TOOL: 3Booter, the Incooperative Game Kicker

[J. M. Pescado]

FPSlimiter is seperate from 3booter. It is possible to use fpslimiter without 3booter, with things other than TS3, but I intentionally stripped the unnecessary modules and documentation to keep the thing simple for stupids, so you'd be better off finding the original download somewhere else if you want to use it without 3booter.

[BobbyTH]

I come bringing my two cent, at the point we are ,,,all in the boat,,,every little bit of significant input is wort it weight in gold...

I was gonna post 10 minutes ago,with a question,but i bring the answer instead,
- I do not condemn the use of fpsLimiter ,After my Rig BSOD 2 time on me because of my "Twin Engine" GTX260SLI exceeded 85 degrees Celsius!I started paying closer attention to it...
- I thought that 200fps is pretty normal for my setup but the game is in fact missing a "V sinc" which would works out to 60 fps on a normal flat screen,although some 24''or larger are set to 85hz !
- I think its best for those that have Nvidia setting (I belive ATI tray Tools can do this as well),Is to "force Vsinc" on a game basis or Globally...I have notice a 10 degree drop to a more respectable 55C with "Force Vsinc ON"...

My PC is high end, with a very powerful (and expensive) graphics card. The case is practically a giant fan, plus the graphics card has its own fan and heat sink, so I'm probably not in any danger of burning out my graphics card but, I figured, why take any chances? I've been loading the game from the TS3.exe. I think I'll just stick with that.

I think that the bigger your card ,the more at risk you are...My setup can draw 240watts per cards at full load,The more watts means more HEAT that need to be dissipated,and most big card are not so good at it,You have to manually increase the Fan speed to 80%+ in my case,,,most card are set to about 40% on automatic,and wont kick in overdrive until the temp as exceeded a safe margin,So basically don't rely on your card automatic setting cause in the end your the one that will pay dearly!(I once literally melted a fan of the card)
My last word ...Stupid EAxis

   

[Liz]

So, the obtrusive, flashing, green "30" in the upper left corner of the screen. Desired result, problem indicator, or Liz doin' it wrong?

[Liz]

Not running windowed - is that recommended, then?

[Liz]

Didn't think it was supposed to be - thanks for clarifying that part.

[witch]

I had the big flashing green number on my laptop last night. I tried 'fps off', not really expecting it to work - and it didn't. I ended up removing fpslimiter for the time being and restarting the game. I run fullscreen.

[Mootilda]

Running TS3 windowed?
That indicator is there, but ought to be hidden behind the fullscreen TS3 window.

I always run windowed and the indicator only flashes up for a moment.

[J. M. Pescado]

So, the obtrusive, flashing, green "30" in the upper left corner of the screen. Desired result, problem indicator, or Liz doin' it wrong?

It normally attached itself to the DOS window or some other window, like Furryfox, and goes away when the window is shrunk/autokilled, but on rare occasions it will manage to glom itself onto the main window and give you a big obstrusive FPS counter in the game instead. Unfortunately, since this is third-party code and no source is provided, I don't know of any solution. You decide whether the occasional glitch in which a green FPS indicator showing up in the game is worth tolerating, or if you prefer replacing $200 graphics cards.

[Liz]

You decide whether the occasional glitch... is worth tolerating, or if you prefer replacing $200 graphics cards.

It does seem to be intermittent; further starts have been indicator-free. I'm not going to stress the occasional occurrence; I just wanted to be sure I wasn't Doin' It Wrong.

[Scroll]

<snip> If the game crashes within 30 seconds of an attempted start, 3booter will kick it in the taco.

<snip>

What exactly does "kick it in the taco" mean? What happens when it's kicked?
When its kicked, is it kicked only once? Also does it load correctly or will it start to iterate UNTIL it loads?

I think I will need this. Yesterday I could not get my game to load. I tried 15+ times and then finally gave up. I have been crying on the shoulder of the "chief of development" all morning here at work, but he (as all dev guys) can only talk zeros and ones. I think he said something like this:
"When the Sims is loading it is threaded and depending (random) what manages to load first it will crash if other stuff isn't in place yet. It will not wait for the goods to load if they come in the wrong order for the mod, but it should. Because of the random order of loading (due to the threading) it's like a lottery if you manage to load or not. Only way around this is the source code to the Sims 3".
I would love to give him the source code, he would have a blast during his vacation.  Can he be correct? Its EA's fault!

I refuse to play this game if it's not awesome!

[J. M. Pescado]

What exactly does "kick it in the taco" mean? What happens when it's kicked?

It's a Buttism. Figure it out.

When its kicked, is it kicked only once? Also does it load correctly or will it start to iterate UNTIL it loads?

It is booted repeatedly until it loads, if it manages to crash within 30 seconds of loading.

I think I will need this. Yesterday I could not get my game to load. I tried 15+ times and then finally gave up. I have been crying on the shoulder of the "chief of development" all morning here at work, but he (as all dev guys) can only talk zeros and ones. I think he said something like this:
"When the Sims is loading it is threaded and depending (random) what manages to load first it will crash if other stuff isn't in place yet. It will not wait for the goods to load if they come in the wrong order for the mod, but it should. Because of the random order of loading (due to the threading) it's like a lottery if you manage to load or not. Only way around this is the source code to the Sims 3".
I would love to give him the source code, he would have a blast during his vacation.  Can he be correct? Its EA's fault!

Yeah, that seems to pretty much cover it, although there remain some unanswered questions, like why it still does it even when you replace the entire gameplay package...

[Scroll]

Great! The repeat boot sounds like my kind of stuff, I am lazy. Just wanted to make sure, some people make strange stuff that doesn't really do what you expect them to do (like EA and The Sims 3). I do trust you though for good or for bad.

[J. M. Pescado]

It's good to be bad.

[Luisa]

Running TS3 with AwesomeMod on a PowerColor HD 4670 PCS Edition 512MB GDDR3, and on a 28 inch LCD at 1920x1200 native.

I get 90-100 FPS max (like staring at a very simple shape like a flat wall), about 50fps when playing normally looking at my sims, and about 30-40fps when zoomed right out and spinning around the neighbourhood.

The room the rig is in is air conditioned so I generally see CPU (Athlon X2 4850e) at about 29C with the stock cooler and Hard Drive (WD VelociRaptor) at 19C. Case is cooled by six silent 120mm fans and graphics card gets up to about 56 C when playing, which if I  remember from my OC'ing days doesn't sound like much of a temp to worry about, but then it is a pretty midrange GFX card and that temp is the highest thing in my system by far.

So, given that data, in your opinion would I get much benefit (from running the fpslimiter, or is that nothing to worry about?

I ask because I can get AwesomeMod to run fine on second boot every time (since it always does the strange loading screen crash first time) and I love AwesomeMod. I tried 3booter and the game still boots second time, but it doesn't automatically do the second boot - I still have to do it manually, not sure why. Maybe my game takes too long (over 30S) to get to the crash point? Is there a way to automatically kill the unnecessary loading screens/vids other than hitting ESC as the vid starts, which would bring the first time TS3 booting crash to within the 30second window so that 3booter can do it's job?

Thanks,
Lu.

[edalbformat]

I don't really have crashes to desktop too often, just ocasionally. I also don't use the top graphic card available but I had a problem with overheat and my GC almost burned. I was luck that I have a very sensible nose and noticed that something was not smelling well and switched off the computer before everything went on fire. Sent the computer for repair cause I was afraid that something really got burnt and no one noticed anything, just because the guys at the computer shop simply left the computer on for 3 days without any operation. To say the truth if you are not playing games you don't need even to know that you have a graphic card. Lost time.
Back to the problem I installed 4 fans inside the computer and now it blows my ears when working, but I got rid of the heat partially.
It is not sure that I need a 3booter once I'm  only afraid of the gc heat. Unfortunately I'm very late reading threads and maybe the other tool could also help me.
Another thing, as you informed about the bug, isn't it possible that EA will also get aware of it and correct it self? Or should we just cross fingers - and stick them in the ears?

[Heinel]

You decide whether the occasional glitch... is worth tolerating, or if you prefer replacing $200 graphics cards.

It does seem to be intermittent; further starts have been indicator-free. I'm not going to stress the occasional occurrence; I just wanted to be sure I wasn't Doin' It Wrong.

Yeah, I also had this problem, and it also causes a black square where the text is so it completely covers the current action in the action queue.  It's quite frustrating.  If you run windowed, you can try to open another window and keep it active for a bit while the game loads.  It seems to encourage the indicator to embed itself on that window a little more.

[HazelEyes]

How can I force 3booter to pass arguments to the game .exe? I specified windowed mode, but it opens at full screen. When I run a shortcut directly from the game .exe I use the -w argument.

[J. M. Pescado]

You don't need to pass arguments to the program to do anything in TS3. Just go to Options and set Windowed mode.

[Writin_Reg]

I'm running an AMD Phenom 64 bit quad core with a PNY NGeforce 9400 gt w/ 1 gig ram on the video card and 6 gigs of Corsair high speed ram. I have Sata everything but do have an oldish monitor still. Just got this pc May 30th and have a new monitor soon - I hope - it's supposedly on back order.

But anyway - I don't get the crash issue ever since I stopped using the disk in my dvd - so should I still install 3 booter and the fps controller? I have sensors on everything - an my VC never runs higher than 46 degrees. As I have an older  KDS monitor i currently have my refresh set at 85. After all this expense at getting this pc built, and now having had to order a new monitor, I surely don't want to have to buy another new VC - but not sure how to install without the 3 booter if i don't have crashing issues. Should I install it anyway as well as a start up?

Thanks in advance.

----Just dropped back in to say I installed both anyway and had no problems that I can see anyway. I checked my VC temps during play and they had actually dropped to 43 degrees which is as low as this card ever gets as that is my start up temps. I'm just using the 3 booter as a start up shortcut  and was happy to see the game still started and played great without the disk. I was really impressed that during a full 6 hours of play my temps did not even deviate even a fraction and stayed 43 degrees throughout the evening. It was funny after I shut down the game and rebooted - for the heck of it i played one of those desktop games and watched my temp go up to 46, which tells me your device does well. Thanks again with all you do.

[HazelEyes]

You don't need to pass arguments to the program to do anything in TS3. Just go to Options and set Windowed mode.

...Oh. It didn't occur to me that they would incorporate a convenient way to use a useful feature.

[J. M. Pescado]

I'm running an AMD Phenom 64 bit quad core with a PNY NGeforce 9400 gt w/ 1 gig ram on the video card and 6 gigs of Corsair high speed ram. I have Sata everything but do have an oldish monitor still. Just got this pc May 30th and have a new monitor soon - I hope - it's supposedly on back order.

There's no real reason to upgrade your monitor if the one you already have works: Monitor technology has remain fixed for nearly 15 years and unless something is physically wrong with yours, getting a new one is just needlessly wasteful.

[Writin_Reg]

It sometimes suddenly goes black screen. My husband opened it up and cleaned everything while I cleaned the case (he knows what he is doing - yes - before you ask. He was a former radio (cb, ham, stereo, etc and tv repairman before he got into computer) as the thing was new in Jan 2000 and had never been opened. It was a good monitor and we paid a lot for it, but it puts out a lot of excessive heat which it really shouldn't. It didn't use to get that hot. Cleaning didn't squash that very much at all. It's an Avitron by KDS. The picture is still gorgeous though. Usually letting her sit a few minutes after it goes black (shut off of course) it comes back on and works flawlessly. I replace my pcs every 2 years, but keep the same monitor, as we always try and get a good monitor instead of one of those el cheapo things. It's only other flaw besides the fact it's weighty is the screen is small and it is not capable of handling the resolution my system offers. At most I can put 85 as a refresh rate on a 1200x800 screen and the picture is perfect, more than that and the monitor can't handle it. So I figured nearly 10 years of use was more than i had expected and really time to upgrade. Besides that popping sound when she goes out is a bit unnerving to say the least.

[J. M. Pescado]

You could try reducing the refresh. There's no good reason to drve a monitor at 85, given that humans can only see about 30, anyway.

[Writin_Reg]

I did, which is probably why it's still alive. I moved it down to 60, which seemed to be a default. I get my parts via my son a state away up in Maine from Tri -State Computer, as I get them 15 percent over  the shops cost - so I figure for the money I can't possibly get a better deal. When I bought this monitor I didn't have that advantage as my boy was still in college. I still think getting nearly 10 years off of one monitor isn't bad, and I just don't want it to reach the point where a ten minute wait ends up with the thing not firing up on me.

I also use this same pc for my day job, as i work from home. I'm like a Vampire and can't go out in the sun - so I sleep all morning, work most afternoons, play games at night. My pc has very little downtime. it is crucial the thing not go out on me when I working though, unlike gaming it's sometimes difficult to go back where I left off. So it may be an expense I had preferred to forego, all around I believe it's the better alternative.

[J. M. Pescado]

Ah, yes, the sun. I do so loathe sun. This is why I live underground where I never have to actually see sunlight.