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Mikone12's avatar
Mikone12
5 years ago

Save Games Unplayable Due to Stuttering, Frozen Sims, and Animation Looping

Hi there!

Ever since the latest patches took effect, my game has been completely unplayable. I can't even get 5 minutes of playing in before it grinds to a halt and Sims are frozen in place, or stuck in an animation loop. When this happens, the game doesn't register any direct input I try to make (i.e. clicking on other objects/Sims), and when I try to save and exit, the screen perpetually saves without quitting and I'm forced to hit end task in Task Manager. This first popped up in my first save game, which, admittedly, is a large file. So, I made a new one. I was able to play it for about a week before it too began to stutter, and I was unable to load up a particular family entirely. It just hung on the loading screen, even after the starting music played. My second family in the same save was fine, and I was able to play for a few minutes before the exact same thing happened with my previous family in the first save.

I've tried every troubleshooting tip I've seen out there. I've tried repairing the game through Origin multiple times. I uninstalled/reinstalled the entire game. I did a backup of the original TS4 game folder and played the game to make a new one so I could swap out the original save folder. I even ported over the same saves and tray files onto a new computer entirely, but the same issue popped up. I've recorded some footage of the issue as I was playing, just in case. Also, I've never used any cc/mods.

I genuinely don't know what to do here. I tried going through EA Help, but I can never get through to anyone. I really don't want to start over again with new sims if this issue is just going to keep following me. Please help!

pc

6 Replies

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    5 years ago

    @Mikone12  The Nvidia graphics driver on your laptop is four years old now, and the dxdiag lists a number of errors that are likely related to the driver.  So it may help to install the newest version available from Nvidia:

    https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/167109/en-us

    However, the issue with your saves is likely not related, since it happened on a new computer as well.  Did your sims recently celebrate Winterfest?  There's a bug related to Father Winter, and while it should no longer happen after yesterday's patch, affected saves aren't automatically fixed.  More details are here:

    https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/CURRENT-ISSUE-Game-Freeze-Extended-Loading-Times-Save-Game/m-p/9721942#M160860

    The telltale sign of the issue is save bloat, with the current save being anywhere from two to twenty times as large as the older ones.  If this is what's happened to your save, you can try one of the workarounds described in the above post.

  • Mikone12's avatar
    Mikone12
    5 years ago
    @puzzlezaddict This laptop is kind of old, so I figured there would be some driver issues. Thank you for that link!

    Regarding the Winterfest issue, my current save is actually stuck on that holiday. So I'm pretty sure it might be the Father Winter bug since that's when most of those issues arrived. However, regarding my first and oldest save, which is the largest of the files, there hadn't been a recent Winterfest and it began acting up right after the Nov 10th patch.

    I looked through my recent saves, and there doesn't appear to be any earlier backups that took place prior to the bugs popping up.
  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    5 years ago

    @Mikone12  It's entirely possible that the issues you're seeing are related to the graphics driver and not to the Father Winter issue.  To double-check, you could use MCCC to delete homeless sims, "save as" to create a new save rather than overwriting the old one, quit and reload, and see how the save runs.  If there's no improvement, you'll know that wasn't the issue, and if you want, you can delete the save where you removed the homeless sims and revert to the previous version.

  • Mikone12's avatar
    Mikone12
    5 years ago
    @puzzlezaddict I downloaded the new drivers, though that didn't help too much. However, the MCCC route did the trick. I was able to play my most recent household with little to no interruptions so far. Though, I can't say the same for my first save file. I wasn't able to run the game long enough to do it. So much of my PC's memory was eaten up that it caused my system to crash. And when I was able to look at the files again, the size had grown from about 10k KB to 100k KB.
  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    5 years ago

    @Mikone12  Yeah, that definitely sounds like the Father Winter issue, both the increased size of the save and the fact that even running the MCCC command to remove the homeless crashes the game.  If you're particularly attached to the game, you could try deleting a few Father Winters at a time, then quitting and reloading when necessary; you might eventually get the number down to the point where the MCCC command works.

    Otherwise, you might still hold on to the save for a while longer.  You're not the only person who has too many sims to even delete properly, so it's always possible that someone will come up with a better approach.

  • crinrict's avatar
    crinrict
    Hero+
    5 years ago
    @Mikone12 Can you check with MCCC or SimsInfo how many Father Winters you have in your game ? Instructions should be in that post puzzlez linked above.

    With 16 GB of RAM, you can delete about 7000 of them before the game crashes. If you have more, the only option is to wait if EA comes up with a better solution to solve this or revert to a backup

    You mention though that your save goes from 10 k to about 100k. Do you have a save that's only 10k still ?

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