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crinrict's avatar
6 years ago

[MOD RELATED] Sims disappeared from household/Blue flashing square on map

Introduction

This issue has been around for a while now and I do believe it's a mod issue but since it now seems to permanently bork existing saves,

I'd like to get to the bottom of this. If you have any information on which mod (maybe it's multiple) could cause this or if there's any solutions, please let me know in here. I will also merge all newer thread on this into here so we got all the info in one place.

Since this is possibly a mod issue, this isn't an official EA/Maxis investigation. This is me as a user trying to find the cause.

Symptoms of this issue

  • You can load your game up to to the map but when you try to load a household, it you only see a blue/flashing background with a never ending load circle.

  • When you load the household manager, you will find that most of your household are empty now and editing them in CAS will create a random new Sim.
  • Sometimes instead of the blue square, you'll see the portraits of a family that doesn't live there. That mostly happens after you load a family that does still work. That family will then take over all removed families
  • When you first try to load the family, you might get an error code. After that it's just nothing happening when you press play. 

Cause

The main cause of this issue is Sims get deleted out of households. If the last one gets deleted, that leaves the household empty, leading to the blue flashes.


So far I've been figure out the following

  1. This is caused by playing with an outdated mod in and saving your game while you have it in
  2. If you saved your game with said outdated mod, the family was permanently deleted from the game and there's now way to get it back. You must load a backup
  3. Most of the time, you will get an error code and map reloading when trying to load a family. When you do, DO NOT SAVE YOUR GAME, exit without saving.
  4. This is a game bug that's being looked into: Sim Erased After Repro Visit

Mods (Outdated Versions) that are known to cause this

All these mods should be fine if you're using the correct version for your patch level

  1. Meaningful Stories
  2. Several Adult mods that can't be named
  3. SNB Bills
  4. Mods that edit career salaries, like Career Salary reduced - 50% or noextramoneyonpromotion_v2 by Bienchen
  5. icemunmun custom food interactions and it's additional packs (harvestables and recipes)
  6. Custom Traits which have ts4script files

Solution


There is currently none. The culled Sims seem to be gone forever and there's no way to get them back.It's still possible to go into build mode from the map to save the houses to the Gallery but the Sims themselves seem to be a goner.

The only way is to find a working backup. The game makes automatic ones so check them if they still work: Recover Backup. Do backup your backups before attempting to load them in the game cause it's possible that you bork them as well. Do all those test on a game with no cc/mods added

What info to provide here

if you know of any other mods that cause this, please let me know. Be aware that the naming of adult mods is not allowed at AHQ. Linking any mods is also not allowed, so please, just name them.

If you're unsure how to recover a backup or if any of yours are still working, post in this thread, I'll try to help you further.

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