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Field Researcher
#26 Old 11th Feb 2019 at 8:55 PM
Mine runs the same as Naus Allien, (all EPs no SPs). I also have Reshade (no depth of field level stuff yet, just some MXAA and sharpening) and have modified my GraphicsRules.sgr file heavily. I run 8k shadows and sims all the time plus a couple of other smaller things. I get pretty steady 60 frames per seconds, sometimes it dips below 50 if I move the camera a lot in and out of Map view and land myself in different spots in the world.

Yeah no wonder your game runs like that when your CC is that borked and you haven't even merged them. Get CC magic. If it doesn't run at first, fiddle with it until it does. I assume you have win 10 and you haven't updated to 1.69.

Quote: Originally posted by AGuyCalledPi
700 package files, some of which may very well be broken in some way (would explain why Windows lists them as having been last modified in 1986, I find that files from before 1995 usually tend to cause trouble)




How did you even manage to find such CC? Screenshots!
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Mad Poster
#27 Old 11th Feb 2019 at 8:59 PM
Quote: Originally posted by AGuyCalledPi
Not sure what Process Monitor is.

Process Monitor is part of the Sysinternals advanced tool set for Windows. I also recommend Autoruns (manage what loads at startup on your system) and Process Explorer (similar to Task Manager, but much more advanced)

(Description of Process Monitor copied from its download page)
Quote:
Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. It combines the features of two legacy Sysinternals utilities, Filemon and Regmon, and adds an extensive list of enhancements including rich and non-destructive filtering, comprehensive event properties such session IDs and user names, reliable process information, full thread stacks with integrated symbol support for each operation, simultaneous logging to a file, and much more. Its uniquely powerful features will make Process Monitor a core utility in your system troubleshooting and malware hunting toolkit.

"About", "What's New", links to a user guide, etc.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/

List of the individual tools available. Links to their download pages where you can find more information about the tools and tiny screenshots almost too small to see.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sy...ocess-utilities
Mad Poster
#28 Old 11th Feb 2019 at 9:07 PM
This all sounds like a lot of effort, to be honest. I doubt it'll make my game run as smooth as Naus's.

insert signature here
( Join my dumb Discord server if you're into the whole procrastination thing. But like, maybe tomorrow. )
Field Researcher
#29 Old 11th Feb 2019 at 9:11 PM
Easy way to test: temporarily remove your CC (not NRAAS tho) and delete cache files. Start new save and see if the gameplay lags.
Alchemist
#30 Old 11th Feb 2019 at 9:14 PM Last edited by sweetdevil : 12th Feb 2019 at 11:14 AM.
@AGuyCalledPi Not sure if you're familiar with this, but if you use Reshade, you can edit the preset file and remove references to filters you don't use, as well as removing them from the Shaders folder. I only use about 10 and only turn on Reshade to take pics, and have observed a very noticeable reduction in the time in takes for the game to load, and how much my GPU heats up.

Process Monitor is very easy to set up and use. Here's a guide tailored to TS3: http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?tit...r_.28Windows.29
ETA: you only need to add TS3W.exe to the filter, which you can find in the basegame installation folder under Game \ Bin. You don't need to add EPs or SPs!

I've identified several pieces of CC that were accessed hundreds of thousands of time within less than a minute, which caused substantial lag in loading and playing. You might have something similar.

And I do have about 30 merged packages; managing them is also easy, as I keep unmerged copies of all files in another folder. As for changing them, you can either re-merge the files when you want to add something, or open the merged package in S3PE and use the Resource \ Import \ As DBC command, which adds the new package to the merged one. It takes me less than 1 minute to merge a 300+ MB package.

Tumblr - more downloads! ◾ CC reuploads / creator backupsTS3 CAS Conversion Catalog - for basegame, EP, SP, and Store clothing!
Mad Poster
#31 Old 11th Feb 2019 at 10:40 PM Last edited by AGuyCalledPi : 12th Feb 2019 at 12:31 AM.
I know the newer versions of Reshade load every filter, because the Reshade interface is fully in-game and allows for modifications on the fly. I've just downloaded the latest version to see if it improves my experience. Usually I have it in Performance Mode so the 5-10 second loading time doesn't bother me. I'll try Process Monitor next time I load into the game.

EDIT: no guarantees yet but Reshade 4.11 so far seems to have eliminated the depth buffer flickering issues that have made my game a glitchy mess for the past 6 months, along with the horrible ambient occlusion lag that the whole thing lagging behind by 2-3 frames everytime I moved the camera.

EDIT EDIT: never mind, it's just as fucked as previous versions. First time I loaded into the game, it worked perfectly. Second time I was getting depth buffer flicker again, third time I was getting depth buffer flicker AND z-ordering issues with the mirror shader, and the fourth time I just started toggling options until one killed the depth buffer entirely. This, of course, made the whole thing work fine but since there was no depth buffer I wasn't getting AO or DOF. Pointless, basically. So I turned it back on and the game CTD'ed immediately. The only viable explanation is that my GPU is causing this, in which case I will go to NVIDIA's house while it's sleeping and murder it with a rusty axe.

This external program thing really isn't working. How do you inject this sort of thing into a game engine?

insert signature here
( Join my dumb Discord server if you're into the whole procrastination thing. But like, maybe tomorrow. )
Mad Poster
#33 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 12:53 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
The other one is a core mod I'm running, which reduced performance dramatically. It's a trade off. Before I ran that mod, the game still ran relatively the same as the video above, except when I leave a lot and travel b/c it needs to load up textures.


Which mod is it?
Mad Poster
#35 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 5:54 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
*ahem* *cough* *ahem* [...] *cough* *cough*

Hey, I'm an adult and I like a little realism in my game.

But there are younger players on these forums, so I don't like to mention it.

Technically that's not a Core Mod unless something has changed recently. It's a Script Mod but it's so far reaching and unrefined (I mean in a programmatic sense, not a morality-based judgmental one) that it cannot help but have a negative impact on the game. I'm surprised you are exposing your long-running multi-generational game to it though as the mod is not really removable without breaking everything and it doesn't really lend itself to long-term play. Or is the original legacy set aside and these are new games you are playing?

We can see it's already having a poor impact on your health though, with all that coughing and hacking going on.
Mad Poster
#37 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 6:07 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
But tell you the truth, this mod does have a really bad corruption that is a good reason to drop it. Remember previously, I mentioned a few times that the "loading" time suddenly jumped to 10, then 20, then 40 minutes? It is apparently caused by this mod, some of the scripts which were corrupting the save. And it isn't just gradually, it is more like playing russian roulette. Just the other day my save was still taking 6 minutes to load and after one session now it is taking 20 minutes.

This corruption is not fixable, not even with town reset. Eventually I just have to refresh the whole town again, port the sims and lots, and tediously place them into a new refreshed version of my homeworld. I've tried it before where I deleted every sim and lot and the blank empty world still took 40 minutes to load.

I'm sure that it's not helping that you either have to remove NRaas ErrorTrap or disable its dereferencing feature in order to use the mod -- or possibly the developer found a way to detect ErrorTrap and stop it from doing that as she did with other NRaas mod features that conflict. This is part of data "trash collection" that should have been but never was built into the game by EA. But there are likely multiple causes.
Mad Poster
#38 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 7:32 AM
I merge packages like crazy. Have way too much CC so have merged a lot. I also have used Process Monitor. If my game is slow to load I know there is a problem. Have run the monitor and found bad CC. Delete them, as easy as I play solely with packages other than a few patterns that do not convert well, and then the game is fine again. I play as smoothly as Naus.

I have divided my CC into groups such as keep in game, modern CC, traditional, abroad, and many others. When I am playing a modern world for a while I just put the keep in and modern CC in. When I move on to play a traditional world I put the traditional CC in instead. I play legacy style and just one family so am in just one world at a time other than when sims travel. I have in the game just what I need at the time.

Love that houseboat.
Alchemist
#40 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 11:13 AM
@AGuyCalledPi Forgot to add that with Process Monitor, you don't need to add all the EP and SP executables to the filter, just the TS3W.exe one as that's the one that runs when you run the game.

Other that that it's pretty simple: set up ProcMon, run the game, enter your savegame, run ProcMon, go into Build Mode, CAS and Buy Mode for 1-2 minutes, then quit the game and look at the File Summary option, sorting it by .package and by Total number of operations (reads and writes). This image highlights what a problematic file will look like.

And I heavily recommend merging packages, aside from mods; loading times absolutely improved for me, and I have more than 1 GB of CAS items only for female sims!
As for mods, I only merge them to test if there are any conflicts among resources, and don't keep the merged package to play with.

Tumblr - more downloads! ◾ CC reuploads / creator backupsTS3 CAS Conversion Catalog - for basegame, EP, SP, and Store clothing!
Mad Poster
#41 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 11:29 AM
Right, I'll get on that then. What's the deal with TS3W.exe though? I was reinstalling Reshade the other day and it didn't want to cooperate when I was installing it into TS3.exe, but worked perfectly with TS3W.exe.....even though TS3.exe is the one that runs when you launch the game.

insert signature here
( Join my dumb Discord server if you're into the whole procrastination thing. But like, maybe tomorrow. )
Alchemist
#42 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 12:06 PM
Quote: Originally posted by AGuyCalledPi
Right, I'll get on that then. What's the deal with TS3W.exe though? I was reinstalling Reshade the other day and it didn't want to cooperate when I was installing it into TS3.exe, but worked perfectly with TS3W.exe.....even though TS3.exe is the one that runs when you launch the game.

Don't know what to tell you, I've always run the game from TS3W.exe. I think the game used to use TS3.exe on older patches, and eventually switched to TS3W.exe.

Tumblr - more downloads! ◾ CC reuploads / creator backupsTS3 CAS Conversion Catalog - for basegame, EP, SP, and Store clothing!
Mad Poster
#43 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 1:02 PM
This may have been different many years ago, but it's currently TS3.exe for Patch 1.69 and TS3W.exe for 1.67 and below.
Mad Poster
#44 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 1:13 PM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
Yeah, I have that disable derferencing thing for errortrap. That's bad?

It's not any worse than not having ErrorTrap at all, but as I've learned the difficult way (longer ago for other reasons) doing so deactivates a huge part of the data trash collecting thing so the junk builds up and you see what happens. But again, there could be other things contributing.

If the developer had ever approached us with her project to find a way to make things work together, we might be able to have a different conversation here. Instead she started out by proclaiming that ErrorTrap is evil, horrible, and no one should ever touch it...then softened that up a bit and settled on the derefs as the part that has to go in order for her mod to be usable. Same kind of deal that renders NRaas Register off limits and a couple of others.
Alchemist
#45 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 3:19 PM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
It's not any worse than not having ErrorTrap at all, but as I've learned the difficult way (longer ago for other reasons) doing so deactivates a huge part of the data trash collecting thing so the junk builds up and you see what happens. But again, there could be other things contributing.

If the developer had ever approached us with her project to find a way to make things work together, we might be able to have a different conversation here. Instead she started out by proclaiming that ErrorTrap is evil, horrible, and no one should ever touch it...then softened that up a bit and settled on the derefs as the part that has to go in order for her mod to be usable. Same kind of deal that renders NRaas Register off limits and a couple of others.


Yes, it makes the Register go completely haywire. I actually tried KW out of curiosity and only after two weeks of random playing my game became totally borked. Register and Error Trap were throwing error notifications in hundreds and even lots became unresponsive in Edit Town Mode. It also affected MC's CAS settings badly. Needless to say that I lost every single save I had made after installing the darn mod and even the save made after a proper uninstal was corrupt. Luckily I had copied the whole Sims 3 folder before KW, so I was able to recover my game with only small losses.
Mad Poster
#47 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 5:01 PM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
This may have been different many years ago, but it's currently TS3.exe for Patch 1.69 and TS3W.exe for 1.67 and below.

Are you sure? Because my launcher says 1.67.2.somethingamajig on it.

insert signature here
( Join my dumb Discord server if you're into the whole procrastination thing. But like, maybe tomorrow. )
Mad Poster
#48 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 6:36 PM
Quote: Originally posted by AGuyCalledPi
Are you sure? Because my launcher says 1.67.2.somethingamajig on it.

I am certain that Patch 1.67 runs TS3W.exe (with the "W"). It could actually be called TS3.exe under the hood of the executable and may show up that way in other contexts, that I wouldn't know, but the "W" one as identified by its file name that way in Win Explorer for example is the one that runs.
Field Researcher
#49 Old 12th Feb 2019 at 8:34 PM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
This may have been different many years ago, but it's currently TS3.exe for Patch 1.69 and TS3W.exe for 1.67 and below.

I always start with TS3.exe, that's what reshade uses for me. My game sometimes just vanishes if I return to desktop from full screen and then click on the tool bar icon to get the game back on full sceen. I thought it was just reshade, hhhhm. I got patch 1.67.
Scholar
#50 Old 13th Feb 2019 at 3:34 AM
I'm currently in the process of removing a lot of cc, previously installed with the Launcher, and re-installing it with CCMagic. I'm hoping it will streamline the game a bit. A useful feature of that program is that use can set up different configurations, with stuff disabled if you're not using it in the particular save you're playing. For example, I have a huge amount of Medieval stuff, which is mainly used for story telling, and a lot of it is really just set dressing. There's no point in having it clogging up the works if I'm playing in some modern day world.

Legend is history as we would like it to be. We pick through the dusts of time for what is worth keeping and, here and there, we occasionally find treasure.

Simblr: Elyndaworld *** Wordpress: Tales of Nantrelor
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