@g4564fg6 , it sounds like something is corrupted in your game. You will need to move your Sims 2 folder to your Desktop. Do not copy and paste or create a shortcut. Move the folder to your Desktop.
Here is how you locate the folder in your Mac which is found in your Library folder. To find your Library folder, click on your Desktop, find the "Go" command at the top in the Finder, hold your cursor button over Go and press the Option key on your keyboard at the same time and Library will show when you do that. Scroll through the Library folders until you find one called "com.aspyr.sims2.appstore" and open the folder. You should see two files in there and open the Data File. From there, locate another file named "Library" and then in that file you should should find another Aspyr folder which when opened will reveal the Sims 2 folder (exactly like the original game and on the Windows side). From there, move this folder to your Desktop. Don't worry. Once you restart the game it will generate a new one. At this point, restart Sims 2 allowing the extra time for the Sims 2 folder to rebuilt itself. If the game starts up faster (it shouldn't take 30 minutes to load up), then play for about an hour or so remembering that none of your saved games will be present at this time. This is to make sure that everything else works as normal.
If everything works as normal, then it appears that the particular sim/household you were playing was corrupted. While I know it hurts to restart all over again, you may just have to. I have had to restart households over again even after playing for many years.
Thanks so much for your advice 🙂
I followed the steps you suggested and without my saved files everything in the game works fine and the default neighbourhoods load quickly.
I re-inserted my saved neighbourhood file and I've created a couple of experimental sims and killed them off to confirm it's not the whole game that's damaged, and their deaths didn't cause any issues. As a result I deleted the affected sim since I guessed his file must be corrupted, but this made no difference to the loading time of the game. Thinking that since deleting the sim didn't solve the loading issue there might be an problem with the size of the neighbourhood file, I also deleted a large number of families I don't play anymore and their properties, but this hasn't helped the game load any quicker.
Could the slow loading neighbourhood be a result of the corrupted sim/household?
I had moved the affected sim out of his house when I deleted him so it's possible the remaining sim in the household is also corrupted?
@g4564fg6 , yes, the corrupted household could be causing the slow loading times. The game shouldn't take that long to load.
Great, I'll keep digging then. Thank you so much for your help.
