Exact same thing happened with me, except in France and my sim was frozen after attempting to take a picture with one of the cameras Only difference was once the trip was over she got back to the neighbourhood, and there was a duplicate of that same Sim! Only she had no job, and had all items up to before the original went to France. Feeling weirded out by it I killed the Doppleganger off (Which had also killed the original Sim's kid off as well in attempt to kill her in a fire).

Few minutes later in real life and my game crashed, which it never happened in a Sims game (Well maybe once or twice in Sims 2 but that was related to a mod). Upon reloading I came back to where she was before, in France at the time she was frozen (I had saved during then). she acted normal and then returned home. However when she came back her twin was still there, and her son had gotten a weird glitch as well as his icon did not appear and he could not be selected or interacted with. This game had no mods either since I just installed WA/Ambitions and took any mods out prior to that.

The same happened to me, i lost my child twice .

The kid thing is a separate issue, I've no doubt.

Patching middle EPs does seem to have resolved this bug for me.

Hm it could be, or it's all related to one thing, that was so small that shouldn't have done anything when I did it, only it has now for me turned into almost a big ball of flames already destroying three neighborhoods and I am too scared to enter Bridgeport, where my favorite family Sims are, after seeing two other favorite Sim families potentially borked.

Oh whiterider! Patching middle EPS? Wait, would WA and Ambitions patches have already gotten added when I installed LN? Because this is how my installation went. The Sims 3 (And patch I think), LN and Patch Then I installed Amibtions and WA, apparently LN 6.5 patch got installed after I installed WA first, no patch after Ambitions,, then I got Gens and never had anything asking for a patch update. The only patch that showed up when installed was LN the latest one because I didn't get that one for a while. Could these be the answers to saving my neighborhoods? (Also would deleting a police car/cop to prevent them from catching my Sims out at Curfew hurt the Neighbourhood in anyway where this might have started?).

Come to think of it that can't be the problem (Although do I need them anyways or would they have be updated anyways when it went to 6.5). Reason why is because I got Late Night when it came out. No WA or Ambitions and it remained that way for quite some time, for like months and I had even played for a couple of months, Bridgeport and Sunset Valley, (First and Second that I had) both had no trouble. Perhaps I should make a new thread for my problems.

I'm so frustrated with this as my sim is always a photographer-one and now I cannot take photographs and skill. I don't know if it happened to you too, but the game doesn't let me see the photography journal and when I looked at it navigating from another skill journal it's blank and I cannot use it. Clearing the cache didn't help and people are saying that patching either. Frankly, the two latest expansions exhausted me with all these bugs!

Willow's Tara, no, that wouldn't have resulted in full patching. New EPs will only update the basegame, since once they're installed, the previous newest EP will become a middle EP and thus "not need to be patched". Download the patch exes manually for your middle EPs: Game Help:TS3 Patching:Patch Download/Current^wiki.

Try patching, colette - it may not work, but it can't hurt.

For me doesn't work

Ok, I've officially gotten every type of opportunity now and did the same sort of testing with them that I posted on earlier. The bug will occur without fail if I try to take a photo with an opportunity or adventure open, and then remain on that save and any other save (even previous ones without open opportunities) that I load up after it has happened. Clearing the 4 cache files from the Sims3 folder always cleans the bug up and allows me to take photos again, but only if I complete the opportunities first and have none open.

It does seem to mean that jobs and opps that depend on photography may be out of luck until EA fixes this. :/

For the record, all my EPs are patched up to date. For me, patching did clean up the bug the first time, but didn't prevent it from happening again. For now I know to just avoid taking photos during adventures or opportunities. :S

Hello,

Thanks a lot for your discovery and your testing. I need to do an extensive use of the Photo skill within the next 24hrs, for a challenge, and I think you've saved me :-)

I haven't had time to do an extensive test, but the small one I did yesterday confirm what you're saying. An open opp' means photographer Sim frezzing, clearing the cache and deleting or completing the opp' brings back the game to work. I wanted to mention that, just after the reload, the Photo skill tab is still empty for me, but after a new shot has been succesfully taken, the photo stats show properly again.

I have base game + EP's up to Lare Night, everything is patched up to date.

@trukittn: Thanks for this. Does this mean the architecture career is not playable atm ?

This worked for me, thanks so much

I dunno. :3 I haven't tried that career yet. I think someone said they had the same kind of bug with the stylist career cause you have to take a photo for your portfolio. If architect is similar I'd imagine so. :/

Can't believe EA hasn't fixed this yet, it seems like it'd be pretty game-breaking for some folks.

Having patched, the bug hasn't recurred for me, and I've been playing a stylist taking 2/3 photos per sim day. No new opportunities, however, so that may still be the cause.

i can take photos too in my architecture career but only with the cell phone camera...

I have my game fully patched and I've seen the freezing on my test game with open opportunities. It might not be all camera ?

Mine is using either her phone or the snaptastic flimsycam, I'm not sure which. I was definitely experiencing the bug with the flimsycam before, I believe that's fixed now.

Sigh. I've tried everything listed in this thread and others: patching, cache deleting, opportunities, and none of it works for me. My photography is still borked. Are there any other suggestions floating around out there?

I like the photo career, but can't use it. After uninstalling my games, from BG, WA, Ambitions and Late Night, cleaned out everything from folders/registry, patched each game again. Fix the DEP stuff, The photography only work for a little while. Mine stopped to work, i could not see any undertext on the photo when trying to take a photo of a mumie. (I blame the mumies) :-) Didn't have any trouble with photo before the new patches. Guess, I just leave the game again without saving. And play without cameras in the household. I thought this glitch could be solved by buying the newer EP Generations? But I understand, it does not solve this glitch?

Okay so did this get solved? Do I just clear my cache every time this problem shows up?

It's really annoying when I get opportunities that require a photo. The one that first broke it for me was my sim had an opportunity back home to take a picture of the sphinx. So they travelled to Egypt (I hate having my sims travel, and not just because of the 15-minute loading time) and he was able to take a picture of the sphinx and the "caption" for it showed up, but then his fiancee had the bug where she'd get stuck after she took a picture and no captions would show up. They went home and the option to deliver the sphinx photo was there, but he'd go and the building wouldn't accept it, he just stayed in the rabbithole for two simhours and then come back out with no completion of the opportunity and the sphinx photo in his inventory. I haven't cleared my cache since, so maybe it will work again now, but it's really annoying.

Offtopic warning:
I'm having a lot of trouble simply with travelling. I'm pretty sure I'm all patched up and I have generations and a good 80% of WA things seem to simply not work. Travelling anywhere seems to completely bork my sims. I use twallan's debugenabler to "fix all invisible sims" and it seems like things go back to normal, but it is annoying to have to repick the hair and clothes. I had my sims that were living together get engaged in france and when they went back home, the game didn't acknowledge that they were engaged (couldn't through a bachellorette or wedding party or anything) so I tried to fix it with the relationship editor in master controller and it appeared that the game had made a copy of the sims and listed them as foreign though it didn't say from what country, and for kicks I had my sims invite their respective (seemingly invisible otherwise) fiances and then I got errortrap messages faster than I could clear them. It was really weird. (I just switched households and then switched back to fix it, but it was still weird.

For me patching, new game, no opps, nothing worked except moving the affected sim to a new home then back to the old home and NOT buying another camera post move, keep the one you moved with. It has not happened again even with opps. Perhaps you need to do that to activate the patch on your pre patch saves?

Ok so here are my three cents hehehe

to point out my configuration:
-I have all 8 SP and EP patched to last version (the only funny thing i cant understand is why WA still keeps saying its on 2.9.10 when the WA updater says its already on 2.17.2, but that's another topic)
-I have CC, Mods, Awesome, Mastercontroller installed.
-My sims are in Egypt, and each one of them owns a camera (3 girls and 3 guys, and damn is it hard to keep up thru tombs like this in 3 different groups or in one big group lol this game sucks at multitasking in groups since it doesn't helps u on it hehehe)


I think i have pointed all that is necessary to mention, so after several tests and combination of tests I have come to this:

-0) Only Cameras are affected.
-1) There is no need of clearing the cache each time this happens.
-2) To unfreeze use the command "Resetsim <name> <lastname>"
-3) If u go to "Main Menu" (whether u save or not) it will unfreeze your sim but u will still get stuck again if u try to take any picture, and no if u save u wont get the picture once u get back.
-4) "Quit" is the only way to clear this error. (whether u save or not)
-5) Only sims without any opportunities can take pictures freely without worry of freezing*
-6) If u try, (that's right "TRY") and get in the viewfinder with a sim having opportunities, u already triggered the error and wont be able to take a picture even if u cancel and move to a sim who was fully able to take pictures before.
-7) Sometimes, when I moved from a sim who was able to take pictures (not having any opportunities) to a sim who had opportunities, I had a chance to fully take a picture with the sim with opportunities before the error triggered, so if i tried again (whether it was a opportunistic sim or not) i would get stuck again.
-8) the only way to tell if your sim (opportunistic or not) will be able to fully take the picture is if u get the captions about what you are aiming (if u don't get any caption, then u already triggered the error and wont be able to take the picture.)


*the only weird thing that caught my attention was that I was able to take fully pictures in a row with my sim having this opportunity open: "Pomegranate Farmer".

and those are my findings regarding this matter.

I know it's only been a couple days, but is there still no fix for this issue? I'm all patched up, caches deleted, can't take photos unless I clear or quit an opportunity, then quit the game, and start it back up again.

Just wanted to add that the latest patch, 1.24 released on the 25th July still has not resolved this issue, despite one of the fixes being "Photos taken with cameras from World Adventures will now be properly saved to the inventory." I currently do have an active opportunity - I'll wait till I've finished that and then try take a picture again (perhaps also after clearing out my cache)

In that case, I certainly won't go and download a 650 meg file (!) in the hope of fixing my photography! Bad EA, bad!

Yes, I too don't understand what that patch corrected exactly 'cause my sim still gets stuck when trying to take a pic. Oh and no captions appear of course. I wanted to make an investigator sim who would take a lot of evidence pics.