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Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
12 years ago

[MAC] My Sims 3 Game Keeps Crashing In Create A Sim/Household

Having the same problem.

I have no custom content (actually reinstalled the whole game just a few days ago to see if the problem went away and didn't add any CC whatsoever), my Mac has more than enough horse power to run the game with high settings (although I lowered them just to make sure that wasn't the problem) and my OS is up-to-date, therefore my graphic card is too.

Usually the game crashes while creating a Sim, but the last time I tried the Sim's skin went black and the thumbnail disappeared before the game actually crashed.

I think this started happening after I installed University Life or Island Paradise, can't really remember which...

<split from another thread that was about PC crashing>

pc
technical issues

3 Replies

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    12 years ago

    Hi

    Most Macs have more than enough horsepower but unfortunately the way the Sims 3 was coded for Macs means that it doesn't make good use of that power. For example my iMac has 16 GB of RAM, but the game can only use 2 GB because of the coding. So, to play on Mac, sometimes you need to use a few tricks.

    Unfortunately a lot of TS3 players encounter problems when playing the game on their Mac. These can include crashing and freezing. A lot of these issues can be avoided or at least improved by the following measures.

    Firstly, manually reset your RAM while playing. See BluebellFlora's guide on how to do this: http://bluebellflora.com/the-sims-3-on-a-mac/resetting-ram-during-gameplay/

    I restart my computer before I play TS3. The memory used as seen in Activity Monitor is at about 3GB after the restart. If I open the Launcher it goes up to around 11 GB (that's all I've done - just opened the Launcher!). At this point I reset the RAM. Then I hit play and get through the opening sequence. I then press cmd-return to put the game in windowed mode from time to time while playing (and always before saving or using CAS). That way I can keep an eye on the memory and reset RAM if necessary. Being in windowed mode also allows you to close the game using force quit if it freezes up - it's better to crash the game than your whole computer.

    Second tip is to save frequently. I save at least once per sim day. Use the option to Save or Save As, rather than the combined Save and Quit.

    Make sure you are patched up to date. The 1.63 patch included fixes for Mac simmers that did actually improve the stability of the game on our operating systems, so it is well worth updating.

    Caspin

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    12 years ago

    Hi Caspin,

    Thank you so much for your reply.

    I do indeed use a small app called Memory Clean and constantly reset the memory during gameplay, never letting it go under 4 Gb of free memory... I also save the game every 2 sim-days as I've noticed if I take too long without saving the game gets slower and I have the latest patch. Unfortunately, these issues don't seem to be related to the CAS crashes, as it keeps happening virtually everytime I go into CAS... Like I said, before installing the last (or the previous) expansion pack everything worked fine...

    Thanks again!

    Sofia

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    12 years ago
    Hi

    Sometimes apps like the memory-cleaning tools do more harm than good so you may want to remove it and see how you go. It is so quick and easy to reset the RAM in Terminal and that way you don't have an extra app chugging along.

    Many players find that their game runs OK until they install a new pack and then the addition tips their game over the edge. For me this happened after Seasons - I started getting a lot of crashing and ended up playing in Windows using Bootcamp for a while. The latest patch (1.63) stabilised the game again for the Mac operating system and that combined with resetting the memory has meant that I can play on the native OS again.

    So I think that you installing the extra expansion was your tipping point.

    Despite my success playing the game, I do still get the occasional crash in CAS. If I want to use CAS, i do that first, then save, quit and restart the game.

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