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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 30th Aug 2020 at 11:34 PM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 3, World Adventures, Ambitions, Late Night, Generations, Pets, Showtime, Supernatural
Confusing Crash Cause, Looking for More Info
Specs:
OS: El Capitan
CPU: 2 x 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-cores total)
RAM: 26 GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 3072 MB

Firstly I can get it to run, but I dislike the solution and I'm seeking more information so as to figure out another way around it. So a couple weeks ago I'm playing and my game's running fine. I had started a new save and was beginning making a new sim then I got busy IRL and left the game running in CAH. When I got back it was still running perfectly, but I was going to N&C so I Quit through the in game interface and it shuts down properly with no errors.

Next time I play it wont run, so:
I check Documents and the CurrentGame folder is empty so it's not that.
I delete caches and that doesn't fix it either.
I restart the computer; because even though I'd just turned it on that sometimes fixes it; but it didn't work either.

Now this has happened to me before, and I can debug it but sometimes even after I run the whole battery of tests there's just absolutely no reason why it shouldn't be running. Then I'll go do something else and try again in a couple days and it will just suddenly work again. So I thought it was just another one of those times where TS3 was mad at me and needed to cool off, and I didn't bother with the whole debugging process.

However this time it went on for a couple weeks, and I thought that was unusual so I decided it was time to go through the debugging process. I found some issues with the Downloads folder, but so far as I know that folder doesn't even matter. The items I need are already installed, and I have backups on a secondary drive if I ever needed to reinstall.

There was a second cause though, the Mods. However all the mods were working before, and it seems to not be any of the mods individually nor in any combination. I suddenly have a strict mod limit of 342, though I've never had a mod limit before.

Mind you I'm not real mod crazy (anymore) as it looks. A third of those are sliders I got when I first started TS3 maybe a decade ago. I did a ton of research on sliders those first couple years and managed to get all the ones I need in order to make any kind of Sim I could ever want, then never looked at sliders again.

Back then I also tried tons of cc and other mods but I realized I didn't really care all that much about them. I think I had over 2k at one point, and a 30 minute load time on the game (compared to ~1 now with my SSD). The only things I kept were a few well balanced cc that complete the game imo, graphics updates, and the NRaas Mods, and KW, and that was it for a long time.

There may be a couple others I collected, and I do have store content too, so I'm not sure what is what anymore... Well the breast feeding mod is third party for sure. Also I got KAPs child abilities set recently, to replace the JTP child abilities set which wasn't really functional anymore (though it didn't cause glitch nor crash) and couldn't do as much. I kind of just forgot it was installed because I think it stopped working with an update years ago, so I just uninstalled it when I discovered and installed KAPs.

Anyway... Anyone know what the deal with the sudden Mod limit is? I mean some of the old sliders I have possibly don't work anymore so I could try to figure that out going through them all, and then I wouldn't have to lose anything. However that will be a pain, and what if I want to install more mods in the future? I'd like to find a way around it.
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 31st Aug 2020 at 1:56 AM
Are you really playing the Mac version of the game or are you using Mac hardware to play the Windows version (and by which method)? As I am sure you are painfully aware, TS3 for Mac is crippled in that it is currently limited to 2 GB of RAM usage no matter how much you have installed.

From where you are now, can you not even launch the game to get to the Main Menu or did you really mean that your game save won't load? If the game won't even launch, what happens if you pull out your Mods folder entirely and clear the cache files? And what happens if you remove or rename your TS3 User Game Folder in Documents so that a fresh one with no added content at all spawns to take its place on the next attempted startup (aka the Clean Folder Test)?

I'm a bit puzzled by an entry on your list of mods though. KW is programmed so poorly that it breaks players' games on any system and it is also known to corrupt players' User Game Folders although that one is a bit more uncommon. It is also totally not compatible with many major NRaas mods and certain elements of gameplay. You can't remove the mod from an ongoing game that has already "seen" it, but can you start a new test game if you take it out and clear caches, if it's the case that you get as far as the Main Menu?
Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 2nd Sep 2020 at 1:35 AM
The Mac version. Originally I could barely install any cc or mods and often got crashes and save errors, so I looked into the RAM issue years back. I found some info online and combined that with what I could figure out looking at the game files and increased the limitation (I don't remember exactly what I did), after which I didn't have any problems with that.

I reprogrammed the game to load straight into the load screen. That I remember how to do, because I had to redo it every time the game updated or I had to reinstall the game patch when something broke. So when I launch it it shows a floating plumbob in the middle of the screen immediately which shows that it's responding, then after a couple seconds the full screen goes black (it loads the game and mods here behind the scenes), then after a few seconds it loads into the load save menu screen. With 1+ more mods than the limit I mentioned in the OP it will never go past the black screen all of a sudden. The way it use to act was it would take a tiny bit longer for each mod extra but eventually load.

I am not using the old broken free version of KW, I am using the latest stable version which is not available to the public for free. It doesn't give me any errors, in fact it has something like Error Trap built into it now so it fixes errors that even Error Trap misses sometimes. I'm pretty sure it updates/fixes old saves that were broken by the free version too. Oniki Kay advertises her Patreon and the fact that this version is made available to patrons on Lovers Lab where the free version is.
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Before I send this reply I'll test the game again in case something magically changed, which I wouldn't be surprised about.
Result: Still wont load with all mods in anymore.
Mad Poster
#4 Old 2nd Sep 2020 at 3:52 AM Last edited by igazor : 2nd Sep 2020 at 4:12 AM.
Okay, uh-boy.

First of all, there is no way that the rest of us know of to overcome the 2 GB RAM limit on TS3 for Mac in much the same way there is no way to lift the 4 GB limitation on the Windows version. The Mac version of the game is installed by way of a poorly implemented Cider wrapper that emulates Win XP and the game has never been able to be made Large Address Aware (LAA) like EA was able to do with the Windows version as of Patch 1.17. The best we can do with the Mac version is Purge RAM from a Terminal command constantly throughout play to help keep game usage at or under 2 GB. Now that I've typed all that out though, I remember that BluebellFlora (her own site, now she practically runs various Mac sections of EA's AHQ boards as a volunteer Hero) did come up with a way that was supposed to help the game out as its calls for RAM exceeded 2 GB, but I never once got the game to wander above what Activity Monitor was reporting as 2.05 or maybe it was 2.1 or so without crashing and/or Error 12s, so the benefit was pretty limited. She said back then that did turn out to be the general user experience with her solution unfortunately and I think one of the later macOS releases made it totally ineffective anyway -- this was way back in the days of Mountain Lion or one of the prior cats.

And it is of course fine to run the game with a 2 GB (or so) limit if the player is okay with that. I could always start new games and begin to play them even with all 11 EPs in play. But once many of us progress our games beyond the first generation and begin to populate our worlds with twice as many sims as they tend to come with or more, the game for us, in the ways we choose to play and especially with Pets and Seasons going, really needs more RAM than that.

Your setup to launch the game into the Main Menu sounds like it accomplishes the same thing as a Launcher bypass. The Launcher and Origin were thankfully never required to startup the Mac version, that could always be arranged by an alias (shortcut) to the base game's executable or to that of the most recently released EP/SP. But maybe yours somehow does this in a different manner.

I play the Windows version by way of Bootcamp now, but I would love to hear what you have done to increase the RAM cap on the Mac version. That said, EA is working up a new update to TS3 for Mac that we hope to see released later this year that will make the game able to be run on 64-bit only operating systems like Catalina (and the soon to be released Big Sur). Whether they are undoing/fixing the broken Cider implementation and lifting the RAM cap that way for all players who can use the newer version or just tricking the crippled one into running on Catalina remains to be seen, but we are all watching and hoping for the best.

I am aware of the different versions of KW, although I didn't realize that she was still pushing out new versions on the paid platform (I tend to fall behind a lot as I don't use the mod or participate on LL in any way). The developer actually "stole" (if you can call it that, the mods are open sourced after all) the code of many of our mods without permission and now charges by way of Patreon for the usage of hers that contain them. Our developer confirmed this by revealing some hidden code that doesn't really do anything in some of our mods and found it showed up in hers as well. But anyway, this isn't NRaas so of course it's fine to ask others for help and what their experiences are if it's okay with the moderators and other powers that run this site, but I have to say that there is no support to be offered (from us, in an official sense) for players who have KW and NRaas mods in play. Not that you were asking for, demanding, or even expecting such, and you only mentioned KW in passing, but just felt the need to point that out. Her mod breaks players games, or at least it has and does for players who bring us the resulting mess although we don't really know which of them are using the free vs. the paid version. That you are successfully running it on the more crippled Mac version of the game sounds pretty amazing to me, as it's also known to be very resource intensive even when it is working properly, or at least it sounds like you are way ahead of where others would be on such a setup.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#5 Old 11th Sep 2020 at 3:08 AM
I had just modified the wrapper. I remember reading a bunch of tutorials on accessing and modifying wrapper files years back; not specifically for TS3; and looking around in the code and trying things out to figure out what stuff does. I could explain how I did the launcher bypass but I don't think I wrote down any other modifications I did to the wrapper. The wrappers not encrypted (at least not with the apps I use to open it), so I can see the coding and change whatever I want. I very rarely use forums or chats so I didn't talk to anyone about it or post it, I always just assume if I can do something someone else already has.

As I said the game runs perfectly fine if I limit the number of mods I use; regardless of which mods I use; and then just doesn't run with more mods than that. Since you're not actually talking about that at all I guess it's not something part of the game nor effecting anyone else. Must be the gods fucking with me or something.

The free version of KW is unplayable, I never have issues with the version I have installed corrupting anything (it in fact makes errors less likely). While I do remember extending the limit of a game from 2GB to 8GB RAM by modifying the wrapper, perhaps that was not TS3. I have a program that monitors CPU and RAM usage, so I'll test it out and see if TS3 is actually going past that limit or not.

Loading to Menu (with 342 or all 349 mods): 1GB
Creating a new game: 1.2-1.45GB
Entering CAH: 1.77GB
Working In CAH (not clothes): 1.87 GB
Working In CAH (clothes, no filters all EP&SP): 1.9-2.19GB (varies by section)
Selecting a Saved Sim for family (no filters, over a decade of saving sims): 2.37GB

I get lag when loading up the countless clothes in tops and bottoms, and saved sims, but not after they're loaded. I don't get any lag in gameplay, so I assume it uses less RAM. It is going over 2GB, but I suppose 370MB might not be very significant to some people. Sometimes I'll get the Error 12 when I don't save for over an hour in a game several generations in, which I think is from RAM limit. Although I'm not sure how much RAM that is actually at, so I'll just check next time it happens.

Since I have this new mysterious mod limit; which is seriously based on number of mods, not size of mods or any particular combination of mods; do you know of any site/tool that can check mods and tell me what versions of the game they will work on? Like I said I have a ton of sliders, and if some aren't even working anymore I'd like to remove them. It would take a couple full work weeks to check them removing one at a time and checking if any in game sliders vanish.
Mad Poster
#6 Old 11th Sep 2020 at 5:08 AM Last edited by igazor : 11th Sep 2020 at 5:22 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by Sweek
While I do remember extending the limit of a game from 2GB to 8GB RAM by modifying the wrapper, perhaps that was not TS3.

That would actually not be possible. Until this new promised version gets released by EA, there is no 64-bit version of the game and we don't really know if what they are working towards will be one either. No 32-bit executable can access more than 4 GB of RAM, that would be like trying to do 16-digit arithmetic on an 8-digit calculator. It is possible to reserve 8 GB in some ways, but the excess would just be sitting there unable to be used.

It may be that I was actually at one time getting almost as far past 2 GB of usage as you were, but I was only using Activity Monitor to gauge and I can't say that built-in tools like that are known for being very accurate.

Quote: Originally posted by Sweek
do you know of any site/tool that can check mods and tell me what versions of the game they will work on? Like I said I have a ton of sliders, and if some aren't even working anymore I'd like to remove them. It would take a couple full work weeks to check them removing one at a time and checking if any in game sliders vanish.

No, the best that can be done is, if you know where the content/sliders came from (and if the developer is still active, which of course isn't always going to be the case), check with the source site to see when the content was released and which patch levels they were released for. Is that what you meant by versions? Mac vs. Windows doesn't matter when it comes to in-game content.
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