Experiences on worlds with high amount of lots?

[Arisuka]

I haven't seen much information anywhere on this subject. Sunset Valley has a total of 97 lots in it. My custom world (which is still under work, and thus not play tested) has 155.

If there are others out there with any information or experience on worlds with similar amount of lots, I'd be very curious to hear about it! For example, does it affect playing? If so, how significantly? Does it make the game unstable, or is the high amount of lots un-noticeable when playing?

It would be very interesting to hear something about this subject!

[happyyasu09]

I haven't seen much information anywhere on this subject. Sunset Valley has a total of 97 lots in it. My custom world (which is still under work, and thus not play tested) has 155.

If there are others out there with any information or experience on worlds with similar amount of lots, I'd be very curious to hear about it! For example, does it affect playing? If so, how significantly? Does it make the game unstable, or is the high amount of lots un-noticeable when playing?

It would be very interesting to hear something about this subject!

as i do remember, it highly recommended to create worlds with 100-120 lots, far from each other, but idk. my town of yokio (you can see the pics right up picasaphotoalbum (https://picasaweb.google.com/nebovcvetochek/YokioCAB_1?authuser=0&feat=directlink) ) has more than 300 lots, or even more :wtf: so, i know that it's not even opening with the amount of already built buildings on slow computers like: pentium 2.44 1core, nvidia 8800, 1gb ram. but it's working fluently on this particular specs: pentium dual-core 2.88, nvidia 250, 4gb ram. even with all the CC it has (like maybe 1 - 1,5 gb of CC) with all the options set to high, except for sim render set to middle, and water&reflection to one step before very high. so idk, i think 155 is normal amount of lots, just put them not so close to each other.
Just, test it on lower specs computer, like ask a friend or something, and see what he'll got, like any error messages or anything. I think there was also some reference to chunk borders, but you need to find that CAW manual, there is some information.

[Arisuka]

That's very interesting and helpful! :) My game recently started to refuse saving properly in EIG, and it must've been due to the fact that I got the first 100 lots quite tightly together, as those are the BIG city and suburban area... I'll try making the areas more looser, and see what happens!

[High Plains Gamer]

I think it is interesting to compare Red County (209 lots) with Los Aniegos (165 lots). Red County is pretty much free of lag, whereas Los Aniegos can be laggy to the point of being unplayable.

Both worlds were created by the same creator. Both worlds share many of the same lots. (Many of the Los Aniegos lots are just transplanted from Red County.) Both worlds share many of the same building techniques. So why is it that the world with fewer lots experiences more lag?

If we can answer that question, we have made a lot of progress in cracking that nut.

A couple obvious things. Los Aniegos is a later creation, which should signal that it has fewer problems. However, it also has incorporated many Late Night Features.

It seems that the problems with lagging seemed to start at about the same time Late Night was released. So, one or more of its features may be causing lag.

My working theory to date has been that it is not the number of lots, per se, but the opportunities for problems created by lots. It would seem that a creator has twice as many opportunities to create routing problems in a world with 200 lots than a world with 100.

[happyyasu09]

I think it is interesting to compare Red County (209 lots) with Los Aniegos (165 lots). Red County is pretty much free of lag, whereas Los Aniegos can be laggy to the point of being unplayable.

Both worlds were created by the same creator. Both worlds share many of the same lots. (Many of the Los Aniegos lots are just transplanted from Red County.) Both worlds share many of the same building techniques. So why is it that the world with fewer lots experiences more lag?

If we can answer that question, we have made a lot of progress in cracking that nut.

A couple obvious things. Los Aniegos is a later creation, which should signal that it has fewer problems. However, it also has incorporated many Late Night Features.

It seems that the problems with lagging seemed to start at about the same time Late Night was released. So, one or more of its features may be causing lag.

My working theory to date has been that it is not the number of lots, per se, but the opportunities for problems created by lots. It would seem that a creator has twice as many opportunities to create routing problems in a world with 200 lots than a world with 100.

I did found that if you flag you town as a city (like bridgeport) it start causing lags, maybe because of NPC taxis and hotfood truck going round the city. so huge cities will work fluently if it's flagged as a town, thou it consumes less cpu to calculate the taxies and other npc from latenight.

That's very interesting and helpful! :) My game recently started to refuse saving properly in EIG, and it must've been due to the fact that I got the first 100 lots quite tightly together, as those are the BIG city and suburban area... I'll try making the areas more looser, and see what happens!

although i had similar problem, when my world wouldn't saved normally in eig, it's like 50\50 for saving, or even crash to desktop XD but i found that sometimes, after editing in game some empty lots, start to lag, so i need to to delete them and place one more time.
Right now i'm doing like this: open world -> placing some lots like 4-5 -> build in them, or placing previously built buildings -> saving&exiting eig -> redo from step 2.
So it's saving like in 80% chance of saving, and not crashing right now.
Try this, maybe it will help you also.
but still while constructing new city i'm placing middlesize-to-hugesize lots like maybe 20-30 in one chunk border, and make more unlotted parks and squares, so the game won't think that there are lot of "lots"

[Arisuka]

My world has a MASSIVE city. It has almost the same amount of skyscrapers as in Bridgeport, but also, an industrial area and a Brooklyn-type brick apartment area. But when I first play-tested it ages ago with only 1gb of RAM, there was no lag at all... and I hadn't even painted the terrain with the routing paints!

But when playing Bridgeport, my PC lagged like hell. Something really seems to be behind all this!

EDIT: Oh yes... my world was NOT flagged as a city! Is Los Aniegos flagged as a city or as a regular hood? I couldn't find info about that anywhere, has somebody who has played the world the info on this?

[simsample]

I've found that problems with lots can cause a great deal of lag, so perhaps that's what's wrong with Los Aneigos.

For example, I made a lot with a Bistro rabbithole on it, and I put fences either side of the path from the front door to the sidewalk. I also had an insect spawner on the lawn. I found that sims were arriving at the lot and walking almost to the door, and then being attracted to the spawner and attempting to catch the insects. However, to get to the insects on the lawn, the sims had to leave the lot (because they were fenced in). So they would attempt to calculate a route from one side of the lot to another via the entire world, and this caused a few seconds lag.

I also had problems with a lot on an inacessible island- it took me a while to realise that you have to mark inacessible lots as no visitors allowed (or hidden tomb). That fixed it.

For the city flag, it shouldn't cause lag in itself but it's possible that there is an error in routing for the food trucks, or perhaps the constant fake taxi spawning causes lag. For Bridgeport though, that world is just downright buggy- look at the amount of problems Ellacharm3d has found. If you have holes in the routing paint and disconnected roads it's going to cause problems.

ETA: Yes, Los Aneigos (Late Night) is flagged as a city.

[BenC0722]

My world has a MASSIVE city. It has almost the same amount of skyscrapers as in Bridgeport, but also, an industrial area and a Brooklyn-type brick apartment area. But when I first play-tested it ages ago with only 1gb of RAM, there was no lag at all... and I hadn't even painted the terrain with the routing paints!

But when playing Bridgeport, my PC lagged like hell. Something really seems to be behind all this!

Have you play-tested your world recently?

I would be interested to know if you have lag with your world now. Presumably there is a great deal more stuff in your world now than there was before, since you said "ages ago."

[Arisuka]

Simsample, that's interesting! I had always expected something like that happening, and therefore avoided putting spawners on any lots than parks in my world and also I've been very cautious with fences because of that lol...

Ben, no I haven't tested it recently, just that couple short sessions looong time ago. But at the time, it had most of it's lot placed already, but they weren't fully built yet. Probably sometime this month I'll be posting a CFF thread to get opinions on few things, and will start play testing the world too.

[armiel]

Like simsample already mentioned, the routing is the biggest cause for lag. You should not have areas/lots that are accessible only through another lot. Or areas that are not accessible unless you teleport there. So when you place lots, make sure that there is a way to go all around them, or paint the other side unroutable. Same with any decorative places you don't want sims to be able to access. I have said it many times, but I suppose one more time doesn't hurt - if an NPC spawns to a point they can't route out by walking or by car, it causes lag. The amount of lots shouldn't matter too much. (Before you go to ridiculous amounts of them, like over 400)

[happyyasu09]

Like simsample already mentioned, the routing is the biggest cause for lag. You should not have areas/lots that are accessible only through another lot. Or areas that are not accessible unless you teleport there. So when you place lots, make sure that there is a way to go all around them, or paint the other side unroutable. Same with any decorative places you don't want sims to be able to access. I have said it many times, but I suppose one more time doesn't hurt - if an NPC spawns to a point they can't route out by walking or by car, it causes lag. The amount of lots shouldn't matter too much. (Before you go to ridiculous amounts of them, like over 400)

i'm Guilty for 400 lots ^_____________^

after checking my city, i found some spawners inside the lots, i placed them outside, and found some dots in routing-paint. made changes, exported, and now i have less lags.

I've found that problems with lots can cause a great deal of lag, so perhaps that's what's wrong with Los Aneigos.

For example, I made a lot with a Bistro rabbithole on it, and I put fences either side of the path from the front door to the sidewalk. I also had an insect spawner on the lawn. I found that sims were arriving at the lot and walking almost to the door, and then being attracted to the spawner and attempting to catch the insects. However, to get to the insects on the lawn, the sims had to leave the lot (because they were fenced in). So they would attempt to calculate a route from one side of the lot to another via the entire world, and this caused a few seconds lag.

I also had problems with a lot on an inacessible island- it took me a while to realise that you have to mark inacessible lots as no visitors allowed (or hidden tomb). That fixed it.

For the city flag, it shouldn't cause lag in itself but it's possible that there is an error in routing for the food trucks, or perhaps the constant fake taxi spawning causes lag. For Bridgeport though, that world is just downright buggy- look at the amount of problems Ellacharm3d has found. If you have holes in the routing paint and disconnected roads it's going to cause problems.

ETA: Yes, Los Aneigos (Late Night) is flagged as a city.

Thank you! This was really helpfull =)

[Arisuka]

Wow, that's great happyyasu09! Seems like it's all down to those simple rules of thumb then, awesome!

[simsample]

Just to clarify on my above post, what I meant was that the problem was that the sim had to leave the lot itself, because he was attracted to something else on the lot (it was just incidental that this object happened to be a spawner).

I wasn't trying to imply that spawners should not be placed on lots- in fact, I have several worlds that I play often which have lot bound spawners, to no ill effect.

Rather, what you need to remember is that the sims must be able to easily reach the spawners, or any other attractive object for that matter, without having to leave the lot.

Also, excessive numbers of spawners can cause lag due to the effects that the game has to render associated with them (E.g., animating the butterflies) and also the calculations involved with actually spawning the objects.

Sorry if I misled anyone!

By the way, this might be a useful method for anyone trying to fix routing problems in their world:
http://sims3newyork.blogspot.com/2011/09/twallan-comes-through-yet-again.html

[Arisuka]

I guess it's important to simply leave one tile space surrounding the lot, so that sims can go around the lot without leaving the lot?

[simsample]

I think it would depend upon the lot layout- I wrote some things up about my findings here, but bear in mind that was written a while ago, so it's always possible for routing modes to be changed with the recent patches.
http://www.modthesims.info/showpost.php?p=3438734&postcount=395

[Arisuka]

Ah, that's great! I have tons of lots that have fences completely around them (or hedges), so it's good to know it's nothing to worry about as long as sims are able to access and use every feature on the lot.

[birdyfly]

I noticed that the only time I really have a great amount of lag is when I create buildings while still making my world.
I've been using this technique in order to keep the CAW program from lagging:
Placing Lots (http://bearmtncreations4sims3.com/index.php?/topic/734-placing-lots-tips-for-perspective-and-terrain-conformation/)

Since I'm still new with CAW, I am working with small or tiny maps, so I usually only have the minimum requirements for the lots I need. I also heard that spawners tend to cause major lag as well, but I do not know that first hand since I have yet to play with the spawners.

EDIT:
I am not sure if this will help or if you already know about the set routing data, but here are some links about routing and lag as well:
http://builders.forumotion.net/t2197-perfecting-routing-an-oc-approach-to-routing-paint
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=439329



happyyasu09,
I love your world! The pictures you took look amazing. Are you planning to upload it eventually? If so, I'd love to play it. :bunny: