Can't use half my store content

[Norinia]

Okay, This is driving me nuts, and I don't think I'll find a more active community outside of here so I'll post here.

I just bought several worlds (Monte Vista/Hidden Springs bundle, and Roaring Heights Gold edition) then found I had a HUGE backlog of simpoints accumulated from buying the other expansions through steam and who knows what else they were just there as the click option in My Store Account and I clicked it until it stopped appearing (guess I had like 5600 points backlogged, and I got 1900 from Gold Edition Roaring Heights, so you can imagine the shopping spree I proceeded to binge on lmao)

The several pieces I was extremely excited about was I bought the Bakery Oven (bought the whole bakery) the Brick Oven from Monte Vista, The Bohemian Garden (I had bought bits over the years to make it cheaper, so I finally splurged 1.1k to get the plants) the magic 4 set (the cauldron, soothsayer crystal, voodoo doll, and lady raven podium thingy lol thing costs so much in game I barely care but i tried during testing) kiddie play pen, glass maker (the set it belongs to was half off) and the toy maker.

I got the game going (I also have a login loop issue, but since I could load the worlds and content in game I barely care, but since this is an bug list, probably should mention that too) and started making new sims

My Create a Sim content seemed fine, I could use any piece I wanted of it, then I built a house (built a nice house out of the Alvi house, once I booted them out) I set up the house, not aware that it wouldn't work, Then I tried the baker oven. More specifically, I tried clicking on the bakers oven repeatedly, as it only responded with a greyed out option.

I then tried using the brick oven instead, the result was odd, I didn't get the options for anything from the actual oven, but because I owned the farm stands, by extention, the lemon tree and eggplant plant, I was given the option to cook the lemon and eggplant lasagna, and it came out fine, no invisible dish or dish cancelling. But that was the only dish allowed to be made in the brick oven.

I realized then that something was wrong with my premium content, so I cheated and bought multiple pieces to try out. the glass blowing station will start the interaction, but cancels out and gives no objects, whether or not I try the vases or accessories.

I then tried the Head Start Playpen, it would work for teaching to talk, but I didn't see any premium options (maybe if I worked with it more, but as you can tell from this giant freaking word wall, I had a lot of issues and didn't want to spend a ton of time trouble shooting a minor issue)

I tried the Titanic Toy Machine, it would make the toys, but the drum would not level up any skill for the toddler, so something wasn't working there.

Then finally, I tried the Lady Raven podium thingy, any attempt to learn any of the skills would result in the interaction getting cancelled out and the sim resetting.

I double checked my old premium content, the violin will not level up the skill, but plays and I can use nraas to cheat the skill and then use the songs from the cheated skill level. Then the Multitab 6000 will level skills just fine, I was done testing at that point.

I tried the general mention of replacing the ccmerged.package with the link they give (very narrowly avoided a virus by remembering the linker's name wasn't Lily, mediafire sucks watch out for it, I still need to get my computer scrubbed thankfully, this is exclusively for gaming.)

I even tried uninstalling the game and deleting the game's file from my electronic arts folder, then reinstalling. I then re tried someone else's way of how to do the replace ccmerged.package (rename the one in folder as .old, then extract the original linker's ccmerged.package into the same folder.) None of it worked.

So, Is there anything I've failed to think of? This is driving me nuts, if I downloaded this stuff pirated, it would have likely worked better (not going to try, because again, I was almost tricked by whoever the f*** 'Lily' is into say yes, thinking it was like how sims 3 constantly asks permission. If I hadn't second thought 'wait, is the creator's name Lily?' My computer would definitely be full of virus.) But because I got it through the proper channel of The Sims Store I'm having all these issues I never had before.

[igazor]

I don't know who or what Lily is, but a safe source for a replacement ccmerged file that we always direct players to at NRaas is over here:
https://nonasims.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/dcbackup-ccmerged-package-and-your-premium-content-items/

Is this the one you were trying to use? The proper Download button is about 1/3 to 1/2 way down the page.

[Norinia]

That's the link I used. Lily is one of the scam advertisers or whatever on MediaFIre, She (or he who knows who made it) pretends to be part of the program, just asking permission to 'install the download'.

She gets mad and demands you press yes if you press no, but it shut down after I clicked no again. Still though, I need to get my dad to run a virus scanner through here, just in case.

Just in case anyone looks here, MediaFire runs 'ads', and anyone can put anything on those 'ads' just like "Lily". Whatever program you are downloading will more than likely appear on the bottom of the web page to be opened by your zip file programs when you click on them, not appearing to already be ready to go on your computer screen.

Still though, The ccmerged.package that Nona provides just didn't work for me, no matter how many times I tried it. I'm trying another method I just saw on youtube to install the content in under 200 MB downloads, individually. I'm about to see if it works.
Edit: several hours wasted, completely failed again.

I don't know what to do next. If I knew how to completely uninstall to reinstall a blank slate that worked with the content. I've fixed mod conflicts easier than trying to get the legal microtransation dlcs made by the people who made the game to function in said game.

Should I downgrade the update version somehow? I really can't think of many other things that could be wrong. I had the MultiTab, the Violin, Farmstands, and Chicken Coop & Cow Pen for years, usually get them to work, sometimes mod conflicts happen that make them not appear in game for a bit, but when i feel like it, I get that fixed pretty easily.

[igazor]

If you still suspect a ccmerged issue and Nona's ccmerged file placed into DCBackup isn't fixing it, the next thing to try (assuming you have the mods Framework set up to work with package based files) is to leave Nona's ccmerged in DCBackup but put a second copy in Mods\Overrides. It must be Overrides, not Packages. But again this is only relevant if you have the Mods Framework setup.

I have used MediaFire for what feels like a decade now and have never met Lily or been bothered with annoying drive-by downloads. I'm sure I've had to close a window containing something like that which may have popped up once in a while, but anyway on Firefox with a decent ad blocker that nonsense usually leaves me alone. Of course, I am just one user and can't speak for what happens on other browsers and without the ad blocker I use (AdBlock Plus, the legit free version and not one of its impersonators). And maybe I just subconsciously close this stuff out when I see it since I'm so used to the rogue ad nonsense that so many sites unfortunately allow in to pay their bills. No great love affair for MediaFire here really, but they aren't entirely evil and useless either.

[Haeloth]

Originally posted by Norinia:

I tried the Titanic Toy Machine, it would make the toys, but the drum would not level up any skill for the toddler, so something wasn't working there.

Toddlers do not have access to the Drums skill until they age up to teen. It does not show up in any way at all. You can only see the progress when they age up to teen, in the skill tab of the Sim. Another way is to use MasterController to see skill progress of the sim.

Steam version of the game does not have Store content patch. You need to add that manually to your installation. Make sure you also have that.

[Aviana]

Hold on, you get Simpoints from purchasing expansions on Steam? I don't have ANY at all

[ModerNertum]

Have you tried clearing the cache files?

To do so go to the documents folder\Electroic Arts\The Sims 3 folder and delete the following files:

CasPartCache.package (CAS parts that appear in Create-A-Sim)
compositorCache.package (New objects that would appear in Buy/Build mode)
scriptCache.package (Mods)
simCompositorCache.package (New Sims, default skins)
socialCache.package (Simport-related (maybe?) and other social data, if you use the wall to integrate with your MyPage on thesims3.com site)

Those are cache files that will help solve many issues (no other content should be affected by its deletion. I had a corrupt file the last time I did this (scriptCache.package) which caused me to be unable to complete download on new content from the Store or the Exchange). The game will make those files again when you launch it the next time so it is advisable to close the game entirely before deleting the cache files for it.

Hope it helps and have a good game :)

[Norinia]

I'll try these, but no I didn't get my expansions through steam (Although I kind of wish I had waited a couple more days, might have tried to get the discounts on Steam to work (I think it's by buying the base game here, then buying whatever dlcs you are missing?))

I just completely failed to realized I was getting credit every time I registered a game on Origin, so the simpoints that you get for registering expansions (this is the best guess I can make, not positive if this is what happened) just piled up and up until I had around 5600 points stacked up (my best guess, since I got 1900 from buying gold Roaring Heights)

Lol it's epically infuriating right now trying to get it all to work, but believe me I had the time of my life spending all of those extra dlc points lmao. Hopefully one of these fixes work :)
Edit: I don't have the steam version, But I trust the Steam Community a lot. Hence I'm here.

[Norinia]

@igazor OMG THANK YOU!!! That was the issue! I didn't realize because Nona mentions that's only if you installed premium content as .package files, THANK YOU!!! I would have gone mad over this for weeks before giving up on the 75 bucks I spent (spent 55 on worlds, then when i uninstalled and deleted the whole game, I realized I didn't know where my world adventure disc was, so I had to shove out an extra 20 bucks for a digital copy) THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

Now off to lose myself in the fun world of epic mods and awesome premium content :D

@Haeloth Thanks for the tip on the drum skill for toddlers. Guess it makes sense they don't work it in like learning to walk or learning to talk lol.

Thank you everyone for helping me troubleshoot this! Steam Community rules!

[igazor]

Originally posted by Norinia:

@igazor OMG THANK YOU!!! That was the issue! I didn't realize because Nona mentions that's only if you installed premium content as .package files, THANK YOU!!! I would have gone mad over this for weeks before giving up on the 75 bucks I spent (spent 55 on worlds, then when i uninstalled and deleted the whole game, I realized I didn't know where my world adventure disc was, so I had to shove out an extra 20 bucks for a digital copy) THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

Glad to hear it. If it helps at all, this issue isn't reportedly all that common but apparently there is occasionally, or at least for some players, a timing issue at startup during which things we are not meant to see happen out of their intended order. The Overrides trick helps to ensure that the ccmerged file is applied at the point it is meant to if it is silently failing prior. It's possible that your original one was never really damaged, just not being read from at the correct time in sequence, but as long as the replacement one now works then that doesn't really matter anymore.

And also, to make you feel better, I watched a player whom I KNOW did not have their store content converted in any fancy way and Nonemena herself drive each other mad quite a few years ago (it may have been 2013 or even longer ago, Nona has pretty much retired from TS3 since then) until they came up with this workaround and still remember it. They happened to be thrashing it all out while we watched on an NRaas forum board. :)