Forum Discussion

Hero

12 years ago

A Mac User's Best Friend!/PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING ANY NEW PROBLEM THREADS!!!!!!

First of all, I'd really like to thank BlueBellFlora for all the work, time and patience that she has put into researching and putting together many tips and tricks for the Mac users. This is a Mac user's Best Friend. Read this thread before posting any problems and I'm sure you'll find an answer to your question or concern. Caspinwall, itsaprilXD and tamalinn also have contributed to this thread and many guides other as well.

http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/658546/latest-mac-help-threads-guides-please-start-here-before-posting-a-problem-updated-27-07-14/p1

The next thread is from caspinwall and details problems and solutions with using Origin. Yes, Origin does work on the Mac side. Yes, it is your best friend if you lose your disk and have registered your game. If there is a problem with a game not showing up in your Origin account and you have registered it, you will need to contact EA support.

http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/727857/collecting-information-about-origin-on-mac/p1

And lastly not to toot my own horn, here is a thread about how to patch your game correctly and safely. I am patched to the current patch 1.67 and run all of the EP's and SP's as well as a lot of Store items and sets. My game is stable and runs fine. I haven't tried to run it on high graphics settings lately, but I'm sure it will run fine.

http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/740366/how-to-update-your-game-when-a-new-patch-is-released#latest

We have another thread here that may help with the Disk Authentication Errors that several folks have had. It leads to the EA Help Forums.

http://answers.ea.com/t5/The-Sims-3/MAC-Disk-Verification-Error/m-p/3106024#M163986

If you are trying to play Sims 3 on a newer Macbook, here is a list of the new Macs which have the Iris Intel Graphics cards. Please be advised that Sims 3 does NOT recognize this brand of graphics card and you may experience weird graphics or the game may not start at all. There is a workaround since Sims 3 will never be updated again.

http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/840249/macs-that-have-intel-iris-graphics#latest

So Mac users, join me in thanking these wonderful people who have researched and tested these solutions. I know I really appreciate all their hard work and time to write these guides. :D

EDIT as of April 2018:

Newer MacBooks have a hard time running this game with all the EPs/SPs. You can maybe run with the Base Game and a couple of EPs installed. Be warned that Seasons and Pets are usually the two that will give you the most trouble due to the intense graphics these EPs offer.

Since the release of El Capitan (Mac OS version), physical disks will no longer be recognized. You will have to play the digital version of the game through Origin. If you are the original owner of the disk, you can register the CD key at Origin for free and your digital copy will appear in your library. No need to repurchase the game.

If you find that the game does not run as you hoped on the Mac OS, try Bootcamping your Mac and running it through the Windows OS.

mac

technical issues

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SamuraiLadyRoni
7 years ago
I dont know if thisnwas listed before and i have a few mintues to try and type this up so here is another solution I found.

So long story short (feel free to skip) only after a few days of playing i fell asleep with the game open, and it happened to be on a huge world and making it worse I didnt even shut down and restart i switch to a household that was bigger than expected amd crashed my game. But thats not it, that alone didnt break my game I was also trying to install store content via the launcher but that was the one thing I never got `fixed`. After a dozen more tries to uninstall and install sometimes due to getting blackscreen and other times the launcher was still broken. I really wanted to figure out the launcher part - opening the Activity Monitor i coukd see the install pop up appear but it CPU would be stuck at using 2-7 percent at most. It dint make sense why it was stuck when the rest was jusy idle. I was noticing my Macbook was also supsiciouly slow even when doing things with just Finder and nothing else open. I knew my Mac previously was fine and its Specs seemed in line with working with TS3 and nothing else was working I considering types of `resetting my mac` solution and one worked perfectly.

ADDITIONAL BLACKSCREEN & BROKEN LAUNCHER SOULTION:
So assuming no other solution has worked for you up to this point and
If your game has crashed,
Launcher still broken despite clean install
And game still having a blackscreen or staying on it for like 20 mins before loading

Then try resetting your Mac's PRAM.
Sometimes if your Mac seems slow or acting wonky like struggling with one or few non-heavy programs open then this simple process of shutting down your mac and and immediately holding Command+Option+P+R may help. It effects thing resetting you mouse speed, clock/timezone, and much more a google search could explain better than I can and ending fixing my slow loading and launcher. Probably a much better solution than my previous 'Open Steam and a game to fix it' and hopefully this means i dont have to do anymore but I'll test and update this post later.

Thanks for reading and hoped this help.

EDIT: I opened my game to find the black screen issue again. I even tried my previous solutions of opening steam and shutting down and resetting the PRAM but nothing is working. I hate my problem keeps evolving every time I find a solution.
SamuraiLadyRoni
7 years ago
Well my game is broke, I didn't want to post here because I feel like I do that too much but I"ve gone through all the regular fixes and I"d still like to request an updated BootCamp guide if anyone has one or can help me since IRL I had a friend of my dad who said they could help (but it's been weeks so I won't get my hopes up for that.)

Sorry for all the posting, I really wanted to get my game running so I when I came back here I could focus more on the community side and participate a little more but time to once again uninstall and reinstall until I can get something to work (and i've been having a problem of not getting just the base game to get past the blackscreen). I'll edit/update this post if anything changes.
Vividorei
6 years ago
I don't know is this even the right place but i have A HUGE problem. And yes, i am using mac.

I had few days ago few ep and base game what was working just fine. Then i unistalled one of those ep and then nothing worked anymore. I have watched every video from youtube what could help with "unknown error" when i try to go the launcher or whatever it is called. I have tried unistall and install again 5 times and it doesn't work. HELP! I bought new ep and i rly wanna play it :(
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
6 years ago
@DahliaW Are you still having issues getting the game running? If so, please do a clean uninstall of the entire game, as described here:

https://bluebellflora.com/how-to-do-a-clean-uninstall-and-reinstall-on-a-mac/

Install the base game only, and run the Super Patch (digital download version):

https://bluebellflora.com/sims-3-manual-super-patch-for-mac-1-67/

Test to see whether the patched base game opens. If you get an unknown error, let me know. If you get the license server error, just ignore it, and go ahead and install your packs. If you get an unknown error after the packs are installed but not before, please list all the packs you've installed, and any you would like to install but haven't yet.