[ARCHIVED] Game Freeze/ Extended Loading Times/ Save Game Bloating
Product: The Sims 4 Platform:PC Which language are you playing the game in? English How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%) What is your current game version number? 1.68.154.1020 Wha...
As EA fixed the main issue of this thread, I would ask you all to post in different threads, depending on your issues. I don't want anyone to miss out on help because they post here. There are several issues going on and it's best to keep them seperate.
I've made a new thread for the Father Winter issue here:
Yesterdays patch fixed the LE from happening which means no more Father Winters are generated in abundance.
What does this mean ?
For unaffected games: You can now have Winterfest with Father Winter again but I would still recommend making a backup before the holiday occurs
For affected games: Depending on how badly your save is affected, it may or may not be saved. I'm still testing but so far I'm not having much luck with badly affected saves. Reverting to a backup is the best option still cause fixing saves can be time consuming.
The patch notes say games should fix themselves over time .. I think this means culling will delete your extra father winters .. if you make it that far.
I'll do further testing. I personally don't need any saves at this point but QA is looking for them, so please send your badly affected ones to SimQARobo
Summary of the Issue
There's several issues going on in this thread. The main one being an endless generation of Father Winters. If you already had one in your save (has to be Clemens Frost), then you should be safe. Do backup before the Winterfest if you decided to follow through with it.
Since the game just creates and creates and creates, the game will start to lag and then freeze. It will use all your RAM (or at least a lot of it). You will have an insane number of Single Sim households in your hidden households (can only be made visible with MCCC).
Another reason for this seems to be routing issues concerning platforms. Sims try to get to a place in a (sunken?) platform and can't cause of MoveObject placement or other reasons and just keep trying and trying until the game freezes.
How do I know if I have the Father Winter Issue ?
Typical Symptoms are
Insane RAM usage
Save Game bloating (compared to the backups, your save is exponential bigger in size (this is only happening if you actually saved your game in this state)
Loading times are getting insane. Depending on your computer, the save never loads at all
The time freezes. If your Sim freeze but the time goes on, then you have a dead lock and not this issue.
You can't click on anything. No menu comes up
You had a Winterfest but Father Winter never showed up.
You get a LastException: Exception while updating the sim filter service.. (TypeError: apply_permanent_appearance_modifiers() missing 1 required positional argument: 'additional_flags')
The RAM usage, save game bloat, LE and the Winterfest with no Father Winters are the strongest indications that this is your issues, If you use mods, you can also use MCCC to check the hidden households (you need MC Cheat. Click on Mailbox > MC Cheats > Sims/NPC Household Cheats > Unhide Hidden Households
This is what you should see (depending on the packs you own). You will also see ghost + pet strays appear here. If you have LOTS of male adult Sims as well, then you have the Father Winter Issue.
How do I know if I have the platform routing issue ?
Typical Symptoms are
RAM usage is steady.
Save game size is not majorly increasing.
Loading times are normal.
The time freezes. If your Sim freeze but the time goes on, then you have a dead lock and not this issue.
You can't click on anything. No menu comes up
It only happens in certain households. Others are working perfectly fine.
If you replace the house with another, the save works fine.
There are no LastExceptions
Sounds like I have the Father Winter Issue. What do I do ?
Some folks have also had success with disabling seasons: https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2017/03/disable-single-packs/ (Seasons is EP05). I tested this method and all it does is stop the LastException from happening and hence the new creation of Father Winters. If you only have a few now, this can solve your issue but if you already have 4000-6000 father Winters like some of the saves I tested, then the freezing just came right back. I don't recommend this method as you'll loose everything Seasons on your save, even if you just temporarily disable it to get rid of the LE and then enable the pack again (you do need to save) but I'm putting it here for completion sake.
If you don't have a backup, the best thing to do is, save all your Sims and houses to the gallery and place them in a fresh save. You'll loose all money + relationships outside the family, so that might be a huge issue for legacy saves.
Wait until EA fixes this and play another save in the meantime. Depending on how many Father Winters you already have, it's unclear if they can clean the save better then MCCC though.
Remove any Winterfests from your calendar or at least remove Father Winter as Tradition.
Looks like I have the platform issue, What do I do ?
Locate any (sunken) platforms in your save and see if anything in them was placed with MOO. Other reasons could be a narrow platform and something that causes the Sims to route there like a speaker on the wall but not enough space to dance.
Try deleting stuff and replacing until you find what's causing.
It's often somewhere Sims want to go on their own but can't, not user directed.
Unfortunately you can't switch Sims once the game froze and if you have NPCs on the lot, it can be them. Sometimes you get lucky and see which Sim has a stuck interaction in their queue. Go look there.
I'm still looking into this to verify the theory, so if you need help, you can send me your save and I'll take a look. Instructions in my signature.
I don't think I have either of those issue. What do I do ?
Bit unsure how to handle this currently cause there are a lot of issues going on. I think for now it's best to use the tech forum of your platform.to post instead of here. Do state that you don't think it's the Father Winter issue but something else. Make your own thread and provide your specs. Describe what symptoms you are seeing and if you can isolate it to a certain save game, provide that as well.
I am having the exact same issues on Mac, I can still click on other sims but time is completely frozen and it appears to be happening at night time the most as the clock does not go into super speed. The loading screens are excessive and my game crashed because a notification came up saying my application memory was full, and the sims 4 was using 64GB of running application memory, which is definitely not normal.
I have been having this problem also, I have 5= packs I have downloaded but not the university one. But every time I load into my game everything is fine I can interact but not even 2 mins in I can interact and my sims continue doing what they are doing and time moves on but my sims have frozen. I exit and save the game and the colourful bubble appears so I have to force quit every time, this issue has been happening for 5 days and I really want to play one of my favourite games of all times but can't. I got this laptop a month ago and its one of the new MacBook Pros so I doubt my laptop is the issue. EA HELP! I WANT TO PLAY THE SIMS!!!
Product: The Sims 4 Platform:Mac Which language are you playing the game in?English How often does the bug occur?Every time (100%) What is your current game version number?N/A What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed?Discover University Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves?Load the game What happens when the bug occurs?Anytime I try to create a Sim, Edit my Sim, build a house, edit a house, after 5 minutes I get the colorful spinning bubble, and then everything freezes and I have to manually shut down my computer. When I go back in the game I have over 5 saves of the same Sim family, and the game continues to repeat the exact same part that I initially left off from the previous week. When I initially downloaded the game I downloaded a few mods/cc, but after the first crash I completely deleted all mods and have uninstalled and reinstalled game, repaired game, patches, updated to Sims 4 Legacy addition and deleted any saved games. As well as I have deleted unnecessary files from Sims 4 folder, tried placing certain files open on my desktop, and other tips and tricks that I found online but it continues to freeze and has done so for almost an entire week now, I just downloaded the game last Thursday night. What do you expect to see?Computer freezes/crash Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods?Not now. I've removed them. Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system?No
Hello, I updated my game with the update before Snowy escape came out. I had issues with it crashing like every 10 mins or so. I did the emergency update when it came out the other day and everything was fine no more crashing I was actually able to play. I played all day yesterday without any issues but this morning I tried to play my game and now I'm experiencing long load times, and once in the game and able to load my save game file I get to my sims but my sims don't do anything no matter what I tell them to do they just don't move. I can forward time but they don't MOVE at all I can hear sounds as if its playing but nothing is happening. If I press pause sometimes the timer will pause other times things are going on in the background and the sound is still going. I try to exit the game w/o saving and it just hangs still nothing is happening so I have to force quit out of the game. I have repaired the game so many times today. I have uninstalled Orgins and re-installed it. Can anyone give guidance on what to? I am very frustrated and so very disappointed. I am playing on my MacBook Pro 2020 Os BigSur.
Having the same exact issue and can't find anything posted about it. I basically can't play the game because it only goes a couple of minutes before this happens.
I'm not sure if it's just caused by winterfest. I used a recovered save from before my sims experienced winterfest and disabled father winter in the holiday panel. The game was playable (with minor lagging and no speed through) until the Valentines day event popped up. The game did the same endless loop with the clock stopped as it did after winterfest previously. My activity monitor also showed that the game was bloating rapidly and crashed. So it may be related to more holidays than just winterfest?
@Sierrakristine I was able to get mine to stop freezing by just deleting all of the 'Holiday' events off the calendar. The freezing for me seemed to be triggered by the TV premiere holiday, and after deleting, it has been working fine so far. Hope this helps until EA can fix this problem
EDIT: NVM, started freezing again. I was able to play for much longer, but still froze.
So this solution worked for me for a little while. I deleted my bloated saved and went back to a previous save. My loading time went back to normal and my game play almost went back to normal (it still delayed clicking between sims but not as bad as before). I played on and did a couple of saves but the issue got worse and worse until the freezing/switching bw sims/unable to save came back completely again. I don’t see any bloated saves in my files this time.
Update: I followed the instructions on @crinrict ’s site. Originally I deleted the bloated save and restarted from before Winterfest started but Father Winter didn’t come again and the freezing problem reappeared. But when I restarted from before Winterfest again and took Father Winter out of the tradition, the problem was solved! I have played for 3 or 4 sim days and it’s not reappeared. @crinrict is a Sims lifesaver.
@crinrict This issue has just popped up in my game and I never thought it would be based around Winterfest. Problem is, I HAVE a Clemens Frost in my game and this is still happening. Do you happen to know if I have to move Mr. Frost into my neighborhood to get it to stop trying to spawn him?
@Valnatron I literally moved ALL my saves to a new folder, uninstalled my sims 4 and deleted ALL the folders and reinstalled. Started a new game and so far am having no issues.. (I deleted ALL holidays from my calendar). I'm not sure about moving him into your neighborhood, but so far this is working for me.
@crinrict So, this is the 3rd Winterfest my Sims have celebrated. The first two were celebrated in a house with a fireplace and he appeared on the lot each time (and stayed for about 4 days afterwards just playing video games and eating leftovers).
This Winterfest was celebrated in a different house on a different lot with no fireplace. My Sims did what they normally do (invite everyone they know and bake more cakes than ANYONE needs), but Mr. Frost did not show up. When I learned about the bug, I checked my "unplayed households" and Clemens Frost and a ghost dog are listed there.
I'm having the same problem with Father Winter and by the moment I think I found some way to fix it on my case. I used the MCCC to check the issue and confirm it. Then, I disabled father Winterand and used the MCCC to delete all the NPCs sims (for me it's ok), incluiding dozens of Fathers Winter.
It seems to work but I have a question. Does the MCCC change on some way my save file? I just checked for Father Winter, delete the NPCs and disable the mod. I'm worried that when they fix the issue on a patch I won't be able to acces this save file. I have backups and copies but I'm worried about losing the progress.
@crinrict yep, sadly the earliest backup i could get (ones that create automatically), is already during Winterfest).
I've installed LeRoiDeTout's script - when I didn't have it - i did get LE's, now LE's are not logged, but the save game is still bloating up with homeless sims trying to be father christmas Am I correct its the should_stop_fatherwinter_errors.ts4script made by LeRoiDeTout ? maybe I've downloaded the wrong one
I have had the Father Winter bug for days and I had tried everything I could think of to fix it so I didn't loose my save file, I finally managed to fix it by installing the LeRoiDeTout_Should_Fix_SIAFU_Errors mod. I no longer get a Last Exception report when the save file loads and it has worked fine ever since!
the thing is - i don't get exceptions as well - but - the save game keeps on bloating - the multitude of father Christmas's are still being generated - so its just a temporary measure (eg need to run the 'clear all homeless' every day to be able to play - which is not really a solution)
I had the Father Winter issue. I restored the last "healthy" backup and it is working fine. I didn't even have to cancel Winterfest (the backup was at 6pm Winterfest day), I just removed the father winter tradition and voila, the game is OK.
