There's a world I've been working on for the past three years and now it's become horribly glitched. For example:

1. The sound is broken. I can only hear background noises and sims in the background talking and nothing else. Anything with audio sounds (TV, radio and computer) is really loud and can be heard even when switching households. Going into build/buy mode does nothing. Pressing pause does nothing.

2. The pause button is broken. So, when a sim is watching TV or playing the computer and it hits pause, the video and audio continues playing.

This is a definitely a world-specific issue, because I tested Starlight Shores and one of my other worlds, and this issue wasn't in them.

I have been through the ringer going through every single possible troubleshooting solution out there: closing, restarting game; uninstalling/reinstalling graphics/sound drivers; deleting cache files over and over again (not just in Sims 3 but in CAW); repairing the game in Origin to factory resetting; clean uninstalling/reinstalling the game; clean uninstalling/reinstalling CAW.

I even did the whole thing of:

1. Splicing in a new Global Layer
2. Deleting and replacing all the lots one-by-one to ake sure it isn't a glitched lots issue.
3. Exported and played versions of the world a) unpopulated, b) populated, c) with specific layers deleted (like spawner or tree layer) d) with SuperCAW objects deleted [I had placed a bunch of floor lights from SuperCaw in some areas] f) all of the routing erased g) all radios and audio removed

More information: This is a very large world with 210 lots. However, an earlier version of the world from several months ago had 213 lots and worked perfectly without any issues. Plus, I had been play testing this game for weeks with tons of households, and no issues.

A minor clue of some of the strange goings on in this world, trees migrating to the basement layer of lots. In other words, if I click on the basement level, some will drop to that level.

Having absolutely no CC or mods whatsoever. I can't for the life of me understand what could've gone wrong other than the fact that weeks ago, I gave the world file a long name, as in "Pottersville-Seasons Edition." I changed it back to just plain Pottersville.

If I can't get this to work, then I have no choice but to trash the world and quit the game. There's just no way after investing so much time into all of this that I'd go back to an earlier save in July. This would make a mockery of the insane amount of play testing sessions, sculpting, terrain painting and placing of trees, street lights, etc. that I did since then.

If you can help me, I will totally buy you a coffee (by way of Paypal) and drop you a line of thanks in the world description!

First thing I would try is- generate a completely fresh set of game userdata, and generate a completely fresh set of CAW userdata. Then, copy your CAW files into your fresh userdata, export afresh and install the world to your new Sim3 userdata. This is the simplest thing to test first.

Okay, I'm completely new to all of this. How do you this? Can you post a brief tute that ELI5? Or is there a link or two that you can point to? And thanks in advance!

Documents\ Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3 Create A World Tool <<Move this to somewhere safe
Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Create a World Tool<< Delete this if it exists
Documents\ Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3<< Move this to somewhere safe
Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3<<Delete this if it exists
^^For the above, change the path if you didn't install to the default location.

>Run Sims 3 & close it
>Run CAW and close it
>Put back any mods, CC etc that your world uses (in Sims 3 and in CAW), put your CAW project back.
>Export your world and install it to your fresh userdata.
>Test.

I'm doing this from memory as I haven't had Sims 3 installed for a few years, so if anyone else spots a mistake or has any suggestions then please do help!

Ah, I see! Thank you so much for breaking it down for me! I'll be doing this shortly (and crossing my fingers in the process!).

Hi, @simsample! Sorry to keep you in suspense, but I've literally been running myself ragged since last night making sure I followed your instructions to the letter and trying to avoid any mistakes that might reintroduce the glitches back into the world.

So far, everything is looking good! I just have to play test again to make sure that the glitches are gone. I'll keep you posted but already I can see that you are the ultimate lifesaver at MTS!

Fingers crossed, don't run yourself too ragged!

Hey, @simsample!

I have good news, bad news and hopeful news!

The good news is that after I followed your instructions, I was finally able to get an earlier, pre-glitched version of my world running! (YAY!)

The bad news is that the world was partially incomplete, and when I started adding lots back in today, the glitches came back...(BOO!)

BUT (and here is the hopeful part)...thanks to refreshing the user and game data, it made things so much easier to investigate where the problem lies. I have a sneaking suspicion that the problem has to do with apartment shells, public markers and pools.

HOWEVER...I'm not sure yet because right now, I'm still testing the hell out of the world and going back and forth putting in lots, taking out lots, testing to see if this theory is true. If this is true, then this may have exposed a major glitch that will be a huge help to world builders!

I will be back with a major update soon, pics, a huge sob story about how this all came about, and how other builders can avoid this problem!

Oh, and I owe you a coffee!

Oh, sorry your latest version won't work! Apartment shells have sounds associated with them (some of them emit city noises) and the markers also deal with sound (neighbour noises and background noise) so maybe that is significant. I remember having sound issues when world building, I always thought that maybe there was a limit to how many sound channels the game could handle per chunk. Remember that Bridgeport is quite simplistic, the lots are spread out so per chunk you don't have too many sound sources. Remember trees also have sound effects. If you are using markers in shells, perhaps try to minimise them- so if you are building an apartment block, make the NPC hidden area one huge room instead of smaller ones each with a marker. Hope you can get it working satisfactorily!

@simsample: Wow! Come to think of it, I HAVE indeed been breaking NPC apartments up into mini-chunks! I probably have a bucket load NPC apartments built this way because I always assumed that you had to make a room/public marker for each separate NPC, not that you could do one large room. Makes total sense as to why, in adding in the last batch of lots, the world suddenly starts borking. I was thinking that one of the lots had glitched, but it could be due to the additional load of markers.

I'll be back to report when I merge these NPC apartments, as well as eliminate some. Even if this doesn't work out, that's totally okay. I will still owe you a coffee because this is an amazing lead/tip that I wasn't aware of before and will be very helpful to other world builders who build a large-scale Late Night world. Pottersville has 210 lots, so...

@simsample: I am posting an update.

So, what I've been doing is consolidating all the NPC rooms, and yes--it definitely does seem to be a public marker/sound issue. What happens is that the world can't handle more than one type of sound at once. For example, it can't handle both a TV going off and a sim playing a guitar and sims talking at the same time. When all three go off, one of or more of these channels cuts off.

I was able to get some of the sound working again by merging NPC rooms for the apt shells that are already in-world. However, I keep having trouble with the last set of apt lots that I need to add back in. So, I'm trying to figure out if it's a question of those particular lots being glitched (I noticed that the trash cans glitched on two lots) or maybe the world no longer being able to handle additional apt shells past a certain number (in which case I'd have to cut them out of the world altogether and just live without having those lots included).

Once again, I'll keep you posted as I work on this issue.

Interesting! What's glitchy about your trash cans?

On one lot, a trash can isn't able to be moved or deleted via moveobjects on. When I hover over it with the hammer, the game says that there's nothing there.

The only way I could fix it was to reset the lot to commercial, then back to residential again. But at the phase I'm in right now (trying to unglitch the world), I kind of don't trust it. So I'm going to just try to continue merging NPC rooms for the apartments that I know aren't glitched. If the world is back to normal, I'll save it, then re-add this lot as an experiment just to see what happens.

Incidentally, the lot next to it is bugged, too, but in a very strange way (see screenshot below). At some point, I used NRAAS to reset all objects, Everything reset perfectly, but then this wall popped up out of the blue outside the apartment shell. I have no idea where it came from or why it appeared, but it's a very curious bug! This world is the gift that just keeps on giving! That's what I get for being too ambitions for my own good.

How strange, some silly glitches! I hope you manage to get them sorted. For the trash can, sometimes you can delete things by clicking on them in debug mode object>delete it. Are you building lots in Edit-In-Game? I always used to find that I had many glitches when building like that, EIG seems to be more of a memory hog than the game. So I used to export a copy of the world and install it to Sims 3 with just blank lots, then build the buildings in game and save the lots to the bin. It was then possible to install those lots to the world in EIG, which was far easier than trying to build in EIG. Good luck with it, let us know how it goes!

Hey, @simsample, I'm back!

Unfortunately, the glitch came back in spite of merging all the public markers. I had written this long, whiny self-pitying rant about how miserable I was feeling about this entire affair, bemoaning CAW, bemoaning Nvidia (because I began suspecting a driver issue), bemoaning my stupidity in not having saved an older copy of this world back in September because of how confident I was that everything was fine then. However, right after I posted, I had a lightbulb moment, so I'm going to try an experiment! If what I suspect is true, I'll say what happened.

I'm not going to air what my suspicions are yet, because I don't want to look foolish if I go, "A HAHHHH!!!" and then turn out to be dead wrong. ???? So, let me just try this thing out and see how it goes. There's hope still yet.

@thesims1depot
How is it going ? Have you found any solution yet? I really feel with you! (I also work on a world with exactly 210 lots) Do you have Nrass Overwatch installed? So it can cut down on abandoned audio sources and other things? And that thing with the trees moving ... you did not forget to turn off any cheat you used to build the lot?
I thought about it because I'm going through my 210 lots after forgotten cheats.

@ Eve-Lulu:

I accidentally wrote this message via PM because I confused a notification for an actual PM. So, disregard that (LOL).

Just to give everyone an update, I'm still trying to troubleshoot the world. In spite of paring down markers, cleaning up chunks of terrain paints (the world had three "red zones"), etc., there are still issues, so I'm going back to Square One, slowly reintroducing lots back into the world section by section to see which lot (or number of lots) could be the problem.

Believe it or not, there's another possibility to all this--that that this could also be all down to being a driver issue. The reason why I say that is that as it's turning out, Nvidia rolled out a whole bunch of drivers since October that reportedly have been wreaking havoc on everyone's machines. I've been installing updates and hot fixes since then seeing if that will fix the issue but nothing's changed.

Nevertheless, I'm still going to treat this as an in-game problem until I know for sure it's a driver problem.

If it's not a driver problem, I'm suspecting that it might have to do with the fact that there are too many career rabbit holes, which causes the game to spawn too many coworkers, which in turn causes the world to freeze. I'm retracing my steps again, reintroducing the lots one by one.

Another thing I'm noticing is that when I place markers in apartment buildings, the grids don't disappear anymore. So, I'm wondering if this isn't the issue as well. When you place public markers, the floor grids are supposed to disappear to let you know that the markers "took." This doesn't happen.

I use Overwatch religiously and didn't notice anything unusual other than the occasional sim getting stuck on one stretch of sidewalk, and Overwatch does turn everything off.

I had asked you in PM about the "trees moving" thing and then remembered that I had complained about trees migrating to the basement. The only cheats I ever used was the buydebug/restrictbuildings cheats for apartment buildings, no other cheats like constrainfloorelevation, etc. But it hadn't occurred to me to maybe turn them off in between builds. Interesting.

Are the trees actually moving below ground? There used to be a visual glitch where when you went below ground some trees would show up there, but they were still physically on the ground level and grabbing/ releasing them would usually fix this. Same problem as some decorative items which still appear when you page down, like the Riverview crate piles that show up floating in the air, but they are actually upstairs.

@simsample: Yes, that's it. Half the lots had started doing that so that was what had me jumping to conclusions about the world being glitched. I thought that maybe the first floor and basement layers had somehow become jumbled. It's a great relief to know it's just a visual thing, because there are areas of the world that are built on stepped platforms with lots placed over them, so I was afraid that maybe those platforms were messing everything up. If that had been the case, I would've been really screwed, because literally, the "main attraction" of the world are these stepped platforms. which include two river bank parks and a Downtown area where you have to go up a series of steps to reach venues.

Don't you just LURVE this game, LOLOLOL???

Anyway, if anyone following this saga is wondering where I've been and what I've been doing, I've been away for weeks because I've been spending so much time removing terrain paints from so-called "red zones" (chunks that had more than 8 paints in them), removing markers, removing NPC doors, etc, etc, the whole shebang. The sound would come back after each major fix, the world would seem back to normal...and then slowly but surely after my third or fourth save, the TV set/sound glitch would return.

Right now, I am back to reintroducing lots back into the world that I went back in for a second time to downsize in terms of hidden rooms and NPC doors. So, for example, 3-story townhouses that had an NPC apartment on the third floor, I decided to just convert the top story into one gigantic hidden room and limit everything to two stories. Disappointing to say the least, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Some apartment buildings, I had given them really elaborate foyers with more than one entrance, so I'm paring those down, too.

If worse comes to worse, it could just mean that no matter how much downsizing of public markers, fixing of terrain paints, etc. the world can't handle this many apt buildings and career rabbit holes. In that case, I will have to bite the bullet and get rid of an entire sub-hood of townhouses and some rabbit holes and replace them with houses instead. I would be really sad if I had to get rid of this hood because it was one of the first hoods I had completed years ago. But I really want Pottersville to work so if I have to remove this sub-hood and put in houses, that's okay.

What's so frustrating about all this is that when all is said and done, this could also be a driver issue that somehow reduced the functionality of my card, because like I said earlier, Nvidia released a set of borked drivers in October, which coincided with all of the problems I started having (key word, coincided, meaning it could just be a coincidence or the actual cause behind this). At any rate, I'm not taking any chances, so I might as well just do what I can to get the world working regardless of whether it's a driver issue or not.

Next time your sound issue happens, save as a copy and then reboot the game/ CAW/ EIG completely. (Might be a good idea to test this deleting all caches (including the CAW caches and world caches too). Then go back to where you were. Do you still get the sound glitch? I'm wondering if it's a session thing, so that maybe the game can only deal with a certain sound incidences at one time, but that it caches or glitches on some until it can't handle new sounds at all. Might be why you can make some changes and it works for a while but then not at all.

Ah, okay...good idea! I'll definitely do this. I'll report back when I can (this week was a real doozy, both online and offline).

@simsample:

Well, I'm back, and I tried the experiment. What happens is that when you reopen the save, everything sounds fine. But as soon as the TV is turned on, everything goes to hell. The TV goes from normal to loud. and the sound glitches again. Plus, the video on the TV either freezes or if it's playing and I press pause, keeps playing regardless.

Another thing I noticed is that when I play in an apartment building or house, I can hear everything outside the lot, as if I am still outside.. For example, I can hear birds tweeting, cars driving by, the wind, etc. while inside. And another strange thing, too, in two apartments that I played, I kept hearing sounds from what I believe is a different lot--lots of doors slamming and the sound of a female sim yelling. This was definitely not an NPC living on the premises because I heard the same exact sound in two different households.

One of my greatest regrets ever was picking sound for each one of my terrain paints, because that is around the time this whole issue started, too, and I don't know if that caused it. (And yes, I've tried resetting the paints, deleting _KEY in s3pe). But who knows if that's even the cause at this point? That is the problem. I've tried every different angle, considered every single possibility to try to figure out what's going on and have turned up nothing.

Could you perhaps show some overhead screenshots of your world; if you take some showing the chunk boundaries, and your trees and lots and where they are in relation to each other, perhaps we might be able to see some ways to improve performance. The game seems to process everything by chunk, so as your sim moves around the world the game renders the appropriate chunks and puts everything else in low performance. Also, trees are grouped into a single object, but only if they are on the same layer, so make sure you have a tree layer and put them all on there. Which expansion packs are you using for the game?

@simsample:

1. I have provided screenshots below. (See thumbnail gallery, not main post.) For peace of mind, I have in some cases posted a "before" and "after" of so-called "red zones" (chunks with more than 8 paints) so everyone can see that they were properly dealt with.

2. I had started this world using all the EPs through Seasons except University, IP, Supernatural and ITF. So, the very last EP I had installed when I started building this world was Seasons. Then over the summer, I installed Island Paradise and worked on the world again. So, I went from Seasons to IP halfway into completing the world. I play tested both with IP turned off in launcher and turned off, and the world played perfectly in Seasons and IP. I did not add any IP items, AFAIK, even though I completed it with IP installed.

3. Re: the trees? They have always been on one layer. However, a long time ago I became suspicious that maybe some errant trees might have fallen below the surface. You know how sometimes when you're planting trees and then undo, they might accidentally wind up in the middle of the ocean or something? And then before you know it, there is this huge island of trees that you don't remember planting there? But I didn't see any errant flora. I also did a test where I deleted the entire tree layer and play tested and still ran into the same problem.

Now, get this! In turning on the chunk boundaries, I noticed something fascinating! Remember in the above post, the screenshot of the two buildings with the silly little glitched mailboxes that remained stuck and couldn't be deleted?

Well, guess what? The mailboxes fell exactly along a chunk boundary!



Let us, for the sake of clarity, call these borders "fault lines."

This is interesting, because this other house below also suffered the same problem as those two buildings. The mailbox and parking space had sunk into the ground at some point. I replaced it, thinking it was a temporary glitch.



The house runs fine now, but maybe...just maybe this fault line thing was the issue the entire time?