TOOL: 3Booter, the Incooperative Game Kicker

[J. M. Pescado]

If you're getting a crash BEFORE then, 3booter will not help because that is a different type of crash.

[Motoki]

You could make a batch file that goes something like this:

cd "C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\My Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\"
del scriptCache.package
cd "C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\"
3Booter.exe
exit

That's what I've ended up doing.

[Rockermonkey]

I'm confused  .

I never reached 30 before so how would it have gone lower? I usually never went lower then 70. But my usual, 100 was way to high. Then in CAS I would reach 300 and in map view I got up to 500 at times.  I'm gonna try taking the fpslimiter out and trying my game with vsync.

[gtachampion]

Err...I can't say I've ever seen that. Stack overflow isn't normal, though. Screenshot the behavior and I will take a look.

At the moment I can't get back in my neighborhood unless I remove the 3booter and fpslimiter. Then I don't get the Stack Overflow message. If I put them back in, the game crashes when I click on the check mark after picking any of my saved games (neighborhoods) so I can't try to get the exception message again. I took a screenshot when the message first appeared but the message isn't on the screenshot. Don't know where it went. I'm trying different combos of stuff to see when the game will load and when it won't but when it does crash it isn't at the normal spot, it's when selecting the saved game to play (and it does it on all 3 saved games).

[Rockermonkey]

Oh I get it perfectly fine

The thing is, if my game never goes lower then 30 without the limiter, how the heck is it going lower now? I checked without it quickly, making sure my temps didn't go to high in the process  . And I got over 100 with vsync on in map view while playing. Then went into create a sim, and I was still hitting 200. As far as I know that isn't static, and 200 for a computer with vysnc on is pretty high. I don't think the game would have any issues on my computer since my card is fairly recent: Nvidia geforce 9600gt OC 1gb.
Meh, how much does the limiter and 3booter strain the cpu? That's the only thing that could be really doing it other then if it's taking up ram as well. Because my 2gb is pretty low .

[Rockermonkey]

Aha, I see. I was wondering why it was scattering then going up so quickly. Usually when I saw a framerate drop before, it would stick. Before the fpslimiter by the way. But now like in the instance I said when I drag a full pattern to a new object in drops down and flies back up.

Thanks

[witch]

And too much work for the GPU can cause it to overheat and lock.

I had a gpu crash which scared me back to fpslimiter. I haven't had any problems since.

[Valcorian]

Was suggested to use this fpslimiter by someone because of my problem.

Here is a quick rundown of my computer:

Intel Core i7 920 Octo-Core Processor 2.67ghz
EVGA x58 SLI Classified Motherboard
12 Gigs DDR 3 ram
Nvidia GTX 295 GPU
1000 Watt PSU

All drivers up to date.  Games that I have on this computer that run perfect on highest settings - Oblvion, Fallout3, CivIV

Games that crash:  Spore, occasionally.  Sims 3 - CONSTANTLY crashing to a blackscreen which it recovers from sometime, error message from windows is that my video driver failed and was rebooted.

I have been working with EA tech support until they finally gave up on me and offered me a free downloadable game from their store, which I refused.

I have been through all sorts  of troubleshooting, my GPU temp never goes above 55c when playing, so I don't believe it is an overheating problem.

When I run this fix, my game freezes and stutters after playing for less than a minute.  The only way to get it to work again is to short bar and bring it back up, it will run for another 30 seconds or so then freeze again.

This is the same thing that happens to the game if I try to force VSYNC on with the Nvidia control panel for this game.  Also noted that the game runs using a SINGLE GPU, tried to force it to multiple GPU like all my other games, but that doesn't work.  Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

[Rockermonkey]

Well Sims 3 isn't compatible with the i7 so I believe that would be your issue.

[Rockermonkey]

I don't remember where I heard this but someone sent an email to EA asking why the i7's aren't on the supported list, EA then responded and told them it hadn't been tested. So it's not unsupported but rather not on the supported list. Also i7's usually fail the 'canyourunit test', which sucks anyway, but still.
That was the only reason I could think of as to why this dudes computer was flipping out for no reason.
Oh and what drivers are you using? I've heard of some of the newer drivers being crap at the nvidia forums.

[Valcorian]

I have tried the all drivers that have been available since May and I have had the same problem with them all.  And yes, the 190.XX drivers are kinda glitchy with windows, but not with any games....so far.  Fallout 3, Oblivion, Spore, and Civ IV all run fine for me.

[J. M. Pescado]

I don't remember where I heard this but someone sent an email to EA asking why the i7's aren't on the supported list, EA then responded and told them it hadn't been tested. So it's not unsupported but rather not on the supported list. Also i7's usually fail the 'canyourunit test', which sucks anyway, but still.

It's not on the supported list because it didn't exist at the time the game was made. This isn't really new. They obviously cannot test and claim a game is compatible with something that didn't exiat the time they tested it. The game will run.

[Bakermiaz]

For people who get that big green onscreen FPS display or who want to change the frame rate.

I am not sure what J. M. Pescado  has taken out of the FPSLimiter.
But as it was when posted originally on this thread;
 (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15092.0.html )
You were able to control the Max limit and on screen display.

I suspect that these keys may still work and maybe worth a try.
"keys to change the desired fps (F10 decrease / F11 increase)
 ingame fps display, show or hide with F12."
Hope this helps.

[byronh]

After using this tool, my art gallery is now a Riddler Gallery. I did not change anything else in my game.

[Lucibelle]

I've yet to see anything about this issue with Macs. Are Macs affected? I have a nehalem MacPro with an ATI Radeon 4870, so I know if my specs were PC, I'd worry.

Unfortunately, the ATI driver for Mac is a dummy driver with no settings....bastards! I haven't had any issues whatsoever with my Sims 3, and I play frequently. I know that graphics are handled "differently" on Macs than PCs, but I have no idea how.

Thanks

[J. M. Pescado]

It's possible that Macs are also affected. It's also possible this program will work on Mac, but I have no way of knowing.

[Lucibelle]

How do I find the fps rate on a Mac? If you can tell me this and where exactly to install fpslimiter, (I know about "Show Package Contents") I'd be happy to test it and share my results.

[J. M. Pescado]

Type "fps on" into cheat console. If you're seeing values in the 80+ range, that is bad. If you're seeing values consistently below 20, your computer sucks too much to worry about this problem.

[Lucibelle]

Ok, I checked it out and ultimately, it depends on my settings. I would get anywhere between as low as 8 fps up to over 70, depending on action, zoom levels, and speed, with smoothing off. I tried different settings, and higher details slowed it down, but it was smoothing that really made it more consistent, though I didn't go higher than the low setting. I'll still go as low as 12-15 at some times, but it's usually in the 30s to low 40s now. I have a 24" screen set at 1920 x 1080. Between that and emulation, bringing ALL the setting to high makes it too laggy.

I'm glad to have learned about this. Thanks. I know Sims 3 doesn't perform as well on Mac due to it being emulated, but it still looks great! I've run it in bootcamp, (much faster) but I need 64bit Windows to see my RAM.  Anyway, I WON'T run it on bootcamp without fpslimiter now.

[hbird]

For anyone who still has the problem of the flashing green numbers showing in the upper corner, none of the solutions posted previously worked for me,  but having the task manager open (this only works for Windows, obviously) when I start the game gets rid of it. Probably any "always on top" window will work.

[Morphar]

For people who get that big green onscreen FPS display or who want to change the frame rate.

I am not sure what J. M. Pescado  has taken out of the FPSLimiter.
But as it was when posted originally on this thread;
 (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15092.0.html )
You were able to control the Max limit and on screen display.

I suspect that these keys may still work and maybe worth a try.
"keys to change the desired fps (F10 decrease / F11 increase)
 ingame fps display, show or hide with F12."
Hope this helps.

Tested it and here is the correct keys. Pressing F10 toggles the green monsters.:

keys to change the desired fps (F11 decrease / F12 increase)
ingame fps display, show or hide with F10.

[RenegadeSims]

Not sure why this is in the "lesser" hack section, since to me it is pretty much essential to playing the game and not having my computer kill itself.

Basic specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0 GHz
4 GB RAM
512 mb nVidia 9600 GT, factory overclocked to something...can't remember/too lazy to check.
Lots of hard drive space.

My game was running at somewhere over 100 FPS during play, more when paused, and I didn't even check out CAS. Although, sometimes when in CAS, my sim's face would get all distorted and have blocks of colour and/or vertical stripes. I eventually noticed some soft, high-pitched whining/whirring from my machine and things just seemed off, so I googled for a bit and was convinced that the Sims 3 was overheating my 9600 GT. After more searching, I found this thread.  Now I'm using 3Booter + Pescado's FPS Limiter and my computer is whine-free and stays solid at 30 FPS, so I'm no longer scared of anything overheating. I haven't checked CAS yet, but I was more concerned about my video card overheating while playing, anyway.

Would it be possible to make the program have various frame-limit defaults depending on what the user prefers, i.e. 30, 40, 50, 60?  Things just seem a bit "slow" at 30 FPS, though that may be a psychological effect from knowing I have a frame-limiter...? For now, I'm manually increasing it to 50 FPS by pressing F12. Would 60 FPS be a safe configuration based on my specs?

EA needs to fix this somehow...haven't there been 3 patches already?  I didn't even know Pescado's FPS limit existed - or that there was a FPS issue - until I found a post that said "I am using the fps limiter remade by Pescado just for the Sims 3 from MATY"

[J. M. Pescado]

It's purely psychological and pointless. The game itself does not generate information faster than ~30fps tops, so drawing at higher speeds simply means pointlessly rerendering the same frame multiple times.

[J. M. Pescado]

You're ignoring the fact that regardless of how fast your particular eye may be capable of going, the GAME ITSELF does not generate actual data to display that fast. Since the internal clock rate of a Sims game isn't fast enough to generate 60 fps worth of data, any perception that it "looks better" is purely a placebo: Imagine a film of a digital clock with a seconds indicator. Now, such a clock displays new data once per second. This means that if you film at one frame per second, it looks EXACTLY THE SAME as if you had filmed at 30 frames per second, and what you have instead are 29 duplicate frames of the clock saying the same thing it did before. If you think the resulting movie thus looks smoother, YOU ARE IMAGINING IT.

[J. M. Pescado]

Can you give a source for this information?

It's from the source code. The game itself has a simulator tick rate that is only so fast, running at ~30fps.

Also, surely that will depend on the speed of your CPU/system?  I used to have a single core P4 3GHz/ATi 2600/2Gb RAM and have just upgraded to a quad core i7 (OC @ 4GHz)/ATi 4850/6Gb RAM and I can see a vast improvment of image quality in terms of fluidity of motion.

Yes, this would significantly improve quality of motion because previously, the thing restricting you was the quality of your computer. If the computer is not capable of consistently turning out 30 fps to begin with, then setting a cap on it will not have meaningful effects. Since your new computer *IS* capable of maxing out your output, you *DO* see the effect. Your previous computer was CPU-limited. Your new one is not, and this makes everything look smoother.