@Saeiyna @cchant86 Ok, when a bug like you both are describing behaves the way you say it is behaving by not only affecting the save you are playing but also any backup saves you test with, that's an indication that you might have somehow corrupted something outside the save. It could be the game files or another file within your user folder. A repair or uninstall/reinstall of the game will fix issues with the game files. If you tried a repair and that did nothing, the next step would normally be to do a full uninstall/reinstall. Even though a repair will usually replace the files it finds that don't match the original file specs, it sometimes doesn't work. A second repair will sometimes fix it and sometimes won't. Then to ensure every game file is correct, an uninstall/reinstall is the way to go. But based on what you've said, I don't think that's your issue.
There is one other thing that can happen. If you look at your user folder (The Sims 4), there are other files there that can become corrupted over time and cause weird things to happen with your game. Neither a repair nor a uninstall/reinstall will fix those because they are in your user folder, rather than in the games actual program files. There is another way to fix any problems with those files though. That way is a user folder reset.
To reset your user folder, all you need to do is rename your current user folder or move it to your desktop or another place outside of the game path. Start the game and create a new game, go through with making and placing the mandatory sim on a lot, then save and quit. That will create a new user folder with all new support files that reside in the user folder.
Open the folders containing your old and new and copy your saves folder in the old folder to the new one. If you have mods, copy the mods folder, repeat and rinse for the screenshots folder if you want to save any game pics and the tray folder if you want to keep everything you had in your library, the Custom Music and Recorded Videos if you have anything you want to save in those and finally the ConfigOveride folder if you use any overrides. Once you have everything copied over from the old to the new, start the game again and test to see if you can save correctly again.
Hopefully this will work to allow you to save again. If it doesn't work though, the only other thing I know to recommend you to do is a full uninstall/reinstall via the EA App.
Hope this helps.
Something else I just noticed, the file size for the "corrupted" file (or the one that won't save) has ballooned up to 220,000k, whereas even my largest legacy save with multiple generations and many Sims is only 18,000k. Something really weird is going on with the bad save, and I'm still wondering if it's something to do with how Lovestruck downloads the Cupid's Corner Sims into the game, because that's the only thing I can think of that's different about what I've been doing in the "bad save" compared to other saves.
I'm going to keep playing around with the new save I made, avoiding Cupid's Corner, and see if the problem reappears. I also think I'll try going back into my Aug 29 save (the last time it worked before becoming corrupted), deleting all the Cupid's Corner Sims, and seeing if that changes file size and if it will let me save again normally.
So I've been doing some playing around with the "bad" file but no good news so far. I deleted all the Cupid's Corner Sims and it only reduced the file size by like 200k. A miniscule amount. Then I deleted some lots I'd downloaded and the file went down to 119,000k but that's still quite large.
I've been test playing with different families in the file, Sims I'd never touched before, and it seems like it's saving Build/Buy changes as long as they are things that don't go in a Sims' inventory (like cat wand and a child's bike didn't save probably because a Sim picked them up, but adding a cat dish and litter box to a house did save), but no Sims progress saves at all. I aged up a Sim, gave a bunch of Sims jobs, etc. and none of that saved.
I noticed a couple people on the other EA Sims forums had this saving issue, too, so I commented there.
One of the threads is this:
I can't save my game anymore | EA Forums - 4963193
It was suggested I try the "Sims Info" mod to check how many total Sims are in the file. You can see my reply there but basically the "bad" file has 577 total, but a different save file for one of my legacies from July that works fine had 602 Sims (and that file is only 18,000k in size), so number of Sims doesn't seem to be the issue.
I have noticed in all my saving and save as-ing that the game is not renaming my files what I type in. It keeps naming the new copy the original file name and just tacking on the new date and time it was last saved. For example, I had a file called Lovestruck (Recovered) and did a Save As to change it to Lovestruck-Sept 6 and it just appears in the list as another Lovestruck (Recovered). In my Saves folder they're all getting new numbers every time I Save As, but in game they aren't displaying what I typed in for a new file name. So even that is weird. *sigh*
I'll post again if I learn anything else. 🙂
