I <3 the new 64-bit and Metal Sims 3
Having been on this forum for months, and months, answering general development questions and doing my level best to help reassure people that delays like this are normal, I would just like to say ...
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@VeroniqueBellamy and @Arual7296 How much RAM is the game using? You can check the Activity Monitor's Memory tab (the AM is in Applications > Utilities). It would be interesting to know how much memory a save can use without becoming unstable.
As for the NPCs, the old version of the game often incorrectly rated the CPUs in Macs and therefore had a lower cap as to the number of inactive sims pushed to lots. Looking at new deviceconfig.log files confirms that this is no longer an issue.
@puzzlezaddictWhile playing I did not see the game use more than 1,5 GB of RAM - it mostly varied between 1,2 GB and 1,4 GB.
This is quite a small amount of RAM, right?
I have 16GB RAM available on my mac and I thought that the game would use more than just 1,5 GB now that it isn't limited to just 2 GB...
@Arual7296 The game can use more RAM, or at least we hope it can. It actually seems to be using less for me than it used to: a save in Isla Paradiso with all expansions installed topped out at 1.67 GB even when I threw a party. That was just a new save for testing though.
It would be good to figure out whether overstuffed households living on overly cluttered lots in overloaded worlds do in fact go over the old RAM limit, but it's apparently going to take some real effort to get there.
@puzzlezaddictInteresting that your game is using less RAM than before. I don't know that much about computers, but I find it a bit odd that our RAM usages are so similar, although the circumstances are quite different. For context, I got the 1,5 GB usage when playing just base game in Sunset Valley in a save game that was just a couple of hours old (few objects, few sims) and no parties.
Do you think the gameplay would be less choppy if the game used more RAM? Or are those things unrelated?
@Arual7296 I did test in Sunset Valley and didn't hit 2 GB with all packs installed, but I don't remember exactly how much the game was using because I was testing something else at the time. It would be interesting to compare though; I'll check it out again later today.
It looks like the game is able to call as much memory as it needs; the question is how much it needs. Having enough RAM free for Sims 3 is critical and will make it run more smoothly, so make sure you're not running much in the background, or anything if you only have 8 GB installed RAM or less. You can also check the Activity Monitor (in Applications > Utilities) for total system memory use; definitely leave Sims 3 at least 5 GB if you can, so your OS doesn't start to compress files to save memory.
The other factor is whether you have a dedicated graphics card or not. (Please forgive me if you've already posted your specs; they're all running together now.) I have a dedicated card with its own dedicated memory, so it doesn't borrow from main memory like an integrated chip would do.
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