Texture issues ...(Windows 8)... (Black / red towns)
 

Hi everyone

We all know windows 8 has been released for a while now and i was excited for one and bought myself a copy as soon as I could, I did a clean install so my computer was completely wiped including my sims and every other game i had during Windows 7, after installing The Sims 3 and all of the expansions i have which in fact is all of them except seasons which i plan to buy later today, I ran the game initially and found a horrible surprise waiting for me. Sunset valley was black and it had white streets and buildings.. I then restarted the game and loaded starlight shores and the same had happened, I Google'd for a solution but everyone went on and on about mods but i had just finished installing so that clearly wasn't the same problem, I also noticed that all my settings were at minimum (graphic settings in options) and that every time i changed them to high (my system can take it) the game told me to restart the game for the settings to commit or something, but every time i restarted, the game had forgotten the changes i had made. So after my search being unsuccessful and my towns being a nightmare. (I forgot to mention i am above average in computer literacy) anyway it occurred to me that the game wasn't compatible with the new operating system. DESPITE WHAT GOOGLE SAYS !! I was not going to reinstall my game because all those expansion packs and stuff packs took a reasonable amount of time and i was NOT going to do it again, i checked my gpu driver at nvidia and the website said it is up to date (they have this new app where it detects your gpu.. and whether it is up to date or not ... nvidia.. thats really nice). So i decided that i am going to try changing the application file TS3W.exe's compatibility to windows 7 and run as admin and see what happens.

Just by looking at the loading screen i knew my problem was fixed ... There was so much graphic into it I couldn't believe my eyes .. When i got to the main menu i opened options and i saw my changes were saved and finally i loaded a town and everything was working FINE .. no more black towns with white streets.

So i thought sharing is caring which is why my experience is written above, if anyone needs help i'll be happy to assist ... Moderators if this post is in the wrong section i am sorry, please feel free to move it.

Anyways, Thank you and enjoy playing!!

oh : I will post an update after installing my seasons expansion pack.. Hopefully there's no need though.

Later

RE : Texture issues ...(Windows 8)... (Black / red towns)
 

So as i promised above .. I got back and successfully got the seasons expansion pack and i wanted to just test it out to see if everything works the way it should (and it does), the installation does update the launcher .. or something i dunno, took like 5 mins but then it installed smoothly no errors and the game plays fine.. Although note that i do not install external 3rd party components (mods) to my game so if something goes haywire then it's definitely the mods !! So it seems the black town, white street texture issue is gone for good..



Something interesting :

i was really excited to see all the seasons and everything and on this particular night it had just turned from summer to the fall and the rain had just stopped when i noticed an iron man like looking character on my porch, he was fidgeting with a circle like thing that appeared as if it was scanning the floor .. I sent my sim to go tell him to "stop that" .. but my sim took forever to wake up, this thing then walked to the side of the road .. and teleported into its ship and it took off.. I have supplied photo's and a video.. I thought it was a normal sim until i saw the ship so that is why i could only get the footage of the ship and not the actual alien. However the alien is google - able so you can use that. Note that the green blurring thing on the side is the alien teleporting to its ship!

The Three pictures

http://i1291.photobucket.com/albums...creenshot-5.jpg

http://i1291.photobucket.com/albums...creenshot-4.jpg

http://i1291.photobucket.com/albums...creenshot-2.jpg

The video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBB59oMP4iI&feature=plcp


Thanks.. That's all from me

I just got a completely new computer with Windows 8. I've had two problems so far. First everything was going fine. Then, once my girl got pregnant the graphics started getting a little weird. When they went to the hospital there was a big portion of my screen that looked like tv static. When I zoomed in a bit it went away. Then later the baby had big stretched lines going both ways across the screen for infinity. Eventually, the game crashed.

I also had the alien thing happen! It was an elder woman alien though. It walked around with a cane and "inspected" a plant and a hamper, than went away.

You could try the standard steps to fixing such a problem, like first and foremost .. Get new drivers for your graphics card, and this is if it is outdated. I remember i had to download new drivers before i got windows 8 because the new driver was designed especially for windows 8. So that would probably fix the problem, if not and your gpu driver is up to date then you may want to look back into you graphic options / settings. If you are playing fullscreen which i assume you are because whats sims without full screen ? .. Anyway you want to set the resolution in game to your screens real resolution and the refresh rate to default, if that still doesn't help then you need to look at your sim detail option in the game, it would help if you wrote your system specs here so we can see whether you are pushing it too hard or if a file is corrupt somehow. So as I was saying about the sim detail, if it is in fact too high and the computer can't handle it then try changing it from minimum all the way through maximum and see if it doesn't help your sim. If all the above mentioned solutions don't help then we may have a corrupt file somewhere, we'll deal with that once we get to it. In the meanwhile don't forget to leave your specs here so we can evaluate


Please include the name of your gpu

I thought I had already downloaded all the drivers, I'll double check though (I've only had this new computer for 3 days now). I brought a lot of my graphic options down. They were all pretty much on medium already but I brought down texture, amount of high detail lots, smoothing things like that. My computer's resolution and the games resolution are not the same so I'm changing that. I also changed it to compatibility mode. The game ran a lot smoother this time. It did crash on me though. It was completely random except that I had just gone to options. Didn't even get to make any changes. Went to options and it crashed.

And I'm sure this has been told a billion times but, how do I get the spec sheet?

Well, restarted my computer and then went to launch the Sims and when the launch screen popped up I noticed four of the expansions were darkened and that one of them was in between other expansions I have. Apparently when I installed all of my games I somehow missed the Outdoor Living Stuff Pack. So, I'm installing it now and will play again and see if that helps since it's one of the necessary expansions for the world I'm in and for some cc I have.