Forum Announcement, Click Here to Read More From EA_Cade.
Origin and starting the game over
Simmer2500
Posts: 247 Member
I have a few of the Sims 3 games installed on my computer and they are also in Origin and I have previously launched the games from Origin but I have not played the game for a very long time because of a glitch I can't get out of the game. So, I have been considering uninstalling all my Sims 3 games and reinstalling all of them except for the World Adventures expansion pack because I think that the bad glitch in my game is coming from this expansion pack and see if the glitch will go out of the game. I was looking at the install instructions for the base game and it says install on PC (disc users) and install instructions(origin users) so It sounds like you can install it either way based on whether you want to launch it through Origin or not through Origin. When I uninstall and reinstall my games to try to fix the problem in my game I assume it automatically show my games in Origin again since I had been launching it through Origin? Is is really necessary to launch the game in Origin? But, if I don't want to launch it through Origin after uninstalling and reinstalling my games and uninstalled Origin will it let me just through disc/and auto run or will it tell me that I have to use Origin to launch the game? The Sims is my favorite computer game but I have had a glitch in my game that I can't seem to get out of the game and I feel less like playing the game because of this glitch. So, I'm hoping uninstalling and reinstalling without the World Adventures expansion pack will fix the problem in my game and I will be able to play the game again fresh and unhindered by that glitch. If it does not fix the problem with my game then I will probably give up on it and not play the game anymore and I hope all of this makes sense.
0
Comments
If you're not against using mods, there are a few that silently fix many of the issues that tend to crop up over time, keeping your long-running saves healthy and playable long past the expiration date they'd otherwise have. Nraas mods especially are quite popular with simmers—ErrorTrap and Overwatch in particular are explicitly designed to perform cleanup functions that the unmodded game lacks. They're quite easy to install and will do their job without any user intervention. If you're curious, just ask.
A total uninstall of TS3 should be the last resort for troubleshooting, as there are a few intermediate steps that take a lot less work. In particular, the most useful test is to pull your TS3 folder out of Documents (the entire folder, not just pieces) and place it somewhere safe, like on your desktop with a new name. Sometimes this folder can get corrupted, and the fastest way to find out if this is the case is to remove it. When you launch TS3 again, the game will generate a new folder; you can then start a new save and see if the glitch recurs. If not, you can start moving some of the content from your old folder into the new one, bit by bit, and if the glitch pops up again, you know what was causing the problem.
Just so you know, the only way you'd be able to reinstall TS3 without involving Origin is if you have discs of the base game and every pack that you want, and they are all from 2012 or earlier (don't know the exact date). Otherwise, you will be forced to use Origin and patch 1.69, unless you're on a mac (a whole different situation). With patch 1.69, you can't avoid Origin or the launcher anymore, either. If you're not already on the latest patch, the problems associated with it (just google 1.69 issues) are something to consider before you uninstall and reinstall. Even if you're already on that patch, the process is time-consuming enough that you might want to pursue other troubleshooting methods first.
To stay on Patch 1.67 on the Windows version of the game, one needs a base game disc manufactured before then and all of the packs must be disc installs (not Origin digital), but it doesn't matter when the pack discs were made.
However, if the OP is already on Patch 1.69 and playing an Origin controlled game, may I ask why they do not just disallow the WA pack from being engaged on the Launcher's Packs and Stuff Chooser tab and begin a new game to test their theory that the problem they are having is WA-related? I'd like to hear a more detailed description of the glitch as well though, most of us have no trouble running WA in homeworlds at least. It was the first EP ever released and had plenty of time for the bugs to be worked out while the game was actually still in development, more so that any of the others. Travel transitions are always risky, NRaas ErrorTrap, Overwatch, and Traveler (especially that one) work together to help get through those for those not averse to using mods.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
The problem in my game is that the Sims age bars do not work right. So, say you have an adult Sim set at 29 days for example and it's suppose to go down one day every night at midnight Sim time until it gets to the Sims Birthday. Well, it doesn't do it and stays stuck at whatever days was left before the glitch had started. I don't use the Birthday cake much except for the baby Sims and just let them age transition on their own but with the age bar not moving right I have to do it manually with the Birthday cake every time or it won't do it at all. It's really annoying when it messes up their Birthdays like that. The reason I think the glitch might be from the World Adventures expansion is because the glitch started after a Sim couple came back from a vacation. It worked fine before then. It started with just those two Sims but now all the Sims in the whole neighborhood have the glitch. Since the game has that progression feature where your Sims still progress even when your not playing the game and if you didn't play for a long time like I haven't then when you went back to the game all the Sims might be old or dead. But, with the glitch with the age bars they would all be the way it was left a really long time ago because they can't age transition at all like I said unless I do it manually with the Birthday cake. I have tried a couple or few things that other "Simmers" had suggested such as moving them out of the house and moving them back in and deleting certain cache files out of the game. I wrote down the instructions for how to do that so I knew which of those cache files were okay to delete and which files were not okay to delete. The directions was to do this before each time you played but I think I only did it a couple times. I went back into the the game and I think the age bar worked okay again for a while, like a few Sim days and then went right back to not working again. I have the Sims 3 Starter Pack with the Sims 3 base game, Late Night, and the High End Loft stuff pack. I also have the expansion bundle with Generations and World Adventures. The only reason I got the World Adventures expansion pack was because I wanted the Generations expansion pack and I couldn't get it unless it was bundled with the World Adventures expansion pack. I have never bought any digital games on Origin but I have all the game discs and I guess I just added them to Origin and just launched it from there. I'm pretty sure I have whatever the most recent patch is but there will longer be anymore patches to fix glitches in the game since their is no longer any patch support for the Sims 3 games. Thanks for the info about Origin and the suggestion with the Sims folder. I will keep those suggestions in mind.
But the game has no such feature, none of the sims games in the TS1 through TS4 series for PC/Mac do this. If you do not play your game for 10 real time years and then return to a save from that long ago, your sims will be exactly how you left them in your last game session, provided you still have an operating system that will run the game at all. The game engine is totally not aware of the passage of real time.
Progression can only happen while the world simulator is actually running.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
I'm pretty sure I had downloaded the last one of the Sims 3 patches quite some time ago. I guess I just chose to check all the Sims 3 games I have onto the Origin launcher. I hadn't thought about unchecking the World Adventures one from the launcher though. I think when I had Sims go on a vacation it took a long time to load to the vacation spot and a long time to load back to the Sims home. The reason I think the glitch might be from this expansion is because the glitch started after those two Sims got back from the vacation. If I try this suggestion of unchecking the World Adventures expansion pack from the launcher how do I start a new game like you said I should do after unchecking the World Adventures expansion from the launcher?
Oh, so the game progression only happens while your actually playing the game and not also while your not playing it? When I read about that part of the game it sounded to me like that it was going to progress to a certain extent even when you weren't playing the game. So, I thought if I didn't play it for a really long time and went back into it the Sims would be old or dead and it would want you to start a new game or something but it sounds like that isn't the case. So, am I understanding right that no matter how long you didn't play the game none of the Sims in the whole neighborhood would be old or dead when I went back onto the game?
Yes, that is correct.
There are some life simulation games that do progress when you're not playing. Before Sims 3, I used to play games from Last Day of Work, which worked that way. If I forgot to pause those games when I finished playing, sometimes my little people would be dead and gone when I returned to them a day or two later. Thankfully, none of the Sims games do that.
It is almost never a good idea to remove an Expansion Pack and then try to play an ongoing saved game forward that has seen it before, but without it in place just in case you were considering that. Some of the EPs are absolutely required to stay in place for ongoing game, Pets is like that, and saves will either refuse to start up without it or crash in the process. Other EPs come with homeworlds, you cannot play a game in Twinbrook forward without the Ambitions EP in play for example because then your homeworld won't exist or load up anymore. Not as sure about WA, but besides objects these packs have skills, careers, traits, and LTRs associated with them and without the EPs in place they would become undefined. The WA worlds you have visited are also part of your ongoing game history and those just won't exist anymore. That's not good and can cause game save corruption or at least an unsuccessful gameplay session.
To start up a new game if you want to do that, on the screen where you select which save you want to play, the one with the household thumbnails, there is also a New Game button that looks like a plus (+) sign. If you click that, you will be asked in which world that you have installed that you would like to play and then once a fresh instance of that world loads up, do you want to create a new household or play one of the existing ones in town or place one from the Household Bin. Your other save will still be there doing nothing in your absence, you can have as many saved games as your hard drive has space for although it's not a good idea to keep more than 40 or 50 of them in the actual Saves folder where they will automatically accumulate.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
Thanks for the info. It's been a long time since I went on the game but I think I might have started another saved game to see if age bar glitch would go away in a new game save. Unfortunately I don't think it did in another saved game either if I did do that. I'll have to go on the game sometime and double check for sure though. I'm not sure if I want to have more than a couple or few saved games though and since it's not good to have so many as 40 or 50 saved games in the saved game folder then it's probably okay to delete one one or more saved games other than the main one?
Or might actually be intending to play 50 totally different games forward (I don't know anyone who has that much time on their hands!).
But after a certain overload point, newly added saves just stop showing up on the game chooser screen. Yes, it's fine to delete the extras that one doesn't need anymore or else move some them to a different place outside of the live game folder for longer term storage.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
Oh, I see so when your playing one of the households in the neighborhood I should use the save as instead of just save before exiting the household so it has a backup. If you do delete extra game saves do you have to do that directly from the saved games folder? If you delete one or more in the game then will it automatically go out of the games folder or will it still show it in the saved game folder and still have to be taken out? It seems like with the Sims 2 all you had to do was do save for each family and then go back to the neighborhood an then you can switch to another neighborhood but with the Sims 3 you have to do all this saved as save game stuff and make new game if you want to play in other neighborhoods or Worlds, right? But, I guess I will get the hang of all this saved game stuff if I can get that glitch fixed in the game and can go back to playing the game.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
Personally, I like to go into my saves folder after I quit or before I load a new game to clean out all but my latest save and its latest backup.
One other good practice besides the "save as" is to never go to the main menu from a saved game. Always quit one game and reload to start a new game. Corruption can follow into a new game otherwise.
If I were you, I'd uninstall and reinstall. Then, just patch to 1.67. Then you avoid Origin and the launcher, as you can use the program's bin file to launch the game.
Good luck to you.
Store Install
Unlocked Stencils
random legacy
Oh, okay. Thanks for all the help. I'll go onto the game probably sometime soon and try unchecking the World Adventures expansion pack from the Origin launcher and start a new game save and see if the glitch goes away or not. If it doesn't then that would mean the glitch wasn't from the World Adventures expansion. Hopefully I will be able to fix that glitch without having to uninstall and reinstall everything though.
Thanks for the suggestions. I will keep them in mind. I haven't been on the game for a long time and so do you see the main menu outside in the neighborhood after exiting out of a household or when you are in the household before you exit out of the household? Also, does reloading after exiting out of one game before starting a new game mean restarting the whole Sims 3 game before going to another household in that same neighborhood or before going to another game save? If some of the suggestions I have been given don't end up working then I will uninstall and reinstall and only patch the game up to the 1.67 one without the Origin launcher as suggested.
If you choose an existing save, you will be deposited into whichever house was active the last time you saved, but the entire world is a whole ecosystem that has been progressing as you've played with that family. If you want to play a new family in that ongoing timeline, you would need to load that world, then press the button in the lower left-hand corner (below, red circle) to bring up your options. There you can select Edit Town (green arrow), where you can then click on another household and and switch to it. (You also have options like Evict, Split, and Merge.)
Keep in mind that if you switch households, you will be playing in the same instance of this world as you were before, so the family you were previously playing will go about its business without your supervision. If you want the option to go back to the previous family without letting any time pass for them, it's a good idea to use "save as" to rename the save before switching. Also, if there is any corruption in this world, as there usually is when you've been playing there for a while, that corruption will stay with you as you switch households. Mods can help clean up most of it, but it's better to place a new family in a fresh world instead of an existing one. No matter what else you do, it's always a good idea to delete the five cache files in your Documents folder any time you're switching saves (and often in general).
In the second screenshot, you can also see the option to return to the Main Menu (pink arrow). When you select this option, you will leave your save and go back to the Main Menu (first screenshot) instead of quitting the game altogether. If you do this, you can transfer information, including corruption, from the previous save to whichever save you load next. When you want to play in a different world than the one you're currently in, the only safe approach is to quit the game entirely (yellow arrow). Never, ever use Save and Quit (white box). This can cause your game to crash while saving, which may damage the save file beyond repair.
Thanks for the pictures and info. I think I understand better now and will keep all that in mind. I have deleted game cache files a couple times before and I still have the directions I had written down for which cache files were okay to delete and which files were not okay to delete so I wouldn't accidentally delete something I wasn't suppose to. It said in those directions to clear out those cache files after every time you played the game but I didn't want to do it after every time I played the game so I think I only did it twice. It didn't really help the problem in my game much unfortunately. I think the Sims age bars worked okay for a while like a couple or few Sim days after that and then went right back to not working again. Since the game makes more of those game cache files each time you play the game, I guess it's probably good to clear them out every now and then.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~