Hi. Not sure if this is a game/launcher issue or a CAW issue.

I am working on a custom world. At present, I have no custom content installed other than Sunlit Tides from the TS3 store. No package files. No mods, nothing.

A couple days ago, I exported my world to a sims3package and installed it via the launcher to play it for a few minutes and get an idea of how to proceed in CAW. I then uninstalled the world via the launcher.

After making some changes, I re-exported and reinstalled the world (there were no save files and I cleared cache files before doing so). The world showed up as installed, but when I launched the game, the world was not available to start a game in.

I went through a lot of threads on a lot of sites, and after trying several things, I ended up completely reinstalling the game.

I exported and installed my world today to try it again and--nada. It shows up in the Downloads, and will say that it is installed, but does not show up in the list of worlds to start a new game from.

At this point I'm wondering if I also need to uninstall and reinstall CAW.

Any ideas?




ETA...I'm thinking now there's a problem with the world file. I guess I'm just going to have to start over on this world. Sucks. I had a couple weeks' worth of progress into it.

It's not you or your machine.

This is a heavily reported bug from the 1.42 patch with or without Seasons installed.

The "work around" that a lot of people have been using is to export your CAW world as you normally do. This places the exported world in your documents folder:
C:\Users\yourName\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Exports
Install this using the normal process.

When the mini dialog says the world was installed successfully shut down the Sims3 launcher.

Now go into the folder:
C:\Users\yourName\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\DCBackup
This folder should now have two files, one called ccmerged.package. The other one should be a long name with numbers and letters for example:
0x19c2c7349aa1ab8542a017f6577e4928.package

Rename this file as your world file, change the .package extension to .world extension
For example 0x19c2c7349aa1ab8542a017f6577e4928.package changes to become Pendragon.world

Place this file in the location:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds

Now when you start the Sims3 game and get to the world selection menu, your custom world should show up.

This is all a workaround to some issues with the 1.42 patch. Hopefully soon we will see some legit fixes from the developers, until then here's a workaround.

Hmm, thank you very much for this information. I should have asked sooner instead of driving myself so crazy! I'm going to try following your instructions now, fingers crossed.


ETA...it's as though something changes once the world is exported. Twice in a row now, I was able to export and install the world successfully one time, but as I continued to work on the world thereafter in CAW, I was no longer able to use EIG without it crashing, and the world would no longer properly install. I just tried running EIG on backup versions of the world, and it stopped working 4 backups ago--about the time I exported it as a package to install for a test run.

I wonder if Saving As... when I want to export my world for an ingame play-thru would help avoid this issue for me.

I rename the file with the. World at the end but it keeps package, what to do?

You probably need to turn off "Hide extensions for known filetypes" in your folder viewing options.

How I do this?

PS. I'm dont speak english, so i dont know what to do haha

Go into a folder and look at the top. There should be a bar with buttons for File, Edit, View, Tools, and Help.(in your language)
Go into Tools
It will have a menu with Folder Options at the bottom.
When you click that it will produce another screen with 3 tabs. (General, View, and Search)
Click View, and scroll down to "Hide extensions for known file types." It probably has a check mark (or tick as it's called in some other parts of the world) Click that mark to un-check it.
Click "apply"


Edit: and Welcome to Mod The Sims!

I have the same problem. I tried to do this, but there are 118 (!) files besides the ccmerged.package in the C:\Users\yourName\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\DCBackup folder.

What does this mean? What to do? It's so frustrating after spending so many hours building my custom world...

It means you have a lot of files. You probably haven't emptied the dcbackup folder recently. The one you are looking for will be a big one, and will have a "modifed" time that is the same as when you saved it.

Ghetto_me i had the same issue so I took a gamble and looked up what the files in the DCBackup folder are this is what I found
I came across the folder called DCbackup located in My Documents--> Electronic Arts--> The Sims 3--> DCbackup. I looked at those files and realized that they were just a bunch of backup files of all the package files ever used in the game. I did some checking to make sure it was ok to delete those and found out that it was fine. Once any CC is installed, it's there in your game, so you really don't need backups of it. But if it will make you feel better, you can always move all of those files to another folder somewhere other than your Sims 3 folder. But the best thing to do is just to delete all of those files in the DCbackup folder. In fact, it's probably a good idea to clean it out weekly or monthly....depending on how often you play.
Here's a link http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/t...lp/slowgame.php
But anyway what I did was I looked for the largest file which was at 51,000 something like that and did what PWN9483 suggested to do with the largest file I found, it happened to be my world so it's working

This worked for me! I've been trying to figure this out for like two months!

Yes it's ok to delete the DCbackup folder. In fact before I go to install a world with this method, I go and empty that folder first just to save time trying to figure out which is the world file.

I have the same issue, I had cleaned out my DCBackup, so it was empty before I installed it, and after I did 97 files (including ccmerged) were there, and they equaled the the size of the actual world file, each file was about 200 kb or so, and it came to a total of 146mb (the size of the world).

PWN9483 idk if you'll ever see this post but, this is exactly the solution I needed. I was trying to build a world using CAW, and it wouldn't upload either. Thanks soo much man! Rep for you...