Sims 3 household sim picture not appearing

by SaoMacnamara
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Sims 3 household sim picture not appearing

★ Novice

I recently got the sims 3 and sims 3 pets exansion both ondisk and today im trying to play and my main family isnt playable ,theres a blue outline as if your just starting but the name is still there. It says when i click the check an serious error has occurred and i should restart but i have and its still the same. Also origin for some reason isnt updating but says it has an update available it just gives me an error 7049 message.

 

Please give help???

Message 1 of 6 (4,036 Views)

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Re: Sims 3 household sim picture not appearing

@SaoMacnamara  You can only play one household at a time, but you can switch between them as often as you like.  When you want to change the active family, click the three dots in the lower left corner of your screen (where you have the options to save and quit) and select Edit Town.  Find the house of the family you want to play and click its map tag, and then select "switch to this household."

 

Keep in mind though that your original sims will go on living their lives without your input.  That means they can switch jobs, start or end relationships, move to a new house, and even have kids while you're not playing them.  There's no way to prevent this in an unmodded game; it's just the way things are set up.

 

The other option, and maybe the better one for you, is to have several different saves, one for each family you want to play.  Each time you start a new game in a certain town, the sims that live there will appear in their original form, not the way they progressed as you played a previous save.  So for example, each time you start a new Sunset Valley, Bella Bachelor, Mortimer Goth, and Malcolm Landgraab will be children again, even if in your previous save they've all grown up and started families of their own.

 

This way, you can play each of these other families separately, without worrying about what's happening with your original sims.  If you want, you can also save a household from one game to the bin and then place it in a different save.  (The bin files show up across all saves.)  The sims in that household won't know anyone in the new world, but they'll keep the skills they built, and the jobs as well, if the buildings that host those jobs are present in the new world.

 

By the way, whether you're rotating households or not, the game takes care of inactive sims.  You might see them hungry or unhappy for some reason, but that's just the game engine calculating that maybe they should want something.  (So if you see them at 6 pm, they're looking for dinner.)  But they won't starve without your attention—their needs will be reset when you're not watching them.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.

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Message 6 of 6 (3,990 Views)

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Re: Sims 3 household sim picture not appearing

@SaoMacnamara  There are a few reasons that a picture of your sim family might be blank.  One is game corruption, but it can also happen for no apparent reason.  Can you load the save?  If not, the first thing you can try is deleting the cache files in your game folder in Documents.  They should be deleted regularly, even in the absence of any game issues, as they'll fill up with stale data.  For reference, the files are:

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

If that alone doesn't help, pull your entire TS3 game folder out of Documents and onto your desktop.  Launch the game, and a clean folder will spawn with no content.  Then go into your old game folder and copy the Saves folder; paste it into your new game folder, and your saves should be available to load at the Main Menu.

 

If you can't even load your save in a clean folder, it may be too corrupt.  You could try loading the automatic backup version, though.  Inside Saves, you'll see a folder with your save's name, and another folder with the same name but a .backup extension (so. I guess, PatterGrims.sims3 and PatterGrims.sims3.backup).  Delete the .backup and rename the save (maybe PatterGrims1.sims3), and it will also show up at the Main Menu for you to load.

 

For the Origin issues, try clearing Origin's cache.  If that doesn't help, you can just uninstall and reinstall it, which wouldn't affect your TS3 install.

 

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/faq/clear-cache-to-fix-problems-with-your-games/

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/origin/origin/manually-uninstalling-origin/

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 2 of 6 (4,028 Views)

Re: Sims 3 household sim picture not appearing

★ Novice

Thankyou so much for this info and I got it so fast too! (Didn't xpect a fast response didn't know people still played it) But this crazy thing happened. ...I made a new game and I recently added a quick family and then I got out of the game ,got back on an hour later and my family I wanted back and the other I made previously are in the new game under my households when u enter the game and see the map and neighborhood . What should I do now??does that mean the house is still playable and there?

Message 3 of 6 (4,021 Views)

Re: Sims 3 household sim picture not appearing

@SaoMacnamara  Do you mean that when you're starting a new game and choosing a household to play or move in, your families show up in the bin for you to place?  Those are the files of the households as you originally created them, before you ever played with them.  The sims will be brand-new again—they won't have any career or skill gains, they won't know anyone in the neighborhood, and they won't have their belongings, or even their money.

 

The one exception is if you ever saved the families to the bin after you'd played them.  (To do this, you'd go to Edit Town, click on the household map tag, select Save.)  But it sounds like you probably didn't do this.

 

Each saved game is its own separate entity, so you wouldn't see any progress from one save transferred to another.  You could, of course, save an existing family from one game and then drop it into another, but that never happens automatically.

 

And there are plenty of us who still play TS3.  Some have come back after a break or after getting sick of TS4; others, like me, never left.  And there are quite a few new players, too/

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 4 of 6 (4,016 Views)

Re: Sims 3 household sim picture not appearing

★ Novice

For the new game I have alot of families in lots,I'd like to play the new one I made aswell as the main and their pets in it, is that possible? Or no? Can I check on their household and play them too?because they seem to be hungry and wanting lots of things and always standing outside sometimes they go out.

Message 5 of 6 (3,995 Views)

Re: Sims 3 household sim picture not appearing

@SaoMacnamara  You can only play one household at a time, but you can switch between them as often as you like.  When you want to change the active family, click the three dots in the lower left corner of your screen (where you have the options to save and quit) and select Edit Town.  Find the house of the family you want to play and click its map tag, and then select "switch to this household."

 

Keep in mind though that your original sims will go on living their lives without your input.  That means they can switch jobs, start or end relationships, move to a new house, and even have kids while you're not playing them.  There's no way to prevent this in an unmodded game; it's just the way things are set up.

 

The other option, and maybe the better one for you, is to have several different saves, one for each family you want to play.  Each time you start a new game in a certain town, the sims that live there will appear in their original form, not the way they progressed as you played a previous save.  So for example, each time you start a new Sunset Valley, Bella Bachelor, Mortimer Goth, and Malcolm Landgraab will be children again, even if in your previous save they've all grown up and started families of their own.

 

This way, you can play each of these other families separately, without worrying about what's happening with your original sims.  If you want, you can also save a household from one game to the bin and then place it in a different save.  (The bin files show up across all saves.)  The sims in that household won't know anyone in the new world, but they'll keep the skills they built, and the jobs as well, if the buildings that host those jobs are present in the new world.

 

By the way, whether you're rotating households or not, the game takes care of inactive sims.  You might see them hungry or unhappy for some reason, but that's just the game engine calculating that maybe they should want something.  (So if you see them at 6 pm, they're looking for dinner.)  But they won't starve without your attention—their needs will be reset when you're not watching them.

——————————————————————————————————————————

I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 6 of 6 (3,991 Views)