More Awesome Than You!

Heya folks -- first time poster, but long time user. Try and go easy on me, eh?  

I've been using AM for years, with lots of CC, on a not so awesome computer. Life was good. (I could even run AM with Twallen mods -- so long as no pedo stuff was going on.)

Then I bought Showtime, and tried to run it. Crashed to a black screen.  So, I removed AM and tried again - everything was fine.  At this point the only thing I could think of that I may have done wrong was installing the EP with AM in the mods folder. SO I uninstalled and did a fresh install and AM download. That normally works.

And it did this time also - sort of.  With no game items installed, AM works like a charm. But who wants a game with no CC?   :-\

With a few dl'd CC (installed through the launcher) it will work fine, but once the DCCache folder gets more than 3 files in it the game starts crashing to black screen again.  Either when I try to play, or when I try and install more content.  If I look at task manger the tsw3.exe (or whatever the game file is called) is completely frozen.

When I remove AM I can load and install more content. I don't think there is a conflict with any of the content - at least not that I have been able to identify. All the content is what I already had running with AM before the EP install. It seems to have to do with the amount of things I have installed through launcher.

Before this all happened, before I installed the EP, I must have had 11(?) files in the DCCache folder and AM worked fine.  I have been screwing with this for weeks now, and I finally broke down and decided to write in. I've done everything that I can think of -- but having to choose between AM and dl'd CC items does not make me a happy girl.  And thats all I can figure out. There aren't any conflicting files in my mods/packages folder either. Currently, AM is the only mod I have installed.

Hopefully I gave all the info that ya'll need -- if not, let me know.

Please, and thanks.

ETA: I'm running XP. I have all EP's installed.

Have you updated all of your other mods besides AM? Even any obscure mods that you might not think to update?

At this point the only mod (core or otherwise) that I am running --or rather, trying to run-- is AM.  Removing Twallen's mods was one of the first things I tried doing.  They aren't currently installed.  However, if I remove AM and install them the game runs fine; they just aren't as good as AM.  But if I can't figure this out I guess that is what I'm going to have to do.

I have also tried removing all the slider hacks (and everything else from my mods/packages folder), and that doesn't make a difference either.

Based on all my fucking around I think it has something to do with too many files installed in the launcher, but I can't for the life of me figure out why it would only start doing this once I installed the new EP.

Define "crashed to a black screen". At what point does it crash? What are you attempting to DO when it crashes?

It happens either when pressing the "play" button in the launcher, or after selecting content in the launcher and clicking "install." 

After doing one of those actions, it happens almost immediately.  My computer is a bit on the old and shitty side, so there are normally (when it was working before w/ AM, or currently working w/o AM) a few seconds of lag between doing either one of those actions and getting the screen where there is the loading bar.  Instead of getting the title screen with the moving bar I just get the black.

When trying to play the game itself, the whole screen just goes black.  It stays that way no matter how long I leave it alone.  When trying to install, a small black box (the same size as the launcher install box would be) appears on the screen and also stays that way.

I guess its more accurately described as a failure to continue the loading process than as a 'crash.'  The file stays open, but the size of it doesn't move in TaskManager. Its like it gets to a certain point and just won't move any further.

I hope that is a better description. Thanks again for the help.

This sounds suspiciously like either a corrupt file or Framework Fail.

A corrupt AM file? I just DL'd the newest one; I had the same problem with the last AM file also.  I've also re dl'd the config file.  Or do you mean some other corrupt file?

Excuse my ignorance, but if some other file was corrupt wouldn't the game not work at all, even w/o Awesomemod?  Or could the corrupt file interact with AM in a way that AM doesn't 'like?'  It seems that it can't just be one or the other, it has to be the interaction of the CC and AM. Nothing else makes logical sense to me. Why would the game work with a corrupt file, but not with AM and a corrupt file?

And the same with Framework -- if that was borked (I'm using the new/simple downloads directory method) wouldn't I not be able to run any mods or CC?  I'm pretty sure the Framework is alright, but I'll dl a new resource.config file for the fun of it.

I know how to find corrupt .package files using Dashboard, but have not a damned clue about how to find them inside of .dbc files. (I've killed all the DCBackup files that were in .package form, so I can't go that route.)

Any Pro tips on how to determine if I have a corrupt file and how to identify it? I have some ideas about how to narrow it down, but I've already spent a lot of time on the trial and error method (slowly installing the CC files a couple at a time via the launcher and then testing) and its not going well.  I can't find a rhyme or reason to the point at where it stops working.

If your framework is not completely installed, core mods will likely malfunction, even though most other mods still work. If your download is corrupt, your game may also fail to load. Since this problem doesn't afflict anyone else, it's clearly a you-problem.

Downloads?  Why would you put Awesome in the downloads directory?

Yes - its clearly a me problem (as few others seem to be having it).  :-\ 

@PA: I meant the framework is in the My Documents (and the proper sub-directory) -- not Downloads. As opposed to the old method of putting files in the /bin folders with the Program files.  I am of the understanding that they should both work the same way and neither is superior to the other.  Sorry about that typo - it was late.

But I really don't think its a Framework problem -- the corrupt file idea makes more sense given my longtime running of AM w/o issue, even with a shit-ton of launcher CC.  And I have followed the instructions on http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,17454.0.html to the T in making sure I have the new Framework setup right. Those are still valid instructions, yes?

I guess I'm back to trying to figure out which of the CC has a problem. I just don't know how to do this since it all works fine in the absence of AM. Fuckety-fuck.

Any last lifelines that you fine people would be so kind as to throw me?

The Launcher is evil!  Don't use it to start your game.  Find the TS3W.exe in Program Files, create a desktop shortcut, and use that to launch the game.

If that fails, go to Mod the Sims and make sure your framework is installed correctly.

Also if you've lurked hard enough you'd have seen that awesome works better when using the "old" method of framework.

There's that, too.  Though I would like to point out that I have no issues using AM with the new framework.  

If you don't have any issues, you're lucky, but if it's being fussy, the method I run is Ye Olde Frameworke, so that's the method officially supported. Anything else is a crapshoot.

If you recently switched from the old method to the documents method of installing mods, you might want to double, even triple check the resource.cfg file, as the contents for that file are slightly different with each install method.

Also make sure the only place you have the "old" framework is in the base game directory. Use that for AM and the my documents method for everything else.

Well, I guess I do have one issue: after doing stuff in Edit Town mode for a couple hours, everything goes wonky and sometimes crashes the game.  But I've read elsewhere that since Generations(?), the Edit Town mode is severely f'd up.

SINCE Generations. For a couple of HOURS? Edit Town has ALWAYS been unstable and crashy, with or without mods.

I wouldn't know exactly, as I never messed around with Edit Town until I installed Pets.  And what's with the emphasis on HOURS?  Are you implying that's some kind of miracle?

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, yours runs for a couple of HOURS before it dies? Mine tends to catch fire and explode within *AN* hour.

You probably know about this already, but I'm going to mention it anyway (it might be helpful to someone else):  Have you looked at your Sims3.ini file?  The memory usage limit is automatically set to 2 GB.  My game crashed a lot -- usually in 30 minutes or less, and no matter what I was doing -- until I learned about the .ini file and changed it to 6 GB.

(Now you're probably going to tell me that's complete and utter crap.)