right photos in the new game. I probably wouldn't attempt it myself for quite that many of them.

For purposes of a test run though, you might try just copying the old TravelDB file into a copy of your new game, thus bumping out the existing one, and see what happens. Might make more of a mess of things than you've already got, so be prepared to dump the whole test copy if that happens.

Parka12

igazor wrote: »

Hi there. The file being talked about, strange though it may seem, is the TravelDB.package file. When you start a new game with existing binned sims, or move them to a new world the EA way, you are possibly without realizing wiping that file out. Therefore, pictures and pictures frames in-game will blank out from that point backwards. The sims don't seem to realize it, but we players can't see them anymore.

There is a way to extract the data from the old TravelDB file and insert it into the current one using tools like S3PE, but it's a really fussy process and there is no reason to expect the right pictures to end up displaying in the right photos in the new game. I probably wouldn't attempt it myself for quite that many of them.

For purposes of a test run though, you might try just copying the old TravelDB file into a copy of your new game, thus bumping out the existing one, and see what happens. Might make more of a mess of things than you've already got, so be prepared to dump the whole test copy if that happens.

Yeah, that sounds like more work than its worth. I might just see if the photos are in the binned copy of the family. If not, oh well. I still have a ton of screenshots of the kiddos growing up. I'll just take a lot of pictures of this new generation and make sure not to start a new file with them if I ever move them.

ArielGrint

igazor wrote: »

Hi there. The file being talked about, strange though it may seem, is the TravelDB.package file. When you start a new game with existing binned sims, or move them to a new world the EA way, you are possibly without realizing wiping that file out. Therefore, pictures and pictures frames in-game will blank out from that point backwards. The sims don't seem to realize it, but we players can't see them anymore.

There is a way to extract the data from the old TravelDB file and insert it into the current one using tools like S3PE, but it's a really fussy process and there is no reason to expect the right pictures to end up displaying in the right photos in the new game. I probably wouldn't attempt it myself for quite that many of them.

For purposes of a test run though, you might try just copying the old TravelDB file into a copy of your new game, thus bumping out the existing one, and see what happens. Might make more of a mess of things than you've already got, so be prepared to dump the whole test copy if that happens.

When I was playing one of my previous games, I had the photos and paintings wiped when I moved the sims to another town using the phone, but it only applied to things that were in the Sims inventory, the things in their Family Inventory were ok. I am now playing another family and want to move them to another town and keep the photos(I have photos of my main couple that took me forever to take as the camera is hard to control for whatever reason), so I have already saved everything to the family inventory. I wanted to bin them as they are right now and start a new save in another town as I hoping that this would reduce my save size - would the photos still disappear if they are in family inventory?

You mentioned that one can try restoring them using S3PE - I only have a few photos I really want, so I would like to try it, but I haven't really used S3PE before, only had a quick peek at it. Is there perhaps a tutorial for restoring photos that you can link me to? Thank you in advance!

igazor

ArielGrint wrote: »

igazor wrote: »

Hi there. The file being talked about, strange though it may seem, is the TravelDB.package file. When you start a new game with existing binned sims, or move them to a new world the EA way, you are possibly without realizing wiping that file out. Therefore, pictures and pictures frames in-game will blank out from that point backwards. The sims don't seem to realize it, but we players can't see them anymore.

There is a way to extract the data from the old TravelDB file and insert it into the current one using tools like S3PE, but it's a really fussy process and there is no reason to expect the right pictures to end up displaying in the right photos in the new game. I probably wouldn't attempt it myself for quite that many of them.

For purposes of a test run though, you might try just copying the old TravelDB file into a copy of your new game, thus bumping out the existing one, and see what happens. Might make more of a mess of things than you've already got, so be prepared to dump the whole test copy if that happens.

When I was playing one of my previous games, I had the photos and paintings wiped when I moved the sims to another town using the phone, but it only applied to things that were in the Sims inventory, the things in their Family Inventory was ok. I am now playing another family and want to move them to another town and keep the photos(I have a photos of my main couple that took me forever to take as the camera is hard to control for whatever reason), so I have already saved everything to the family inventory. I wanted to bin them as they are right now and start a new save in another town as I hoping that this would reduce my save size - would the photos still disappear if they are in family inventory?

You mentioned that one can try restoring them using S3PE - I only have a few photos I really want, so I would like to try it, but I haven't really used S3PE before, only had a quick peak at it. Is there perhaps a tutorial for restoring photos that you can link me to? Thank you in advance!

I can try to find one, but I've been through this myself and it's really fussy and complicated. What I would recommend instead, if mods are feasible and tolerable, is using NRaas Traveler (together with Overwatch and ErrorTrap) to move sims to a new world instead of doing it the EA way.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Traveler+FAQ
(See the Switching Homeworlds section near the end)

If reduction of file size is all that is really being sought, I would also recommend Kuree's SaveCleaner. Version 1 does not tend to blank out photos and actually still works with Patch 1.69.
http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=547717

TreyNutz

ArielGrint wrote: »

You mentioned that one can try restoring them using S3PE - I only have a few photos I really want, so I would like to try it, but I haven't really used S3PE before, only had a quick peak at it. Is there perhaps a tutorial for restoring photos that you can link me to? Thank you in advance!

Here's a tutorial I wrote about a year ago on how to do that. Back up everything before you try, especially if it's your first time using S3PE.

http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/14755660#Comment_14755660

JoAnne65

I don't have this issue with all photos. The photos they take with their camera stay the way they are. It's the selfies that get blank. When I really want that selfie in my game, I let the sims in question make the selfie again.

ArielGrint

@igazor @TreyNutz thank you so much for your help guys! I would try following @TreyNutz 's tutorial first and if that fails I will try using Nraas Traveler, but I do have a few questions about that...

@igazor I already have ErrorTrap, but not Overwatch, now looking at the inner works of the latter it definitely looks like an essential, thank you for pointing that one out to me. I would actually like to both move the family to another town(due to the way I want my story to go, they are moving from Twinbrook to Moonlight Falls) and try to decrease my save size. If I use Traveller first(which I would need to study when I am more awake as right now it sounds a bit complex to me) to travel & prevent the photos from disappearing and then use Kuree's SaveCleaner am I risking loosing my save or the photos somehow or are the two mods not conflicting? Sorry if this sounds like a silly question

igazor

Kuree's SaveCleaner is not a mod. It's a utility that you use when the game is not running to clean up bloated nhd files within your save folder. No conflict.

The usual point of using Traveler to move to a new world is that the old one stays in your game as a connected world and your sims' connections, relationships, and history with those left behind remain intact. The old world, Twinbrook in this example, and the sims remaining there go into a state of suspended animation while Moonlight Falls is being played. You can travel sims back to Twinbrook on a vacation to visit if wanted, move sims back there, or transition active play back there, during which time Moonlight Falls would be suspended. Or you can delete the Twinbrook portion of your game entirely if that was what you really wanted to begin with.

Frogsnack

It's been a while for this thread but if there are only a few pictures/ portraits to save there is a simple workaround I've found, which is to rename one of your sims in the original save (or move a townie in if you want to avoid possible duplicates), move the items you want saved into their personal inventory, then edit town and save them to bin.
In your new save/ cleaned save, add that sim to your current family, unload those pictures/ portraits into the house and kick the sim out or completely remove them from the game using nraas Mastercontroller. Nrass > Mastercontroller > Advanced > Total Annihilation

If you've already cleaned your save and can't go back easily, this is not the worst solution lol.

I'm glad @Igazor is here to point out that there's a more compatible save cleaner, I used an old one and had this old problem come back recently so I didn't have the resource you mentioned. Thank you for all you do!

EA_Leeloo

Hey there,

Since this thread had been inactive since 2017 and all the important information seems to have been shared here, I'm closing it as per our necroposting rules.

- Leeloo