Re: [CURRENT ISSUE] sims 3 64 bit & metal keeps crashing?

@Amagirl  Are you trying to play with a pet in the household?  If so, try with just human sims.  It seems that a lot of laptops with Intel graphics chips are having a difficult time with pets.

If that doesn't help, try uninstalling the Pets expansion and playing in Sunset Valley.  You can just delete the folder for Pets, which will be in either Applications > The Sims 3 Packs or Users > [your username] > Applications > The Sims 3 Packs.  Pets was the fifth expansion released, so its folder is EP05.

Actually I tried that earlier today, I think i'm in agreement with you there. I was in Appaloosa still but I selected a household with no pets and it worked fine, I even made them go and interact with someone else's pet, still fine. As soon as I tried to switch households to someone with pets it crashed. 

Is there anything else that can be done other than just not having pets in the family? Ironically this is the main reason why I wanted to start playing the sims again was for the horses 🥺

@Amagirl  I haven't heard of a good workaround for this.  I'm not actually sure how widespread the issue is though—it's possible that a number of people with your hardware play just fine with pets in the household.  It's also possible that some pets are more problematic than others, so you could try having an active, no-pet household adopt a horse and see what happens.

If the game crashes after the adoption, try lowering all the graphics settings to the minimum and playing in windowed mode.  Make the changes at the Main Menu, then quit to desktop before loading a save.  You might not have to keep playing with those settings; the point is to see whether there's a way to play with pets at all, and then go from there.

Long overdue update in me replying to this, but I wanted to really try it out before I could conclude it works for me.

I turned down all my graphics and the game seems to be working absolutely fine for me now. It's not crashed once for me. I'm still in Appaloosa and instead of creating pets I've instead adopted them and that's been fine. My game currently has 2 horses 1 dog and 1 cat. So thank you for suggesting this because I can conclude it works for me, ) (even if the snow on the ground in the winter doesn't actually seem to stay there! 😂)

I might try increasing the graphics a little bit and see what happens, just so I can have the snow behave normally. But otherwise if anyone is looking for a fix this might work for them too. 

@Amagirl  That's great to hear, and I'm glad that adopting pets works okay, since you're one of many that has trouble creating them.

For the snow, try enabling Advanced Rendering; that's the setting that seems to make a difference.  Hopefully it won't make your game less stable.

Hello @puzzlezaddict 

I recently got a Mac desktop. I'm still learning this machine. I'm much more fluent with PC. One of the first things I did when I got my mac was to see if I could get Sims 3 on it. 

So I have the 64 bit metal and most expansions, clean install. Right off the bat, I noticed it ran better than when I first installed it on my PC. My PC was actually built to run sims.

I've noticed after playing sims on my mac now for many hours and many saves it's starting to run a little buggy. What worked on my PC was installing.. error-trap and overwatch

I also always played with internet disconnected and had a program called Razor cortex that would shut off all background annoyances. I had cc and mods. Sims ran great after all that.

So what I'm wondering, being on a mac now. Can you get these mods for mac and do you think these mods would help? I noticed after my last install of Isla Paradiso, the jerky freezing got worse.

I know Isla Paradiso has many bugs and I was able to correct it on my PC by manually fixing most of the objects around town that were causing sims to be stuck. Error-trap also helps with that.

So what I'm experiencing now is, being in window mode my game has crashed a couple of times. I can try what you've suggested to others here. But I'm not sure how to post the deviceconfig.log The first crash I experienced was the very first time my sim travelled to the future and as soon as she landed out of the portal it crashed. The second time was in fast-forward mode after many sims hours.

@leahmay74  Sims 3 can use more RAM, as much as you have installed, in the 64-bit version, so the game may appear to be more stable by virtue of not crashing due to running out of memory.  But it otherwise has the same problems as the Windows version, including a glitchy Isla Paradiso.  (There are also some additional issues that don't exist in Windows, for example you'll notice that you can't see any options when clicking on open water.)  That also includes the possibility of the game crashing for no apparent reason, which of course becomes more likely the longer your game session extends.

For IP, the same fixes that were necessary before are necessary now, and the same fixes work as well.  In case you don't want to do all the work yourself, here's a save you can use; the player who made it also documented the fixes she made for those who would rather edit their own saves.

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/811253/removing-ip-lag

Any mod that works in the fully patched Windows version of Sims 3 also works in the 64-bit Mac version, so yes, go ahead and install ErrorTrap and Overwatch.  I'd add Traveler too if your sims are going to be traveling; Register and Traffic are also quite useful for various reasons.  And MasterController is great for its ability to reset anything and everything, although it doesn't have any impact unless you issue a command.

Yes now that I think about it. There were no options clicking on open water. bummer. Thank you

this helps so much. I'll try the fixes for IP and install those mods. My gosh, why does Sims 3 have to be so good but yet so

complicated? lol!

@puzzlezaddict 

Hello again, Hope all is well!

I worked on fixing IP for the last couple of days. Running better but no open water options still. 

Also just when I think the game is running pretty well. It crashes again after a few hours. Same thing everyone else is reporting.

Do you think there will be a patch to fix it? I was also thinking of maybe something in the background running or being connected to the internet.

How do you play through origin without the internet? I saw something about TS3w.exe and DEP as well but I have no idea. Oh and I'm also thinking of

upgrading my RAM from 8 GB to 32 GB.

@leahmay74  The open water issue affects anyone playing the 64-bit version, and there's no fix for it at this point.  I still have hope that EA will address the issue in a future patch, but we've had no news on that front.

As far as the crashing is concerned, the game is just as unstable as it always was, meaning that even without a hard RAM limit, it can crash for plenty of other reasons.  If you're playing in IP, even a partially fixed one, you could have a stuck sim or another routing issue that suddenly takes up all the game engine's resources, or really any of a number of problems.  If you're willing to use mods, NRaas ErrorTrap and Overwatch, as well as a few others, can be very helpful.

I doubt that the crashes are directly related to anything else on your computer, that is unless Origin is also crashing or iCloud decides to sync suddenly after leaving you alone for a couple hours.  You could always try playing while offline though; it's not going to hurt anything.  Just sign into Origin and put it in offline mode, then disconnect the internet before pressing Play.

Bypassing Origin by using TS3W.exe isn't possible in the 64-bit version, at least as far as I can see.  I'm pretty sure EA blocked it, just as it did in the last update to the Windows version of the game, now five years ago.  DEP settings did interfere with Sims 3 for a while in Windows installs, but DEP is not a feature of macOS.

If you want to upgrade your RAM and your Mac supports it—only a few models do—there's no reason not to.  But before assuming it will help with Sims 3, you may want to check how much memory the game is using after you've been playing for an hour or two, as well as how much is left over after the system and any other apps you're running take their share.  You can run the Activity Monitor (in Applications > Utilities) while you play; it doesn't take much in the way of resources, and it's easy to cmd-tab to it, or just leave it showing in a corner if you play in windowed mode.

hello @puzzlezaddict 

After many days of trying to fix IP and not having much luck with the game crashing, I decided to move out of IP to a different town. 

Now it's playing fine. But can't boat in other towns I guess either? no open water options. In IP you could click on a boat and go boating that way but

when I try that in the new town it does nothing. I'm wondering if it's worth keeping IP expansion or not? It's unplayable and a waste of money

at this point. Does Origin give refunds? 

@leahmay74  Origin doesn't grant refunds for DLC, which covers Sims 3 packs.  If you buy your sims a boat in their new world, does it have the same options?  Some worlds don't have deep enough water for all the IP-related activities, although the ones with a proper ocean or bay should.

You could also download the fixed version of IP and experiement with that.  Even if it doesn't work as well as you want, there's no harm in trying.

@puzzlezaddict 

I moved to Sunset Valley. It has an ocean and bays. When I click on the boat it has options to go boating.

But when I click to go boating it switches to map view and nothing happens. Tried a few times.

I also tried the IP fix before but was still too buggy for me anyway. I guess It's just a waiting game to see

if they patch it up one day.

yea ive noticed some options just dont work for me... when I call for any service (besides mixologist) they never show up even though the chat icon confirms the call.