Hi guys. I'm currently trying to get to the bottom of a particular nasty bug that occurs seemingly randomly, but there has got to be a catalyst somewhere, somehow.

The effects are, when this bug eventually hits, it will remove any sims portraits of the current played family down at the bottom of the UI screen. Their faces just disappear, leaving only the colour background of their current mood. But this does not always happen, their faces may not disappear. What does always happen when the bug strikes is that they will not be able to change out of the clothing they were last wearing. Whatever that was, everyday, athletic, that is what they will stick to wearing no matter how many times you try to get them to wear something else. Not even debug forcing can change the stuck outfit. It also happens to NPCs and town residents visiting community lots. Once one sim gets it, everyone gets it.

And lastly, the nasty element, when this bug hits it will always lead to an inevitable crash. The game cannot be saved, or go through a loading screen, it will crash if you try. However, the game can be played on, and I've tried to see how long, just to see if it clears itself up. But no, the longest I've got it to play on is ten minutes before it all cascaded to a final CTD.

Because of the random nature of it, a 50/50 mod elimination test has proven time-consuming and so far utterly futile. You just cannot know with a bug that may never even strike in a single 3/4 hour session if the catalyst is not triggered. I'm pretty certain this bug came into play after the hot tub stuff pack was installed. My next trick is to remove all hot tubs from all lots and see if the catalyst is removed.

If this bug sounds familiar to you, and you too would like to get to the bottom of it, then let's compare notes here and see what we can come up with. Any feedback would be appreciated.

There is a bugged piece of clothing or hair.

I used to have this problem, face portraits going missing and infinite portrait loading. All you have to do is select the item once and its over until the game loads up again.

For me the problem mod was flirty tank tops. Once removed the game acted normal. Well as normal as TS4 can be.

Problem seemingly solved.

First off, I had far too many sims. With a no culling mod to my game, I had somewhere in the region of 300 sims, played, unplayed and NPCs. I've read reports of some players having 500 sims without "too many" problems. Despite my PC being well capable of handling anything the modern world of gaming can put out there, I just think TS4 game gets a bit stroppy having to calculate those sims, especially with another mod to mix up the variety of attending sims at community lots. (I use the excellent MC Command Centre for both these functions.)

Secondly, with the help of S4S, I was able to eliminate a good handful of potentially problematic CC hair and clothing. I will name no names as to what CC directly, as it could very well be a case that the CC is actually fine in game, it's just S4S didn't like it. But my logic on the matter, if S4S didn't like it, then probably the game doesn't like it either.

It was a matter of testing every one of my CC items individually with S4S, so it took the best part of an afternoon to go through them all. But I am happier about the results.

With S4S installed, just drag and drop the CC package on top of the S4S desktop icon, and you get the results almost instantly. Anything that came up with an error, even though I know it "worked" in game, even though I have long trusted the creator, got removed.

Though not an absolute definitive method, I have to say, so far, so good.