Lag Fixes?

[Felritas]

I've done everything. From installing the fixed worlds (which made it worse) to installing the nraas error trap and overwatch, and to patching the sims 3 as a 4GB patch. I still lag really really bad. I have 60 FPS at all time and the game just freezes for a few seconds/loads forever when trying to go to the future. Any help?

[marstinson]

Wonder if that 4GB patch might have something to do with it? Sims 3 has been Large Address Aware since one of the early patches (1.1x maybe?), so both the current Steam (1.67) and Origin (1.69) versions would have that functionality already built in. Applying an additional patch could be messing things up a bit.

As far as installed worlds fixes, what this mostly accomplishes is to smooth out routing issues (like Sims U students going to the back of the Science Building before returning to the front to enter). There can also be some stuff going on in the background. I get pretty consistent lag at around 3am and again around 5am. This is because those are the times is when ErrorTrap and Overwatch do their cleanup stuff and also when the game updates a bunch of objects (like updating harvestables).

As far as loading times, keeping your game and user files on an SSD rather than an HDD and tweaking your settings to minimize the amount of data that needs to be read/written would help. Also, make sure you're using Save As rather than Save. Even so, transitions to other game worlds are annoyingly long, even with an SSD. It takes almost as long to transition as it does to start a game in a new neighborhood and I'm not aware of anything that will significantly speed that up. Returning to an already-visited location is slightly faster since the world state data has already been generated, but the time it takes to load another neighborhood is pretty much the way the game is.

[Felritas]

Originally posted by marstinson:

Wonder if that 4GB patch might have something to do with it? Sims 3 has been Large Address Aware since one of the early patches (1.1x maybe?), so both the current Steam (1.67) and Origin (1.69) versions would have that functionality already built in. Applying an additional patch could be messing things up a bit.

As far as installed worlds fixes, what this mostly accomplishes is to smooth out routing issues (like Sims U students going to the back of the Science Building before returning to the front to enter). There can also be some stuff going on in the background. I get pretty consistent lag at around 3am and again around 5am. This is because those are the times is when ErrorTrap and Overwatch do their cleanup stuff and also when the game updates a bunch of objects (like updating harvestables).

As far as loading times, keeping your game and user files on an SSD rather than an HDD and tweaking your settings to minimize the amount of data that needs to be read/written would help. Also, make sure you're using Save As rather than Save. Even so, transitions to other game worlds are annoyingly long, even with an SSD. It takes almost as long to transition as it does to start a game in a new neighborhood and I'm not aware of anything that will significantly speed that up. Returning to an already-visited location is slightly faster since the world state data has already been generated, but the time it takes to load another neighborhood is pretty much the way the game is.

The riverview fixes keeps screwing up the 'lin' household for me, and when I step into the future portal, it loads forever.. any fixes for that?

[marstinson]

The loading time while changing worlds (using the time portal counts as transitioning worlds) might be fixable with a faster/beefier system, but the bottleneck is the data that needs read and initialized when you enter a neighborhood (I hope you're saving as a new file before transitioning).

An SSD will give you a solid improvement over an HDD with something like an M.2 NVMe drive probably giving the biggest improvement, although not all motherboards natively support that interface. Mine doesn't and I'm working off of a SATA SSD. In that configuration it takes a couple of minutes of loading time (1:50 according to my stopwatch) when transitioning to the future and it's closer to five on a 7200rpm HDD (guesstimate - I didn't fire up my laptop to check, but it's pretty long).

I'm not aware of anything other than hardware that will improve the loading time on transition problem. The game was designed to hold one neighborhood in active memory at a time, so a faster transition would mean that either the game needs to be able to hold more than one neighborhood (redesign the game) or you need to speed up the processing of the neighborhood data (apply better hardware to the problem). Wish I could be the bearer of better news on that point.

[igazor]

The NRaas Traveler mod, working together with Overwatch and ErrorTrap, is known to smooth out broken and stuck travel transitions for many players if they are not averse to using mods. Travel to and from the future is included. Technically the mods don't by themselves improve unload and load times, but by correcting errors along the way they do manage to stop these things from getting stuck quite so often. Different players will have different experiences with them.

[Felritas]

Originally posted by marstinson:

The loading time while changing worlds (using the time portal counts as transitioning worlds) might be fixable with a faster/beefier system, but the bottleneck is the data that needs read and initialized when you enter a neighborhood (I hope you're saving as a new file before transitioning).

An SSD will give you a solid improvement over an HDD with something like an M.2 NVMe drive probably giving the biggest improvement, although not all motherboards natively support that interface. Mine doesn't and I'm working off of a SATA SSD. In that configuration it takes a couple of minutes of loading time (1:50 according to my stopwatch) when transitioning to the future and it's closer to five on a 7200rpm HDD (guesstimate - I didn't fire up my laptop to check, but it's pretty long).

I'm not aware of anything other than hardware that will improve the loading time on transition problem. The game was designed to hold one neighborhood in active memory at a time, so a faster transition would mean that either the game needs to be able to hold more than one neighborhood (redesign the game) or you need to speed up the processing of the neighborhood data (apply better hardware to the problem). Wish I could be the bearer of better news on that point.

I do have a beefy system. It's not quite a NASA PC. But it can play games really good. I5 4460, GTX 1060, 16 GBs of ram.

[Felritas]

Originally posted by igazor:

The NRaas Traveler mod, working together with Overwatch and ErrorTrap, is known to smooth out broken and stuck travel transitions for many players if they are not averse to using mods. Travel to and from the future are included. Technically the mods don't by themselves improve unload and load times, but by correcting errors along the way they do manage to stop these things from getting stuck quite so often. Different players will have different experiences with them.

I will try it and get back to you.

[Felritas]

Originally posted by igazor:

The NRaas Traveler mod, working together with Overwatch and ErrorTrap, is known to smooth out broken and stuck travel transitions for many players if they are not averse to using mods. Travel to and from the future is included. Technically the mods don't by themselves improve unload and load times, but by correcting errors along the way they do manage to stop these things from getting stuck quite so often. Different players will have different experiences with them.

Thank you! fixed the problem that happened with the oasis landing loading forever. Though it did give me the option to add missing lots? and it gave me 89 errors? damn.

[igazor]

The missing lots thing is supposed to happen when the game loads a town that has never seen a newly added expansion pack before. Not sure how that applies to Oasis Landing...somehow the game decided it needed a firehouse and a laundromat or a bowling alley maybe?

And that's around 89 errors too many unless they were really progress logs coming from the game having seen Overwatch and ErrorTrap for the first time and it had lots of things to fix. Traveler itself shouldn't be throwing errors at all unless it really didn't like the future world descendants the game had assigned to your active travel party. You could bring some samples of the resulting script logs to us at NRaas if you want some help in deciphering what they mean.

[Felritas]

Originally posted by igazor:

The missing lots thing is supposed to happen when the game loads a town that has never seen a newly added expansion pack before. Not sure how that applies to Oasis Landing...somehow the game decided it needed a firehouse and a laundromat or a bowling alley maybe?

And that's around 89 errors too many unless they were really progress logs coming from the game having seen Overwatch and ErrorTrap for the first time and it had lots of things to fix. Traveler itself shouldn't be throwing errors at all unless it really didn't like the future world descendants the game had assigned to your active travel party. You could bring some samples of the resulting script logs to us at NRaas if you want some help in deciphering what they mean.

Maybe I'll take you up on that. For now I'm going to wipe my mods clean except for the Nraas mods and the story progression. That one is too good to pass up. Thanks again

By the way it told me Riverview needed a firehouse and other DLC buildings when it already had them when I came back from the future.. I'm guessing that's due to the Traveler mod?

[igazor]

Originally posted by Feg:

By the way it told me Riverview needed a firehouse and other DLC buildings when it already had them when I came back from the future.. I'm guessing that's due to the Traveler mod?

I don't think so, our developer might have to confirm that one. But more likely it was some kind of indirect effect of the travel transition completing all the way when before (if you had managed to travel to and from Riverview prior) it wasn't fully loading. Sounds harmless either way, you should just be able to say "No thanks" if you already have those lots in play and don't want any more of them.