[FIXED] CAW has completely messed up my game ... but how? Weirdness galore.

[Rockerduck]

Hiya!

Allow me to present you ... the weirdest thing I've ever seen in TS3, and believe me, I've seen a lot. 0_o

I am clueless as to how this happened and why, but I sure hope there's a way to fix it.
Anyway, Sims 3 somehow decided that each and every world should have a weird "overlay" consisting of a world I've been creating in CAS. And I mean every world. What you're looking at in the images is ... Sunset Valley! Yes, that's right! It does it to every single world, EAxis made or user made. Took me a while to figure this out, too, since I've been trying to edit my CAW world in game and wondered why the heck my changes never showed up. Turns out this is why ... because this pesky overlay world thing won't go away!

Needless to say I've cleared every cache folder of both CAW and TS3, yet it persists. I even deleted my UserTools folder, you never know, right? Nada.

Uhm... HELP?!

[simsample]

That's strange! To fix this, we need to double check that you refreshed your user data.

Drag the following folders to desktop:
Documents\ Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3
Documents\ Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3 Create A World Tool

Check the following:
That [Install Location]\Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3\ GameData\ Shared\ NonPackaged\ Worlds contains only SunsetValley.World
That [Install Location]\Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3 World Adventures\ GameData\ Shared\ NonPackaged\ Worlds contains only China, France and Egypt Worlds
That [Install Location]\Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3 Ambitions\ GameData\ Shared\ NonPackaged\ Worlds contains only Twinbrook.World
That [Install Location]\Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3 Late Night\ GameData\ Shared\ NonPackaged\ Worlds contains only Bridgeport.world

Now run the game so that it generates fresh user files. Does Sunset Valley look normal?

[Rockerduck]

Check the following:
That [Install Location]\Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3\ GameData\ Shared\ NonPackaged\ Worlds contains only SunsetValley.World
Check.
That [Install Location]\Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3 World Adventures\ GameData\ Shared\ NonPackaged\ Worlds contains only China, France and Egypt Worlds
Check.
That [Install Location]\Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3 Ambitions\ GameData\ Shared\ NonPackaged\ Worlds contains only Twinbrook.World
Check.
That [Install Location]\Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3 Late Night\ GameData\ Shared\ NonPackaged\ Worlds contains only Bridgeport.world
Check.

Running the game with fresh user files worked. No more crazy world overlay. Now let's see what happens if I rename those folders back to their original names (didn't move them to desktop, heh. :P )...

[Rockerduck]

Blaaargh, I hate this computer. Not enough disk space to do a proper copy & paste job so I'll have to repeat the experiment later. All I can say is that loading Sunset Valley produced a crash for some reason while it worked fine with the fresh folders. I'm not sure what's going on here at all. 0_o

[HystericalParoxysm]

Have you tried to install your world to the game to test it, but done so by extracting a package from the sims3pack? Worlds installed to Mods\Packages as .package files (instead of installed properly as sims3packs) will do something very much like the pictures you showed.

[Rockerduck]

I might have accidentally done so by extracting several Sims3Packs from TSR, because I can't be bothered to install them via Launcher. It might very well be possible that I forgot I had a copy of my world in the Downloads folder, then extracted all Sims3Packs and moved the packages into my Mods folder. I've never had this happen before, and your explanation makes perfect sense! Thanks so much, I'm gonna go over my *.packages once this horrible computer has finished copying my original files to an external harddrive which will take forever. -_-

Edit: You're my saviour!! :D That was indeed the cause of the horrible weirdness! *hugs and does a ducky dance*

[HystericalParoxysm]

I -think- Delphy's Dashboard can detect worlds in .package form (as I complained to him when I had that problem as it was a giant pain to sort out - I did exactly what you did, installed everything as packages because the Launcher is annoying). Might save you some time using the Dashboard to scan your packages and see if any come up as worlds.

Edit: Yay, I see you fixed it. Glad it was a relatively easy fix. :)

[Rockerduck]

Thanks a bunch, I'm gonna grab the Dashboard. Yeah, I had a look at file sizes and figured the largest file had to be a world, and it was. If there are any additional files I need to clear out I've missed them but I'm gonna track them down later. Thanks again, yay! :D