Hello! I'm a long time reader, first time poster. I'm glad to finally join the community and show my gratitude for all the years of good gameplay I've had with nrass. Thanks.!!

I've recently had a lack of challenging issues in RL (I was oddly enough pretty prepared for a pandemic, go figure) so I decided to pick up again playing Sims 3. And let me tell you, it did not disappoint. More issues than Rolling Stone out the gate. Crashing, lags and other self inflicted wounds. Through reading and research I've fixed most of it, but one issue remains.

....or is it more like the game clock keep freezing for real time minutes while the animations continue, then jerks forward and stalls again repeatedly thus making proper gameplay less possible?

- The Mighty igazor, storyprogression-discussion/topic6618

By trade, I am an IT professional. Probably since about 1998. I've run my own business since 2006. It is not an embellishment to say a great deal about troubleshooting and out of the box fixes that I deploy on my job come from consistently popping the hood on my Sims game and seeing what's what. It's with great humility I post here and ask for help specific to me, I have definitely missed something, but just in case I have not, I'd like to share with others my issues so if they can be addressed for them, great.

It just occurred to me how old my Sims 3 game is. I wouldn't mind to start over with my favorite sim. It's probably what I need to do. I probably have too much content. I probably have too much stuff in my inventory. I spent countless hours making my sim immortal, and then doing every single challenge without cheats. But if there is something I can do to fix my game without doing that, I want to do it. I have been reading around and done most of the fixes I can find. But I have script errors I am not sure how to diagnose that may be the culprit. Here are my system specs.

Intel Core i7-4930 @ 3.4GHz
32 GB RAM
1 TB Samsung SSD
Windows 10 Pro x64
nVidia GTX 770, 2560x1440 @ 60Hz

When the game isn't doing that, it runs like butter. I don't think it's performance, but I'll verify any suggestion I get regardless. I've got a little time to play this morning, so I'll see if I can pin down the behavior times and see if they coincide with when script errors pop up. Thanks in advance for any help!

Hi AYHJA,
If you still have the ScriptError XML files available, you can drag them into the reply box below. Someone here can take a look at them (not me because I'm hopeless at reading them ). If that doesn't work, please zip them up together, upload the zip file to a file-sharing website and provide a link here so they can be accessed. Thanks.

Hi Sarah! I can definitely do that. This is the latest one that I have. I am trying to not overwhelm with information, hopeful that there is a capable Sim doctor to make a proper diagnosis if given symptoms and the details of them.

https://mega.nz/file/vAkA3ACR#8B72goVvN ... DgyuVog8Y8

Hi there. That's just an ErrorTrap routine Correction and Deref log, nothing to worry about. ErrorTrap will throw at least a couple of those every game session for most of us and they aren't actually errors. Got any others that might correspond to when the game's performance tanks on you?

I had the game CTD a couple of times trying to use the "Sell All" function of my family inventory. I adjusted my virtual memory settings and then 1 by 1 deleted the items without issue. After having several successful saves throughout the day though, I'm now getting Error Code 12 messages.

I'm trying to be patient and see if I can nail down some common denominators. So far, nothing. Here are the notes I have so far.

1. It takes 10 minutes from the time I click the icon to the time I see my family when I start the game. Usually, it starts lagged, with an in game minute taking an actual real life minute. Animations are clear and smooth, just nothing is moving and edge scrolling is also lagged. I followed the guide I linked earlier, and it did sort most of my issues.

2. It takes 5 minutes for me to quit my game. I pause it. Save (which takes 5 mins) it. And then just quit without saving. Still takes 5 mins. Even if I go to desktop and end the task through the task manager, it STILL doesn't kill it right away.

3. My non user controlled sims are behaving weird. Even for Sims. Doing pre-nrass stuff like visiting community lots and going to the bathroom on themselves, standing around starving, etc. Pets seem to be able to ignore door locks, too. Lastly, my Sims take a really long time to interact. Trying to make a sim talk to another sim might take 5 real time minutes. Like they are doing the little idle animations, etc.

I've done everything except uninstall Story Progression or other nrass mod. I totally feel like there has to be something I can do to fix it, and the techie in me just won't let it go. I have to be totally honest, I have 0 issues with my Sims 4 game. It runs flawlessly on my desktop and my laptop. Something about Sims 3 though that keeps me coming back. Thanks again and in advance for your guys' help and support with our hobby.

It would help to have some information about your system. Please run a dxdiag: hit Windows key-R, enter "dxdiag" without quotes, wait for the scan to finish, click "Save all information," and save the file to your desktop. Then upload it to whatever filesharing service you want and link it here.

I understand you don't want to uninstall your NRaas mods, but I'd be curious to know how this save ran without SP and its modules. This can just be an experiment to see whether this makes any difference, and how much. The reason I mention it is because SP is quite heavy, even more so with the add-ons (Careers in particular has a high impact), it would be good to know whether lightening the load on the game engine or your system helps, even if it's not a fix.

Please also check the game's RAM use in the Task Manager as soon as you load your save, then again after it's been running for at least 20 minutes. You can put the game in windowed mode to check rather than using alt-tab from fullscreen. Please list the game's memory use in absolute values; if it's showing as a percentage, you can right-click on the Memory header to switch. If your system's RAM use is close to max, say >90%, please say so as well.

Here's my DirectX diagnostic:
https://mega.nz/file/KI0XnKrR#9fbtvSixW ... tT4GFZKZEM

I just got another Error Code 12 the 2nd time I tried to save in an hour. I will try to see if there's any difference without my nrass mods next.

The game routinely uses about a 2600 MB of my RAM, and even when it's lagging, there's not a real stress or strain that I can see on my system. I have it capped to run at 30 fps, I've configured the .ini file to use 8GB of RAM even though I think it's capped to use 4GB.

TS3 is a 32-bit application. It can use no more than just under 4 GB of RAM (actual hard upper limit is 3.7 GB, the Danger Zone for most of us is somewhere north of 3.5 GB). One microsecond spike above the Danger Zone and the game will crash or Error 12 upon trying to save. Doing all you can to coax the game to use more than 4 GB is hurting, not helping. The object becomes finding out why the game is exceeding resource usage and lowering its RAM usage, not getting it to use more. I suggest undoing your .ini file change, what I believe you have done affects the maximum size of the game's script heap anyway, and not RAM usage directly, and it's default setting is 20 GB (so I think you have changed this to 80 GB?).

Puzzlez's suggestion was not to run it without NRaas mods. It was to run it without StoryProgression. The other mods, most notably ErrorTrap, Overwatch, Register, GoHere, Traveler and MasterController for its Reset Everything command under Town > City Hall are designed to make it run more efficiently, not less so. StoryProgression is the one that adds extra overhead.

We still need to see some ErrorTrap logs if we could that are not routine Correction/Deref logs, if you have any related to when the game lags, and some actual current readings by way of Task Manager. Error 12 is an out of usable resources condition, and it's usually RAM but it sometimes something else like GPU memory. The symptoms you list out tell us that the game simulator engine is totally stressed out and cannot handle the load that is being thrown at it.

Additionally, have you checked the actual fps rates in-game lately to ensure they are still being capped? A limit of 30 fps is not necessary, but they should at least be staying under 60 fps on a 60 Hz monitor.

Y'know that's exactly what I should do...because I have a real "cheating" problem. Challenging myself by actually playing the game without overdosing my Sims with DebugEnabler, and MasterController cheats. "Balancing" those out is not going to be easy...

Also...did I "hear" 32GB RAM, correctly? And here I'm proud of myself for upgrading my CPU to 16GB RAM without a real GPU!

As previously stated, you should actually take those FPSLimiter files out or just not cap it to 30fps. Reducing FPS doesn't really reduce stutter or lag. That alternate "fix" is mostly suggested for lower-end CPUs anyways.

First, let's start out fresh with the Electronic Arts/Sims 3 folder in Documents...like move it somewhere else...unless you've already tried that.

Next step, you should use the TS3W.exe application if you have a 64-bit CPU! Unless you've already updated Sims 3 to 1.69...

Then that Sims3.ini file that you edited will work once you've done that!

I know that it is an unwritten rule that you shouldn't even touch those .ini files, but have you also tried editing the GraphicsRules.sgr files to increase your texture memory? It's a real easy step if you're interested.

By the way, what fixes have you tried that didn't work, if you don't mind me asking?

Zero2Hero post_id=82690 time=1622805127 user_id=20151 wrote: Reducing FPS doesn't really reduce stutter or lag. That alternate "fix" is mostly suggested for lower-end CPUs anyways.

This is totally not true and is dangerous advice. Stronger graphics cards will run wild on fps because TS3 has no functional built-in fps limiter like most modern games do. The fps needs to be capped to the refresh rate of the player's monitor to avoid performance issues and potentially damaging the hardware. Low end cards and most integrated graphics chips, which the OP does not have, typically do not need to be capped because they aren't strong enough to throw wildly high frame rates.
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Zero2Hero post_id=82690 time=1622805127 user_id=20151 wrote: First, let's start out fresh with the Electronic Arts/Sims 3 folder in Documents...like move it somewhere else...unless you've already tried that.

No. We haven't yet determined if the player's issue is with their current ongoing game only or if the issues arise with any game played on their current user game folder. Testing with a new or at least newer game should come first.
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Zero2Hero post_id=82690 time=1622805127 user_id=20151 wrote: Next step, you should use the TS3W.exe application if you have a 64-bit CPU! Unless you've already updated Sims 3 to 1.69...

Then that Sims3.ini file that you edited will work once you've done that!

Which executable the game uses has nothing to do with CPU. Patch 1.69 uses TS3.exe. Patch 1.67 uses TS3w.exe (with the "w"). No exceptions.

And no, the sims3.ini file does not need to be edited. That one sets the max size of the game's script heap, it has nothing to do with RAM usage, and its default is 20 GB. Many players misread that as 2 GB, but that's not what it says and it should be left alone.
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Zero2Hero post_id=82690 time=1622805127 user_id=20151 wrote: but have you also tried editing the GraphicsRules.sgr files to increase your texture memory? It's a real easy step if you're interested.

Now that is good advice, but we would need to see the player's DeviceConfig.log to tell if it is required. Sometimes it's not, sometimes the player has already taken care of it. But fixing the texture memory override is not necessarily going to help the play-lag-play issue that the OP is facing (though it's not going to hurt).