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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 8th Sep 2018 at 11:09 AM Last edited by Cap'n Crimson : 8th Sep 2018 at 11:57 AM.

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 3, World Adventures, Ambitions, Late Night, Generations, Pets, Showtime, Supernatural, Seasons, University Life, Island Paradise, Into the Future
Default The Sims 3 crashing after an hour or two
I installed The Sims 3 again like a week ago. I've had it installed before, but my desktop stood still for quite a while, and when I got it back, everything was in a windows.old folder. I've restored everything, and it's been running (mostly) smoothly since then. I don't remember what graphics card I had before this .old folder, I think it was ATI. I had an Nvidia 750ti when I got my desktop back, but I'm not sure that's what I had when I used it last.
I didn't really have issues with crashing before, only the occassional freezing due to a custom world or stuck sims or too many vehicles in the world or whatever. But I've had a lot of random crashes since I reinstalled it.

At first my sim lived in custom worlds, and I blamed it on that. I then moved to Isla Paradiso, but still crashed. Sometimes even on the loading screen, silently and I only found out by going to task manager. I fixed the DEP settings, and it now crashes less, but still crashes. It seems to mostly happen after traveling back, like from the future or world adventures. Not immediately, but maybe 5 minutes after.
I have Ellacharmed's Isla Paradiso fix and overwatch, and it solved a lot of my slowdown and lag, but seemingly not the crashes. I'm running the latest update, and I'm running from disc (so I can't repair through Origin). I have cc, but not cc that has previously caused issues. I've been spending the last couple of days looking for bad cc. I haven't tried running without cc yet, as my sim uses cc. I've tried running without launcher, but either nothing happens, or it opens the launcher...

I'm running Win 7. I have 8 gb of RAM, an Nvidia 1070ti and an Intel processor at 3.30 GHz, so my computer is more than fit for running it. I'm running at the highest settings, with all EP and SP. My Nvidia drivers are up to date.
All my specs are the same as last time I had TS3 installed, except for my graphics card and power supply (not that the power supply has anything to do with it).

I really hope someone can help, it's really frustrating... I know it's worked before, so I really can't figure out why it's suddenly not...
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 8th Sep 2018 at 4:07 PM
1 - What kind of frame rates are you getting on that 1070Ti in-game? Ctrl+shift+C for the cheats panel, type fps on (enter). As you play and move the game camera around, the displayed frame rates should never exceed the refresh rate of your monitor. For most of us that's 60 Hz, so 60 fps, some monitors can run higher. Unlike newer games, TS3 has no built-in fps limiter so you would need to use the Nvidia Control Panel for vertical sync and Nvidia Inspector or another third party program if the Control Panel doesn't do the job completely or if windowed mode is required. To make the fps display go away, cheats panel again and fps off (enter).

Uncapped frame rates on a card that powerful lead to graphics glitches, screen tears, lag, crashes, and can ultimately damage the card by making it work far too hard for no reason.

2 - There shouldn't be any DEP issues with TS3 if things are all patched up to 1.67 or 1.69. EA fixed those with Patch 1.50 something years ago.

3 - Ellacharmed's world fixes are great, as are NRaas mods (if we do say so ourselves) but for Isla Paradiso they don't really go far enough.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/di...oving-ip-lag/p1

I would also hope you have ErrorTrap, Register, Traffic, maybe GoHere in play alongside of Overwatch and MasterController for an occasional Reset Everything on the Town Menu run from City Hall.

But Isla Paradiso, fixed or otherwise, is the worst EA world one can choose to troubleshoot gameplay because of how design-flawed it is. I would suggest playing a different world (not Bridgeport either) until you get things stable enough and then maybe work back up to it otherwise there's just potentially too many variables in play.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 8th Sep 2018 at 4:57 PM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
1 - What kind of frame rates are you getting on that 1070Ti in-game? Ctrl+shift+C for the cheats panel, type fps on (enter). As you play and move the game camera around, the displayed frame rates should never exceed the refresh rate of your monitor. For most of us that's 60 Hz, so 60 fps, some monitors can run higher. Unlike newer games, TS3 has no built-in fps limiter so you would need to use the Nvidia Control Panel for vertical sync and Nvidia Inspector or another third party program if the Control Panel doesn't do the job completely or if windowed mode is required. To make the fps display go away, cheats panel again and fps off (enter).

Uncapped frame rates on a card that powerful lead to graphics glitches, screen tears, lag, crashes, and can ultimately damage the card by making it work far too hard for no reason.

2 - There shouldn't be any DEP issues with TS3 if things are all patched up to 1.67 or 1.69. EA fixed those with Patch 1.50 something years ago.

3 - Ellacharmed's world fixes are great, as are NRaas mods (if we do say so ourselves) but for Isla Paradiso they don't really go far enough.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/di...oving-ip-lag/p1

I would also hope you have ErrorTrap, Register, Traffic, maybe GoHere in play alongside of Overwatch and MasterController for an occasional Reset Everything on the Town Menu run from City Hall.

But Isla Paradiso, fixed or otherwise, is the worst EA world one can choose to troubleshoot gameplay because of how design-flawed it is. I would suggest playing a different world (not Bridgeport either) until you get things stable enough and then maybe work back up to it otherwise there's just potentially too many variables in play.

I just checked frames in both Isla Paradiso and Sunset Valley. Ironically Isla Paradiso actually seemed to have a higher average framerate, although both were over 200 at one point, so yeah, limiting them might be a good idea... I turned on adaptive vsync, so let's see if it helps. I never had any graphical errors, so frames being an issue never really occured to me. Not even screen tearing.
I don't know anything about the DEP thing, I just followed what the internet said ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The fix helped a lot, I know Isla Paradiso is real broken. But I didn't figure it was gonna be a big issue, considering my specs. Boy was I wrong lol
I did even consider moving the sim again (which would be like the 3rd time after moving from custom worlds...), but I gave the fix a chance. I do have master controller, but I don't have ErrorTrap, as I never really figured out what it did... Nobody suggested the other ones before, but maybe I'll add them and hope it helps.
Mad Poster
#4 Old 8th Sep 2018 at 5:33 PM
There are four residential lots in Isla Paradiso that are beyond broken. They will bork up the game on any system, it's not a matter of how powerful it is. In fact, stronger systems will bork up faster on these (and with more style, I guess). We're talking about sims not being able to get into and out of their own houses, bathroom fixtures placed backwards just to start, etc. These lead to routing issues and stuck sims, but more importantly the game will tend to lock up as it constantly tries to reroute these sims into, out of, and around their houses.

From memory, Scott (houseboat), Ichtaca (castle), Los Amigos, Medina. Moving these households elsewhere and bulldozing their lots (maybe replacing them with something else except for the houseboat/broken port) should help a lot and is faster than trying to redesign them.

Far too many sims live on houseboats, EA really overdid it there. You may want to consider moving many of them inland. Ciane covers the rest of the changes she feels are required in her post and also provides an all fixed up world ready to go as a game save if that is wanted instead of the Do It Yourself method.

ErrorTrap capture ("traps") otherwise potentially dangerous and game crashing errors from the game itself and other mods and then reports on them. It also performs data garbage collection along the way, removing useless shards of data associated with already too corrupt sims and objects to have ever been useful and data items that really exist in other worlds that somehow got copied into the one being actively played. The logs can be zipped together and uploaded to us at NRaas and a support thread opened for help with understanding them if this is needed.

But the fps issue is far more important to take care of first, if you can manage it.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#5 Old 8th Sep 2018 at 6:29 PM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
There are four residential lots in Isla Paradiso that are beyond broken. They will bork up the game on any system, it's not a matter of how powerful it is. In fact, stronger systems will bork up faster on these (and with more style, I guess). We're talking about sims not being able to get into and out of their own houses, bathroom fixtures placed backwards just to start, etc. These lead to routing issues and stuck sims, but more importantly the game will tend to lock up as it constantly tries to reroute these sims into, out of, and around their houses.

From memory, Scott (houseboat), Ichtaca (castle), Los Amigos, Medina. Moving these households elsewhere and bulldozing their lots (maybe replacing them with something else except for the houseboat/broken port) should help a lot and is faster than trying to redesign them.

I've heard a lot of issues with the Scott househol, but I haven't gotten any yet. I've had several reported with Ichtaca though.

Quote: Originally posted by igazor
ErrorTrap capture ("traps") otherwise potentially dangerous and game crashing errors from the game itself and other mods and then reports on them. It also performs data garbage collection along the way, removing useless shards of data associated with already too corrupt sims and objects to have ever been useful and data items that really exist in other worlds that somehow got copied into the one being actively played. The logs can be zipped together and uploaded to us at NRaas and a support thread opened for help with understanding them if this is needed.

Aaaah, makes sense now. I've downloaded it, so hopefully it helps.
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