Mod Destroys Saves

[azokka361]

For the first time, using the instructions on this board, I downloaded several mods from Twallan's site into my legacy game. This was in a completely new folder, using the Factory Reset, so I believed my dynasty game, which was in an entirely different folder, would be safe from any harmful effects of the mod. Anyway, it worked perfectly in the game I installed it in, so I downloaded a few more and played around with them.

However, when I tried to open my dynasty game a couple days ago, all the saves I had of it were completely blank! The only thing showing was the little blank-house and stick-figures icon that is a corrupt game file. I tried using the backups, but those also didn't work. Then, I made copies of saves I had stored on the hard drive and desktop, but those also didn't work! Is there any way to fix this?

[Seabody]

Which Mods were they? Most mods should not have any effect on saves, they are what are called "Pure Scripting Mods", which means that they are not tied to an object.

[Turoskel]

That is strange, I've used his mods for a long time and never had that happen.

Out of curiosity have you tried putting one of your dynasty saves in the legacy folder to see if it shows up on the menu, or even in another factory reset folder, or have you only tried in it's original folder?

When you say blank you mean that the family and house portraits are missing replaced by the blank house and stick figures but the save is still listed? can you still load one of them or does it give you an error message?

[azokka361]

Which Mods were they? Most mods should not have any effect on saves, they are what are called "Pure Scripting Mods", which means that they are not tied to an object.

Twallan's Story Progression and one of the additional Story Progression mods, Woohooer with another Woohooer mod, and Overwatch.

That is strange, I've used his mods for a long time and never had that happen.

Out of curiosity have you tried putting one of your dynasty saves in the legacy folder to see if it shows up on the menu, or even in another factory reset folder, or have you only tried in it's original folder?

When you say blank you mean that the family and house portraits are missing replaced by the blank house and stick figures but the save is still listed? can you still load one of them or does it give you an error message?

I've tried both the original folder and a factory reset. I'll try in the legacy folder next.

Yes, it's still listed, and it gives me the error message when I try to load it.

Edit: I just went and put the save in the legacy folder, and it still doesn't work. However, I noticed that there isn't even an option to open the save! The checkmark is grayed out. Also, when I mouse over the save it says "Cannot load this save game. It may have been saved with expansion pack data that is no longer present in the system." I haven't uninstalled any games . . . and the dynasty was in Sunset Valley.

[Turoskel]

I found this at the official forums, it's in the CAW area but the info looks like it could be useful to you. It's the 5th post down, but also scroll to the end of the page as somebody else added some info that will mean you need to only do it once.

http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/157376.page

It is still strange and probably just coincidence it happened when you installed the mods, especially as they are in another folder, It sounds more like the corrupted meta data mentioned in that thread might be the problem, and if that is right it stores all the info on expansions and what not. The game obviously considers something changed even if you didn't do anything, I know whenever my video card would auto update it's drivers it reset my options to factory defaults as the options.ini lists a last device and it changed the number every time, I would then have to copy paste the new number to my other game folders so they didn't reset too  Perhaps something happened on your pc that has made the game think it has changed.

[azokka361]

I found this at the official forums, it's in the CAW area but the info looks like it could be useful to you. It's the 5th post down, but also scroll to the end of the page as somebody else added some info that will mean you need to only do it once.

http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/157376.page

It is still strange and probably just coincidence it happened when you installed the mods, especially as they are in another folder, It sounds more like the corrupted meta data mentioned in that thread might be the problem, and if that is right it stores all the info on expansions and what not. The game obviously considers something changed even if you didn't do anything, I know whenever my video card would auto update it's drivers it reset my options to factory defaults as the options.ini lists a last device and it changed the number every time, I would then have to copy paste the new number to my other game folders so they didn't reset too  Perhaps something happened on your pc that has made the game think it has changed.

Wow, thanks! I will definitely try this out. Fingers crossed it works!

Edit: YES it worked! Thanks so much! You have saved my life, and six generations of work.