Not letting me edit post?  Sorry for the double.
Anyhoo did some more poking around and saw this http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,21207.0.html which suggests using twallen's porter, but my game is capable of exporting lots and sims on its own so I'll go ahead and do that.  Seems like the consensus is that the sims and lots are not the issue and that doing so will be safe.  I plan on first removing all cc from the sims and houses before exporting to avoid baggage.  This should be horribly boring and likely unfruitful, but here I go anyway...

Hmm I appear to be having the same problem as Callista.  I even copied over my saves to my bf's computer which has twice the ram of mine, and a different video card just to make sure it wasn't my system and the crashes were the same.  In addition to DEP, CC removal, & clearing cache files, I tried disconnecting from the web and turning off all background tasks - to no avail.  I get up to about 4 hours playing in when I start a fresh game, then it starts crashing and becomes 'corrupt' according to the CLA.  I even tried running without awesomemod, using only twallen's nocd but it didn't seem to change anything - my backup saves continued to become corrupt at around the same point with or without cc.  TBH though I couldn't be bothered to play a fresh game without awesome bc it does take a few hours at first to recreate the corruption.  I'm finally at the point where I am going to try a fresh game, non custom world, no cc no nothing and see what happens. 
One thing I am not looking forward to is remaking all my sims and apartments and whatnot.  So, I'm wondering if sims and lots that are saved to the bin (or exported) from a corrupted save will themselves be corrupted.  I don't want to try and start fresh only to import patient zero and go through the whole frustrating process again.  Anyone have any suggestions on the most stable way to backup my lots and sims?

Thank you, I've decided to just start fresh, I wasn't loving the custom world I was running anyway.  The problem has been fixed by removing my cc, if I manage to narrow down the file I'll hunt the creator down and see if they know wtf happened.  Lol. 

Hello all, I'm hoping I can get some advice.  After downloading some new clothing and hair one sim who I made over in the cc started giving me problems.  Of course I immediately removed my packages folder, cleared caches and reloaded, but the problem persists.  Basically my last save (where everything was working but the sim was wearing the cc) loaded up without any sim panels on the bottom or sim's portraits on the left.  Only the clock and build/buy/edit town etc menu remained.  The missing sim panels are only an issue in Problem Sim's family.  Switching households works fine, but the problem remains when I return to their house.  My problem sim's household can interact with objects, and even with each other but I cannot select them except by right clicking - pressing space bar doesn't work.  I cannot select my problem sim at all, and when I attempt to control click her through a neighbour's relationship screen it causes the attached error.   I'm hoping there's some way I can fix this, but after the last hour of trying I'm about ready to just destroy the household and move on.  I would go back to a save before the addition of the problem cc but it was a while back and I've built quite a bit since, so I'd prefer simicide.  I'm just worried that it'll be a corrupt neighbourhood thing and I'll have to totally restart. 

Oh and I've tried:
- loading with no cc after clearing cache
- moving them to a new house
- splitting problem sim from hosuehold in edit town (caused CTD)
- editing problem sim and using all original hair and clothes (no effect other than sim's appearance, sim's thumbnail still showing her with CC even after refreshing, still flagrantly erroneous.)
- loading with only AM and trying fix all, reset sim

So my question is, is there some hope for Problem Sim?  And more importantly, do you think the whole neighbourhood is now borked? 
Thanks for any help!

Just wanted to say this is one of the best worlds I've played... unfortunately my computer doesn't have the power to run it once it starts getting populated.  Oh well, amazing work and if I upgrade my hardware it'll be first on my list.  Kudos. 

I had this household's son move out into the trailer once he declared his step mom his nemesis.  Seemed like the right thing to do.


"AAAAH maggot attack!"


Playing fooseball backwards while standing inside the table.  Impressive.

Damn!  Lol why must my sims be renegades?  Well no worries, played last night with new shiny build, still going about 50% of the time to work and school.  Ah well, at least they wont get fired, and i guess it's not all that important that they get passing grades.  Silly question probably but how do I tell the game which sims I want running in high-res?  Do they have to be sacred?  I'm tracking several and most of them are 'low detail mode' though a few aren't... not really sure why.  Is it just when they are out and about or something that they are in high detail mode?  Sorry I don't really know how that works and can't seem to find any info about it when searching.

Sympathetic laugh @ Motoki, man I wish I understood this 'voodoo' too.  Just when I think I get these computer things figured out somebody tells me what I did to 'fix' the situation has nothing to do with the problem and couldn't possibly have accomplished anything.  I think I'm gonna start leaving offerings of raw meats in front of my disk drive.  Chanting is also not out of the question.  You mock my superstition but it's all I have!  Lol

edit:  Forgot to add that the 'work&school' option on supreme commander causes an error whenever the sims interact with objects outside of their home, and for some reason it tends to send them to the library... to study most likely, but they are never able to complete the task since they have to be reset.   

It seems odd to me that the game would make it so diffucult to just get those little buggers to go to work.  They do nothing else all day!  What's their excuse?    
I think the game a lot of us wanted requires more than just the simple action of the non playabled going to work/school, or at least the one I wanted did!  I only get bothered about stuff that seems so blatantly borked... but your probably right, EA likely didn't put enough thought into this feature either.  Still, if we all just accepted that there wouldn't have been Awsomemod!!  At any rate, to answer your question yes I use supreme commander, but only in terms of switching houses and tracking sims on radar, I haven't played around with the powertasking function.  I don't have time since I'm workin' atm (okay clearly not working but hehe, supposed to be...) but I do want to try using those options for my noncontrolled sims to see if it forces them to be responsible when not controlled.  That would be schweet. 

lol that kid looks like he's picking grandpa's nose.


Yes, all around awful.  That 'Yay I'm on a swing/*Snarl* Bring me cakes!!!' expression doesn't really look good on anyone though to be fair.  Too bad she rolled 'family-oriented'.  Let you pass that ugly mug on to the next gen?  I don't think so.  Prepare for disappointment kiddo.

Hmm not ideal, but at least they wouldn't all be flunking.  I can just disallow NPC Work Performance Gain for chosen to keep them from being fired but doesn't fix the issue of me having to 'make-believe' that anything is going on outside my controlled family.  ex. If I'm controlling a girl with a journalism career, and her best friend is a co-worker, it's a little annoying when that best friend is just wandering around town pointlessly when she's supposed to be working along side my girl.    

I've been having the same problem that a few people have mentioned with my non played sims failing to go to work/school.  Sometimes they do, but it's pretty inconsistent.  I have them all on my radar tracking and I noticed that they tend to 'go to the park' at the most bizarre times of day - like 4:30am - with their entire family, kids included.  They stand around in the park until they are tired and then go home to sleep, seemingly unaware of the time of day.   

When they are well rested and in a good mood they have no trouble getting to work/school (unless they run into route fail issues trying to get out the door or into the school/workplace itself, but thats a whole other kettle of fish.)  I have started just ctrl-clicking each house at around 5am, making sure they are all at home and just maxing their motives.  They tend to get on with their days.  Its pretty lame though having to cheat just to get things functioning in a playable way.  I really want my chosen family's children to befriend each other at school/work, and I don't want them to be getting failing grades or getting fired.  I mean, I wan't them to fail if they deserve it due to traits and life's many complications but at the moment they aren't really getting a fair rap.  They just all fail, even the genious workaholics.  Thats clearly not right.  It's one thing if they didn't get any sleep last night because they were up fighting with each other, but if they didn't get any sleep because they were just standing around tapping their feet while standing right outside their front doors... well that's just silly.    Originally I thought that sims did go to sleep with their schedules in mind, but maybe they were just deciding to go to sleep when they weren't tired in an attempt to confuse and frustrate me. 

Is there some way to tell uncontrolled families to go to sleep in time for them to get up for work or school without having to switch families and use the 'go to bed' command for each household member?  A similar command that effects the whole household would make things quicker at least, since it is fantastically great how quick it is to switch households now.   
If I put on supreme commander and tell my sims to power idle or some such thing will that make them more aware of when they need to sleep or will they stand around until they get a negmoodlet before attending to their sleepiness?  (I think I'm going to try it if nothing else to stop them from going to the park all the time.)  I also worry that their relationships will decay if I tell them to power idle since they won't socialize with each other unless I am controlling them... is there even relationship decay for uncontrolled sims? 

Anyway if anyone has come up with a better way of dealing with lazy uncontrolled simidiots I would be much obliged.

On a side note... it occurrs to me that I spend more time scowering this lovely site looking for fixes and advice than I spend actually playing this abomination.  I keep thinking 'Oh if just this one little thing was fixed then it would be playable...'  But there always seems to be something else that drives me nuts.  Thanks to the management for the many 'little (and big) things' that have been fixed so far.  Fingers crossed that this one will join those ranks, fast fading from my memory.   

Bright future in radio for this kid.  "Careful Billy, if the wind changes, it'll stay like that."


Does it strike anyone else as strange that these toddlers are discussing campaign finance?  Maybe they should talk about the reprecussions of ignoring structurally impossible facial ticks. 


Why do all children have Quagmire chins?  This one in particular burned my eyes.

Even her neighbour was shocked by the horror... and for once not just because she has a maggot growing in her belly. 


Super cool and natural looking dance moves... *cough*  Actually kinda looks like he's winding up to kick his buddy in the nuts. 

/chuckle.

Yes, I have been plotting their courses by hand to avoid collisions, but it's more that every activity takes an unreasonably long time for them to complete.  They walk so slowly compared to the 1x speed that combined with the slow activities it just feels unnatural.  It takes half an hour for them to get out of bed, then they wait next to the bed for no apparent reason before responding to my poking, turning the whole thing into 45 minutes instead.  Not a huge deal, takes longer than that for me to wake up sometimes, but its with every friggin' activity!  Why is it that they have to stand around considering every activity before and after completing it?  Its only a few sim minutes but since they are already doing everything so slowly the lag or whatever it is becomes painfully noticable.  "Hurry up theres only an hour left for you to scarf down your bowl of mush!" 

PS.  TYVM for all the apostophe's.  I had misplaced mine was unable to make it to the apostrophe store because I had a piano tied to my leg.  ''''''''''!!!

Here are some of my thoughts - okay mostly complaints... cuz 'omg i luvzzz sooo much ea is my favvvv!!1!!11 isn't productive. Also I dont feel much like gushing. 

I'm finding I am growing very bored very quickly with TS3, and I played the base games for both sims 1 and 2 way more than is healthy.  I dont remember ever really getting bored with either of them.  I think the biggest reason is I really enjoyed making the sims in both 1 & 2.  I do not enjoy making the sims this time around.  I am also finding that I do not feel like I like these little pixelated people.  Maybe its because they are all such little maggots as babies...  Or maybe its that as toddlers they can't interact with other toddlers or children...  or maybe its that all the children look like little square jawed oompa loompas.  hard to say. 

re: pudding face and general annoyance.
Adding a layer of chub may make the facial animations smoother but thus far I havent been able to make the sims I want.  And its not like the chub has eliminated the chunky accidents of cas where a jaw juts out in a disturbing pixelated mess, and nostrils fail to connect to the face resulting in choppy and unnatural animations.  Some sims turn out alright looking thanks to awsome mod, but never as good as I had hoped. 
I dunno if any of you guys played fallout 3, but the face controls remind me of the character creator from that game.  So many options... but they give only the illusion of control.  youre still stuck with certain parts of the face that cannot be altered.  That was just fine in fallout where you had to go out of your way to see your character's face... but i like watching my sims! i mean, isnt that the whole point?  Why does it seem like they put more effort into decorative outdoor plants than the sims themselves?  No actually, they put more effort into that than any other objects.  (Really?  We're back to octagons pretending to be circles?  The furnature looks like poorly made ts2 cc with low poly counts. just look at the cheapest lamp and you'll know what i mean.)

I guess I expected the graphics to be better.  I didn't expect every sim to have a weird spare tire around their necks.  I didn't expect that nearly ALL the (very limited) hair styles we were given to be horribly ugly.  I didn't expect them to all storm around town looking like theyre hunting for whoever put that stick up their bums.  My boyfriend asked me the other day "why are you still playing sims 2?"  to which i replied "im not, its sims 3." "then why are they all so pug-fugly?"  he laughed uproariously.  He went on to demand to know what happened to a particular cc'd out female sim who he had always heckled with cat calls as i played her or as she came onto a community lot.  'wwooOOooo there she is.  thats what im talking about.  make her date the bigfoot!  do it!!'  Regarding the sims 3 sims, he considered them for a moment before declaring that they looked like playmobile people. 

i really didnt expect to still see route-fail-splosions resulting in all the sims nearby stopping to tap their foot and bob their heads like my awkward older brother at a club.   It takes them over fifteen sim minutes to get back on track.  and its not even when they run into each others squares, it seems like even one sim walking behind another will without even bumping into the back of them stop and do the foot tap, as wil the one in front, until finally they find alternate directions to their target both abandoning the straight route.  I guess my expectations for mobility were too high.  I had hoped after hearing how they climb out of pools to avoid death even without the ladder, that maybe they could climb over the couch to avoid driving me crazy.  (little do they know failure to do so may also result in death for them if i get bored enough.  Tap your foot at me will you?!) 

on the time issue, i really wish the 1x speed would be slower.  it takes them half a sim hour to get from bed to the kitchen in a 2 story house, and im not talking about a mansion here.  Maybe then the 3x speed would feel faster without having to turn all the graphics to the lowest setting.  I thought this would be the sort of thing they would look into since sims are having to travel all over town.  time travelling too fast for the painfully slow sims to catch up with results in them being late for everything and never having time for leisure activities.  I feel like they have just enough time to sleep work and fullfill basic needs then an oppertunity rears its ugly head and their whole day is a write off. 

I dont even want to talk about the way they eat (or dont eat) group meals/birthday cake.  Sit down damnit, enjoy a family meal!  I feel like my freaking mom herding insolent kids to the dinner table. 

I do like the trait system - but the traits are pretty poorly balanced in terms of how they effect game play.  'Extreme sleep?'  WTF?  I guess they think thats funny but that should be a bonus to the actual trait feature.  that - oh i dont know - doesn't suck? 

I was also shocked at the poorly underdesigned genetics system. 

In terms of gameplay, while i love the open neighbourhood i am constantly unable to find the sims im looking for, and with new sims moving in (one more ty for awsome mod keeping them from moving out) and households switching around, its really time consuming and annoying to hunt down the sim you want.  Maybe if they had added a sim by sim run down in the family info screen in edit town, like in ts2.  I want to be able to click on each sim in the house and see their name...  maybe even see the information availiable in their bio card.

on that note, is it me or does alot of stuff seem about half done?  i love that theres a little bio card run down in the relationship menu, and i think its cool that you have to make your sim ferret the info out.  however, if our sims have wishes to 'cook so-and-so's favorite food' shouldnt their favorite food be listed on that card?  how am i supposed to know?  i dont examine every speech bubble and write this stuff down.  Similarly collecting seems pretty lacking.  wtf are we supposed to do with the metals and gems?  theyre not even pretty.  why would i want to display them?  maybe if i had a display case...  same deal with fishing.  i dont want 40 tiny fish bowls.  plus i think its a little cruel to keep a 10lb salmon in a tiny goldfish bowl - even if it is a lazily described extra dimensional whatever-the-hell. 

and then theres the whole barely any objects thing.  then there the whole lazily chosen colour schemes for defaults forcing us to redesign every single item thing.  and theres the whole story progression being totally broken thing.

oh man.  ea is lucky there are people like jm out there willing to clean up after their shit.  i guess theyre also lucky its next to impossible to return a game.  lol.  if i had something better to do i would so stop playing this game.  but who am i kidding, it just means playing WoW while i procrastonate instead.  *Sigh*.  Anyway, wow what a ramble.  I apologize, this is time I would normally be playing the game, but i already played for half an hour, so I'm bored.   

Yay first post evah!  First of all thanks for all the awsomeness, didnt expect fixes to come to fast!  The random one parent babies were driving me crazy.  

Bad news, the first time i installed awsomemod with default settings, without enablescripterror file, the game was crashing seemingly at random.  after 45 minutes, then after 15, then 30... possibly as a rusult of my sims visiting community lots, the crashes happened during lots loading - although not all lots caused a crash, nor did the same lots cause the crash reliably.

So I got enablescripterror file, changed settings to only story mode and route fixing enabled, started having the crash at 1pm and am consistantly.  ive been clearing my cache before every start.

Gonna try it again with only the 'necessary' fixes (imo) minus the enablescript file.  hope this works, i refuse to play a town full of immaculatly concieved babies.  (Seriously why would something like that be overlooked and shipped??  Its pathetibad.)

-edit: still crashing at 1am/pm.  /sigh.  oh well, waiting on the fearless leader's fixes. -