Thank You. "Vanish" is the perfect word. One second I'm telling my sim to clean up an empty glass... the next second the game is gone and I'm staring at my desktop.
The worst part about this glitch or bug or whatever it is... is that it's totally random. It's happened on every kind of lot; tiny residential, residential, venues and vacation lots. It can happen no matter what my sims are doing or whether they are doing it alone or interacting with other sims. It happens to all types of occults including non-occults (obviously).
I have tried dozens of things to try and "recreate" this glitch, but to no avail. The "crash" seems to happen most often after many hours of gameplay (usually at least 5 or more hours), although it has happened in as little as two or three hours on at least a few occasions. I have never had it happen in a short session (less than two or three hours), and 90% or more of the time it's a long session. Also, it doesn't always happen. If I only play for a handful of hours it almost never happens, and sometimes I'll play for 8 or 10 hours and it never crashes, and I just shut down normally.
Because it doesn't happen by any "re-creatable" action I have tried triggering it by removing and/or playing with my mods and cc to see if I could identify a potential mod 'causing the problem. So I started a brand new folder and added only my actual mods - no cc either CAS or Objects, and I've played the new game for a couple of days with only the mods and it has eventually happened. So then I deleted the sims 4 folder and let the game create a new one and in the new one I added only CAS cc. I used the cc liberally and played for a few days and eventually the game had this weird "crash" again. Next I deleted that folder and had the game create a new sims 4 folder and this time I added only Object cc... and you guessed it... after playing like that for a while it happened again. So I am not convinced it's any one piece of cc or any one mod.
Also it may be noteworthy that although I do play rotationally, I rarely rotate in or out of a household in a single game session. To wit, during a play session I am not adding or removing a lot of cc. My sims are already created with all their CAS cc and their house is pretty much built and decorated. So the theory that some piece of cc one of them is wearing is causing it doesn't seem likely... because I've been playing the same sims with the same cc for like 5 hours or more before it happens - although at this point, I am totally open to ANY ideas about what may be 'causing this.
At one point, I thought it might have to do with scrolling around while the game wasn't paused, but I was unable to create a crash by testing this theory either. For example one of the tests I did to test this is, I left my sims soaking in the hot spring at the Onsen bath house unpaused in live mode and scrolled back and forth between the bath house and the top of the ski slopes, and then had my sims teleport between the two locations, naturally this wasn't the only test but just a sample of some of the stuff I've been doing to try and trigger this crash on my own. I am pretty frustrated by this so any ideas would be soooo welcome.
Finally, my current working theory is that it's not a game thing but an OS thing. Although I disengage my system's protections during gameplay, I do play in windowed mode and I am open to the idea that there may be some system feature that examines "open" windows that may be considered Idle for a long time and closes them. I don't know of any upkeep or protection app or software that does this, and I have researched it, but I am totally baffled by this one so I am appealing to the community for any ideas. Also I have never had this crash or spontaneous closing of any other game or window. So it's probably just another dumb idea. Either way, I am so grateful to know that I am not the only one out here experiencing this. so ..
Thank You. Thank You. Thank You.