Insects vanishing after patching to newest.

[kerryanne13]

Alright I've looked everywhere and did multiple searches to try and find the answer myself but so far I haven't seen anyone with this problem. After installing the latest patch yesterday I noticed that I wasn't finding insects like I was before patching. I'm playing in sunset valley so I know where most of the good locations are and I'm not finding as many insects as I used to. Strangely enough it seems at around 7pm or 8pm the insects I have queued disappear on me. Is this a new feature? If it is it's kind of strange and frustrating because I just started a new game so I don't have enough lifetime reward points to get the collection helper. The cheat shazaam doesn't work for me either so that's not an option. I've removed all CC and deleted all my cache files and then restarted the game and I'm still having the same problem. Any help and info would be appreciated and thank you in advance. Oh and my computer is over specs for graphics and memory so my game runs very easily at the highest settings. No lag and no crashing at all.

[ellacharmed]

Do you mean the spawners are no longer spawning insects or vanishing from the Sim's action queue when directed or those you've caught are vanishing from the Sim's Inventory?
Only insect spawners affected, gem, seeds and fish are fine?

Is this occurring for just this Sim in this Household, or all Sims in this Household only or all Households in Town for this Save? Other saves?
Does it occur in a brand new Sunset Valley game? When you wrote you restarted the game after removing CC and caches, is that with the same Save game or a brand new game?
If you have the other EPs with their respective worlds, does it occur in those worlds, too?

Do you already play with the corrective mods like Overwatch, ErrorTrap, MasterController, Awesomemod, etc before you removed them? Or you never had these mods in the game before now?

[kerryanne13]

All checked households seem to be suffering from this glitch with each individual sim it's the same. If I catch them I keep them, they aren't vanishing from the inventory, just from the place on the map where they are flying about or crawling. It's not affecting any of the spawners for fish, gems and metals or the spawners for the little pets, seeds are fine too. It seems to just be happening in Sunset Valley on two separate games, I really don't know the other worlds as well so I can't be sure if those are affected as well since I don't play them as often. It started in an old sunset valley and a new one as well, I deleted the old one thinking that it had become corrupted only to start a new game and have the same problem. When I removed the caches and the mods it was the same game that I was playing and it didn't fix the problem even though I was in vanilla mode so I just deleted the file and started up a new game only to find that even when fresh starting a new vanilla game and giving the game a couple weeks of checking I still have a lack of insects and those that are there vanish from the map at around 7pm. I mean they aren't completely gone but there's like an 80% drop or higher in the insect population and after playing a couple weeks game time I've seen almost every species of insect it's just there's only two or three of them in the town. The only corrective mod that I've used is awesome mod but I've removed that with the other mods and deleted the cache and kept the game vanilla just in case. I used Twallan's story progression and overwatch a long time ago so those don't have anything to do with this problem, the others I haven't used at all. It was the same problem with and without the mods and I've deleted the cache yet again to see if that helped while keeping the game vanilla. It's still got the same problem with lack of insects, everything else is okay though. I hope I answered all your questions.

[kerryanne13]

Okay just earned enough life time reward points for the collection helper... only 22 insects spawned in sunset valley.

[ellacharmed]

Oh dear. Could I beseech you to use paragraphing? Please?

That 22 is for the whole Insect population, inclusive of the new ones from Showtime (if you have Showtime, and you may need to test in Starlight Shores for this one)? Don't their spawn time stagger across the day? Or is that value only when using the Collection Helper at that point of time?

OK, the issue is the spawning is not occurring, yes? It's not that the caught ones are vanishing from Inventory or Terrariums and stuff?
Because the latter is a reported bug with 1.3x and Showtime:
- http://nraas.wikispaces.com/message/view/Chatterbox/51470436
- http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/505859.page#7816587 (Under Misc)

When you wrote latest patch, you do mean 1.33? Or another version?
For the proper context, could you please confirm the patch version and add-ons you have?

You could try adding ErrorTrap and Overwatch to your games. Awesomemod does not have the features that these two specifically corrects, routinely. Or it is there, but AM requires a console command.

[kerryanne13]

Alright, sorry about the no paragraphs thing, I was tired at the time and I sort of run on trying to get everything out at once. Sorry for the ramble I know it must have been rather confusing.

I don't have showtime yet though I just noticed something odd, when I checked the patch version info it said 10.0.96.0150010 :wtf: very odd unless they've gone and moved the patch number on me. I'm playing the vanilla game right now so I don't have any add ons.

I have around 22 insects spawned in my town at any given time, they don't vanish from my inventory or from terrariums. They just vanish from the map at around 7pm at night and the bug population is even less through the night until the morning. It's the same in the Vacations worlds for the same save I've been playing, haven't checked the vacation worlds for the other saves but since the bug population is so low here it's probably the same there as well.

I'm going to go and download errortrap and overwatch to see if they help. thank you for your help. Hopefully this works. It's such a weird glitch....

Just wanted to edit to mention that it is the lastest patch downloaded through the game launcher, I haven't downloaded patches from anywhere else.

[nonamena]

Perhaps this information will be useful to you:
The Showtime patch added fireflies. These fireflies will take the spawn of all butterflies in the evening, between 8pm to 6am game time. Butterflies now spawn only between 7am and 7pm. The information for this is in the Insects XML.

Additionally, minor pets can spawn where insects would normally spawn, so if you have Pets, this may affect the number of insects you have up in your game at any given time. The SpawnableMinorPets list is in the InsectSpawner XML.

[kerryanne13]

Nona I think that's what it is! Because my butterflies and insects are gone from those times and since I don't have showtime yet that means that everything would be gone in the late night in the game. That's what I just notice, checked at like 4am and all the insects are gone and since I don't have the new game yet.... it makes a lot of sense, thank you for your help!

I did notice that a lot of the insect spawning places were over taken by the minor pets during the day so yeah, I think I have my answer now, thank you so much!

[ellacharmed]

Thank you, nonamena! That indeed explained a lot.
Opening gameplay files is the last thing I have interest in. As that always push me down the path of things I want to tweak. :)

Can we consider this resolved/answered, then, kerryanne13?

[kerryanne13]

Thank you both again and yes, it has been resolved :)