Is your The Sims 3 game lagging on PC? Here's a fix!

I'm sure you mean well, but your late-breaking fix is to clear the cache files? That's indeed a good part of routine maintenance, but doesn't really rise to the level of needing to be posted on multiple places around the forum. This advice goes back to when the game was first launched many years ago.

Couple of finer points

1 - The WorldCache files should never be deleted by players on the Mac version of the game unless they have no intention of ever playing that world again. It will break their World install.

2 - I really wouldn't recommend deleting WorldCaches (on Windows) and Thumbnails on a regular basis unless the player is having difficulties and trying all other kinds of troubleshooting techniques. The game has to work really hard to build these back up again, it could take many game sessions to do so, and the game will run more slowly while these are being restored.

3 - I also wouldn't recommend deleting NRaas script logs. Those will only accumulate until around 10-12 of them are there and should then start overwriting themselves with the oldest ones going out first. They don't do any harm by being there and if the player needs our help at NRaas with interpreting them, we can't do that if the logs have since been deleted. Crash logs and memory dumps, on the other hand, are generally useless and will accumulate forever. Those can be gotten rid of at any time.

"aidansays;c-16579649" wrote:
In the disclaimer on the document, I made sure to note that this may not work on Macs or other OS.

"May not work" is not the same thing as "This will break your game." I would suggest a stronger disclaimer for Mac players on the World Caches in particular.

"igazor;c-16579645" wrote:
I'm sure you mean well, but your late-breaking fix is to clear the cache files? That's indeed a good part of routine maintenance, but doesn't really rise to the level of needing to be posted on multiple places around the forum. This advice goes back to when the game was first launched many years ago.

Couple of finer points

1 - The WorldCache files should never be deleted by players on the Mac version of the game unless they have no intention of ever playing that world again. It will break their World install.

2 - I really wouldn't recommend deleting WorldCaches (on Windows) and Thumbnails on a regular basis unless the player is having difficulties and trying all other kinds of troubleshooting techniques. The game has to work really hard to build these back up again, it could take many game sessions to do so, and the game will run more slowly while these are being restored.

3 - I also wouldn't recommend deleting NRaas script logs. Those will only accumulate until around 10-12 of them are there and should then start overwriting themselves with the oldest ones going out first. They don't do any harm by being there and if the player needs our help at NRaas with interpreting them, we can't do that if the logs have since been deleted. Crash logs and memory dumps, on the other hand, are generally useless and will accumulate forever. Those can be gotten rid of at any time.

I've made this mistake (Windows) and had to restore my WorldCache. :weary: It was for troubleshooting reasons and still not worth it in my case.

Hi there! :) I join @igazor - this manual way to clean caches is a method as old as the game itself. You have it all here, with the explanations of what each cache does to the game...

http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Sims_3_Delete_Cache_Files

That's odd. I was told to do it by an EA Advisor on EA Help live chat. It didn't break my game so I assumed that it would help out others. But, I did remove it from the .bat file just in case someone does use the .bat file and has a different operating system.

After hearing what people have said about the WorldCache folder, I don't think I should have recommended it. But, it worked for me and I thought that it would work for others. I meant no harm at all.

From what I've heard, you shouldn't delete anything in the WorldCache folder if you are on a Mac device. I deleted that from the .bat file script just for the Mac users. :) But, it should work for Windows users. If it doesn't, I'm really really really sorry if I damaged anyone's game and I had no intentions for that at all.

I will remove that part from the document, but I haven't heard anyone say anything bad about the other suggestions I've given. So, the others should be safe. At least I would delete the files I shared at the top and delete everything in the DCBackup folder except for the ccmerged.package file.

Once again, I didn't mean any harm whatsoever and I thought since it worked for me, I wanted to share what helped me so I could possibly help someone else. I never meant any harm whatsoever to anyone.

Thank you.

Yes. I delete the other caches, too. But I do remove my world caches -- there's 2 of them whenever I'm playing a world that isn't Sunset Valley I think. They just get so big, lol, I thought they should go.


The next few times I play I won't delete them and see if I notice any difference.

I really appreciate how quickly you (and others here) help because I'm horrible at technical stuff. Thank you :)

@Idontrcall - Yes, they can get quite large. It depends on the world. I've never seen them go much over 500 MB each, so for a world that caches that way that could be as much as or just over 1 GB per world as each one has two such files. Have to admit that I wouldn't want dozens of those hanging around for worlds I rarely or never play either, but then it becomes more of a hard drive space consideration than one of performance.

"aidansays;c-16606335" wrote:
That's odd. I was told to do it by an EA Advisor on EA Help live chat. It didn't break my game so I assumed that it would help out others. But, I did remove it from the .bat file just in case someone does use the .bat file and has a different operating system.

One thing, though: the Sims community certainly knows WAY more about the game than any EA adviser. Most of those people in live chats have never even seen a screenshot of the game, they just search for ready-made advice/files on their database. ;)

We appreciate your willingness to share your newly-gained knowledge, nonetheless! :)

Of course the OP means no harm, never really thought that they did and I meant no disrespect.

When one is approaching an online community where experienced and more established members are already helping out users/players as best we can, it's really a better idea to try to work with those of us already doing so rather than ignore or come across as against us. I would have been and still am happy to work with the OP, as I'm sure would others here, to help them help other players. There isn't meant to be a clique or a closed off community of "helpers" or self-described tech responders as we call ourselves on the Tech Discussions boards. New energy is always appreciated, but it can be appreciated better if it is harnessed in such a way as to really be helpful. As old as it now is, this game is very complex and has lots of moving parts. Often more than a small number of helpers can really keep up with or know all about, so the more players helping others out and sharing their knowledge the better.

I'm still learning new things about this game and how others play it all the time.

And I still don't think it's wise to habitually delete NRaas script logs as we can't help interpret them at NRaas should questions arise or something with the mods start going wrong if the most recent 10 or so logs aren't there anymore. The presence of 10-12 log files doesn't really add to any measurable overhead. A good compromise might be to move them out of the TS3 user game folder into a folder of their own on the desktop periodically if their presence really does concern or annoy the player, then that folder can be cleaned out once in a while. But again, actual crash logs and memory dumps, these are the ones of type xcpt or with that in their names, will hang around forever, can be quite large, and are generally useless. Those can and should be deleted unless one is trying to keep a diary of how often their game crashes (probably not).

I usually delete the oldest NRaas files if a new one comes up. I try not to go too ham on it. But, I definitely agree that EA Advisors don't know what they're talking about half the time. But, the one that I connected to that told me this information was really persuasive and even linked some forums from other players that had sort of the same information on it as what he was saying. It kinda made sense in my head that since other people have recommended this info, let along someone who works at EA, that it would help and work correctly.

To clarify, I always delete the DCBackup files (excluding ccmerged.package) when I start up my game. Due to these types of methods I've noticed a giant leap in my game's performance. I can even stream the game without lag. Then the other information like the CAScompositor file and so on helped even more. Even my game loading times have decreased drastically and I can load the game and get into my household in 5 minutes. But, I also do have a beefy computer so it might vary for others.

If I was in any way rude beforehand, it was probably because I was going through a sudden pet death in my real life family. But that doesn't excuse me being rude or snarky at all. So, if I did come off as mean, I'm truly sorry.

Thank you guys for also sharing your knowledge in this thread. Hopefully this does help others out.