I see a lot of people losing saves and sims and whatnot and it used to happen to me too. I still miss some of my earlier families that I could’ve saved using these tips! I know these will be kind of no-brainers for some, but I hope others find it useful.
NEVER ‘save’. ALWAYS ‘save as’. saving overwrites your last save, and if something causes your save to become corrupt, you will lose EVERYTHING. using ‘save as’ ensures that each time you save, a new save folder is created. if for some reason your most recent ‘save as’ is corrupted, the last backup should be roughly around the same spot. you’ll lose hours of work, rather than months of work! you can get a mod that reminds you to save as from NRaas here.
back up your .sim files and home lots, not just your save files. put them in a folder outside of your TS3 folder. upload them to a file sharing service biweekly (or more, depending how much you play). that way if for some reason your computer dies or needs to be wiped, you’ll have a recent save of your current families stored in the cloud. also, if you upload a S3P of your family’s current lot, you may be able to salvage some cc, or at the very least, the structure of their home. backing up the library file might also be a good idea.
convert anything that you can to package files. whenever I download cc in a S3P format I always separate what can and cannot be converted into separate folders. and use Delphy’s S3P multi-extractor. I usually convert anything and everything except lots, worlds and counters/patterns (because they will break your game!). extracting counters may lead to some bugs and extracting patterns leads to “materializing materials” in CASt. DO NOT CONVERT COUNTERS OR PATTERNS.
“quarantine” new cc! I always put my new cc into a folder fondly named “toxic”. if I’m able to play without any issues, I move the cc from “toxic” into the general cc population and repeat as I add new cc. it’s easier for me to do it this way if for some reason my game won’t start, I’ll just move my ‘toxic’ folder out and start troubleshooting. you could also just sort your cc folder by “last added”, but if you move your cc folder around a lot (I do sometimes move the subfolders in and out of my game folders) the dates will not always be correct and it may be harder to find the offending cc. some use Delphy’s Dashboard to find corrupted cc, but I don’t find it very useful.
