Uncontrollable sims in my household (is this a WA bug?)

[Noodles]

Something rather odd happened. This is not an urgent problem as I have a backup-save (I have read enough about WA bugs to make one everytime I send my sims on a trip).




I lost control of my twin girls. They do not have their portrait on the list of the sims in my household; I get the notifications about schoolbus normally, but they never wake up or do anything... ResetSim does nothing, but they still appear on their mums social panel with pictures and she gets wishes regarding them as if they existed.
(Oddly enough, I could sell their beds, so now I have floating eternally sleeping twin girls...)

My sims had returned from France a few days earlier, but this happened only after I saved & reloaded. They were fine for a couple of sim-days. Any guesses if this glitch is caused by travelling?

[Pam]

This could very well be triggered by the travel bug.  There's no fix for it, so I suggest you either try deleting the twins with testing cheats or just continue with an alternate file.

Also, I'm moving this to Miscellaneous Help.

[ultralilac]

I have had a similar problem with my Sims in Bridgeport.
My family had been to France earlier before any kids were on the scene and had some weird buggy things happen with stuff they'd bought vanishing from their inventories, but it was such a long time ago I don't know if that's related.
I've also played several Sims games with WA and this has never happened before.


I ended up with a child from the time machine. I saved the game, then when I started to play again her portrait was blank and I couldn't select or control her, and my other Sims couldn't interact with her, although they still had wishes regarding her.
I quit without saving, then when I reloaded the same thing happened, only this time she was invisible too!
resetSim didn't work.
I restored my game from an earlier save so she was gone from the household and figured it was a glitch with time travel kids.


Then I adopted a toddler a few days later. After I saved and came back to the game exactly the same thing happened to the toddler!
I'm guessing my file for the whole family got corrupted somewhere?

I'm creating a new lot of Sims (so heartbroken!) in Sunset valley, hoping that the glitch is only in my Bridgeport game. Is this wise, or should I reinstall everything before starting over?

I don't have any mods or anything other than official expansions installed.

[Noodles]

Pam, thank you.

ultralilac, I'm curious, did this all happen to you before or after installing the new patch? I'm starting to get a feeling this was not caused by the travelling, as it keeps happening again without any trips (I deleted my save and went back to an earlier one, where they had not travelled yet).

My game just got totally messed up. Sad thing is, this is my legacy game and I had just brought home twin babies... This is not a very old game so the age/size of the file should not be an issue. I also have reinstalled everything just a few days ago and have no CC of any kind. They had not been travelling this time.

I have a family of 5. I loaded my game, and this is what I have now:
-one visible, but uncontrollable sim without a portrait pic (same as the twins I wrote about earlier)
-3 invisible sims with pics, which I can't control, and which can not be restored with resetsim
-one sim that reverted back to normal after I used "ResetSim *" three times.

Yikes! I'm too scared to play anymore. Glithces just keep pouring in every time I play (since the patch?) 

[ultralilac]

Noodles This happened after I installed Generations (that was the last time I updated my game too). That was probably a week ago, but the problems only started when kids appeared on the lot yesterday. Before that I've never had anything like this happening!
It's a family I've played for a long time, so it's pretty annoying.
The saved file I restored from was also from after I installed generations, but before time travel kid showed up. The glitch came back in this restored file too, which is why I suspect Generations is the culprit.

I'm hoping the new game I just started will be OK, but I have my doubts.  

[katielo]

I'm having the exact same problem as Noodles -- missing portraits in the household list, sims stuck in actions (1 eating and 1 reading, in my case), cursor greys out over them, as if they don't exist.  resetSim does nothing for them (I do still have one controllable sim!), and when I pick them up with moveobjects, their avatar in a black ball that says "Sim" and not their names.  I certainly didn't mean to save this game, but I guess I did it out of habit on the way out, and now I'm in trouble!  When I load the regular save file, ALL my sims' portraits are missing, all sims uncontrollable, all Sim Panels inaccessible, and, curiously, they have $0.  Also, the two previously uncontrollable sims have random, computer-generated names NOT their own -- everytime I loaded it they got different names.  Scary!!

I have reverted to my .backup file, but that still leaves me with first uncontrollable characters problem!  

I think this issue occurred because of the "travel bug" that's been going around since the Generations patch.  Ironically, the patriarch of my family had just taken a short jaunt to China to solve ANOTHER bug -- an inventory issue that left me with a huge number of nectar bottles rendered unclickable (I was in the middle of a large move/remodel).  China solved that issue, but a few simdays later, THIS happens!  

This is probably unconnected, but I'm also still having family (not personal) inventory issues -- gifts and items bought abroad never appear, unclickable items.  

Are there any other fixes or workarounds I could try that don't involve having been smart enough to backup/save a different game?  I've tried evicting the family (game crashes) and splitting up the family (doesn't take).

If I'm just out of luck and an idiot for not having been more careful saving (or NOT saving) my precious games, break it to me gently! :'(

[Noodles]

Sorry to hear you are having this same problem, katielo!

Lucky me, I had another, earlier save file... I think I talked about this in some another thread, but when this happened yet again on my file (and this last time was without any travelling), I tried different things to see if it could be fixed somehow. I managed to split the household and get rid of the sim that was stuck. She was sleeping, and strangely enough the Zzz's kept floating where she had been even after I moved her out, but the rest of the household seemed to be fine. I kept playing and first, the other, still "normal", sims seemed to be OK, but over time they started acting strange, one after another. Popping invisible and back, teleporting around the house, canceling their actions etc etc. Some furniture became unmovable/unusable. It seems like there's no cure if this thing starts, it's like it spreads if you keep playing with the same file...
There's many different topics around the forum about similar problems and it seems to me there is no fix to this. Still, someone said that the family could be restored if you save it to the bin and copy it to a new town/file, but I have not tried that myself. Maybe you could try that, katielo? (I deleted the bugged file earlier, so I can't try to see if it works. Somehow, I doubt it, as the game seemed so totally messed up after this bug, but I'm hoping someone will prove me wrong.)

These days, I make a new file with "Save As" every time I play more than an hour just to make sure. It happened to me once without travelling, so I just want to be 100% sure.

[Pam]

This is probably unconnected, but I'm also still having family (not personal) inventory issues -- gifts and items bought abroad never appear, unclickable items.  

This is a new bug with Generations and/or the latest patch.  We haven't figured a way around it yet other than to purchase the items again through Buydebug. 

[katielo]

I tried what Noodles suggested -- just putting the buggy house and family into the Library and moving them to a fresh neighborhood in a new game.  I also had to move all the community lots I worked so painstakingly on, but it was worth it.  The house appeared normally in the new 'hood and my family was back, visible, and whole!  So far I haven't come across any other bugs, but I know I might run into a myriad of issues down the line, so I'm being very careful about saving and using the Save As option to ensure I have something to fall back on should any other bugs pop up.

This will result in lots of saved games, though, and I'm wondering if it's a good idea to limit the number of saves you have?  I'm thinking of cycling through maybe a dozen saves (Riverview I, Riverview II, etc.) so the save file doesn't get enormous.  Have you ever heard about someone having trouble with multiple save files?  Does it slow the game down?

And yes, I managed to solve my inventory issue with the move, too!  The family inventory is back to functioning, and I purchased the items I had bought abroad and never got through buydebug.

Thanks very much for the suggestion, Noodles!  I really appreciate it!

[Noodles]

I tried what Noodles suggested -- just putting the buggy house and family into the Library and moving them to a fresh neighborhood in a new game.  I also had to move all the community lots I worked so painstakingly on, but it was worth it.  The house appeared normally in the new 'hood and my family was back, visible, and whole!

That's great news! I'm glad it worked for you.
It's also nice to know there is at least some solution, no need to worry about this bug so much.