France crashing issue with Traveler enabled

The only mod stopping your Sims from traveling to the abyss. Did you end up there anyway? We'll try to help.
HappyCigarettes
Reactions:
Posts: 3
Joined: December 7th, 2018, 12:33 pm

France crashing issue with Traveler enabled

Post by HappyCigarettes » December 7th, 2018, 1:00 pm

Hi @Igazor! Popping over from the MTS forums.

I just ran another test on that issue so there's more information now.

Low-down:
  • With Traveler mod, game crashes in France between 0500-0600 on Day 2. Even if the game is saved, quit, and reloaded before that point it will still crash 9/10 times (not a play-time issue? Probably?) at around 0530. The furthest I got with repeated save-reload and praying was the same time the following day.
  • This issue does not persist if all graphics settings are turned to low. Only happens if graphics are set to anything above medium. Egypt and China can be played with settings on max and the mod enabled with no problem.
  • I've put the crash log in a pastebin here. Seems to be some kind of memory error, but it's calling a high address which strikes me as odd. I get no errors from the game itself, just a straight crash-to-desktop.
  • Issue not present in China or Egypt. Untested in University. I can test that if you like?
  • Issue not present if Traveler mod is removed entirely.
  • NEW TEST from today: Issue not present if Seasons are disabled in France. Seems to be enabling Seasons that's causing it. Again, not a thing in China or Egypt. You'd think they would require MORE memory being both larger and more detailed, but here we are (I disabled seasons in Egypt anyway because snow on the pyramids is just weird, but I can leave them on with no issue)
  • DeviceConfig can be found here. A note on my processor: the i5-6200U has turbo boost up to 2.8GHZ which is automatically activated. Why the game is only reading it at 2.3 (which would be below requirement) is beyond me. I don't know if it's just reading the base stat, or if my machine is not activting turboboost because it doesn't need to? Honestly I don't even know how to check that. Either way, my processor is definitely up to code. Promise.
  • I'm also not sure why the Crash Log says I'm running Vista when I'm on Win10. I suspect that has nothing to do with the issue, it's just weird. I mean the DeviceConfig says Win 8 so clearly it just doesn't know what OS I'm on. Just to, y'know, clarify that I'm not running this on a machine from last century. Definitely on Windows 10.
For now I've just removed Traveler from my game. I only put it in to port my family to a clean copy of Moonlight Falls and then promptly forgot about it, so I don't mind not having it. But if someone knows why that happened or wants to test it that'd be cool.
 

Best Answer by igazor » December 7th, 2018, 2:31 pm
That would be the hour at which plants across the world begin updating their growth states. There might also be spawners set to "go off" at that hour and I suppose there could be sims getting ready for work in the marketplace at that time, though it still seems a bit early in the morning for that. Individually these would typically be no big deal, but added together with other forms of stress could be leading to the overload.

No, you cannot (or rather should not) force a U-series processor to work harder than it is designed to. That will likely lead to overheating and the possibility of burning out the entire device to the point where it no longer starts up. I didn't mean to sound overly critical of your laptop choice, but the point was that once we get beyond the base game alone, unpatched as it was in mid-2009, TS3 has much higher demands on hardware than other games of its time. Regardless of how EA may market things or come up with fantasy level "Minimum Requirements," it was never a game built to function well on lower end systems in the real world and running on Win 10 doesn't actually help it in that regard at all.

A GTX 1070 would be overkill for this game, but would be great if you planned to play other more modern titles as well. For TS3, in the newer 1000 series, a 1050 (desktop or mobile) should be sufficient, even better would be a 1050Ti or 1060. But not a 1030 (also coming in variants confusingly called MX130s and MX150s), as those would put you back where you are now in the GPU restrictive range.

It's great that you can run the game as well as you can now on that system and hopefully you are enjoying it and much that the mods here and from elsewhere have to offer, but there are some limitations to what you will be able to do with the game and I believe you have just bumped into one of them. I would now recommend setting Traveler to disallow weather in these worlds and being cautious with the Game Options graphics settings going forward rather than taking more resource usage readings as originally suggested.

GO TO FULL POST ➙

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.

France crashing issue with Traveler enabled

Post by igazor » December 7th, 2018, 1:56 pm

Hi there, and thanks for bringing the issue over here. As suspected, the Crash Log doesn't really help except to tell us that the game crashed because it was out of resources, as we already knew. The DeviceConfig and your further description of the crashing issue pretty much confirms what I already suspected, though.

As an aside first, don't worry about what Crash Logs and the DeviceConfig say your operating system is. The game was never patched to recognize Win 10 because it was released way after the game was out of development.

Yes, the issue is pretty clearly relating to weather and Traveler's allowing it on the WA worlds. Why France more so than the other two I have no idea, but that could be coincidence. This wouldn't really be a flaw in the game's design or the mods, though. Your system is underpowered to run the heaviest of the EPs properly and without potentially severe performance issues.

Processor - The "U" in the U series processors indicates Ultra-Low Power -- this kind of power means actual electricity, not theoretical processing power or cores. These processors are designed for lightweight usage no matter how fast they claim to be able to run under turbo and are really not suited for graphics intensive gaming as they keep wanting to go into "ultra-low power usage" mode whenever they can. That's great for battery and electricity consumption conservation, but horrible for when highly intensive tasks (like running the game) are required constantly and without interruption.

GPU - Your graphics card is an Nvidia GT 930M and does not have the throughput ("bandwidth") to handle Pets, Seasons, IP, ITF very well. Many players on this card cannot work with the heavy EPs at all. You have it forced-recognized as a 650M so that the game will give it a proper profile, but that cannot make the card work any harder than it possibly can by its design. In the 900 Mobile series, we would say that a 960M or higher would be required to run the entire game at more than low/medium graphics settings. Note that it's the "middle" digit in these cards that dictate GPU strength.

Now clearly your game runs fine in other places, but I think for whatever reason the combination of France + weather + high graphics settings in the Game Options is just not going to be a winner here.

HappyCigarettes
Reactions:
Posts: 3
Joined: December 7th, 2018, 12:33 pm

France crashing issue with Traveler enabled

Post by HappyCigarettes » December 7th, 2018, 2:10 pm

Thanks for you reply Igazor. This is a 'gaming' laptop, albeit low end because I'm not made of money, so a little surprising it can't hack a 10-year old game (how did anyone cope when it was released, even?!), but I hope to have a newer one by next Xmas with a 1070 in it and say goodbye to this issue forever.

Seasons is the only 'heavy' EP I have. Not for performance problems, I just didn't like the others enough to buy them (used to share a physical copy with my old roomate, have sine purchased digital since moving away). I'd probably have more notable problems if I were also running those. That's fair. As it is 'make it weather in France' is the only time I have a crashing or even lag problem, so fingers crossed it doesn't disintegrate further in the next 12 months ;)

I'm not much good with Windows since mostly switching to Mac in 2006, so forgive the dumbass question but is it possible to force the device to use the higher processing power all the time and override the 'must be in low power always' urge?

Also, did you still want me to run it again with the seasons on and check the memory usage in task manager at the specific hour it likes to crash at? I don't know what it's doing in France specifically at 5am, honestly, but it strikes me as weird that it's always at the same in-game time.

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.

France crashing issue with Traveler enabled

Post by igazor » December 7th, 2018, 2:31 pm

That would be the hour at which plants across the world begin updating their growth states. There might also be spawners set to "go off" at that hour and I suppose there could be sims getting ready for work in the marketplace at that time, though it still seems a bit early in the morning for that. Individually these would typically be no big deal, but added together with other forms of stress could be leading to the overload.

No, you cannot (or rather should not) force a U-series processor to work harder than it is designed to. That will likely lead to overheating and the possibility of burning out the entire device to the point where it no longer starts up. I didn't mean to sound overly critical of your laptop choice, but the point was that once we get beyond the base game alone, unpatched as it was in mid-2009, TS3 has much higher demands on hardware than other games of its time. Regardless of how EA may market things or come up with fantasy level "Minimum Requirements," it was never a game built to function well on lower end systems in the real world and running on Win 10 doesn't actually help it in that regard at all.

A GTX 1070 would be overkill for this game, but would be great if you planned to play other more modern titles as well. For TS3, in the newer 1000 series, a 1050 (desktop or mobile) should be sufficient, even better would be a 1050Ti or 1060. But not a 1030 (also coming in variants confusingly called MX130s and MX150s), as those would put you back where you are now in the GPU restrictive range.

It's great that you can run the game as well as you can now on that system and hopefully you are enjoying it and much that the mods here and from elsewhere have to offer, but there are some limitations to what you will be able to do with the game and I believe you have just bumped into one of them. I would now recommend setting Traveler to disallow weather in these worlds and being cautious with the Game Options graphics settings going forward rather than taking more resource usage readings as originally suggested.

HappyCigarettes
Reactions:
Posts: 3
Joined: December 7th, 2018, 12:33 pm

France crashing issue with Traveler enabled

Post by HappyCigarettes » December 7th, 2018, 2:39 pm

Well, the difference in price between an MSI with a 1060 or a 1070 is £200 (perhaps even less a year from now) which would only mean getting it maybe a month sooner so I figure I may as well wait it out and go for something that may potentially last - as far as performance goes - a little longer.

Noted re: processor. I certainly don't want to kill this thing before I can replace it! I'll just run with the seasons disabled in WA then, no biggie. At least I finally figured out the system limit, so that's something ;)

Thanks for your help and advice!

C0rd3lia-
Reactions:
Posts: 4
Joined: December 26th, 2018, 7:23 am

France crashing issue with Traveler enabled

Post by C0rd3lia- » December 26th, 2018, 7:35 am

I have the exact same problem but I’m pretty sure my card should be able to handle it - I have the NVidea GTX 1080. However I’d like to turn weather in France, China and Egypt off completely but the option in Traveler to do this isn’t showing for me. I’m pretty sure it used to so I redownloaded and installed the latest version just to check and I can’t see the option there either. I’ve checked the mod documentation just to ensure I’m looking in the right place.

Please could someone point me in the right direction? Wasn’t sure whether to start a new thread as we have the exact original problem but I can do if required. Thank you.

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.

France crashing issue with Traveler enabled

Post by igazor » December 26th, 2018, 10:28 am

C0rd3lia- - Hi there. Let's confirm, if we could, that you are looking in the right place for that Traveler option. That would be while in a WA world, not your sims' homeworld, on the map tag for Base Camp (standing in for City Hall), NRaas > Traveler > Enable Seasons > T/F. Do you have a Traveler menu there and is the option not showing up among the others?

C0rd3lia-
Reactions:
Posts: 4
Joined: December 26th, 2018, 7:23 am

France crashing issue with Traveler enabled

Post by C0rd3lia- » December 26th, 2018, 11:24 am

Hi @igazor Thanks for the reply. Ahhh I was looking in the home world so that explains why i couldn’t find it! I’ll try next time I’m travelling and see if that stops the crashing. The crash always happens when I have a sim sleep in the tomb in the Forgotten Burial Mound in ‘The Trivial Affair’ Adventure so I wondered if it was something to do with that.

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.

France crashing issue with Traveler enabled

Post by igazor » December 26th, 2018, 11:35 am

C0rd3lia-- Ah, yes the mods' settings are all world specific. Traveler has no say over the weather in a homeworld, only when the game is in vacation mode, so the option just wouldn't show there.

Afraid I don't have any experience with that tomb/adventure line, so would have to defer to other players here if they have anything to add.

I do have to ask though, that GTX 1080 is an extremely powerful graphics card. Have you arranged for vertical sync on it and verified that the actual frame rates you are getting in-game stay below the refresh rate of your monitor? Most monitors are 60 Hz, so the goal would be an upper limit of 60 fps, some can run higher. But left unchecked a 1080 could be running into the hundreds or even thousands which would have a very negative effect on game performance and can ultimately damage/burn out the card. TS3, unlike more modern games, has no functional built-in fps limiter.

C0rd3lia-
Reactions:
Posts: 4
Joined: December 26th, 2018, 7:23 am

France crashing issue with Traveler enabled

Post by C0rd3lia- » December 26th, 2018, 11:49 am

Igazor thank you. I actually bought the card as a present for my children as they are approaching gaming age and I wanted one that would be ‘future proofed’ as far as these things can be. I actually got a gaming PC rather than a laptop it was cheaper and could be upgraded!

However I’m pretty sure I did set vertical sync as I have experience of many years of playing Sims on a basic card but I’m not familiar with the other things you mentioned so thank you for the warning. I will research that and test.

Post Reply