I bought the Super Collection all of four days ago, am using empty hood templates, and have already done the tutorial to increase the maximum file limits in my game. Today I was testing gameplay with a few sims in an emptied Strangetown and I had errors I've never seen before in all the years I've played. First, I tried to get two sims to walk to a premade Fiesta Tech community lot and they just said "arriving" and never showed up. I tried quitting and relaunching the game and they stayed stuck away from the dorm lot. I had to delete the entire neighborhood and restore it.

After that, I started in the restored neighborhood and play-tested a family for a little while. That was fine. I started a second family to test a house I'd built and then that my SimBlender was gone. The game deleted it after the error mentioned above. I ran a search on my entire hard drive and the file was erased but there was no evidence that my downloads folder had been changed. I went to redownload it, then put it back in. Fine. Realized I was lacking the collection files for some OMSPs and went to get those. Also added two objects from Garden of Shadows that I've used before. Opened game again, went to the second house... and every single piece of CC I'd had in it was gone and replaced with whatever it was meshed from.

I moved the sim out, deleted the lot, and added the one from the bin. Same problem. I quit and went to my downloads folder and— every last item that had been on the lot when I opened it was erased. Some of these were files over 10 years old that I will not be able to find again.

Any idea what is going on??? At this point I'm afraid to test any other lots in case the game starts deleting even more stuff, or messing with mods instead of objects. Super-frustrated because it's taken four days to reset everything in the SC and I can't even play three lousy sims without stuff going wrong all over the place.

Not sure if it's a Mac problem or a game problem (bug in the Super Collection?) - could easily be either one - but like I always say, make sure to have a backup of files you really don't want to lose (and that includes downloads). You never know when your computer/OS/game/malware protection (or actual malware) is going to throw you a curveball and start deleting or corrupt files, or just doing something stupid in the background. If you have a recent backup, you don't lose all your progress or all your downloads.

Before going ingame again, you may want to backup what's left, just in case, so you don't accidentally lose anything more. Then you can go about diagnosing the problem (I'll leave that one for those who know their way around a Mac...).

Check (just in case) if there are any files in the Mac's paper bin (I think there was one? haven't used a Mac since 2008 ) or anywhere else it likes to put deleted or recently changed files - it's a long shot, and I doubt you'll find anything, but at least you've checked.

Also see if there are other places your game is hiding savegame files. Windows loves making a second, completely empty TS2 file in Public files, and on rare occasions when people have had issues with their games, it turns out files have been saved there instead of the main folder. It could be your Mac is doing something similar, since the files have seemingly been deleted, but the folders haven't been changed. Maybe the files have been exported to a different folder, or hidden from view, or locked somehow, so the game can't access them. If you know the names of various seemingly deleted files, do searches for them on the entire computer, and see if you can figure out where they went, if they're there at all.

Mac's have a file limit, that could be your problem. There's information on how to find out the limit and fix it here: https://bunsim.tumblr.com/MacFileLimitHelp

Thank you! So it appears to be some sort of bug with the Super Collection? At least, it seems like a bug compared to the way the game worked when I was running it off a disc. I had packaged a lot to save as a backup and the game packaged up all the CC on the lot and removed it from my game—while the game was still running! I think that's what caused the errors with the Uni hood, because I used the SimBlender to create some Townies but the mod's file had gotten pulled before I started playing the lot. I've been building for TS2 since forever and I've never had that happen before.

On the bright side, I booted up XP via Parallels and I can see all the missing files in Clean Installer. On the annoying side, they are no longer organized and a bunch have lost their file renames so now I don't remember what they are.

Huh. That's the strangest thing... Never seen that happen with the Windows version. I mean, packaged lots get renamed CC files all the time, but I haven't seen CC get ripped out of the Downloads folder and get packaged alongside the lot in that way before. Usually the lot just packages a copy of the files, not the actual files. No wonder your game is having problems.

That's definitely a bug, and I'm guessing it's a Super Collection bug because it's not something I've heard of in the UC version or in the regular disc versions (not the Windows version, at least). I think the Super collection exists in a couple different versions depending on which platform you're using (Apple or Steam, I think? Not sure, or if there are more?). The version could have something to say, possibly also if there are any recent updates you have installed and/or need to install (I have no idea how or if it's kept updated).

Yes, it’s definitely a bug when packaging lots using Sims 2 Super Collection. I’ve had it happen to me as well, so I now make sure I make a backup of my Downloads folder before I do any lot packaging.

The first time I saw it I was temporarily playing on my underpowered Macbook Air with minimal hacks, only the CC I needed for building, and only one hood, so I know I was nowhere near the file limit. Apple seem to have bumped the open file limits up a lot from High Sierra onwards, so that’s barely a problem any more.

I believe CC disappearing when packaging lots first showed up with the old PowerPC disk based version of the game, as I saw at least one pre-super collection mention of it, so sadly it seems to have survived through both rebuilds of the game, for Intel and then for 64-bit. :-(

Incidentally, do you have Time Machine running? You might be able to restore the missing CC from there, as it should have backed it up if it was there for more than an hour or so before deletion.. Getting it to restore the hood back to a consistent state can be trickier, but I’ve done that too in the past.

Thank you! It's been a long few days of porting everything over to the Super Collection and updating mods (I hadn't installed BV before this) and I was starting to think I was going crazy or doing something totally wrong. And yes, I do have a backup buried away in Time Machine somewhere. Now I know to make a second TS2 folder specifically for building lots and to duplicate the CC.