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nolurk's avatar
nolurk
5 years ago

New Saves or Copies of Existing Game Somehow Become Corrupted?

I'm at a definite loss as to what's going on with one of my neighborhoods. Several months ago, I had a new save of a neighborhood become badly corrupted and was forced to delete it (which proved painful, as I'd put so much work into it, but I felt like I was left with no choice--even the backup file seemed to have been corrupted), but was I lucky enough to still have an old, untouched "backup" file of it from several months ago sitting elsewhere on my hard drive, so had to accept that I couldn't change what was and decided to move forward with that instead. I still have no idea as to how/why my file originally became corrupted. At the time it happened, I would try and load the save and it would complain of an error and tell me to restart my game without ever letting me into that save.

Since then, I've been careful to save my game as new saves as a precaution so in case something did happen, I could go back to an earlier version. Yet now, I'm having a problem where every time I go to save my game as a new save (or make a copy of my existing save in-game), it seems to somehow get corrupted and I'm at a loss to understand why. It even happens when I go to save it anew without making any changes whatsoever to the game yet its predecessor I can load just fine.

Currently, there are no sims living in this neighborhood but I have several years worth of work I've put into building and customizing each building I've been building and decorating in this neighborhood and it's been a huge investment for me in terms of time, effort, and just how much of myself I've put into this project so far so to lose that would be devastating (something I'm sure any builder or player here can relate to).

I'm using the neighborhood terrain for Sunset Valley and again, there are no actual sims living in the neighborhood at this time. There are only decorated buildings and rabbitholes at the moment. The lot I was working on when this started up again also wasn't that large (maybe 20x30?).

If someone has an idea as to what's going on or how I can fix this, I'd greatly appreciate it! Thanks in advance! :smile:

1 Reply

  • iAMciane's avatar
    iAMciane
    Seasoned Ace
    5 years ago
    I don't know why your game keeps getting corrupted. However, one fix that has worked before is to ... copy the .nhd file from an old save into a new one. This means choosing the same world to start a new game. Use "save as" to save that pristine, untouched new world. QUIT the game. Then, go into the save folder in the sims 3 folder to copy the old .nhd file (from the played save) to the new (unplayed) save.

    In order to try to avoid future corruption, you can rename the old sims 3 folder and let a brand new folder be created when you launch your game. Go to the options in the game and change the settings to your liking turning off the auto memories and the auto spawning off pets, supernaturals, weather, full moon cycle, etc. Then use "save as" to create a save file. Quit your game.

    Go to the old sims 3 file and copy the .nhd (neighborhood) file from the your oldest, non-corrupt save in the save folder to your new sims 3 save in the current sims 3 save folder.

    You will also need to copy the .ebc files from the old dccache folder to the new one for any store content you may have installed. Sometimes store content such as venues install into .dbc files as well, though mostly they are for other custom content. (You can check to see what is in any .dbc files by moving out the .ebc files and using the launcher to see what it is them, but using the launcher to delete items from any of the files in the dccache folder does not actually delete them. It just keeps you from seeing them.) The reason for simply copying the .ebc files is to try to avoid bringing over any possibly corrupt custom content. Along with copying the .ebc files, you need to copy over the ccmerged file from the dcBackup folder. NOTE: If you use a lot of custom content, you will need to decide if you want to copy over the .dbc files too OR to just reinstall what you know is safe.)

    Installed store content also creates other files. Store venues that show up in your game bin for placement get a file each in the library. (Library files are "numbered" not "named" so you can only tell what they are by the date they were created.) Installed worlds will have a .world file for any world you have installed. (You do not need the world cache files, as cache files will regenerate when you load a game. They just take more time to display everything the first time you load them.)

    If you have saved styles in CASt, such as unlocked stencils or favorite recolors, those are in a file called userpresets. So that file would be another you might want to copy over.

    You might also want to copy over library files (for any store venues that installed into the .ebc files OR lots (and families) you may have saved to the bin. This is not needed for changes you've made, such as building and landscaping directly on lots.

    After copying over those essential files, load up your game again. This time, when you load the save that you made option changes to earlier, it should look like your old save. (Of course, if you didn't copy over any custom content, there will obviously be some strange replacements.)

    So, long story short: copying the .nhd file from an old save to a new one should keep the look of everything, but possibly avoid the corruption.

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