Re: sims 3 neighbourhood problem
@jordantan05 Again, I've never seen a link to a video; this sort of thing is usually just written out by whoever's trying to help. The fact that you're on a mac doesn't make a whole lot of difference in this case, although there are other mac-related issues that you should know about (I'll get to those).
- When you get to the Main Menu, you can choose to load any save that's in your game folder—pictures of each of them will appear across the bottom of the window. You select one by clicking on it and then hitting the play button. But it sounds like you've never created a backup of this game on your own. So here's what you need to do:
- Open your Documents folder, then Electronic Arts, then The Sims 3. Inside, you'll see five cache files: CASPartCache, compositorCache, scriptCache, simCompositorCache, and socialCache. Delete them all.
- In the same folder, open Saves. Here, you'll find a folder labeled with the name of your save. This is the one that won't load. You can remove it or leave it.
- You'll also notice another folder with the same name as the one above, except it will have .backup tacked onto the end of its name. So if the save above is labeled SunsetValley.sims3, this other file will be labeled SunsetValley.sims3.backup. Delete the .backup part of the name and change the rest of the name slightly, so maybe SunsetValley1.sims3.
- Right-click (or control-click) on this relabeled folder (SunsetValley1) and select Copy, then right-click on your desktop and select Paste. This is your extra copy of your backup save, in case something else goes wrong.
- Launch the game. When you get to the Main Menu, click on the picture that's labeled SunsetValley1. The label will be at the top of the screen after you click on the picture. Then load that one. If it works, you can play it forward.
- If this backup save doesn't load properly, then unfortunately you're out of luck. There's nothing else you can do to recover this save.
The biggest issue with playing the Sims 3 on a mac is that the game can only use 2 GB of RAM (memory) at a time. If it goes over the limit, it could crash. But even if it doesn't, some of the information that's been loaded into memory—the info the game is using to keep track of your sims and their world—will be lost or corrupted. When you then save the game, even if your RAM use is back under the limit, the new save file will have incomplete data, since it will have lost some of that data when the game went over the memory limit. When you try to load the save again, one outcome is that you can't properly load your sims' household, as you've seen.
There is no way to get around the RAM limit on a mac. You can monitor memory use in the Activity Monitor, and purge RAM occasionally, but that will only help a little bit. When your game gets to close to the 2 GB memory limit, the only thing you can do is save, quit to desktop (in two steps—never use "Save and Quit), and reload.
https://bluebellflora.com/resetting-ram-during-gameplay/
The other thing you should start doing is using "Save As" instead of "Save." Rename your game slightly (maybe SunsetValley2, SunsetValley3, etc.) each time, so that you're not overwriting the older file, and you'll have lots of backup saves to use should anything else go wrong. After a while, you can delete the oldest ones—either go into Saves as described above and drag the folders to the Trash, or delete them directly from the Main Menu. I always keep 4-6 saves at any given time. There's so much that can go wrong with this game, having backups is essential.
