Constant Freezing
Velax:
Alright. There's a bit of a back story to this problem, so bear with me. Last year I downloaded a rather large house, mainly because I liked the look of it. Two large floors + basement, large garden, well-furnished, etc, etc. Took me a few months for my sims to save up enough money to buy it (don't really like cheating about things like that), but I eventually did, and moved my family in.
Almost as soon as I did, I noticed a problem. Every two or three seconds it would lock up for a second or two, then unfreeze, then lock up again, and so on and so on. It didn't ever seem to stop. Sounds and music continued to play normally, but the graphics hung. I couldn't find what the problem was, and I was so annoyed that I stopped playing entirely. I came back to the game every few months or so, but still couldn't fix the problem and so quit again.
A couple of months ago I bought University, hoping something in there would fix it, but nada. I kept at it, though, and finally found out what the problem was. Every time someone wasn't able to get somewhere they wanted to go, the game would lock up. The reason it was happening so often was that the house's garden wasn't very well designed, and the point I had happened to save at was a time when the gardener was there. She was trying to clip a hedge she couldn't get to over and over, and so froze my game over and over. I fixed up the garden so every bush/hedge/flower/whatever was reachable, and this finally made the game playable.
Unfortunately, it didn't solve the cause of the problem. It still locked up for a couple of seconds when someone couldn't get where they wanted to go, and lately the problem has been getting worse. It seems to lock up now for 15-20 seconds each time, mainly when a ghost can't get somewhere they want to.
I've tried using boolprop, but no errors pop up. I've tried watching the console, but no errors come up there either (or at least, nothing comes up because of the freezing. I get dozens upon dozens of other errors and warnings, from duplicate materials and missing textures to "Error whilst parsing material" and "No such effect"). Tried re-installing a half dozen times over the year or so since I downloaded the house, tried taking out the Downloads folder and so on, but nothing. Had this problem with every patch, and with every expansion (from just the original, to Uni, then to Nightlife). Doesn't seem to happen on any other lot (but no other lot I have is near the size of this one).
I'm out of ideas of things to try. Anyone have any suggestions?
Brynne:
Have you tried removing the flowers, etc? Could be, and I'm guessing, that the game is lagging because of the combination of a large lot, lots of flowers, etc, and ghosts all using up a lot of the resources. I'm playing a big lot, too-the house of fallen trees, and everytime the ghosts would come out the game would slow to a crawl, freeze for a second or two (or lag, rather), and it was extremely frustrating. I have the ghosts en route to the cemetary, and had to take out a lot of the foliage, but the game is running pretty smoothly for me, now.
gali:
Yes, it happened to me - freeze for a second or two, then continue the play.
I called the technician, who tried first to update my drivers - didn't help. Only when I got the latest graphic card, and increased the Processor to 800MHz, and increased RAM to 2 Giga - it stopped. It costed me quite a lot...:).
The second time it happened, he only updated the drivers, and it stopped.
Brynne:
Isn't it fun spending all this money to upgrade our computers to play this game? I actually bought a new laptop just for this purpose.
Velax:
Yeah, I think back before I knew what the problem was I tried getting rid of most of the objects and whatnot on the lot, but the freezing still happened. Since I found out what was actually causing the problem, I've tested it fairly extensively, and it *only* freezes when someone's path is blocked (someone's in the shower when someone else wants to use the toilet, for example). I don't know if the increase in duration of the freezing is specifically because of the ghosts or whether it's just a co-incidence.
And I've tried updating my drivers, but nothing. Because it's a specific thing that makes my game freeze rather than it just happening randomly, I think it's not a graphics card or driver problem.
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