Sims 3 Relationships Don't Save

[imlyss]

My sims 3 family has their relationships reset every time I log out of the sims and then go back in to continue the game. I have to use a cheat to get them back to where they were and find all their friends again since the cheat to make them know everyone always freezes my game. Is this a corruption in the game? Is there any way to fix this? HELP

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@imlyss  When you say you log out and then go back in to continue playing, do you go to the Main Menu and then back into your save?  There's a known issue with the game where not all the save data gets flushed when you only exit to the Main Menu—that data can be transferred into a new save and corrupt it.  It's not even a good idea to do when you're going back into the same save, for reasons of memory management and data cleanup.

At any rate, the first thing to do is to delete the five cache files in your Sims 3 game folder (the one in Documents\Electronic Arts).  These files should be deleted regularly anyway, and every time you quit the game while troubleshooting.  For reference, they are:

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

If this alone doesn't help, to to Edit Town, evict your sims, and immediately replace them in their house.  They'll keep their jobs and relationships—or at least, they should keep those relationships if the data isn't totally corrupt—but lose their promised wishes and opportunities.  Then use "save as" to rename the save, so you still have the previous save as backup.  Quit to desktop, delete the cache files, reload, and see how their relationships look.  Even if the relationships are messed up again, you can adjust them by cheats, save, quit, delete the cache files again, reload, and hopefully this most recent adjustment will have stuck.

On the cheat to know everyone, that might be kind of a heavy command if there are a lot of sims in the world.  The relationship panel can also bog down with so much data in it, as in, one entry for each other sim in town.  So it's better for your sims to know a more manageable number of people; something in the range of a few dozen is fine.  Mods can help prevent some issues, but the game engine itself will also have trouble with too many relationships to track.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@imlyss  When you say you log out and then go back in to continue playing, do you go to the Main Menu and then back into your save?  There's a known issue with the game where not all the save data gets flushed when you only exit to the Main Menu—that data can be transferred into a new save and corrupt it.  It's not even a good idea to do when you're going back into the same save, for reasons of memory management and data cleanup.

At any rate, the first thing to do is to delete the five cache files in your Sims 3 game folder (the one in Documents\Electronic Arts).  These files should be deleted regularly anyway, and every time you quit the game while troubleshooting.  For reference, they are:

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

If this alone doesn't help, to to Edit Town, evict your sims, and immediately replace them in their house.  They'll keep their jobs and relationships—or at least, they should keep those relationships if the data isn't totally corrupt—but lose their promised wishes and opportunities.  Then use "save as" to rename the save, so you still have the previous save as backup.  Quit to desktop, delete the cache files, reload, and see how their relationships look.  Even if the relationships are messed up again, you can adjust them by cheats, save, quit, delete the cache files again, reload, and hopefully this most recent adjustment will have stuck.

On the cheat to know everyone, that might be kind of a heavy command if there are a lot of sims in the world.  The relationship panel can also bog down with so much data in it, as in, one entry for each other sim in town.  So it's better for your sims to know a more manageable number of people; something in the range of a few dozen is fine.  Mods can help prevent some issues, but the game engine itself will also have trouble with too many relationships to track.

[imlyss]

@puzzlezaddictThank you! I meant that I exit completely out of The Sim 3, and then open the launcher and go back into the game. So, I do fully exit the game. Clearing the cache files did it