Empty inventory after arriving in Champs-les-Sims and wrong coloured gems

Anonymousething wrote:Sorry if this is in the wrong section or already discussed; the search option yielded no results.  :newfag: 

Basically, my Sim had just received the "Knowledge of the Past" quest in Shang Simla, which requires you to travel to Champs-les-sims, so she returned home and headed off to France 2 days later.

At first, everything seemed OK, as she rode around on her Kespa (which was slightly odd as she usually used the car she always brought along).  Upon closer inspection, it turned out her inventory was empty!  All the stuff had gone, including the Kespa, on which she had just been riding.  This wouldn't have been too dramatic, but the boulder-smashing axe from China had vanished, as well as some keystones, relics AND the Collection Helper!    Nothing in her family inventory either!   Too bad I saved upon arrival...

Is there any way to "restore" the items?  They seem to be invisible rather than gone, otherwise how did she ride the Kespa? I can always go back to an older save, but is there any way to prevent loss of the inventory again short of leaving everything at home?  Seeing as you need the axe for certain quests leaving that at home is not an option (not that it really matters as the dreaded "adventure board bug" has struck and no new adventures appear in France).  Did anyone else ever have this problem?  Was it caused by having gifts in the family inventory?  She's been to France first, then China twice without any problems. I'm a little scared this may happen again next time...

The second problem is not as serious, but any uncut gems collected in a foreign country and brought home appear as blue Topaz when removed from the inventory.  They show up correctly IN the inventory.  Also, they cannot be cut with the gem-cutting machine.  I read that this error can occur if you take the gems with you from home and travel with them, but this is not the case here.  Anyone have anything similar happen to them?

All expansions (except Late Night) up to and including Island Paradise are installed, but no Stuff Packs.  No mods or Custom Content have been applied to the game.  The game is up to date and patched.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated, especially with the missing inventory items.  One a side-note:    your website!  Sorry for the long rambling text...

EDIT: Sending her home didn't help, all her inventory stuff is still gone.  The stuff put in her inventory later did come home with her though.

My Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Saves location !


Next, look if there is a folder like this: (Name of your savegame).sims3.backup ----> please REMOVE the .backup ending in that folder, so that it looks like the folder you just deleted.


Now, re-start the game. You should have "restored" your savegame to the point before (?) you saved in Champs-les-Sims. If that "solution" doesn't work, then I'm unsure.


There might be a "workaround" to get a few of these items back, like the boulder-smashing axe. But I'll get back to you later (because I'm too tired right now ).

Good luck for now - and please report back to us about your progress !  


P.S. NEVER EVER save the game again, if you see that there are "severe issues" ! Even if you lose some in-game progress, saving the game is just not the right thing to do.  

Anonymousething wrote:Hi,

Thanks for your response!  I'll try out those suggestions tomorrow.  Before the reply, I continued with an older save and am at the same point as last time.  Will try and send her to France again and see whether it works (but will defo NOT save this time!).  No kidding about the bugs!  It's funny they call it a "minor bug" when 2/3 destinations are unplayable!  Some people suggested deleting the adventure board, but it is nowhere to be found in buy debud... Anyway, that's a whole other story.  Will let you know if the suggestions work.  Thanks again!  

Yes, the thing with buydebug was what I wanted to say last time. You should be able to find a few of these items, like keystones and the boulder-smashing axe in buydebug.

I can't really tell though if they actually work, once you use these bought items; normally they should work of course, but I never tried these specific items myself.

Go ahead then.  

Anonymousething wrote:Hi,

Yeah, wouldn't have saved if I had seen the inventory, but didn't notice (especially as she was using the Kespa) until AFTER the save.  Typical!    Even more annoying as the game was saved before sending her on holiday (in case of crashes), so no game progress would have been lost.   

Deleted the appropriate save folder, but it did not work.  Thanks anyway!  I'll continue with the other save and hope the same bug won't re-occur.  Best to leave the stuff at home and NOT save until the inventory has been inspected.

Sort of off-topic:
Continued with the "bad save" and bought the axe in buydebug and placed it, but once you exit buy mode it disappears.  I suppose you can put it in the family inventory, but not the personal inventory.  I also duplicated some keystones, but then got the "Error code 12" and couldn't save.  Not sure how that is related to the buydebug stuff though...   Usually it's a memory (size) thing, but deleting the memories in the scrapbook and "Save as..." solved nothing.  Didn't try the zoom out thing, but too late now!

As somebody else pointed out, the China and France adventure boards appear as "Adventure board Egypt" when selected in buy mode, so that could explain the lack of adventures.  Problem is, you can't re-buy adventure boards in buy mode (or buy debug), so once deleted they're gone.  Someone did say it re-spawns somewhere else, but good luck finding it!

On-topic: Anyway, thanks for your suggestions!     As for the colour of the gems, there seems to be no solution, except for buying a holiday home and displaying them there.  Maxis created a truly wonderful game; too bad EA somewhat ruined it with the bugs...

EDIT: Sent her to France and it didn't bug this time, so at least it doesn't seem to be a permanent problem.

Hello again,

As for "error 12", you might want to have a look at this here: https://games4theworld.forumotion.com/t4523-the-sims-3-save-errors-fix-error-code-12-13-15-16-updated-24-11-2012

Also, check out this older topic on here and my suggestions there on how to cope with "memories": https://games4theworld.forumotion.com/t11543-sims-3-error-code-12

And I'm afraid I can't really help more with this issue; while I have all EPs/SPs installed, I haven't travelled anywhere with my sims, for quite a while again. Maybe I'll pick up on it again later. But this system is so heavily glitched that it's not really worth the hassle; but let's see.

Have you tried buying the axe at home, BEFORE travelling anywhere ?


Otherwise, are you on a 32-bit or 64-bit Windows ? And how many GB of RAM does your computer have ? These questions are important for dealing with the "error 12". Otherwise, keep us updated (if you want) !  

Anonymousething wrote:Hi!

Sorry for the lack of responses, the Internet is down and due to unfortunate circumstances cannot be fixed until the neighbours are back.

I bought the axe at the Sim's house. It can be placed but then turns "invisible". Another person had the same problem, but no one knew what to do.

Thanks for the thread. :-). I've read it already.
The memories are annoying.  The sims 2 system was a lot less "suckerish". I deleted them all as Error 12 appeared previously. Will read the memory thread later.

Erm, I'm not entirely sure on the computer specifications. I have to use my father's computer as my 11 year old single-core Windows XP computer can not handle it, although Sims 2 works fine.
I hope I'm right about his PC: 4 GB RAM, 32-bit, Windows 7, 546 / 928 GB free Hard disk space. His graphic card isn't great and the "can u run it?" Web page / program says the game shouldn't work. The graphic settings are on low and the game works except for the odd deformity and freeze, there seem to be no "abnormal" bugs.

The bugs are likely to remain as EA is more interested in The Sims 4 and cashing in...

At least she's at Visa level 3 for France and China.
Thanks for all your help :-)

OK then, having a 32-bit system is bad.   It means you won't be able to use the full amount of RAM (because the 32-bit system can ONLY "access" a maximum of around 3 GB of the RAM, even if you have more installed).

While this 32-bit system is a disadvantage, you can still try and make the best of it. If I remember anything else, I'll let you know !   But that's it for now.

Anonymousething wrote:Thanks for all your help.  I've noticed recently that the screen goes black for a few seconds whenever the game stops responding.  I hope that's not the graphic card packing in...  It happens from time to time during normal play.  It never used to happen before...  It happens mostly when I'm in buy mode; it goes black 3 or 4 times in a row before the whole computer freezes. Anyway, should probably open a new topic.  Thanks!

Keep us updated, if you want !   

Anonymousething wrote:Hi!  Thanks for you response. Luckily, there are dedicated people like you to answer all these questions.   

I don't play any other games on my father's computer at the moment, because all others work on mine.  I played Sims 2 a couple of times in the past and there were no problems.  The screens never go black when my father uses his computer normally. I think the graphic drivers are up-to-date, but I'll check just to make sure.

No graphical changes, just both screens go black and then come back on 5 seconds later.  Task manager stays open on the other screen to see how much RAM and CPU are used and to see whether the game is still responding. It happens mostly once whilst scrolling (in live mode), several times consecutively in buy mode and only on the home lot. Just before the blackness, the game stops responding.  However, the screen doesn't go off EVERY time the game doesn't respond. There is the odd graphical glitch with the cats, but as they both died, there are no more pets in her house. The house was built a few days ago and everything worked fine for a while.There seem to be quite a few problems on the home lot.

Bonehilda seems to have several difficulties; apart from being a "juice-holic", she comes out of her cupboard, does a few chores, then displays a "something blocking the passage" speech bubble. At first, I thought it was because I blocked the bar off, as all she does is drink all day and night.  I removed the obstacle, but she still stomped her foot.  It seemed as thought she couldn't enter her cupboard, but after several hours of moaning, she does eventually re-enter it. No idea what the problem is.  Everything is accessible; the issue just appeared one day... I deleted her and the cupboard and placed a new one, but each Bonehilda has the same predicament, regardless of whether she is outside or inside.  Resetting her didn't help either.

Now the game crashes every time I try and send her (the Sim not Bonehilda... Although how hilarious would Bonehilda be, exploring a tomb and fighting mummies?) to Egypt.  Wanted to save the game, but as the suitcase icon had appeared and "you cannot save whilst your Sim is travelling" some progress was lost. Who thought that was a good idea? You can't save whilst in build mode, buy mode, a fire, death, woohoo (joke for the last few items). Luckily the game never crashes, so saving isn't essential.  Oh wait...    Anyway, after restarting the game, she tried to go again but it crashed to the desktop. That was annoying enough, then my germinating orange seed in a pot crashed to the ground...twice and there was earth everywhere!     Short of throwing the computer out of the window, along with the plant, as I doubt my father would appreciate his computer in pieces, I stopped playing.  She travelled to Egypt once and it worked, the game didn't even crash on her return, so once again no idea what is up with the game now. Probably should have stopped some of the programs running in the background... I tried a "save as", but it wasn't finished after 5 min and wasn't responding. Will try again later.

Summary: the problems are: screen going black, Bonehilda being stuck and now crashes whilst attempting to travel.

Sorry for the length and sarcasm (or irony, whichever applies).  Someone decided it would be a good idea to set the boat yard on fire and the family sailboat was reduced to ashes.  

Go to that site and let your computer get "checked" for The Sims 3, just to be sure. And yes, check the video drivers, because graphics glitches with pets often indicate outdated drivers. Also (not sure if I suggested that already  ), does it matter if you LOWER some graphics settings ? In particular, lower resolution, edge smoothing, lot detail, and MARK the box "Enable object hiding".

I'm afraid there is not much else for me to add here, but I'll get bck to you if I remember anything. Good luck again !   

Anonymousething wrote:Hi,

As I couldn't send the Sim on travels anymore and the game crashed each time, I used some tips on this topic: https://games4theworld.forumotion.com/t857-the-sims-3-crashes-freezes-to-desktop-fix-updated-on-7-01-2014 and also renamed the Sims 3 folder.  All graphic settings were reduced to minimum. I also deleted the TravelDB.package as suggested elsewhere as it was 600 MB. Not sure which of things actually helped, because it takes the game 5 min to start and it's way too boring to apply 1 thing at a time, only for the game to crash and try the next thing. Obviously, it makes more sense to try one thing at a time, especially if something messes up the game and you have to undo everything. It seems to have worked as she can now travel and the game runs a little more smoothly.


As for Bonehilda, she can't travel sadly.  I just meant I tried sending the Sim NOT Bonehilda. Sorry if it was confusing!     She just seems to be eternally glitched!


The driver for the graphic card appears to be up-to-date, but maybe going on to the actual website of the graphic card manufacturer may be useful.


Thanks for all your help.  

Do you know how to "recover" a backup save ? This glitch might be due to some sort of slight savegame corruption. I had a glitch once where my sims couldn't use any bath or shower anymore, because the game crashed whenever I used such an item ( ). I recovered a backup save then (see this post from me):

Re-start the game and see if anything improved. If not, then I'm out of explanations. I will be re-testing the travel features, next time I get to play TS3. Until then: good luck !   

Anonymousething wrote:Hi!

Yeah I added everything to DEP, however certain files couldn't be added, because "this file cannot be excluded from DEP". It turned out I had only added the Sims 3 base game .exe files to DEP and after I re-installed the game a while back didn't bother to add the others.

The 32-bit system thing is annoying, but applying some of those fixes except step 1 (don't have any mods or CC) and step 3. I think the game stated crashing whilst travelling because the Traveldb.package became so big, the computer didn't have enough RAM to run it.  Deleting it (or rather just moving it to the desktop) seems to have helped.

I have recovered a save, but never cleaned one.  I will give it a go.  Thanks for the links!    Otherwise, too bad for Bonehilda, she'll just have to be annoyed! The Sim is always travelling, so it doesn't really matter much.

At least Egypt doesn't have a problem with the adventure board.  There are a few "temporary" fixes for the adventure board bug: 1) scrolling through the home opportunities tabs (work, skill and er... whatever the 3rd one is, university or something?) and then clicking on adventure opportunities tabs (Egypt, China and France) several times, can bring up an adventure; 2) queuing adventures and the set speed to 3. Other than that someone would have to change the scripting of the actual adventure boards, as there seems to be a problem with it.  You might know of these already, but if you were going to travel, you can try them out!

Thanks for all your help!  

//EDIT

Just a quick update.  The Bonehilda mystery has resolved itself. I'm so stupid!     It turns out she wasn't glitched after all!  There were some junk yard items on the roof, including an old dishwasher that was leaking.  The 4th floor wasn't finished, so I just shoved any extra stuff on the flat roof. The leaks went unnoticed, except by Bonehilda. She wanted to mop up the puddles, but there's no access to the roof.

Pangu's Axe disappeared after returning from Egypt, so I loaded an older save. The game was saved before her return this time, but she lost it again. Thinking there might be time to reach visa level 3, I re-loaded to before her departure, so she could buy a house and leave the axe there. She did some more adventuring, but she didn't reach visa level 3 and the holiday ended a day early (same as the 1st time), but this time she returned home not with 1 axe, but TWO axes.  It's weird.  It remains to be seen whether they both work and whether one will disappear.  One will stay safe in the chest at any rate...

Yes, feel free to keep us updated about this !   But do you really need Bonehilda for cleaning the house ?   Do it like I do: Make one of your sims into a genie. When you have a genie, click on the floor of the house and choose the option "genie". You should then see the option of "cleaning up the house". This will clean the entire house in an instance (I think witches can clean the house too).  

P.S. if you click on the "edit"-button of your post, you can modify it: you can correct typos or add stuff. Please use that option, instead of double-posting.   

Anonymousething wrote:Hi,

Sorry about the double-posting! I originally edited the post, but I wasn't sure anyone would see that there was a modification to this thread. Not that it matters really, I guess.      Sorry for the extra work.

No, I don't need Bonehilda, but I just find her hilarious! Plus she ruled in the Sims 1.  The things she does are priceless: she shows a "pumped up" thought bubble, but she has no muscles!  She warms herself by the fire, but has no skin or nerves!  She still has an obsession / addiction to juice from the bar though. It's surprising she hasn't raided the nectar nests yet...

I wanted to make a genie, but didn't have the expansion pack installed, which supports them. I do have Supernatural, but Genie was greyed out     I guess they are in Late Night, but that expansion never worked. It always displayed an error at the end of installation. I re-downloaded it from here, but haven't installed it yet. Mainly because I like the expansion packs to be in order, which means de-installing everything (apart from the base game and the expansions that came BEFORE Nighlife, oops Late Night) and CAS takes quite a while to load all the clothes already.

Thanks for the suggestions though.  I'll defo try and make a genie or possibly a witch.  Having said that, my Sim is a fairy. You'd have thought she could just fly up there and clean! Guess you need a jetpack and Into the Future to do that though...

Yes, Bonehilda is "fun" to watch. And unlike the NPC sim-housemaid, you don't have to pay Bonehilda !    

When I played with her though, she often served food that nobody wanted   and she often played with the DJ turntable.   Maybe I'll give Bonehilda another try though.

In Supernatural, you have the "alchemy" skill, with which you can create potions and elixirs. There are potions that can turn your sim into all kinds of supernaturals (there are also potions with many other effects too). I'm not sure what the elixir is called that can turn sims into genies, but you also need to have a sufficiently high skill level for making certain potions. Also, keep in mind that the ingredients of some elixirs are damn hard to get hold of...   

Which is why you may want to do some cheating, but maybe I'll get back to you next time, if you want. For now, that's it again.   

invalidusername wrote:Just to let you two know, Genies were included with Showtime

Also, my one big contribution to this would be to suggest downloading traveler from NRaas. It's a big help when you're using the travel system at all, Twallan revamped a lot of little things with this mod.

From what I understood, the question was whether you could actually turn your sim into a genie, and I assumed that was only possible with  "Supernatural"..but OK.    

 

Anonymousething wrote:Yay answers.    Thanks for all the info!

I saw I could make genies in CAS, but I was sure they were greyed out when I first made Sarah (with Supernatural). Maybe Showtime wasn't installed at that point or something.

I have yet to use a mod. They are sort of scary!    Not sure where to even begin. How do you install a mod? Where do you get it from for that matter? Can you download them on G4TW? Does the traveller mod fix the adventure board?

The whole World Adventures expansion is ubber glitched. It is a cool concept, but the adventure board doesn't function properly in France and China. It's sad (or good?) that general public people have to make mods for a game for it to  actually WORK properly. At least it doesn't crash any more on the way to or from the destination. Half the time, you end up re-loading because something (mainly the axe) has disappeared out of the inventory!    Probably shouldn't go adventuring any more, but it's fun! When it actually works...

The gems collected in the foreign "countries" still are the wrong colour when they are removed from the inventory. Has no one else experienced this? It could just be my game.

Let's hope Sims 4 isn't this glitched.    (There's no clover smiley, but pigs are lucky in Germany, bizarrely... or at least they are when they are called "Lucky-Pig".)

About the gems, I'm sorry, but I can't help with that one, for now at least.

And no, the Sims 4 will most likely be as glitched as The Sims 3.

//EDIT

I forgot to add: the NRAAS mods are quite popular

http://nraas.wikispaces.com/

Anonymousething wrote:Hiya!  
(AAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!       My computer is USELESS. First, it restarted by itself so I lost all the text for a post, THEN it just randomly refreshed the page, said "site unavailable" and the text disappeared.   Anyway...)

No problem. Thanks for all the info about the mods.   It may indeed be time for a mod. Just a bit worried it might slow the game down. Theoretically, the computer shouldn't be powerful enough to run the Sims 3.   

Stupidly, patched the game to 1.65 BEFORE the ultimate fix had been updated.    Learned my lesson and waited for the fix to be ready before patching to 1.67.

Too bad about the gems, they will just have to "exposed" in the holidays homes in the country they were collected in. This is a strange and irritating bug. You can't cut these gems with the gem cutter, but I think you may still be able to send them off to be cut.

A few other bugs have appeared. On the rare occasion Hannah (NOT Sarah like mentioned above. I'm REALLY bad with names, apparently even Sims' names) doesn't drive her car somewhere random before travelling and therefore doesn't take it with her, she drives either a Nostalgi bike or a Kenspa in the holiday locations. These are not anywhere to be found in the inventory... They must have been bought previously and become bugged whilst travelling. Also, when she does take her car, she always gets a "new car smell" moodlet. This is a good thing, but the game somehow thinks the car is new when on or returning from vacation.
You used to be able to name and have relationships with vehicles without needing the Fast Lane Stuff Pack or whatever it's called. Did they remove that ability with the patches? Not that it matters, it was weird anyway.

When she returns from travelling and you press "page up" or "page down", there's a loud BOOM sound. It usually disappears after a while or saving. There isn't supposed to be a sound, is there?

When she's in Egypt and the "attractive Sim" moodlet appears the following tip is displayed "it looks like a Sim is feeling the effects of the temperature. Would you like to know more?" Yes, actually! It would be nice to find out how temperature relates to being near an attractive Sim.

This is more a question about a gardening quest. If you "accidentally" rejected the "deliver 20 good or better fruit or vegetables to..." quest (can't remember the exact wording, but something like that) that leads on to the omni-plant quest, is it gone forever or is it offered again?

Yeah, she is at the top of the alchemy skill, so she can easily turn people. BuyDebug comes in useful for placing rare-object spawners. She has just re-built a sarcophagus and has the "embalming pot" thingies, so she can summon mummies.    

Sadly, the Sims 4 will be as bad as the Sims 3.    EA's games are progressively becoming worse. Sims 1 wasn't that bad. It was simpler, but Makin' Magic and Bonehilda were fun. Sims 2 had better memories and genetics. It had the odd crash and glitch, made worse by a faulty graphics card, but was wonderful compared to Sims 3. Soon you'll need a 8-CPU 500 GB RAM 50TB computer to run their games. APPARENTLY, Sims 4 will run better and with lower requirements, but who knows?

On a side note, was just thinking of downloading a new neighbourhood from http://www.games4theworlddownloads.org/ts3/neighbourhoods.html (where else?   ), if the version.tag says [Version]
LatestBase = 1.67.2.024002
will the neighbourhoods work?  Or is this just the launcher version and not the game version? Or are they the same?    (This isn't strictly an in-game problem, but I thought I'd just stick it on here rather than making a whole new post)

Currently, I'm on an extended vacation, and therefore I might not be able to reply as quickly to posts as I normally do.

Anyhow, about the thing with the car and the "new car"-moodlet, yes, I got that one too, but I'm not sure if that has been corrected with the 1.67 patch (haven't travelled for a while now). But it doesn't really bother me anyhow.   And yes, you used to be able to "befriend" cars (they showed up in your relationship panel), but that feature was removed again, with some patch.

. There, see if you get options to re-spawn certain opportunities. I used to do that occasionally, but I can't quite remember with which mod. So for now, try the DebugEnabler-mod.

I haven't played so much with the object spawners...occasionally, I used to spawn metals and gems, but I stopped doing so (cheating too much tends to make a game boring very quickly  ).

That's it again !