Register - Merchants

Role Sims, homeless, service Sims, oh my. Something tells me we're not in Sunset Valley anymore.
varusso
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Post by varusso » February 21st, 2017, 6:57 pm

Sorry you must have posted that while I was typing the other post, so I missed it. My sys specs are well over; wife bought this as a gift for me to play high-end MMOs a couple years ago :)

-Win7 (64-bit)
-Inspiron 7720
-920 GB Hard Drive
-Intel i7-3630QM CPU @ 2.40GHz 2.40GHz (Dual Core)
-8 GB Ram
-GC: Intel HD Graphics 4000 (onboard) w/1696 MB

Town Pop = 78 Residents.

I can usually run TS3 and multiple video sites concurrently without any significant slow-down and minimal stuttering or buffering (except as noted before when I had to unclog the pipes on it). If I open my video editing software, though, TS3 does not like it :D

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igazor
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Post by igazor » February 21st, 2017, 7:35 pm

Now see, with you trying to cram 24 sims into who knows how many venues in town (okay, so maybe it's just 1 or 2), I fully expected to see that you were working with an overpopulated world with 400 residents or something. Glad I asked, at 78 we can certainly rule that out.

I'm sorry, but something might be missing on those specs. I believe that Inspiron comes with dual graphics, so you should have a dedicated Nvidia card in addition to the Intel HD. Perhaps a GT 650, if it's the right model I just looked up? If so, have you made sure the game is really using the Nvidia card, usually by way of the Nvidia Control Panel, and have you checked its frame rate in game to ensure it's being capped at 60 fps? A runaway frame rate will kill performance (and possibly your computer). Running the game on Intel only will also not be helpful to performance.

If you don't have dual graphics and only the Intel, then that is a pretty big weak spot. But then we wouldn't be talking about high end much of anything graphics intensive either.

varusso
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Post by varusso » February 21st, 2017, 8:26 pm

Yep there is an NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M as well. Didnt show up in dxdiag, and I was in a hurry cos my daughter is sick, so I didnt check my Device Manager. Also wrote down the wrong memory on the Intel GC -- its 64 MB not 1696 :P

Dont know how to check the FPS in-game; havent ever needed to. Never had a problem running the game, except when it got bloated very badly with junk (which is how it is behaving now with SP enabled BTW, so I think SP is going back on the back burner for now).

The game auto-allocated all those visitors to my lot all on its own, and in theory it is supposed to gauge my comp for its ability to handle it. In fact, the game rates my comp at a 3 instead of the 4 it actually is (thats buried in one of the game files I was digging through when I was getting that horrid lag before -- you are probably more familiar with how it works than I am). I suspect I get so many visitors to that particular lot because I have multiple rabbithole rugs there drawing them in and tons of goodies to keep them interested once they are on the lot. I was getting a satisfactory amount of visitor on other lots as well pre-SP, and without any of the slow-down I am now starting to see (I let it run on its own for a while at speed 4, and I was seeing alot of the pausing and hitching that I used to see before I cleaned up my mods and game).

I will take SP out of the equation tomorrow, and I expect I will see a drastic improvement in performance again. Still leaves me with the problem of missing workers, though, and since that pre-dated activating SP, it's likely it will persist until I figure out what is causing Register to not draw in immigrants like it should for them. It filled up my tourists right away when I upped it to 10, so its not like it isnt pulling in immigrants AT ALL.

varusso
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Post by varusso » February 21st, 2017, 8:31 pm

Anyway, going to take a real break now, so take your time responding. Gonna go cuddle a sick little one :D

varusso
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Post by varusso » February 21st, 2017, 8:32 pm

I will look up how to check FPS in the game tomorrow and let you know what I see with and without SP.

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TreyNutz
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Post by TreyNutz » February 21st, 2017, 8:43 pm

Use the "FPS on" cheat to see the FPS in the upper right corner. If you play in full screen you can enable vsync in Nvidia's profile for the game to limit FPS. If you play in a window you'll need to use Nvidia Inspector to access the normally hidden frame rate limiter for the TS3 profile.

varusso
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Post by varusso » February 22nd, 2017, 12:49 am

I had a little time before bed, so I decided to go ahead and fiddle with this a bit more. Thanks TreyNutz, saved me a bit of searching :)

My FPS with SP progression enabled was about 55 on my home lot with nothing going on, 30~33 on my busiest lot on speed 1, 13-18 when set to 3 or 4. After disabling SP, clearing cache, restarting, and letting the game gear up for a bit, I was @ 60-75 at home (only peaked a couple times, mostly hung around 60) and about 25 @ the mega mall, 13~18 on speed 3 & 4. So a slight improvement on FPS, but noticeably less hitching at higher speeds with SP progression disabled.

After reading some of the terminology docs, I realized I might be shooting my own foot with my homeless auto-purge via OW in regards to role objects not populating, since apparently the homeless are what the immigrant pool is created from. Realistically, it shouldnt, since they should be assigned long before the 5AM purge (and my maxed tourists tells me that they ARE sticking around long enough to be assigned in any case). As suspected, it didnt make any difference when I stopped the purge; role sims still were not being created and assigned to my objects. So I finally got sick of trying to make it work and just assigned them manually out of the homeless + unemployed pool. Yay, instant Role Sims. Took them a while to show up for shift, but they are there now. Hopefully they will stick around now :P Guess I just have to resign myself to the fact that I have to assign them manually when I add a new object. At least I CAN thanks to these wonderful mods. :)

Still had problems with townies not wanting to sleep or use the john, but the same ones that refused to do that had no problem listening to my busker out on the sidewalk and tipping him, so they at least did still interact. I finally gave up and maxed the entire town's motives and cleared all the need-related negative moodlets via MC. Now everyone seems to be doing fine again; all of the folks standing around complaining are now interacting properly again. Just like the ones who were stuck with stinky and couldnt be bothered to take care of it, once I cleared it with MC, it seems to have just gone away.

So it appears that SOMETHING is making negative motive-related moodlets stick on some of my sims, and once they stick, the sims become stuck in a behavioral loop (IF it is one of the moodlets that causes them to complain -- most sims dont complain about being stinky, thus they dont get stuck in the loop) as if they have no autonomy and are waiting for the player to command them. With the exception of hunger -- they seem to be able to satisfy that even after they start complaining. I havent seen them complaining about Fun or Social yet, so dunno if those will stick as well.

I hope to god that is enough info for SOMEONE to be able to identify what is causing this, and perhaps come up with a viable solution or mod tweak for the next person, 'cause I am SO done with it LOL. Just gonna accept that I have to mod it out when it crops up and just be grateful that the mods exist to correct it in the first place :D

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igazor
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Post by igazor » February 22nd, 2017, 4:46 am

When an inactive sim who is on a community lot or visiting another's house suffers from very low fun or social, they don't wave their arms and complain to the player like they do with sleep, hunger, and bladder. Usually we see a fun or social thought bubble with a red slash through it as a warning, and then they just try to go home since they aren't very happy where they are.

Your system is okay but not quite as high end as you have stated. Its processor is sufficient, the GT 650M is actually kind of lower mid-range. But it's not over the top all 4s and 5s as would be expected from a faster processor (laptops are different from desktops in this regard) and a higher end graphics card.

And we're still having a slight misunderstanding about what I mean by performance issues. Very slight misunderstanding, not like before. When the game engine has more to do than it can effectively handle, things like sims not taking care of their needs in a timely manner and tasks like moodlets getting cleaned up will get skipped over. I'm not talking about lag, I'm talking about processor overload as the game engine trips over itself. And I have to say again that this system (though possibly any system really) when working with a lot as complicated as the one you have described with up to 24 sims on it will be expected to not do well. Running at higher game clock speeds would only make things worse. You could test that off to the side on a version of this world without the mega lot but working with just a more typical bar venue with one or two bars and a small number of fun objects (e.g., darts, shuffleboard, music playing with a place to dance, and of course bathrooms), no rabbit holes, and see how that behaves for comparison. With or without SP progression.

And I understand that you are not putting those 24 sims on the lot yourself. It's the high number of fun objects drawing them all in. But I expect the result would be the same if you had used MC to invite them all over there on purpose.

I'm still puzzled by Register not behaving itself, but that could be performance related again. But it sounds like you have a mostly workable solution for that now.

varusso
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Post by varusso » February 22nd, 2017, 10:11 am

Are merchants supposed to stay at their registers 24/7? They never leave, but the bartenders do. Also, I have the Role/Service sims caste options set to static needs, yet theirs keep dropping throughout the day. Viewing individual role sims shows that they are assigned ot the caste and they do have static needs, yet portrait colors and mood checks via MC confirm they are dropping. I do not have an extended venue-hour mod installed. Did I jig a setting somewhere that I need to fix?

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sittingbear
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Post by sittingbear » February 23rd, 2017, 10:49 am

The only Roles that are 24/7 is the Elixir Consignment Shop and a Bartender that is running a Bar on a lot that is open 24 hours. Even tho in the XML it shows that the Merchants should but because EA has Residents as the ones to use those Registers it gets canceled out

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