TOOL: 3Booter, the Incooperative Game Kicker

[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.

[tickleonthetum]

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.

Can you give a source for this information?  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.  This is with all the settings in the game on maximum, lots of Sims per lot, etc...

[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.

[tickleonthetum]

OK then, so you're saying that the game can only generate a maximum of 30 unique frames per second?  That was a bit of a bad choice by EA wasn't it?  I found force locking Vsync drops the frame rate too low at certain times in game, I saw a low of 15fps with Vsync forced on, where as without it the same scenes would run at 40 fps (so at least meeting the 30fps minimum).

How did you manage to get a peak at The Sims 3 source code??!!

I assume this is something that must be set at compile time and so can't be hacked?

[J. M. Pescado]

OK then, so you're saying that the game can only generate a maximum of 30 unique frames per second?

Correct. That is the rate at which the action in-game occurs. Since action is not occurring any faster, about the only thing you MIGHT see going faster is you waving the mouse cursor around.

That was a bit of a bad choice by EA wasn't it?

No, this has pretty much been the standard tick rate of the Sims series since forever. Having the game calculate at a higher resolution will impose larger hits on your CPU, jacking up the minimum system requirements significantly, as the game is already CPU-bounded.

I found force locking Vsync drops the frame rate too low at certain times in game, I saw a low of 15fps with Vsync forced on, where as without it the same scenes would run at 40 fps (so at least meeting the 30fps minimum).

Based on the description of your original computer, your computer was simply not able to consistently achieve 30 fps anyway. Vsync would lock the thing at 60-80fps, depending on the refresh rate of your monitor, and even at peak performance, your computer is unable to achieve this. As for "same scene", I find it very difficult to believe you could so precisely replicate the EXACT conditions of the simulation that your 15 fps scene was completely equivalent in every way to the 40 fps scene. Especially if you did anything like pausing it to take measurements, as pausing the game raises your frame rate because the action is now STOPPED and the game no longer needs to calculate actions.

How did you manage to get a peak at The Sims 3 source code??!!

Same way every other modder does. We decompile it, which renders it into a somewhat legible, if not particularly usable, form.

[tickleonthetum]

Correct. That is the rate at which the action in-game occurs. Since action is not occurring any faster, about the only thing you MIGHT see going faster is you waving the mouse cursor around.

Hey don't knock a speedy mouse, I want a 160fps mouse cursor!! LOL...

No, this has pretty much been the standard tick rate of the Sims series since forever. Having the game calculate at a higher resolution will impose larger hits on your CPU, jacking up the minimum system requirements significantly, as the game is already CPU-bounded.

Surely they could have written it in such a way that it takes into account the hardware and adjusts the fps accordingly?  isn't that why we have options to lower details, etc?!

Based on the description of your original computer, your computer was simply not able to consistently achieve 30 fps anyway. Vsync would lock the thing at 60-80fps, depending on the refresh rate of your monitor, and even at peak performance, your computer is unable to achieve this. As for "same scene", I find it very difficult to believe you could so precisely replicate the EXACT conditions of the simulation that your 15 fps scene was completely equivalent in every way to the 40 fps scene. Especially if you did anything like pausing it to take measurements, as pausing the game raises your frame rate because the action is now STOPPED and the game no longer needs to calculate actions.

Yes my old PC was a bit of a clunker!  No I couldn't 100% reproduce the same scene but the point was while watching the in game fps display I saw sub 30fps with vsync on, but never below 60 with vsync off.

Same way every other modder does. We decompile it, which renders it into a somewhat legible, if not particularly usable, form.

Wowzer, not for the faint hearted then!!?!  Shame you can't recompile it with the limits removed huh?

[J. M. Pescado]

Wowzer, not for the faint hearted then!!?!  Shame you can't recompile it with the limits removed huh?

Based on how things work, even if it were POSSIBLE, it would not be considered a desirable outcome.

[tickleonthetum]

I Just tried to use the fpslimiter from here using FPS_limiter.exe TS3.EXE and all I get is the error message "Could not create game process" should it work on Win7-64? Or am I doing it wrong (wouldn't surprise me).

I placed all the files in game/bin to make it easier...

[tickleonthetum]

Couldn't get it to work so given up.  Even with frame rates of 140+ my GPU doesn't seem to be getting to hot...

[J. M. Pescado]

You could try putting it in simply your TS3 install directory.

[tickleonthetum]

Nah... I'm giving up for now and just trying out the game...  My card seems to be running OK and not getting hot at all, plus I've just added a 200mm side fan to my case so it is nice and icy in there!

[wepaman]

First off, I would like to give thanks to Pescado for this info. I am brand spanking new to this site, and new to the Sims3 as well. I always wondered why my high end gaming notebook would run so hot every time I would play TS3. So I took the time to read every post on this subject and READ EVERYTHING Pescado instructed. I installed both programs and found that without the program, I was running a whopping 500 FPS!!!!! Damn EA to hell for their shenanigans!!! My Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX Video Card thanked me, and I am happy to think that I am in the clear for now. By the way.... I had absolutley NO PROBLEMS with the programs and they work great. The graphics are smooth as silk. So my advice to other noobs is this............"Take your time and do the research before you get all hasty and start downloading stuff and get it all wrong."

[Lion]

My game hangs and crashes a lot. I think I should give the frame limiter a try. I got it to work, alone or together with 3booter. Now my question is whether I can make it work with this Auto Cheater from MTS2 that assigns hotkeys for cheat codes. The auto cheater works wonderfully, and I wonder if there is a way to use it together with 3booter or the fps limiter bat. Thanks for any suggestions.

[Mootilda]

I just run AutoCheat (leave it running), then run 3Booter; seems to work just fine.

[Lion]

Yes, it does! Thank you for this tip. You saved my sanity.

[Checks]

I was wondering if anyone can tell me since world adventures has come out, does it lack v-sync like the first, and if so can I use these same tools for the expansion?

[J. M. Pescado]

Probably. And you'll have to wait until I get to the part where I can even ATTEMPT to boot the game. At this point, we are still working on a patch tool.

[Noenmity]

If we still need to use the 3booter and fps limiter, do they stay in the base game root directory or do they get put in the expansion directory?

[J. M. Pescado]

I have no idea. You'll have to wait until I can address that problem.

[Noenmity]

Ok JM, thanks for the feedback.