Sudden severe lag
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? 1.101.290.1030
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? Outdoor Retreat, Get to Work, Luxury Party Stuff, Perfect Patio Stuff, Spa Day, Cool Kitchen, Spooky Stuff, Get Together, Movie Hangout, Romantic Garden, Dine Out, Kids Room Stuff, Backyard Stuff, City Living, Vintage Glamour, Vampires, Bowling Night, Parenthood, Fitness Stuff, Toddler Stuff, Cats & Dogs, Laundry Day, Jungle Adventure, Seasons, Get Famous, Strangerville, Island Living, Discover University, Eco Lifestyle, Nifty Knitting, Snowy Escape, Paranormal Stuff, Dream Home Decorator, Cottage Living, Decor to the Max Kit, Moonlight Chic Kit, High School Years, Pastel Pop Kit, Everyday Clutter Kit, Growing Together, Grunge Revival Kit
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Not sure - I don't know what caused the issue in the first place, so I'm not sure how to recreate it.
What happens when the bug occurs? I played for several hours on Saturday and everything was running beautifully - no issues at all. I have quite a few mods, but I updated everything before loading up the game. The game itself and my computer are also fully updated. Sunday I loaded up the game again, and everything was running fine until I moved the family to a new lot. (I think that was the trigger for the issue, but I can't guarantee that.) I do want to note that I didn't download or change anything between Saturday and Sunday other than moving to a new lot. I'll raise or lower the speed, but it won't do it automatically - it will take a few in-game minutes to change. I've had issues before where it will take a few in-game minutes for the speed to change or for the game to figure out what's going on, but it always reverted to the original time. This isn't happening now though: if I'm at Speed 3 and click on Speed 1 at 10:00, but the game doesn't actually change speed until 10:10, the clock stays at 10:10. While this is happening, I can't click on anything, and my Sims are frozen. This is happening constantly (like every few seconds), and is making it impossible to do anything in live mode. There's also a noticeable delay between clicking on something and the interaction menu coming up, and the super-fast-because-everyone's-asleep speed is acting funny as well (not actually moving super-fast, which makes me think that someone's awake, or it'll randomly slow down). Build mode seems to be fine? It takes a bit longer than it should for things to load, but I can build without lag. (I've had that lag between live and build mode that you can only fix using the esc key, but at this point it's just become a habit to press esc after switching.)
What do you expect to see? Game speed working correctly, without consistent stops and starts. Game clock working correctly.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Yes
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? No
At various points I took out all of my mods, loaded up another save, updated my computer, lowered my graphics, turned off the audio mood sting thing, tried the simulation lag fix mod, and repaired my game, but nothing is fixing this. Even the home screen when you first load up the game is lagging!
@shanaconda16 There's a reason that the "have you tried turning it off and on again?" cliche exists: restarting a computer is absolutely a valid troubleshooting step all by itself. So perhaps that was all you needed to do here.
However, your dxdiag does list a number of failed Windows updates and a couple of serious crashes of the graphics driver, or one of them anyway. The failed updates could have caused the lag and could be resolved now; it's less likely the driver issue would disappear with a restart, but an update could fix it. If you do have any more issues with Sims 4, please let me know, and we can address those problems.
