My houseboats disappear along with the sims

[beardeux]

I had one houseboat with 3 characters and the boat and people have disappeared.  They are gone from other characters friends lists.  The game has deleted them.  My other character, whom I'm currently working with has a home with an additional lot (houseboat) which has disappeared.  I have started this island 3 times and all three times, the houseboats I used have disappeared.  I didn't pay attention to all the houseboats before, but this last time when I went to go to the houseboat, and noticed it gone, I looked around the map and noticed that all save 1 empty houseboat were gone.  This is very frustrating.  I had built the characters up, they had accomplished their level 10 diving and made many friends.  They were lost when I went to work with another sim.  To lose them was a bit mind blowing.  Does anyone else have this problem and is there a fix for it.

[Wai]

I have not seen this with houseboats specifically, but, it has always been a possibility for families to disappear from town at anytime.  You normally get a notification that the X family have decided to move, but, this is easily missed.  Story progression causes this and you have no guarantee that a family you are not playing will always remain as part of your town.  If you want to prevent this happening then the only way to be sure is to turn story progression off.  However, this has it's own hazards. 

[Pam]

It doesn't sound like a case of Story Progression to me if the actual houseboats are disappearing from the game. 

Beardeaux, are you running any mods in your game?  And you say this happens with each new game you start?

[beardeux]

I don't run story progression.  I have the lastest mods 1.55 of master controller (and MC cheats), overwatch, Error Trap and traffic.  It is not every time I enter the game.  It seems random throughout the time I play each scenario.  I have now copied my 3rd character to the library (incomplete) and will start over again (4th time).  I'm only going to use him until he's got his diving completed.  Then depending on what has happened in the world, I'll either introduce my other 2 families or start over again.  At least this way I won't have to build those relationships again which are the ones I care about.

[Pam]

I don't run story progression.  I have the lastest mods 1.55 of master controller (and MC cheats), overwatch, Error Trap and traffic.  It is not every time I enter the game.  It seems random throughout the time I play each scenario.  I have now copied my 3rd character to the library (incomplete) and will start over again (4th time).  I'm only going to use him until he's got his diving completed.  Then depending on what has happened in the world, I'll either introduce my other 2 families or start over again.  At least this way I won't have to build those relationships again which are the ones I care about.

It might be worth your while to try uninstalling those mods to see if it still does the same thing without them.

[Dellena]

Make certain you have the latest of those mods.  Overwatch was deleting houseboats initially.  Twallan updated his mods when 1.55 came out, initially.  However, after IP was released, there was a whole raft of new updates because he couldn't account for how IP would effect everything until it actually came out.  So if you updated when 1.55 hit but haven't since, that's the problem.  Go to Twallan's site and update all of your mods.

[DanBrunetu]

I think that is the Overwatch. Get rid of it. I don't use it anymore and the game runs well even without it . 

[beardeux]

Ok, I'll get rid of Overwatch and see if that helps.  I'll also check out Twallens for updates.  Thanks.  I just lost another set of boats in my 4th game.  Only 3 empty boats on the map. 

[Susinok]

I am using the updated Overwatch, and it works well to clean things up. I have not had boats or houseboats deleted.

[beardeux]

I got rid of all the mods and played for the day.  I haven't lost any boats in my 5th game yet.  However, I put my usual boat in and my sim bought it, and when I got there, the Scott family was stuck there.  I think unroutable - they were on the outside ledge of the houseboat.  I tried to find a way to reset or evict them, they don't show up on the evict screen or as living there.  I also had this family on another boat, the one with my 3 guys in one of the earlier games where the boat ended up disappearing.  I was forced to delete the Scott family in both games.  Not happy with that.  This happened with and without the mods.

Also, the game clock is out of whack.  It will not change time for hours, eg. 8 hrs, the game runs on but is extremely stop and go.  One queued action can take as long as a minute or more (real time) to play through and will take up to three hrs or more game time.  Just to greet someone or pet a pet.  Playing with the pet doesn't happen.  After a minute the icon just disappears.  This too is with and without the mods.

I went into another neighbourhood and experienced the same time problem.  I started a new IP and the time still did this.  So I now think I have something else going on and it's not the mods.  There is no difference in play.  I don't know what else to try.

Is there any chance this thread can be moved to technical problems.  I believe I have a serious problem with the running of the game.  It has become almost unplayable now.

[beardeux]

Hi all.  My game became totally unplayable.  I think the houseboat thing might have been the trigger for worse things to come.  I believe I must have had a corrupted file or something.  My entire game was affected, every neighbourhood.  I decided to uninstall Isla Paradiso and start over from scratch.  As soon as I got rid of it, all was fine.  I've installed IP again and put my lifeguard in and she is fine.  I've now put my second character in and will start him over from scratch as I believe the problem started somewhere in that family/lot.  Hoping it goes much smoother this time around.  Wish me luck.  Thanks for trying to help me.

[Pam]

@beardeux:

Be sure to check your game files to see if any of them has ".bad" as part of the name.  If so, delete them because those corrupted files can spread to your good files.

[DanBrunetu]

... and beardeux, be sure to evict the Scott family from the houseboat because it causes big issues. Move it to another free cheap house and you will not have problem with them .

[beardeux]

Pam, I had no .bad files.  I always check for that and usually know when I've aquired one.
  DanBrunetu , I was unable to evict them.  I tried resetting them, evicting them (they weren't on the household list) and asking them to leave.  They were just stuck there.  I had to delete them from the game.  Sad.
  With my new IP install, I am now ready to start my 2nd character with diving.  So far all is good.  He has his own house and an additional houseboat with no Scott family and the game is running well.  I will make continual backup saves.