Save File Issues guide
Recently EA made a statement about Save File Issues you can read the article here:-
https://forums.ea.com/blog/the-sims-game-info-hub-en/community-concerns-with-save-file-issues---november-2025-update/12929713
What I'm trying to do is make a guide on how I manage my save game file, to avoid some of the potential pit falls, so yes some of this guide is tin hat time.
Part 1 of the guide is the observation and general managing your save file, everybody can do this part.
Part 2 Is more advanced and you need Sims 4 Studio to able to do this part. https://sims4studio.com/
Part 3 The last part concerns good house keeping when it comes to uploading and downloading lots and Sims from exchange, this mainly deals with reducing texture size of everything you place in your worlds and upload to the gallery. You will need art program to do this part, I use Gimp it's free
https://www.gimp.org/downloads/
PART 1
The first thing you need to aware off is everything you download and place in your world , comes at KB cost to the size of your world.
So if you download 1 Sims from the exhange without any textures it should cost around 100 KB. Rather than just dropping Sims into your world, click on the Sims from the Gallery and on the right side of the Sims you will see a file size. It should be around 80-140Kb, for the easy reference lets just call it 100KB.
Recently I made a Zombie Sims called DawnOfTheDead, it contains high detail texture of a zombie, you can search for this Sims on the gallery if you wish to see what I'm talking about, search for DawnOfTheDead. It's cost is 2MB (2000KB). So when it comes to your save file that zombie is equal to 20 Sims in terms of size.
That being said, I would never recommend not downloading Sims with textures, it what makes the Sims more fun play with. But what I do recommend is be more observant of what you place in your save file. You don't want hundred of high detailed textures, it bulks up your save file at alarming rate. So use them at respectful level
Lots are the same, people place photo's and artwork in lots. Them photo are going straight into your save file, if you want them or not, in part 2 I will show you how to delete them.
But on observation level when you download a lot, always do this from inside the game not the gallery, look at the file size, it should be less than 2MB (2000KB). I'm not telling you not to download the lot, but like when you download the Sims you should be aware that you have high detailed lot with many textures, you really don't want hundreds of lots like that in your world, but keeping some is fine.
Extra point about lots, the price of the lots can give you general idea how good in game play terms the lot will run while playing the game. Many builders who upload lots, just wont to make the best lot for the gallery, they will not be thinking about game play experience. You could use a general price based on size of lot, this price would be different depending on how powerful your PC might be:-
Low Medium High
20x15-30x20 0-20K 0-30K 0-40K
30x30-40x40 0-40K 20-80K 20-150K
50x40-64x64 20-150K 20-300K 20-400K
You probable get the idea, there is very little point of having loads of million pound mansions in a save file file, unless you have a NASA computer
Tidbits
Avoid Massive Art Library's with a high texture count
Be aware community lots, you pay for 4 times, so you wont a simple designs to keep the cost down.
Avoid Pets with high texture count.
Don't use million pound mansions
T.O.O.L and downloaded worlds
Many players will enjoy downloading worlds that use a Mod called T.O.O.L. and yes the worlds look fantastic and played with many of the worlds myself, something that always bothered me about them worlds they place objects outside the lot using the T.O.O.L mod. This in terms will increase the World size, many of them worlds don't actual remove objects, they only add to the world size. This will increase recommended specs of the game, a player should be aware of this and should play with a world like that, keep a more careful eye on the world size
Populate Your Save File With Sims You Want with MC Command Center
You will need to download MC Command Centre to do this part https://deaderpool-mccc.com/
When I setup a world, the first thing I do is delete all the townies, the game will then only spawn townies that it needs, you can then follow one of them many Tutorials to Populate your world:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IId51m2Hj_4
From time to time I might delete my NPC or add new NPC's into my tray, just a small note MC Command Centre will not transfer over textures so you don't need to worry about Sims have a massive input on your save file.
Do I Really need that lot?
To be honest you only play with a small part of the world at any given time.
What I do, is delete all my Retail, vets, restaurant and small business I only use them in gameplay, so example should I be working on a retail Sims I will use the gallery to download a retail store and place it in one of the empty lots near the Sims current house. So the longer you play in a given world more it expands due to gameplay
When you first start a world if you delete them you will save upto 5000KB, this gives you greater options how the world will develop, you might wont more Sims, more bars, but what is inportant it's your choice.
Part 2
Sims 4 Studio is needed a some basic understanding of how this works is needed.
So what I'm going to do first, is load on my save file into Sims 4 Studio
I'm currently buiding a Monster High World, I've done some edits world file and I'm going check how healthy my current lot sizes are and then I will check on the textures I'm currently using
Drag and drop your current world onto Sims 4 Studio
I place everything in file size order, the first thing you notice is my save game data 12.5 MB, this includes all Sims stuff, it does not include textures, it also contains neighborhood information etc.
Everything below that in the picture is actual lots and you can see how you are paying for the lots you are using in your game, I've got 4 lots over 2MB, which is pretty good, with Von Winterburgh Estate being my highest at 2.6 MB and this is a EA Based lot. In your own save have you got to many above 2.0MB? If the answer is yes, you might wish to consider removing some of them lots, possible for smaller lots. I can't give you any hard rules on this, but if you have had any corruption problems, if you have 20+ 2MB size lots it's probably to high. On the right side it tells you where the lot is should you need to amend any, which you can do inside the game.
Textures
Save games will have two types of custom texture skins and objects.
In Sims 4 Studio type Texture in the filter and you see what you currently have.
When it comes to objects, you mainly see photo and pictures, you can delete in Sims 4 studio without upsetting the world file save so anything you don't wont, just delete them. So what happens in game, when you load in the lot with a deleted texture, you will get a white picture in game, if it was a photo or picture, this would be a empty canvas you can then delete the empty canvas in game.
To be honest most photo's and pictures are less than 50KB in terms of adding to save file size, but they can add up if you get hundreds, if you think of it like this a Sim cost 100KB, two picture in a art gallery is the same as having a Sim.
When it comes duplicate texture in photo's art pictures, if you have any, it probably not woth trouble to much about, I tend to just delete one of the pictures, this tends to happen when somebody uses the same picture on the canvas, it will be given a different instance number so end up with a duplicates.
Manage duplicate Tattoos
First point I would say I tend to merge my tattoo into one area, usual the head acts like a full body tattoo, I will show how to do this in part 3.
In the picture above you can see that I've got 2 undead mummy skins costing 701.8 each, that pretty high for a tattoo, considering I've got 2, so what I'm going to do is delete 0000000000000A14 in my game this tattoo belongs to a Sims called Spookenkhamun De Nile what I need to do next is enter the save game data on the right menu and click edit items
I searched for De Nile and then click on that Sims Spookenkhamun De Nile
Scroll down until you see a section called Parts_Custom_tattoos I then change the texture_id to 0000000000000AE8 so in game they will both use the same tattoos.
Save and exit Sims 4 studio a load the game and test, by doing this I've saved 701.Kb on my save game file.
When doing each individual tattoo the KB gain is very small compared to the amount of time you will need to go over each Sims and work out what goes with what Sims a full edit of your save game file could takes days, so a general rule I will manage tattoos that have a total of 500KB or more.
Part 3
Full body tattoos vs Part Tattoos
In general a full body Tattoo will cost less than a part Tattoo.
The game by default will save each area that contains a Tattoo, the first thing to do is setup a empty worlds, you from this point use this world for testing Tattoos, I use Srsly's Blank Save found here:-
https://www.curseforge.com/sims4/worlds/srslys-blank-save
The save game contains no Custom Texture, so when you edit any in game textures they are very easy to find in the world files.
So enter your new world and place the Sims you wish to give a full body tattoo in an empty lot. To make this easy just add a custom tattoo to each location of the Sims in cas, does not matter what tattoo you add, this just for testing. Make sure you have head tattoo
This is optional, if the picture you are using very high detail, do not do this, if the picture is similar colors and does not need to be higher quality you can click on image/mode/Indexed and convert, to reduce the quality of the image, this will reduce KB of the image, you should consider doing this if the image saves over 1MB, it will look poorer in the game.
When complete save and exit
Go into Sims 4 studio and load up your blank save, because your using a blank save it should be easy to find your save game Sims custom texture, they will be the only ones in the save. Batch export all your save game Sims textures, you then need to load all the texture into Gimp or your current art program.
You can then cut and paste all the texture files into the Head tattoo, if your unsure which is the head tattoo is , it will be tattoo that is the highest point on the screen. Export the file from Gimp and inport back into Sims 4 studio and save and exit
Load in the game and your Sims, it's very inportant you get this part correct, edit the Sims in cas and click the delete button for tattoos
Oh no all the tattoos have gone
All you need to do is hit the Undo button once
What happens is that the game will replace the head tattoo first, which happens to be the full edited tattoo, you can now save your Sims. In game terms the tattoo is just head tattoo that covers the full body. You are no longer using 11 different tattoos so your net gain when it comes KB on a save file is greater than using 11 different tattoos.
