Game Crashed and Erased Save Data
Hello, I'm not actually 100% sure where this goes because it was a weird "bug" that I've never seen before. First, I would like to note that I don't ahve any type of mods on my game; secondly, I on...
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Thank you for sharing your computer information. Have you tried updating your graphics drivers, turning off Origin in-game and playing in Windowed mode to start with?
How to Find devices and updating drivers on your PC
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/finding-devices-and-updating-drivers/
Turn off Origin In-Game:
Open Origin, Select Origin > Application Settings > Origin In Game tab and click the on/off switch to disable Origin In Game. - This deactivates Origin In-Game, as it has been known to cause problems with games.
Restart the computer, to help the computer refresh itself, and try launching the game again.
Start the game in Windowed mode:
In Origin > Games Library, right-click Sims 4 and select Game Properties > Advanced Launch Options and In the Command Line Arguments, add the following text: -w and click Okay.
Playing The Sims 4 in windowed mode
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/the-sims/the-sims-4/playing-the-sims-4-in-windowed-mode/
I'm not entirely sure why playing in Windowed mode works, but there have been many with higher end cards reporting that playing the game in Windowed mode works. If Windowed mode works, try switching back to Fullscreen to see if it continues to work.
Please forgive the double post. I wanted to make sure to break up this information in to more smaller bites so to speak as it's a lot of information. Hopefully it helps.
You mention the game erased your Saves and families have been deleted?
If you still have your saved games in your Sims 4\saves folder - [C:\Users\Username\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\saves]
It may be the game isn't reading the save files correctly.
Have you tried renaming your saved game file?
To rename your save, remove the version number. - .ver0 or .ver1 by deleting the .ver1 on the end.
For example: Slot_00000002.save.ver1
Rename it to: Slot_00000002.save
You may want to give it a different number if you already have a save 2 in your folder. The game should then recognize the save file again.
-- If you have an old auto save file (Slot_00000001.save) it's safe to delete as the game doesn't use it anymore.
If the above doesn't help, Crinrict has some very useful tips on saved games disappearing:
Save Games disappearing
https://sims4.crinrict.com/en/2014/09/save-games-disappearing/
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Regarding missing families ---
If you're missing any families, have a look in the Library as a copy of each family created gets saved to the library every time you create a new family.
Or check Manage Households, it's up in the right corner fo the map screen.
In the My Households tab (which is automatically selected) you should be able to find what families are in-game and what world they are in. To play a family, find them in the world they are in and select them to play.
If they aren't in Manage Households, maybe you saved your game playing one household and then switched to another household before exiting the game?
If that doesn't help, click Load Game to see what other saves you have. Select a save to see if you can find the missing family, through Manage Households.
Please Note: Sim families from another game save cannot interact with another Sim family from a different game save. To get them to interact with each other they need to be in the same game save.
-- To get the families all into one game save, go to the main menu and click Load Game for each of the families you want to save. Save the family and their house to the library and place them into one game save.
** Important Note: ** If you exit CAS or the game before the household is finished being created, you loose that family and will need to start over.
However if you've already created the household, but not placed them in the world you need to load the game and either click the Play button to continue from when you last played, or Load Game button to select the household.
Thank you for your reply and I will do my best to answer your questions in the same way you asked me:
Firstly, I will give that save data thread a go, but I fail to understand why this is accepted as a permanent solution if this was an on-going issue. Not blaming the community for figuring out a way-around... but it's messy to me.
As for the Game:
- I do not play with the Origin In Game simply because I'm not always in a place with internet service, so the first thing I did was disable my computer from auto connecting to the internet, to include any and all software that might try to auto connect to the internet once it's opened. For the sake of this thread, I did check my internet connection settings in Origin, and they remain the same (not using the internet features).
- I might give windowed mode a try, but with my laptop, running in windowed mode is not preferable. It normally over-heats my latop and causes the game to freeze up normally. I tried running FFXIV in windowed mode, and regertted it immeditely since my laptop repeatedly shut itself down from the over-work.
- The save file is completely gone when I checked it; I tried to look in my other folders that had traces of EA/Sims on my hardrive, but nothing was there. This has happened again earlier today after i played for 3 hours and my file was erased again. i did toggle auto-save on and off, in case was was an issue, but so far it looks like I haven't started a family at all in the game.
- Neither of my previous families (to include the ones from Get to Work that I made earlier this year) are on my laptop when I try to search for them.It's almost as if I just installed the whole series today and started a new game today without saving it.
- Without trying to sound snarky, I know that I need to save the family after i create them and that's not the problem. The family shows up after I create them and even if I close the game immediately after I create the family and open the game up, I can see the family. But after a few hours of actualy game play, my sims stop responding and sort of just do their own thing. I can't even completely say the game is frozen because everyone is still moving when this happens. People are still eating, or going about their own business. But I can say that each time my game went into that weird freeze mode, it's always when my character is at her job and I'm attempting to accomplish some of the tasks at work.
Most recently, I attempted to talk with the director prior to going on the stage, and my sim did not respond to my command. This is when the game froze/didn't freeze and I had no control over my sim. The weird thing is that I could click on the options menu and it would pop up, or I could go into the build mode and come back out of it, but my sim still wouldn't respond to me. My game would sit like that for 10 minutes before closing itself and then re-opening. When I clicked "play" and got back to the town that I started in, my save file was gone again.
@bru74Lbutt3rf1y
Do you use Onedrive? If this is the case, maybe the computer saves everything there for some error@kreatora As I said in my earlier post, I do not use the internet conection for my saves because when I go to work and do not have access to the internet, then I wouldn't be able to play my game. I know I can always just download it; but most of the time I have a poor connection and trying to download something with a poor connection will sometimes delete files, corrupt them or just not even begin the download. So simply put: no, I do not use OneDrive.
@roberta591 : That was one of the first things I did for my laptop since I'm aware of this issue.
@172e3cda00349872 I probably didn't explain myself correctly: I have tested it in windowed mode but it ran slower and it reverted to skipping animations. I toned down the graphics to see if that would help, but it still skipped some animations while I was in windowed mode. Plus (and I'll admit it might be the laptop, because this isn't the first game it's done it with), my cursor will sometimes "escape" the windowed mode and I'll end up clicking on icon that's on my desk top (I keep a clean desk top, save for a few important ones); and of course the game will freeze for an unprecidented amount of time before finally downsizing itself while the new window loads. Most of the time when this happens, Origin will crash and I'll have to close the program.
As for the Save file advice, I only have two saves in that folder and as for games, I do not keep that many on my laptop. Even if I move my save to the desktop, will that be a premanent fix for the solution? If so, then fine but then I'll have to worry about my desktop being loaded right?
My mistake on the save comment for the family creator, I'm just used to saying "save" all the time even though "auto save" is almost a normal thing now. I does auto save after creating my family, I just get edgy about it because I'm so used to saving the file myself.
Instead of the desktop, I will move my save file to another folder that's not on the desktop, so incase this is a temporary fix then I won't overload my desktop with the save files. I've had to do that with another game before, and that seems to work until an update comes out.
@bru74Lbutt3rf1y Check the temperature of the cpu. The Intel I7-6700HQ I believe has an idle clock of 800MHz or will throttle down after certain temperatures.This is not desirable in a gaming computer. Most computers have a way to disable this or change the values.
Sorry for the confusion. I'm not saying to use Windowed mode permanently. I'm saying to try it as a test, see if it works. If it works, then switch back to full-screen to see if that works as it normally should without crashing.
From what I understand Sims 4 has issues with the higher-end cards not displaying the game correctly in full-screen. Temporarily switching to Windowed mode and then back to full-screen after a few minutes seems to help.
There was a bug of sorts that the game would delete game saves if you have a lot of saves in your Saves folder. I don't know if the bug has been fixed or not.
You could try moving your saves folder to the desktop and try a new save with a new Sim to see if that helps.
It may be that the bug hasn't been fixed or is back. If that's the case, it might be a good idea to limit the amount of saves in your folder to make sure the game doesn't delete your saves.
Autosave isn't used anymore, It was patched out in 2016/2017. If you have a Slot_00000001.save file or any of it's .ver files. (Slot_00000001.save.ver0) These are safe to delete.
You don't need to save a newly created family to the library. The game should automatically save a copy of the family to the library after you're done creating them via Create a Sim. Does the game not do that for you?
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