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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 11th Dec 2022 at 8:18 PM
Default Where is an Up-to-Date modding guide?
Hiyo, poke. Today i suddenly had intense nostalgia for the Sims 3. I am installing the expansions via the disc versions right now, and i was wondering where can i find an up-to-date modding guide? There are many around the web, but they are all older than 5 years. I am mostly looking for performance and quality-of-life mods.
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 11th Dec 2022 at 9:42 PM
Mods are a personal choice. IMO head to Nraas to get ones you want and also check the ones here. I use as few as possible. I had a few hundred in 2 but use far less for 3 and even fewer in 4. Mainly get error trap and overwatch in Nraas and Master Controller. I also have register and traveler and some others.

Any older mod lists are still probably pretty accurate as this game is so old now. ?
Virtual gardener
staff: administrator
#4 Old 13th Dec 2022 at 1:12 PM
There are some fantastic YouTube videos out there explaining how to get your game up and running modding wise, sometimes they even share some “Must have” mods, which are most likely going to be nraas. (which, I'd also recommend). Though, it doesn't quite matter in TS3's case whether a modding tutorial is from 2014 or very recent, the process really hasn't changed.

Though, every time I reinstall the game, I always find myself coming back to this steam guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfi.../?id=1131162350

It's really great! I've played this game since it came out, and the guide still surprises me with new ways to update the game to just run smoother. So, I'd definitely check that out as well when starting out again Plus! It keeps getting updated occasionally, which is even better!
Mad Poster
#6 Old 14th Dec 2022 at 1:31 AM
Using the Nraas keeps my game running well. I have everything other than K Perry which I did not get installed and my game runs very well. I am not sure if a factor or not, but I just have the EA story progression and sometime in the past I think I read that make saves less bloated? Others can talk more about that than I can. I just know my game runs very well on this about 12 year old PC and my about 2 year old laptop.
Instructor
#7 Old 14th Dec 2022 at 4:27 AM
Nraas used to have gameplay performance tips and general issues FAQ on its old wikispaces. Too bad igazor and the team didn't manage to re-upload them since they helped me in the past.

LGBTQ+. Fans of RAMMSTEIN, GOJIRA and Architects. Check out my favorite YouTube channels: Second Thought, Adam Something, Climate Town, and Not Just Bikes
Virtual gardener
staff: administrator
#8 Old 14th Dec 2022 at 12:48 PM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
haha didn't I already debunked 1/2 the stuff on that list in another thread?

ah here it is, well I didn't go through it thoroughly, but caught a few issues:

https://modthesims.info/showthread....943#post5845943


You're correct that some of these steps aren't really correct. To be honest, most of these tips, I've seen occasionally floating about on tumblr over the years and people being convinced that they're 100% fixing their game.


"Step 7 - Making The Game Use More CPU (Essential)" in the guide, this is actually not at all used to define how much "CPU" power it should be using. That's just plain up silly from a technical perspective. From what I can gather when reading the graphicsRules as a whole, is that what it does instead, is it first checks what kind of CPU you have, and then depending on that, it auto-sets the game's in-game graphics (and potential fixes where necessary).

Basically, it's setting information that we, the end user, can't actually reach in the in-game settings. It just sets the game's settings to super high or low.


"Step 8 - Making The Game Use The Correct Amount of Vram (Essential)" - This does actually work when editing it. What is not explained in the step itself, is that any compressed and rendered/read texture from disk to material that were compressed inside the package/disk are read in GPU memory. This was an essential step for older games, because it separated the work for the CPU to also de-compress these textures. Depending on how much is free, it can actually de-compress them much sharper because the more memory is there, the more "tiles" it can read (or rather, how many min maps it can read before displaying it on our mesh) In case you want a better in-depth on it: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/q...e-up-on-the-gpu

You really need to be cautious doing this, though! Most modern graphics card should be fine to be set to 4GB, but exceeding over the amount of GPU memory (VRAM) your Graphics card has, may actually cause for your computer to lock up, in worst-case scenario. Make sure you FIRST check the VRAM of your GPU, and then minus this by 2GB at least. Even the not-so graphical looking programs you may have open when playing the game are using some VRAM, simply for displaying it correctly on your monitor. So in my case: I have 24GB dedicated memory, so I should probably be fine with 20GB (although personally, I would just set it to 4 or 8GB in that case :p)

I do want to share a few things to any new simmers among us, who come across this thread, about a few myths that have been floating around the interwebs regarding “speeding up” the game:
  • The game is a 32-bit game. There is no way to change this into a 64-bit game, without any super duper C++ wizard looking to reverse engineer the whole engine. And there's really only a handful of those people on the planet who are capable of doing that. So we'll probably have to wait for some fancy tool to be brought on the market before being able to changing this.
  • Because the game is a 32-bit game, you CANNOT change the memory size it uses. EA already increased the memory usage from 2GB to 4GB back around when Late night was released. So, any tool that increases the RAM to 4GB (or supposedly should "remove" the max of 2GB/4GB limit it has) are useless.
Virtual gardener
staff: administrator
#9 Old 14th Dec 2022 at 2:05 PM
Quote: Originally posted by legacyoffailures
Nraas used to have gameplay performance tips and general issues FAQ on its old wikispaces. Too bad igazor and the team didn't manage to re-upload them since they helped me in the past.


You mean this one? https://www.nraas.net/community/TIP...AME-PERFORMANCE

Till this day that's still my to-go troubleshooting page :p
Instructor
#10 Old 14th Dec 2022 at 2:49 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Lyralei
You mean this one? https://www.nraas.net/community/TIP...AME-PERFORMANCE

Till this day that's still my to-go troubleshooting page :p


Oh thank you. I used to search it all day but got no luck finding it.

LGBTQ+. Fans of RAMMSTEIN, GOJIRA and Architects. Check out my favorite YouTube channels: Second Thought, Adam Something, Climate Town, and Not Just Bikes
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