Sims crashes when travelling if I’ve played for a bit but doesn’t if I haven’t

[SaladBerry23]

Hi all so I’ve been having an issue where my sims game crashes when I travelling/returning from any of the destinations worlds in WA and the University world (I haven’t tested out Oasis Springs as I want to do ITF stuff much later in my save) but this only occurs if I’ve played the game for roughly more than an hour but if I just boot up the game just to go into the loading screen then it has no issue with the loading screen so although it’s not game breaking and I have a small fix for it, it’s still very annoying due to taking roughly 5-10 minutes to load back into the save so it would be nice to find a more permanent solution.

Any help is appreciated!

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@SaladBerry23  The rules on this site about third-party downloads are quite strict, so I can't just post a link even to a well-tested game tool like the Smooth Patch.  Version 1.2.1 is still available on Lazy Duchess's tumblr and should work fine.

With your save using 2.7 GB before traveling, that's probably not contributing to the crashes.  Aside from running an MC town reset immediately before traveling, you can try setting "Perform Travel Actions" to False within Traveler as well as enabling Ageless Foreign Sims for the vacation worlds.  Each of these should marginally decrease the demands of the travel transition.

But neither is anything close to a fix, and to be honest, I'm not sure there is a good fix here at all.  Traveling is going to be hard on the game no matter what you do, and the only guaranteed way to flush the resources a save is using is to quit and reload.  So that may, unfortunately, be your only option at this point: to save/quit/reload before each travel transition and accept that you'll need to wait through another loading screen.

[roberta591]

@SaladBerry23   Are you playing on a pc, mac, or console? If you are playing on a pc please post your computer's dxdiag - how to gather dxdiag data  Then attach the created text (.txt) file to the paper clip in the lower right of the forum response window.

[SaladBerry23]

I'm playing on pc and here's my computer's dxdiag

[puzzlezaddict]

@SaladBerry23  The crashes you've described are quite common with Sims 3, especially in an overloaded save or when playing on a computer that's only borderline-capable of running the game or the packs you've installed.  The travel transition is quite fragile and somewhat demanding, and there's only so much you can do to mitigate the effects.  Quitting and reloading resets resource use (including RAM), which is why you're not having trouble traveling right after loading the game.

Your computer's processor is capable of handling everything Sims 3 demands of it, and you have enough installed memory too, but make sure you have at least 4.5 GB free before launching the game so that it can use all the RAM it might want to.  Or if you have browsers or other apps running alongside Sims 3, close everything else before traveling.  And check the Task Manager to make sure both that your system memory isn't completely allocated and that the game isn't close to its ~3.7 GB limit already.  If it is, if it's running above around 3.2 GB before you try to travel, that could lead to a crash.

In-game, there are a few steps you can take to limit resource use that don't necessarily require a restart:

• Keep your sims' inventories relatively empty.  A few items is fine; a few hundred is not.
• Disable memories, which are a huge resource hog.
• Turn off the in-game shopping experience and the interactive loading screens, each of which uses a bit of extra memory.
• Stay out of Edit Town, and don't spend much time in Build/Buy (especially not with the Create a Style tool), in any play session where you plan to travel.

I would also highly recommend a few NRaas mods: Traveler, which replaces the EA travel transition with a more stable version, as well as ErrorTrap, Overwatch, Register, and MasterController.  All but the last do their work without player input, and ET in particular is somewhat chatty, reporting the problems it fixes as you play.  MC doesn't do anything on its own, but I'd suggest running a town reset (NRaas > MC > Town Options > Reset Everything) before traveling, whether or not you're going to quit and reload.  You can exempt the active lot in the mod's settings if you don't want your own sims reset.

Having said that, your dxdiag also lists a few issues that may or may not be contributing to the problem.  Do you ever notice your system overall slowing down or seeming to pause before responding?  If so, does this happen while you play or not, and do you notice any other performance issues while playing that are NOT related to the game being its usual less-than-optimized self?  An example would be a delay when opening the Options menu or switching tabs, but it can really be anything that feels off to you.

[SaladBerry23]

Thanks for the response I usually never have any tabs open when playing the sims besides the EA app running in the background so keep doing that coz I’m pretty sure you can’t close the ea app if you’re playing a game if it’s anything like origin and I’ll try removing a few unnecessary things from my Sims inventory and disable memories .

I already have the shopping experience and the interactive loading screens off and I barely go into edit town unless I desperately need to swap to another sim so I’ll try avoid going into buy mode as much as possible also I already have Traveller, ErrorTrap, Overwatch, MasterController and I think Register (I’ll check to see if I have Register later).

Also referring to the issues you mentioned with my pc, I’ve found that usually slows down when starting and trying to open apps when it first starts up after that I’ve only found it slows down sometimes when opening accessories taking like 15-45 seconds more to open (this is due to cc as if my cc is turned off it loads in around 5 seconds) and when opening create a style (depends on how many palettes there are e.g if they’re 4 colours on what you’re trying to change it takes a bit to load but if it’s one or two it loads create a style pretty fast) but other than that, this doesn’t happen in any other games which my pc can run with mods or when I open/change tabs or go into options.

[SaladBerry23]

@puzzlezaddict Just adding an update on top of my original message to say that removing items from my sim’s inventory, disabling memories and not going into build mode or edit town mode didn’t work and it still crashed

[puzzlezaddict]

@SaladBerry23  How much RAM is the game using when you first load this particular save and let the game clock run for a few sim-minutes?  How much memory is it using a real-time hour later, when you're ready to travel and it's about to crash?  Please list both in absolute values, e.g. 3,000 MB, rather than percentages.  If the Task Manager is showing percentages for each app, right-click on the Memory header to switch.

The slowdowns when loading Create a Style or certain CAS categories is normal.  The Smooth Patch by Lazy Duchess is a great help with this.  If you want to try it, I'd highly recommend using the highest 1.x version you can find rather than a 2.x version; these newer ones add some CAS changes that aren't fully compatible with MasterController, and you may not want or need those features.  I'm still using 1.0, downloaded 18 months ago, and it's very useful and has caused no issues at all, crashing or otherwise, as far as I can tell.

I doubt the Smooth Patch will help with the crashing while traveling; I'm just saying it helps in other ways, particularly when loading an entire category in CAS or Build/Buy.

[SaladBerry23]

@puzzlezaddict When I first load the game and let it run for a few minutes it takes up 1,504 mb, after an hour it takes up 2,788 mb and while it’s in the loading screen it takes up 1,782 mb.

also I’d be interested in trying the smooth patch by lazy duchess is it on mts or does it have it’s own website if so could you link it to me?

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@SaladBerry23  The rules on this site about third-party downloads are quite strict, so I can't just post a link even to a well-tested game tool like the Smooth Patch.  Version 1.2.1 is still available on Lazy Duchess's tumblr and should work fine.

With your save using 2.7 GB before traveling, that's probably not contributing to the crashes.  Aside from running an MC town reset immediately before traveling, you can try setting "Perform Travel Actions" to False within Traveler as well as enabling Ageless Foreign Sims for the vacation worlds.  Each of these should marginally decrease the demands of the travel transition.

But neither is anything close to a fix, and to be honest, I'm not sure there is a good fix here at all.  Traveling is going to be hard on the game no matter what you do, and the only guaranteed way to flush the resources a save is using is to quit and reload.  So that may, unfortunately, be your only option at this point: to save/quit/reload before each travel transition and accept that you'll need to wait through another loading screen.

[SaladBerry23]

@puzzlezaddict Ah okay I didn’t even know that was a rule but I’ll make sure to find just didn’t want to spend a long time looking through mod the sims and all.

As for my save, I thought as much because it seems as if it only effects that save due to it being so long and sometimes getting code 12 errors when saving but I’ll try changing the settings you were talking about and keep doing what i do when travelling so I’ll accept that as the solution.