Forum Discussion

Re: Game will save but doesn't update the actual save file.

@Saeiyna 

Are you just saving over the previous save every time or are saving using the "Save As" option?  In your 1st pic I see just one save listed in the panel, but it looks like you cropped it so, I'm guess you do have other saves.  

I've had something similar to what you describe before, several times actually.  Right portrait, wrong household name and the Resume option landed you on the wrong lot.  When that happens, it means something happened causing an error when you made the last save and may have corrupted it or caused it to abort the save process without giving you a visible error message, so the game couldn't/wouldn't load it and reverted to a previous version of the save.  Everything you did between the saves is simply gone as if you never made any changes before the last save.  Whenever that happens, it is a good idea to make a new save using "Save As" as soon as possible after you realize something happened before you play or attempt to save again so you can at least save what you have up to that point. You can then play on and see if it keeps happening and have something to fall back on if you need it.  I recommend that you do a game repair and delete the localthumbcache file before you start the game the next time you play.  At the least, delete the cache file as the portrait you see when you select the save to load is kept there and that will probably correct the portrait you see attached to the save in the Load panel so that at least will match the Household name.

Sometimes it will seem to self-correct, and you won't have any issues with saving or playing after a game restart and reload meaning it was a one-time thing that didn't damage the save.  But other times it won't, meaning that the save has corrupted which will only get worse if you continue playing the save.  One thing you should look for the next time you open the save is for any signs of triangle icons with an exclamation point in them on the lots. If you get an icon, which can be several different colors, each indicating some sort of issue, when you mouse over or select the lot as if you were going to open it, you might have more than a save issue as the icons are one of the indicators of corruption in most cases, Orange and Red being the worst.  My advice is that you look at every lot in every world in the save to see if you find one or more.  If you do find one, try to open the lot.  If the lot won't load, or if the does load and you find the lot empty with the sims who live there standing in front of it, that is an almost certain sign that you have a corrupt lot.  The sims living on that lot will mostly likely have been corrupted too. Tbh, at that point, you should try to save what you can to your Library and start a new save because it will only get worse, and you will lose everything.

Not what you wanted to hear, I know, and I admit it is worst case scenario.  But when you start to have save problems like you've described, the odds go up that it can happen.  The reason I ask about how you save is simply this.  If you routinely use Save As rather than just Save, you create a brand new save each time rather than overwrite the old one.  As each save can have up to 5 versions that you can use to recover, using Save As gives you more saves you can use to recover giving you more options to find an earlier version before the event that caused the corruption occurred.  Hopefully, you just had a one-time glitch, and everything will go back to normal but if it continues to happen, you should probably consider starting over in a new save with what you can salvage from the old one.  

Hope this helps.

12 Replies

  • @CGrant56 Saeiyna

    Thanks for the reply, I have done both save and save as and they are all doing the same thing. Even my backups linked to each one pop me to the same spot even though they have different times/dates attached in the files (and would have been different households prior to the game getting stuck). It's like once it gets stuck, all the saves sync to the same spot and overwrite themselves or something so I have no actual back up to work with (minus an old year old one on my external hard drive which I remade in the way you suggested with the library and moving things over manually which took forever and it eventually did the exact same thing) I have deleted the cache as well as repaired (multiple times) even uninstalled and reinstalled. Every copy of my game does the same thing =/ I have no idea what keeps causing it. None of the houses have any of the triangles and I can honestly say I've never seen that in my game (I have seen screenshots from others so I know what you're talking about but I've never had it pop up in mine). Honestly in all my years playing, with every update I have never really had any issues or bugs until this one so it's just crazy *how bad* this has seemed to mess up my entire game ☹️
  • CGrant56's avatar
    CGrant56
    Hero+
    11 months ago

    @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.

  • cchant86's avatar
    cchant86
    Seasoned Veteran
    11 months ago

    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. 

  • @cchant86 Good luck, any info you get that may help me figure it out is super helpful. I have back up saves that show dates/times from when my game was functional but they literally won't open at all or they put me at the same stuck point even though the day/time stamps don't match so the ONLY safe back up I have is over a year old and missing a TON of progress I'd have to completely start over on which is depressing/frustrating to say the least *(esp since I already did that and it got corrupted too after a few weeks and wiped it's back ups as well). So I don't even have a good starting point to try again sadly. This whole thing has been a mess.
  • cchant86's avatar
    cchant86
    Seasoned Veteran
    11 months ago

    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. 🙂

  • @cchant86 I had that issue with my saves as well, it wouldn't really let me make a new save/was renaming the new 1s after the old ones etc. Back ups all synced to the same thing even though time stamps/dates were different. Was like once it broke/got stuck , they ALL did. It's super weird. I saw EA put out a laundry list of fixes for next patch but I didn't see anything about anything like this in that list so not feeling hopeful.
  • cchant86's avatar
    cchant86
    Seasoned Veteran
    10 months ago

    I have good news! Until today, my file had been completely hosed. It was 220,000K in size and nothing but random build/buy changes were saving. I fiddled with the file, tried using different versions of it, repaired my game twice (even did the thing where you remove the whole Sims folder and force the game to recreate it), and nothing helped, so I finally gave up last week and resigned myself to placing the Sims I'd saved in my gallery to a new file and starting over.

    Well, after today's update, I noticed that the new file I'd been playing for about a week now had strangely DECREASED in size when I saved it just now. And that was after I'd added a couple new lots to the maps. Hmmmm.

    On a whim, I loaded the "corrupted" file, let things run for a while (gave the Sims time to get to sleep), then saved again and the file size reduced from 220,000k down to 8000K AND when I loaded the game again, everything had saved! The Sims were in bed where I left them!

    I have no idea what happened or why, or if this file is "all better now", but maybe I can play it long enough to finish the stories I was working on with it and then just move on to something else. But it seems like something in today's update fixed "something" because that is a huge change in file size when I did nothing but let the game run for a few minutes. I didn't delete anything from it. 

    So, hopefully today's update with help a few others that have been having this problem with saving progress. ❤️

  • ariannaneal's avatar
    ariannaneal
    Seasoned Ace
    10 months ago

    Hi! I had the exact same problem! And oh my gosh that expanded game file size explains so much! I had a ton of storage space issues all of a sudden. I can’t wait to see if my corrupted game is ok again. I did want to warn you though, I’d done that thing where I generated a new Sims 4 file, and after playing a new save for a couple weeks (which did eventually get the same Groundhogs Day situation) I discovered that I no longer had my rewards from the event a couple months ago. The new garbage can etc. That stuff is stored in your Sims 4 file, I can’t remember the name of the place it’s in though, maybe User Settings? Anyway, luckily I had saved the folder I took out and was able to put them back into the new file I’d created. You might want to check if yours is missing too. 😊

  • @cchant86 Mine seems to be fixed with yesterday's update too <3 I tried it on a whim not expecting much but it was fixed and I was finally able to play yesterday. Super relieved and updating my back up save file ASAP so my last 1s not a year + old in case more goes wrong in the future,
  • Saeiyna's avatar
    Saeiyna
    10 months ago
    @ariannaneal I honestly wouldn't even know what it's called to look for it. As long as my paid packs/stuff are there I'm ok though. I don't worry too much about the events and all. I just wanna play my game lol. Glad you figured yours out and your stuff is working though <3
  • cchant86's avatar
    cchant86
    Seasoned Veteran
    10 months ago

    Oh, thank you for that tip! I do still have the old folder out on my desktop so I can copy the user ini file back to keep the rewards.