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Instructor
#26 Old 19th Jun 2017 at 9:11 PM Last edited by PapaEmy : 19th Jun 2017 at 9:27 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by DerpyArtistNeko
I mean once and a while I will get a frame drop in live mode but it's still REALLY playable, not causing issues.
Hopefully everything goes well after I continue player a bit more for the next couple days. I'll let you guys know if I experience more issues later on in the future.


Ok now that your gpu recognizes by TS3 and you have Nvidia Inspector capping its FPS, first thing to notice.. make sure that every time you play TS3, hit the cheat box and enabled "FPS ON" so you'll see your in-game FPS all the time while the game is being played, secondly as you have Island Paradise.. try to avoid playing in its world (we'll get to this later on after the basics).

Now you can try to add some store content you may have, and then followed with CCs and/or mods, make sure they are clean from errors like corrupts, conflicts and duplicates, I personally always converts my store content and CCs that are in sims3pack format to *.package format so it's easier to know if any of them conflicting and/or duplicating one another, because some of object mods were made by cloning from store content and CCs, so if they are in the same *.package format, it's easier to detect them with Sims3dashboard, the same also goes for lots if you have download them, try to choose one that doesn't includes/requires CCs or mods, because if they do then it's better to extract them first and sort them out so it won't create another potential conflicts and or duplicates, when all are cleared from errors, that is the right time to merged them.

So that's the basics I personally set up my store content CCs and Mods for my TS3 in my computers. Cleaning up errors like corrupts, conflicts, and duplicates doesn't guaranty will eliminates the game free from lags/freezes although in some stages cleaning them from errors were also reducing lags/freezes, but in my personal opinion that's tiny, probably less than 10% from the total heavy lags/freezes, but in doing cleaning them up free from errors does affect the game loading time, it reduces the loading time in general, whether you just load a new game or old save game and in the game itself while in Live mode, build/buy mode and CAS mode.

If you set up your game like the way I set my game for these store contents, CCs and mods, and you think you still experiencing some lags/freezes, you can do some comparison to check them, by moving your current TS3 docs folder to somewhere else temporary and do the steps like the one above I mentioned, with this comparison, you'll have your own personal benchmark how your overall computer performance while running TS3, when you have cleaned TS3 Docs folder, that's your computer performance benchmark for TS3.

Quote:
1. Move your TS3 Docs folder to somewhere else temporary.
2. Run TS3 up to TS3 main menu then just exit, this will trigger TS3 to regenerate TS3 docs folder, and then go to your old TS3 Docs and copy Options.ini and paste it to your new TS3 Docs folder. Note: you can also copy & paste your mods in this comparison test.
3. Now test run your TS3 with starting new game, pickup a house and go to build/buy mode, or load your current save game and see if the game runs smoother or the same as it was.

Note: always do the 3 steps if you're not sure what affecting what (after you added some new stuff like store contents, CCs, Mods), so you'll know where to look.

So where does the major lags/freezes coming from or generated? After I did my own experimental tests (when I was still actively playing the game) to understand how the game lags/freezes no matter what, the big major lags/freezes were coming from all EA's worlds and the level of complexity in it. I don't include some self custom worlds that we can download from anywhere, but if the custom worlds were made as in the same level of complexity as the EA's worlds, it certainly will lags/freezes somehow sooner or later no mater what we do to prevent it.

Those lags/freezes are basically because of TS3 adopting the concept of simulating open world like open world in our real life, and yes adding Pets and Island Paradise EPs are actually make the game performs worst than before, and this is why I believed why EA went back to the Sims 1 & 2's world concept for TS4, no more open world in TS4, they even get rid the own-able vehicle as early as TS4 Base Game.

And thanks to all the mods creators here or everywhere else that made the game are reasonable to play eventually, especially big thanks to Awesome Core Mod and NRASS Master Controller creators, by using them.. I can understand and find solution (at least for me personally) why that the game.. no matter what I do to the game and how I'd like to play it.. in simulating the real world, I always ended up with crappy gameplay performance.

And my solution is to create new worlds replacement for all EA's worlds, so after I finally get all the TS3 EPs and SPs disk, I download all EA's world that its routing has been fixed by Ellacharmed, but I don't just replaced the original EA's world in my game, I made copy of the worlds fixed by Ellacharmed to be recreated by using S3PE, and then load them in CAW, and I simplified them with CAW. There are a lot of things I removed and destroyed to almost empty world, but still using the same landscape layout as the originals.

Most of the things I removed from the world map were the houses, buildings, roads and cemeteries, I replaced the houses that weren't play by me or my daughter with "decorated or decoration only" houses, with the help of LN EP I can customized the house like the blank/black apartment in LN, probably only about 6-10 houses maximum are playable for me or my daughter to play, the rest I replaced them with decoration house and convert the sims lives in it with NPC sims, the playable houses of my world households were also fixed by making them bigger or just simplified, like if any sims in my world just living alone, I put them in tiny house, I don't place big family household in small or medium house, I even redesign their kitchens, bathrooms, hallways etc that potentially will contributes to lags if the sims living in it were stuck because the space for them to move around was too small.

As for the roads and cemeteries, just keep them simple, no double roads like in Showtime or University EPs and get rid of the cemeteries because off too many ghosts flying around, after all my daughter was 6 when she starts playing TS3 and she always asked to me to get rid of those ghosts.. lol, who cares about the ghosts life anyway, they're not living in our world dimension.. lol, so I only left few cemeteries in total like in China, Egypt and France, and I also disabled vampires and all supernatural stuff but still using both LN and SU EPs, and the same concept of getting rid of these ghosts, vampires, werewolf zombies etc I also used them in managing the Pets, and after all was redesigned, then I put back Awesome Mod and NRASS Master Controller including Overwatch etc to the game, all of these core mods help me managing the game, they still required even my worlds are now more simplified.

And since then, my game almost never lags/freezes again, basically when lags/freezes happened, was because the game made the CPU on its limit, and when CPU bottle-necking, that's when the lags/freeeze happened, so by simplifying them altogether to suit how I'd like to play it, getting rids of bits here and there.. will improves the overall gameplay to prevent bottle-necking in CPU. And this also why I also customized my TS3 installation files, getting rid of any corrupt, conflicts and duplicates between Deltabuilds.package vs Fullbuilds.package by using S3PE to speed up my game loading and also reducing lags/freezes that specially caused by these errors that EA left on every patch level and finally the super patch 1.67.

So basically since my old GTX280 were damaged because of playing TS3 without knowing I have to have it protected by using FPS Limiter or NVidia Inspector, most of the time I played TS3 was learning its problem and fixing them by modifying them, the one that is actually really playing TS3 all this time.. is my daughter.. lol, that's why recently I decided to stop playing because I'm bored fixing them by now already.. lol

So hopefully this would give the OP to understand how TS3 works, why its lagging or even freezes, basically is not because of computer spec related issue rather than the concept of TS3 in simulating the real world in its game, In my personal opinion I think TS3 it's ahead of its time to be played in single computer system, we don't have the technology to play it as is simulating the real world, no matter how powerful trhe CPU is, it's going to lag if the CPU is bottle-necking. So the simple solution to lags/freezes problem is by simplifying the worlds, but unfortunately to simplified it, it's really not simple tasks at all

In my understanding that the only way to how is possible for TS3 being played as its suppose to simulating the real world is by LAN at least in small scale, all users connected to the LAN only play 1 household in the same world, but to implement that, obviously that's not small thing to do, I remember when EA launched Need For Speed World (On-Line) in 2010, in my opinion that's the same concept with TS3 actually, but only racing in open world, but because the greedy of EA in sucking their customers, it ended up lagging everywhere because not only the users were growing rapidly but most of disappointed users eventually used cheat engine because it's impossible to win if we don't pay to win, and it finally shut down in 2013, RIP NFSW

My only hope or wish.. if I my wish, someday in the future, when TS3 is no longer acquired by EA and become an open source to anyone to play it, some of the best modders here or elsewhere.. can make TS3 be playable online at least by LAN, and to the admins here.., no.., this is not a request.. but it's a wish.. so please don't delete the thread and banned me
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Mad Poster
#27 Old 19th Jun 2017 at 9:39 PM
Quote: Originally posted by PapaEmy
My only hope or wish.. if I my wish, someday in the future, when TS3 is no longer acquired by EA and become an open source to anyone to play it, some of the best modders here or elsewhere.. can make TS3 be playable online at least by LAN, and to the admins here.., no.., this is not a request.. but it's a wish.. so please don't delete the thread and banned me

I hope, that in the same way that TS1 got an open-source remake 16-17 years after its original release, TS3 will also get one in about 8 years' time. Though I would expect that the exponentially more advanced engine would be much, much harder to re-write. Maybe "OpenTS3" could be a re-imagined, re-mastered, re-invented successor to TS3...a perfect Sims game of sorts.
I wonder if that's in any way feasible. Maybe the alternative of reverse-engineering the existing game and patching it would be more viable. I could imagine there's coders out there willing to figure it out. TS3 runs on what, C++, Python?

insert signature here
( Join my dumb Discord server if you're into the whole procrastination thing. But like, maybe tomorrow. )
Instructor
#28 Old 20th Jun 2017 at 3:17 PM
Quote: Originally posted by GrijzePilion
I wonder if that's in any way feasible. Maybe the alternative of reverse-engineering the existing game and patching it would be more viable. I could imagine there's coders out there willing to figure it out. TS3 runs on what, C++, Python?


I think TS3 runs on C#, but I think you may have to ask that to someone else with better programming knowledge than me for more details. I leave that to you or other modders that knows best to make the game perform better.

The TS3 patching as I understand it, whether in small bits like on every level or the super patch 1.67, basically it just adding updates, connecting and integrating the BG to all its EPs and SPs, the problem with the TS3 patching (on every level and in the super patch 1.67 as well), they updated some content that originally located in Fullbuild.package and put the updated ones on Deltabuild.package files, this is what patching do to the game, adding Deltabuilds.package files to the game, but they didn't removed the content that supposed to be updated and just leave them there in Fullbuild.package file, this is the ones that creating conflicts and duplicates one to another, and in the process it will take more time to execute as it adding some extra work to read them especially when loading therefore took more time to load the game in general.

So basically what I did when modifying the Fullbuilds.package (original installation) files with S3PE, is just like removing unwanted mods that have been merged together. I opened Deltabuilds.package as the original mods in separate window of S3PE, then I opened Fullbuilds.package as the merged mods also in separate window of S3PE, and then just take out the stuff I want to remove from Fullbuilds.package, but since there are so many things that needs to removed, I have to do it one type of files at a time, because if all being done at once it may take probably 6-8 hours for Deltabuilds cleaning up Fullbuilds files, and this is just to clean up the mess EA left, fortunately I have 16GB RAM and made 6GB RAM of them as RAMDisk to do the job, so it can be done approximately 2-3 hours in total.

But even that, only affecting TS3 to load faster in general, it does affecting in reducing the lags, but only certain lags that were created because of the conflicts and duplicates, not lags caused by the complexity of the EA's worlds, so we actually have 2 different kind of lags in TS3. The best way to reduce the lags caused by complexity of the world being played is by redesigning and simplifying the worlds we wanted to be play in the game.

So if TS3 as its current complexity open world nature is supposed to be played, there's no single computer can handle all of them together at the same time, but it may be different if TS3 being able to be played together by LAN as 1 computer only handle 1 user per household regardless how many sims in the household being played and the complexity of the house the sims living in. In big scale we may need server to join users playing, but in small scale, I think that can be done with LAN.
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