I started off with clean installs (followed above procedure for windows version) and everything was ok ( having ~ 300 files totaling ~500mb.) It wasn't until after I had played for a few days that I that I experienced a dramatic increase in loading time and slowed playing time. IF (and I'm not saying it is) the issue is the number of files the game is loading, by starting over completely fresh isn't one decreasing the number of files be loaded? They are just being removed from another area?

edited to clarify: I followed the suggested steps for a windows clean install - mac procedure is a bit different.

The framework required to handle .packages in the mods folder. If you don't know what the framework is, I'm wondering how you are handling your custom content.

I have the basegame + WA and the latest patch installed. Installed helper monkey and put some cc (mainly hair) (~400MB) in the mods folder. The game loads in 3-5 minutes - so that's ok. BUT it is very laggy. When I put the game on fast forward there are always small stops visible when I look at the time. That annoys me - I don't really know if it's the cc - I will try some things mentioned here. And what is also very annoying: the loading of the textures... When I jump to town or another house and then back the textures are white and load then in some seconds with an increased lag. I have updated my pc with a good graphics card and it has good specs and runs actual games well.

If you're getting lag with a "tiny" amount of CC, odds are the problem originates within your computer. How many RAMs do you have, and how much CC? Remember, TS3 itself consumes a significant chunk of RAM, as does Windoze. Assuming you have the typical 3 GBs of RAM on a 32-bit system (more is useless), you have a free slice of maybe 300 MBs left, perhaps.

No, that would be silly, unless MyDocs is located in a completely seperate disk. If you want to see the game run crazy fast, though, get a system that can actually support a metric assload of RAMs, and then install the entire mess and all your CC onto a RAMdisk. At that point, hard drive lag is removed entirely from the loop, as there are no hard drives involved. Of course, we're talking about a system with maybe 16 GBs of RAMs in it, but no one said this was sane.

wel first I never used the folders at all, never could get the game to read like that.

Pescado. I only have 2gb of ram and was once told that was enough on my system, I'll look into upgrading that. Graphics card is a nVidia 9800.

When I say minimal amount of cc I mean around 25 packages. Hacks work fine, I'm starting over and installing one to two packages again, I have now reduced all settings for graphics to medium.

The weird thing though is, I had it all working fine, didn't touch a thing, then it went all sulky on me again for no other reason than that I pressed fast forward in game. I wouldn't mind if it never worked but it does, it works for ages, like a whole day of game play then it konks out on me. Surely if it was a ram or graphics card issue, it wouldn't play at all

Something else to consider, is what other processes are running in the background when you're playing? A lot of people have all sorts of things installed on their PCs by the supplier, such as Norton Utilities (notorious for slowing PCs down very notably), anti-virus/anti-spyware stuff and so on, all running in the background eating up resources.

It MAY be that I've had no problems with slowdown (so far...) because I always disable all those items when I get a new PC, then go into Services and disable any services that I know I don't need (only recommended if you know what you're doing - I'm an IT engineer IRL!) and then run MSconfig and disable anything that starts itself at boot-up that I know I don't need. I run anti-virus/spyware apps manually on a periodic basis, rather than have them always active in the background.

It might be very much worth looking into this side of things for those who have done a clean install but are still having problems.

Sorry Pescado, but I don't think that the problem is the RAM. Disk defragmentation is sure a problem for some software, included The Sims 3, and the RAM size too, but I don't think that CC and RAM are related as you tell.
The first thing is that Resource.cfg hack the game and forces it to do something not natural. This forces to load a new folder and all contents here. I've study tonight and I've seen that game loads from Mods folder both when you load a family and both when you load a travel destination. If you check simCompositorCache.package and CompositorCache.package, these files increase so much when moving form a family to a travel destination. This happens both if you haven't cc, but the increase is about a pair of bytes, not some megabytes.

Some of my trials. (each time cache cleaned)

1. Without CC, files Cache cleaned
   • Load main menu -> 40seconds
   • Load a save -> 1minute
2. Only patterns (2.36mb, 18 file, 1 folder) and default replacement (24.8mb - 8file)
   • Load until main menu -> 1 minute
   • Load a saves -> 1:30 minute
   • Load France destination -> 1:30 minute
   • SimCompositorCache.package after load a Saves -> 8635 kb / after load France -> 27664 kb/ after exit game -> 27699kb
   • CompositorCache.package after load a Saves -> 8437 kb / after load France -> 9124 mb / after exit game -> 9133
3. Only hair (202mb - 125files - 52subfolders)
   • Load until main menu -> 30seconds
   • Load a saves -> 1:10 minute
   • Load France destination -> 1:30 minute
   • SimCompositorCache.package after exit game -> 50.50 mb
   • CompositorCache.package after exit game -> 9157kb
4. hair (202mb - 125files - 52subfolders) - clothes (20.2mb, 14 files, 2 folders) - shoes (8.98 mb, 6 files, 3 subfolders) - makeup (464kb, 10 files, 4 subfolders)
   • Load until main menu -> 32seconds
   • Load a saves -> 1:25 minute
   • Load France destination -> 1:38 minute
   • SimCompositorCache.package after exit game -> 156.654 kb
   • CompositorCache.package after exit game -> 26.762kb
5. buy mode objects (151mb - 118files - 15subfolders)
   • Load until main menu -> 28seconds
   • Load a saves (empty) -> 43seconds
   • Load France destination -> 1:52 minute
   • SimCompositorCache.package before loading france-> 8kb / after exit game -> 1298kb
   • CompositorCache.package before loading france-> 6854kb /after exit game -> 7300kb
6. buy mode objects (207mb - 255files - 40subfolders)
   • Load until main menu -> 30seconds
   • Load a saves -> 1:34 minute
   • Load come back home from France destination -> 2:24 minute
   • SimCompositorCache.package before loading france-> 2755kb / after exit game -> 3228kb
   • CompositorCache.package before loading france-> 7866kb /after exit game -> 11416kb
7. buy mode objects (207mb - 255files - 40subfolders) +hair (202mb - 125files - 52subfolders) +shoes (8.98 mb, 6 files, 3 subfolders)
   • Load until main menu -> 1:15minute
   • Load a saves -> 2:50minute
   • SimCompositorCache.package after exit game -> 3587kb
   • CompositorCache.package after exit game -> 4097kb

MYPC
2gb RAM, Nvidia 7900gs 256mb dedicated memory, AMD Sempron64 3400 Ghz (single core)

About DCCACHE and sims3pack
The file .dbc is created only with custom .sims3pack
The file .ebc contains .sims3pack created from EA, such as Riverview, store contents etc.
during sims3pack installation, another file is created dcdbt.ebc and it is deleted when you confirm and close the installation window.

TS3 does not use as much RAM as CC.. and neither did TS2. I could put 20GB of CC in my game and between RAM and page filing my system never used anywhere near that much memory to run the game. I'm not sure where that theory came from but it's not true, and I would appreciate it if nobody went around telling people they had to go out and buy as much RAM as they have CC. If TS3 is like TS2 then it would scan through every file (and then do.. something.. with it) before loading the game and that's why extra cc can account for longer *loading* times, but once that cc is properly categorized (or whatever you want to call what the game does with it) it *does not* stay in active memory while you play the game. HOWEVER, that said, there's more going on than just how fast a computer can read/write through the cc because I've done some tests across several different strength machines and you just don't get the performance increases like you would expect from faster hardware and actualy HDD and RAM read/write abilities are MUCH faster than what the game actually takes to load the cc into. So there's something going on with exactly what EA does when it loads cc into the game in the beginning and THAT is most likely the kicker to lag/load times. Are there cases where someone might not have enough RAM and it would cause lag? Sure. But you don't have to go out and buy 8gb and 12gb of RAM just because that's how much cc you have. Our guides in the computer forum lay out realistic amount of RAM for the game and if people have that then adding more isn't going to help any reasonable amount.

callistra, I think the problem right now is that too many people are theorizing. You did the right thing and had the ability to check on different machine, like I have. Rather than people wanting to be correct and theorizing it would be better if as many people as possible did realistic tests and shared the answers, like simsCri did above. We're not going to get an answer by guesswork and, as you already know, people's guest work made me go out and spend £88 on a new graphics card that I likely didn't need at this point.

It's not money we need to spend, it's research into an answer.

Pescado, one thing I did note was that you said it was piffle to think of changing to my docs. Inge has said she is considering that theory. It doesn't hurt to try and without trying anything we can, we'll never get anywhere with this

I didn't know that the word framework was used to explain those files. I'm sorry it's upsetting to you that someone wasn't aware of that.

The freezing up of the game I was experiencing is nothing to do with cc or with whatever is running in the background.

I took cc out and it still did it, then back in and it's not doing it. I think the freezing is a glitch rather than being even remotely related to the cc issue.

Today I had the game running with hacks and paintings in and I had outlook express, my anti virus, comodo firewall and I downloaded 4 files during gameplay, so whatever is running in the background has no bearing on it, the game ran absoultely fine. Of course it could just go pop any time.

The freezing issue seems to be linked to using that ultra speed through current action for too long.

My experience:

I had major game issues after installing WA and the latest patch. Started with blue lots which I finally got rid of by stripping out CC (packages and sims3packs) that were furniture, build or decor related. The game functioned again, after starting a new neighborhood, but the lagging was atrocious to the point where Sims looked like they were doing the robot when I would take them into CAS.

After reading that the issue was likely .package related, I stripped out all package CC with the exception of custom eyes, skin, and the latest body mod hack. I then reinstalled the decor/build/furniture sims3pack files and now the game runs flawlessly.

I can live with the furniture and clothing sims3pack files, but I am a hair addict and most of the selection is just awful.

For those wanting to know what files the game accesses and when can I suggest "Process Monitor" available here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...s/bb896645.aspx

There are a lot of things that can slow down both loading and playing of any game. Disk fragmentation is probably the easiest to sort out as Windows comes with a built in defragmenter. Memory should only be a problem if you USE a lot of CC in your homes/worlds, not just because you have a lot on your disk as the game only loads what is needed to display your world.

As people have said, a great deal more research is need and nothing should be ruled out at this stage.

It may well turn out, for all we know, that EA have got the right method sussed and we'll all have to use sims3pack files.

I need to come back what I wrote on my previous post is not really true.

I hate The Sims 3 really. Each time I reset it and I delete all saves to make new trials the game works in a different way.

I wrote:
- if you delete files from Mods folder and don't delete simCompositorCache.package, CompositorCache.package and so, your game still load your cc, except patterns. I am really sure that this worked. I'm sure that I've deleted my furnishing folder and I've found them in my game the next load. Now I tried to repeat the same situation, but each time I tried to delete files in mods folder (and I've tried with the same files!), the game doesn't load them anymore.
So this way works just sometimes, the only reason I find to justify this behavior is that I haven't touch files for some some times before delete the folder the first time, and my cache.packages were really so big (500mb about).

Another new behavior of my game. I told that sims3pack are extracted from the launcher and stored in an index file .dbc in DCCache, and a .package version in DCBackup. I remember this summer some trials to understand folders meaning... and I am sure that when I deleted some files from DCBackups my game didn't load the cc deleted.
Now I've mass deleted all contents stored into DCBackups and all patterns and clothes are still in my game.

I really hate The Sims 3, it is not possible that one day it runs in a way and the day after it changes. I'm a computer scientist, so I'm not a monkey users and I'm able to monitor my pc and to make tests. I'm really tired today.
In add, I've discovered that .sims3pack files created with Delphy pattern packager don't work, they are installed as a single file and the game doesn't recognize an unique id for them.

I'm going to convert all files with TSR Workshop... I'm bored to do so, I like .package and I like to offer both version of files, but create cc is a passion, I've a life, a work... I can't spend some days in trials and get everyday different results. I know that the first EP give always some problems, as with The Sims 2 University, but I ask at least to see the same issues each time I load the game! Perhaps my pc and my game are more crazy then me...

Btw, I've updated my previous post, I've added the time to load some other types of cc.

TickleOnTheTum, sure application in background and active processes have a great rule in loading time, but same pc, same application and so give some different results...

In my post above I said that I ran the game while downloading 4 files and had av, firewall and outlook running, so I doubt it's anything to do with running processes.

Defragging goes a lot quicker and better if you use Defraggler. Having done everything possible to clean my pc, including defraggler, ccleaner and auslogistics registry cleaner, I doubt this is the big issue. I've said all along that EA don't want us to be able to make cc, why would people need the store if we could. They know that this is one of the biggest sites for cc and that we use .package files. Enough said.

When sims 3 first came out we couldn't do a thing with it, within two weeks the programs were there to help us create cc, the same minds will crack this one too.

I still think though that some of the issues are just your basic bugs that we get with everything from EA, though not the cc one

Sims3Cri, you are feeling much like me, my results differ each time and that's what is most puzzling. I now have even more cc in and working. I added the whole collection of plates by babayaga and some curtains. No problems whatsoever, so why problems yesterday with less in and today it's fine? This is really messy and hard to get a result then replicate it again, it changes so much. I'll keep adding and see where I get

Do you know if someone is finding a solution for that? I've read of our problems but I don't read of anybody providing a solution...We know that the game work with a vanilla game, sims3pack and just few .package...Are we sure that someone will spend time on a problem that concern only people (like us) who play with several Gb of packages? The solution is terrible but I think we have it: try to keep the Packages folder under a huge size. (I prefer playing with nothing than choosing something)

Inge is looking into it, she said she was. These answers don't come overnight and as they are unpaid we have to give them time to work it out.

I'm finding that if I only add a very small amount of packages at a time then play the game for a bit, I'm not having the same issues I was at the start.

Let's face it, this is only happening with the old .packages and Ange showed that recloning fixes the issues. People are making new content all the time and if it's made with the latest programs then perhaps this issue will sort itself.

I don't know, but I do know a little patience is required from us all.

I would have patience if someone else besides Inge would look into this. And if someone would tell us: "Hey I'm providing a solution, so wait for that" (I'd wait even for months). But actually I think that no one will find a solution because this is a problem only for us who are addicted to a lot of CC...And as you said they are unpaid...
Edit: I mean Inge can't do everything by herself...

Franziska, sorry but I don't agree with your post. CC are in testing and released as beta and in testing. When you download something you know that it could create problems with your games... So you should be patient. I think that is annoying read ten pages of problems, and if people has time perhaps they pass it on test and try. I have passed 2 days to try and find possible way to solve loading issue. I don't want release objects with problems to my user, and even if my game work I try to understand where is the problem and how to solve.

Sometimes when I read some posts all it seems to be due, but you forget that here there is a free community that create for passion. They try to hack and understand the code of the game and they aren't EA producers.

I have the same problem, but with the original game. I can basically have as many files for the game as I want, as long as I don't have ANY package files. It is totally frustrating. I have spent the past week trying to re-install and re-download, and each time the game takes 30 minutes to load if I have package files, then runs horribly when in game. It make me almost not want to play anymore.

No I'm not. I just made a suggestion. Helping Peter to track bugs in s3pi tools and occasionally playing is all the sims-related stuff I have time for in my life right now. Sorry.

Then the only option available is for people to reclone their creations and hope that works, it did in the case of Ange's curtains. The newer stuff coming out of the updated tools seems to be ok too.

Thanks for letting us know Inge.

Are you not doing the sims3.packs thing with S3PE either then?

Cristina we are saying the same things...And Inge has confirmed it. No one will find a solution just because this is a free community and this is a problem only for few of users who want to have Gbs of CC. I appreciate the hard work made up till now to have CC in the game and perhaps the issues stop here. We have to resign ourselves and be content with few packages. As I said, the game works with a clean installation, several sims3packs and few packages. This is the best we can have now, and it is enough for a free community and a hostile EA.

That's so sad!
I'm experiencing this awful lag since some days ago and I don't even have WA or any patch, so imagine. Everytime my sims go to dresser or to the city everything loads agains, like the other guy say, everything dissappears and starts appearing white and finally completely loaded. The load times for a family are long too, at about 10 minutes. My laptop is new, 4 gb memory, 1gb nvidia, amazing. I've tried everything you commented in this post, nothing worked. I can't believe there's no solution, I always hope mts will solve that, now I see it very difficult. Sad, sad, really sad. Hating EA!

pd: sorry if you didn't understand well, English is not my mother tongue.

Franziska, the amount of cc doesn't seem to make a difference at all. I've never been able to get much in but I do notice a pattern, in that some creators files don't work for me, like specific people's cc. Other stuff works just fine. Other people have loads of stuff working for them and some with lower specs than me, and lower graphics cards.

This isn't just limited to a few people either, it's just that a lot of the people experiencing problems don't come here. On other sites I've been reading that they never had success with .packages and that we are the ones late in finding this out. When I think of the amount of cc I have in sims2, I know that there is no way that sims 3 will be able to have that amount with that format, especially as we only have one EP right now, what happens after 5 or 10 EP's?

Hacks don't seem to be a problem at all and that's probably because they have a dll in the folder to make them work.

I'm switching to sims3.packs for things I make, like Cristina I don't want to cause problems for the end users, that would be more trouble than it's worth. I was hoping that S3PE and S3OC would allow us to do that but it doesn't look like Inge and Peter are going to be working on that. Still, I can use their tools for doing game mods.

My own humble opinion after days of testing and playing around with this is, hacks are great as .packages but cc is better as a sims3.pack