Sims 4 on 16 inch MacBook Pro

[Bluebellflora]

@ldthomson 

It may not need to be edited anymore as the GraphicsCards.sgr file has been updated since this thread was created. We can check though. Can you open the config.log file and copy and paste the 10 or so lines under === Graphics device info ===. That may not magically fix the game though, as you can see there are still issues with these new Macs playing the game

[ldthomson]

I found it! It's been moved, it's now in ~\Contents\Resources... 

Checked it and the graphics card(s) have been added to the file, they're at the top - very frustrating, looks like a driver fault to me but EA will have to fix it. 

Maybe the patch that's coming in the next few days, ahead of Eco Lifestyle, will have some fixes for us. The problem has been around for long enough, I'm not sure how long it took them to fix my previous issue with iCloud Document syncing! 

[Bluebellflora]

@ldthomson

Yep, it was moved as part of the notarisation requirements in April - https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-Mac/The-Sims-4-macOS-Notarization-FAQ/m-p/8876253#M29009

Fingers crossed for a fix, The 16" MBPs should be able to play the game beautifully!

[ldthomson]

It really does! I don't get it, it worked fine when I played for a few hours on Thursday, it just seems to be today that it's crashing - I didn't try building anything then though.. 

Here's hoping they get it sorted soon! 

[Bluebellflora]

@ldthomson

Hmm, interesting about building. Try toggling the post processing effects off and on and see if that makes a difference. It would be great if you could test this on an empty lot and on an inhabited lot. I'm asking because we noticed this a while ago - https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/NEEDS-INPUT-Depth-of-field-visual-differences-on-owned-unowned... and maybe it's related?

[AmazingADO]

@Bluebellflora

Apologies for being absent! I am now just able to try out things, here is what I discovered:

1. Resetting NVRAM helps for the 1st game ONLY, by this I mean Sims being opened 1st and have not been exited. Pretty much on this 1st open, I can play all you want, I can change from 1 load file to another. I can pretty much play however I want (I did see some floors being invisible though.)

2. Exit Game causes the problem, every time I exit the game it crashes, once it crashes, ALL consecutive games crash -- and the only way I am able to play again is doing the NVRAM reset.

I guess my question is, is it okay to be always reseting the NVRAM??

[ldthomson]

I've done that now and posted it on the other thread for you. 

It's really strange, when I played it on Thursday night, it was perfect - so much better than how it looked on the 13" MacBook Pro from 2012 which I was using before! 

[Bluebellflora]

@AmazingADO

How interesting, thank you so much for posting in detail. Have you tried exiting the game at different points? From the main menu screen, from the map screen, from an inhabited/uninhabited lot? I guess it happens every time regardless.

I honestly don't know if it's ok to reset the NVRAM so frequently, that would probably be a good thing to Google. I don't think it would have a detrimental effect but would be good to check elsewhere. It's not good to always have to do it because it indicates an underlying issue causing the problem but we know in this case it is Sims 4 related. It would indicate that something possibly corrupted is being stored in the NVRAM every time your game crashes and resetting it clears this which is why it works ok the next time. Maybe screen resolution related?

The question is why your game cannot quit properly, intriguing!

@Idthomson maybe worth trying the NVRAM reset and see if it has the same effect for you?

[AmazingADO]

@Bluebellflora

Yes I did this actually, I've tried exiting game through different portions of the game, house, map, main menu, and none of them would exit properly. At first I thought maybe its because of the "going to a different desktop" that mac does for full screen, so I tried doing windowed screen, alas it still broke.

Yes I think that is what it is, once it crashes it stores something there. I do feel hesitant to always be refreshing my NVRAM. (I don't see much articles about how safe it is to always be doing it too much apart from 1 or 2 reddit comments saying its okay to do it multiple times.)

Indeed, the game saves properly, but does not exit properly. I do hope it gets fixed on the next update, it would be nice to play conveniently.

@Idthomson -- Yes please try the NVRAM reset and let us know how it goes.

[Aaryana1987]

Hello,

My previous MacBook Pro recently bit the dust so I have upgraded to a brand new 16 inch MacBook Pro (purchased May 31, 2020). When I first downloaded the game and my previously purchased expansions, it seemed to work fine with occasional, brief freezing/loading for about 24 hours. It suddenly started crashing every time I load a family. Sometimes the family will load for 5-10 seconds before the crash and sometimes it just crashes immediately after the loading screen. I tried all the repair options, turning off cloud, turn off auto connect to origin, etc. Nothing fixed it. I moved my game file to the desktop and restarted the game. The new game worked fine for about 24 hours and now the same thing is happening again. I didn't do anything differently. I'd just really like to be able to play my game without having to delete the entire file and start from scratch every 24 hours. 

Running the regular game (not legacy) with all expansion packs/stuff/game packs before realm of magic. (I don't have realm of magic, Moschino stuff, tiny living, university)

I purchased all content directly through EA/Origin

No mods/custom content

No antivirus software running

Origin keeps trying to download the legacy edition (which I used previously on my old Mac).

macOS Catalina 10.15.2

Model Name: MacBook Pro

  Model Identifier: MacBookPro16,1

  Processor Name: 6-Core Intel Core i7

  Processor Speed: 2.6 GHz

  Number of Processors: 1

  Total Number of Cores: 6

  L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

  L3 Cache: 12 MB

  Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled

  Memory: 16 GB

Please help! Thank you! Also, I'm happy to upload the crash data if someone can tell me how to save it to a file. I tried pasting it, but it's extremely long.