Hi, me again. Sorry if this is obvious question which was maybe already answered, but i would like to confirm the issue i am having (or not) due to this module StoryProgression and StoryProgressionRelationship.

So after i installed those two modules i got massive massive impact on game performance. When i say massive i really mean it, it made the game completely bugged in the way that my family is constantly stuck in "Action lag", so one action like eating can take 5 hours or more, and made the game unplayable. I know there is some incompatibility issue with "smooth patch" (so i installed smooth patch older version), but there was still the issue. Then i uninstalled smooth patch (there is literally just 3 files for that mod, older version do not have package files) but issue was still persistent. Then i uninstalled those two modules and game started working amazingly, even better than before xD
So does that mean i can't use those two modules without having massive issues with performance??
And yes i did use save cleaner, tried 2 saves i have, both have exactly the same issue, and i did not have too much sims in my town, i checked number of sims, there was 67 total residents. I would show short clip how it works, but i would not do that because i just made the game working good, so i do not wont to bug out the game again. Thanks and sorry if question is already answered and confirmed.

StoryProgression doesn't typically cause performance issues this severe. But there are a few reasons it could, temporarily or on an ongoing basis. One is that when you first install it, SP will do a lot of work rearranging inactive sims' lives to match their personalities and lifetime wishes. So for an SP cycle or two, you might see much worse performance than you would after SP has completed that initial workload.

Additionally, if there are any already-pregnant sims that get assigned to new rabbithole careers, you'll need to manually grant them days off with MasterController so they don't have to work while pregnant. Most careers don't have proper maternity clothing, and a sim trying to spin into what's an invalid career outfit will drag down performance to a surprising degree.

Finally, if your computer is already struggling to run Sims 3, adding SP can tank performance, as it is a somewhat heavy mod. Turning down the overall speed (SP > General Options > Adjust Speed) can help here; try running it on the slowest pace and see how it goes. If you want to know whether this might be a hardware issue, please list your processor, graphics card, RAM, and free and total storage on your C drive.

puzzlezaddict post_id=100215 time=1710208717 user_id=17934 wrote: StoryProgression doesn't typically cause performance issues this severe. But there are a few reasons it could, temporarily or on an ongoing basis. One is that when you first install it, SP will do a lot of work rearranging inactive sims' lives to match their personalities and lifetime wishes. So for an SP cycle or two, you might see much worse performance than you would after SP has completed that initial workload.

Additionally, if there are any already-pregnant sims that get assigned to new rabbithole careers, you'll need to manually grant them days off with MasterController so they don't have to work while pregnant. Most careers don't have proper maternity clothing, and a sim trying to spin into what's an invalid career outfit will drag down performance to a surprising degree.

Finally, if your computer is already struggling to run Sims 3, adding SP can tank performance, as it is a somewhat heavy mod. Turning down the overall speed (SP > General Options > Adjust Speed) can help here; try running it on the slowest pace and see how it goes. If you want to know whether this might be a hardware issue, please list your processor, graphics card, RAM, and free and total storage on your C drive.

Nahh friend, HW is not the issue, i have overkill HW for this game. And every HW before this in last 10 years probably.
But other things you mentioned will require manually checking every sim, which is honestly almost impossible because of that mentioned action lag, where every action i would take is getting every sim stuck in place because of "action lag" which is caused probably by one or maybe both of those mods (or some elements inside of them). And yeah i was trying resetting everything i could via NRAAS, like town, lot, disabling notifications, slowing down story progression pace to the slowest, and many other things which i knew what they do, but nothing helped, but almost instantly when i deleted them, and clean the save, game started working even better than before i even had them.
So to cut to the point you made, i would need to check every sim to see if there is "an issue" with them from the reasons you mentioned !?

Is there more "simpler way", for example resetting something (or entire lots) to "fix" the issues, because that would be faster way to avoid checking every sim, because that would require a lot of time??

Also i almost put entire family with the lot in the bin, and planed moving them to new save, just too see will the same issue happen, but luckily just by deleting those mods, it fixed the issue, though i really like StoryProgression, it adds everything what this game needed.
Oh yeah i forgot to mention, that "action lag" session i had was yesterday, and believing or not it lasted 2h (our hours), and instead of game progressing normally (what is considered normal form sims 3 engine), clock got stuck, and my sims family almost died of everything (hunger, filth, missed work, social...etc) so you can imagine how severe the issue was with "action lag".

If the severe lag lasted through two full SP cycles, which you can calculate based on the cycle length or just count from the notification summaries you see on-screen, then the issue is not limited to SP's initial rearrangement of sims' lives.

You can check only the pregnant sims, if there are any, for full-time rabbithole careers. Use MC > Sim > Basic > Baby or MC > Sim > Advanced > Pregnancy, pick an option, X out the filter, and you'll get a list of pregnant sims on which you'd be able to run the command you chose. You don't actually need to run it; the idea is to get a list of pregnant sims and then check them.

An MC town reset never hurt anything, so that's a good option too. But I'd be surprised if it solved a problem that only showed up with SP.

Another possibility I didn't mention is that you have another mod conflicting with SP, and the test for that is to pull all your non-NRaas mods. You wouldn't need to save your progress, just let the game run for long enough to judge the performance.

I realize this is a lot of testing for a mod you've already removed, but this is absolutely not normal behavior from SP and shouldn't be happening on a capable computer with only 67 resident sims to push around. There are of course other sources of lag, including stuck sims, but it would be surprising for that to only be a problem with SP installed. Still, hopefully you're using Overwatch too, so you'd know if you were getting stuck sims on a regular basis. I guess SP could exacerbate that particular problem too if a sim who was prone to getting stuck didn't previously have a job, but at this point, this and other suggestions are just speculation.

What is your performance like before introducing SP? As in, is it going from perfect to unplayable- or from average/bad to worse?
StoryProgression is quite a heavy mod for setups already struggling with performance, but shouldn't be noticeable on a rig you're claiming is 'overkill'.

But that claim also doesn't mean very much because of how bottlenecked the game itself is- without actually sharing your PC specs, knowing if the game has been set up to recognise your graphics card, if ErrorTrap and Overwatch are in play, so on, any number of things could be setting this up for failure. For all we know, you could have a laptop that's accidentally running the game on its integrated graphics card. More context is always better

CardinalSims wrote: ↑

March 12th, 2024, 2:42 am

What is your performance like before introducing SP? As in, is it going from perfect to unplayable- or from average/bad to worse?
StoryProgression is quite a heavy mod for setups already struggling with performance, but shouldn't be noticeable on a rig you're claiming is 'overkill'.

But that claim also doesn't mean very much because of how bottlenecked the game itself is- without actually sharing your PC specs, knowing if the game has been set up to recognise your graphics card, if ErrorTrap and Overwatch are in play, so on, any number of things could be setting this up for failure. For all we know, you could have a laptop that's accidentally running the game on its integrated graphics card. More context is always better

As i said HW is not the issue>rx 6800, R7 5700x, 32gb ram, so this PC can run SIMS 3 and other games no problem.
Before those 2 mods performance were average in the game and did not get worse within time. So i also had smooth patch newer version which was using its 2 package files as part of its files>then i added NRAAS StoryProgression both mods, i already had overwatch but did not have ErrorTrap. So after adding those 2 mods i started having issues. So i firstly tried SmoothPatch older version, did not help, then i deleted entire SmoothPatch that also did not help, and its important to note all those "experiments" i tested were on copy of the save which i played without StoryProgression, but interestingly even that save when i loaded it up and StoryProgression mods were added was working terribly. Upon deleting StoryProgression mods everything is completely fine and is working better then before for some strange reason.

puzzlezaddict post_id=100219 time=1710214642 user_id=17934 wrote: Another possibility I didn't mention is that you have another mod conflicting with SP, and the test for that is to pull all your non-NRaas mods. You wouldn't need to save your progress, just let the game run for long enough to judge the performance.

I realize this is a lot of testing for a mod you've already removed, but this is absolutely not normal behavior from SP and shouldn't be happening on a capable computer with only 67 resident sims to push around. There are of course other sources of lag, including stuck sims, but it would be surprising for that to only be a problem with SP installed. Still, hopefully you're using Overwatch too, so you'd know if you were getting stuck sims on a regular basis. I guess SP could exacerbate that particular problem too if a sim who was prone to getting stuck didn't previously have a job, but at this point, this and other suggestions are just speculation

Yes as i said, i read that SmoothPatch can (and do have) conflict with NRAAS mod(s), i think it was noted somewhere exactly that, but i also said i DID remove SmoothPatch mod completely, but that DID NOT fix that "action lag" i was getting, and sims got stuck in "action" so game was unplayable. I do run Overwatch, and i do get occasional sims and pets stuck, and regularly cars cleaning. But after i removed StoryProgression both mods and brought back Smooth patch older version, game is working fine as fine as possible with its own engine limitation. Here is the list, most are texture mods and NRAAS, i do not have that many mods. https://imgur.com/wbzBO57

Introducing ErrorTrap would be very valuable, as it would likely catch and report on whatever is causing the game to break in that way with StoryProgression introduced. ScriptError logs will be generated in your The Sims 3 user folder if so, which are valuable to upload here for us to see what is going wrong.

It may be that your game is being weighed down by the mess that accumulates in games without ErrorTrap, and StoryProgression is tripping over it, so to speak. I don't think I'd be pleased with 'average' performance on, as you said, specs that are more than adequate- something is awry under the hood.

TS3 is also so old that it does not know newer graphics cards exist and will default to a range of suboptimal settings- hopefully puzzlezaddict will have a link to the fix for that (I did mine so long ago I don't know which guide is best to recommend!).
Some other modern hardware is also starting to become outright incompatible with the game, requiring workarounds to even start it up, so it's never a bad idea to start with those details and go from there

CardinalSims post_id=100226 time=1710240254 user_id=22933 wrote: Introducing ErrorTrap would be very valuable, as it would likely catch and report on whatever is causing the game to break in that way with StoryProgression introduced. ScriptError logs will be generated in your The Sims 3 user folder if so, which are valuable to upload here for us to see what is going wrong.

It may be that your game is being weighed down by the mess that accumulates in games without ErrorTrap, and StoryProgression is tripping over it, so to speak. I don't think I'd be pleased with 'average' performance on, as you said, specs that are more than adequate- something is awry under the hood.

TS3 is also so old that it does not know newer graphics cards exist and will default to a range of suboptimal settings- hopefully puzzlezaddict will have a link to the fix for that (I did mine so long ago I don't know which guide is best to recommend!).
Some other modern hardware is also starting to become outright incompatible with the game, requiring workarounds to even start it up, so it's never a bad idea to start with those details and go from there

Thanks for your suggestion, i did use that "patch" which added newer graphics cards to the game database (i am not sure about terminology, how, where and what it actually did), but it was one of the recommended "mods" for the game on Steam.
So, alright, i gonna bite and re-add both StoryProgression mods now with error trap, and see how it goes, though i am scared doing that, because that action stuck issue was unbearable. I hope it not gonna bug out my save :S :S

Also to be clear what i mean by "average performance", that means that game is not putting out 60fps as constant, and bugs out if fps is over 60, so before "smooth patch" i was using AMD software limiter to limit game to 60 fps, but after i found "smooth patch" it vastly improved game loading times and performance, proper borderless windowed, and program itself has fps limiter.
So those "vastly improved" performance went to s**t after i added StoryProgression 2 modules. Rest of modules work no problem with this "smooth patch"

gare87 wrote: ↑

March 12th, 2024, 10:40 am

So, alright, i gonna bite and re-add both StoryProgression mods now with error trap, and see how it goes, though i am scared doing that, because that action stuck issue was unbearable. I hope it not gonna bug out my save :S :S

As this is definitely not normal behaviour of SP, I would definitely recommend quitting without saving if the issue reappears. This should likely be troubleshooted in testing saves until resolved before continuing to play in earnest.