Empty action bubbles

Hi everyone,

I'm officially stuck. I've spent hours trying to troubleshoot this myself, even almost screwing up very badly because I thought I could replace my game files with the "update only fix", but that just took all my expansions away. Luckily I fixed that, but I've searched the forum and I didn't see anything that could help.

Some things won't have their text (like, the dance skill, the little disco ball icon is there, but no text in the skill panel, and no dance skill related text in the notification panel), some action bubbles are empty (couldn't even tell you what they're supposed to be) or just say "..." and it's an endless loop of bubbles that do I don't even know what, and I thought I could just deal with it but it's far too annoying. I even sifted through two thousand plus files of CC thinking it was a bad mod, but even a vanilla game produces the error. All of the "solutions" on the internet are either severely outdated, or require using Origin (and, I assume, not a cracked copy of the game) to fix, which I can't do.

I have all the expansions, game packs, stuff packs... everything. I know I installed everything correctly. I've replaced my No Origin files. I searched the forum. The game is obviously patched/updated. I've been trying to fix this for four hours, and the only thing I've managed to do is pull my hair out.

If anyone can help, please do. It's driving me crazy!

EDIT: I guess I can't read text messages, either.

Hi @AlicaKate and (though abit late) welcome to the forum!

It looks like a missing language string problem, but seeing that you have everything installed, the Parenthood should have fixed the bug. Was this a recent thing or is this a totally new game/installation for you?

Ageha wrote:Hi @AlicaKate and (though abit late) welcome to the forum!

It looks like a missing language string problem, but seeing that you have everything installed, the Parenthood should have fixed the bug. Was this a recent thing or is this a totally new game/installation for you?

Well I applied the language strings you sent me, and now my game won't work at all. It works when I remove my mods folder, but I haven't downloaded any new CC before applying the language strings so now I don't know what's broken.

I am not entirely sure how the language strings have anything to do with my CC, but I located what CC was breaking my game. It was one of the first things I downloaded for TS4, and I've only had TS4 on this laptop for a week. With the exception of the base game patch version pre-update only fix (when I was testing to make sure the game would run at all), it's been on version 1.33 this whole time. The only time I haven't played the game was yesterday (Halloween) because I was moving. I haven't the faintest clue what could have possibly happened to that CC and/or my game between the day before Halloween and adding/replacing/whatever the language string files tonight. Truth be told I am not unhappy about it because it looked better in pictures than in-game, so no loss there.

However, the language strings did nothing. Honestly I think I'm just going to have to deal with it as is and hope it doesn't get worse. Shown below is what I believe is the dance skill. All across the game it won't show any text regarding it. Even when I acquired the skill it said "Sim has acquired the   skill" with all that space as if the word is supposed to be there. There are a lot of other instances where no text is shown but this is the one I go to to check to see if it's fixed.



(P.S. I didn't see a rule against "double-posting" but if there is and I missed it, my apologies.)

Hello @AlicaKate ,

I see. Sorry to hear that the language string did not help. It seems to affect the dance skill, was was any other skill being affected? If it's only that one skill, I'd suggest re-installing Get Together, followed by the other DLCs as well.

But seeing that Get Together is actually the 2nd DLC, if you have time, try doing a clean re-install instead. Then start up the game with a new Sims 4 folder in Documents (you can rename the old one) then see if the bug is still there. If it is not, it's either CC OR a missing game data/string that is giving you this bug. The error you mentioned regarding the damaged game data, how did you fix it? If it was solved without the mods, is the missing texts still there as well?

Ageha wrote:Hello @AlicaKate ,

I see. Sorry to hear that the language string did not help. It seems to affect the dance skill, was was any other skill being affected? If it's only that one skill, I'd suggest re-installing Get Together, followed by the other DLCs as well.

But seeing that Get Together is actually the 2nd DLC, if you have time, try doing a clean re-install instead. Then start up the game with a new Sims 4 folder in Documents (you can rename the old one) then see if the bug is still there. If it is not, it's either CC OR a missing game data/string that is giving you this bug. The error you mentioned regarding the damaged game data, how did you fix it? If it was solved without the mods, is the missing texts still there as well?

I don't see any other skills effected. Just various things like texts, and some interaction bubbles.

I have about 2500 files of CC in my mods folder, so I separated it into groups of 500 and loaded it until one set of 500 was causing the game to not run. So then I split it into groups of 250 and narrowed it down to 125, and so on and so forth. Eventually I found the culprit. I don't use mod conflict detectors or mod managers, this has been my way of finding bad CC since TS2. xD Sadly, it did not fix the missing texts issue.

Right now I don't have the space available to redownload the .rars and reinstall, but I'm hoping on getting a new computer soon so when I install on that in the future I will see if the error recreates itself. Otherwise I'll just wait around for a G4TW Cats & Dogs release and whatever patch comes with that.

AlicaKate wrote:
I don't see any other skills effected. Just various things like texts, and some interaction bubbles.

I have about 2500 files of CC in my mods folder, so I separated it into groups of 500 and loaded it until one set of 500 was causing the game to not run. So then I split it into groups of 250 and narrowed it down to 125, and so on and so forth. Eventually I found the culprit. I don't use mod conflict detectors or mod managers, this has been my way of finding bad CC since TS2. xD Sadly, it did not fix the missing texts issue.

Right now I don't have the space available to redownload the .rars and reinstall, but I'm hoping on getting a new computer soon so when I install on that in the future I will see if the error recreates itself. Otherwise I'll just wait around for a G4TW Cats & Dogs release and whatever patch comes with that.

It seems a bad CC is not actually the cause of the missing text. Another user seems to have similar problems as well and even the language string did not help him. You can just scroll through till the bottom where he uploads his folder screenshot with the file size here. I do not know if having the exact file size is relevant or not, but we can only wait to see until he has re-install the game as well.

If say, you actually have some spare cash (after the new computer's budget in mind as well), it's probably better to buy and external disk or a big enough usb stick so you can store all your downloads for easier 're-installation'. But hopefully when Cats & Dogs got released, this missing text won't be much of a problem anymore. 

Till then, cheers and enjoy the game (though with few missing texts).