The Sims 3 64-Bit Keeps Crashing on Mac
Can any help me figure out why my sims 3 64-bit keeps crashing? Here are my computer specs: macOS Monterey Version 12.5 MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) Processor 2.9 GHz Dual-Core Int...
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@MrMicMe What do you mean that mods don't seem to work: are they not loading in-game, does Sims 3 not work with them present, or something else? Does this include custom content, or just mods? What world are you playing in?
Hi! Hope you're doing well, thanks for helping everyone out! Like everyone else, I'm having trouble with the Sims 3 crashing on mac randomly. I actually gave up on the game for a few years, but I recently moved Sims 4 onto a 1tb hardrive which helped that game so I figured I would try Sims 3 too. It worked amazing and I played the game yesterday (new save, deleted the old ones from main menu in game since it had been years since I'd play since anyway) for like 6 hours. Then randomly it just crashed. I wasn't loading a world, in build mode, or CAS (all of those worked fine when I was in it though).
I have no cc's, mods, etc. I have seen your suggestion about starting from a completely new EA folder, and I'll try it if you really want me too, but being that the game can be played for so long without crashing it would be a big time investment. I'm going to play it again today to see how long it lasts now that I would be loading a save.
Computer specs:
13 inch 2017 macbook pro
Processor: 2.3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
Graphics: Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 1536 MB
Memory: 8 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3
macOS: 13.4.1 (c) (22F770820d)
Startup disk = mac HD
The laptop itself has 250b but the game is now pulling from a 1tb samsung SSD. Is it just the case that I might just have to save frequently to play the game, or do you think there is an actual fixable problem? I think I'm going to try playing offline, not sure if this just means Origin the app being offline or like turning off my wifi completely? I will do both.
Please let me know if you need more information, thank you!
Oh! I also have the details all on low pretty much since the new game defaulted to that. And the save is in Sunset Valley and it is in windowed mode
@vanessaneye Sims 3 isn't the most stable game, and the 64-bit version is a little less stable than 32-bit in certain ways. So I would say that if you have an occasional crash but can otherwise play for decent stretches of time, that's a reasonably good outcome.
There are some steps that can help here. One is lowering the in-game resolution: the fewer pixels your computer's graphics chip needs to render, the lower its overall workload. You could play in fullscreen if the game window gets too small in windowed mode.
Mods can also help too, and perhaps quite a lot depending on the packs you have installed. For example, if you're running Pets in a world that wasn't designed with animals in mind, they could be getting stuck and causing the game engine to bog down trying to reroute them. The mod that steps in to fix stuck sims is NRaas Overwatch, which is great to have for multiple reasons. I listed a number of helpful mods here, all of which are completely compatible with the 64-bit version of Sims 3:
There are plenty of other examples of problems that can trigger a crash, but the problem is that it can be difficult if not impossible to figure out what's happening behind the scenes, even with a mod like ErrorTrap that reports and tries to resolve the errors it finds. Repeat crashes in the same situation are usually simple to diagnose at least in general terms, but random crashes, not so much.
So in general, your best bet is to save often and look for any patterns to the crashing, or any extra lag or stutter that might indicate that a problem has arisen. For example, recently, I noticed my game bogging down for no apparent reason, I mean it was clearly a different experience than normal. Overwatch notified me 30 sim-minutes later that two sims were stuck and would have reset them for me had I not disabled that, but the point is, I already knew something was wrong and it was time to save, then investigate. This is something you can get a feel for once you've played on the same machine for a little while—it's difficult to describe objectively but easy to recognize in the moment.
Hi! Ok great, thank you this was helpful. I played 2x today for around 3 hours each time and even traveled w World Adventure with no crash. I took your tip and just downloaded Overwatch and Error Trap. I'll try to pick up on patterns if it continues to happen.
Thank you!
i may be a bit late to respond but i have found that if you have the family inventory open it increases the chance of crashing but the game can over all be unstable i would recommend mods to fix it but cant get them to work
