[FIXED] Ghosts get stuck when urn is in the basement

Is this just on your lot or did you see ghosts elsewhere ?

I am not sure I understand the question, but will try to explain further:

They don't appear on my lot, from their urn/gravestone, like they used to - they appear in the open neighbourhood area instead. Except for the one in the picture, I have always found them stuck in the spots where NPCs appear/fade out when they jog etc in the neighbourhood.

It is only the ghosts belonging to the household I am playing at the time, that appear in the neighbourhood. Not the other ghosts with urns on other lots (unless I am playing one of those households). And they don't appear in other areas like community lots. Unlike all other played, but inactive sims, they have never been used as normal NPCs by the game. They used to just appear at night, when playing the lot the urn is placed on, and act as uncontrolled sims, but always staying on the lot. When I notice them stuck now and use resetsim, they come back to the lot and haunt the place as usual, until morning, when they return to their urns.

That ghost on the side walk is stuck in a spot outside Brook Bungalow, that I don't normally think of as a spawn point, although the Brook Bungalow household will be standing there when I load that lot. In this case, I was playing the lot on the upper left corner of the picture (sorry, the lot has been renamed, and I don't remember the original name), not the lower right corner lot that the ghost is stuck outside.

My save game has 7 ghosts, in 4 out of the 30 played households. The 4 houses with ghosts are in 2 different neighbourhoods in WC. All 7 ghosts are having the same problem: They don't appear on the lot, but in the neighbourhood, and they are all stuck until resetsim is used. I rotate daily, so I don't know if resetting once would make the ghost work properly until the next time you leave the household, as I have always swapped household before it is time for their next appearance.

None of the ghosts have been added to households, or otherwise played as ghosts. They are simply dead of old age and left to haunt their offspring.

Willing to share your save game ?

If so, please zip up this folder: documents\electronicarts\thesims4\saves, upload to mediafire or dropbox and PM me the link.

I don't use any of those sites, but if you still want a save to look at, I will try to figure them out.

But so far, my own tests show that moving the urns out of the basement and outside (turning them into gravestones) fixes the issue. The ghosts spawn as normal by their gravestone then and are not stuck. Putting the gravestone back in the basement (and turning it back into an urn) causes the ghosts to spawn stuck in the neighbourhood again. I will try to see if urns inside, but not in the basement, have issues or not. Trying to figure out if it is the urn or being placed in a basement that is the issue. Either way urns in basements used to work, and now they don't (for me).

It would be great if you could upload your saves. I can forward them to EA so they can figure out what's wrong.

Ok, now I just feel stupid. I have tried PMing you the link, but either I have sent you 2 messages, or you got no message. When clicking send message, the cursor goes back up to before your name in the "send to" box, and there is no record of a sent message on my side.

I didn't get a PM. 

I would think you should be allowed to send PMs

You can post the link here and I remove it once I got it if that's ok with you

Sure. My game has no secrets 🙂

<removed cause downloaded> 🙂

PS. Warning: The population in the save is 165-170, so if running a test too long, the ghosts will just be culled. Households with ghosts are located on Bargain Bend in Foundry Cove and Potters Splay, Riverside Roost and Pique Hearth in Courtyard Lane.

Ok, tried your game and couldn't really play it cause for me, it just crashed.

Those saves are pretty huge (unless I tried the wrong thing - too many save games)

The saves are huge in size and the amount of RAM they use is probably too much (they are 64 MB for you too, right - the last one at least)

Looks like you have some kind of save game bloating going on.

Could you try a new game to see if you have the same issue with ghosts (you might need to kill a Sim)

My save really is that big. 8 sims, full collection basements and all plants etc etc on most lots - the load times are horrible, so I avoid travel, which means their lots are equipped to avoid travel (so way too much going on on every single lot - it is a vicious circle). It doesn't crash for me, and I am practically playing on a toaster, so they really did do well, when they said they were catering to low end machines.

Anyway, I created a new game for you, and I did run into the same problem. I only played on Bargain Bend, killed 3 sims to get the ghosts (increasing the chance of at least 1 appearing), and they still appear in the neighbourhood, stuck, when the urn is placed in a basement.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6uwkhn3gf4jri8y/StuckGhost.zip?dl=0

(Just in case you didn't know, the ghosts always appear right at midnight, so that is the time to check if/where they spawned.)