I was totally ready to start playing Sims 3 again when disaster struck...

[Nukael]

So I'll just expand on the title!

After finally finding a user created world that I liked and met all my criteria (all expansions, have a rural, suburban and metropolitan area, room for expansion, at least one of every type of community lot, ...) I booted that world up, moved my Sims family in and started working on my population.

I use Twallan's mods to make everything to my liking. And it all went really well at first: families were rapidly immigrated so I had neighbors, NPC's were generated and on top of all that: NO LAG!! NO LAG WHATSOEVER, oh the JOYS of world creators that know what they are doing! (This awesome world by the way is "St - Claire").
I had 288 residents and NO LAAAAAAG!!! (I play the Sims on my work desktop on which I do VFX, so yeah, it is TOTALLY overpowered for this game).

After spending 6+ hours of prepping my LAG FREE neighbor hood and populating it with horny twenty something tight bodied gay dudes (yes, I use the Sims to make my own fantasy world, teehee), I was all set to play my dysfunctional family!

And then it started... the first sign was a black deer prancing down main street like a dark omen... A Simfest with invisible performers were only foreshadowing the horror to come... Sims walking around with riding gear when not a horse was in sight made me uneasy...

And when I finally get round to start my Sims life in the neighborhood... my game stutters ever so slightly. Okay, I think, just a hiccup. But then it hiccups again... and again... and suddenly it hangs. And then... oh God, the lag! The LAG! It is lagging all over the place, my Sims can barely take two steps before begin frozen for half an hour. Sims all over town are dying of hunger and sleep deprivation because they are compelled to stand around and do nothing but LAG!

Did I mention I have a monster pc?
(For you techies: i7 core, 24GB Ram, Nvidia GeForce GTX 580, Sims 3 is installed on a superfast SSD disk)

I am so sad... the lag...
(resetsim didn't do anything)

[ani_]

- Get the mod from this site to turn off memories, or modify it so only important memories are included. If you have 125 sims all getting a memory every single time they go to a park (Thank you EA), it will cause lag.
- Then get overwatch from Twallan

Of course it's always possible the world has routing issues, but those two should help.

[Nukael]

That's great advice, thanks! Will do.

[babele44]

I had something similar in Setra and found after a while that it was not so much the world itself but rather the lots and their layout that caused stuttering and then a total freeze, mainly because horses get stuck in and around them.
This comment (http://modthesims.info/download.php?p=3862044#post3862044) and the one further down there sums up what I did in that world and the lag has disappeared. (I had it despite using all those things like "no aotomatic memories", ErrorTrap, Overwatch, Awesome etc etc.)
The horse gear thing, on the other hand, is nothing special, I think, as this is just a normal everyday or sportswear outfit. There is no horse-riding clothing category in the game.

ETA: And having some 288 residents may be a bit much, too, no matter how tight-bodied they are. Setra has about half of that and is perceivably slower on my machine (i7 3770, 8GB, GTX 570) than other, less populated worlds.

[DigitalSympathies]

Nice PC, just below the specs of a new one we got shipped in yesterday! No word on if I get to keep it, though. :(

I think that the lag could be caused by the game trying to do too many things at once. SP and Overwatch can make larger worlds lag if you set them up wrong. It took me seven tries to get it right for Glendalough. :)

[ani_]

and then a total freeze, mainly because horses get stuck in and around them.
I have something similar in my current game. When I go to the park, every single sim wants to use the swings and then route fail when there are no free swing. There are times I just leave the park so the Sims would stop routing to the swing. Because when they are all failing so much, the game becomes super slow. I'll have to move the swings, and if that doesn't help maybe take them away for a while.

[Purplepaws]

I, too, set up St. Claire with eager anticipation, not having played since forever, after doing a major clean-out of my game. This world is everything I've been waiting for (and I would even go so far as to say I'd marry it if it was legal :P ), but I was also having terrible lag after only a few sim days (the whole world would freeze for a few seconds every 11 sim minutes). The best thing I've found to do is a MasterController "reset everything" via the city hall, followed immediately by the cheat "resetsim *". (The latter is important, or you'll have sims stuck in the black areas of apartments.) Don't enable the stuck check in Overwatch, as it seems to create the same problem. I also have StoryProgression cap population at 120 humans and 20 of each animal (though I haven't tested enough to determine if population has that much of an effect). Since there are a lot of close-knit buildings in this 'hood, it also makes a difference to reduce the number of high detail lots (I've got mine on two, with everything else maxed, even though I have a decent graphics card).

Just from what I mentioned above, my intermittent freezes have gone and overall lag is down to a minimum (so far). If it builds back up, I'm going to try another reset combo, as that may be the most important contributing factor.

Other things to try are deleting caches and merging package files (if you haven't already). The "no auto memories" mod suggestion is also a good one. Until you can be sure they're not causing excess lag, I would leave all other NRaas settings at default for now. Oh, also, for the black deer glitch, I think it may be related to playing a custom world on first load up. Reportedly, this can cause black skies, and I've noticed it in pet thumbnails. Simply exiting to the menu and reloading fixes it right up for me.

I do hope you get your game in shape! It's so frustrating when performance gets in the way of enjoyment.

[Nukael]

I, too, set up St. Claire with eager anticipation, not having played since forever, after doing a major clean-out of my game.
Thanks for the tips! After doing some research, I found some spots in the world where routing on lots was quite an issue. The school for instance... all the people would leave the school through the backdoor (even though there isn't one! They just appear at the back). But that lot doesn't have a way to go from the back to the front (there's a hedge all the way around), so the Sims would be stuck there (more than 20 of them) getting constant routing fails. So you might wanna check that out. I bulldozed part of the hedge so now all the Sims can go home without having to use "ResetSim".

I like a lot of Sims in my neighborhood, especially since the evil drunk granny has to go somewhere to get her fix and harass people, which you can't do in empty clubs! :D I have almost no animals (my caps are at 2 of each, and no horses).

I also noticed that at the Simfests, the proprietors were always throwing routing issues until I saw why: because the right side of the stage has usually something covering it, but that's the default spot for proprietors to stand if there isn't a debug square to tell them to stand elsewhere. So you've got quite some proprietors throwing rout fails as well in the world. So I'm changing the podiums where this is the case.

Also ResetSim is bad for your proprietors, when I used that one, all my Simfests had empty podiums, but the proprietors were still there. After I installed a new podium, a completely new proprietor showed up.

And having some 288 residents may be a bit much, too, no matter how tight-bodied they are. :rofl: You're totally right! I actually spent hours making 50+ tight bodied Sims to be used as Genetic material for all immigrants. :lovestruc
Anyway, what I've noticed is that only about 128 spots are filled by residents anyhow, the rest of them are all filled with service and role NPC's. So I was looking for a way to cap the NPC's, 'cause do I really need that many? I wanted a lot of residents! Not NPC's...

[Purplepaws]

So I was looking for a way to cap the NPC's, 'cause do I really need that many? I wanted a lot of residents! Not NPC's...
You could take out some of the registers if you don't think you'd miss them (such as the second food register at one of the cafes or the books register at the library). I think there's also a mod floating around that lets you assign residents to roles traditionally held by NPC's. Sorry I don't have a link for you (but I'll look; it might be by Twallan). Here (http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Register) it is; it is Twallan's.

Thanks for the heads up about the routing issues! I hadn't found much to change when I went through the lots myself (apart from deleting part of the low playground fence in Oak Park so the proprietor wouldn't spawn there and get stuck). I knew SimFests weren't working properly, but I didn't know how to go about fixing it.

Another thing I tried is deleting all hidden room markers to effectively banish NPC apartment-dwellers, but the pop count wasn't affected at all, which surprised me. Maybe they're only loaded in your sim's current residential building?

[Nukael]

Some great tips, I was already using Twallan's Register. I think I have nearly all of his mods, 'cause otherwise the game just... doesn't work. What makes me so tired is that you have an EP like Showtime and then one of the main features don't work (invisible performers). And this has nothing to do with having mods, as I have seen these issues being reported over at the official forums by people who have no CC or mods.

Small bugs and glitches, I understand, but one of your main features for the EP not working properly most of the time? What's going on? Oh, well... I feel like getting the Sims 3 to work is like herding cats. Or maybe just my demands are too high, expecting my software to reasonably work.

[morphius1]

So I'll just expand on the title!

After finally finding a user created world that I liked and met all my criteria (all expansions, have a rural, suburban and metropolitan area, room for expansion, at least one of every type of community lot, ...) I booted that world up, moved my Sims family in and started working on my population.

I use Twallan's mods to make everything to my liking. And it all went really well at first: families were rapidly immigrated so I had neighbors, NPC's were generated and on top of all that: NO LAG!! NO LAG WHATSOEVER, oh the JOYS of world creators that know what they are doing! (This awesome world by the way is "St - Claire").
I had 288 residents and NO LAAAAAAG!!! (I play the Sims on my work desktop on which I do VFX, so yeah, it is TOTALLY overpowered for this game).

After spending 6+ hours of prepping my LAG FREE neighbor hood and populating it with horny twenty something tight bodied gay dudes (yes, I use the Sims to make my own fantasy world, teehee), I was all set to play my dysfunctional family!

And then it started... the first sign was a black deer prancing down main street like a dark omen... A Simfest with invisible performers were only foreshadowing the horror to come... Sims walking around with riding gear when not a horse was in sight made me uneasy...

And when I finally get round to start my Sims life in the neighborhood... my game stutters ever so slightly. Okay, I think, just a hiccup. But then it hiccups again... and again... and suddenly it hangs. And then... oh God, the lag! The LAG! It is lagging all over the place, my Sims can barely take two steps before begin frozen for half an hour. Sims all over town are dying of hunger and sleep deprivation because they are compelled to stand around and do nothing but LAG!

Did I mention I have a monster pc?
(For you techies: i7 core, 24GB Ram, Nvidia GeForce GTX 580, Sims 3 is installed on a superfast SSD disk)

I am so sad... the lag...
(resetsim didn't do anything)

At first mine had some lag, too. I lowered the screen resolution and haven't had a problemo sinse.
Oh, and how did you get so many residents (288)? I can't figure out how to get over 150. :(

[applefeather2]

@Purplepaws. You mentioned:Don't enable the stuck check in Overwatch, as it seems to create the same problem.
I'm confused, as I thought that was supposed to help. Could you elaborate on that, please?

[babele44]

The StuckCheck, as far as I've experienced it, looks for stationary Sims. They are not necessarily stuck but haven't moved for quite some time. It then does a hard-reset on these, and this is the problematic point. This hard-reset will frequently teleport Sims into hidden rooms in apartments or straight into foundations and they are then really stuck. You will have to soft-reset (so to speak) them with resetSim to get them into a safer location.
This has quite some evil effects especially in a Late Night town, because mixologists on duty might be considered as stationary and are then reset when you run the StuckCheck during opening times.
I have diabled it, too, because it caused more problems than solved them.

And re: the school. I find it a bit weird that they leave the school through the back door. Are you sure that the school is alright? Because if there are school children in the back of a school it usually means that they do not have a smoke there but were booted out of it due to some error.

[Nukael]

babele44: no idea, I have errorTrap and don't get an error notification. And every single Sim that enters the schools appears at the back. So maaaaaany buuuuugs... :D

[ani_]

The StuckCheck, as far as I've experienced it, looks for stationary Sims. They are not necessarily stuck but haven't moved for quite some time. So this was the culprit setting my asylum patients and my criminals from jail free? I just turned it off. I thought it was for sims stuck routing.

[babele44]

babele44: no idea, I have errorTrap and don't get an error notification. And every single Sim that enters the schools appears at the back. So maaaaaany buuuuugs... :DHave you already played with one of the families with children to see whether they have difficulties entering the school or staying inside? It might also be that one or more passed out causing all others to drop what they're doing, even if it is attending school. You did have problems with passed-out Sims, didn't you?

[babele44]

So this was the culprit setting my asylum patients and my criminals from jail free? I just turned it off. I thought it was for sims stuck routing.I began to turn it off after it had reset all residents I had. Going through some 150 messages told me then that I shouldn't have done this perhaps.

[Nukael]

I only had the problem of Sims passing out because they were stuck in the back of the school without a way out. But it IS very busy at school in the morning. It takes all the Sims roughly two hours to all get inside the school building (they use only one door instead of all three, or maybe that's just the way that the rabbit hole is supposed to work).

[jje1000]

After spending 6+ hours of prepping my LAG FREE neighbor hood and populating it with horny twenty something tight bodied gay dudes (yes, I use the Sims to make my own fantasy world, teehee), I was all set to play my dysfunctional family!

[...]

And then it started... the first sign was a black deer prancing down main street like a dark omen... A Simfest with invisible performers were only foreshadowing the horror to come... Sims walking around with riding gear when not a horse was in sight made me uneasy...

And when I finally get round to start my Sims life in the neighborhood... my game stutters ever so slightly. Okay, I think, just a hiccup. But then it hiccups again... and again... and suddenly it hangs. And then... oh God, the lag! The LAG! It is lagging all over the place, my Sims can barely take two steps before begin frozen for half an hour. Sims all over town are dying of hunger and sleep deprivation because they are compelled to stand around and do nothing but LAG!

Thou have sinned! Thus the Computer Lord has decided to smite your neighbourhood à la Sodom and Gomorrah.

[Nukael]

Thou have sinned! Thus the Computer Lord has decided to smite your neighbourhood à la Sodom and Gomorrah. :rofl: Because my neighborhood was filled to the brim with tight bodied gay dudes? I could see that, yes... :D
Anyways... since I had only been setting up my neighborhood to finally play the game again after more than 7 months of not even booting it up, I'm thinking of just wiping everything clean and do a full reinstall and start from scratch. Fingers crossed!

[Purplepaws]

@Purplepaws. You mentioned:Don't enable the stuck check in Overwatch, as it seems to create the same problem.
I'm confused, as I thought that was supposed to help. Could you elaborate on that, please?The StuckCheck, as far as I've experienced it, looks for stationary Sims. They are not necessarily stuck but haven't moved for quite some time. It then does a hard-reset on these, and this is the problematic point. This hard-reset will frequently teleport Sims into hidden rooms in apartments or straight into foundations and they are then really stuck. You will have to soft-reset (so to speak) them with resetSim to get them into a safer location.
Exactly. Thank you for clarifying, Babele. The stuck check does the same thing for sims that a MasterController reset will do. Therefore, if you have any non-accessible areas, such as blocked-in null space or hidden rooms, and don't want to do a "resetsim" to counter this effect every time Overwatch runs, it's best to keep it disabled.

Best of luck with your reinstall, Nukael! I hope things iron out for you.

As a side note, I do think population might be a culprit. I was playing around with immigration and unwittingly populated the entire town, and I'm sure I noticed more lag than before. Still, I need to do more testing to be sure. If I find anything new, I'll be sure to post.

[MiniMimi]

Twoftmama have a mod for the route fix that does wonder for the school problem: http://simsasylum.com/tfm/index.php?/topic/877-route-fix-mods-4-flavors-updated-october-20-2011/
And 388 residents is way too much, whatever your specs!

[Purplepaws]

Haven't found a way to "cap" NPC's, per se, but theoretically, you could use MasterController's "total annihilation" to completely rid your town of service/homeless/whatever and then use Register to make sure roles are given out only to residents. That way, the game should only generate what's necessary to keep the town going. I'm testing this theory as we speak, but it'll be awhile before I'm able to gauge effectiveness.

[Nukael]

You read my mind! I've done just that. I disabled immigration through Register and manually assigned all roles to either homemade Sims (that I made myself by hand) or residents. I even manually assigned all NPC's (mailcarriers, pizza delivery guys, ...). So I can hopefully control the population but also I made all the NPC's by hand, so now all my firemen and pizza delivery guys are, yes, tight bodied gay dudes... Don't judge! I play the Sims to escape into a fantasy world! :D (Though our real life pizza delivery guy is actually super hot! But straight. :D)
I've reinstalled everything and have been setting up the world so I haven't had a chance yet to play. But I've now capped the resident population at 120, so hopefully this'll give me less lag. I do hope that after removing all the barrier ropes at the clubs and bars there will be Sims in them. Because otherwise my drunk gambling granny has nowhere to go to harass people!

I also discovered I was starting my game from the wrong exe file... I was starting from the exe of the latest installed EP/SP, but apparently it's better if you start from TSW3.exe.

MiniMimi: Thanks for the tip! I'll be sure to install that, awesome.