Abour nrass traveler

The only mod stopping your Sims from traveling to the abyss. Did you end up there anyway? We'll try to help.
puzzlezaddict
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Abour nrass traveler

Post by puzzlezaddict » October 25th, 2018, 1:49 pm

@deedee_828  Okay, there's a lot here, but maybe I can give you somewhere to start.  (Oh, right, where are my manners?)  Hi, and welcome to NRaas.  The host(s) will be around soon to give you a proper welcome, I'm sure, but in the meantime, make yourself comfortable and have a look around.

Before you do anything else, you really do need to address your in-game frame rates, if you haven't done so already.  TS3 has no working fps limiter of its own, and your graphics card is capable of working hard enough to burn itself out if you don't cap fps manually.  When in-game, bring up the cheats console (crtl-shift-c) and enter "fps on" without quotes, and a number will appear in the upper right corner.  ("fps off" to make it go away)  The number should never go above the refresh rate of your monitor, which is likely 60 Hz.  Anything above that is excess noise and unnecessary extra work for your (quite powerful) card.

For an AMD card, the first fps limiter to try is RivaTuner Statistics Server.  (The built-in AMD tool doesn't normally work, although you can play with it as well.)  It's a free download and usually does its job, but it needs to be running in the background while you play.  Here are some instructions that igazor wrote up for RTSS; keep in mind that he has version 6, and you'll want version 7.1 or maybe 7.2.

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discus ... t_16227429

Once you've taken care of your frame rates, your game might already run better.  But another very easy step that may help is using MC to reset the entire town.  Click on City Hall, NRaas > MC > Town Options > Reset Everything will reset lots, objects, and sims.  It might take a minute or two to run.  If you want, you can go to MC settings (again, click on City Hall) and set "Include Active Lot in Reset Everything" to false, and manage your home lot yourself.  It's good practice in general to run this reset every few in-game weeks even if you're not having issues.

You may also want to add to your mod collection a bit.  Register helps manage Service and Role sims, and Traffic controls the overspawning of vehicles, which can seriously drag down the game's performance.

While you're clearing out your game folder, be sure to empty FeaturedItems.  That's just EA trying to sell you stuff through the in-game shopping experience.  Speaking of which, your game will run better if you turn that off, as well as the hidden object interactive loading screens, and if you don't login either in the launcher or at the Main Menu.  Turning off memories helps too, although you might need to clean up the ones your sims already have.  There are a number of other tips for better game performance, although I'm not sure whether the relevant page has made it over to the new site yet.

Anyway, there are a lot more steps you can take, especially if you're still getting lag after doing all of the above.  But this is probably a good enough place to start.

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Abour nrass traveler

Post by Sarah_Sims » October 25th, 2018, 2:22 pm

puzzlezaddict wrote:
October 25th, 2018, 1:49 pm
There are a number of other tips for better game performance, although I'm not sure whether the relevant page has made it over to the new site yet.

It's here: TIPS-FOR-BETTER-GAME-PERFORMANCE 

:-) 

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Post by igazor » October 25th, 2018, 2:52 pm

On the 16 or however many you want worlds question, there's no secret settings for that. While each world so connected by the Traveler mod makes the overall save file (folder) larger, it does so by adding new nhd files for each world. But at any given time the not actively played worlds don't add much of anything to the overhead. The game can only simulate one world at a time, so it's only the actively being played world that's loaded into RAM on startup and then offloaded on saves, quits, and travel transitions. Nothing at all is happening in the inactive worlds. Even the "aging" that takes place in inactive worlds, on/off as per Traveler's Ageless Foreign settings, isn't really aging as we usually think of that, it's merely incrementing the total sim ages by one every night at midnight. Any actual age stage changes or forms of progression in the inactive worlds are held pending until these sims are simulated again, either by sending for them to move into or visit our currently being played world or by traveling over to their homeworld thus making that one active, and then things might catch up a bit.

Therefore, if Twinbrook for example is giving you performance problems, it's only Twinbrook that is causing that or experiencing it if it's hardware/fps rate related, and not the connected worlds.

I don't actually "play" 16 worlds, I rotate through what is currently 5. The others are the WA worlds, Uni, Oasis Landing, some custom vacation destinations, and a couple of places where "my" sims used to live in the past but there are still some distant relatives and friends of the elders kicking around (or pretending to since again inactive worlds are not simulated) back there.

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Post by deedee_828 » October 25th, 2018, 3:00 pm

Thanks everyone for the quick responses. I'll check out all the links and hope one or more of them helps with the game freeze.
At least making it better and playable.
I have checked on FPS and did set AMD global setting to 60 after a recent driver update, but didn't realize it didn't really work. :(
So I'll be checking out rivatuner as well.

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Post by deedee_828 » October 25th, 2018, 6:02 pm

Well, I went in and cleared some caches and did a Nraas reset everything for Twinbrook and it's working much better!
Thanks everyone.

As fars as the aging goes with using Traveler---I have family members from previous towns that look like ya or aduly sims yet when you hover over their icon it say, elementary school! So the aging thing is totally out of wack.
 

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Post by puzzlezaddict » October 25th, 2018, 6:24 pm

I'm glad to hear things are working.  Hopefully, though, you've made sure your fps is capped at 60.  Even if the game is running smoothly, it's critical to the long-term health of your graphics card to keep fps down.

As far as the "foreign" sims go, a lot of details about them don't change until you actually go back and visit.  As igazor said, they're not animated in any way while off the map.  Their ages do increase, but all other progression is neglected or suspended until that world gets loaded again.  I imagine that school assignment falls among the details that would be readjusted when your own sims traveled back.  But if you wanted to see for yourself, you could send someone to visit (no need to save) and take a look around.

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Post by igazor » October 25th, 2018, 7:24 pm

What you see in the relationship panel on foreign sims is what the current world knows about them by way of the TravelDB. Yes, things will get out of sync and the other way around you may even get impending death from old age notices when in reality no one over there is aging or dying. Or perhaps they already died long ago (I've seen this too). After a while one gets used to what might be useful information and what is best to just ignore.  :)

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Post by deedee_828 » October 26th, 2018, 12:56 pm

puzzlezaddict, Yes, the first thing we did was check my fps which stayed at 60 or just below the whole play session.I kept it on to give it a good test. Is it better to leave it on or off during play, or just user preference?
I have actually gone back once to Sunset Valley from Moonlight Falls and it was great to see everyone again! But my aging up notices were pretty long, so wow, things caught up fast after arrival!

igazor, Yes, that matched information you had posted previously, that the information shown is what you know about them the last time you were in that town. And I get lots of impending or actual death notices.
I think poor Yumi Sekemoto has died about a dozen times now!

But I can actually invite family and friends from previous towns to parties in the new town and actually aged one of them up from child to teen! It did change his profile picture in the family tree as well. But I had thought that these Sims would only be partial copies of the originals so wasn't sure if that was a permanent change or not.
And as far as visiting goes. I have ever only tried asking a family to visit once and they showed up and then left almost immediately, which is not what I expected for a visit, so I've never bothered with that again. Is there a setting to use that would make them stay in town longer?

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Post by igazor » October 26th, 2018, 1:17 pm

Any changes that are made to or experiences had by the mini-sim versions who visit our active homeworlds are meant to be held pending in the TravelDB file. If you look at the modification dates of their homeworlds' nhd files within an ongoing game's save folder, those never change while they are foreign worlds (unless you SaveClean them). The pending changes should catch up with the full version underlying sims the next time that world is ever simulated.

On the visits, many of us find the MC method to be much more reliable and pleasant to use. On your own sim or the lot you want them to visit, NRaas > MC > (Sim) > Basic > Invite Over > (filter to Homeworld). The sims should arrive in your world right away and begin making their way over to where the sim is who invited them. If you want them to stick around for a while, when evening arrives chat them up (silly if they are related but still necessary) and ask them to spend the night. Shouldn't have to be all of them, if they are all from the same household then one will do and they should all stay. And if you didn't really want overnight guests, you can still ask or direct them to go home when you've had enough of them.

Visiting children and teens may still try to go home when curfew arrives, depending on SP's curfew settings on the world being played. That's very annoying when they try to go out into the night unexpectedly to "go home" when you thought they were busy sleeping in a warm, safe bed.

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Post by deedee_828 » October 26th, 2018, 10:37 pm

Thanks for that information! I will have to give visiting a shot the MC way!
I didn't know that you could change curfew via SP or any way at all really!
I'll have to try that as well. Is there a way to set it for individual days of the week or just one setting?
And where would I find that in SP?
Sorry for so many questions, but haven't gotten around to a lot of the fine tuning for MC or SP.

Issues with my game already though.
First, I got that weird glitch where you get stuck on one sim in the family and can't really check on anyone else, no matter whose portrait you switch to. I quit back to origin, logged out, went back, and the portraits are switching correctly again, but the freezing is back.
I was hoping the reset everything would last a bit longer. 
I guess I'll have to pare down the inventories even more. What's too much for personal and family inventories? Or the treasure chest?
I'd hate to get rid of everything but if it would make my game play better I'd rather have a working game than stuffed inventories.


 

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