So... Mostly I prefer to play only with my family. Sometimes I watch other families. I just want to make sure they're okay. After that, I always close them houses, because I know that open houses will have a bad impact on the performance of the game. And now... Suddenly, I notice that one family that lives on the other side of the map from my sims is showing suspicious activity. I didn't forget to lock their house. I happened to notice the appearance of objects of cooking (I was deleting unnecessary objects in the town and saw that someone cooked waffles). They are not in hibernation as they should be. Why? How long has this been going on? Of course, I can just evict them and return them. But how many more sims in town have become so active? What a side effect?

Sounds normal the game will periodically simulate inactive households I see it all time.

sittingbear, what's the point? I don't think that can be the norm. Other sims at home should just stand still. In addition, players are advised to close this homes for a good reason. The reason is the performance of the game. It would be appropriate if I used SP and sims tried to build relationships. But no. It's a mindless activity that happens on the other side of the world. And time later I will wonder why the game is lagging. It seems that I can only hope that this activity has manifested itself in isolated cases.

sittingbear is correct, this is expected game behavior and it should be more or less isolated, not a regular ongoing thing. The way TS3 was originally designed, and in fact I believe the way it still runs on a totally unpatched base game only disc install, was that all inactive households were kept animated all of the time. That of course led to performance issues all over the place as towns grew in population, so the developers switched gears either as the game was being released or before the first EP came out and patched in the hibernation stuff that makes inactives hide in their own homes not doing anything at all with the game taking care of their basic needs for them. The NRaas HomeOpener mod was later made to emulate the original game design for those who wish to try it, but if you have any more than around 10 inactive households you will indeed stand to get a huge performance hit. And the mod is a pain to remove because its effects persist after removal, thus requiring an MC > Close on ALL residential lots in town to get back to what became EA standard.

But anyway some households will periodically still stay animated every once in a while. We can see this by using Tagger to catch what inactive sims might be doing while in their own homes, and those of us with Woohooer's KS add-on might get reports that they are woohooing in there occasionally. Sometimes (rarely) I see inactives playing with their kids while at home and sometimes an inactive sim's house catches fire, which tells me someone was probably cooking or had lit a fireplace. The overall occasional simulation effect is not harmful in relatively small doses and I don't believe there is really any way to prevent it.

Edit: As sittingbear points out while we were both posting at the same time, I may have the history/timing of the early patch that changed this behavior a bit mixed up as it was before my time with the game.

Bah igazor beat me to it but the hibernation didn't start until Ambitions or Late Night some say WA but even after that the game never kept all inactive households hibernated all the time if it did they would never leave their homes.

What I've noticed is that sims usually do something in their houses if they were outside before when they chose the action. Also, most - if not all - fires in my worlds are caused by inventors so I'm blaming SP for that since it does the skill/work pushes. :p

igazor post_id=60544 time=1543599909 user_id=6716 wrote:  should be more or less isolated, not a regular ongoing thing.

 

I sometimes wonder if this is hardware related with my current computer it seems to be a regular thing don't have any performance issues other than the normal ones with lag when sims get stuck. Whereas on my older I3 2120 it seems to be more isolated and random.

igazor wrote: ↑

November 30th, 2018, 12:45 pm

 and sometimes an inactive sim's house catches fire

Wait, is that possible? What mods do I need to add to my collection to make this possible? I thought other characters ' houses were always protected from fires. And in the last patches they are even in the career of a firefighter didn't appear.

arathea wrote: ↑

November 30th, 2018, 12:59 pm

What I've noticed is that sims usually do something in their houses if they were outside before when they chose the action. Also, most - if not all - fires in my worlds are caused by inventors so I'm blaming SP for that since it does the skill/work pushes. :p

I haven't watched that family in a long time. I have no idea where they were originally and why they suddenly decided to live life to the fullest. You said the SP could be a source of disaster? That is intriguing. I'd like to add fire to the game, but I'm afraid the cemetery will be overpopulated :D

Sara_Darkees wrote: ↑

November 30th, 2018, 1:46 pm

igazor wrote: ↑

November 30th, 2018, 12:45 pm

 and sometimes an inactive sim's house catches fire

Wait, is that possible? What mods do I need to add to my collection to make this possible? I thought other characters ' houses were always protected from fires. And in the last patches they are even in the career of a firefighter didn't appear.

They are to point a fire can start but it won't be in danger of anything being destroyed the game after a certain amount of time repairs the damage.