Forum Discussion

Huiiie_17's avatar
5 years ago

No premade ghosts in new save games

So for some reason, whenever I start a new game, a household with all the premade dead sims from the neighborhood is generated. They aren't ghosts, however, they are human sims like if a ghost ate ambrosia and got resurrected, and it doesn't matter if the dead sims' gravestones were on the graveyard or other random lots in the neighborhood. This "ghost" household automatically moves to an empty lot in the world at the start of the game (like any other premade household) and their respective tombstones on the graveyard are replaced by empty gravestones that only say "remains" when hovering over them. This happened in two different saves I created in the last couple of days, one in Bridgeport, the other in Twinbrook.

Is this a known bug in the game? I highly doubt it's a new feature since the game doesn't receive patches anymore. I'm not really bothered by it being this way, I'm just curious if this is intentional or not and why this happens. (Also sorry if this was confusing in any way, just ask if something's unclear, I'll try to elaborate further ^^)
  • This is a known issue that happens when you exit one save, but only to the Main Menu, and then start a new save without quitting to desktop first. The problem is that the game doesn't fully flush the data from the previous save, and some of that data can get superimposed on the new save and cause all kinds of issues. I've seen the ghost one a couple of times when I wanted to look at different neighborhoods without loading from scratch. Other fallout from the data contamination might not become apparent until later. That's why it's always best to quit to desktop and reload before switching saves, whether the one you want to play is new or not.

    If you did quit to desktop before starting the new save, maybe your game folder has leftover data from a previous save that's getting loaded into the new one. Go into Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\CurrentGame and delete anything in there. This folder should always be empty unless you have a save loaded. Delete the five cache files in the Sims 3 folder as well. For reference, they are:

    • CASPartCache.package
    • compositorCache.package
    • scriptCache.package
    • simCompositorCache.package
    • socialCache.package
  • "puzzlezaddict;c-17423736" wrote:
    This is a known issue that happens when you exit one save, but only to the Main Menu, and then start a new save without quitting to desktop first. The problem is that the game doesn't fully flush the data from the previous save, and some of that data can get superimposed on the new save and cause all kinds of issues. I've seen the ghost one a couple of times when I wanted to look at different neighborhoods without loading from scratch. Other fallout from the data contamination might not become apparent until later. That's why it's always best to quit to desktop and reload before switching saves, whether the one you want to play is new or not.

    If you did quit to desktop before starting the new save, maybe your game folder has leftover data from a previous save that's getting loaded into the new one. Go into Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\CurrentGame and delete anything in there. This folder should always be empty unless you have a save loaded. Delete the five cache files in the Sims 3 folder as well. For reference, they are:

    • CASPartCache.package
    • compositorCache.package
    • scriptCache.package
    • simCompositorCache.package
    • socialCache.package


    Interesting, I indeed started both files without quitting to desktop first, however, I am pretty sure I used to do this fairly often, yet I've only ever seen this issue happen in these two recent saves I've mentioned. Thank you for the help :)