Coming Back From Sims 4 To Sims 3. Any Stability Tips?

[SilentAegis]

After purchasing the City Living expansion and playing The Sims 4 for a week, I'm already bored. And slightly annoyed that it's so easy for my sim to lose\gain weight muscle. Tired of changing it back in CAS all the time.

So until more patches, packs, and expansions come out for The Sims 4, looks like I'm going back to The Sims 3.

However, some tips on keeping the game stable would be MUCH appreciated. ( funny how stability is the only thing the Sims 4 has got going for itself )

So a few questions getting answered would be nice.

1) What mods reduce game stability? If I had a huge amount of clothing, hair, make-up mods, but only a few scripted ones, would that be better or worse than having a few clothing, hair, make-up mods and a lot of scripted ones? I'm guessing it'd be worse, but a second opinion would be nice.

2) Do old saves reduce stability? I have a pretty good computer, but I still have stutter issues. Going through all my files and cleaning it can reduce it for a good few days, but I'd like some more long term solutions. My current playthrough is 3 or so years old. If I start fresh, would that reduce it?

Thanks for reading.

[marstinson]

As for #1, install ErrorTrap and Overwatch from nraas.wikispaces.com. They will help with in-game stability and with fending off saved game corruption. I also recommend turning off memories and deleting everything from the scrapbook as minor performance boosts (and reducing load/save times). If there is something worth preserving, screenshot it. Even with those, the game will occasionally CTD, lock-up, and other annoyances, and saved games will occasionally go belly up on you, but they do help. As for the kinds of mods you're talking about, they shouldn't affect game performance very much unless everyone in town is using them.

Leading to #2. The number of old saves don't affect anything other than the amount of your drives space that they eat up because the game only looks at one of them during the gaming session. When you save the game, though, it clears out a lot of accumulated state changes from memory, basically contributing to improved stability, so save fairly frequently (every couple or three hours). Always save with a new filename and you should never use the "Save and Quit" function. Keeping your three or four most recent saves is probably a good idea. Any others are only if there is something special going on that you might want to revert to at some point in the future.

[SilentAegis]

Originally posted by marstinson:

As for #1, install ErrorTrap and Overwatch from nraas.wikispaces.com. They will help with in-game stability and with fending off saved game corruption. I also recommend turning off memories and deleting everything from the scrapbook as minor performance boosts (and reducing load/save times). If there is something worth preserving, screenshot it. Even with those, the game will occasionally CTD, lock-up, and other annoyances, and saved games will occasionally go belly up on you, but they do help. As for the kinds of mods you're talking about, they shouldn't affect game performance very much unless everyone in town is using them.

Leading to #2. The number of old saves don't affect anything other than the amount of your drives space that they eat up because the game only looks at one of them during the gaming session. When you save the game, though, it clears out a lot of accumulated state changes from memory, basically contributing to improved stability, so save fairly frequently (every couple or three hours). Always save with a new filename and you should never use the "Save and Quit" function. Keeping your three or four most recent saves is probably a good idea. Any others are only if there is something special going on that you might want to revert to at some point in the future.

Thanks. I'm going to be cleaning out my mod list for things I don't use and I'll be sure to remember those tips as I play.

[cruinne]

My tips for adding stability and reducing lag mesh with Martinson's above, but here we go in short steps.

1. Use as few scripting mods as possible - that said, NRaas Overwatch and ErrorTrap are necessary. I also recommend Traveler (if you have World Adventures, University, or Into the Future) because it fixes a lot of trouble with moving Sims between their home and various destinations, then back again.
   
   
2. A lot of hair/clothes/furniture can slow you down, but it's hard to say when. It can depend on a lot of things, such as how many vertices the download you have has, whether its texture files are high-res, and so on. It's possible, though, to combine multiple .package files (non-scriptings ones only) into a single .package file which will be easier on your computer and game. There are different ways to combine them - two ways are covered at Nona's Sims, https://nonasims.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/tutorial-getting-started-with-cc-magic/ , and at Club Crimsyn, http://club-crimsyn.dreamwidth.org/28336.html .
   
   
3. The "Online" features of the game should be turned off. This means go into your game settings and disable the social media portions. In my experience, the game is extremely unstable and prone to lock up with these on.
   
   
4. Also, disable the "in game store". This is the "suggest sell" items that pop up in Create A Sim or in Build/Buy mode when you're playing. They talk back and forth with EA when this feature is on and, again, in my experience, cause a lot of instability while that happens.
   
   
5. Don't have anything running but the game itself. Don't have youtube open playing music in a browser; don't have streaming services running; don't have every other program on your computer searching for updates in the background, &c. &c. &c. Sims doesn't play well with others. (Also, put your AV into Silent/Gaming mode).
   
   
6. Be extremely careful of custom content from places like the Sims 3 Exchange. Those are notoriously riddled with viruses and bugs and a single bad item can screw up the whole game. Some sites offer better checking of their content and it's better to stick with those because, afaict, EA doesn't police it at all. Also, if you go to a site to get some CC, and it spews ads at you and makes you click thorugh five things to geto the download, that's a bad sign that the CC is likely compromised.
   
   
7. Use "Save As" when saving. Rather than change the filename every time, I just use two or three names and rotate through them so that I don't have a bajillion old files laying around - such as: : Lunar Lakes 1, Lunar Lakes 2, Lunar Lakes 3, then go back to 1. Using "Save As" overwrites the existing file of the same name, rather than just appending the old file the way Save does. As your game progresses, Save As makes things a bit easier on your computer since it's a "fresh" file each time and less likely to have old mistakes building on top of each other the way plain old "Save" does.

[SilentAegis]

Originally posted by cruinne:

My tips for adding stability and reducing lag mesh with Martinson's above, but here we go in short steps.

1. Use as few scripting mods as possible - that said, NRaas Overwatch and ErrorTrap are necessary. I also recommend Traveler (if you have World Adventures, University, or Into the Future) because it fixes a lot of trouble with moving Sims between their home and various destinations, then back again.
   
   
2. A lot of hair/clothes/furniture can slow you down, but it's hard to say when. It can depend on a lot of things, such as how many vertices the download you have has, whether its texture files are high-res, and so on. It's possible, though, to combine multiple .package files (non-scriptings ones only) into a single .package file which will be easier on your computer and game. There are different ways to combine them - two ways are covered at Nona's Sims, https://nonasims.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/tutorial-getting-started-with-cc-magic/ , and at Club Crimsyn, http://club-crimsyn.dreamwidth.org/28336.html .
   
   
3. The "Online" features of the game should be turned off. This means go into your game settings and disable the social media portions. In my experience, the game is extremely unstable and prone to lock up with these on.
   
   
4. Also, disable the "in game store". This is the "suggest sell" items that pop up in Create A Sim or in Build/Buy mode when you're playing. They talk back and forth with EA when this feature is on and, again, in my experience, cause a lot of instability while that happens.
   
   
5. Don't have anything running but the game itself. Don't have youtube open playing music in a browser; don't have streaming services running; don't have every other program on your computer searching for updates in the background, &c. &c. &c. Sims doesn't play well with others. (Also, put your AV into Silent/Gaming mode).
   
   
6. Be extremely careful of custom content from places like the Sims 3 Exchange. Those are notoriously riddled with viruses and bugs and a single bad item can screw up the whole game. Some sites offer better checking of their content and it's better to stick with those because, afaict, EA doesn't police it at all. Also, if you go to a site to get some CC, and it spews ads at you and makes you click thorugh five things to geto the download, that's a bad sign that the CC is likely compromised.
   
   
7. Use "Save As" when saving. Rather than change the filename every time, I just use two or three names and rotate through them so that I don't have a bajillion old files laying around - such as: : Lunar Lakes 1, Lunar Lakes 2, Lunar Lakes 3, then go back to 1. Using "Save As" overwrites the existing file of the same name, rather than just appending the old file the way Save does. As your game progresses, Save As makes things a bit easier on your computer since it's a "fresh" file each time and less likely to have old mistakes building on top of each other the way plain old "Save" does.

Sorry, didn't notice this comment. Thanks, I'll keep everything in mind.