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    Unplayable following return from university

    NitroglycolNitroglycol Posts: 121 Member
    in The Sims 3 Help & Technical Discussion
    So the two sims I've been playing lately were at university. The other day I had a day off and spent several hours getting them through the last week of uni, then they graduated and everything seemed fine till they went home. But on arrival back in Bridgeport they were unplayable, their icons failed to show up to allow them to be selected, they didn't get back in the U-haul back to their apartment, nothing. Tried resetsim on each, nothing. Was able to go into Edit Town, but went back into the game and it was still unplayable. Not currently running any mods.

    So I went back to my previous save point, played until Friday night (game time), saved there, and tonight I sent them off to grad again. Same thing happened, which suggests that the corruption is somewhere further back and just doesn't become apparent till they return home. Is there any way out of this?

    Comments

    • igazorigazor Posts: 19,330 Member
      edited November 2021
      You are describing what we call a travel transition failure, and these are very common in unmodded games. As from prior posts you seem to be dedicated to the idea of playing without mods, the only possible solution there (besides abandoning your ongoing games or trips whenever this happens) is to reduce as much stress as possible on the game before attempting travel in either direction. That means only attempt travel and returns on a freshly started up game session, empty out your sims' personal inventories as much as possible, play while logged off at both the Launcher and in-game levels, do not have the in-game TS3 store shopping experience switched on, nor the startup hidden object game. There will unfortunately always be the very real risk of this still happening though.

      With mods, the solution is to embrace NRaas Traveler. It reprograms the travel transition so that things happen behind the scenes in the order in which they are supposed to and works together with NRaas Overwatch and ErrorTrap to prevent the failures from happening in the first place, although traveling only on freshly started up game sessions is still a very good idea.
      Post edited by igazor on
      o550pjoa47rpxo63g.jpg
      NRaas has moved!
      Our new site is at http://nraas.net
    • NitroglycolNitroglycol Posts: 121 Member
      I wouldn't say I'm dedicated to no mods. I've been leery of them, but that's probably more a consequence of playing a lot of Minecraft, which is still getting updated and for a while was getting updated a lot more. I was leery because your mods could fail after an update, and if your game was dependent on them for some reason you'd have to just hope the mods were still being supported. I know TS3 isn't being updated anymore so I shouldn't worry about it, but it's more inertia than anything.

      So if I'm to install mods, are those the three to install then?
    • igazorigazor Posts: 19,330 Member
      edited November 2021
      Those are the three to begin with, yes since your pain point right now is travel transitions. And I should point out that NRaas mods have always been supported since inception and we do have a developer "on staff," so even if the game is updated tomorrow (doesn't seem very likely) we will analyze the changes and produce updated versions of the mods within a reasonable amount of time just as we always have.

      Traveler has some really neat options associated with it, but default settings already fix travel transitions to EA worlds that are already prone to breakage.

      It's a slippery slope though, so be warned. I predict you are really going to want MasterController, Register, Traffic, and maybe some others as time passes. Not that such would be a horrible thing. :)

      If you need help in setting up the Framework to accept package based content, and mods are always package based, this is the place to begin.
      https://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Installing_Sims_3_Package_Files/Setup_and_Files
      o550pjoa47rpxo63g.jpg
      NRaas has moved!
      Our new site is at http://nraas.net
    • NitroglycolNitroglycol Posts: 121 Member
      Thanks. Will probably do that soon; I'm planning to do a system reinstall using a SSD I picked up recently, so I'll probably do my messing with things at that time (not only the mods, but also the registry tinkering needed to install CAW when you have the Steam version of TS3).

      I did try a few more things. The most recent one was actually saved when I exited (by mistake); I was able to retrieve the backup though, which was saved on the Saturday morning prior to graduation. I tried both of those saves; the one that was saved after coming back I went into Edit Town and tried to evict my sims from their apartment - no dice. The apartment actually showed as vacant. Then I tried the other save, came back and again my sims failed to load properly, but when I went into Edit Town I was able to evict them. Problem was, when I tried to place them again, no apartments showed as available, even though I could easily place sims from my library.

      I still do have the save from just before grad. Do you think it will be salvageable once the mods are installed?
    • igazorigazor Posts: 19,330 Member
      edited November 2021
      Traveler in particular is designed/meant to be in place before leaving the homeworld. But it reportedly often does save the day for saves where current gameplay is in a foreign world already (and Uni World counts as such), so you have nothing to lose by giving it a try from just before graduation as noted.
      o550pjoa47rpxo63g.jpg
      NRaas has moved!
      Our new site is at http://nraas.net
    • NitroglycolNitroglycol Posts: 121 Member
      Cool.

      On a tangentially related note, do any of the NRaas mods have any chance of salvaging a couple of old saves that give the "a serious error has occurred while loading [savename]. It is strongly recommended that you restart the application" error?
    • igazorigazor Posts: 19,330 Member
      edited November 2021
      @Nitroglycol - I can't say for sure, but probably not. Usually the "Serious Error" indicates that one or more of the files within the save folder are locked and the game can't access them. Sometimes it means the save name has too many characters in it or it has spaces or special characters (non-alphanumeric) that the game is balking at and it just needs to be renamed.

      Mods cannot really fix these things. Perhaps the suggestions on this page can:
      https://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:A_Serious_Error_Has_Occurred
      o550pjoa47rpxo63g.jpg
      NRaas has moved!
      Our new site is at http://nraas.net
    • NitroglycolNitroglycol Posts: 121 Member
      So I finally got around to doing a full reinstall, and installed the mods you recommend along with MasterController. The save from just before their return from uni worked, and I got them established in Bridgeport, then had them invite Samantha Grey (who they'd met at uni) to visit and invited her to move in. Then I saved again. Then I installed the NRaas Story Progression mod, and when I started this save my two sims winked out of appearance. One of them also had her avatar button disappear; the other one's avatar remained but I wasn't able to select him. Samantha continued to work fine. I quit without saving, then tried again with the same results.

      My next attempt to save this save will be to uninstall Story Progression and see if it works.
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