Invisible sims and save option not working.

[blackcat]

I have had this problem with the second neighborhood now. Dropped the first one since silly me thought that it won't happen again and started over.
The problem is as follows. I load game and everything goes fine until some sim, generally from within a household, but once happened with another sim visible on the screen, becomes invisible or only partially loaded, you know, like a wooden doll. After this moment this sim generally gets stuck, I tell him to do something and they just stand there not doing anything and the action becomes uncancelable. Resetsim isn't working and I can't use Force reset through debug menu, cause I can't see them. After some time more invisible sims appear. Also the save option is not working. I had invisible sims before, but generally saving and then reloading game helped, but now it just gets stuck in save mode. Once I waited for an hour, just to make sure that it's not simply a really, really long save. It doesn't corrupt the previous save.
When reloading the game from the start everything happens again after a random period of time, generally from a couple of minutes to several hours, but almost always on the same sim day. After I felt like I'm in the Groundhog Day, playing the same sim day for tenth time, I dropped the first family. Now the same thing is happening with the second neighborhood.
Both towns are Riverview. Played with two families in the first one and with one in the second one. Have awesomemod and twallans story mod as well as other miscellaneous xml mods (feel like abusing the switch between families option). Advanced in about 5-6 sim weeks in both games. Save files do not look bloated and of the avarage size of 28 Mb. Used s3rc.exe -s on them which redues the size to 18 Mb,but the problem still appeared.
The only theories I have is that the game 1)can't access cache files and/or 2)can't build into cache files. Tried to delete all cache files and it didn't help. Also tried reinstalling the game.
Looked here and on the net if other people have had the same problems, but the only ones I could find are the simple cases of invisible sims, without stuck or save problems.
Kinda lost here. Even if these games are unsavable now, I hope to find out the reason so I can avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

[Steele]

I have the same experience usually it ends as an error 12. The infinite save loop in my experience a save somewhere between an error 13 and a good save. The save file is 1-3% more in size than an error 13 save and the save game can sometimes be loaded. But I'm not confident on the game stability of those files.

My guess is that the invisible sim are textures and meshes failing to load into the cache.

Normally, the caches for riverview is located in the world cache directory. One is labeled objects the other is sim. I think those cache speaks for itself what it stored during gameplay. Deleting them in my case did not produce any problems only a very big lag and slow down during re-writing the cache. Also the dynamic cache feature that riverview uses has potential for writing saves. So sometimes you'll get an error 13 when the current size is full and does not seem to grow larger until your next game reload.

One suggestion I can think of is try going to the game directory where you installed your game, then go into the cache directory. Make a copy of the Sunset_valley.objectCache file and rename the copy to Riverview.objectCache. So you'll start with a cache 1Gb size and observe if you're still having these invisible sim problems.

[blackcat]

I'll try this, though this solution seems a little strange to me. I did try to delete all cache files including those two that belong to Riverview to no avail. During the next game session I observed their size closely and the glitches started when their sizes were about 50-80 Mb each. Their sizes previous to deletion were ~500 Mb each and it looks like this is the maximum size cause from there on they don't grow. I think that after this point they start to recycle old data with new, maintaining stable size. But since the deletion doesn't change a thing its unlikely that the problem is there.
Right now I save every 3-4 sim hours (takes about a minute or two) and reload at the sign of problem. I've managed to live through two sims days like this with three reloads.
When you say error 12 or error 13 where do you get the number? Do you see some kind of a pop up window that says that there has been an error? Because I've never got anything like this.

EDIT:
I tried these suggestions of yours first;

Use after starting a new loaded game.

Using Awesomemod:
1. Resetallwants
2. Cleanhouseholds all
3. Refreshtraits all
4. Purgegenetichair
5. Fixall
6. Fixagingstates
7. Purgereactions
8. Fixromances
9. Towderelicts on (sometimes this command does not work on some cars and you have to individually nuke stuck cars)
10. Resetworld
11. Destroyallnpcs (Some grim reaper hacks and outfits + 1.3 game update causes bugged reapers)
12. Destroyalltownies (optional) but sometimes the townies are bugged
13. ResetDnP all
14. Destroycorruptsims (so far this command always yield me 'zero' corrupt sims but better be safe)

Using NRaas Supercomputer
1. Recover Lost Sims
2. Recover Wandering Toddlers
3. Turn off stereos

Save

Quit and restart game.

At the end of the sim day my family became invisible and stuck again. After that I used resetworld and though they still remained invisible they got unstuck. Their next interaction got them stuck again, BUT I used resetworld again and saved the game immediately. It got saved and when I reloaded sims were visible again.  Just to be clear, before I couldn't save at all and I had to close the game through task manager, previous save didn't get overwritten, it remained untouched, as though I didn't try to save at all.
Current solution, as much as it is imperfect at least lets me to continue playing from the same moment, instead of replaying the same day all over again.

I will still try to rename Sunset Valley.objectCache file.

[Steele]

I have found that the debug commands does not work in cases when the cache is full.

Re-studying your information it seems your main problem is centered around the sim.cache file. Maybe if you can recall befroe you got this problem, did you:
1. Add any download sim from other players
2. Added a mod
3. Added a custom content
Try removing what you remember adding, if you did add some custom stuff into your game.

Another thing to try is re-install the game. There might be a file or setting that got changed which prevented writing to the caches properly.

When you say error 12 or error 13 where do you get the number? Do you see some kind of a pop up window that says that there has been an error? Because I've never got anything like this.

The number is from a pop up windows that says you have a certain error type.

[blackcat]

After renaming the file I didn't have this problem again, thank you! But what will happen if I'll decide to play Sunset Valley, or when this file will be small enough either, if it ever will. I mean, we still don't know what causes the problem

[ganz_shoni]

I have exactly the SAME symptoms from your problem man, only with Twinbrook! How can I fix this problem?

[Aimlak]

How about reading the solutions listed above? Also, necromancy is bad, m'kay?

[ganz_shoni]

I tried several times removing all CC and uninstall and reinstall the game but with no luck. Yet, the solutions mentioned above were right with RIVERVIEW, I am playing on TWINBROOK which uses different caches. Riverview comes as a separate download from ts3 main site, while twinbrook is ambitions main world (and that means, it has a Twinbrook.objectcache stored in ambitions program folder (around 1gb) so I believe the above solutions DO NOT work in my case. Tried and retired also to delete documents cache files but with no luck. I even tried Nraas debugenabler functionality "Fix invisible sims" but it does NOT work either. I use awesomemod but with Nraas story progression.

[ganz_shoni]

Oh, forgot to say I tried more than one time all console command above, none of them worked =(