Sims 1 Legacy; Empty World + Crash in CAS

For starters; I am playing this through Steam and not the EA app. 

My main issue is that while my game starts up just fine and when it opens up to the map view, all the lots are empty.

This includes all the expansion towns as well. 

When I click on CAS/Create-A-Family, my game crashes.

I haven't seen anyone else have this issue and I'm wondering if there are any possible fixes for it.