Game crashes in 1 save file and not another

[tlobliviate]

My sims 3 game works perfectly for most of my save files, but for 1 specific file, it crashes every few minutes. The save file that crashes is an old save file. I've been playing it for about a year, and have 8 generations, and tons of family members. I'm wondering if the huge family trees are causing the crashes, since the game has to load up all that family history. 

But, can this really be the cause of the problem? I do not use CC, and the only mods I have are NRAAS and story progression. Please help me understand how I can make this save file less complicated so that the game doesn't crash every time I open it. I've put so much time into this save file and don't want to just delete it. 

Thanks <3

[puzzlezaddict]

@tlobliviate  What world is this current save in?  How large is your household, and how many sims live in the world?  What about the active lot: is it stuffed full of clutter or created objects (paintings, sculptures, inventions, whatever), and are there hundreds of objects in the sims' inventories or in storage chests?  There are plenty of other reasons a save can become overloaded and start crashing, but those are some of the more common and easily addressable issues.

Additionally, which mods do you have, aside from StoryProgression?  There are also ways to try to help a save run better, depending on which mods you use.  Let me know if you're willing to add a couple others from NRaas as well.

[tlobliviate]

Thanks for the reply I'm playing in Sunset Valley. My town has about 50 people in it. I would like to make it much less but i don't know how, because random people just fill up all the empty houses or show up and never leave the town. 

I just went around and deleted some paintings. My sims family is 4 people, they live in a pretty big house, but there is no clutter. I also emptied out their inventories. Do you think the crowded inventories of family members I moved out of the playable household could be causing problems? 

I have the nraas mod, and the story progression mod.

Thank you <3

[puzzlezaddict]

@tlobliviate  StoryProgression and the other mod you mentioned are both NRaas mods, and there are a few dozen others.  (Please edit your post to remove mention of the other mod; it raises the rating of the game and is therefore not supposed to be named on this site.)  Which other mod do you have?  And would you be willing to add a couple others also from NRaas?

Overstuffed inventories can contribute to overhead, as can many other accumulations of data (like cluttered households).  Unless there's a broken item somewhere, none of this should cause crashing on its own, but the combined effect of several factors can raise the resources required to run a given save enough that the game engine can't keep up.  It doesn't sound like this is the case for you though.  Sunset Valley is also one of the most stable EA-made worlds, so that shouldn't present any problems; the population is well below the number where it could start to cause a problem.  There are certainly ways to prevent more sims from moving in, but let's leave that for now.

It would still be helpful to know which packs you have installed though.

The reason I keep asking about mods is that there are ways to reset the town or otherwise try to repair a save, depending on which mods you have installed.

[tlobliviate]

Hi. Yes I am open to using more mods as long as you think they will help. 

I currently have generations, world adventures, island living, university, into the future, ambitions, late night, and supernatural installed. Whenever I try using world adventures, university, or into the future, (where my sims have to travel to another location) the game takes about 30 minutes to load, and if it does successfully load, it will crash pretty soon afterwards. When I tried returning from France, the game file got really badly corrupted. I fixed that, but decided to never use world adventures for this save file again. Idk why everything is so glitchy with this save file. 

I think I'll go through townspeople's inventories and houses and start deleting clutter. 

Do you think the long family trees are an issue? At least 3/4 of the town is a part of a very long family tree. One time, I used Nraas to open a townspersons family tree and the game crashed. That's why I mention the family trees. However, I don't know how I would fix that problem without having to delete all the townspeople, which I don't want to do.

Thanks so much for your help!! Hopefully this information will be useful to you. 

[puzzlezaddict]

@tlobliviate  What it sounds like is that your save is in fact going over the RAM limit of the game, maybe almost as soon as you start playing.  Some of this is fixable, for example when there's corrupt data or a glitch the game engine is trying to resolve, it can take extra resources, so addressing the underlying problem directly will remove those extra demands.  Some of it may only be manageable, to the point where you can keep playing this save, but maybe for only an hour or two instead of six.

The travel transition is fragile and breaks easily even in saves that are otherwise running well.  I'm not surprised it isn't working in yours.  Among other things, the new world needs to be loaded into RAM, and some of the data from the previously played world isn't always released first, or even at all.  Still, if you don't want to travel in this save, it would be understandable.

I don't think the large family tree is necessarily an issue, although it can be related to factors that do cause problems.  One common issue is when a sim has an overloaded relationship panel—it's difficult for the game to keep track of all that, and more so when several sims know all those people.  Another issue is if you play with memories enabled, because memories take up far more in the way of resources than they should.  It's a good idea to disable memories, but that doesn't really help with the ones that already exist.

So, after all that, I would suggest installing NRaas ErrorTrap, Overwatch, MasterController, Traveler (if you ever want to try traveling again), Relationship Panel, Register, and Traffic.  ET and OW clean up errors in general, MC will be used for a town reset, RP in case the relationship panels are an issue, Register manages service and role sims, and Traffic prevents the overspawning of vehicles.  While I would only consider the first three or four (depending on travel) absolutely necessary, at this point, your save needs all the help it can get.  ErrorTrap is a core mod, so be sure to download the version that corresponds to your type of install; there are separate versions for patch 1.67/disc, 1.67/Steam, and 1.69/Origin.  The others all work equally well on both 1.67 and 1.69.

Load your save, let the game clock run a few sim-minutes, and you'll probably see a pile of error notifications in the upper right corner.  That will mostly be ET and OW doing an initial cleanup.  To be thorough, pause the game after about five sim-minutes, let it run another five, then use "save as" to rename the save, so you have the original as a backup, and quit.  Delete the five cache files in your Sims 3 folder in Documents\Electronic Arts.  For reference:

• CASPartCache.package
• compositorCache.package
• scriptCache.package
• simCompositorCache.package
• socialCache.package

Load the save (under its new name), and again let it run for a couple of sim-minutes.  Click on City Hall and select NRaas > MasterController > Town Options > Reset Everything.  This can take a few minutes to run, depending on how overloaded the game is and the speed of your hard drive.  When it's done, run the game a few more sim-minutes, save as, quit, and delete the five cache files again.

Reload, let the game run for a couple of sim-minutes, then put it in windowed mode.  Bring up the Task Manager and see how much memory Sims 3 is using.  If it's listed in percentages, right-click on the header to switch to absolute values.  Please also let me know how much memory you have installed overall.

[tlobliviate]

Hi! Thanks for all of those instructions. I did everything you said, and now I see that the Sims is taking up 2.3 GB of memory. My Mac has 12 GB of memory in total. I did notice that the loading screen was much shorter than it normally is. So it seems like your instructions are working. Also, it only took about 3 minutes to save, which is much better than the usual 6-10 minutes. I have done much playing yet, so I'm not sure if it will still crash or not. 

PLUS, the 'chat' option for toddlers is back! I haven't been able to chat with toddlers for years because the option disappeared for some reason. It's back now. yay!

How does error trap work and what do I do with the overwatch mod? I have them installed now. 

Thanks for your help. I REALLY appreciate it. <3

[puzzlezaddict]

@tlobliviate  ErrorTrap and Overwatch run on their own, without any need for user input.  You can of course mess with the settings if you want, at least for Overwatch, but the default settings have always worked fine for me.

ErrorTrap finds stray data that's corrupt or not tied to anything or otherwise doesn't belong, and cleans it up.  So you might get notifications about piles of laundry and plates from cooking being deleted, sim data recovered, that kind of thing.  These reports are not indicative of a problem, just ET doing its job.  If your game starts crashing, or you get repeated errors about a particular sim though, you can take the related scripterrors (in Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3) to NRaas and ask for help.  People there can interpret the scripterrors and make suggestions for troubleshooting whatever the specific problem happens to be.

Overwatch cleans up other kinds of data, for example abandoned cars and stuck sims.  It runs when you initially load a save, then every night at 3 am by default.  The deleted cars and stereos that get turned off are nothing to worry about, unless the cars number in the thousands, in which case installing Traffic would be the best approach.  If you get repeated notifications about a sim being stuck or not aging, that should be investigated, but an occasional error here and there can be ignored.

By the way, are you really playing in macOS, or have you Bootcamped or installed Parallels or something?

[tlobliviate]

Ah ok. Yeah, I got a bunch of aging errors. But after a few sims minutes, they all aged up anyways. Thanks for the info about the errortrap and overwatch mods, and thanks for telling me about the option of asking NRaas directly about my problems. 

And yes, I'm pretty sure I'm playing on macOS. I didn't do anything fancy with my game. Just put in the disc and started playing. 

The game did crash after I went around and used NRaas on a bunch of sims. That usually happens -- when I use NRaas so much at once, the game can't handle it. Idk if that's fixable. 

[puzzlezaddict]

@tlobliviate  Okay, now I'm curious.  When you open a folder, does it look like this:

or one of these?

And when you say you "used NRaas on a bunch of sims," what exactly did you do?  Please list the categories you pick, so I know what specific mod you're using, and what function of that mod is involved.