For those of you whos game lags...

[lkandak]

I'm not sure if this thread should be here or in The Bulletin Board, so feel free to move it if needed.

After I got LN, AMB and WA at the same time last year, my game started lagging like CRAZY. After trying different things, I looked online and ended up trying Twallan's Overwatch. It cleared 3000 cars from my 'hood (and clears 50-200 every sim-night) and my game has been running smoothly...until last week. It started lagging again and it took almost an hour to load the town :headache:

So I decided to try combining all the .package downloads I have, and surprisingly, it worked. My Downloads folder went from 6 GBs to 2 GBs, (when I combined the downloads, they also shrinked in size) and the game runs perfectly, it also loads much quicker. I made different catagories (hair, clothes, furniture, etc.) and combined everything in each catagory into 1 file. I have around 30 combined .packages now (+ the mod packages, which I didn't combine). So if your game is lagging or taking forever to load, you might wanna try this out:

Tutorial

Sims 3 Package Editor (S3PE)

And if you don't have a bunch of downloads and your game lags...

Overwatch (and a bunch of other very useful mods)


Hope this helps someone out there :D

ETA: I've read many reports since installing Pets of pretty bad lag. Amjoie was having the same problem and updated her video driver which put a stop to it. ~Regina

[Regina]

It belongs in the non-fiction section of the Library but hey, I have it on pretty good authority this forum is sometimes confusing. I'll move it there and sticky it to boot. We have this information sort of split up in various threads so having it in one place should be very helpful.

And you're right--these two steps can do wonders in preventing game lag. I know people who don't even use custom content and have had to resort to Twallan's Overwatch to keep their games playable.

[lkandak]

Thanks, Regina :)

It was really annoying when I just got the EPs and coudn't figure out what was wrong! I was thinking that it was my Video Card (It's not the best) but it turned out it was just the car issue from LN. And now I was thinking of moving all my sims to a fresh town, but it looks like there was a solution without having to move them for the millionth time. :)

[Regina]

Yeah, and moving them only solves the problem in the short term and not at all when it's the CC files causing it. I declare, this game is messed up in so many ways. I have hundreds, maybe even thousands, of CC files for TS2. On my old computer the longest load time was five minutes (anything more than that and I trimmed CC). Before I started merging them I had a whopping 500 .package files for TS3 and it was taking longer than that for a town to load.

[Spacerox]

Oh, there were a few other things about lag, too...

What were they?

Oh, um...sometimes you can fix it by choosing save as instead of save and then playing the new save. I don't recall WHY that works, but it's supposed to lol.

[lkandak]

(10-17-2011 05:23 PM)Regina Wrote:  Yeah, and moving them only solves the problem in the short term and not at all when it's the CC files causing it. I declare, this game is messed up in so many ways. I have hundreds, maybe even thousands, of CC files for TS2. On my old computer the longest load time was five minutes (anything more than that and I trimmed CC). Before I started merging them I had a whopping 500 .package files for TS3 and it was taking longer than that for a town to load.

I don't mind the loading time as much as the lagging while playing. I had 2500 .package files that I just recently merged :giggle:

(10-17-2011 06:06 PM)Spacerox Wrote:  Oh, there were a few other things about lag, too...

What were they?

Oh, um...sometimes you can fix it by choosing save as instead of save and then playing the new save. I don't recall WHY that works, but it's supposed to lol.

I never tried saving as when it lagged, but now I save as EVERY time I save. Error code 12 pops up every once in a while, so now I save as, not to mess up the last save, just in case. Seems like it hasn't been popping up since I merged the downloads, though. I name the saves PlanarIsland001, PlanarIsland002 etc. and I actually reached the 200s, LOL.

I don't know if it's just me, but Sims 2 seemed to have much less issues. I played Sims 3 without CC at first, in Sunset Valley with only 20 or so sims, and Error Code 13 kept showing up all the time. Maybe it's cause in Sims 3 it's seamless and every sims is doing something at the same time...
But at the same time, some EA games like Spore have never crashed (or had issues) on me and it's a whole galaxy full of 6 different creatures on each/most planets!

[tontrin]

I don't know if anyone else has had this issue, but the last time I tried to merge files, it totally broke them for me, so I would suggest using caution when it comes to merging. If I remember correctly, I believe it completely stopped my game from loading.

I think merging a few at a time and keeping the originals somewhere backed up and testing your game after each time you merge some would be prudent. As Regina said, "this game is messed up in so many ways".

I haven't tried this yet on my new computer, so I might. I have only had one crash to desktop with the new computer that wasn't related to mods/custom content testing without having to use any work-arounds to prevent them. This computer has AMD Athlon and ATI products as opposed to Intel and Nvidia products, which is on my old computer and Sims3 crashes with all the time without work-arounds.

I still use "save as" because I'm permanently paranoid after error codes 12 and 16 with my old computer. And I never save on exiting the game. Yep, permanently paranoid.

I didn't have as many problems with TS2 either. But my game eventually became unplayable; I believe it might be a disk error, but Sims3 came out around the time my Sims2 broke and I haven't had time to test it other than my daughter once re-installing it and playing for a while and having the same problem.

[lkandak]

Sorry about that Tontrin. I know it's a pain to re-download and re-install everything. I didn't have any issues, but yeah, there are lots of issues that pop up out of the blue with Sims 3. Like my computer minimizes the game sometimes and there's a pop up that says 'The Sims 3 Has Stopped working' and it closes the game. I did DEP for all the Sims 3 EPs and all a while back and it STILL closes it. Maybe because it's an issue with Vista or something. Every once in a while I backup my recent save files, just to make sure I have them in case they mess up. :)

[tontrin]

Oh, that reminds me; I need to backup my saves again too. That is such an important thing to do; you never know. I don't know what makes the crazy game crash; I've had it crash with Vista, XP, and 7 on different computers and XP and 7 on the same one without changing DEP settings and making it large address aware before that was fixed with the LN patch.

Even with those settings, it would still sometimes crash on my old computer, and that computer has pretty good specs. I took a hunch when I found a great deal on a new computer and got one with the AMD processor and ATI graphics, and the game works better on it than on anything I've loaded it on before. It also has a quad core processor that helps with graphics. This game is such a graphics resource hog.

I'm really glad that merging your files helped so much. I'll probably try merging mine a little at a time and see if they will cooperate with the new system when I have time. It would be nice, because I notice a bit of lag after playing a town for a while now. It's not bad, but it could be better.

[Regina]

Oh, definitely make sure to save the original CC files when merging. I save everything, that way if something goes haywire I can go back to the old stuff. I don't have a lot of CC and the only things that wouldn't merge for me were HystericalParoxysm's original hair files from MTS. I figured that's no big deal, though, as I only use a couple of them.

Like you, I also didn't try merging game mods and everything else went perfectly. I took my files from I think slightly over 500 to around 100 and it made a huge difference. My combined files ended up slightly larger than the total original files but that could be because I had compressed any of those that could be compressed. Some stuff wouldn't work compressed and caused loading and lagging problems with my game.

It's strange because I've had times where the game has just crashed to the desktop for no apparent reason. I don't remember when that was, may've been before EA fixed it to recognize more RAM. I only have four gigs but dog-gone it, I want all four gigs used!

Now I've never had an Intel processor unless it was way before I ever knew what was going into my computer. I've used AMD for years along with NVidia graphics card. I know some people have problems with NVidia but I never have.

[whitePhazer]

I used to get a lot of lag and error code 12 when I was on a Intel duel core 2ghz with 2 gb's of ram. Built a new computer using an Intel i5 3.3ghz overclocked at 4.60ghz with 8 gb's ram and now get no lag or error code 12's. But one note, I have most of Twallens mods installed with no problems,but had recently tried his "Dresser" mod which is good but that even made my game lag so had to disable it. At the last count I have got 410 mods/cc installed

[Regina]

Even on my old computer I never ran into the error codes. Maybe it's just because I didn't get to play enough to ever see them.

lkandak, I edited your original post with a little information about Pets and game lag.

[lkandak]

(10-17-2011 09:38 PM)tontrin Wrote:  Oh, that reminds me; I need to backup my saves again too. That is such an important thing to do; you never know. I don't know what makes the crazy game crash; I've had it crash with Vista, XP, and 7 on different computers and XP and 7 on the same one without changing DEP settings and making it large address aware before that was fixed with the LN patch.

Even with those settings, it would still sometimes crash on my old computer, and that computer has pretty good specs. I took a hunch when I found a great deal on a new computer and got one with the AMD processor and ATI graphics, and the game works better on it than on anything I've loaded it on before. It also has a quad core processor that helps with graphics. This game is such a graphics resource hog.

I'm really glad that merging your files helped so much. I'll probably try merging mine a little at a time and see if they will cooperate with the new system when I have time. It would be nice, because I notice a bit of lag after playing a town for a while now. It's not bad, but it could be better.

My computer has pretty good specs (I think) and the only thing that could be better is the RAM, and a better video card wouldn't hurt. I noticed less error codes after merging, too. I just wish the random crashes would stop. And the game is usually only using up 1.5 GBs when it crashes!

(10-17-2011 11:31 PM)Regina Wrote:  Oh, definitely make sure to save the original CC files when merging. I save everything, that way if something goes haywire I can go back to the old stuff. I don't have a lot of CC and the only things that wouldn't merge for me were HystericalParoxysm's original hair files from MTS. I figured that's no big deal, though, as I only use a couple of them.

Like you, I also didn't try merging game mods and everything else went perfectly. I took my files from I think slightly over 500 to around 100 and it made a huge difference. My combined files ended up slightly larger than the total original files but that could be because I had compressed any of those that could be compressed. Some stuff wouldn't work compressed and caused loading and lagging problems with my game.

It's strange because I've had times where the game has just crashed to the desktop for no apparent reason. I don't remember when that was, may've been before EA fixed it to recognize more RAM. I only have four gigs but dog-gone it, I want all four gigs used!

Now I've never had an Intel processor unless it was way before I ever knew what was going into my computer. I've used AMD for years along with NVidia graphics card. I know some people have problems with NVidia but I never have.

I have a NVidia graphics card too and haven't had any issues so far. My game closes randomly too. It used to close more before, now it's better, but it just closed when I loaded the Geometric patterns for a wall and minimized. I tried to maximize it, but it closed right away. Hmm. It JUST loaded it. It usually only CTD's when I have it open for a while. I'm not really sure why it closes sometimes. Maybe it is just random. Some of my hairs went missing after merging too. I just re-downloaded the ones which I needed and didn't merge them this time.

(10-27-2011 05:11 AM)whitePhazer Wrote:  I used to get a lot of lag and error code 12 when I was on a Intel duel core 2ghz with 2 gb's of ram. Built a new computer using an Intel i5 3.3ghz overclocked at 4.60ghz with 8 gb's ram and now get no lag or error code 12's. But one note, I have most of Twallens mods installed with no problems,but had recently tried his "Dresser" mod which is good but that even made my game lag so had to disable it. At the last count I have got 410 mods/cc installed

I only have 3 GB's of RAM and I'm thinking of updating sometime. There's been no lag, but it'd probably be better if I had more RAM anyways. I have NRaas's Dresser mod without issues (all the sims change their outfits every 7 am.) but it probably depends. I also have 2000 CC (merged, now though) and a save file (not folder) that's 160 MB big. LOL :)

(10-27-2011 01:18 PM)Regina Wrote:  Even on my old computer I never ran into the error codes. Maybe it's just because I didn't get to play enough to ever see them.

lkandak, I edited your original post with a little information about Pets and game lag.

I guess the error codes are when your sims have visited alot of lots/you have lots of sims in your town. But my first error code happened in my first game, when I only had 10 people in Sunset Valley. I guess it's really dependent...or just random.
I haven't installed Pets yet, but I'm hoping there isn't too big of a lag...

[Regina]

lkandak, do you occasionally delete your cache files? I see those files just getting larger and larger and the more different saves a person plays the bigger they get so I clean the whole mess out once in a while and let them start over.

[lkandak]

(10-31-2011 02:19 PM)Regina Wrote:  lkandak, do you occasionally delete your cache files? I see those files just getting larger and larger and the more different saves a person plays the bigger they get so I clean the whole mess out once in a while and let them start over.

Oops, I forgot to add that. I clear out my cache files every time before I play. I just use Delphy's Dashboard and set it so it doesn't automatically scan CC when it loads up, and then delete the Cache files. I can never remember all of them so I find it easier to do it through the dashboard.