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Hero+

Re: missing worlds and store content?

@ashkie12 There are a couple of things to note. First of all, you may have turned off the in-game shopping experience, which would otherwise try to sell you stuff while you're playing. The Sims 3 store is still very much active; you can check your account and redownload any items you've already purchased from the store site (https://store.thesims3.com/). By the way, it's actually a good idea to turn off in-game shopping, as it's a resource hog and can significantly delay load times in build/buy modes and CAS.

As far as your available worlds are concerned, with only World Adventures, Late Night, and Generations installed, you could start a game in Sunset Valley or Bridgeport; the WA and University worlds are not homeworlds and are only available through travel. (Adventureland is a phenomenon that suddenly appeared out of nowhere a year or two ago, and only for new installs that patched to 1.69, but it's just SV with only two sims living there.) But if you bought other worlds, they would also be in your store purchase history, and you could redownload them for free. Riverview is also available for free whether you ever installed it or not. Just make sure to sign in with the same credentials you used before.

Oh, and DCCache is where your installed store and custom content is saved. The game creates large master files of up to 200 MB each to store the content: .ebc files are from the store, and .dbc files are third-party content. So clearing this folder would remove all of this content from your game.

I don't know why your sim doesn't have the option to join the film career, but perhaps the building is borked. (Bridgeport in general is poorly built and presents a few annoying issues.) You could test this out by sending another one of your sims to get the job, or a sim from another household (no need to save the game afterwards). If your sim is the problem, maybe he or she would still be able to find the job in the paper or on the computer. If it's the building, you could bulldoze and replace the lot. Keep in mind that if there is no studio on the map for even a moment, even just within one Edit Town session, all the sims who were employed in the film career would lose their jobs. So it might be better to place a second studio before bulldozing the first.

Finally, a good troubleshooting step for any in-game problems is to drag your entire TS3 folder out of Documents and onto your desktop. All of your existing content—mods, store purchases, saves, etc.—will be preserved in this folder, but when you launch the game again, the new folder that spawns will not have any of it. If playing in this clean folder fixes whatever issue you're seeing, then you can start moving your existing content into it from your old folder, without needing to delete anything. When a bit of content causes the game to act up again, you'll know where your problem was.

5 Replies

ashkie12
7 years ago
hey! about the worlds, thanks. i thought i was missing a few worlds but they ended up just being the worlds i had to buy using the store, so no problem there.
however, i am still encountering issues with the film career track. at first, i had loaded in adventureland and i wasnt able to join the career. after, i tried bridgeport, yet again i could not join the career. even with sunset valley, after bulldozing the studio and replacing it, i still cannot join the career. this is so strange because the other content from later night seem to be working fine, it's just the film career im having issues with.
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
7 years ago
@ashkie12 Sunset Valley doesn't load with a studio lot, and I'm guessing neither does Adventureland. You'd have to add one manually in Edit Town. This is a separate building from the theater; I think it's called "[Something] Studio Back lot." (It's pretty big though, so you could check the large community lots in Bridgeport.) If that doesn't work, I'd suggest briefly playing with one of the townies already in the film career, like Tiara Angelista or Devin Ashton, to see if the sim can go to work.
ashkie12
7 years ago
omg i finally got it. thanks so much! i had mixed up the theatre with the studio. although i thought sunset valley would add lots from the expansion packs automatically, like the studio lot ?
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
7 years ago
@ashkie12 Each town that's older than your newest packs will add some lots but not others. I don't know if it's random or if certain lots have a hidden priority for placement. But there's no way that any single town could host every lot from every EP, as there are something like 100 in total. For example, when I loaded a new SV with all of the EPs in play, there were 10-12 new lots that didn't appear when I just had the base game and Ambitions; the rest were available for placement in Edit Town.
The other consideration is that the studio lot, like some others, is too big to go just anywhere. I read that some people who wanted to add it to SV placed some combo lots from other worlds, which freed up the stadium or military base lots for the studio.
ashkie12
7 years ago
ah i see. i understand now. thanks so much !