Re: Game crashes in 1 save file and not another

Hi! Thanks for all of those instructions. I did everything you said, and now I see that the Sims is taking up 2.3 GB of memory. My Mac has 12 GB of memory in total. I did notice that the loading screen was much shorter than it normally is. So it seems like your instructions are working. Also, it only took about 3 minutes to save, which is much better than the usual 6-10 minutes. I have done much playing yet, so I'm not sure if it will still crash or not. 

PLUS, the 'chat' option for toddlers is back! I haven't been able to chat with toddlers for years because the option disappeared for some reason. It's back now. yay!

How does error trap work and what do I do with the overwatch mod? I have them installed now. 

Thanks for your help. I REALLY appreciate it. <3

@tlobliviate  ErrorTrap and Overwatch run on their own, without any need for user input.  You can of course mess with the settings if you want, at least for Overwatch, but the default settings have always worked fine for me.

ErrorTrap finds stray data that's corrupt or not tied to anything or otherwise doesn't belong, and cleans it up.  So you might get notifications about piles of laundry and plates from cooking being deleted, sim data recovered, that kind of thing.  These reports are not indicative of a problem, just ET doing its job.  If your game starts crashing, or you get repeated errors about a particular sim though, you can take the related scripterrors (in Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3) to NRaas and ask for help.  People there can interpret the scripterrors and make suggestions for troubleshooting whatever the specific problem happens to be.

Overwatch cleans up other kinds of data, for example abandoned cars and stuck sims.  It runs when you initially load a save, then every night at 3 am by default.  The deleted cars and stereos that get turned off are nothing to worry about, unless the cars number in the thousands, in which case installing Traffic would be the best approach.  If you get repeated notifications about a sim being stuck or not aging, that should be investigated, but an occasional error here and there can be ignored.

By the way, are you really playing in macOS, or have you Bootcamped or installed Parallels or something?

Ah ok. Yeah, I got a bunch of aging errors. But after a few sims minutes, they all aged up anyways. Thanks for the info about the errortrap and overwatch mods, and thanks for telling me about the option of asking NRaas directly about my problems. 

And yes, I'm pretty sure I'm playing on macOS. I didn't do anything fancy with my game. Just put in the disc and started playing. 

The game did crash after I went around and used NRaas on a bunch of sims. That usually happens -- when I use NRaas so much at once, the game can't handle it. Idk if that's fixable. 

@tlobliviate  Okay, now I'm curious.  When you open a folder, does it look like this:

or one of these?

And when you say you "used NRaas on a bunch of sims," what exactly did you do?  Please list the categories you pick, so I know what specific mod you're using, and what function of that mod is involved.

I attached a photo of my screen. 

When I say I used NRaas on a bunch of sims I just mean I used NRaas Master Controller, then clicked on intermediate and checked their ages, and checked their relationships. I also changed some relationships using the NRaas Master Controller mod. I also 'open' a lot of houses to check on the people inside. But, I only open them one at a time, because I'm scared that having a bunch of houses open at once will cause a crash. 

Hope this helps <3 

@tlobliviate  Wow, yes, you're managing to run all those packs together in macOS.  It's not surprising your save would crash constantly then, given how much memory it uses.  The Windows version can use up to ~3.7 GB RAM at a time (4 GB minus some overhead), but the Mac version is hard-capped at 2 GB due to the way it was initially programmed.  The Windows version also originally had a 2 GB memory limit, but it was patched to be able to use more; the Mac version never was.

As you've seen, and I've seen from time to time as well, that doesn't mean the game will immediately crash if it goes over the limit.  I haven't paid close attention in a while, but it's possible macOS does a decent job of compressing unused data.  It's also possible that the Activity Monitor isn't reporting the data correctly.

It's kind of a moot point though.  This particular save is using too much memory right away, and so the crashes are totally unsurprising.  Opening houses isn't going to help either: it takes more RAM to simulate two houses and the sims inside than one.  Sims 3 is also notorious for not releasing all the memory it was using but no longer needs, so closing a house again might not free up all the RAM that was used when it was open.  Checking random data like ages and relationships should only have a minimal effect, if any.

At this point, you can keep playing the save and hope for the best, but there's no guarantee things won't get worse.  There are ways to try to keep memory use down overall, from disabling the interactive loading screens and the in-game shopping experience to purging RAM every so often.  Sim memories are a huge resource hog, although as mentioned before, disabling them now won't remove the data from the existing ones.  Here's a more complete list of things you can do to keep resource use down:

https://www.nraas.net/community/TIPS-FOR-BETTER-GAME-PERFORMANCE

Here's how to purge RAM on a Mac:

https://bluebellflora.com/resetting-ram-during-gameplay/

StoryProgression is also a heavy mod in that running it will take more resources.  I don't know what your settings are, but it might help to slow down the speed of SP, or even play without it in this save if you can stand it.

Given how long you've played this save though, you might end up needing to move your sims to a new world.  If you do, don't use the EA method of calling on the phone and moving; save the sime to the library, quit to desktop, reload and start a new save, then place the sims there.  If you want to keep their house, save it separately.  The sims won't know anyone in the new save, but they'll keep their skills and relationships to each other, as well as their jobs if those jobs exist in the new world.

If there are more sims than just your active household that you'd like to keep, you can save them separately and repair their relationships using MasterController once they're in the new save.  Or you could pack them together with NRaas Porter, which would preserve all the relationships among the sims.  If you end up going that route though, it's best to ask on the NRaas forum.  I've never done this myself, and I know there are small details here and there that can matter very much, for example making sure to pack the graves of ancestors to preserve the family trees.

By the way, I don't think I answered this before, but you asked how to keep sims from moving into town.  There are various StoryProgression options you can use, depending on what you're trying to accomplish—one thing you can do is block a certain empty house from being occupied.  But the simplest approach of all is to remove the fridge from the lot.  Sims won't move into a house that doesn't have a fridge.

Hi again. Thanks so much for all the information! I've been searching the internet for answers to my problems, and really I should have just come here -- you have a solution for everything. 

My game is running much better than it usually does. I was able to play for over an hour without crashes. Of course, the game did eventually crash though. I save probably every 5 minutes, and it never takes more than 3 minutes to save, which is amazing! I've stopped opening and closing houses, as you suggested. Also, I notice that my game is not taking up more than 1.8 GB of memory. I'm not sure why it said 2.3 GB before.

I'm wondering if switching back and forth from sims to an internet browser could be the cause of crashes. I often play in windowed mode and watch youtube at the same time. Could clicking on and off of the game lead to lagging and crashes?

I'm very interested in what you said about saving the sims to the library and making a new world with the same sims. I had that idea before, but when I tried it with one family, I noticed that their family tree did not carry over, and the family tree is a very important part of my game to me. You say if I bring the tombstones it would keep their family tree in tact? Can you explain that more?

And thanks for that fridge tip!!! What a good idea! 

<3

@tlobliviate  Switching between a browser window and the game shouldn't cause crashing on its own, although it can if your system is already running close to capacity with just Sims 3.  Yours has more than enough memory; I'm thinking in this case of the processor, or perhaps that the graphics card is involved in something else you're doing and doesn't switch back and forth well.  Sims 3 also doesn't always respond well to being minimized, at least on some systems.  I find it does fine though if I put it in windowed mode and leave it up.

Playing the game and playing a video at the same time is more demanding than playing one and having the other on pause.  Whether your system can handle those extra demands depends on the specs of your computer, your OS, and other factors.  It's difficult to be sure what's happening on your computer without being in front of it and watching the output of some hardware monitoring app.

It's really speculation though, unless you notice something specific.  At any rate, if the game crashes when you run YouTube or some application at the same time but not when you just play, then that's enough of a pattern to say you probably should avoid doing that.

When you save a household to the library, the sims lose all relationships with people not in that household, and that includes dead relatives.  This is also true of the option to move sims to a different neighborhood through the phone interaction.  The point of using NRaas Porter is that instead of transferring single households, you pack a number of them together, preserving all the info among them.  If you put the tombstones of the dead relatives in the inventory of one of the packed sims, the ancestors' data, and the relationships that follow, will be intact.  So for example, using Porter, if first cousins living in different households bring their dead parents' urns with them, they'll still be first cousins in the new save, regardless of whether you unpack them to the same household or different ones.

The fridge tip is a great idea, and it's not mine.  Someone else posts the suggestion often, and I and others steal it mercilessly.  The nice thing about it is it works whether you have StoryProgression or not, and without having to go through any other mod options.

I see. To be honest, moving all my sims to a new neighborhood, and trying to keep their relationships sounds too complicated. For now, with the errortrap mod, I think I'm just gonna deal with the game as it is. I guess I shouldn't play it in windowed mode. I play in full screen, then save in windowed mode since I'm so used to the game saving for infinity and freezing my computer. 

Now I have to go delete some refrigerators, lol. 

Thanks for all your tips! My game is running so much better than it was.