Travel Bug at University

[artymisx]

Hello everybody!

I am a new user to this forum however I have used this forum and the accompanying website guide several times in playing TS3.

Anyways, my issue is this: I am suffering a variety of the "travel bug" as my current diagnosis. My legacy family is currently away at university and, well, the face tiles on the left are missing and I am unable to control any of my household Sims.

The EPs and SPs I have downloaded are as follows: Ambitions, World Adventures, Pets, Supernatural, University Life, Island Paradise, Seasons, Generations, Master Suite, Outdoor Living, and Late Night. I also have some mods downloaded and I do really believe that the mods are not affecting any files. Mods include some nRaas ones, like Twallen's Relativity, and fashion, hair, etc from thesimsresource.com.

This is what it looks like when I load the file


The message I received when I selected the debugging option on the relativity menu when you click on a clock and select nRaas. I have no idea what it means and have tried searching for the meaning but I was unsuccessful in finding an answer.

I have casually tried to solve this problem for the past couple days and have read threads such as these
http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=8186.0
http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/180691.page
http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=6291.0

I have tried the following suggestions

• deleting cache files and switching households temporarily
• copying the family to the library

I moved the cache files into a different folder for now just in case I need them later. However, I am unable to switch households while away at University. When I tried copying the family to the library, it permanently would "process" until my computer crashed. I tried this 3 times before writing this post.

I don't know what else to do. This is my legacy file so I would really appreciate any suggestions or ideas on what to do.

Thank you so much,

artymis

[Lisa46]

This is a travel bug. Your mods and CC could be affecting it, so try uninstalling. Otherwise just copy to library and place in a different town.

EDIT: You probably shouldn't just assume that your mods aren't affecting it. A bad mod can kill your game. My tip would be to look for the sims mod board and also check where you got all your mods. For example a Twallan mod is safer than some, and also some mods may be outdated.

[Pam]

Welcome to our Forum, artymisx.

This looks like the travel bug we've seen with World Adventures, but I don't know for sure that it also appears with University.  If it's the same bug, there's really no fix for it.  Do you have a copy of your game from before your Sim went to University?  You could go back to that copy and try again.  I agree with Lisa46 that your mods could be causing a problem.  One of the first things we recommend in a situation like this is to remove the mods and see what happens.

[Dellena]

Agree with everyone.

Remove your mods and see if the problem persists.  If not, then make sure your mods are all up to date and compatible.

If the problem persists after mod removal, then you might only have the choice of placing them in a new town.

[artymisx]

It still persisted after removing all mods.

In order to move them to a new town, I would first need to save them to my library right?
I'm going to leave the machine running for a few hours and find something else to do and hope that it works. I've tried both options of saving just the household and am currently trying save household with house.

What would happen to the file if I just removed University alltogether? Wouldn't they have to be in the home town, in this case Sunset Valley?

[MrsFlynn]

Removing University expansion may mess up your game. So if you choose to do that. It may be good to backup your family first by "sharing" them. This will save them to the library and also save a copy of them to the Exports folder.

I'm not entirely sure the following link may help. But I thought it was worth mentioning.

Missing Sims and empty UI when arriving in vacation town
http://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2011/03/bug-missing-sims-and-empty-ui-when-arriving-in-vacation-town.html

I did run across this link, while doing some research on the University/Travel bug -

Sim disappears traveling to sims3 university
http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/655767.page

While doing some game trouble shooting awhile back. Crinrict says the same travel bug experienced in going to/from university is the same travel bug that was introduced with World Adventures. And still has yet to be fixed, by the sounds of it.

MrsFlynn

[artymisx]

I thought sharing might prove more beneficial than saving them to the library because it was a slightly different process but it leads to the same result -- being stuck "processing".

The links were helpful as it gave some more detailed insight on the problem although I have determined my issue is different than the problem they were solving.

I was more thorough on this post http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/225/655767.page#12072036. I didn't realize I was actually necro-ing it and crinrict and ceejay had given up on helping people. However, as they wrote over a year ago.. lol.. perhaps a guru could help me on that forum. So I quoted the guru and we'll see how quickly it will take for a reply.

crinrict did however come to the same conclusion as me and decided that the bug is not mod or cc related and even suggested to dl a few more mods. I have done so and am currently testing if they will fix this issue (using a student laptop to play sims, gg #dati3processordoe #integratedcardsareforwinners). If they do, I hope that my research will be helpful to someone else having this problem. I will post a reply if I am successful.

I think you are right that removing the EP will make my Sims gone forever because I tried the nhd workaround suggested in the other thread and that made the situation worse.  Since I am unable to save my Sims to the library in any way, I don't want to try this.

[MrsFlynn]

Thank you for sharing the link to your post on the Sims3 Forum and sharing your saved game. We'll see what we can do.

MrsFlynn

[Flynn Arrowstarr]

I thought sharing might prove more beneficial than saving them to the library because it was a slightly different process but it leads to the same result -- being stuck "processing".

The links were helpful as it gave some more detailed insight on the problem although I have determined my issue is different than the problem they were solving.

I was more thorough on this post http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/225/655767.page#12072036. I didn't realize I was actually necro-ing it and crinrict and ceejay had given up on helping people. However, as they wrote over a year ago.. lol.. perhaps a guru could help me on that forum. So I quoted the guru and we'll see how quickly it will take for a reply.

crinrict did however come to the same conclusion as me and decided that the bug is not mod or cc related and even suggested to dl a few more mods. I have done so and am currently testing if they will fix this issue (using a student laptop to play sims, gg #dati3processordoe #integratedcardsareforwinners). If they do, I hope that my research will be helpful to someone else having this problem. I will post a reply if I am successful.

I think you are right that removing the EP will make my Sims gone forever because I tried the nhd workaround suggested in the other thread and that made the situation worse.  Since I am unable to save my Sims to the library in any way, I don't want to try this.

Hi, artymisx.

MrsFlynn and I checked out your saved game from your download link and unfortunately it doesn't seem to be recoverable. I tried going in to Edit Town and there are no other families available to change to. Also, the current household doesn't show on the map (no green bubble on the dorm they are in). Trying to add a family to another lot from the Library results in nothing happening. We tried several things, but nothing allowed us to even cancel the queued actions. Resetting the game and trying to move the family to an empty lot showed no Sims on the lot and the Play Table Tennis actions still stuck in the queue.

Since the family doesn't show on the Edit Town, we couldn't move them to the Library, with or without their household. Hopefully you have a backup save, as I don't think this one is recoverable. Wish I had better news for you.

Flynn

[artymisx]

Thank you very much everyone for all your help.

I feel more assured about everything and have decided it's time to let the Sims go. I'll just make a new file and start fresh. Because the file I sent was the backup file and there are no more backups.

With the mods suggested by crinrict, I wasn't even able to load the game. It would just be perpetually loading, just like when saving the family to the library would perpetually process.

I wish I knew what specifically caused the problem to avoid any future actions that would lead to such an unplayable file.

Again, thank you for your time and consideration towards my problem.

[Dellena]

Next time you send sims to Uni or on vacation, change the name of the save file that they prompt you to make prior to travelling.  Keep that save safe and don't over write it.  That way, you'd have a good save to use.

[MrsFlynn]

Hi Artymisx,

I'm happy we could help. But am very sorry about the loss of your game.

I don't know what really happened with your game save. But some times the game save hiccups and gets corrupted some how. But saving and make a backup often specially before traveling or going to University is the best advice I've heard.

MrsFlynn

[Pam]

I always keep multiple copies of my game files, with slightly different names.  For example, my current game has four ongoing saves:  GameName 1.0, GameName 1.1, GameName 1.2, GameName 1.3.  I rotate the names every time I save my game using Save As.  That way, I'll have more than one backup if something happens to one of the files.