Master Controller making game crash on Mac

Why won't that blasted mod show up in game? Hopefully we know!
Post Reply
Teeg
Reactions:
Posts: 3
Joined: December 6th, 2018, 4:10 pm

Master Controller making game crash on Mac

Post by Teeg » December 9th, 2018, 8:46 am

TL/DR: Playing on a Mac (High Sierra 10.13.6, Sims 3 version 1.67.2.024001...autoupdates turned on, and no option to update to 1.69), Story Progression causing in-game issues while Master Controller makes the game crash on start-up, but only after updating to the most recent mod update.

I just recently re-started playing TS3 after a long break (a year) and then giving up on TS4. I hadn't removed my old game, so just opened it and started playing. I like playing the characters that populate the worlds, so started with the hackers in Twinbrook, a world I hadn't really played with before. 

The two main characters in the hackers group have girlfriends, although Story Progression decided that one of the girlfriends would be better off with someone else (or maybe that my hacker was moving too slow), and married her off. The other one married his girlfriend, and oh my goodness, they had the ugliest toddlers that I've ever seen in the game, and aging them up didn't help. So the first one becomes a teen, and soon she wants a boyfriend. So my sims throw a party, inviting all the elibible bachelors in town. Here's where I run into an issue. She has no romantic interactions. None at all. All my settings are set to allow her to have interactions with anyone her age or older, but she doesn't even have the Romantic option. She can't ask another teen on a date. She can't ask a young adult on a date, and I should have, but didn't check for other ages. I finally just aged her up to young adult and then everything was fine. Back to a pre-children save with same household. Put 2 of the hackers and the girlfriend that it turns out they both like (I think they had a lot of fun creating this town...you can tell it from the names as well, this is where Nick Knack lives) through major CAS makeovers. Yay, ugly toddlers are no more. Same issue with teens though. Reset Story Progression, and here's where it gets weird. When Story Progression is reset, everything works perfectly. Until the game turns Story Progression back on and brings up the initial pop-up. As soon as the pop-up appears asking me if I want stories on, regardless of whether I choose yes or no, romantic interactions disappear. Oddly, the circle of options doesn't close, so you can tell that Romantic should be there, but just isn't showing. At the same time, any romantic interactions (like asking a sim on a date) that I had quequed disappear. 

This would be bad enough, but since i hadn't played in a year, I figured maybe I'd missed an update and needed to update Nraas. So, I do that. Now my game crashes on start up. Well, I'm on a Mac. I've dealt with this before. I remove everything, reloading a bit at a time. So now my game runs just fine, as long as I don't have Master Controller and Story Progression installed. And it'll run okay with Story Progression as long as I don't want my teens to have romantic interactions at all. 

But Master Controller is one of the main reasons I love Sims 3. So any help would be greatly appreciated.

User avatar
igazor
Organizer
Reactions:
Posts: 17102
Joined: April 8th, 2013, 6:00 pm
Answers: 203
Location: Everyone should strive to find their inner platypus.

Master Controller making game crash on Mac

Post by igazor » December 9th, 2018, 12:21 pm

Hi there, and welcome to NRaas. The fact that you are playing the Mac version of the game means that you are subject to its 2 GB RAM usage restriction whereas the Windows version can address almost twice that (assuming the RAM is available). Oh, and yes you can go no higher than Patch 1.67 but many of us (including me) have no intention of running an Origin for Windows based 1.69 game for other reasons -- been there, done that, walked away after a year of Origin-related annoyances.

None of this has anything to do with how the mods function if the game is otherwise operational and you can manage to stay under the 2 GB RAM usage limit. The Mac version of the game is pretty broken by comparison, but shouldn't be to the point of not being playable and the mods should still be usable on suitable hardware.

1 - Which model Mac do you have and what are its specs beyond the operating system (processor, RAM, graphics card, this should all be available on About This Mac on the Apple Menu)? And how many EPs do you have in play (and which ones)?

2 - Are you clearing the five cache files on the top level of the TS3 user game folder in Documents on a routine basis? In particular, the scriptCache.package file should be cleared (deleted) after the contents of Mods\Packages changes in any way, meaning both additions and removals.

3 - Suggested course of action if you have not already done this and the cache clearing doesn't help: pull your entire TS3 user game folder out of Documents to the Desktop. The game will spawn a new, fresh game folder for you on its next launch. Stop, back out, and set up the Mods Framework again.
http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=G ... _and_Files

After verifying that the two sample mods included do work, add in a freshly downloaded copy of MC (the base mod only, no add-ons). If the game works with no crashes, then add in MC Cheats. Then the SP base mod, you can get to the other MC and SP add-ons later, but again each time freshly downloaded so we don't have to worry about mismatched mod versions. If you still have a functional test game, then you can start working towards adding your other content and mods, slowly a bit at a time, to the new game folder. Eventually with enough content and mods restored you may be able to get your prior saves added in and get them working again as well if that is part of the goal.

Teeg
Reactions:
Posts: 3
Joined: December 6th, 2018, 4:10 pm

Master Controller making game crash on Mac

Post by Teeg » December 10th, 2018, 9:42 am

Hi igazor, 

I'm on a 2015 MBP with an AMD Radeon R9 M370X graphics card and an Intel Iris Pro graphics card. Sims is set to run on the AMD card. My processor is a 2.5 GHZ i7 and I have 16 GB of RAM. 

I have all the expansion packs and store items, but only a couple of the stuff packs. I'm playing with Ambitions and Future (2 seems to be the limit I can play and avoid crashes). 

I cleared the cache when I first loaded the game, but forgot to when I started trying to figure out why my teens didn't have Romance options,  (thanks for the reminder!) but I once I got the error message, I pulled the TS3 folder, started from scratch, then added in the basic mods folder (without any other downloads), when that worked, I tried running only Nraas in case one of the others was affecting it (I don't run many mods, but there are a handful that I find add to my game). The issue was still there. Then I tried running all the other mods but leaving out Nraas, and the game worked fine. After pulling up an old save of the Nraas mods, in case the new downloads were the issue (they weren't), I discovered that if I pull SP, then MasterController doesn't work. With SP (base mod) in, MC works fine, but there's no teen romance. With both out but all other Nraas mods in, my game runs fine. 

 

User avatar
igazor
Organizer
Reactions:
Posts: 17102
Joined: April 8th, 2013, 6:00 pm
Answers: 203
Location: Everyone should strive to find their inner platypus.

Master Controller making game crash on Mac

Post by igazor » December 10th, 2018, 10:34 am

Okay great, that's much more information to work with now.

Let's address the crashing thing first, if we could. Do you by any chance have the MC Progression add-on module in play? That one is a bridge between the MC and SP base mods. If both base mods are not present, it will crash the game on startup every time (in other words, you can't leave MC Progression in place and pull out SP).

Then we can talk about this teen some more. In case this wasn't already clear, there is no teen-older romance of any kind and there are no teen-older flirts in this game at all without a mod specifically meant to unlock these things as EA has them blocked by the game core. The mod from this collection that has options to unblock teen-older is Woohooer, SP alone will not do it.

As for teen-teen romance, that should be fine -- they can't get woohoo, get married, or make babies that way again without Woohooer unblocking those things for us, but they can do other lower level flirty and romantic things like date and be steadies. If that's not happening either, I would say the settings on your Teenager caste as to which castes are allowed/disallowed for them to participate in these activities need to be examined again. For example, if you have caste "allowed" only YAs, Adults, and/or Elders on the Teen caste, then that will by itself disallow teens from flirting with or romancing other teens.

Teeg
Reactions:
Posts: 3
Joined: December 6th, 2018, 4:10 pm

Master Controller making game crash on Mac

Post by Teeg » December 10th, 2018, 11:46 am

Ahh, I do have progression in my game, so that explains that. And yeah, EA always disallows teen/adult romance, but I like not having to automatically age up one teen just because their girlfriend or boyfriend aged up. Looking at the caste settings, teens seems to be set to only adults and elders, which makes no sense, but does explain things. :)

I'll try it with the settings changed later, when I have time to play with it and see if it works. :)

Thanks! :)

Post Reply