Lags & Invisible, Frozen & Stuck Sims --> Post here if you have the issue.

Okay, first off - I do not use mods or CC. Telling people to install a mod to fix a glitch is kind of ridiculous. Second, I play on a Mac so I can't get the mods even if I wanted them.

The too many cars issue is a serious problem. I shouldn't have to go into each individual household and delete the cars that have built up in their inventories every time I launch the game. This has been reported repeatedly since the EP has come out. It's been months - I'm getting pretty tired of the excuses.

@LadyLaFleur: Twallan's Mod work perfectly on a mac. Tools don't, but CC and mods are working without a problem. I don't know where you have your user files on a mac but other than that, it's the same.

I keep a flickr page with whatever bugs I find or just funny or interesting things:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/96179754@N00

I just had the bed bug happen again, and the game was going so well into it's 15th week. I'd had no lagging or freezing or getting stuck in furniture up to that point. Somehow the game had seemed to improve with the last game I played.

If you go back through some of the images on flickr, you'll find most of the major bugs are shown. People frozen, merged, floating out of their bed or in their bed or in the ground. Cars accumulating, cars embedded in the ground. People in the driving position outside their jobs, stuck in the ground. It's hard to show people invisible, as they aren't there, LOL, but I took a couple of pictures of where they had just been.

I'm using a new iMac,
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac11,3
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.93 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s

ATI Radeon HD 5750:

Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD 5750
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 1024 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x68a1
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B9710C-238
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.417
Displays:
iMac:
Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Built-In: Yes
Connection Type: DisplayPort

I have only downloaded and installed items located in the Store that are free, such as the Toyota Prius pack and the Ford Fiesta. Also any holiday free packs for the December holidays and Valentines and Halloween.

I don't have any other items installed for the game, and only run the base game and Ambitions, which came together in a special box.

The computer itself has had no new applications added other than Firefox. Everything else installed on the computer is stock, directly from the manufacturer.

I agree that this could be a very severe Sim pathing issue, at best. I've had every problem mentioned in this thread (and the 50+ page thread that was deleted), from the beginning signs of the game stalling slightly for short periods of time ; townie Sims and my own household of young adult - adult Sims becoming invisible or frozen while either exiting their cars outside of their rabbithole jobs, or being reset to home position when trying to enter rabbitholes for work; children and teenage Sims gathering in large groups in front of the school, unable to enter for whatever reason (recently with my current game, my two 3-star Celebrity teenagers will leave for school at 7am, arrive outside of the school on time, stand directly in front of the school doors as other neighborhood Sims gather, but will not actually make it inside the school and begin improving their grades until after 11-12 o'clock, giving them barely an hour to be in school, negatively impacting their performance and mood.).

Someone mentioned in the deleted thread something about when experiencing the disappearing or automatically reset Sims problem, they discovered that their Sims could be found on the basement level (even if there was no basement - they would be trapped underground with no possible route to escape except for the resetSim cheat). That made me wonder - though I have yet to check myself, because luckily I have not encountered invisible Sims since I began using Overwatch, Master Controller, and NRaaS Story Progression - if maybe there is a major issue with routing Sims on the way to rabbithole places, mainly for work, that they are for some reason leaving their cars or carpools and then being sent to a nonexistent basement level outside of the rabbithole building. It makes sense to me, because when I first started having these problems in Bridgeport (I'm currently playing in Sunset Valley), the plumbbob of the invisible Sims would appear not distinctly, and possibly slightly lower, closer to the ground, as if they were a level beneath the ground. The plumbbobs would still be visible for me, but they would not be as big as they should, and not in the correct full form.

I also had problems in Bridgeport with every single highrise bar or club, with a myriad of mixologists appearing in the lobby unable to access the lounge/bar area, which was also inaccessible to my active Sims, and when my Sim would attempt to enter the elevator with a small group of other townie Sims, he would be reset to home position and never reach the floor of the lounge.

It seems as though pathing is seriously corrupted when it comes to Sim routing, rabbitholes, and high rise buildings. Hopefully we can investigate this further ourselves as players and potentially narrow down the problem if/when EA takes notice of our issues.

Thank you guys for all the info.

@AndreeAndree: I have posted your link on the first post.

@zerobandwidth: Thanks for all those points you made. I'll try compiling some of it.

I also would like to explain to you guys that this issue has actually nothing to do with Late Night. The first I saw people getting stuck in beds was shortly after the game came out. Must have been August 09. I tested a game for someone who had the problem and there was nothing I was able to do about it except tell the person to start a new game. I also came across a thread in this forum that was from back in '09 describing the very same problem. So this issue has been around forever. It's just the more EPs you add, the more info gets added to your Sims. This is particularly true for WA that introduced the 'MiniSims'. Those are the sims that you see gray in your relationship panel and that are striped of info to only keep the minimum necessary. There are many things wrong with them and the first invisible Sims appeared when you got back from vacation traveling. Twallan has found that most of these invisible Sims have corrupt outfits which makes them invisible in the first place. That can be corrected with the fix invisible Sims interaction in DebugEnabler but since this rerolls everything you might end up with Sims that look very different then they did before.

Late Night with all it's new Sims and that bad routing place in the mountains just added to the problem, making it show up for a lot of people and thus making it a common problem. The more data gets accumulated the likelier you get this bug.

I find it very curious that it seems that once you had this problem, it seems to affect every new game you start, making the error come back a lot earlier. Twallan's Mods do seem to help tremendously for they are constantly cleaning up hung references, broken outfits and temporary items that don't get deleted properly.

If it really is a routing issue, I'm wondering if Twoftmama's Route Fix mod (formerly Richdre's RouteFix Mod) will also help with it.

If you are into mods, it's worth a try as well as Twallan's ErrorTrap (that is core).

That's it for now. Keep posting :)

suelorcha wrote:


In the deleted thread some mentioned their troubles might have begun when a parent tries to feed a toddler who crawls to the stairs while the parent is at the bottom of the stairs.

The last game I was playing was single story. I had a toddler. There was enough space in the child's bedroom, and in the living room, that the child could be fed on the floor. Or be picked up.

And yet several times, when the child would be playing in their bedroom and the parent was in the living room, both the child and the parent would head for the kitchen to "feed on floor".

Even when the babysitter was going to pick up the child to snuggle, the child would leave their bedroom, head for the kitchen, while the babysitter left whatever spot they were at and also headed for the kitchen.

It doesn't happen every single time, though. Sometimes the parents will feed the child on the floor in the bedroom or in the living room. Sometimes when I had instructed the parent who was carrying the child to "feed on floor", no matter where the parent was standing around the house, they would also head for the kitchen and feed the child in the same spot. IN THE KITCHEN.

Here's an image of the location of the child with babysitter (screen shot 259):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/96179754@N00/5567179477/

Screen shot 258 is also posted, it's of the babysitter and the toddler in the kitchen. The toddler was IN THE BEDROOM before the photo was taken, and the babysitter had been at the computer in the living room. The babysitter wanted to snuggle/pick up the toddler. Both went to the kitchen, and the location of the sitting toddler in 258 is exactly where the child would go to be fed or picked up...sometimes. Not every time. I'm thinking it has to do with the child wanting to be a certain distance from the fridge...zeroing in on that location, as well as the parents or babysitter. The fridge is hard to see, it's black, but it's the item in the upper left corner of the kitchen shown in the image 259.

As I said in the deleted thread, if you have the problem with the toddler at the top of the stairs, it's because of the need for the child to go to the kitchen to be fed. Toddlers (as it is right now) need to be on the same floor as the kitchen in order to be fed.

I've added some info to the first post. It would be great if you could include that info from now on (only once per user):

How to post your info in this thread
Reading through your posts I decided it's probably best if everyone just writes down what ever they think important. There is a few info, that you should include though:

1. Basic System info (no DxDiag unless you are asked this info by a guru, they just make it hard to read through everything)
- Processor
- RAM
- Graphic Card
- OS
2. What Add-Ons do you have
3. Are you using Mods/CC
- If you are using mods, please post the bigger ones (no need to list every single one)
- If you have cc, how much do you have (little, moderate, a lot)
4. Do you have any other significant problems like crashing/save errors

Also, if I ask you a question back and you answer, it would be great if you could quote the question. It's sometimes hard to keep track on who I asked what.

Windows XP The rest has been given to EA multiple times and there were no problems
No Mods

I dont find any consistency why my games starts with the Sims disappearing
and freezing and time stopping and the game stuttring.
The last time it started in Egypt when my sim pushing a statue.
The time before that my Sim was playing a guitar in his living room and his
wife was exercising in front of the tv. I did however on that one notice
one of those irritating paparizzi come on the lot just before.

Sometimes I notice mass freezes and they are usually at schools however since
I have been emptying the caches it does not stop it but it stops the mass freezes
at the school as the kids seem not to comeall at once. They seem to come one
after other.

When I try to change houses to play another Sim it works fine for a long time
to until i get far into the game then when I do the change I get the overhead
view and its frozen. I use the cheat and quit. When I restart the family I have
been playing when I tried to change has disappeared totally.

The Jalopys have gone away down in my game with cache clearing but the taxis
are there in droves. I counted 15 in a very small area. That has to affect the game.

To sum up I have cleared my caches faithfully and this is not a fix but helps
me play longer and I got rid of any CC I had which was little and then have
just installed some patterns which seem fine.
I know uninstalling the CC helped me. It was all exchange CD (17 items) but it
was old and the game played longer after i uninstalled it.

Windows 7, 64 bit, quad core, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GTX460

My Sim(s) have always frozen or disappeared at home, not before, after or during their jobs. Jobs they come and go to fine. Not in front of a staircase or in the basement. Just in the kitchen, chatting or on the way to the mailbox or sitting in a chair. For whatever reason, about ten Sim weeks into a new game, the problem starts.

I don't - will not - use mods - and have cleared all the stuck cars and stuff from every community and non-played lot in town and removed them all from personal inventories. I do not have any CC, only store items. I don't really have "lag".

I personally believe the base game itself is somehow flawed and every EP and SP added to it is slowly causing it to implode. For some, sooner and for some, later.

I had no problems until LateNight or the patch preceding it. Others, perhaps with WA. All I know is this game has real problems and EA will not acknowledge
it. Instead, they throw another EP at us.

What is the point when you cannot play?

My apologies for this being long; I’m trying to record everything again, since they saw fit to delete the other thread in its entirety (rather than just the troll posts….)

System info for crinrict:
iMac
Mac OS: 10.6.6
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo
Graphics card: ATI Radeon X1600

I have the whole lot: Sims 3, WA, LN, Ambitions, Fast Lane Stuff, High-end Loft Stuff, Outdoor Stuff. Game is fully patched and up to date.
I’ve never had any mods or cc from third parties. I have some items from the Store but nothing from the Exchange.
I don't have any other problems (no crashing, no save errors).

Timing:
I’ve only had the game since January of this year so these glitches developed quite quickly for me. I can’t remember how many sim weeks this represents but my game reached four generations of a family before becoming unplayable.

Problems I have experienced (roughly in order of occurrence):

1. Pausing and freezing. While the sims are frozen the plumbobs keep spinning, if they are asleep the zzzz keep rising, music or ambient sounds also continue (e.g. bird tweets). The pauses last a few minutes, becoming more frequent and longer. It gets to the point where it is frozen more often than playable and I have to give up on the game.

2. Sims stuck in furniture or floating half-in half-out their beds. This happened most often while sims are in bed – they float in a rigid horizontal position, part way through the bed. Resetsim works a few times but then stops working, sometimes the “reset” sim remains in the horizontal position but moves away from the bed so that they are floating in mid-air. The problem is not confined to beds - sims also get stuck in other furniture – chairs, bookcases etc. They cannot be controlled while stuck.

3. Merged sims and sims stacked up around town (e.g. a bunch of kids stuck in a seated position outside the school, as though on an invisible bus). One or more sims occupying the same space and uncontrollable. Similar to sims being stuck in the furniture except they are stuck to each other! Reset sim works for a while but then starts to fail.

4. Sims resetting themselves. Sims will pause for a moment and then suddenly jump to a reset position. This happened quite a lot while my teen sims were sitting down doing homework – they would suddenly leap up and be standing next to the table, but it also happened for the adults.

5. Invisible sims. The final symptom – sims just disappear. You can sometimes tell where they are because their thought bubbles still appear. Sometimes you can continue to direct their actions. It resembles the sims get into their cars – you know how they disappear from the pavement and suddenly reappear inside the vehicle – except that when my sims turn invisible they are not travelling anywhere.

(6. I used to have toddlers stuck at the top of the stairs. This would happen to me when the toddler was really sleepy and I would send an adult to pick up the toddler and pop them in the crib. Toddler would sit at the top of the stairs, adult would walk up and down stairs, achieving nothing. I solved this by instructing the adult to walk to near the crib and the toddler to crawl to the same place. Then they could interact without any stair-related shenanigans.)

Things I’ve already tried:

1. I tried turning down some of the settings in the Options panel (e.g. turn off mirror reflections, reduce quality of graphics) but this didn’t help.

2. Completely uninstalling and reinstalling. I tried this a few times but it had no effect.

3. After a very long email exchange with Customer Support, they had me try all of the following: clearing cache (no effect), turning off background tasks (I didn’t have any running that I could turn off), playing in a different account on the iMac (no use), resetting SMC, verifying and repairing disk permission, repairing Mac hard drive (none of these three worked because the hardware is not at fault!), provided system info to EA (system is OK).

4. Eventually, my final email from customer support stated that they were forwarding my correspondence to the team that develops Sims 3 patches. I thought this represented progress, but since the necessary information was in the deleted thread, I wonder what that team will now see (presumably they can still access it at their end). I might email them back and give them a link to this new thread, so they can't use their deletion as an excuse not to act.

5. What I am doing currently is playing a new game, as Andree suggested in the deleted thread, and keeping a log of how long I can play (in sim days), then which glitches occur and when.