Don't sue me! I know this isn't technically for "OMG I NEEDZ HELP!" issues, but ... I do. Or more specificially, I want to know if you're experiencing the same issue.

I'm running the game with custom content but no scripting mods at the present.

The issue: Everything runs smoothly for a while of playing and then suddenly everything starts to lag horribly. And I mean horribly. The game freezes for several seconds which also affects the user interface (play/pause, etc) which happens about every 10 in game minutes which means it's almost permanent after a while.
I used to play with NRAAS/twallan's Traveler Mod installed and experienced that I did not have these lags when I sent my Sims (and their pets!) away on vacation. Everything ran smoothly in the vacation worlds, even when the game created strays and Pets related content. The "Homeworlds" are almost unplayable whatsoever. I started a game in Appaloosa Plains and thought the issue to be world related so I started playing a fresh Riverview... which became also horribly lagged after a while of playing. Note that at this time I no longer had any scripting mods installed.

Does any of you experience the same lagginess in your "Homeworlds"? I have this nagging suspicion the evil ice cream truck might be the culprit. Simply because it's annoying and doesn't exist in travel destinations. *glares at ice cream truck*

It's also most likely the game attempting to generate animal spawns. I get the lag (without the crashing) mostly when the game starts producing strays and wild animals around my sims house or location. Kinda annoying.

In another thread, Twallan (I believe) stated that some of the wild animal spawns have hopelessly borked skins (or something to that effect) that can mess a game up and produce some considerable lag. I've been playing in a custom world that is marked as a city, so I haven't had as many issues. However, any time I play in a world that is flagged as a town... forget about it. It's nigh unplayable.

Sorry I can't provide any useful advice/help though. I'm in the hopelessly tech-illiterate camp.

Wow, that was an impressive misquote.

Don't recall stating anything about lag, however the outfits worn by elder Raccoon and Deer sims were persistently crashing my game.

The other species of service animals however should be fine, at least on my setup. I have yet to encounter a cat, dog, or horse that crashed my game.

^Ha... whoops. Statement rescinded then. I believe I'm quoting someone else who quoted you as saying that. My bad.

Heh, that's what I thought, though ... so thank you very much for your input! It confirms my suspicions that there's little I can do about this super annoying lag that completely destroys any fun whatsoever. Guess I'll just have to re-install "Traveler" and play in a vacation world until someone provides a "BURN THOSE BUGGY ANIMALS!!" fix. And the ice cream truck, too. Seriously, I hate that thing.

Considering the ice-cream truck has been camped out in front of my sims house for at least two days now... I'm with ya'.

What neighborhood are you playing? I only have lag in Bridgeport. Is that what you're playing, too? Appoloosa Plains runs pretty flawlessly for me.

Install Master Controller and do a reset everything. My appoloosa save was doing exactly what you described and doing the reset made the every 10 sim-minutes pulsing lag stop.

I've had this problem too (not just with this expansion; particularly it often happens to me when my Sims are in Al Simhara) but "resetsim *" (without the quotes) in the cheats panel works wonders for me. I figure it must be some NPC doing something that glitches out and borks the game.

This sounds like the problem caused by routing problems in the world. Basically, NPC sims spawn in spots surrounded by unroutable terrain, and the game hangs while they try to find a (non-existent) path. ResetSim fixes it because it puts those sims back where they belong. Possibly this problem, which pre-dates pets, is made worse by wild critter spawns, dunno.

EllaCharm3D has a collection of fixes for this problem in various worlds: http://www.modthesims.info/member.php?u=1515002

I've mainly been playing Appaloosa Plains and for the most part it's played very well. I have had a few tiny pauses but only only after a few sim weeks of play. The worst of it came after my sim was fishing at the waterfall lot and a unicorn and then 3 wild horses showed up. They were all backing up like crazy because they were having trouble with routing. The pauses continued for a short while after I sent her home but stopped after a few minutes.

Othere than that, no, so far I have not had any major issues. Did you add any lots to the world? Some players have reported problems with store items on user made lots that aren't behaving nicely. Other than that, I don't have any ideas other than to agree with the reset everything using MC. If it's route fail that should fix it.

In Appaloosa Plains my game has been completely freezing every now and then (sometimes up to approx 30 seconds) but it's not the same type of continuous choppy lag I had in Bridgeport. Other than the freezing my game has been running more smoothly than ever before.

I'm playing Appaloosa Plains, too. It started off perfectly fine. I managed to play for a few hours before turning the game off. When I loaded it up again, it was unplayable. The game now lags like crazy, and all of the solutions I used to fix the Bridgeport lag (reset town, combine packages, delete world caches, etc) seems to not work here. I needs the helps.

There are some routing fixes needed for Appaloosa Plains, too. The usual blank spots on hillsides, among other things. In WIP mode.

Oi, I just ran the ErrorTrap and it turns out my "main" horse produces a cartload of errors for no apparent reason. Lovely. On the plus side, game's running smoothly right now after a reload. That is, it ran smoothly until CAS decided to crash on me when editing a cat, but that's fairly normal behaviour. ;-)

I'll impose the power of the Master Controller upon the game once it starts acting up again and see if that fixes anything. Gonna try to fix my horsey first. I think her family tree is borked.

i have to agree with previous speakers. this problem is most likely caused by npc routing failiure. resetSim * should fi it. alltho its not a permanent solution it is easy enough to just do it again if/when the problem comes back.

I've attest that my sims and NPCs (maids/butler) sometimes found themselves on the outside wall of a second floor house, hanging in the air, with the resulting pathfinding failure. I'm usually alerted by its wailing and gnashing of teeth. I wonder if it happens to NPC not under my control as well. With enough sims doing the same, it could probably bring the game to a halt. Also, Twallan's Overwatch mods clean up many cars each nights, usually over 30 vehicles. You can guess what would happen to the game if they're allowed to continue to pile up.

Even with all these tweaks, though, Pets runs slower and with more pauses than ever before, even though I'm using less CC this time around, and have a better computer to boot.

And this is why we love you.

I'm happy to say that my game runs somewhat smoother now. For what reason I don't know. Probably simply because I have to restart it so many times with Pets crashing on me every half-hour or so. ;-)

I agree on the routing front, definitely. There also seems to be a weird bug that renders a porch/door unroutable if you "invite in" a stray cat. I've had this happen two times before I realised what was going on and avoided the interaction. My Sims were no longer able to use the front door where they had greeted the stray and instead would throw a tantrum and show a "pet sleeping spot" image (you know, the little blue pillow thing that looks like a puddle at first ;P ) when they tried to leave the house. I couldn't even bulldoze the faulty foundation part because it was blocked by an invisible object, presumably the sleeping spot. *rolls eyes*

I did just encounter the same problems with the pets expansion playing in that new town. The game was running fine for several hours until suddenly it could freeze every 10 seconds. The animation just stopped except for the green gem above the sim's head and the water pouring from the water can.

I'm not so good when it comes to understand The Sims 3 game engine performance issues (which has been alot through the years) and I didn't know what to do about this particular animation freeze until I read in this forum thread to try the resetSim * command. I tried that and now everything works smooth again! It must have been a sim or something that was located somewhere it should not be.

I'm happy!

Anyone with the lags: you could also try "resetsim wild horses".

hmm, if it is a routing lag, and we're playing user created worlds, how would we go about determining if that's the case?

Open the world in CAW... not the easiest thing to do, but it can be done. There's a thread about it on the CAW forum.

Or contact the creator and ask

Or, you can just look for sims who seem to be stuck in someplace you wouldn't expect to see a sim :p

Or, if MC's Reset All SIms command clears it up for you (temporarily), you can be pretty sure that was the problem.

The fact that Twallan's game crashes and mine doesn't is doing terrible things to my mind!

I get it too. It's annoying but it doesn't mess up my gameplay. Little animations and music still run even when the entire screen freezes. I'm thankful it doesn't crash my game.