The Autonmy / Simulation Excuse
Source: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/COLLECTION-THREAD-Autonomy-and-Simulation-Lag-Seasons-Patch/m-p/6918287#M68264
Issue: http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/945038/fast-forward-speed-not-working#latest
--Specs--
AMD FX-8350 8-Core
GTX 960 4 GB
16 GB 1666Mhz RAM
--The Issue--
Ultra Speed causes rollbacks on time (game is having a hard time keeping up).
Ultra Speed causes Sims to stand still before doing next action (Processing issue, game doesn't utilize proper cores).
--Solution--
Proper Development. It has come to my attention that this issue is not related to the user's Custom Content, Poor Specs, or even massive houses/household inventories/sim inventories. If that was the case, than refer to first section, Poor Development. Sims 2 doesn't have this issue, never did in fact. Sims 4 started to show these signs when expansions and stuff packs came out. So lets look at the problem.
Based on my testing, and following the above guide, the result was the same. I immediately did Ultra Speed on a brand new neighborhood and sim, and the result was the same. The sim remained in a standstill position for merely 30-40 in-game minutes before actually doing the action it was suppose to, on top of that it would freeze between actions/animations before proceeding to the next step of the so called stage of those actions (eg. cooking goes from accessing fridge, to cutting board, to stove, to oven), just add pause between those...very very long pauses.
Testing the above on normal speed, results in very low to none of the issues stated above. The issue? Ultra Speed needs more processing power but doesn't have access to it clearly, based on this, the sims running around, the neighborhood activities, and all the townies doing actions this really puts a lot of strain on the game, or more or less "awaiting" actions for the CPU to complete because too much is happening at too much of a speed to handle.
A Development team needs to work on tasking these processes so they can work faster. I was skimming through the forums and here, and was very disgusted by EA's support team and technical help, blaming it on CC, massive inventories, houses with a lot of content...and began thinking--Isn't it you who made this game to contain all this content in the first place?--Telling users to remove inventories or empty them (is a failing task, because there is no quick way to EMPTY your inventory, heck, not even a console cheat?) I'm not gonna spend 10 minutes dragging and dropping, no thank you. Houses contain too much objects? What is this? If you didn't want people to use too much objects, then maybe at a limit? What is this? 1st Generation gaming consoles? Who are you people hiring to program this game?
I purchased the base game only to test if these issues are present in the just the base game itself, that means no expansions, no cc, and no additional objects that would take endless seconds to process. I will confirm if the base game alone has the same issue! So far, I used a friend's copy that has every expansion, and packs to date, and Fast/Ultra Speed is a plague to be avoided.
Now intellectually, I don't want to see the next "representative" linking me to the thread about how to solve my issues, because the issue isn't with me, its with your software programming. If the game ran as flawlessly as it does in normal speed, then you can surely make it run flawlessly in ultra speed, if not, remove the feature.
I also tested Sims 2, and for a game as nostalgic and inferior to the sequels, it never lags or delays any actions, even at top speeds with overloading of 8 sims and objects beyond compare.
I also noticed that this thread appeared on 7/13 and last edited on 7/13, while the seasons game was released on 7/22, and posts made by other users where over a month ago. I don't know what fishy business is going on over there, but if you can't keep your facts straight, don't expect us to keep ours. I don't like that stuff coming from a big game company.
So I want an honest answer and discussion. What gives that Ultra Speed is causing this? Where did you guys screw up in the code?
