My game is running smoothly on max settings, but everyone once in a while the game will stall for a full minute or more. Some effects are still moving (sleeping zzz, spray paint cloud, glow etc) but everything else will be frozen and I can't interact with any menus. After a minute or more, the game will snap out of it and run smoothly again. The longer I play, the more it happens.

I have some mods, almost all NRAAS essentials (SP, MC, Woohooer, the big ones) and I've triple checked they're installed correctly. I have all expansions and they're all patched. I recently downloaded some store content as well. Errortrap isn't giving any clues. I suspected my world was overcrowded and moved the family to a fresh one, but the problem persists even with a sparsely populated world. I turned the settings down to minimum just to make sure and that didn't help. I run an external FPS limiter; doesn't help. All the game executables are set to LAA; no dice. I've tried the 50/50 method of removing mods, but the problem usually doesn't start manifesting until about 20 minutes in, so even with minimal mods it would take days to find the problem, if it even is a mod problem. I clean out the cache files every time I start the game and I've used a save cleaner. So far the problem persists. It's hard to pin down because this game appears to be a buggy mess even when it's fresh.

I'd appreciate any help. My gaming time is limited and I'd prefer not to spend weeks of it trying the 50/50 method. Thanks!

EDIT: I tried removing the entire mod folder along with the cache files and yeah, the problem is still there.

Are you sure there isn't some process going on that the game spends a bit of time doing? Applying skin overlays, triggering weather, spawning sims, switching between environments, that sort of things - Basically a delay when the game is in a thinking process of some sort?

Been a while since I played TS3 so I can't quite remember if this was/is a problem there, but this can be common in TS2, and I've occasionally noticed it in TS4 too. Sometimes the game stops for a few seconds like when a townie enters the lot area, and other times for much longer (like when sims transformed to werewolves back in the days on my ancient laptop, which could take about a minute, or when I clicked "change appearance", which would render the computer useless for anything from a few seconds to 5-10 minutes - on TS2 and with a ton of CC, mind). Since TS3 technically doesn't get cooldown periods like TS2/4 with loading screens and smaller lot areas, and has a lot more stuff to keep track of, I'd assume the problem could be a bit bigger in TS3. Could be related to computer specs and computing time.

That's what I thought, especially since it seems to be worse during ingame night, but the game ran perfectly fine for many hours in a pretty crowded world. The occasional stutter, but nothing this egregious. I've been trying to root out the cause and the more I fiddle with it, the worse the problem becomes. It's at a point now where it happens immediately when I load the game and then every minute or so of play time.

I've already resigned myself to a clean install and a new game, but I'd like to prevent it from happening again.

Quick question, since I'm leery about store stuff: where are the mods installed through the launcher saved?

Sims games might be the only ones in the world, I wouldn't know, where we make a differentiation between Custom Content (CC) and mods. Store and Custom Content that are Launcher installed live in bundles in the DCCache Folder. The dbc bundles are CC, the ebc bundles are Store Content. Any tmp files in there are expendable garbage. Mods are always package based and they together with other forms of package based content do not involve the Launcher and live in Mods\Packages within the appropriate framework.

Where you said that your external fps limiter program is no longer being effective, do you mean it is not helping to preserve game performance or that it actually isn't limiting your fps rates any longer? What kind of actual fps rates are you getting in-game?

LAA is not necessary, the game became LAA on Windows when Patch 1.17 was released back in 2010.

Can we get some specs on this computer, and how much free space is on the drive or volume running Windows? And the one running the game, if it is not on the boot drive? Which world(s) are you playing in? Can we see a DeviceConfig.log (this is a file in your current TS3 user game folder in Documents)?

Ah, that explains why I couldn't find them. Thank you!


To be clear, I only started using an FPS limiter when ,y game started acting weird and I remembered that's just good housekeeping with this game. Without it the game runs 80-120, with it it runs a steady 30, and I triple checked to make sure it's not just saying that.


Damn, at least they got that right. Well done EAxis!


Yarp.

It's installed on the boot drive, SSD, about 22GB free space
I'm playing this custom world: http://modthesims.info/d/598530/greymont-bay.html

You have a 144 Hz monitor. There shouldn't be any need to cap the frame rate at 30 fps, either the more typical 60 or up through 144 (maybe 143) should be fine especially on a GTX 1070.

Your graphics card is not force-recognized and you are getting the 32 MB texture memory override. Those shouldn't be causing unplayable lag, but the texture memory thing is easy to fix later once the game is working properly.

This may not be causing your issues today, it's difficult to say, but 23 GB free on the drive running both Windows and the game is cutting things too tight. You have a 256 GB SSD there, can you not free up enough to get to 35 GB or more space by shifting other things over to the HDD?

I'm most likely to suspect the world you are playing in, though. Check out its message board, the last page of player comments mention the freezing up thing. It may be well made but too large and complicated for the game to handle well. How does a new test game function in a known to be gentle to play world like Sunset Valley, Twinbrook, or Riverview?

Son of a- I hadn't even noticed that, thanks!


I swear to god I read a couple of pages of that thread and thought it seemed legit, if there were any huge problems they'd be mentioned all over the place. That's what I get for being lazy. I suspect you're right, I'll try a different world.

Thanks a bunch!