More Awesome Than You!

Ok, so I've just about had enough of this. Since installing AMB, I am getting those freezes, everything pause except flowers and trees swaying in the breeze, about every 20 minutes of gameplay. I have had them in previous EPs but not with this frequency.

I've read the two threads from a while back about these but there doesn't seem to be an indicator of why this happens. There isn't anyway to recover, and I have to task manager out of there.

My specs aren't too bad, I'm running an X1950 Pro, 2x 2.66 GHz, running XP so just under 4GB RAM. If I remember rightly my power supply is 550W. While not amazing specs they are far above the minimum. I'm wondering if my power supply could do with an upgrade, or maybe my processor. I just get the feeling that it comes down to overheating.

Anyone else experiencing this too?

Edit - Forgot to mention I'm running only AM and the only CC I have is decrapified store crap.

I just had this too; about the fourth time since installing Ambitions (I haven't played a lot lately.)

It's quite hard to make machinima, when the game freezes every 10 minutes.

And you have to close down and reload everytime, yes?

What specs are you running, Parrot?

I get these from time to time, but not with the frequency you are reporting.  I am running an i7 965 CPU, that's a quad core at 3.2Ghz, 12 GB RAM, an Nvidia GTX295 (Dual Board) GPU, and a 1000 Watt power supply. and Windows 7 64-Bit.

I have yet to work out what is causing it, as everytime it appears to be triggered by something different.  Sometimes they occur once a week, maybe once a day for a couple of days then nothing for weeks, sometimes several times a day, then nothing for days or even weeks.

I run the FPS limiter to help with the GPU, so while overheating may be the problem, I don't suspect overheating due to the infrequent nature of the freeze, and the fact I can restart the game straight away and in many cases get several hours, even days without another freeze, without shutting down the system to cool it down, so if it was caused by overheating it should kick off again quickly, in my view.

If I remember, Pescado has indicated elsewhere that he doesn't see this issue, and it could be a memory thing.  Pescado keeps saying he loads and runs the game on a RAM disc, which makes me wonder if it may even be something with accessing the HDD.  The so-called green HDDs run even slower to consume less power, something like 5400rpm as opposed to the usual 7200rpm, so maybe the game while trying to access information at different times is unable to access it fast enough and throws a dummy spit causing everything else to lock up.  

I plan on upgrading my main HDD and my games HDD to the WD Velociraptor which spin at 10,000rpm, this update won't happen until after I get back from my holiday, so I won't be able to confirm whether the faster HDD makes a difference for a while.

I may be way off the mark with that theory, but it seems to be the only thing that fits, and also explains why Pescado doesn't see the freeze, and why some people seem to get them more than others.  Please, feel free to tell me I am way wrong and off the mark.  I am not a genius with all of this, so may well be wrong, just thought I would throw my theory out there for some consideration.

Perhaps my game is just going through a bad patch at the moment. It would be nice if I could go a couple of play sessions without the big freeze.

I am also able to restart straight away so perhaps I was a bit hasty on deciding that overheating is the problem. My pauses are likewise triggered by nothing in particular. I can play the game in exactly the same way a second time and not encounter the pause when it happened in the first game.

Memory seems like a more likely explanation from what you say. I will be interested to hear the results of your Velociraptor HD experiment. I'm pretty sure my HDDs are 7200rpm, but it was a couple of years since I put together my rig and my memory fails me.

I think your theory seems much more likely than mine, hopefully this thread can help get to the bottom of it, once and for all.

I have noticed the freezes last longer in the world I made than they do in Sunsetvalley and Twinbrook.  My husband gets them in all of the towns.  The only thing I can deduce from this is that computer specks play a large role in it.  I've never had to shut the computer down when it happens.  It always comes back after awhile.  Last night my husband had one that lasted 10 minutes.  Some of the things I do that seem to help are; clicking the pause, clicking page up or down, and zooming in or out.  They seem to help, but I can't be sure it is not just a coincidence that the game returns to normal after doing so.  My freezes don't last long enough or happen often enough to be a concern, but my husband was not pleased by his long pause.  It would be nice if we can find an answer to this and lay this issue to rest once and for all. 

I thought  I was alone on this issue. Mine occurs ramdom and rarely but it will sometimes freeze up for a minute or so. I've played around with screen resolutions and it seems to help having at lower levels.
 

I get the feeling that that may be the issue.

Here is my window's "Experience" Index
 
Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB 7.5
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series  7.3
Gaming graphics 2807 MB Total available graphics memory 7.3
Primary hard disk 497GB Free (587GB Total) 5.9 -Weakest link

Total amount of system memory 4.00 GB RAM
  System type 64-bit operating system-Windows 7 Pro
  Number of processor cores 4- i7 2.8GHZ

Display adapter type ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series
  Total available graphics memory 2807 MB
        Dedicated graphics memory 1024 MB
        Dedicated system memory 0 MB
        Shared system memory 1783 MB
  Display adapter driver version 8.723.0.0
  Primary monitor resolution 1680x1050
  DirectX version DirectX 10

I do in fact have to close down, and reload.

My specs aren't excellent, but they work fine... That is when the game doesn't freeze.

Windows XP sp2
2.16 GHz processor
Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB of RAM
ATI Radeon x1600

There are a few fixes for random freezes, be sure you've tried them all. There's no harm in trying.

One single piece of CC can be causing it (even if it is more prevalent in a certain neighborhood, keep in mind that the bad CC may be, too).

Then there's Fixall, which can fix some sim issues that could cause a pause.

And if that doesnt work, be sure you've tried Resetworld. One single busted sim can be causing it, which is another reason it would happen more in one world than another. This was a HUGE issue for me a while back, resetworld fixed whatever sim was having an issue and all temporary pauses stopped until the next time one screwed up.

Alternatively, you could use resetsim on every sim in town until it stops- I did this, as well, and found which sim was causing the problem. Then I reloaded, found them, and took note of what they were doing- they were trapped in a doorway, and any time they or another sim tried to path somewhere else/through that door, the game would freeze.

None of you have mentioned trying anything like this and seem to be thinking it's hardware, but there's a chance it's not, so be sure to try.

It couldn't hurt.  I'll try it at night so none of my Sims leave work early.



Edit:  It didn't help.  Fixall and Resetworld did not have any noticeable effect. 

I do wonder whether the neverending pauses and the shorter pauses are related though. The pauses I get, last forever. I have left the game on for up to 12 hours and it is still the same, and I've never had shorter pauses. I have tried pausing but nothing registers, also can't get the cheat box up so fixall and resetworld can't help either. Also, as I only run AM, and store crap, I don't think that mine can be related to bad CC.

Edited to add - I'm trying to free up a lot more space on my C drive to see if that makes a difference too.

If the trees/waves/plumbobs/etc are still moving, they're the same kind of pause. Clearly there's a difference since one is lasting forever, but both are caused by the game having some kind of loading/computing issue, which is why repeating animations from stagnant objects keep moving, but the sims and interface and world itself freeze. The game hasn't "frozen" so much as it's stuck trying to do something it can't figure out how to do.

Also, are any of you able to recreate it with one save? As in, if it happens at X time, and you reload, does it happen at X time again? That's another sign that it's a kind of loading issue, and would probably be fixed by resetworld.

OH, and I do mean to use the console command fixes BEFORE it happens, and to observe if it happens again- because, no, as you said, you can't open the cheat box during the freezes.

In custom worlds pathing errors are possibly the most common cause. The tiniest things, if unspotted, can destroy a world's ability to function without pauses. Possible errors include:

- almost invisible dips in terrain. Most recently for me, a one-click ditch near the edge of a lot I didn't notice and that was surrounded by perfectly routable terrain anyway. In any game with decent pathing the Sims would just walk around it. But we know this isn't one of those games.
- the odd 'base is uneven' glitch that hits builders sometimes.
- routing paint overlapping or blocking any place sims might try to route to.

Needle in a haystack sort of stuff. But of course, it's hitting in non-custom worlds too. Don't rule out building errors as the cause though, more than likely EA's worlds have a few dodgy areas of their own.

As both myself and wizard pointed out earlier in the thread, we are unable to recreate the pause on a reload of the game. In fact I have deliberately played exactly the same way but no pause. Because it is impossible to recreate, the fixall and resetworld aren't really applicable. I tend to fixall every now and again during gameplay anyway but that doesn't seem to have much effect on the pauses.

Oh and I only play the EAxis hoods. I have been playing Twinbrook since the pauses increased in frequency, perhaps there are more pathing errors there than in Sunset or Riverview.

Hmmm. This is definitely a signifier that it might be pathing as well. The pathing errors from my worlds that are easy to find are always the ones where Sims most often gather. There are always more obscure ones that only rarely trap Sims, and I imagine there are potentially ones altogether more obscure than the obscure ones I've picked up on and fixed personally. It can be as simple as a Sim approaching the trouble spot from a rare direction and getting stuck.

I guess my point is that most of the pathing errors in my custom worlds don't hit consistently, and don't hit on every play-through.

In that case, I will start a game in Sunset Valley, as that is more likely to have been tested more fully than Twinbrook. Unless anyone can suggest a custom world that has had extensive testing?

I've been getting the never-ending pause that requires an End Task exactly like you describe, but only on Saturday and Sunday (sim days) and at 1:59PM sim time.  I guess there is some event that occurs at 2PM that's causing it in my game.  It only happens with my simbot and is 100% predictable and reproducible.  It doesn't happen for other households.

Do you still get the same issue with other households as well?

I hadn't had this occur for quite a long time. The stability of my game improved immensely when I began using 3booter+FPSlimiter, but I wasn't sure that was the fix so I refrained from posting. I was still feeling pretty smug, though.

Of course Pride Goeth Before, so naturally I had to have one of these yesterday. I still have to say I rarely see this happen, and I play for pretty long sessions (6+ hours) with no incidents. I had noticed (back when this happened frequently for me) that one sound effect typically loops during the freeze. I can't count on a freeze or I'd do this myself, but have any of you that reliably have a freeze each session tried disabling sound and playing long enough that you should have gotten a freeze?

Other info, for the record: I only play in EA hoods. I've been playing in Twinbrook since getting Ambitions. I'm not certain, but I think it's only frozen on me during speed 3. I have 3GB of RAM (4GB installed but XP only sees 3) and the physical drive my pagefile is on has 108GB free. Since Pescado reminded me of the practice by mentioning it in another thread I've used a RAMdrive for my saves, but I don't run the whole game from RAMdrive. I can't say I've noticed a significant improvement in my save/load times since I began using the RAMdrive, so ymmv if you try it.

I can say with reasonable certainty that Twinbrook hasn't been tested thoroughly enough.

Unless it's the result of a mod I was using before I uninstalled Ambitions, all of the Twinbrook Sims begin the game with 'new friend' moodlets, which is a sign that the creators didn't have time to nuke the moodlets. It betrays how new all the characters are, and if they were doing a good job I'm sure they'd have removed them. That moodlet appears the moment you set up friendships (including in CAW), and is easily deleted using 'testingcheats'. On top of that, I would have expected the family trees to extend a little outside of households, which they don't. No ancestors at all, but lots of ancestoral Sims that are islands by themselves: Steward Curious, Lacey Darer, etc. Unless they did this deliberately, to make the world mysterious, but I'm reckoning it's more that it was a rush job and that was a convenient excuse. Edit: Pile on top of that the lack of grammar, sane syntax, and consequently grace in all the Sims' texts. There are lots of typos, and some of the sentences are just... ...wtf.


Due to the sheer volume of players demanding worlds on the official forums, that's where the best tested worlds seem to come from. Nowhere else can creators rack up the necessary volume of testers, MTS's less accessible feedback forums ensure it. A player named ehaught-something-or-other has made an extensively tested (and somewhat nice) world called Fort Sim. It's not polished enough for my liking personally, but it probably runs well.

I've experienced this a few times running Twinbrook. The game renders the current scene ok including any looping animations so hasn't crashed, more likely it's stuck in an endless loop somewhere. If the pathing code/logic is the likely cause, is this not something that Pescado could look at fixing?

I've had this happen a couple of times, and it's usually a couple of hours into gameplay. The only thing the same in both situations was that I was doing a lot of actions quickly. X-ing out a queue, paging the house up and down, giving a command, changing speed all within 10 seconds. In my case, my computer probably couldn't handle all of that at once, so I usually pause now in order to give commands more slowly. I noticed that fixall and frequent saving seem to be helping me.

ETA: It just happened again, this time when 2 wants were fulfilled at the same time. I wasn't racing around clicking anything either. Again, it seems like my problem is memory processing or something nerdy I know nothing about.

I had this issue prior to Ambitions in all saves (new and old) and all towns.  My game wasn't playable so I uninstalled.  After re-installing everything was running fine.  

My theory was the game wasn't able to handle 3x/4x speeds.  I thought this was the problem because my freezes would happen when I would change from 3x to 1x or pause.  Also, the official patches speak of improving game stability at high speeds.  When I play I switch between speeds a lot, so I figured that was the problem.  When I forced myself to play a 1x, using 2x rarely, there were no pauses.

I was also never able to replicate the pauses by loading a previous save.

However, as I said, after re-installing everything was running fine.

Laptop's specs:
Win7 Professional 64-bit
Intel Core Duo 2.0 Ghz
4G ram
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4500 series w/1G ram

Pescado probably could fix it, if he could see it.  The problem is the freezes we are talking about are not predictable and cannot be recreated, and Pescado doesn't get them in his game.  Sending him a save doesn't work, because it doesn't freeze when you restart.  All of this makes it impossible for Pescado to even try to fix, or properly identify the problem.  He needs to be able to reliably reproduce the freeze to track the cause.

Those of you on 64 bit systems could try the CFF explorer trick, to tell the exe to allow over 2GB of ram usage (Supposedly it's unecessary, but ticking the box still does something or other, I don't know the specifics of it. Just that it lets the game access more memory if it can't for whatever reason.)

Like before, it's always worth at least trying. CFF explorer fixed a few peoples memory issues with the base game.

YUP, doing something you don't exactly know what it does sounds like an excellent idea. Because you try to give information - success rate on those tries is irrelevant.

People suspect their VAGUE, UNPLACEABLE ISSUE is a memory issue. I suggest they try a solution related to allowing the game to access more memory.

I really, really don't understand how this is a problem.

I am unconvinced at the credibility of this solution because TS3 seems to intentionally limit its memory usage by releasing memory. Additionally, I have not performed this move and have no problems.

If the design or implementation of a particular piece of code itself is flawed then Pescado doesn't need a save game to look at it other than for pinpointing where to look. The suggestion has been that the routing is causing the problems so it's probably worth giving any related code a once over as glaring bugs can often be spotted without running the code. If routing is failing and the piece of code calling it doesn't handle that within a loop then you would end up with what appears to be an endless pause.

I wonder if you're on to something here. I don't get those pauses - well, not since my sims tried dig sites on SC in WA - I haven't had any pauses at all otherwise. (Touch wood). Although I only have 2GB RAM, I have two 10,000rpm Raptor drives set as RAID 0.

Already did that, a long time ago when it was first suggested, and did it with AMB as soon as it was installed.

The CFF Explorer trick in Windows x64 does indeed work as a permanent cure to the E12/E13 errors, but it doesn't help the neverending pause nor the long, but eventually ending pauses.

If it was a routing problem then everyone would be having the issue. I've never once had the game freeze like is mentioned here in my hundreds of hours of play. I don't see how one sim getting stuck would cause the whole game to freeze either. The amount of processing the game devotes to a single sim's pathfinding is ridiculously minor (it's often moving hundreds of sims around at once). If one sim got stuck on a ledge or something it's much more likely that sim would simply stand there in it's own loop while the game moved on without them until the system reset them or they died. I mean I've seen this happen before when a sim tries to route to something inaccessible, eventually their motives change and they pick something else to route to, I don't see there being a difference in the process when the obstacle is terrain instead of a fence or wall.

To debunk a few other possible causes of the issue, I play off a normal SATA 7200rpm HDD (500gb with less then 2gb free), I play on both EA and custom worlds, I have both EPs and the SP and all store content (except the soccer jerseys because they spammed the hell out of my clothing section), and my PC isn't that great (Vista, AMD Athlon 7750 2x 2.71ghz, 4gb RAM, GeForce 9500 GT 1gb).

Hope that helps you narrow down possible causes. Only thing I can think of (other than bad custom content) would be compatibility issues, maybe an ATI problem, or an issue with specific drivers.

Code runs sequentially so if the update gets stuck in a loop then the game will appear paused. The rendering is probably handled in a separate thread so that's why the game graphics are redrawn, including simple animation updates. If this is the cause it's probably a particular sequence of attempted actions on the part of one sim in a particular location that then results in the game getting stuck. This makes it almost impossible to replicate unless you are lucky enough to have saved immediately before, however it is perfectly reasonable to spot bugs in code logic if you have an idea where to look. It's entirely possible that EA encountered this in the test process but it probably didn't make it through triage as, despite being a showstopper, it isn't reproducable and occurs relatively rarely.

I've had both types of freezes. The freeze that eventually ends on its own has always been fixed by resetting the world and has probably been caused by stuck sims.

I also, rarely, get the freeze that never ends which requires me to end task to get out of it. When I get those freezes there is always a tool tip stuck on screen; I've either changed speeds or been about to, or I've hovered over something, such as a sim, that causes a tool tip to appear, and then it freezes.

Same here with me, moondance.

But I have to say that so far I have not experienced a lot of pauses or freezes since installing AMB. I have probably only played Twinbrook maybe 6 sim weeks, though. I have started 3 different games in order to test out the new careers since I had difficulty changing households. Is it possible that the longer the game goes the more pauses you have? I don't know how long any of you who are having freezing issues have been playing your current game so I was just curious.

I also thought I'd mention that amjoie at Custom Sims 3 reported that while removing, replacing, and repositioning a lot that spawners were multiplying each time. Some of the spawners were actually buried below ground. They were left behind when the building was bulldozed, they were placed on the lot again when she replaced the lot, then more were generated again when she repositioned the lot. I just thought I'd mention this as a possibility because I would think that having so many spawners on a lot might also mess up a game pretty quickly.

I am playing a relatively new game.  I always restart y game from scratch when EAxis release a new patch, and I often do it after major work is done to AM.  In this case, I started a new game when AMB was installed, and again when AM was first updated to the patch, and again when AM was updated to AMB.

Whether it is a new game, or a game that has survived few generations, doesn't appear to affect the frequency of freezing.  It is just totally random, unpredictable, and not reproduceable at will, and restarting a new save made just before a freeze just plays straight past where it froze last time.

I find the freezes more of an irritation when they do occur, especially if I haven't saved for a while.  I don't see them often enough for them to be overly bothersome or annoying.

I had one earlier. Been playing this new game three RL days, ambitions, originally vanilla; the pause happened after I added awesomemod, though it still took a while, and I only had the one. My game seems to be running slower in general, though, I ought to tweak how much background shit I've got turned on in my config.

My save that I had been experiencing the Neverending Pause with, decided to refuse to load and CTD. After starting a new game, having freed up a lot of space on my C drive and not using the third speed, I have not experienced any Neverendings, so far.

Over the weekend, my wife's computer experienced the exact same 2PM (clock stops at 1:59PM) weekend never-ending pause that mine did with my simbot.  However, switching to a different fambly before the clock strikes 1:59PM didn't work for her.  One fambly happened to have a simbot, so she tried deleting the simbot.  That didn't work either.  However, she extracted the house to the bin, then deleted the house, and put it back in from the bin, simbot and all.  Now the clock was able to advance past 2PM and all was well.

Strange.  Only thing we could come up with, is something becomes borked in the relationships with or involving simbots and when some code (story progression maybe?) that's scheduled for 2PM on Sat/Sun sim time occurs, some thread in the game goes into an infinite loop.  Neither one of us ever had the infinite never-ending pause until introducing a simbot into the game.  Could be coincidence though.

I used to get these all the time playing a user made world (Fargo) but they were the type that would go away after a few minutes.  I chalked it up to that world and stopped playing it.  Since then I have been playing multiple worlds, including Twinbrook for quite some time.  I never had another one until I just must awesome mod back in and restarted Sunset Valley and had a bunch right away.  They were the ones that I had to kill from the task manager.  So I think it's something related to awesome mod as I've never had any problems without it but a bunch when it's in.  I don't think it's a stuck sim because I started using fixall and towderelicts every sim day and there was really nothing ever needing clearing.  I don't have any simbots and it shouldn't be routing because it happened in an EA world.

I wanted to report that I started having serious lag issues shortly after my earlier reply - Murphy's Law, right?  :(

I played without AwesomeMod for a few days and still had lag. My PC actually had a blue screen event last night, to top it off. Today I finally spent some time combining some CC package files since I hadn't done that since last winter, which served to identify and eliminate some bad CC files. At least I think that's what SP3 does when it crosses out some of those numerical files. Through examination with S3PE I also discovered that I had some files that modified the same skill even though it was not identified as a conflict using Delphy's Dashboard application. So I edited one of the package files to eliminate the duplication so I could keep the file I liked. I also discovered that in the last two days I stoopidly had added a file I KNOW conflicted with another file, which was probably a large part of my lag problem. Duh.

Anyway, the result is that this game is suddenly fun to play again. Loading a saved game only takes a few minutes instead of the 10 minutes it's been taking. So if you haven't combed through your mods lately to look for conflicts and/or merged them to create fewer package files, I can personally recommend it. It sure helped my game, anyway!

I've been getting this same never ending pause ever since installing Ambitions. I can start a new game and edit the town as much as I want. I can create sims in CAS with no problem. The issue shows up when I go to actually play the game. As soon as I either move in a new family or choose a family to play, the lot loads and that's it. The game clock never moves off of 8am and I can't select anything on the UI or in the game world. It happens every time, doesn't matter which hood I choose the game is simply unplayable.

My system is five years old but still above minimum with a recently upgraded video card, and the game played fine with WA and HELS:

Pentium D 3.00Ghz dual-core
3GB RAM
GeForce GTS 250 with 1024MB RAM Driver version 6.14.12.5721
Over 100GB free HDD space
WinXP SP3
No CC installed All caches cleared

Edit: Uninstalling and reinstalling Ambitions did not work, but messing with my settings in game seems to have done the trick. I set all the graphic options to their minimums, then while exiting and restarting the game a few times brought them all back up to where I had them. The game is now running just fine, no sign of the pause.

I don't know if others found a solution, but for me I was having the never ending pause constantly. It was driving me up the wall. I did a clean install over again, and the game still did it. I followed the instructions from http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,17746.0.html regarding merging package files. I went from around 1500 package files to a little over 200 package files. I extracted all the store stuff into combined package files, which greatly reduced my numbers. It has been over a week now, and I haven't had any never ending pauses in the game. I don't know if this will help the rest of you, but it made the difference for me. I hope this helps you guys too.

Well today I spotted and fixed my damn pausing issue!

My pauses were inconsistent and lasted for 1-20 seconds every 15 seconds or so (while the trees continued to sway). Turns out it was nothing to do with memory, as far as I could tell. It was the simulation itself freezing whenever a Sim on one particular lot tried to leave that lot though an action such as 'Go to work' or 'Go to the Gym'.

This paticular lot was downloaded from MTS, and I placed it by firstly creating new empty lots using Edit World. It appears any Sim living here could not leave the lot at all. There were no obstructions, however the lot was slightly raised up from the sidewalk. I noticed the occupant of the lot being rather idle so I decided to visit the lot with my active Sim and then click on the 'Go Home' button on his portait icon. The game immediately froze for 1 second and then resumed when that Sim displayed the 'I'm stuck' thought bubble. I repeated this and at every time the game froze.

Deleting this lot completely fixed the issue. I do hope this can shed some light on the problem. The only way I can think of pin pointing this in your world would be to visit every lot and then click 'Go Home'

Good luck!

EDIT: I fixed the problem. It was a stuck Sim. Fucking Mortimer somehow got stuck through the fence over at the Bachelors', I had to do some temporary remodeling.

So yeah, looks like the constant temporary freeze problem is due to stuck Sims.


Sorry for the necro, but I'd rather necro a topic with a relevant post than create a new thread (and get anally reamed with "FUCKING SEARCH" posts).


This is exactly the problem I am having and it started only just a few hours ago (I've been playing four about 8 hours straight for the past three or so days). First thing I tried when I had this problem was fixall; it fixed some phantom butts and a bad Sim, but not this problem.

Installed:

Sims 3
Sims 3 WA
Sims 3 HELS
Sims 3 Amb
Sims 3 FLS

(In that order.)

Have been playing with Awesomemod from the very beginning.

I've not installed any major CC (not that I know what the hell constitutes "major" CC, though) - just two Sims; the first of which did not have any problems (i.e., the game did not have this freezing problem immediately after the Sim was installed; in fact this problem didn't crop up until after about a day of play after this Sim was installed and dropped into my neighborhood) and the second of which I just installed about an hour ago (i.e., long after since this freezing problem has started; this Sim was only used for bodysnatch onto another Sim I made through CAS). No other custom CC, playing in Sunset Valley only.

Have only added two Sims to Sunset Valley; one made through CAS (later modified with bodysnatch and some minor tweaking with editsim) and the first CC Sim (mentioned above). I don't play the CC Sim at all.

I've placed only two lots - EAxian's Miramontes at 74 Landgraab Ave and Cabin Fever at 9 Sun Song Ave - before the freeze problem. Miramontes currently has no occupants, Cabin Fever has the CC Sim and I have verified that she can enter/leave the house without problem.

Just nuked the Miramontes lot from orbit. Has not fixed problem.

Started a new game in Twinbrooks. No freeze problem.

Have tried restarting the game multiple times to no effect. Haven't tried doing a system reboot, though.

Have been starting the game using the Awesome Updater's updater.bat (mostly to avoid using TS3's Launcher).

System specs:
Win 7 Pro x64
ASUS P56X58D Premium motherboard
Intel Core i7-930 (2.4GHz, 4 physical, 4 virtual cores)
6GB DDR3 RAM (G.SKILL PI Series, if that's relevant)
ATI Radeon HD 5850 GPU (specifically an XFI card, if that's relevant)
ASUS Xonar Essence ST soundcard
2x2TB@7200RPM Hitachi Deskstar HDDs (technically only one is in use, as it has my Windows partition; the other HDD is Ubuntu and not relevant to this, AFAICT) (1.39TB free on the partition that I've installed TS3 to [the same partition has My Documents]; 29.4GB free on the system partition)
1TB@5400RPM Western Digital My Book portable HDD (on which I'm currently storing the .iso of TS3 that I'm running the game from) (575GB free)
750w Corsair PSU

Just tried moving the .iso from my portadrive to my system drive, no change in performance (i.e., the problem still persists).

Just switched active households to a default (i.e., non-custom made) one; no freeze problem. What the eff is this bullshit.

:rage:

ETA: resetworld hasn't helped.

Since I'm running in windowed mode, I can watch how much TS3 is sucking up, system resources-wise. It holds steady ~15-18% CPU use and ~1,180,000K - ~1,300,000K memory use.

ETA2: I tell a lie. Normally TS3 uses up 05-08% CPU; when it does its freeze though, that number shoots up to 15-17% and stays there until it unfreezes (for all of twenty seconds). This is constant and consistent. So, at least for me, the problem doesn't seem to be memory use.

ETA3: The problem still exists and persists even after I removed all .package files (except for awesome.package and aweconf.package) from my Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Mods\Packages.

ETA4: I think I found the problem. Mortimer Goth is stuck partway through the fence of the Bachelor household. I am going to punch this kid in the dick so hard his mother will be retroactively sterilized. I don't even give a fuck that he's a kid. Anyone know how to nuke/move specific Sims?

Just wanted to say that the CFF explorer thing made a huge difference to my game when I first started playing TS3.  I got crashes without it and almost no crashes with it.  I didn't put the fix back after I installed loft stuff and ambitions, but I haven't got the crashes back.   I'd guess EA improved the memory handling since base game.  I am getting these freezes.  Sometimes the game unfreezes quickly, sometimes freezes last 10mins or so and sometimes I have to kill the game with task manager.  Can't help on why/when.

Here's my saved game with reproducible results:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/koaclandox7qdxr/SV%20AdamThomas.sims3.zip

I have the EPs, but no SPs. The freeze will occur at 2:43. The clock, sims, and any screen directions/movement will freeze. Plumbobs will turn and woohoo confetti will fall. The family is in Sunset [played less than two Sims weeks (or three if you count the six days in France)] and resides in the normally empty lot next to the Altos.

I use large address aware, cff_explorer, and fpslimiter and have a quad-core Vista system with 8 gigs of RAM.

I do have some mods, such as Twallan's master controller, overwatch, and debug enabler; Rainbow Brite's skill challenges XML tweaks; things like nointro, gymbufffixed, and ghost/simbot reaction remover; and, of course, AwesomeMod. I do really limit the things I add to my game (though my package folder does contain over 300 files).

I didn't try any fixes yet (other than clearing the four main caches) as I wanted only to provide a reproducible error for others to look it.

Also: It happens to be a Sunday (for the person who stated that this normally occurs on a weekend) and I had to alt-tab and end task through the task manager. Resetworld did not stop the 2:43 freeze when I tried it on a "saved as" file. The freeze happens right after the pop notice about the boy earning simoleans for the latest chapter of the book he's writing.

Just solved a case of frequent long pausing in Champs Les Sims. No problems in the other vacation hoods or the base hood.

I had plonked a couple of families down into lots, and it started.
Evicted, and placed elsewhere the suspects, (whose house had an 'elaborate' path to the front door) and all was fine.

Short end: Delete families one-by-one, and keep checking if its gone.

my pc specs are almost identical to wizard_merlin, he just has a little more ram than my 6gigs, but same gpu core etc etc. aka more than enough for the sims.

I too have experienced this random freeze up...on the rare occasion it rights itself after about 30 seconds, 99% of the time I'm forced to end the process via the task manager.

It's most prevalent when I've hit fast forward, or in a world that I've been playing for a while, and then after restarting the game it's not a repeatable crash and will happen again down the track at some other seemingly random time.

I was under the impression that it was a result of a bad sim, or bad pathing or something eventually going pear shaped in game and the game just hanging as it tries to figure out what the hell it's supposed to be doing, and it has nothing to do with my pc specs.

The game will never crash if I've left it in build mode, have 300 other programs running in the background or on my other monitor etc and disappeared away from the pc for hours and then come back, it's only when the game is live and the sims are doing their thing that it will randomly choke.

I've just accepted this is a part of ea's flaking programming, and saving reguarly and doing a fixall every now and then and me visually poking around the neighbourhood to reset any dodgy looking sims seems to limit it to a minimum.

I suspect in my LN game the neverending pause is related to mixology. Something is borked on the skill gain and for some reason when a sim is about to gain the first skill point it pauses forever. I figured that out by chance after 3 different games. I have no idea who are the sims freezing the game on my first saves but on the last one if I make my sim read a mixology book or practice on a bar it pauses forever at the skill gain. I didn't notice this before because I usually send them to a class.

The problem is I cannot prevent NPCs from practicing or learning skills. I suspect some other new skills are broken - this was reported on the BBS. On my other save games I can avoid freezing by using ResetWorld a few times, but it is getting too frequent now so it is impossible to play. I have to investigate this though, my very first game playing Late Night never paused or crashed for over 6 sim weeks. I did few interaction with celebrities and didn't try most new features.

The only mods I have installed are AwesomeMod and Twallan Master Controller. Games played with store content but no other CC, cache deleted.

Reading the description it's the problem I've been having for a couple of days. Sometimes it resolves itself after 5 or 10 seconds but I've already had 3 case where I had to ALT TAB and end the process. I was used to the occasional tiny lags when the families moves out but that is game breaking. The 'good' freezes resolving itself happened in Sunset, Egypt and France; the 'bad' ones needing process halt all happened in Bridgeport. I guess EA must have really screwed the lots there or something.

Just remember, AM is not updated for LN yet.

Well the neverending pause is back. So far the only thing I've been able to do is take AM out, play past the point of the pause, save, put AM back in, and it will let me play for a few hours before I have to do it again. I'm almost to the point of giving up on AM and it is the only mod I'm using now.

I was having the NEP off and on since Sims 3 first came out. After LN, the pause was happening quite frequently and, on one occasion, I could duplicate it. It happened as the car pool arrived to take my Sim, who was in the Journalism career path, to work. Time: 11:59.  I then noticed that she was set to work at the Dos Peas building and there was no such building in this hood (the new LN hood). I had to switch her career location to the new building that houses Journalism and a restaurant after which the pause stopped.

 I am going to try to replicate this with AM in the game. I had AM in this hood and removed it and the pause stopped, but I got the 'go to work' queue stomp instead of a freeze. So, I cannot totally rule out a glitch with the mod. I can try to dupe this as I was playing an EAxian Sim in the new hood.

I also cannot fulfill any opportunities that take place in the new multiple purpose buildings. One example is to teach a class to the police. If you try to click on the opportunity tab (on the UI), the queue drops. If I try to manually send her to the police station, there is no opportunity available. So could a lot of this be, as mentioned before, routing problems?

Edit: I tried to replicate the freeze with and without AM and I could not. :/  The only difference between these two game plays/saves today and the game played last night was that last night a car showed up to carpool her to work. No carpool showed up with either of these two saved games.

 There is borkage with that Sim and her job. The name is King and her job is Journalism level 6. I had not remembered correctly when I said she worked in the Dos Peas towers. It does not say that in the UI. But you do get the option to have her transfer her job to Steve's Business Complex. Transfer from where? I searched the hood and couldn't find an alternative Journalism work zone. *shrug*  Anyway, this post now belongs in the LN Bugs thread since I cannot replicate the pause and had queue stompage instead.

Same problems, frequent, self fixing freezes in Sunset Valley/Twinbrook/Riverview and ALT-TAB + CTRL-ALT-DELETE ones in Bridgeport.

I would check that all your EP/SP's patched properly, and not just the base game and LN.  With the patch, all the games are now set to LAA, don't know if EAxis did this deliberately or accidentally, but if you haven't properly patched only the base and LN would be LAA, unless you did the others yourself, although if missing patches, that wouldn't help.  If you relied on LN or the launcher to apply the patches it only appears to do the base game.

I haven't had this problem for a long time now, knock on wood.  When I did get it, I never had to remove AM as simply restarting the game, would for whatever reason, prevent the freeze from occurring.  If you get the freeze repeatedly with AM installed, that is a reproducible freeze, I would suggest posting a save for Pes to check out, as that would seem to suggest something else is going on in your game.

There was an automatic patcher a while back that fixed one of my EPs. I could not complete the patching because it complained of invalid files but the autopatcher could. Maybe (if anyone remembers where it was and it still works) he could try that on his game?

This one, perhaps? http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=409829

I've been using it since Ambitions and yeah I've got the updated one so my base game, EPS and SPs are all up-to-date. Anyway the NEP seems to only happens in Bridgeport. The route paths seems pretty broken, I even lost a maid after 2 sim weeks and I cannot hire another one nor cancel the service.

Thank you for the link. I did not even know that program existed. I was not fully patched, and I thought I was. Thanks for the help guys.

I'm reluctant to call this a routing issue since such a thing would be affecting everyone and not just some.  But here is something to try (http://ts3.tscexchange.com/index.php?topic=2705.0).

I am posting this as it helped me, not sure if it's been mentioned (as I briefly read over some of the replies here).

IF you think it's possible CC issue (Mine was, i used this and it plays like an entirely different game), this is also easier then deleting all of your cc.

http://www.simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Package_File_Lag

I ran the program, deleted the .package files that were the issue. May help some of you.

Blargh, I hate this problem. I never used to have it but ever since LN I consistently get these very long pauses, and every solution I've been able to find has been pure voodoo. It's really not giving me a great desire to play when every few sim days (if it even takes that long) the game freezes for 10+ minutes.

I most often get a NEP/freeze when taking a screenshot which involves a lot of quick camera moves;  a fast changing and complicated background certainly adds to the probability of a freeze which, however, only occurs after I had taken the screenshot and not while I am moving the camera. (It is almost guaranteed in one of the "star" villas in Bridgeport which has big windows with great vistas of the city and the landscape.)  Sometimes I also get it, as already pointed out in this thread, with a lot of concurrent commands/events. On the other hand, I never got it with a family that does not have at least three generations.

At least in my case it seems to be a memory problem. Anyway, I hope this helps.

Somehow, I doubt people are still checking this thread after a full three months.  Didn't you see the scary necromancer guy when you posted?

I have a similar problem, that I feel is in no way related to AM, but this seems to be the best place to put it. For some reason, after about 5 minutes(RL time) my game freezes and I can't do anything. I have had to resort to forcing a reset to get out of the game. Any ideas as to why this happens to me? If it helps, I just installed Ambitions last night. Worked fine up until this morning.

Do you mean YOU specifically as opposed to everyone else?  Sure, we all know why it happens, the exact cause, etc., but decided to keep it to ourselves instead of sharing so we can watch people resurrect old threads and ask if there is a solution yet.  Give me a break.

As an update, I upgraded my graphics card from an ATI X1950 to an HD7550 and that seems to have solved the problem for me.  My current card has more video RAM so I think that is what helped, although I would still see both cards as overkill for a sims game.

First off, I've noticed two types of pausing. One where the game hangs permanently due to bad content or corrupt town. The mouse cursor still works, but the game doesn't. The second type is processing lag, where the CPU is over-worked and is taking too long to process all the stuff the game needs.

I've run Sims 3 on several different PCs, from the a single core Athlon - 2gig RAM - x1950 Pro, dual core Athlon x64 - 4Gig - x1950xtx, Core2 Quad - 8Gig - HD3750x2 and finally the i7 3ghz - 12Gig - 6970. What I have found, with mods installed, this game can use up to 4gig of RAM just for itself, Windows likes to keep around 1gig itself, GPU power doesn't make much difference to performance, and most all performance comes from Memory availability and CPU power. The never-ending pause was an issue on anything under a quad core. With a quad, that pause only lasted a few seconds and with the i7 it was barely there at all.

Taking out mods is the first way of getting speed back and this is a problem in any game that makes heavy use of mods. I know using awesome seems to require a little more CPU than normal, mixing that with other script mods like Twallan's will increase that, especially if you like lots of new features and options. The more CC you have installed, the more RAM is required to load housing and Sims into memory, due to the amount of models. Also a lot of CC will duplicate existing models rather than linking to original models, which again creates overhead, not to mention the bad content which will lag your game up a LOT.

Honestly, anyone trying to play this game on less than a quad core, with 6Gig of RAM and a 4000 series ATI is asking for lag. Unfortunately for almost everyone, the idea of removing mods to increase performance is something they are unwilling to do, so at the end of the day, its a matter of putting up with it.

I suspect some of this is caused by Backlog Runaway, where the game generates work for the computer to do faster than the computer can actually do the work, resuting in the game never catching up.

I've got a Core2 Duo, 4Gb RAM and a low-to-mid-range nVIDIA (9400m) and a fuckton of mods and lots of CC and I never get this pausing.

I had freezes as well but they seem to have been resolved after following the instructions on one of these links.

http://geekmontage.com/texts/the-sims-3-late-night-expansion-pack-crashes-freezes-errors-glitches/

http://ezinearticles.com/?Sims-3-Late-Night-Freezes---Sims-3-Late-Night-Keeps-Freezing,-How-Do-I-Fix-It?&id=5574362

Yes, I am kicking a topic that has been left alone.  I think it is important to the issue as people still are having it AND I have a couple of interesting points to add to the mix.

I am playing Vanilla S3.  No expansion packs.  No mods.  The only world I have added is Riverview.  I have less than 20 pieces of custom content added, and all from the Sims 3 store at EA (the free stuff that did not cost any Simpoints, but not the pile of free decor).  I am patched up to 1.33, and was patched up to that point before the pauses started.

I played the game on and off for more than a year before playing more frequently this past month.  I never had any issues with it pausing.  I have changed motherboards (Biostar to Asus... same base chipset), video cards (9600gt to 9800gt... Evga replaced it), the processor (AMD Athlon 64 x2 6400+ to AMD Phenom II x6 1100t) AND the brand of Ram (G.Skill F2-6400 to Kingston 2G-UDIMM)  since I first installed the game, and never experienced this pause (the hardware change occurred at Christmas... I treated myself).  By choosing my hardware carefully, I did not have to reinstall Windows XP MCE, and I have had No issues with any software installed before the hardware change.

So hardware is not causing the issue for me.  Mods are not causing the issue for me.  Custom Content is not causing the issue for me.

One thing I can comment on is that I can clearly remember (last night) when this problem first started, and what occurred in the game.

Male teen guest was visiting at the home of a female teen.  He had been "invited over" by her, and they are boyfriend/girlfriend.  The visit was considered to be (automatically turned into) a date, but they never left the front step of the home.  When it was time to ask him to leave, the only option given was "Ask to leave date".  I chose this.  The game appeared to pause, but all the animations continued (the spinning hearts over their heads, the girl's plumb-bob, etc.)  After the pause stopped, he ran home (across the street) and she went in to eat before bed.

Ever since then, the game has been freezing like that every few minutes.  Saved it, shut down, came back to it today, it is still doing it.

Now.  I've seen references through this thread to "fixall" and "resetworld" but I can find no reference as to where to download these tools in the thread itself, nor another thread which indicates where to download.  I also did not see anywhere in this thread anyone mentioning when they first noticed the pauses, or what happened in the game when they first started.  I shall change to another family, and see if the pauses continue.

Wow, you necro'd a thread because you didn't RTFM for Awesomemod? Even worse, you wrote all that just to tell us you didn't RTFM in the last paragraph?

Here's a hint: PEBCAK

Also, just because you bought better RAM doesn't mean you have enough. If you are using a 32-bit OS, your RAM is capped regardless of how much is installed, so the problem could still be insufficient RAM.

If I understand it properly, the fucknut doesn't even have AM installed and wants to know where to download the commands from.


Also, remember that the FOJ has stated several times, that the game is only a 32-bit game, so even with a 64-bit OS to see all available RAM, I doubt the game would see it all.  You would be relying on the OS to move all other tasks away from the RAM the game can see, thus allowing the game to use the maximum amount of RAM possible, which I doubt happens.

Wow.  What a hostile community

I read the thread.  I did not see any solution listed... just a lot of supposition.

Nowhere in the thread did it say that either of those two tools were part of a specific Mod.  In fact, I was asking where I would have to get them.  That's why I said..
I mean, you did see that comment, right?  It's not like Wizard was being a... what did he call me... a "fucknut" by missing how I mentioned that I was obviously ignorant of the fact that both of those tools were included in that specific mod... since I did not where to get them... and I said as much.  So, obviously I would not have that Mod installed.

I mentioned that I had no Mods installed, so that others like myself who are brought here by a Google search for a solution to the problem, could see that people who aren't using any Mods can be experiencing this, and that they don't have to uninstall their Mods as a bug-fix.  I expected anyone reading my post to be able to comprehend what I wrote, to see that I never said anything about BETTER Ram, just that I had changed Ram months before this problem ever surfaced, so that the Ram was not an issue at all, before or after.

I've further proved on my own that Ram was not an issue, for starting a new game in Sunset Valley sees no pauses whatsoever... which proves it has nothing to do with the amount of Ram either, genius.  Way to go attempting to look smart about things, only to show that you have reading comprehension issues AND can enjoy being just plain wrong.

But, it was my mistake to attempt to seek assistance here.  Thank you for making that abundantly clear.  Let the ignorant flame war continue.

Oh.. and where is the "fucking manual" I am supposed to read?  Better yet, where is the post that everyone who joins the forum is supposed to read, that has all of this information?  Oh, and where is the moderator who should be closing threads that are not supposed to be posted in?

Yes, didn't you read the FAQ before posting your drivel here first?


Yes, you did see a solution, you quoted it yourself, coming from yourself.


If you even tried the easiest of searches you would have found an answer to these stoopid fucking questions.


But see here at MATY tardlings like you come here and resurrect dead threads asking questions that are just about always answered within all of the TL;DR all of the time. Skeptical we are.


But tards like you are the kindling for said flame war.


1. SEARCH MOAR.
2. SEARCH MOAR.
3. We are smart enough so that we don't have to have moderators (for the most part). Besides, this'll get tossed into RL eventually, that way even moar people can point, laugh and poke you with sticks.  

It's right here: www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ts3/awesome/manual (http://goatse.info).  To be honest, it is rather hard to find; it took me ages.

BAD JEEBUS. NO HELPEE TARDEE.

Rohina - hover over Jeebus linkee.

OMG COULD YOU BE ANY MORE STUPID? JFC. Why do you tards INSIST on underestimating me? I could spot you 50 IQ points and not even wince, so don't embarrass yourself by pointing out the bleeding obvious, and TRY for ONCE in your life to think more than half a move ahead.

In other words - WAY TO GIVE AWAY THE WHOLE GAME TO ANYONE WHO ISN'T A COMPLETE MORON.

Do yourself a favour in future and STFU.

It's not underestimating if it's true.

If my poor and stunted IQ is so predictable then don't post things so tempting to it. You didn't have to say anything there. I proclaim that you are now trying to cover your own butt, instead of owing up to your own fail.

Logs from last night on IRC:

[00:59] <rohina> I was helping trick it.
[01:00] <rohina> I figured it would be more likely to cleek
[01:01] <Jeebii> Too bad bit.ly threw up a warning when I tried to hide the link
[01:01] <Jeebii> The tard won't notice anyway, of course
[01:01] <rohina> My Chrome shows the link, but hopefully the tard is too stupey

Now, of course, Madame Mim has given the game away.  DAMMIT, YOU.

What a shame there is evidence to the contrary.

You know, a slightly smarter person would have PMed me. That way, you could have avoided waving a giant red flag for the tard. But I guess that's yet another thing that wouldn't occur to you because you are a complete idiot.

I'd like a better value on the times for the conversation please (at least tell me the time zone that those hours exist in), because it looks to me like backpeddling happening more than 5 hours after the original postings.

Rohina posted at about 12:47 AM my time (MATY servar time is roughly ten minutes off actual Kofistani time), and I asked her about her post at 12:59 AM, an interval that's less than fifteen minutes.

TIMEZONES: yet another concept with which Madam Mim is unfamiliar.

Oh, and by the way? This tedious nitpicking in an attempt to cover up your own stupidity is not fooling anyone.

Oh, dear, you're getting all butt-hurt now. I wanted confirmation because my listing shows your MATY posts at @09 and your so official log at @01 - a major time discrepancy. I asked for clarification and you lose it.

Thankyou Jeebus for the clarification. I see now that there wasn't any time to commence a back-peddling campaign.

It's not butthurt, it's the anger caused by someone who GAVE THE STINKING GAME AWAY TO A TARD, GODAMMIT.

FIFY

LOOSE it? Really? I would suggest you "loose" any further arguments about your being a fucking moran.