What (before I give up altogether) am I doing wrong?

Bilmonaghan · September 2011

I just love the Sims franchise, but I'm getting fed up with Sims 3.

I'm about to uninstall and reinstall everything and see if I can keep my saved games running for longer than a few weeks but if it doesn't work this time, I may give up before Pets comes out.

This has been going on since the game came out in '08: I'll play a household for about a generation and a half, then it starts getting all glitchy, then becomes unplayable. I've never seen grandkids.

When I played Sims2 I played the same households for the entire run of the franchise. You'd have glitches now and again, but nothing completely crippling of a particular saved game. Sims 2 was fun. This is just frustrating, almost insulting.

I'm starting to suspect that what I'm doing wrong is expecting the game to run well and I should just quit before I blow any more time and money on it.

I do send my Sims on vacations a lot. They spend for more time at the vacation destinations than at home. So they spend between 3 and 28 days on vacation for every week in their base neighborhood. If all that time on vacation is causing bloated, corrupt saves, I can understand that may be the problem, but shouldn't EA have fixed it long ago?

I don't think they're motivated to make the game run well cuz we blow money on it even though it's glitchy and crash-y. If that's the case, I have to stop being such a sucker and find something less predictably frustrating to do with my free time.

slynnski · September 2011

The only suggestion that I have is to try some mods Twallan/Nraas offers. There are ones called Overwatch, Error Trap, etc that improve functionality and get rid of things that cause known glitches. I personally have never really had any serious problems with my game, but I have heard from other Simmers on the forums that Twallan's mods have saved their games.

IAmtheGoblinKing · September 2011

If you're open to it, definitely try some mods. More specifically Twallan's mods on Story Progress and the Master Controller.

Twallan has a mod (I believe it's Overwatch if not the other two listed above) that will also help your game run even if you have corrupted data/files.

Now, maybe a quick fix to see if you can get your game to run BEFORE deleting your sims 3 folder and starting from scratch again, is delete the following files from your Sims 3 folder:

CASPartCache
compositorCache
scriptCache
SimCompositorCache

Deleting those cache files is safe. Your game will re-create these files when you load up your game. Sometimes these files can get corrupted.

Hope that helps.

Good luck seeing those grandkids. 8)

Bilmonaghan · September 2011

IAmtheGoblinKing wrote:

If you're open to it, definitely try some mods. More specifically Twallan's mods on Story Progress and the Master Controller.

CASPartCache
compositorCache
scriptCache
SimCompositorCache

Deleting those cache files is safe. Your game will re-create these files when you load up your game. Sometimes these files can get corrupted.

Hope that helps.

Good luck seeing those grandkids. 8)

Thanks guys. Yeah, I remove the cache files between sessions all the time. I used to run with AwesomeMod, but would still get fatal glitches and decided to run mod-less for a year or so. I'm pretty sure the mod reduced the frequency of fatally corrupted saves, but it'd still happen eventuall and I got tired of bothering with updating the mod along with all the other dang maintenance.

Never tried Twallan's stuff. I might give that a spin if (OK, when

) I start having trouble again.

slynnski · September 2011

Bilmonaghan wrote:

IAmtheGoblinKing wrote:

If you're open to it, definitely try some mods. More specifically Twallan's mods on Story Progress and the Master Controller.

CASPartCache
compositorCache
scriptCache
SimCompositorCache

Deleting those cache files is safe. Your game will re-create these files when you load up your game. Sometimes these files can get corrupted.

Hope that helps.

Good luck seeing those grandkids. 8)

Thanks guys. Yeah, I remove the cache files between sessions all the time. I used to run with AwesomeMod, but would still get fatal glitches and decided to run mod-less for a year or so. I'm pretty sure the mod reduced the frequency of fatally corrupted saves, but it'd still happen eventuall and I got tired of bothering with updating the mod along with all the other dang maintenance.

Never tried Twallan's stuff. I might give that a spin if (OK, when ) I start having trouble again.

I've never used AwesomeMod, but I have heard that Twallan's are really reliable and that they really have improved simmer's games. In fact, his are the only that I would trust in my game at the moment. I can't fully testify because I've only been using his mods for a short amount of time and I've never had any truly bad glitches in my game, but time will tell. I say give it a try. If they don't end up helping, you can always remove them.

ivinian · September 2011

I can testify that they're solid. I use next to no CC in my game at all, but I do use a bunch of his mods and they have made my game playable again. I've used his mods for like 6 months now and haven't had any issues (beyond the Pets demo; they aren't compatible with Pets yet). Twallan is great about updating often, communicating with those who use his mods, and fixing issues quickly. I wish EA would pay attention to him, because he does it right.

sirona66 · September 2011

i found that the upgrades to the game itself, even if you don't have that perticular expansion, causes a problem with saves. For instance the memories. Every sim in your town is getting as many memories as your sims in the family does. so say you have 100 sims in the neighborhood, soon you have 100 x300 memories and huge saves. or error 12 saves, like i was getting. I went to twallans mods, and i got a memory supresser as well, my game now runs much smoother and with no more error 12's.

I still don't take chances, i play say 2 hours and save/close out game then return to it. I did find that about 2 1/2 hours is about the most i could go before i would still get an error 12 do to the save being to big.

sereniticat2 · September 2011

Bilmonaghan wrote:

I just love the Sims franchise, but I'm getting fed up with Sims 3.

I'm about to uninstall and reinstall everything and see if I can keep my saved games running for longer than a few weeks but if it doesn't work this time, I may give up before Pets comes out.

This has been going on since the game came out in '08: I'll play a household for about a generation and a half, then it starts getting all glitchy, then becomes unplayable. I've never seen grandkids.

When I played Sims2 I played the same households for the entire run of the franchise. You'd have glitches now and again, but nothing completely crippling of a particular saved game. Sims 2 was fun. This is just frustrating, almost insulting.

I'm starting to suspect that what I'm doing wrong is expecting the game to run well and I should just quit before I blow any more time and money on it.

I do send my Sims on vacations a lot. They spend for more time at the vacation destinations than at home. So they spend between 3 and 28 days on vacation for every week in their base neighborhood. If all that time on vacation is causing bloated, corrupt saves, I can understand that may be the problem, but shouldn't EA have fixed it long ago?

I don't think they're motivated to make the game run well cuz we blow money on it even though it's glitchy and crash-y. If that's the case, I have to stop being such a sucker and find something less predictably frustrating to do with my free time.

Oooh mate, i've had this same problem since '08 as well. I've never ever been able to make it past Gen 1 & 1/2because after about a week of playing my game would get glitchy or something would happen and I'd find myself having to uninstall and reinstall and I'd just give up and start a new family.

I gave up on actually playing the game for quite a while.

Then, I found myself on a very long sick leave and I really wanted to play.

I decided I'd risk some actual mods and got Twallens master Controller, then I added Story progression and Overwatch.

My game has Never ever played so well. Overwatch is amazing. I no longer get error 12's trying to save my game.

i know mods can be scarey, and I admit I was really reluctant to get them, but now I would not play without them. With Twallen's mods, I've finally made the generation break through and I've made it not only through Gen 2 for the first time but am happily making my way through gen 3 ! And, my hubby doesn't have to hear me cussing like a sailor due to crashes and save fails.

If EA were smart, they'd find Twallen and hire him/her.

psychotica · September 2011

Definitely check out Twallans Error Trap and Overwatch mods. I couldn't play a family for very long without getting fatal errors before I found these. Now I have some ridiculously huge games that still run perfectly. Master controller is another great mod. I have a TON of CC and I have no issues, I can't even remember the last time I had a crash.

WoWLynnia · September 2011

As others have said, check out Twallan's mods, specifically Master Controller, Story Progression, Error Trap, and Overwatch. I would also suggest finding a mod that prevents the automatic creation of memories (haven't checked if Twallan has one, nor do I remember where I acquired the one that I use, sorry :? ). Aside from basic play and family trees, there are two HUGE things that will accumulate information in your saved game and make it unplayable after a while because it just gets too big. One is inventories, and Late Night and the patch associated with it made this issue particularly bad. Sims in other households continually spawn cars that get stored in their inventory, eventually accumulating in literally hundreds of cars per sim that your game save has to manage. The other issue is memories. The game automatically creates so many random, senseless memories like "learned logic skill" and "first trip to the park". It stores up to 300 memories PER SIM, resulting in thousands of memories for your game to manage. Without those two issues, your game will run substantially more smoothly.

Edit: Also a note, the game came out in June '09, not '08.

psychotica · September 2011

Twallans Master Controller has a setting that allows you to turn off memory creation in the main settings.

GEMUFRAN · September 2011

Hola, soy nueva en esto y he comprado el disco de expansión de los sims3 vida en la ciudad pero no se de que manera tengo que instalarlo para que se monte con el juego base Sims3.
¿Puede alguien ayudarme, por favor? :?

Bilmonaghan · September 2011

Thanks for all the tips everybody.

I've just installed (let's hope correctly) Error Trap, Overwatch, Master Controller and Story Progression.

Let ya know what happens.

Thanks again. :-)

slynnski · September 2011

Bilmonaghan wrote:

Thanks for all the tips everybody.

I've just installed (let's hope correctly) Error Trap, Overwatch, Master Controller and Story Progression.

Let ya know what happens.

Thanks again. :-)

Awesome. I really hope it all works out for you. I'd hate to have to give up playing TS3, or to see anyone else have to just because of EA's incompetence. Thank goodness for Twallan!

sereniticat2 · September 2011

Bilmonaghan wrote:

Thanks for all the tips everybody.

I've just installed (let's hope correctly) Error Trap, Overwatch, Master Controller and Story Progression.

Let ya know what happens.

Thanks again. :-)

I wish you lottsa luck. Hope it all works out.

Remember, read the read me files Twallen offers, because there's a lottsa options given in his mods to really let you set your game up how you want it.

have fun !

IAmtheGoblinKing · September 2011

Bilmonaghan wrote:

Thanks for all the tips everybody.

I've just installed (let's hope correctly) Error Trap, Overwatch, Master Controller and Story Progression.

Let ya know what happens.

Thanks again. :-)

Great - I'm sure it will work out. And, if by some fluke it doesn't, you can always contact Twallan through his NRaas Industries site. He is willing to support and help those who download his work.
Best of luck~ 8)

NTense · September 2011

I too feel like giving up because of these joy-crushing glitches and bugs. I didn't buy the game on release so I shudder to think how bad it was on day one. I only recently downloaded it after seeing some gameplay and have enjoyed many hours of sim fun since.

But now I have reached the point where when things are going well and I am really immersed in the game, something odd happens for no apparant reason. The long save and loads are crippling and we shouldn't have to install 3rd party mods to fix that.

Now when I travel to China, my Sim's surname changes and a look at the family tree discovers that she is married to a ghost and had a baby with him out of nowhere. Ok I thought, I can work around this. Then the game starts freezing every minute for 5 seconds each time and when I return home, some of my Sims are unselectable and can't perform interactions. Why am I trying to work around these blunders - shouldn't that be the job of testers? I almost pre-ordered Pets as that seems like a wonderful idea but hopefully EA can sort out the issues first.

KramYraelo · September 2011

I definitely agree with the suggestions to use Twallan's mods. I too was ready to give up, and in fact did for a few months at the begining of the year. But his mods have pretty much kept my game playable.

Another thing you may want to check out is Crincrit's forum thread and blog topic on bad custom content. You can find the blog topic here: http://crinrict-help.blogspot.com/search/label/Bad%20CC, and the froum thread here: http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/234888.page. Twallan's mods are great for fixing game mechanics, but bad custom content is another game killer for me. I had sims looking like they just walked off of the set of a sci-fi film (long gangly arms with claws on the end and their heads in the middle of their body) as a rsult of certain content creators deciding evreything\everything\everything clothing catogrization was a great thing. NOT!

Reading through his blog, starting from scratch installing, I used Delphy's Sim3PackCleaner tool to scan each sim and lot I installed from the Exchange and remove the mis-catagorized\over-catogorized or just plan bad stuff and have had a very pleasant experience the last several months. It's really worth the extra time and effort if you use a lot of stuff from the exchange or download a lot of custom content like I do.

Hope you get it sorted out. It's relaly not a bad game when things work (though I still like TS2 better myself).

Regards,

Kramy

Bilmonaghan · September 2011

Yeah, sereniticat2, like a dizzying array of options. At first I just want to run them in the background to save my file, but I'll be mining the readmes for ideas to tweek my game.

I only ran the game about 1/2 an hour this a.m., on a fairly fresh saved game so I haven't had a chance to test the glitch-preventing features yet but there are some real promising signs.

Like, one of the first things one of the mods did was remove 54 abandoned vehicles from Bridgeport.

54? The saves only two Sim-days old! It also removed an untold number of homeless Sims.

I also noticed in reading about this stuff that my habit of keep massive amounts of objects in Sims' personal inventories probably didn't help matters. I'm kinda a hoarder in games so I'm probably gonna have to figure out how to be more feng shui about stuff.

Bilmonaghan · September 2011

WoWLynnia wrote:

I would also suggest finding a mod that prevents the automatic creation of memories ...so many random, senseless memories ... ... PER SIM,

Ba haha ha! Truly spoke. Hate's a strong word, but man I hate that stupid feature. Does anyone use it or like it? Has anyone troubled to flip through more than a couple pages of those albums? I can't imagine, and even if I liked it I can't imagine it's worth all the extra file size. Those artless photos. Banal, generic, endlessly repeating "cute" captions. :evil:

And those dang alerts in the upper right corner! It's like being prodded with a plastic spork all freaking night!

But is there a mod that kills Memories? I'd prefer something that's part of the Twallan family of mods. Or something equally reputable that's compatible.

Thanks again everybody.

But I'd try shaky stuff too. Can't be worse than Memories themselves, y'know?

Bilmonaghan · September 2011

psychotica wrote:

Twallans Master Controller has a setting that allows you to turn off memory creation in the main settings.

Thank you! I was just asking for that tip and you'd already answered it! I will definitely be finding, then toggling that toggle next.

Bilmonaghan · September 2011

NTense wrote:

But now I have reached the point where when things are going well and I am really immersed in the game, something odd happens for no apparant reason. The long save and loads are crippling and we shouldn't have to install 3rd party mods to fix that.

I completely agree with you, to the point I feel I've contributed to the problem simply by continuing to buy their EPs. The concepts in the game are brilliant, unrivaled, and keep customers coming back, but the execution is so sloppy and the utter lack of effort to fix obvious problems is where it's almost insulting.

I do think in some sort of cost-benefit analysis, EA has decided to leave these sorts of fixes up to the modding community, which underscores for me a responsibility to help support it. I chipped in modestly when I was using Awesomemod and will probably need to do the same with Twallan now, if that works out.

I use the money I save not buying Stuff Packs (my feeble economic boycott) to support my modders.

Bilmonaghan · September 2011

KramYraelo wrote:

... long gangly arms with claws on the end and their heads in the middle of their body...

I thought they were saving that for the Call of Simthulhu Expansion Pack. Ba hahaha ha!

No, I buy Store content but I don't use custom content. I know there's a lot of really good stuff but there's also a lot of busted/crummy/glitchy stuff and I don't wanna spend the time to figure out which is which.

I ruined Sims 1 with lousy CC (nothing as scary as you described!) and/or way too much CC and haven't used it since.

sereniticat2 · September 2011

Bilmonaghan wrote:

Yeah, sereniticat2, like a dizzying array of options. At first I just want to run them in the background to save my file, but I'll be mining the readmes for ideas to tweek my game.

I only ran the game about 1/2 an hour this a.m., on a fairly fresh saved game so I haven't had a chance to test the glitch-preventing features yet but there are some real promising signs.

Like, one of the first things one of the mods did was remove 54 abandoned vehicles from Bridgeport.

54? The saves only two Sim-days old! It also removed an untold number of homeless Sims.

I also noticed in reading about this stuff that my habit of keep massive amounts of objects in Sims' personal inventories probably didn't help matters. I'm kinda a hoarder in games so I'm probably gonna have to figure out how to be more feng shui about stuff.

I know, it's a scary amount of options. I had the Mods in my game about 4 weeks now and I am Still learning about the things they can do. ( LoL But then I am a very slow learner and am thinking of getting the fast learner happiness reward)

The reason I mentioned the read me file is because one of his Mods offers the choice to turn off memories and that ended my error 12 save issues and sped my game back up to pre-Generations stage.

But for the life of me, I can't remember which Mod it is. It's either Master Controller or Story Progression. Also, there is a set Occult option that lets you chose the percentage of vamps you want running around in your game, and now Vamps no longer suck all the life outta my town.

NTense · September 2011

Found this mod that only disables memories, dunno if it is helpful

http://gnautylilgnomes.com/forum/index.php?topic=2428.msg13411#msg13411

MGSFan612 · September 2011

That world are you playing in?

If it is Riverview, Barnacele Bay, Hidden Springs or any user world have you tried deleting the files in the worldcaches folder?

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What (before I give up altogether) am I doing wrong?

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