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elleskyheart's avatar
5 years ago

Sims 3 Freezing Games

With puzzlezaddict advice, I decided to make a thread for this in case anyone else is experiencing the same problem.

So it's weird, I'm not sure if for myself this is a major problem, but from time to time the game freezes on me. This doesn't happen often, but when it does I always find myself nervous.

Basically what happened yesterday was that I created a sim, moved them to Appaloosa Plains and the game suddenly freezes during gameplay. I waited about two minutes because sometimes the game will move again, but this time it didn't. Basically, the game was frozen, except for the trees or wind which always seem to move. Oddly, this happened only on my second game day of playing and it didn't start up again. Sadly, I had to shut down the computer and delete the file just in case it was corrupted.

Then I created a new game. I made a guy and moved him to Lucky Palms. Now, I don't get freezing her, but noticing that my sim and the time stopped moving again. Lucky this time it only lasted a few seconds and I didn't need to restart. This time though, it happened around fifth day if in game playing. I will say I had used World Adventures in this play through and it froze three times in that Egypt, but quickly worked again.

So yeah, I'm not sure why the game does this. It's not the first time either, but usually the game will move again on it's own. However, I've had times like my first example where I have no choice but to shut down the game and restart it. It's an odd thing honestly and this is why I save often, though I also have play throughs where it never happens. It may have something to do with speeding up time though. I find this freezing thing often happening when I speed up time, so maybe that plays a part in it.

Anyway, if anyone has any advice or the same problems, you can post here. Thanks so much.

2 Replies

  • I sometimes get temporary freezes that resolve themselves, and I think it's not unusual. One common culprit for me is when my sims are exploring a tomb and they do something to trigger the opening of a staircase—the game almost always locks up for a couple seconds before the animation and music play. This has happened on two different systems, so I think it's either the game itself or something about newer graphics cards, not an issue with a given install or save.

    There are different reasons for a lockup like that, but it's probably related to the game engine needing to calculate something and basically dropping all other functions until it's done. Whether the effect is temporary or permanent may depend on whether the game engine can resolve the issue or not, or these may be two separate problems. Speeding up the game clock can definitely contribute as well, since faster speeds mean more calculations in a shorter time frame.

    So the question is what exactly was happening in-game when the freezes happened, what time of day was it (for example, was it 5 am when plants would grow or bear harvestables, or maybe 8 am when sims would be going to work, etc.), or are there any other patterns that you've noticed? Do you currently use mods, and if so, which ones, and do you have any custom content? It's possible there's an obvious, avoidable trigger, but it's also possible that there's no single cause, and you'll just need to take a couple steps to try to prevent the issue.
  • The only help I could offer is to look at places that sims and pets can get stuck. Fences and hedges will sometimes trap sims or pets spawning or dislodging from vehicles and poofing right into a hedge. (This happens to me at the science facility in Sunset Valley, for example.) So, I delete fencing and hedges around rabbit holes. I also recommend using nraas's overwatch to help fix errors like that. They also have a mod to help prevent errors from happening. The other thing you can do would be to delete some cache files that grow quite large from normal play. For me, it is the two compositor caches. The simcompositor cache can climb up towards 500,000 and then I need to save my game and quit to delete the file before reloading my game. The compositor cache climbs up to 100,000 when I'm busy CASting items. So, again, I save and quit and delete that cache before reloading. Also, IF you don't use "save as" instead of "save" when you save your game, it can carry over corruption that "save as" avoids as that creates a fresh save rather than overwriting the old.

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