Objects in neighborhoods are not getting cleaned up
Problem
Over time more and more litter is accumulating in neighborhoods. This range from food and drinks to flea market furniture or even snow pals.
They can’t be clicked and therefor you can’t remove them (not with mods and not with cheats)
There’s also a problem with overlapping food stands, festivals and ice/roller skating rinks. Those seem to have a different cause though. More details can be found here: Festivals spawn on top of each other and don’t go away
Cause
The issue occurs in places where’s there lot types with shared spaces.
Those are (aka affected lot types):
- Apartments (San Myshuno, Evergreen Harbor)
- Penthouses (Ciudad Enamorada, San Myshuno)
- Residential Rentals
- Dorms (Brichester)
The error occurs when you change from any lot to a affected lot type. If you do that a large amount of objects is moved from the object inventory of the street to the object inventory of the shared space of your lot type. Because of that the game looses any relation and doesn’t clean up the objects when it should.
On top of that the objects are invisible (some of them permanently) until you switch to another lot yet again. You might not even know that you have the issue.
San Myshuno is especially bad as NPCs spawn with drinking cups and cupcakes in their hand and walk through the world that way. If you now change the lot or talk to the NPCs, they have a tendency to drop everything on the floor. Changing back to a affected lot type will then move the objects to the shared space of the affected lot type. The error can occur in any neighborhood that has lots of the affected lot type. It’s not important if you play a family living in those neighborhoods or not or if you just visit. Loading the lot causes the issue.
Objects (list not conclusive), that are affected by the issue
- Food/Drinks
- Festival garden plants
- Flea Market furniture
- Flea Market collectibles that are sold on the sales tables
- Canvases of easels placed around the worlds
- Snow globe boxes
- Bikes
- Snow pals & Snow angels
- Pile of leaves
The main issue with all the litter in the neighborhoods is that it bloats your save game which might lead to corruption somewhere down the line.
Solution
There are two 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 1 also doesn’t seem to work for stuck festival data (in most cases).
If you switch a residential rental back to residential all objects are back in the open street and should become delektable with mods.
You can also play another save game and wait until 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.
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. The method is also very tedious if you have a lot of stuff to delete. S4Studio has a tendency to become very slow if there’s a lot of objects. Be patient.
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 zones in Save Game Data. Use the world_id from the list above for filtering
Make a note of all zone_ids of the lot types concerned. For apartments and residential rentals you only need the one of the master.
Return to the main window and filter for the first zone_ID you noted down. Select the Resource Zone Object Data and open the window for the objects on the right-hand side.
You will now see a long list of objects. The list contains all the objects on the property, i.e. all the apartments/rental units, as well as all the crap that should not be there.
Depending on how much crap has already accumulated, it may take longer for the list to be displayed.
Basically, all objects that you have a lot of are a potential problem.
To delete, select all relevant objects and click on Remove.
Filter by the following terms: These are things that either don’t belong on a lot or where it simply doesn’t matter if you delete items on the lot itself
Filter by the following terms: These are things that may be on the lot legitimately.
It is best to check each object to see if you can delete it. You can do this very easily using the x coordinate of the position. If the value differs greatly from the values of other legitimate objects, they are outside the lot and you can delete them.
Filter by the following terms: These are items that you can collect. If you do not have collections in any of the households concerned, you can delete them without checking them. If you are a collector, I would recommend going into the game first and moving all collectibles to the inventory. However, depending on the number, it may be easier to check the location instead.
Once you are satisfied with the removed objects, you can click on Save at the bottom right and close the window.
It is also worth saving between the individual search terms.
Repeat steps 3-8 for each noted zone_id. If you have other affected neighborhoods, repeat all steps for the other neighborhoods as well.
Save the changes again via the main menu.
If you are unsure whether you can delete something, leave it and check in-game to see if all the crap is gone. If not, edit again.
How to prevent
Since the issue will just reoccur after cleaning your save, I suggest the following options to prevent it from happening again.
- 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 for a festival.
- 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.
- Collect all snow globe boxes before switching to an affected lot type (unfortunately time-consuming)
- Check whether there are cups and similar items on the ground before you switch to an affected lot type and clear them away manually. In this state, you should still be able to interact with the objects. However, you usually need a mod to get rid of them anyway. (extremely time-consuming)
You can find me on Bluesky or in the thread on EA forums if you have further suggestions.
