First, I’d like to welcome all the New Players to Sims 4 who took advantage of EA’s recent base game giveaway. Let me encourage you to visit us on Deaderpool’s Discord, you don’t need to wait until you have an error to drop in. We’re a support server, but we do have several general-chat channels also available, and a pretty large members base. Come see who’s around!
One thing we ask all players to do is to please read the #rules_and_guidelines channel. If you have not Verified, you will need to do that, before you will be able to see most of the server channels. Just FYI, we can usually tell who hasn’t read the rules channel, by comments made and questions asked. (Hint: How to Upload a LastException has a gif in there.)
Here’s a “rules of the road” tech-support post I would love for you to read. Well worth sharing again, in my opinion.
As far as playing the game, the single best decision I ever made was to install MC Command Center. It allows customizing of So Many things, it’s a must-have in my Sims 4 Mods folder.
Nobody is “required” to have MCCC to get help on our Discord, we even have a self-tag you can role yourself with, if you choose not to install the mod. But it does so many helpful things, I personally can’t really enjoy playing without it.
The best advice I can offer players installing MCCC is to read over the Installation and Troubleshooting pages, whether you’re new to the mod, or updating from an earlier version. There are a lot of useful tips on both pages that could help you sort out any errors you may be seeing. The FAQ is also a good page to check.
One thing I feel it’s important to mention… MCCC Will Not Load, if you also have arturlwww’s Pregnancy Megamod installed. It is NOT necessary to have two mods doing the same thing, and in fact, that can easily cause more problems than it solves.
If you’re curious about the files in your Sims 4 folder, crinrict wrote an excellent overview post detailing what they are. Also, here’s an in-depth look at what you’ll find in the localthumbcache.package, if knowing more about that interests you.
EA patches tend to break mods and/or custom content (or both), depending on what parts of the game they make changes to. Also, it’s worth noting, that the game sometimes errors on its own, even “vanilla” (no mods or cc present).
Generally, after I patch my game, I also do a game repair in Origin, since I’m in the launcher anyway. It is not necessary to remove Mods to do a repair, the process works on the “Programs” Sims 4 files, not the “Documents” Sims 4 files we deal with.
Game-related issues are reported on what we call AHQ, EA’s Answers Headquarters. Please browse, and be sure to “Me Too” the first post of any issue(s) you’ve experienced. There is power in numbers, the Gurus do seem to pay more attention to threads having more input.
There’s a really nice list provided by Scarlet for SimsVIP following most big patches. It’s a great resource for finding out what’s had an update, and what still needs one. It can also be a good shopping list, as long as you stick with mods that are compatible with the current patch version.
Organizing your Mods and Custom Content from the beginning can save you a LOT of trouble down the road. If you’ve just been dumping everything you’ve downloaded loose into /Mods, that will work, but, when something breaks, it’s a lot more useful for troubleshooting if you’ve sorted your files into some sort of folder system. "Type" is good, because scripts/game changing mods and build buy cc generally throw exceptions, whereas broken CAS CC will just crash your game outright.
Check out this post of mine if you want a “quick and dirty” sort idea… but if you’re hardcore into organization, Athena’s post goes into a lot more detail than the one I wrote for beginners.
You may notice Athena plays on Mac… check the bottom of this post for several Sims 4 Mac-related links, I’d rather keep those together.
Sims 4 Studio and Sims 4 Tray Importer are both excellent tools to have on hand. S4S works on package files, and includes batch fixes for many EA-patch-broken custom content items. S4TI can be used on Tray files, to narrow down what custom content is in use in your Library-saved Sims or Lots. Both S4S and S4TI have Windows and Mac versions available.
S4S Windows: http://sims4studio.com/thread/562/sims-studio-windows-wishes-open
S4TI Windows: http://luniversims.com/files/file/73-sims-4-tray-importer/
We usually recommend doing 50/50 for finding broken mods or cc, especially if you have a trigger you can repeat for testing. Here are links to a post I wrote, a video Onyxangel made, and an interactive troubleshooter KlingonDragon created, any of which can help you figure out how to fix your game.
As promised, the Mac links I mentioned. I don’t know much about Macs, but these are links I give out pretty regularly on Discord. Hope you find them useful!
AHQ Mac: https://answers.ea.com/t5/The-Sims-Mac/bd-p/The-Sims-Mac
Mac Issues: https://bluebellflora.com/
S4S Mac: http://sims4studio.com/thread/6065/sims-studio-apple-blossom-open
S4TI Mac: https://luniversims.com/files/file/389-sims-4-tray-importer-for-mac/
Athena’s Discord: https://discord.gg/HREXDBY
I know this is a lot of information, and I thank you for reading, if you made it this far.
Visit Deaderpool’s Discord if you have any questions or comments, I’m easier to catch there than anywhere else.
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