My game * up

[Wipply5]

So, I made these sims a LONG time ago and one of the Sims in my household was in love with her so I decided to move her in. Typically, when I move in a family, if there are other people in the old household, I move them in as well so I moved in five people with my current household of three people. When I moved them in, I decided to see who the other people were so I clicked on the child and it let me select him, but when I tried to change it changed her name but not the face. So, I was trying to fix it (and personally I didn't actually want those people anyway) so I removed them all and put them in a new house. But my problem didn't change and the names and background colors were gone. I tried to look at another family but the same issue continued to happen. I saved this (of course) and now I dunno what to do because my game is now officially * up.

[puzzlezaddict]

@Wipply5  The best thing to do now is to load a backup save from before this happened.  Even if you've never made one, the game keeps the files from the second to last time you saved, so you can use that instead.  First though, delete the five cache files in your Sims 3 game folder in Documents.  They should be deleted regularly anyway, as they tend to fill up with stale data.  While you're troubleshooting, delete them every time you quit the game.  For reference, they are:

• CASPartCache.package
• compositorCache.package
• scriptCache.package
• simCompositorCache.package
• socialCache.package

Now open Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Saves, and you'll find folders for both your current save and its backup copy.  So if your save is called SunsetValley, the folder for your current save will be SunsetValley.sims3, and the backup will be SunsetValley.sims3.backup.  Delete the .backup extension and rename the save (e.g. SunsetValley1.sims3), and it will be available to load at the Main Menu.

Once you open the save, use "save as" to rename it yet again, so you have another backup if you need it.  Then try to move the other sims in again, or maybe just the girlfriend.  If it doesn't work, quit without saving and let me know.  If it does, it's a good idea to use "save as" to periodically rename your saves, so that you always have backups to revert to should anything happen.

If the backup save is also from after the move, and you see the same weirdness with the user interface, there are a couple of things you can try to fix it, atlhough there's no guarantee they'll work.  Let me know, and I'll write them out.