Hello,
I am relatively new to the Sims - I started playing Sims 3 back in early January. I apologize if this is long - I am trying to include as many details as possible, because I've scoured this (and other) technical help boards and never seen a problem like the one I am having. I've also tried a number of fixes that have been suggested to other users, with no success.
I played a couple games for a very long time, and then had a game that had an error. I had a family that had married Christopher Steel (he was an elder at this point in the game), but some members had moved out. I was switching between the households, and went back to the household with Christopher Steel, and he was standing in the house, but not playable (or moving). His face icon on the left was an empty green box. I didn't save, restarted and once again returned back to that household. Now he was moving, but the character had renamed, and was not playable or a member of the household. I assumed that there was an error in the game file, so I stopped that game and started another.
The next game that I started progressed fine for a long time. And then it reached a point where the three family members I had would disappear from the screen (unless they were sleeping - then they would appear to be floating in the bed, not sleeping). The game would also freeze (although background graphics would continue to move- treadmill, shower, etc). I went back to a earlier saved version of the game about 20 times, tried every suggestion that I found on the web. And every time the same error happened. I finally figured out that it happened at 10:36 pm on a Wed, approximately (I'm not sure how to positively know) 30-40 Sim days into the game. Once again, I quit that game, and started another family and game, assuming a bug.
But before I started a new game, I decided to download and install Ambitions. I used Origin to download, made sure all patches were up to date, but I have not installed any content other than the original game and expansion.
I had been playing along in my new game, getting quite attached to my little Sims, when WHAM - the same error as above occurred. The two Sims in bed were floating, and the other two disappeared (can't even see their little green diamonds). I looked at the Sim clock, and again, it said Wed at 10:36 pm. And again, it's probably 30-40 Sim days into the game.
I really hope that someone has a suggestion to correct this problem. I've tried to "resetSim *" - that doesn't do anything. Are there other cheat codes to unfreeze them? The only work around I can come up with is to put them into the bin at my last saved point (and save their house), and move them in again and start a new game. But I really don't want to have to start a new game every 30-40 sim days.
Thanks for any help.
