I wish this break was intentional! It wasn't my PC after all, it was the electricity (reaching the main switch) which finally burned down last night - that was causing all the troubles, and I spent the night with a candle
But they fixed it this morning and now I hope to enter the New Year without issues.
I'll see with Carl to upload another save file. Yesterday (before electricity broke) I uninstalled Pets and was able to load saved file fine, got the Missing objects message and it was all good. I'll try with only base game too (and reinstall everything back LOL) and then upload that saved file that is working properly - at least for me - not shore why it wouldn't work for others.
Now more informations about 2 files we are talking about. One is sim3pack - file that will install the world. You need it regardless how many EP's you have. If you have all of them it is the only file you need. If you don't have all EPs you should ALSO download save file. Since that is a folder with several files inside, it had to be compressed. Zip and Rar are official worldwide used aplications and there is no reason not to have them anyway. I don't know of any other way to upload the save file folder. Once you download it it (save it anywhere) extract that folder in Saves folder, among the other saved games. When you start the game, you'll see it in main menu without any Sim icon since it was saved before any active family was selected. It is named Union Cove Start - I had 0 problems this way when testing it, and Schipperke and Ausette used this method in previous version(s).
About save erorr, crash and settings. I didn't want to lower the settings in my game for a long time, but it was much more consuming in CAW than in game and eventually I had to. I only have 2GB RAM and 2.4Ghz Core2Duo intel processor. Eventually I had to have smooth work in CAW I had to put all on lowest, but in game I changed settings back to most of the things on medium, and detailed lot number on minimum. Error 12 happen with those higher settings but not on lower. Before lowering it, I did run into same issue and I gave up the game - save as didn't work. It is hard to decide to compromise the details to actually play the world, but I understood that this configuration is almost on the lowest end of recommended - with all EP's. And I also realised UC is so wonderfull even with lower settings - only with minimum effects waterfalls don't appear until you zoom in closely.
And you do have to start the game for waterfalls to appear.
If your game crash while loading new game - you most likely don't have all EP's and game couldn't load the objects in it so it crashed - that is why there is a save folder)
Lagg:
Beside lot's of objects in the world, all that I could do about it I did. I spent almost a month just working on routing, even went back to several previous versions because I didn't want to risk possible routing issues. I reduced the number of spawners since animating lot of them can cause the lag. Did several things that I'll sum up in other post/tread one day as tips - which I find all over the internet. I got most lag between rich mansions (ZapKid, I apsolutely agree about golf course
), and near the ruins - those are the areas with very dense, large lots and with lots of details on them. In first few days game will shuffle Sims to fill in remaining career coworkers (depending on what career your Sim has if any), employ merchands from unemployed residents, generate NPC's (BTW I set the maids, repairman, mixologists and babysitters, will try to see if they didn't accepted it and just became homeless - or something else). Also, number of Sims is depending on our PC strenght, so it may take a few days before story progression move out Sims that it can't handle.
Keep in mind that this world is double sized SV, both in lots and number of Sims (or almost double size) - and it is not easy to handle it as it does with SV - even with lots added, it is still bigger in every way. It is closer to Bridgeport than to Sunset Valey with size, number of details and resources it needs to run.
And finaly, this is the first world I "finished" in CAW so it most certainly is not perfect. It was a learning process for me and I'm carefully looking for your comments to see what I have missed or possible mistakes I made. If anything, as KJSinclair said, it is an awesome collection of lots and sims at least, but even if I lower the settings for it, it is my favorite world ever, and even if I just sent my Buznik family to walk in strollers down to the Pier, have her jog to the ruins (when Unicorns and deers appeared there it was a perfect set up!), sent her to look for collectables around crater with spooky tree or just chit chat with awesome neighboors - it brought me back to actually playing Sims instead of just building and occasionally running trough some fast challenge
