Sims disappears when I travel

[DeviousCaterpillar]

Hello,

I'm new to this forum, although I've been referring to it quite frequently while I start to become more familiar with the Sims 3. Anyway, I've been playing for awhile now, and I hadn't experienced any problems (none that were game-breaking, anyway) until, just yesterday, I started getting this glitch.

When I get to the destination, there's nothing. The NPCs are there, of course, but most of them just stand there without concern for their needs as the time races by. I've read lots of fixes for it - some of which are outside of my power to implement, and tend to broker only temperamental solutions - but I haven't found one yet that worked for me. I've tried limiting the number of people who go, I've tried emptying the family inventory (my front yard looks bizarre with a reconstructed S. of the Kings in it), I've tried resetting their wishes and their opportunities by changing active households. Nothing has worked for me yet. (I've yet to try changing neighborhoods: that's a last resort for me.)

However, I've found an interesting phenomenon: when I tried to go into edit town, in the hopes that for some reason this might work (desperate people try anything  ), I went into the original town (Appaloosa Plains) where my home is, getting the "travelling home" screen. I zoomed in on it (I had to click on the world editor to do that) and I can see my sims standing in front of the house.

All four of them were just waiting by the side of the road. I could see my horses in the pen where I left them, too, and my dog as it ran across the road. I left-clicked on them in frustration (to no avail, obviously) and eventually gave up. When I returned to Egypt (and again to France to confirm) the sims actually arrived! I still had no panels, but one of them had the plumbob. I could control them (switching sims by right-clicking), and even accept adventures...Still, without panels, it would be impossible to do things like eat dried food when they're in a tomb, or use escape dust.

The reason I'm telling you this is because I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else while I researched this glitch, and I was hoping someone cleverer than I could deduce from this which files are borked up...or something. I don't know, but I thought you would at least find it interesting. I suppose, with static needs, you could adventure on from this point, but I don't want to. (Oh, and "resetsim" doesn't work even in this state; there is a sim to reset, but I still couldn't see their panels.)

Anyway, if anybody has any ideas about this glitch or how to fix it, please let me know: I would greatly appreciate it. My computer more than meets the minimum requirements, and in addition to the BG I have World Adventures, Ambitions, Generations, Late Night, and Pets. However, my internet is dial-up, and it would take me about 300 years (give or take a decade) to download the newest patch, so I'm almost up-to-date. If that was fixed in this new patch, that'd be great. Does anyone know if it was? At least I would be able to go on adventures when I'm 318 years old.

To answer your question, Miss_Judged, I haven't experienced that error, I'm sorry. I've been too afraid to try fixes involving game files thus far.

[lanlyn]

I had this bug for the first time today. Tried suggested fixes but they did nothing for me.

So out of the curiosity I quitted the game and deleted travel files from the save (package and nhd), in my case they were Egyptsomething... Loaded the game, loaded the save and ta-da, my sim can travel again! All my travel stats were there, visa level fine, I couldn't check if my adventure would have be continued as well cause I've cancelled it while trying to fix the bug, but I think it would have.

Hope that will help someone else. =))

PS: I suggest backing up the save just in case before deleting

I registered here just to let you know that this suggestion worked for me. Thank you so much! I was trying to return to China, but all the sims were missing. (When my previous vacation ended, I was pulled out of a tomb, so I wonder if that had caused a problem with my save.)

Anyway, after reading your post and those of others in this thread, I went into the save I had before leaving Riverview and deleted the two files (package and nhd) with China in the name. I left the generic travel file. I loaded the game, had my sim choose travel back to China and everything was ok.

The dungeons had been reset, but all my travel stats were present and my quest was still alive, which I was able to finish. I still had some foreigner relationships, but don't remember too much about those because I had mainly adventured before, not worked on friendships.

I just wanted to express my appreciation to this website for all the info I've used and to also say thanks to twallan, whose Master Controller and Cheats mods I use. I wanted to try the errortrap and overwatch, but decided to wait until I worked through yesterday's new patch from EA and this traveling glitch.

[Pam]

I had this bug for the first time today. Tried suggested fixes but they did nothing for me.

So out of the curiosity I quitted the game and deleted travel files from the save (package and nhd), in my case they were Egyptsomething... Loaded the game, loaded the save and ta-da, my sim can travel again! All my travel stats were there, visa level fine, I couldn't check if my adventure would have be continued as well cause I've cancelled it while trying to fix the bug, but I think it would have.

Hope that will help someone else. =))

PS: I suggest backing up the save just in case before deleting

Welcome to our Forum!

Thanks for sharing this information.  I hope it will help others, too.

[lanlyn]

Wanted to update my experience. My sims disappeared again when I returned to China, and I didn't want to lose my purchased vacation home by deleting data files again. So I installed twallan's Traveler mod. What a life saver! Kudos for your wonderful work, and thank you so much. I haven't had any more travelling issues.

I registered here just to let you know that this suggestion worked for me. Thank you so much! I was trying to return to China, but all the sims were missing. (When my previous vacation ended, I was pulled out of a tomb, so I wonder if that had caused a problem with my save.)

Anyway, after reading your post and those of others in this thread, I went into the save I had before leaving Riverview and deleted the two files (package and nhd) with China in the name. I left the generic travel file. I loaded the game, had my sim choose travel back to China and everything was ok.

The dungeons had been reset, but all my travel stats were present and my quest was still alive, which I was able to finish. I still had some foreigner relationships, but don't remember too much about those because I had mainly adventured before, not worked on friendships.

I just wanted to express my appreciation to this website for all the info I've used and to also say thanks to twallan, whose Master Controller and Cheats mods I use. I wanted to try the errortrap and overwatch, but decided to wait until I worked through yesterday's new patch from EA and this traveling glitch.

[ophelia_dust]

I thought I'd contribute to this thread because I've had the problem recently and as I only had one saved game, I'd basically lost the entire  thing because when my active Sim travelled home from Egypt, the bug always occurred. I know it's probably a small comfort, but even though I lost my household, I was able to save all the things I'd done to my home town (eg complete customisation of buildings, all the new characters I'd put into empty homes, and all the other households I'd also played as at other times). This just saves your spirit from being completely crushed because you haven't lost absolutely everything, just your primary household.

Anyway, to do that I went to my backup save from before the bug occurs, and just went straight to Edit Town. Then as my sim was in Egypt I clicked on 'Home' (rather than editing Egypt). Once there I was able to copy my customised buildings and households individually to the library by clicking on each one. Even if you then start a brand new game, you can still load those buildings and characters into it from your library when you edit your new town. Like I said, small comfort perhaps - but it meant I was willing to carry on playing rather than completely abandoning the Sims in frustration at all the progress I'd lost.