Sims and Cars stuck all over town

[catlover]

I am finding Sims frozen in their homes and around town. These are Sims that are literally frozen, not just stuck. Resetting them does not work. I tried to "delete Object" them through build/buy and edit town mode and that does not work either. You can not click on them to interact and the mouse cursor is like a dull brownish color when placed on them. I've tried to move them out of their homes and the Sims get stuck on the clipboard. I have to shut the game down manually, ie: Ctrl + Esc keys, and therefore no save file is created.

The same is happening with the cars around town. Some are even "meshed" together meaning they are overlapping each other on the road. At one house the family car was parked on their lot in an awkward position. It was half on the road/sidewalk and into their yard and they were walking and moving through it as if it wasn't there. This house does not have a driveway or a parking "thingy" (sorry, I can't remember what they are called in the game right off the top of my head) that you have to buy in the game to park their cars on. The same thing is true for trying to delete them, I have no control.

I have: Sims 3, Ambitions, Generations, Outdoor Living. I am all patched up. No Mods ever, some custom content from the store only, playing on Windows 7, no vampires or mummies, and am currently living in Twinbrook. The most recent changes I have made is to send my kids off to boarding school. My Sims have jobs in the political field and the other is working in the investigator field.

The cars started off in the game being messed up and frozen on the road and don't interfere with the game so I overlook it and the game played fine. The frozen Sims just started and are interfering with my game now. What should I do?

This would be like the 7th time I have had to uninstall and reinstall my game and start over from scratch losing many hours of gametime and progress. I have lost 4 different Sim families and I am feeling really deflated right now.

Thanks for any help.

[Naga]

It seems to me that it can be two things. It's either yet another bug that most likely won't ever get fixed, or it's a visual glitch that's happening with your computer. It's nice of you to put so many details in your post so we can eliminate many possibilities, but if it's not too much trouble, could you post which video card you have?

I'd rather think you can fix this by buying a new video card (or updating your current one) than thinking it's something you can't fix at all and won't get patched.

[catlover]

Hello, thanks for responding.

My video card is fairly new, less than 6/7 months I believe. It is a NVIDIA GeForce 6800.

[Pam]

Does this same thing happen in every game file?

[Naga]

Hello, thanks for responding.

My video card is fairly new, less than 6/7 months I believe. It is a NVIDIA GeForce 6800.

It says here that it's a compatible video card. Still, you should consider upgrading it into something better if you're an addicted gamer like me.

Is your directx updated? Do those bugs happen if you lower some of your game's graphic resolutions (start a new game to test this out*)?

*Only if it happens to every game, of course.

[catlover]

Hi Pam.
The cars around town use to be random and only a few here and there. The frozen Sims are new. I had problems installing Generations and OL and decided to take the route of uninstalling and reinstalling the game. I checked the forum and found your posting for install/restall and for cleaning out my pc of old files and de-fragmenting. I followed all the steps and then began a new game. From the start I noticed the cars stuck on the road around town, but ignored it because it didn't interfere with gameplay. After several weeks (real time not Sims time) I noticed that my Sims started disappearing from the game. They were still there, they were still moving chairs to sit in and such, they were just invisible. To fix that I would just send them to town somewhere and they would become visible again. The frozen Sims began to show up when my Sim joined the investigator career and accepted job opportunities from Sims that were homeless. I would have the Sim call the homeless Sim to call them over or to meet them somewhere in town. They would never show up. Then I happened to notice there was a Sim frozen on the sidewalk directly across from my Sims home. I tried to reset him but when I placed the mouse cursor over him the name of the Sim would not show. I looked through my Sims personal Sim directory, but could not identify the frozen Sim. I tried to delete him, but the game would not allow it. I cancelled the job I had accepted and moved on, and then accepted a job from a Sim that had a home. I went there and their toddler was in that frozen state that the homeless Sim was in. I tried all the same steps as before and again, nothing.

The only other new activity I had tried for the first time in the game was to enroll my Sim kids into boarding school. I could not go back into the game and get a picture of the frozen Sims because of the forced manual shut down of the game. My latest save file does not show the frozen Sim on the sidewalk or the toddler. I do have a few pictures of the car "wrecks" around town.