Missing pre-made families in a new game - RESOLVED

[Rinkils]

Hi there.

For reasons I am mentioning elsewhere I attempted to do a factory reset through a shortcut as described here http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=7507.0.
I did everything as suggested, except I didn´t copy my saves to the new folder because I anyway wanted to test a new game. I also freshly installed all the downloads via launcher. I double-checked, I did everything right, including renaming and so on.
Then I started the game normally and chose a world for a new game. When it loaded, there were no pre-made families in the town, as it should be, and there wasn´t a button "choose household" there (only create sims and move in). The houses and venues were there, but all empty.
I deleted all and repeated the factory reset in the same way, with the same results. It was the same problem regardless of which world I chose. However, when I copied one save to the new Sims 3 file, it loaded normally, Sims were there and so on, it wasn´t lagging, crashing, just fine (however it didn´t solve another problem I was trying to get rid of in the first place). When I loaded the game from an "old" folder and started a new game, the world was there complete with families present.

Then when I was browsing through the directories, two differences I noticed:
1. In the "old" folder (the one that worked) there was but one .package file called ccmerged in DCBackup, while in the "new" folder, at the same place, there were at least 120 .package files including ccmerged.
2. In the "old" folder, in Library, there are some 40 package files, while in the "new" folder, there was just one (with identical size to one of those in the "old" folder, but with a different name).
I copied the library files from old to new, but the problem remained.

If anybody could guess what is the problem here, please let me know.

[Angélique]

Hi there.

For reasons I am mentioning elsewhere I attempted to do a factory reset through a shortcut as described here http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=7507.0.
I did everything as suggested, except I didn´t copy my saves to the new folder because I anyway wanted to test a new game. I also freshly installed all the downloads via launcher. I double-checked, I did everything right, including renaming and so on.
Then I started the game normally and chose a world for a new game. When it loaded, there were no pre-made families in the town, as it should be, and there wasn´t a button "choose household" there (only create sims and move in). The houses and venues were there, but all empty.
I deleted all and repeated the factory reset in the same way, with the same results. It was the same problem regardless of which world I chose. However, when I copied one save to the new Sims 3 file, it loaded normally, Sims were there and so on, it wasn´t lagging, crashing, just fine (however it didn´t solve another problem I was trying to get rid of in the first place). When I loaded the game from an "old" folder and started a new game, the world was there complete with families present.

Then when I was browsing through the directories, two differences I noticed:
1. In the "old" folder (the one that worked) there was but one .package file called ccmerged in DCBackup, while in the "new" folder, at the same place, there were at least 120 .package files including ccmerged.
2. In the "old" folder, in Library, there are some 40 package files, while in the "new" folder, there was just one (with identical size to one of those in the "old" folder, but with a different name).
I copied the library files from old to new, but the problem remained.

If anybody could guess what is the problem here, please let me know.

As far as I can tell everything you describe here is perfectly normal. It's just the way the game is supposed to work. Look here and here for more information on the subject.

[Rinkils]

Genius, thank you so much, Angélique.
It´s been such a long time since I played Sims3 for the first time, that I had forgotten completely what it looked like in the beginning.

[Pam]

Genius, thank you so much, Angélique.
It´s been such a long time since I played Sims3 for the first time, that I had forgotten completely what it looked like in the beginning.

Was it the tutorial?

[Rinkils]

Was it the tutorial?

She meant the tutorial mode in which you find yourself when you are playing the game for the very first time. At that point, you begin in a classic town view, and can only choose to create sims or move in household, but cannot choose existing household. When you go to the menu (left bottom) and choose to edit the town, it will ask you whether you want to exit the tutorial. If you choose to exit, you find yourself in edit the town mode, and then when you press the switch active household button, you are back at the initial view, but since you have exited the tutorial, the option to choose household is already there. Any next time you play, even if you start a new game or a new world, you will never be again in the tutorial mode.
That is all I knew and tried.
For most people it´s been a long time since they played for the first time, so generally perhaps they forget about this feature, which was my case, too.
However, what exactly is this tutorial, I don´t know for sure, I don´t remember going through it, I think I somehow exited it the very first time I played and consequently forgot totally it ever existed.