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Ariellove23's avatar
Ariellove23
2 years ago

Sims 3 64 bit on Mac keeps freezing

I started having this problem a few years ago and because I didn't discover what was causing this I ended up uninstalling the game. Today, I decided to see if I can finally play The Sims 3 on my computer. I get about 5-10 minutes and the game freezes. However, I'm still able to click pause and play, and different things in the game. Basically, the screen freezes but I am able to move my mouse and select things. For example, my sim was trying to level up a skill and I go to speed it up or select something and the screen freezes, my mouse gets the little colourful loading circle and then I can click things in the game, but my screen is frozen on my sim. I am able to hear the mouse clicks and I can go into open world/map and click the little '...' in thecorner, it just doesn't pop up on my screen yet I can hear it running in the background. I don't have mods, costum content or store content in the game. I tried to open the game many times and this problem appears every single time. I tried to reset the origin and it didn't work. I tried to reinstall the game and it didn't work. The sims 3 and my Mac are updated. My packs are World Adventures, High-End Loft Stuff, Ambitions, Late Night, Generations, Pets, Supernatural, Seasons, University Life and Island Paradise. 

mac
technical issues

5 Replies

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    2 years ago

    @Ariellove23  What world are you playing in?  Please also list the full specs of your Mac: everything under About This Mac including the OS and except for the serial number.

  • Ariellove23's avatar
    Ariellove23
    2 years ago

    Mac Book Pro 13-inch, 2018, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports

    2.3 GHz quad core Intel Core i5
    Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 1536 MB
    8 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

    Mac OS Sonoma 14.3 

    I was playing on the world that comes with the Supernatural Moonlight Falls. I also tried to play in Sunset Valley, but the same thing happened.

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    2 years ago

    @Ariellove23  Try disabling Advanced Rendering, in the graphics options.  Do so at the Main Menu and restart the game before loading a save.  You'll notice things don't look great, but this is just an experiment to see whether it makes a difference.

    If that doesn't help, lower Lighting and Tree Detail to the minimums as well, also changing the settings at the Main Menu and quitting before loading a save.

    If you get more crashes, try removing the Pets expansion.  Wherever you installed the game, you'll see a Sims 3.app and a "The Sims 3 Packs" folder, which holds one subfolder for each pack.  Move the EP05 folder to the desktop, and Pets won't be present.  You'll need to start another new save, since any save already exposed to Pets may be corrupted once it's run without the expansion present.

    The point here is to try to get the game to a point where it's stable, then start adding back features or increasing settings until you run into trouble again.  I'm not saying you necessarily need to keep all of these changes going forward, only that it's worth testing each of them.  Let me know how it goes.

  • Ariellove23's avatar
    Ariellove23
    2 years ago

    Thank you for your help. I did what you suggested. I moved The Sims 3 Pets folder to the desktop and I also disabled the Advanced Rendering. I decided to try to play in Sunset Valey in the Goth family. I played for almost an hour. However, the game just went down by itself. But that is something that always happened to me, even with my previous PC. You were also right, without the Advanced Rendering, the graphics of the game aren't great, but at least the game works. I would like to know if I can be able to play with Pets as I love that pack. Do you think is possible? 

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    2 years ago

    @Ariellove23  Does the game work with Pets installed but on lower graphics settings?  Does it matter what kind of pet your main household has?  Horses and long-haired dogs have traditionally been more problematic to render than cats and short-haired dogs.  There are mods that can prevent the spawning of strays and wild horses, and prevent inactive households from adopting pets (unless you instruct them to do so), although the latter one, NRaas StoryProgression, can be heavy on the wrong settings.  Let me know if you're interested and if you can play with any pets at all.

    It's worth noting that without the right mods, inactive households will adopt pets even when their houses are unsuitable for the animals, and the resulting routing failures can drag performance down and even crash the game.  Aside from that, if for example you find that your computer can't handle horses, an inactive household adopting a horse would be a problem too, and you might not even know that was triggering crashes.  But all of this is dependent on which pets your computer can reliably handle.

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