saved games not loading; loads as new folder

[uchuujin]

This sounds like it's a typical problem, but it's not. I am so baffled. There's no error message or anything.

I have Twallan's story progression and master controller, but they haven't been giving me any issues (except for the latter, but I'm using it to fix a family tree).

I've got all my saved games in my "The Sims 3" folder, but when I loaded the game up just now, nothing is showing up--the game is acting as though I had no saved games and all of my personal settings are reverted to the original.

I didn't save it or make a new neighborhood (though I backed it up yesterday, just in case), I just quit the game and went to look at "The Sims 3" folder--it's still all there. I also tried deleting cache files; no dice.

I did notice the Shop has a patch, which I didn't install because patches and I don't have a good working relationship. Is this the problem? Should I install it? Because I don't know how to UN-install it.

Anyways, let me know if you have any idea what's going on.

[ellacharmed]

Can you take a screenshot of your EA folder, The Sims 3 folder and the contents of the Saves folder, and attach it in your next post?

[uchuujin]

They're all attached. I hope this is all the information... The Sims 3 folder comes in two parts.

In case this helps: it's been the Twinbrook neighborhood I've been playing. Twinbrook II ended up corrupted and a Twinbrook.bad (or whatever) would show up whenever I saved, if it didn't crash. I haven't been playing that one since I figured out the problem.

[ellacharmed]

Sims 3 - Game Problems
Please go through this FAQ and follow the instructions, doing each step in order and not skipping anything:

Game Help:Sims 3 Game Problem
Most issues with the game can be resolved by following those steps.


You have lots of Exception errors there.
Have you looked at ErrorTrap's FAQ to see if there are things in your game that ErrorTrap caught that needs fixing? Twallan has a page on how to read and understand it so you can diagnose issues yourself. If the error message is not listed, than you can post there to ask the developer himself what that particular error meant.

Tried to create and Save on fresh user files to see if that Save can be loaded the next time, after you have Quit? ie do step#3 of the FAQ linked above. Do you do "Save" and then "Quit" separately or always "Save and Quit" when you exited the game?

If you haven't patch, you were on an older patch than 1.29? 1.31 has just been released...
And as far as I know Twallan's mods are only supported on the current patch version.
Oh! Wait, you were talking about the EA Store patch specifically? Can you still confirm what game patch version you have at this time?

You might also want to do this:
delete preferences
/Users/<Username>/Library/Preferences/The Sims 3 Preferences folder
delete caches:
<diskname>/Library/Caches/<anything with Sims 3 in it>
/Users/<Username>/Library/Caches/<anything with Sims 3 in it>
repair permissions
/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility, "Repair Permissions"

[uchuujin]

I went through the game FAQ before I posted(and just now, too); none of it applies. It was working well enough one day(minus error traps, though I don't know if those are from my old Twinbrook neighborhood) and then the next all of my saved games don't load.

Actually, when I look at them, all of the exception errors are the same thing: "error on line 6 at column 11: error parsing attribute name". I'll try to find that. Usually ErrorTrap catches something and my game is fine, but every once in a while it'll crash.

I am on patch 1.29, and all of my mods are up to 1.29. I was talking about the sims 3 store patch; I posted this thread a day before 1.31 came out. (would a store patch matter?)

Give me a minute after posting this and I'll try the saving and quitting suggestion, and if that doesn't work... are there any cons to deleting the preferences/caches in the Library, or repairing permissions? I guess I'm desperate enough to do that anyways.

[uchuujin]

Okay, the Repair Disk Utility idea worked. I... have no idea why, but thank you! I tried the others, but that's what actually made the difference. Thank you so much for your help; I've been going insane over it. :wtf:

[ellacharmed]

Glad the fix is that simple! :up:

When applications crash, the lock on the files is not released properly. So, it appears that the way EA handle this on Macs is to create new User folders as the application has no permission to open the "locked" version. And some applications have flags that says "did not exit gracefully last time and so I'll treat this as a brand new factory reset" when they crash and won't go away until this flag is cleared - which what deleting caches and repairing permissions essentially does.

Which is when I reiterate my advise here - you need to clear up the cause of the crashing with all those ErrorTrap scripts. Not taking care of those, worsen things until the game is in a state where it cannot load / quit properly. And would most likely recur again.

As ErrorTrap support is located elsewhere, I'll be locking this.
Happy Simming! :)