Game Freezing because of Father Winter (Aftermath Patch 1.69.57)
by crinrictOriginal Post
Game Freezing because of Father Winter (Aftermath Patch 1.69.57)
Introduction
The endless creation of Father Winters has been fixed in Patch 1.69.57, making Winterfest safe again (at least in the Sims).
Affected saves still have issues though cause the abundance of Father Winters makes games lag and freeze. The patch didn't remove the Sims that have already been created so that part still needs a fix from EA's side.
There are also other freezing and crashing issues out there that have nothing to do with this issue. To identify these, it's best if you could determine what issue you have and post in the appropriate threads.
How do I know what issues I have ?
Check your symptoms to decided what issue you have
Father Winter
The Father Winter issue is very specific and to have it, you will need to have the Seasons pack and had a Winterfest between the Snowy Escape Patch (1.68.154/1.33) and Patch 1.69.57/1.35.
The symptoms for this issue are as follow
- The game typically uses lots of RAM
- The game will freeze the clock after playing a while
- The save game will exponentially increase in size (compared to the backups)
- If the game gets to the point where it uses up all your RAM, it will crash.
Please see second post of this thread on how to proceed with your affected saves.
Saves that never had a Winterfest should be save now and you can use the Holiday again (do backup your saves before the holiday though)
Routing to platforms
This issue is caused by an autonomous Sim wanting to interact with something above or on a platform that he can't.
The symptoms for this issue are as follow
- RAM usage is steady
- The game will freeze the clock after playing a while
- Save game size doesn't increase by much
- The game will just freeze not crash
You can usually solve this issue by fixing the platform. Make sure you don't place stuff with MOO.
If you have this issue and need help, please use this thread: Routing Issues with Platform freeze the game
Other Issues on Console
XB1 and PS4 have lots of crashing. As I'm not a console player, I don't know the details. Please refer to these thread for details.
Other Issues on Windows PC
If you have any of these issues on PC, please refer to the following threads.
Other Issues on Mac
If you have any of these issues on Mac, please refer to the following threads.
Good Luck
Crin
I don't work or have any association with EA. I give advice to the best of my knowledge and cannot be held responsible for any damage done to your computer/game.
Please only contact me via PM when asked to do so.
Important Threads
- Help us helpers to help you
- Welcome to the Sims Section of AHQ
- Common Game Fixing Mods - Hero Approved
- Reporting bugs ? Please read these first for already reported issues: Compiled list of reported Issues
- Been asked for a save ? Here's instructions: How to provide your save game (Post #7)
Accepted Solution
Re: My Game Continually Loading after Nov. Update (I've tried repairing)
Was your game save feeling the pressure to not continue with the Winterfest spirit? So were we. We have applied a fix that should help with the culling of extra Father Winters… affecting some saves. The Culling (it’s like The Happening, so something will happen… we hope) should start when loading into a Lot. Simmers with low-end machines and many, many Father Winters… in saves, may take some time (possibly hours… that is real life hours, not Sim hours… just in case) for The Culling to complete. Afterwards, Simmers should see an improvement in performance when playing these saves.
Fixed in Patch 1.7186/ 1.38
If you're still experiencing this issue, please create a new thread.
Good Luck
Crin
I don't work or have any association with EA. I give advice to the best of my knowledge and cannot be held responsible for any damage done to your computer/game.
Please only contact me via PM when asked to do so.
Important Threads
- Help us helpers to help you
- Welcome to the Sims Section of AHQ
- Common Game Fixing Mods - Hero Approved
- Reporting bugs ? Please read these first for already reported issues: Compiled list of reported Issues
- Been asked for a save ? Here's instructions: How to provide your save game (Post #7)
All Replies
Did you have a winterfest without Father winter showing up ?
Good Luck
Crin
I don't work or have any association with EA. I give advice to the best of my knowledge and cannot be held responsible for any damage done to your computer/game.
Please only contact me via PM when asked to do so.
Important Threads
- Help us helpers to help you
- Welcome to the Sims Section of AHQ
- Common Game Fixing Mods - Hero Approved
- Reporting bugs ? Please read these first for already reported issues: Compiled list of reported Issues
- Been asked for a save ? Here's instructions: How to provide your save game (Post #7)
Good Luck
Crin
I don't work or have any association with EA. I give advice to the best of my knowledge and cannot be held responsible for any damage done to your computer/game.
Please only contact me via PM when asked to do so.
Important Threads
- Help us helpers to help you
- Welcome to the Sims Section of AHQ
- Common Game Fixing Mods - Hero Approved
- Reporting bugs ? Please read these first for already reported issues: Compiled list of reported Issues
- Been asked for a save ? Here's instructions: How to provide your save game (Post #7)
How to fix affected Father Winter games
Depending on how badly your game is affected there might or might not be a solution. EA is still investigating a solution for this but we all know this won't be happening before XMas break.
Note: If you were lucky and only a few Father Winters have been generated, you can also just leave your save and let culling do it's stuff as you go along. So if you're game no longer freezes while playing, you can just leave them in. They are hidden so you will need a mod to delete them. If you want to clean up your save anyways, you can use Option D or E.
Option A: Backups
The best option is to load a backup if you have one. Even if you loose 2 weeks of ingame time, that's better than trying to fix your save. Even if you have one that's on Winterfest day and Father Winter has already spawned, you might get lucky with a backup if that doesn't have too many Father Winters yet.
- If you made your own backup before the SE patch or even just before Winterfest, use these. Copy the backup back to your saves folder and continue there.
- If you used save as at any point, check if any of the older saves are still usable. If so, use those
- Check on your automatic backups (you find those in your saves folder in documents. They are called Slot_yyyyyyyyy.save.verX (y being the number of your save that's broken, x being a number between 0-4 as the game keeps 5 older save points). Check on the size of the files. If they are remarkably smaller than the current one, then you're lucky.
You can find instructions on how to revert to that here: How do I restore a backup ?
Option B: Salvage your save
If you don't have a backup, this is the second best option and often the only one at this point.
You will loose all inventory items and non-household relationships with this method so this might be devastating for legacy saves.
You do need to be able to load your save for this option. If it never gets past the loading screen, you can't use it. Most saves should be loadable to the map though. You don't need to load a family.
- Go into every lot that has a house you want to keep through build mode (don't load the family, go to build mode directly). From build mode, save the house to your library/gallery
- Go to the household manager and do the same for the Sims you want to keep.
- Start a new save and re-place all your houses and Sims.
Option C: Wait for EA (or a modder) to find a way to fix existing saves
EA is still looking into this to help you save your games, so hopefully they can come up with something. I wouldn't hold my breath for this to happen any time soon though (XMas break is coming up). Basically what you do is keep your save somewhere safe and start a new save to play in the meantime until there's a way to fix.
Option D: Delete Father Winters with MCCC
This option will only work under the following circumstances. Be also aware that it will take quite some time to delete Sims. Turn off all programs that use lots of RAM such as your browser before doing this.
- You are on PC/Mac (sorry console players, I don't have a solution for you)
- Your save isn't too badly affected yet (meaning, the amount of RAM needed to delete the Sims doesn't exceed the RAM you have). I have 16 GB of RAM and was able to delete about 7000 Sims. On saves with more, the game crashed on me. It will also depend on how big your save normally is. Saves with large houses and lots of clutter will probably crash faster.
- You're not attached to your ghosts or other homeless Sims. MCCC currently only has an option to delete all homeless Sims, this will include all Sims in your household manager that don't live anywhere + all ghost as well as the Star Wars JTB characters (I don't know if those get recreated or not)
- You are not opposed to use mods. MCCC Is a script mod but you only need the base module and MC Cheats to fix it)
The method is described in my Blog here: Father Winter doesn’t appear at Winterfest/ Endless Generation of Father Winter under Mods that help with the issue.
Option E: Manually delete Father Winters
This is only really an option if you have say < 500 Father Winters. I deleted about 2000 manually yesterday and that took all afternoon.
To do do this, you will also need MCCC as the Sims are hidden. You need to unhide them first by clicking on the mailbox and then they should appear in your household manager. You can then delete them from there. Will write a separate blog post on this and link that later.
How do I find out how many Father Winters I have in my save ?
There's two methods but you'll need a mod for both: MCCC or Show/Search Sim Info Mod (google to find)
- With MCC: Follow instructions here to generate a log file: Who's Who? MCCC Population Logging. After creating the log file, open it with with any text editor and scroll all the way to the end of the file. That will give you an overview. The log file can be found in your mods folder where you put MCCC. The number Total Sims in Hidden Households will give you approx. the number of Father Winters.
- With SimsInfo: Start the game, load a household, click on a Sim and choose Show Sim Info > Search Sims. Put: Trait:FatherWinter in the search box and click OK.
This will list all Father Winters in your game and give you the total at the top
That sounded complicated. I don't feel up to it, can you help me ?
I decided that I will be offering helping clean up saves for those of you that can't do it themselves. This will be on a first come - first serve bases. I only have limited capacities so I can only do so many. I also cannot promise that I can save your game. If your save is > 100 MB in size, don't get your hopes up.
I can only help in the following cases
- You are on PC or Mac
- I can only help if the game generated < 7000 Sims
- You are not using any cc in your game. Saves will be stripped of any cc or custom traits/custom .. in your game if I save them on my computer. I will need to load a house so the game will strip cc. If you don't care about that, I can help. If you do, I can't. I'm not putting cc/mods in my game for this.
- Be aware that I don't work for EA and I'm doing this on my own time. I'm not getting compensated for my time by anyone so I reserve the right to not help certain users (and no, I can't be bribed)
To send me your save, zip your saves folder and upload it to googledrive, onedrive or dropbox (please don't use mediafire) and PM me the link. Let me know that it's for cleaning up Father Winter saves. Please let me know if there's any homeless Sims/Ghosts you want to keep.
Good Luck
Crin
I don't work or have any association with EA. I give advice to the best of my knowledge and cannot be held responsible for any damage done to your computer/game.
Please only contact me via PM when asked to do so.
Important Threads
- Help us helpers to help you
- Welcome to the Sims Section of AHQ
- Common Game Fixing Mods - Hero Approved
- Reporting bugs ? Please read these first for already reported issues: Compiled list of reported Issues
- Been asked for a save ? Here's instructions: How to provide your save game (Post #7)
Good Luck
Crin
I don't work or have any association with EA. I give advice to the best of my knowledge and cannot be held responsible for any damage done to your computer/game.
Please only contact me via PM when asked to do so.
Important Threads
- Help us helpers to help you
- Welcome to the Sims Section of AHQ
- Common Game Fixing Mods - Hero Approved
- Reporting bugs ? Please read these first for already reported issues: Compiled list of reported Issues
- Been asked for a save ? Here's instructions: How to provide your save game (Post #7)
See the first two posts for suggestions. Let me know if you need help.
Good Luck
Crin
I don't work or have any association with EA. I give advice to the best of my knowledge and cannot be held responsible for any damage done to your computer/game.
Please only contact me via PM when asked to do so.
Important Threads
- Help us helpers to help you
- Welcome to the Sims Section of AHQ
- Common Game Fixing Mods - Hero Approved
- Reporting bugs ? Please read these first for already reported issues: Compiled list of reported Issues
- Been asked for a save ? Here's instructions: How to provide your save game (Post #7)
