All DLCs and I get constant lag?

[Devs]

Even when I'm not in Isla Parisoso, in Twinbrook, Sunset Valley, or wherever, I constantly get lag. I like story progression, pets, and supernaturals so I don't want to touch them, but what else can I do?

[HiFive]

LAG PREVENTION - WHAT I DO

I'm not using any mods yet, so here is some of what I do:

Turn off shop mode.
Turn off online notifications.
Limit the framerate to your monitor refresh rate with your video card software.
Don't run other things in the background while playing.
If you are playing in fullscreen mode, don't use the Alt+Tab feature.

Turn off memories. You will get an excessive number of them and they will bloat the game.

I use sequentially-numbered saves. (Always use the "Save As" button and use different names. Don't use the "Save" button.) Whenever my game seems to be getting buggy or has severe lagging, I try finding a save from before the problem started. You can either keep reusing about 9 - 12 different save names, or you can purge old saves on a regular basis.

I make very frequent saves. Doing this helps a LOT. I don't know why, it just does.

I've learned to clear excess baggage out of my Sims' inventories on a regular basis. If you have a gardener, it's easy to get way too much stuff in your inventory, and this causes a lot of lagging, and subsequent bugs. Keep the count of those apples and limes below 100 each. Under 30 is much better. Try to get to the point where you only have edibles of the same quality in each stack - like all Perfect apples, and all Perfect life fruit.

Don't collect or buy too much scrap for your inventors. Acquire what you need, and use it, then get more. A max of about 200 units per inventor table or Sim inventory is best for my Sims.

I don't allow tons of fish either. Either I sell them all, or keep only the ones that are of the same quality for the best garden fertilizer.

In general, the fewer details the game has to keep track of in your inventory, the better.

Don't go crazy with the fast-forward button. Using it too often can cause problems. If I'm using it for actions my Sim is doing, I will often pause it after a bit - do a save - and then continue. Better still is to only let the game do fast-forward for sleep cycles.

If one of your Sims gets really laggy, or yours or any other Sim gets stuck, use the reset function. Use Cntrl+Shift+C and type:

resetsim nameofyoursim (whatever that name is)

A more extreme measure for those with serious issues where the above steps are still not enough: Limit customizations as much as possible, i.e., just use whatever generic Sim/house/items the game has, and don't change the colors and patterns or build your own house, etc. This is what I had to do when I was working on a shrimp of a machine for a while.

There are 5 cache files that should be deleted every time you end a play session.

CASPartCache.package
compositorCache.package
scriptCache.package
SimCompositorCache.package
socialcache.package

This is safe to do for only these files. The game will create new ones when you play it again.

Here are some good guides with a lot more information:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1131162350
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=279488894


If you want to get more than 5 or 6 expansions, it's probably necesssary to get the NRAAS mods. The biggest problem people have is lag and the bugs created by the lag.

Keep in mind that if you install any DLC and then try to uninstall it later, there will still be some registry gunk left behind that will probably disable your ability to open the game. It's a hassle to fix, but there are guides to help with that. There is also a free cleaner you can get for it, but then after a while you'll get constant notices to "upgrade" to the paid version, and the free version will stop working. I used it once and got tired of the popup notices so I uninstalled it.

And this is what another person does:

I have found that having your GPU use v-sync and setting Reflections to Mirrors and water (NOT SUPERWATER), Edge Smoothing to medium and the rest to high refresh rate of 60 Hz caused the game to run much much smoother.

[Devs]

Wow. This is informative! Thanks. Hopefully it will help.

[HiFive]

Początkowo opublikowane przez annabuhrow:

Wow. This is informative! Thanks. Hopefully it will help.

[Devs]

This is funny... I have little issues with the Supernatural world. Wonder what's bugged about the others.

[Criss-Cross]

Funny because sims people haven't bothered, to look into it and yeah I hear you. Its constant lag .

[HiFive]

This is mostly a problem with newer machines and graphics cards trying to run older games. As others have noted in other threads, the game runs better on older machines. One person suggested recently that we can add an older graphics card to our machine and make the game use that card.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/47890/discussions/0/4351043827026802731/

[Devs]

If I changed graphics cards, then other things wouldn't work... There's got to be something else I can do?

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Pets is the biggest offender for general lag, as it adds misc wild-life which massively increases the weight on routing issues.

--------------------------------

in my case I use 3booter+fps Limiter, which solved a lot of issues as it forces the game to run at it's intended specs. However that only really works for non-origin hard-copies. (i recall it doesn't work with the steam version but maybe that changed since then).

in my case i get lag only in Isla Paradiso, I've done most of the improvement stuff + using 3booter, and my only mod is Overwatch, since it cleans up the few remaining issues.

The first reset on a fresh game lags a bit, but after that you never really see lag.

[Marsh]

In regards to the newer graphics card, I do remember there being a fix that we can install so that the game recognizes them. I believe i saw it on a reddit post that was called "Sims 3 Starter pack" or something along those lines.

[HiFive]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Marsh:

In regards to the newer graphics card, I do remember there being a fix that we can install so that the game recognizes them. I believe i saw it on a reddit post that was called "Sims 3 Starter pack" or something along those lines.

That is an issue about the game not even opening because the newer graphics card is not listed in its files. Even if you add your graphics card to the list (which I had to do) so that the game will open, you can still have lag due to new vs. old mechanics.

NRAAS mod are designed to help with lag and other issues, but there are lots of other suggestions in the two guides I linked in my earlier comment.

[HiFive]

For Isla Paradiso, this guide is good.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1681308025

For Pets, I really think you need the NRAAS mods. I uninstalled Pets because I had so many problems with it, but that broke my game and I had to jump thru hoops to get it running again. If I ever wanted to add it back, I'd get the NRAAS mods.

[Devs]

Before I get NRAAS, does it play well with Lunar Lakes and Hidden Springs? I have a mod, and never saw either world. Unsure if it is interfering.

[Nemmy]

No matter what your specs are game always will be laggy if you don't use nrass on busy worlds

Just installing nrass is not always enough neither sometimes you need to tweak it's setting for that world

[Zen-chan]

https://modthesims.info/d/658759/

[Numzy]

So I have all graphics maxed out, all dlcs, and (store bought maps) all on a beastly computer and I still experience very little lag. I can tell you the saving every 5-10 mins removes all lag for me, very useful tip. I recommend the NRAA saver mod and set it to 5-10 mins. This game has always been poorly optimized, its more strenuous than Sims 4.