Game not Saving right

Is the day of the week (and the time) reverting back several sim days as well? If so, then you are probably loading up the prior save each time and not the newer one(s).

There is a limit, it's difficult to define, on the number of saved games that the TS3 startup routine can display to choose from. If you have maybe more than 20, certainly more than 50, saves then possibly the newer ones just aren't showing up there. Can you delete some of the older saves from the TS3 user game folder in Documents (where your saves and added content are) if this is the case or move some of them out of the game folder for safekeeping if you wish to hold onto them all?

The point is not that you aren't saving the game properly. It is that you are then being presented with a bunch of stale saves to choose from and are, from the sound of it, with no other viable choices loading up one of the older ones.

Again, delete the saves you don't need anymore from the Saves folder. And move any that you would like to hold onto for future reference perhaps into another folder on your computer somewhere. The saved game selector screen cannot navigate 163 game saves, and it's only going to show you a select few most likely the older ones rather the newer ones.

Ive had this problem in the past. I now back up saves I want to keep in another folder and keep my saves folder with only a few current saves in it. On my computer the limit is close to 50 saves before the newer saves stop appearing in the list of saves I can open. Once I reduce the number of saves to less than about 20 I can access them all.

@Simmer2500 the first hint you have a problem is when you launch the game and you most recent saves are no longer there. The first few times it happened to me I had to think what was the problem. But eventually I learned to keep the number of saves down. It's magical when you remove the extras and suddenly everything is exactly as you want and expect it to be.

I think what might be throwing you off there is that your saves are taking on the surname of the family being actively played at the time. But in reality, the current data all of the sims in your ongoing game are in one game save, the most recent one. The data does not ever cross over between different game saves. The only point of holding onto any older saves would be to load up things as they all existed a long time ago (on purpose I mean, not by accident) or replay something that has since gone horribly wrong -- as in whoops, okay let's go back a week or two and try that again.

The game also makes one backup save for us each time Save or Save As is used and the file name is not changed since the last time. It is not necessary to save any of these much older game save files once time has marched on, unless you want a few for possible nostalgia purposes.

I have easily over 100 saves of my current (and only) ongoing nine year old game saved elsewhere on my computer and other places for backups. That's a bit overkill admittedly, but the point is that I could never lose the entire game all at once unless something really unusual and catastrophic happened. Within the actual Save folder, around five or ten instances of the same ongoing game are plenty, depending on how long it's been since I've cleaned up more or less redundant saves that are no longer required.

The households you see in the household bin by way of Edit Town correspond to Library folder files. Those would exist in any ongoing game that uses the same user and Library folder until such time as you may choose to delete them.

"igazor;c-17881242" wrote:
Is the day of the week (and the time) reverting back several sim days as well? If so, then you are probably loading up the prior save each time and not the newer one(s).

There is a limit, it's difficult to define, on the number of saved games that the TS3 startup routine can display to choose from. If you have maybe more than 20, certainly more than 50, saves then possibly the newer ones just aren't showing up there. Can you delete some of the older saves from the TS3 user game folder in Documents (where your saves and added content are) if this is the case or move some of them out of the game folder for safekeeping if you wish to hold onto them all?

Well, It seems to be going back several days. When I load the game and it goes to the thing were it shows the active household and it shows four or five previous saves under it. I always write the save as name with the family name and the date numbers and I noticed what seemed to be the recent save of that household was showing it with my Sims maiden name of Conroy instead of her new last name which I have been writing for the save as since I had those Sims get married. Another thing I notice was that the second time that I had the Sim I was getting my Sim married to moved back into her house his lifetime wish was different than the first time he had moved into her house. The first time he moved in he the lifetime wish to get to the top of law enforcement career and he rolled a wish to get that job. The second time he had the lifetime wish to get to the top of science career and rolled a wish to get that job. He had a part time job at the spa given to him by story progression and I had him quit that job and got him the law enforcement career but since it didn't save right I guess so his original part time job was back and I got him in the science career the second time. But, now it put me back to before they had their first child again. I'm sure there are quite a few saves in the Sims 3 saves folder. I have never deleted any from it before. I just looked in the folder though and there is definitely more than 20 or 50 saves in there. It says there are 163 items in the folder and all the oldest ones are from 2020. So, is it okay to delete all the ones that say 2020 on them and which are probably mostly from families no longer in the game? If I delete a bunch of these then do you think it will save it the way I left it and stop putting it back several Sim days or more? I want to keep playing this household and don't want to keep re-doing things every time I go back into the game after having saved it.

"Karritz;c-17881472" wrote:
Ive had this problem in the past. I now back up saves I want to keep in another folder and keep my saves folder with only a few current saves in it. On my computer the limit is close to 50 saves before the newer saves stop appearing in the list of saves I can open. Once I reduce the number of saves to less than about 20 I can access them all.

I have never deleted any out before so it showed there is more than 100 in my folder, so I guess I need to delete a bunch of old ones out that I know for sure are from families that are no longer in my game. I guess I'll have to try and remember to clear them out a little more often now so I don't get anymore problems of the game going to not the right save of the game.

"igazor;c-17881279" wrote:
The point is not that you aren't saving the game properly. It is that you are then being presented with a bunch of stale saves to choose from and are, from the sound of it, with no other viable choices loading up one of the older ones.

Again, delete the saves you don't need anymore from the Saves folder. And move any that you would like to hold onto for future reference perhaps into another folder on your computer somewhere. The saved game selector screen cannot navigate 163 game saves, and it's only going to show you a select few most likely the older ones rather the newer ones.

Oh, right since I didn't get any errors when I told it to save as then that means it did save fine but like you said it wasn't showing the most recent save and taking me to the wrong save of the game because of too many old saves. Thanks for the help. I'll delete out all the old 2020 saves and I think also some of the older 2021 saves that I know are from families no longer in the game. I think I will keep all of my Conroy family saves in there for now since I still have some of that family line in my neighborhood. Several members of that family line have passed now but I can't really tell by looking at my saved game names which ones those are, so I probably should keep all those for now. I'm assuming the ones that say back up at the end of them are back ups of families that I have created that are saved to the Sims bin so that you can re-play them again later if you want to. I'm not planning to re-play those backed up families in the game again later. I have a feeling that my Sim bin might eventually get to full of those backed up Sim families though. I haven't created a ton of families yet but sometimes I will create a special Sim to be with one of my born in game Sims. Is it okay to delete those if I'm not planning to re-play them again later or should I just leave them for now? Also, is it necessary to move all the saves that I want to keep into anther folder? I would rather just delete the old ones and keep the ones I still want in the same folder rather than making another one.

"Karritz;c-17881690" wrote:
@Simmer2500 the first hint you have a problem is when you launch the game and you most recent saves are no longer there. The first few times it happened to me I had to think what was the problem. But eventually I learned to keep the number of saves down. It's magical when you remove the extras and suddenly everything is exactly as you want and expect it to be.

Yeah, I did notice that the save it was showing as supposedly the recent one was showing my Sims old last name instead of their new last name which probably also means it wasn't showing the right date on it either. I just deleted a bunch of the old saves and it is now down to 107 saves which is probably still too many. I have a lot of saves from my Conroy family I have been playing and I wasn't going to delete any of those yet since I still have some of that family line in my neighborhood although some have passed on of course but I think I will have to. I think it should be fine do delete the oldest of them that are from January, February and March. I'll delete those oldest Conroy ones and see what it gets down to.

"igazor;c-17881713" wrote:
I think what might be throwing you off there is that your saves are taking on the surname of the family being actively played at the time. But in reality, the current data all of the sims in your ongoing game are in one game save, the most recent one. The data does not ever cross over between different game saves. The only point of holding onto any older saves would be to load up things as they all existed a long time ago (on purpose I mean, not by accident) or replay something that has since gone horribly wrong -- as in whoops, okay let's go back a week or two and try that again.

The game also makes one backup save for us each time Save or Save As is used and the file name is not changed since the last time. It is not necessary to save any of these much older game save files once time has marched on, unless you want a few for possible nostalgia purposes.

I have easily over 100 saves of my current (and only) ongoing nine year old game saved elsewhere on my computer and other places for backups. That's a bit overkill admittedly, but the point is that I could never lose the entire game all at once unless something really unusual and catastrophic happened. Within the actual Save folder, around five or ten instances of the same ongoing game are plenty, depending on how long it's been since I've cleaned up more or less redundant saves that are no longer required.

The households you see in the household bin by way of Edit Town correspond to Library folder files. Those would exist in any ongoing game that uses the same user and Library folder until such time as you may choose to delete them.

Oh, Okay I think I understand now. Deleting older saves of a family I'm still playing won't affect my family line in the game because it's only using the most recent save and not the other ones. Of course like you said the point of keeping older saves is in case something happens and you need to go back to a previous save or you just want to. I do not want to go back to previous saves of the games unless there is a problem and I really need to. I was thinking that those saves that said back up were connected to the families that I had created that were saved into the Sim bin/ library folder in the edit town mode but it isn't. So, it sounds like it's fine to delete those back up saves too. I'm down to 11 saves, so I think I should be good for now.