Crashing issue in a custom world

earthgirl

I'm not sure what's going on here exactly, but here it is: I'm playing a family in a custom world and it's close to winter, like 3 hours left till it's officially winter in my game (9:08PM) it starts to snow and the game just plain freezes and crashes. Don't know what happens at that exact moment, I believe it's probably when the first layer of snow covers the ground and that's when it freezes for a bit, but its usually fine afterwards. I played winter in this world before with no issues whatsoever.

So, I reloaded the backup save and hoped that this doesn't happen again. Even saved several times before the deadly hour.... and what do you know? It crashed again, at the same hour and minute mark! I'm not sure what exactly the issue is, but I would love some help. I did save my sims to library and started a new save with them in Isla Paradisio, but it's not the same thing... I want to play with this town without having to restart the town itself.
I cleared the cache files, even took out the mods, but the problem persists.

earthgirl

So far so good, I disabled snow and the crashing didn't happen again.
At least I can go on with playing with this family the way I want to, but it stinks, because winter without snow is like summer without sun.

phoebebebe13

@igazor any tips?

earthgirl

It's just an issue with this world I guess.

I enabled snow again to see what happens, I all went well without crashing after the first layer of snow, but then a baby in the family was born and had to go buy a crib. When I went back to live mode it froze and crashed again.

igazor

Is this an extremely large or complicated custom world? Does snow cause any issues in more standard EA worlds (not Isla Paradiso, I mean more like Sunset Valley, Riverview, Twinbrook, etc.)? If this issue is across all worlds, we'll have to know more about the computer system being played on. Seasons and snowfall are very resource intensive and not all systems can handle them well.

Or it could be just that world as suspected.

earthgirl

This is the first time it happens in my game and I've played winter in this particular world before.
But yea, this world is pretty complicated if I were to compare it to Sunset Valley. Not sure if it's more complex than the other custom one I never had issues with(Rocky Streams) and that one has way more lots and more crazy terrain sculpting.

earthgirl

Looks like Seasons is causing the crashing in my game after all, since I could retrieve my other save of this family as well when I disabled it was the snow frying up my computer, literally. I don't know why, because it's never caused me trouble in the past.

igazor

If you would like to pursue the cause of the problem further, we would need to see a dxdiag to know more about the computer you are playing on and what, if anything, can be adjusted for better gameplay. It would have to be pasted into several responses here as it would be far too long to fit into one response, or you could use pastebin.com to upload it all in one step and provide a link.
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information

earthgirl

@izagor

Here's what I got: https://pastebin.com/ywMBi5RV

igazor

The weakspot there I'm afraid is your graphics card. An Nvidia GT430 is going to struggle and perhaps not be able to cope with the heaviest of the EPs (Pets, Seasons, IP, ITF). Whereas it was working better through winter weather before, there are a couple of things perhaps worth trying.

It looks like you are running at a resolution of 1920x1080. That might be too much for the card to handle. Can you try a lower resolution (everything will be somewhat larger and in less detail) to see if that relieves some of the strain? You also might try turning your heavier hitting graphics settings down in Game Options, especially when snow is expected.

I can't work out if this computer has dual graphics or not, it's also possible that the game isn't even using your Nvidia card.
@phoebebebe13 - what do you see?

earthgirl

1920x1080 is the default, since I have a large screen. I play Sims 3 in windowed mode for this exact reason. I might have set a few of the graphics a bit higher than usual, but I'm not sure. I'll check. I could play winter normally in my other towns with no crashing.
The game runs quite smoothly otherwise, even on high graphics. I think it's a Seasons problem, more than a graphics problem.

phoebebebe13

The GT 430 is a low end and very old card. It can not handle and is not designed for gaming in 1080p resolution. The higher the resolution , the better the video card you need. You need a GTX card to run 1080p. I would lower your resolution option for the game in the launcher. Your card may also be giving out. It was issued in 2010 and is 7 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_400_series

I agree with @igazor that this is a graphics card issue and having a 7 year old computer. They don't last forever. Your computer may not be able to handle this custom world