Festivals spawn on top of each other and don’t go away
Update
2025-01-10
Maxis announced on X that they are working on this and that it will be fixed in a future patch.
2024-12-30
The issue has been happening more often again. Post completely revised.
2023-02-07
There have been several attempts to solve this issue but it seems it’s still occurring.
Problem
I have several festivals that spawn on top of each other
Ich habe mehrere Essensstände, die übereinander angezeigt werden
Ich habe mehrere Schlittschuh- oder Rollschuhbahn, die übereinander angezeigt werden
The festival doesn’t disappear after it’s over.
Cause
I think this bug has been fixed.
I could not reproduce it on the current game version for a new save. The festivals are cleaned up except for some objects (see Objects in neighborhoods are not getting cleaned up).
I was able to reproduce that the food stalls do not disappear properly if you travel to a different lot while the game is switching from one setup to another. This however resolves itself as soon as either a festival spawns or when you change neighborhoods. This makes the problem only temporary.
The reason that many people suddenly see overlapping festivals in their old savegames after patch 1.109.185/1.99 is that a bug fix caused previously invisible festivals to suddenly become visible.
Just like with the objects, the food stalls etc were assigned to the apartments instead of the streets. EA has now fixed this and all the festival objects have been reassigned to the street. Unfortunately, they are now stuck and the game can no longer despawn them.
The problem should no longer occur on new saves.
Solution
There are three possibilities to get rid of the stuff. Method 1 is really invasive and depending on the world it might not be a solution (doesn’t work for base game worlds). You need to evaluate what’s more important to you. Method 2 is more for advanced users and Method 3 uses Mods.
You can also play another save game and wait if EA fixes the issue and hope that they also clean up the save games. See tips on how to prevent to not get it on a new save.
Tests have shown that this method doesn’t work on save games loaded after Sept. 18th 2024. If you can see the festival then it won’t be removed even when you uninstall and then reinstall the pack. This happens because remove the pack doesn’t remove the street data. The workaround only works if the festivals are still stuck in the apartment.
Choose this method if one of the following is true
- You’re playing on console
- You don’t feel comfortable to poke around your save game with an external tool.
If the method below doesn’t help, repair your game as well.
The following method has the disadvantage that all clothing/objects/.. of the affected pack will be lost on that particular save game.
The method does not work for base game worlds (Willow Creek, Oasis Springs, Newcrest).
Instructions
Create a backup of your save game in case something goes wrong
Load the save game and load all your homes/families that use something of the affected pack to your library or make a list what you need to add back later. Premade families and houses are removed from the pack when you disable/uninstall and placed back in their original form afterwards. If you changed something about them, you’ll need to save those as well.
Load the save game through Load Game. You will receive an error message that packs are missing for that save. Ignore the message.
The world will be grayed out.
Save the game with Save As and give it a new name. This will remove all content of the pack from your save game. It should be fine to save from the the world but if that doesn’t work, load a family in the base game worlds and save there.
Close the game
Activate/Install the pack again (remove the line in EA app)
Load the save game that you have saved without the pack before.
You should now have only one world and the NPCs duplicates are also gone. Any changes made to the world are lost though.
You can now either replace all your houses/Sims from the library (Attention: This will strip all Sims from relationships they had with Sims outside of their household) or add the objects/clothing back manually. You will need also need to re-establish any occult statuses
Once you’re happy with the result, you can delete all backups you made.
This method is for advanced users and I recommend many backups. This allows you to go back if something doesn’t go as planned. Use this method at your own risk. I have not done any long-term tests and therefore do not know whether the method has any side effects.
You will need Sims 4 Studio (S4 Studio). Please install it, if it’s not on your computer yet.
You can find some basics on how to use the tool here: Clean Saves with S4Studio – Basics
You will need the world_id for all affected neighborhoods for this tutorial. You can find a list here.
Steps
Create a backup of your save game in case something goes wrong
Open your savegame with S4Studio and navigate to streets in Save Game Data.
Click on Edit Items..
For each neighborhood you have visited, there is an OpenStreetsData entry. Find the correct entry by comparing the world_id with the linked list.
Then click on Edit items next to objects.
Check the objects if it’s plausible that you choose the right entry (for example for geekcon there are game consoles in the list) then choose the first object and just hit Clear. This will empty all the entries
Click on Save and on the Streets window on Save again.
Save the whole thing through the main menu under a new name.
Start the new save game and check if the festival overlap is gone. Be aware that you will still see some objects like furniture for the flea market, possible plants and other collectibles. These are saved elsewhere and can be removed with the guide in this post: Objects in neighborhoods are not getting cleaned up
There are some reports that calendar entries are affected by this. It should be possible to just delete them and create new ones.
You can use mods such as T.O.O.L or Destroy Object Cheat to delete the stuck objects. However, there are some objects that are not selectable and therefore the cheats do not work.
Also, be careful what you delete. Some objects belong to the neighborhood and should not be removed.
How to prevent
- If you live in San Myshuno, stay on one lot and do not travel during a festival (this also applies to other neighborhoods with festivals if you have built a residential rental there).
- If you live in another world/neighborhood, travel to an unaffected lot type instead of an apartment/etc.
- Always wait until a festival is completely despawns before traveling to another lot, entering CAS or leaving the game. It should not be a problem to leave before the festival ends, but not while the festival is despawning.
- This problem can carry over to other save games. Because of this, always close the game completely before loading another save.
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