Okay, I just ran a test. I made only 1 sim, no pets. After making the sim and going to the map view where you can pick a house to move into, everything was smooth. Short loading time for the lot preview, both entering and exiting it. I picked a house and decided to not move any furniture. I just had my sim go to the library and get started on a skill. Fast forwarding time at first was smooth, and then it froze my game again. So after it was done freezing and the rainbow wheel went away, I just kept it at the normal speed. I wanted her to go to the park, so I went to the map view and when I clicked on the lot, it froze again and the rainbow wheel appeared. It was like that for a while and then it loaded the lot. I had her "go here" (just some random area on the lot) and I followed her to the lot. However, when she stepped onto the lot it hadn't fully loaded in yet, and then my game froze again. I just saved and quit after that. It froze three times in less than ten minutes... again, I thought the 64bit was supposed to push the computer and make it less buggy ☹️ ...
@daydreamqt This was just a compatibility update: something to make the game run in operating systems that don't support 32-bit apps. The game is supposed to be as buggy as it ever was, although your issues are beyond the normal problems in either version of the game.
Please post a screenshot of your in-game settings. When in-game, click cmd-enter to switch to windowed mode. Click the three dots in the lower left corner of the game window, select Options, and take a screenshot of the settings in the first tab. To take a screenshot, click cmd-shift-4 and drag your cursor over the section of screen you want to capture. The screenshot will land on your desktop, and you can embed it within or attach it to a post.
Ah okay, that makes sense. Anyway, I attached the screenshot. For whatever reason, the game forces my whole screen into a 4:3 aspect ratio and changing the settings just makes all the UI super tiny in-game and doesn't actually change the ratio of the screen... That's something that is inconvenient but manageable. The freezing every few minutes is my main issue ☹️ But anyway, those were the default settings. I didn't change them except for the "Enable Animation Smoothing" (when I played the game I enabled it).
@daydreamqt For the screen resolution, try deleting options.ini (in Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 3) and letting the game spawn a new one. Switch to windowed mode (cmd-enter) and apply the change, then switch to another resolution.
When you change any settings other than those two, be sure to do so at the Main Menu and then quit the game before loading a save.
As a test, please change all your settings to low and see whether the same issues occur. I'm not saying you need to play on low settings going forward, but I am wondering whether a particular setting is a problem.
Thank you for the tip about the screen resolution! It looks a lot better now lol. Anyway, I made all the settings to the very lowest. I think that's what the issue was! I was able to have time fast forward with no problems and have my sim travel from one lot to another with no freezing. What should I do so that I don't have to play with all the graphics at the lowest setting though?
