I've been incredibly frustrated, but never enough to quit playing. There's something so inherently appealing about it for me that I just can't quit. I throw fits & want to yell at EA people who don't provide the game I expected, but I keep playing. It's an addiction. :oops: I really hope you manage to get it working properly, and yes I do recommend NRaas mods, as little as I know we all want to hear that EA won't give us exactly what we paid for (a working game), so I hope your son can help you get your computer up to specs if possible & get the mods installed, if that's what you choose. The concept of the game, when it works, is too good to give up on. In my opinion. Good luck.
Not keeping the game current on patches is silly. They provide fixes in every patch even if you don't buy the EP or SP that comes just after.
The next time your son comes over ask him to help you install Twallan's mods. You just need ErrorTrap and OverWatch to keep your game running smoothly. Those two get frequent updates right after a patch comes out but then it tapers off. You won't have to be constantly updating them.
There's nothing silly in not patching something that works fine already. After I complained about what an update had broken in my formerly working perfectly game, to my son, the IT tech, he said, don't fix what isn't broken! I'm following his advice, and I will continue to recommend the same to anyone who asks. Should the OP choose to reinstall her game, once she gets it to the point where everything is working, I'd stop right there and go no further.
No, but you have my sincerest sympathies. I play this game to unwind and for a time it was doing the opposite. :shock: A couple of things occurred that made it better for me. My old computer finally gave up the ghost. My new computer is better equipped to handle Sims3 and I now use Twallen's Mods. The man is a game-saver! His Overwatch mod is the one I rely on the most. I know others sing the praises of Error Trap, but that's a Core mod and I don't like those much. I'm not terribly tech-savvy, either. So the endless notices of this and that Error Trap kept spamming me with was just too much for me. I was powerless to "fix" the problems. (Claire Ursine kept giving me fits so I did what apparently we should never do. I deleted her from the town. :shock: ) According to others this can break your game save. Sure did mine.
Overwatch seems to do what the game needs. For one, it cleans us the vehicles in town. Sometimes over 15, 000 in my town! It will also turn off TVs and stereos the "townies" leave on. This is all done around 3-ish:00 a.m. Sim time on a daily basis. So, if my game freezes momentarily, I glance up to the right corner of my screen awaiting the report. Really, it doesn't take very long. My game now runs fairly smoothly.
I will say that I started with Sims2, made the transition to Sims3, but will not likely move on to Sims4. That's definitely a wait and see with me.
If you have enough space on your computer you might want to give Twallen's Mods (you can find them under nraas.wikispaces.com) a try. You'll need Sims3 framework in order to get them installed. But it's pretty straight forward. Just know which your OS is, either 32 or 64, so that you download the correct file for your computer. It will setup the Mods folder for you. After that, you just extract the mod files into the new Packages folder provided by framework. Voila. If you need additional help, just holler.
Thank you for the support, but I'm not tech-savvy enough to even know what OS 32 or 64 is. An elementary school kid knows more about computers than I do.
I've had this desktop computer for maybe 5 years or so. I played Sims2 on a laptop before that and it killed the laptop. My son ordered this gaming computer for me, Sims is the only game I play, or rather did play. Maybe the next time he comes over I'll have him look at it and see if there's anything he can do.
I find pets are what lag the game most since the patches caused routing problems and Paparazzi from late nights as they sprawn everywhere usually in places sims don't go, maybe your game needs the cache and saves cleaning out keeping these along time can make your game lag,you say it is a gaming computer, but it depends on the ram and processor, whether it meets the recommendation , another thing I find is closing down background tasks while playing helps, I use razor game booster which closes down them while you play the game and after puts them back.
I've had a number of frustrating issues with the game and the worst was with EA's game-breaking Story Progression causing so many problems that I was forced to fight a major war with it just to shut it down and stop it from ruining my games.I don't enjoy just playing one household and letting AI control the rest because I'm a major control freak with Sims and I hated what SP did to the towns.I got into Mods earlier this year so I could play towns for generations with growing populations though I still do most story progression manually with help from the NRaas mod version of Story Progression and that version works better than EA's game breaker disaster.I have my current game in a custom world I built in CAW called Winfield and that's one of my earliest projects.I still have it working and don't mind the empty world and having to move Sims in myself.
One other thing I kept having issues with was how the festival lots were designed and I had to resort to custom festival lots to solve those issues.
Gibsons Festival Hall: http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=7695015
Riverdale Bay Festival Grounds: http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=7651308
These are how I solved the badly functioning festival lots.
I have all of the expansion and stuff packs. I was playing island paradise without problems...then I downloaded this last patch and now I can't even sign into the launcher. I've uninstalled and reinstalled three times. I can now only play the base Sims3 game and still no internet action. I was able to download my favorites, Pets and Seasons with some difficulty, but they do not load up and the Pets disc is not recognized.
I'm so frustrated, I have all limited editions and I have spent so much money. This computer I bought just to play the sims3.
Spec:Lenovo Win 7 Home Premium
Intel core i7
CPU Q720@
1.60GHz 1.60 GHz
RAM 4.00 GB
64bit OS
I was playing all packs until the last patch and now only the base game.
Can any one help me? I've been reading and trying things for weeks!
No mods or any content outside of the discs used and I've cleared the caches many times.
hey Catsim3 if your only issue with the game is your launcher then its possible origin update or the patch of a combo of both broke your launcher - fun right
first thing to try is to pull the sims 3 doc folder to the desktop and see if the launcher is fixed
path my documents/electronic arts/sims 3
now its possible your origin files are corrupt reinstalling origin is the next thing to try
and also creating a new game short cut - shortcuts can also get broken with updates
i would try these suggestions and if you continue to have issues create a new thread in tech with info and since your issues are different from the OP, good luck
Thx ceejay402, I appreciate your effort and I did try your suggestion, but it didn't work.
You may need to upgrade your computer. I am not very computer savvy either. :roll:
My current PC will no longer play the sims for an unknown reason however I uninstalled and reinstalled just the base game and it worked fine without installing the updates but when I then went on to install the updates my game would no longer work. I know this is because my computer is quite old now but I am in the process of a new one. Anyway I believe that with each EP and update it puts more strain on your computer, perhaps yours can not cope as well as others.
Have your son or a computer savvy person take a look at your computer to try and figure out what is causing your issues and I do hope you can start playing issue-free soon! Good luck.
Maybe we can help you I used to have the same problem crashing freezing but I did figure a lot of thing out still some annoying bugs but quite playable.
If your com is low on spec you may want to avoid living near the water area for example Island Paradise because it drain a lot of com memories.
Also you may want to lower some in-game effects, some weather effects such as snowing, storm are eat a lot of com resources too.
Try lower the graphic setting see if that help?
Another thing delete all the unnecessary objects from your Sims inventory don't collecting too many objects like 999 seeds make it at light as possible often it cause some really bad glitch.
I was there (even with Twallan's mods and only the base game installed) until a few weeks ago. I updated my system from Windows XP (32-bit) to Windows 7 (64-bit), and I finally have everything installed and the game RUNS! I still have some lag if I add Twallan's Story Progression (suspect my old dual core processor just can't keep up) but with a few of his other mods I'm loving it again. Only took four years. :?
Comments
I love this game...:)
The next time your son comes over ask him to help you install Twallan's mods. You just need ErrorTrap and OverWatch to keep your game running smoothly. Those two get frequent updates right after a patch comes out but then it tapers off. You won't have to be constantly updating them.
I find pets are what lag the game most since the patches caused routing problems and Paparazzi from late nights as they sprawn everywhere usually in places sims don't go, maybe your game needs the cache and saves cleaning out keeping these along time can make your game lag,you say it is a gaming computer, but it depends on the ram and processor, whether it meets the recommendation , another thing I find is closing down background tasks while playing helps, I use razor game booster which closes down them while you play the game and after puts them back.
I think it's Twallan's you should thank...
One other thing I kept having issues with was how the festival lots were designed and I had to resort to custom festival lots to solve those issues.
Gibsons Festival Hall: http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=7695015
Riverdale Bay Festival Grounds: http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=7651308
These are how I solved the badly functioning festival lots.
My current PC will no longer play the sims for an unknown reason however I uninstalled and reinstalled just the base game and it worked fine without installing the updates but when I then went on to install the updates my game would no longer work. I know this is because my computer is quite old now but I am in the process of a new one. Anyway I believe that with each EP and update it puts more strain on your computer, perhaps yours can not cope as well as others.
Have your son or a computer savvy person take a look at your computer to try and figure out what is causing your issues and I do hope you can start playing issue-free soon! Good luck.
Maybe we can help you I used to have the same problem crashing freezing but I did figure a lot of thing out still some annoying bugs but quite playable.
If your com is low on spec you may want to avoid living near the water area for example Island Paradise because it drain a lot of com memories.
Also you may want to lower some in-game effects, some weather effects such as snowing, storm are eat a lot of com resources too.
Try lower the graphic setting see if that help?
Another thing delete all the unnecessary objects from your Sims inventory don't collecting too many objects like 999 seeds make it at light as possible often it cause some really bad glitch.
Dreamsong's Simblog