Hello all. I'm on PS3. The last sim in my household recently passed away. After I get the "The End" message, I go to move in a household from the family bin. After I choose one, the game sits on a loading screen forever (I've let it sit for up to 3 hours). It doesn't totally freeze and the plumbob continues to spin and sparkle, the music still plays, and tips still go by. I saved right after she had finished her bath and the "expire" action queued itself. When I instead chose to take over an existing household, everything worked fine. Is there any way to move in a family from the bin?
@marks217 I'm afraid there isn't much support to be had for the console versions of the game. This forum section is really for the PC/Mac computer version and specifically for tech assistance. Let's see if someone else answers, but we don't get very many console game questions here.
I'm having a Graphics Card issue, since the game gives me the "The Graphics Card is not recognized" error and a "Video Card is not recognized" error too.
The DeviceConfig.log is totally empty!
=== Options === === Default Options ===
I've tried everything to get some kind of result. Uninstalling, deleting registries, reinstalling, updating drivers, rolling back drivers, renaming The Sims 3 folder in My Documents... just about almost everything. I tried to add lines to the GraphicsCards.sgr and GraphicsRules.sgr files, but even then no avail. All of my drivers are up to date and Windows 10 does seem to recognize my card.
My ASUS laptop has both an integrated and dedicated graphics card. It's automatically set to the dedicated graphics according to NVIDIA Display settings and I'm trying to get it running with a GeForce 940M.
As for the game itself, I can load in and make sims. I can also zoom in on the houses. However, it doesn't let me adjust the graphical settings beyond the lowest and I get a strange white town whenever I zoom out completely.
I really want to play this game... am I out of luck?
I'm having a Graphics Card issue, since the game gives me the "The Graphics Card is not recognized" error and a "Video Card is not recognized" error too.
The DeviceConfig.log is totally empty!
=== Options === === Default Options ===
I've tried everything to get some kind of result. Uninstalling, deleting registries, reinstalling, updating drivers, rolling back drivers, renaming The Sims 3 folder in My Documents... just about almost everything. I tried to add lines to the GraphicsCards.sgr and GraphicsRules.sgr files, but even then no avail. All of my drivers are up to date and Windows 10 does seem to recognize my card.
My ASUS laptop has both an integrated and dedicated graphics card. It's automatically set to the dedicated graphics according to NVIDIA Display settings and I'm trying to get it running with a GeForce 940M.
As for the game itself, I can load in and make sims. I can also zoom in on the houses. However, it doesn't let me adjust the graphical settings beyond the lowest and I get a strange white town whenever I zoom out completely.
I really want to play this game... am I out of luck?
I'll vote for "No, you are not out of luck."
I will send you a PM (since as a New Member you cannot start one yourself) where I will ask for a dxdiag report. Let's get that card formally recognized properly. It's the game that isn't seeing or knowing what to do with it, not Win 10, and this is quite common on dual graphics setups.
I will add though, that your expectations for quality play with all EPs should not be overly huge. The 940M is not really strong enough to carry the entire game on full resolution and high graphics options settings, it will struggle and just doesn't have the bus width (throughput) that medium to higher end cards do. But the game shouldn't be impossible to launch, either. Different players' experiences tend to vary with that one and those in its class.
I have sims 4, and my loading and playing screen is laggy, where there are bars at the top of my screen. I have cleared out and done checks to test my PC's performance, and they all say that my PC is performing well. I do not have any mods installed, so if anyone can help me, that would be greatly appreciated
@Poconococo - A computer performing well and having strong enough components to handle an intensive game are two different things. Not all computers can be expected to run TS4, and the EPs you have installed (if any) may be a factor. But yes, a post on the correct forum board should get the attention of those who can better assist.
I recently downloaded a tongue CC as an accessory for my poses but now since I downloaded it, it's stuck to all my sims while in CAS and in the game. I can't take it out of my sims, I even deleted the tongue CC from my computer yet it's still there? What should I do, it's soooo annoying
I recently downloaded a tongue CC as an accessory for my poses but now since I downloaded it, it's stuck to all my sims while in CAS and in the game. I can't take it out of my sims, I even deleted the tongue CC from my computer yet it's still there? What should I do, it's soooo annoying
If this was a sims3pack Launcher install, the item needs to be removed from the dbc bundle file in DCCache where it would have landed upon installation. It also needs to be removed from DCBackup, from installed sims, and any other places where it might have landed. See Method by Mell for removal from the DCCache bundles. https://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2012/10/uninstall-sims3packs-method-by-mell.html
If all else fails and there is no way to remove the unwanted item entirely, then one might have to declare the entire TS3 user game folder a loss, pull it out for safekeeping thus forcing the game to create a new one on its next launch, and then slowly begin building up the content installs of all kinds again, hopefully without the offending item, with the ultimate goal of being able to copy one's saves back in and resume play.
I play on a Mac. So far I had a bunch of issues :
- Long-haired dog apears short-haired with a weird transparent layer,
- My dog is barely playable anymore, he can’t go through the front door (for no reason) and he constantly gets blocked with a bubble saying he cannot go where he wants to go, I keep having to go to buy mode and move him.
- The game crashes regularly
- Sometimes my sims faces will look melted
- My laptop gets very noisy and overheating
- I have been unable to connect to my sims 3 store account for a while. I type in the username and password, it works but nothing happens.
- It can be a bit slow especially when my sims go out.
@Dianesims The specs of your mac (found under "About This Mac" if you click on the apple icon at the top-left corner of your screen) will influence how well you can play TS3, and with which EPs. If you post the specs, people here will be able to give you better advice.
But even the newest, most powerful macs have very little chance of running TS3 with the most resource-intensive packs, of which Pets is certainly at the top of the list. (Next is Seasons, followed by Island Paradise and Into the Future.) This is because TS3 for mac uses a program called Cider to translate the game for mac OS, and Cider can't use more than 2 GB RAM at a time. There is unfortunately no way around this, other than playing on a Windows system. So it's entirely unsurprising that you would have so many issues playing with Pets.
Some of your problems are very likely the result of playing on a mac. The game will crash when it goes over the RAM limit, which probably happens quickly with the Pets EP. When your sims go out, your computer has to load and render new lots and other sims, further increasing its workload. The appearance of your long-haired dog and your sims' melted faces are graphics glitches that could be due to a bad, insufficient, or improperly functioning graphics card, which is why it's important to know your specs. Your computer is overheating and running the fan on full blast because it's working harder than it should to run the game. This may have something to do with graphics card problems, but even in the absence of that, your computer will still have a lot of trouble with the demands of the game, especially but not limited to extended sessions in CAS or build/buy. Another issue is the in-game fps (frames per second), which I don't think you can limit on a mac. Rates in the hundreds cause even excellent graphics cards to work hard and heat up. (You can check this by typing "fps on" into the cheat console [crtl-shift-C] and the number should pop up in the upper-right-hand corner of your screen.) My macbook gets hot enough for me to worry about it after an hour or two of playing, and it's only a few months old.
As to your dog's routing issues, these glitches happen occasionally for no apparent reason (and are apparently quite common with pets), but moving him in buy mode will only make things worse. It's better to reset any stuck sim by typing "resetsim (firstname) (lastname)" into the cheat console; if you have nraas MasterController, a reset under Advanced options would probably be even better.
There are ways to partially address some of the issues you're experiencing, but it might be that running TS3 with the Pets EP is unhealthy for your computer even with the best practices you can implement.
- My dog is barely playable anymore, he can’t go through the front door (for no reason) and he constantly gets blocked with a bubble saying he cannot go where he wants to go, I keep having to go to buy mode and move him.
This particular issue hits all TS3 players, it is not Mac specific. There could be invisible objects on the lot in question, called "jigs" or "pet jigs" that get left behind after certain (usually but not always) interrupted interactions. There are two safe ways to remove those.
-- For mod users, use MasterController to flush them.
-- Retreat to Edit Town, evict everyone from the residential lot, copy the lot down to the bin, bulldoze the original, replace the lot with a copy, and move everyone back in without having left the screen.
Other forms of resets do not get rid of these jig objects. But yes, I have to agree with @puzzlezaddict that using the Move Objects On cheat in Build/Buy Mode to move any kind of sim around is not recommended and an almost certain way to lead to game save corruption. The MOO cheat is meant for objects, not sims. The same can be said for the testingcheatsenabled shift-click kind of object deletion.
Playing TS3 with the heaviest hitting EPs including Pets, even on Mac hardware that is otherwise up to the task and doesn't typically become prone to overheating, requires much care to stay under the Mac Cider 2 GB usage limit. Almost constant purging of RAM is required for most to stay well under that limit. https://bluebellflora.com/resetting-ram-during-gameplay
But honestly, chasing down a satisfying TS3 experience on just about any Mac is, after a certain point for most players, a constant battle against resource usage and limitations that just becomes much less fun than the gameplay can provide. At least, not without drastically altering one's expectations and playstyles. Hence the seemingly never-ending advice to not play the Mac version and find a way, either through Bootcamp or by acquiring a sufficiently strong enough PC, to play the Windows version instead for those who can.
Specs Macbook pro Retina from 2015
Processor : 2,7 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory/RAM : 8 Go 1867 MHz DDR3
Graphics : Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 Mo
I had no idea using the moveobjects cheats on pets was bad ! I use resetsim quite often, because my sims get "stuck" in awkward positions and places very often (like in a sleeping position, mid-air, in the living-room......) but it doesn't work for the dog, he still won't be able to move.
I have no mods but a lot of Sims3packs, maybe it's related. I will try to copy the lot and replace the original. I have the base game, Pets and Seasons, that's all.
Oh I should also add that my mac doesn't have lots of storage left (right now 2go something, out of 250), I delete stuff quite often. But when I go to "about this mac", I see it's mostly "other" that fills up the mac and that is more complicated to delete (I tried Cleanmymac but it cleaned 500go and then you have to pay ) I manually deleted some cache files too.
I know the Sims is better on PC, but I can't afford to buy one just to play. So I use the mac. I have Sims 4 too with Cats and Dogs and so far it works well.
@Dianesims I'm not surprised that you've been having trouble playing TS3 on your computer. igazor is the real expert here, not me, but he'll tell you that integrated graphics cards are most often insufficient, or perhaps just barely adequate with low in-game graphics settings, to run some of the more demanding EPs. I imagine that snow would be particularly hard on your card.
The storage issue is also something to address, but again, I'll defer to the expert on the best way to deal with that.
As far as overheating goes, your computer is probably going to have issues no matter what you do, but you can help it a bit by keeping it elevated so that air can circulate underneath. BluebellFlora recommended a product that helps in this post; I bought one, and it's great. Anything similar that lets the heat dissipate from the bottom of your laptop is a good idea. No matter what you do, don't wrap it up in a case or swaddle it in blankets, as the fan will be overmatched and utterly unable to do its job.
TS4 was designed in part to run well on computers with lower-end hardware, and it also has a proper mac OS version that plays just like the one for Windows. So your computer is likely well suited to the task of running that game. I don't know anything about the EPs except that they generally have less content than their TS3 counterparts (not a criticism, but less content can mean fewer processes for the game to manage at any given time). But some of the issues with the Pets EP have to do with the functioning of pets out in the open world, which is obviously not a consideration in TS4.
If you do want to keep playing TS3, I would highly recommend using mods to control some of the other issues you're seeing. Nraas has a couple (ErrorTrap and Overwatch) that clean up the errors and glitches that can accumulate in a save. Another (MasterController) adds many unobtrusive functions, one of which is a comprehensive reset of a glitched sim. If the first two didn't address your stuck sims automatically, you could use MC to reset them and/or the objects that are causing problems. Some corruption can't be overcome, but if you catch it early, like when your dog first has routing issues, you can restore the sim to virtual health. MC is also the mod that igazor mentioned could be used to flush leftover jigs. There is also a mod that can be deployed to manage stray animals in town, but since I don't have it in my own game I can't tell you exactly how it works. (Probably very well though, as nraas mods are reliable and efficient and tend to do precisely what they promise.)
Still, I'm not sure how much you can expect out of playing TS3 on your laptop. Especially if you're letting it overheat and keep running, you could possibly be damaging the computer and taking years off its life. There's no way to know for sure what's going on internally, but the heat and the extremely loud fan should at the very least convince you to quit your current simming session and give the laptop a break.
@Dianesims - I am very sorry, but there is likely not a way to get what most of us would call decent TS3 game performance on Pets and Seasons out of that graphics chip. It's just not made for such use. Bootcamping would be out of the question because of lack of hard drive capacity and the same graphics chip would be limiting on the Windows side.
On the drive space, Macs can be more forgiving than PCs running Windows in this regard. But not at 2 GB free of 256, that's less than 1% free space. There needs to be more free space than that for OS X to function properly, as well as certain apps like web browsers and even sims games. It should be taken as a given that at least 25 GB of free space should be maintained on that machine. And not by clearing cache files, that's a good thing to do but they will just accumulate again, by clearing out other kinds of files that have been stored on it. Perhaps you have a music or movie collection that is using up a lot of this space? Or some other form of downloaded or "collectible" data files that would be better off stored elsewhere?
Forcing TS3 to run, well or badly, and continuing to operate with essentially no hard drive space free can be expected to take years off the lifespan of that computer. With the processor and RAM that it has, it's not a bad laptop -- for other purposes, not for graphics intensive gaming. I would imagine that it could take to TS4 (not with the heavier TS4 EPs) better because the base TS4 game is more processor than graphics card intensive.
Sorry, it's in French, but still, as you can see photos and videos don't take that much space, it's the Autre ("Other") that fills up the hard drive and I don't know how to delete these files. I've transferred a lot of photos to my external hard drive, I deleted all the movies except one. I don't have that many files. It's really annoying. I had managed to clear 14go, and it's all filled now with the sims 4!
@Dianesims - Yes, the "Other" category in your case is not helpful. I don't get very meaningful breakdowns on my version of OS X either, it first throws all of what I would call movies into System (because it doesn't know what these unclassified things are) then after thinking about it for a while decides they are Documents instead of Videos. But I already know what I have stored on my drives, so in my case at least the total is never a big surprise. These movies in my case are external to iTunes and any other Mac managed system, so they are just batches of misc unclassified documents to the operating system.
Maybe it would help to pinpoint where all of this space is being used rather than by file type. You are looking for where over 200 GB of storage is being taken up, it can't all be hiding on you. Is a lot of it showing in the size of your Documents folder (do a Get Info)? Or some other, like Downloads, or split between them and then maybe you can drill down into sub-folders to help find out what the majority of these files actually are? I suspect saved games and user game folders will be a significant portion, but could be other files hogging up the space as well.
I just checked, the document folder is only 1.9go. Could it be emails ? I have way too many, and I know attached files can take a lot of space.
Maybe. But an email store of 200 GB (or anything close to that) might tend to explode pretty often. If you are using Mac Mail, you can get to the folder where the Mail database is by holding down the Option key and hitting Go from the top Finder menu, then Libraries > Mail and do a Get Info from there.
Hi everyone :) As I posted on another link, I have problem with my Sims 3 game. So, I start the game and everything is fine. I choose my world and then game started to loading, but can t be loaded till the end. I would like to screenshot you that but I don t have an option here for send pictures. Did someone can help me? Thanks
@joanne71 The first step to try is to drag your TS3 folder out of Documents (the entire folder, not just its contents) and place it somewhere safe with a new name. Then launch the game again and see if you can load a world. If so, then you can start adding content from your old folder back into your new one, checking to see if the game still loads properly. This way, you can isolate what's causing your problems.
If the clean folder doesn't work, please post your computer's specs as well as which EPs and SPs you have installed. A dxdiag might also be helpful; you could upload it to a (free) pastebin account and provide a broken-up link (h.t.t.p. or something similar). As a new member, you can't post links yet. And no one posts pics here directly, just bbcode from an image hosting site. You could break up an image link here as well, but your problem is common enough that I think responders will know exactly what you're describing.
Also, if you've updated your game in any way, like installing a new pack or adding custom content or mods, that would be good to know.
Hello all! I am writing this on behalf of my wife. She has encountered a problem where she wants to access the console bar using Ctrl+Shft+C but it wont open for her. All it will do is make a screenshot. We have looked online, tried restarting the game, reinstalled the game, everything we can think of but still cannot get the menu to open...We managed to get it open once before but not anymore...Any help or advise would be greatly appreciated :) Thank you all in advance :3
Comments
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
The DeviceConfig.log is totally empty!
=== Options === === Default Options ===
I've tried everything to get some kind of result. Uninstalling, deleting registries, reinstalling, updating drivers, rolling back drivers, renaming The Sims 3 folder in My Documents... just about almost everything. I tried to add lines to the GraphicsCards.sgr and GraphicsRules.sgr files, but even then no avail. All of my drivers are up to date and Windows 10 does seem to recognize my card.
My ASUS laptop has both an integrated and dedicated graphics card. It's automatically set to the dedicated graphics according to NVIDIA Display settings and I'm trying to get it running with a GeForce 940M.
As for the game itself, I can load in and make sims. I can also zoom in on the houses. However, it doesn't let me adjust the graphical settings beyond the lowest and I get a strange white town whenever I zoom out completely.
I really want to play this game... am I out of luck?
I will send you a PM (since as a New Member you cannot start one yourself) where I will ask for a dxdiag report. Let's get that card formally recognized properly. It's the game that isn't seeing or knowing what to do with it, not Win 10, and this is quite common on dual graphics setups.
I will add though, that your expectations for quality play with all EPs should not be overly huge. The 940M is not really strong enough to carry the entire game on full resolution and high graphics options settings, it will struggle and just doesn't have the bus width (throughput) that medium to higher end cards do. But the game shouldn't be impossible to launch, either. Different players' experiences tend to vary with that one and those in its class.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
Just vibing...
Check out my stories The Diversity Club and Lost Pride here on the forums!
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
https://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2012/10/uninstall-sims3packs-method-by-mell.html
If all else fails and there is no way to remove the unwanted item entirely, then one might have to declare the entire TS3 user game folder a loss, pull it out for safekeeping thus forcing the game to create a new one on its next launch, and then slowly begin building up the content installs of all kinds again, hopefully without the offending item, with the ultimate goal of being able to copy one's saves back in and resume play.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
- Long-haired dog apears short-haired with a weird transparent layer,
- My dog is barely playable anymore, he can’t go through the front door (for no reason) and he constantly gets blocked with a bubble saying he cannot go where he wants to go, I keep having to go to buy mode and move him.
- The game crashes regularly
- Sometimes my sims faces will look melted
- My laptop gets very noisy and overheating
- I have been unable to connect to my sims 3 store account for a while. I type in the username and password, it works but nothing happens.
- It can be a bit slow especially when my sims go out.
But even the newest, most powerful macs have very little chance of running TS3 with the most resource-intensive packs, of which Pets is certainly at the top of the list. (Next is Seasons, followed by Island Paradise and Into the Future.) This is because TS3 for mac uses a program called Cider to translate the game for mac OS, and Cider can't use more than 2 GB RAM at a time. There is unfortunately no way around this, other than playing on a Windows system. So it's entirely unsurprising that you would have so many issues playing with Pets.
Some of your problems are very likely the result of playing on a mac. The game will crash when it goes over the RAM limit, which probably happens quickly with the Pets EP. When your sims go out, your computer has to load and render new lots and other sims, further increasing its workload. The appearance of your long-haired dog and your sims' melted faces are graphics glitches that could be due to a bad, insufficient, or improperly functioning graphics card, which is why it's important to know your specs. Your computer is overheating and running the fan on full blast because it's working harder than it should to run the game. This may have something to do with graphics card problems, but even in the absence of that, your computer will still have a lot of trouble with the demands of the game, especially but not limited to extended sessions in CAS or build/buy. Another issue is the in-game fps (frames per second), which I don't think you can limit on a mac. Rates in the hundreds cause even excellent graphics cards to work hard and heat up. (You can check this by typing "fps on" into the cheat console [crtl-shift-C] and the number should pop up in the upper-right-hand corner of your screen.) My macbook gets hot enough for me to worry about it after an hour or two of playing, and it's only a few months old.
As to your dog's routing issues, these glitches happen occasionally for no apparent reason (and are apparently quite common with pets), but moving him in buy mode will only make things worse. It's better to reset any stuck sim by typing "resetsim (firstname) (lastname)" into the cheat console; if you have nraas MasterController, a reset under Advanced options would probably be even better.
There are ways to partially address some of the issues you're experiencing, but it might be that running TS3 with the Pets EP is unhealthy for your computer even with the best practices you can implement.
-- For mod users, use MasterController to flush them.
-- Retreat to Edit Town, evict everyone from the residential lot, copy the lot down to the bin, bulldoze the original, replace the lot with a copy, and move everyone back in without having left the screen.
Other forms of resets do not get rid of these jig objects. But yes, I have to agree with @puzzlezaddict that using the Move Objects On cheat in Build/Buy Mode to move any kind of sim around is not recommended and an almost certain way to lead to game save corruption. The MOO cheat is meant for objects, not sims. The same can be said for the testingcheatsenabled shift-click kind of object deletion.
Playing TS3 with the heaviest hitting EPs including Pets, even on Mac hardware that is otherwise up to the task and doesn't typically become prone to overheating, requires much care to stay under the Mac Cider 2 GB usage limit. Almost constant purging of RAM is required for most to stay well under that limit.
https://bluebellflora.com/resetting-ram-during-gameplay
As long as we're there, we also have this guide and others like it that Bluebellflora has prepared for us over the years.
https://bluebellflora.com/how-to-play-the-sims-3-on-a-mac
But honestly, chasing down a satisfying TS3 experience on just about any Mac is, after a certain point for most players, a constant battle against resource usage and limitations that just becomes much less fun than the gameplay can provide. At least, not without drastically altering one's expectations and playstyles. Hence the seemingly never-ending advice to not play the Mac version and find a way, either through Bootcamp or by acquiring a sufficiently strong enough PC, to play the Windows version instead for those who can.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
Specs Macbook pro Retina from 2015
Processor : 2,7 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory/RAM : 8 Go 1867 MHz DDR3
Graphics : Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 Mo
I had no idea using the moveobjects cheats on pets was bad ! I use resetsim quite often, because my sims get "stuck" in awkward positions and places very often (like in a sleeping position, mid-air, in the living-room......) but it doesn't work for the dog, he still won't be able to move.
I have no mods but a lot of Sims3packs, maybe it's related. I will try to copy the lot and replace the original. I have the base game, Pets and Seasons, that's all.
Oh I should also add that my mac doesn't have lots of storage left (right now 2go something, out of 250), I delete stuff quite often. But when I go to "about this mac", I see it's mostly "other" that fills up the mac and that is more complicated to delete (I tried Cleanmymac but it cleaned 500go and then you have to pay
I know the Sims is better on PC, but I can't afford to buy one just to play. So I use the mac. I have Sims 4 too with Cats and Dogs and so far it works well.
The storage issue is also something to address, but again, I'll defer to the expert on the best way to deal with that.
As far as overheating goes, your computer is probably going to have issues no matter what you do, but you can help it a bit by keeping it elevated so that air can circulate underneath. BluebellFlora recommended a product that helps in this post; I bought one, and it's great. Anything similar that lets the heat dissipate from the bottom of your laptop is a good idea. No matter what you do, don't wrap it up in a case or swaddle it in blankets, as the fan will be overmatched and utterly unable to do its job.
TS4 was designed in part to run well on computers with lower-end hardware, and it also has a proper mac OS version that plays just like the one for Windows. So your computer is likely well suited to the task of running that game. I don't know anything about the EPs except that they generally have less content than their TS3 counterparts (not a criticism, but less content can mean fewer processes for the game to manage at any given time). But some of the issues with the Pets EP have to do with the functioning of pets out in the open world, which is obviously not a consideration in TS4.
If you do want to keep playing TS3, I would highly recommend using mods to control some of the other issues you're seeing. Nraas has a couple (ErrorTrap and Overwatch) that clean up the errors and glitches that can accumulate in a save. Another (MasterController) adds many unobtrusive functions, one of which is a comprehensive reset of a glitched sim. If the first two didn't address your stuck sims automatically, you could use MC to reset them and/or the objects that are causing problems. Some corruption can't be overcome, but if you catch it early, like when your dog first has routing issues, you can restore the sim to virtual health. MC is also the mod that igazor mentioned could be used to flush leftover jigs. There is also a mod that can be deployed to manage stray animals in town, but since I don't have it in my own game I can't tell you exactly how it works. (Probably very well though, as nraas mods are reliable and efficient and tend to do precisely what they promise.)
Still, I'm not sure how much you can expect out of playing TS3 on your laptop. Especially if you're letting it overheat and keep running, you could possibly be damaging the computer and taking years off its life. There's no way to know for sure what's going on internally, but the heat and the extremely loud fan should at the very least convince you to quit your current simming session and give the laptop a break.
On the drive space, Macs can be more forgiving than PCs running Windows in this regard. But not at 2 GB free of 256, that's less than 1% free space. There needs to be more free space than that for OS X to function properly, as well as certain apps like web browsers and even sims games. It should be taken as a given that at least 25 GB of free space should be maintained on that machine. And not by clearing cache files, that's a good thing to do but they will just accumulate again, by clearing out other kinds of files that have been stored on it. Perhaps you have a music or movie collection that is using up a lot of this space? Or some other form of downloaded or "collectible" data files that would be better off stored elsewhere?
Forcing TS3 to run, well or badly, and continuing to operate with essentially no hard drive space free can be expected to take years off the lifespan of that computer. With the processor and RAM that it has, it's not a bad laptop -- for other purposes, not for graphics intensive gaming. I would imagine that it could take to TS4 (not with the heavier TS4 EPs) better because the base TS4 game is more processor than graphics card intensive.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
Sorry, it's in French, but still, as you can see photos and videos don't take that much space, it's the Autre ("Other") that fills up the hard drive and I don't know how to delete these files. I've transferred a lot of photos to my external hard drive, I deleted all the movies except one. I don't have that many files. It's really annoying. I had managed to clear 14go, and it's all filled now with the sims 4!
Maybe it would help to pinpoint where all of this space is being used rather than by file type. You are looking for where over 200 GB of storage is being taken up, it can't all be hiding on you. Is a lot of it showing in the size of your Documents folder (do a Get Info)? Or some other, like Downloads, or split between them and then maybe you can drill down into sub-folders to help find out what the majority of these files actually are? I suspect saved games and user game folders will be a significant portion, but could be other files hogging up the space as well.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
NRaas has moved!
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If the clean folder doesn't work, please post your computer's specs as well as which EPs and SPs you have installed. A dxdiag might also be helpful; you could upload it to a (free) pastebin account and provide a broken-up link (h.t.t.p. or something similar). As a new member, you can't post links yet. And no one posts pics here directly, just bbcode from an image hosting site. You could break up an image link here as well, but your problem is common enough that I think responders will know exactly what you're describing.
Also, if you've updated your game in any way, like installing a new pack or adding custom content or mods, that would be good to know.