More Awesome Than You!

Is your game refusing to cooperate and crashes immediately after looking like this a lot?
(http://beta.moreawesomethanyou.com:8080/ts3/awesome/2ray.jpg)
We don't know what causes it, and this won't solve that, but at least you won't have to relaunch the game. Just plop it in your root install directory next to resource.cfg and Mods directory, and point your shortcut at 3booter.exe instead. If the game crashes within 30 seconds of an attempted start, 3booter will kick it in the taco.

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/zip.gif) 3booter-win.zip (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ts3/tools/3booter-win.zip)

NEW UPDATE
Directions above have been revised: 3booter should be moved from game/bin to just the root install directory (although because you meatheads never listen, I spent an hour making sure it will actually function anyway even if you do it wrong and keep doing things the old way).

A discovery has also been made regarding "WHY TS3 WILL KILL YOUR COMPUTER". The short gist of this is that even though the game itself only runs internally at 30 FPS, the game has NO VSYNC and therefore, absolutely NO LIMITATIONS on how fast it will try to render. It will therefore happily run your expensive new video card at unnecessary speeds (I saw mine rendering at like 90-100+), causing it to rapidly overheat and die.

This program, stripped down for TS3's purposes, will prevent this in combination with 3booter:
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/zip.gif) fpslimit.zip (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ts3/tools/fpslimit.zip)
Unzip into the same place you put 3booter, regardless of whether you actually follow directions properly.

FAILURE TO DO THIS CAN RESULT IN YOUR VERY EXPENSIVE NEW VIDEO CARD BECOMING A VERY EXPENSIVE LUMP OF FUSED HARDWARE!
On the other hand, if your computer is a piece of shit, you have nothing to worry about, you probably can't render 30 fps, anyway.

I took 3booter out of the game/bin and placed it in the root install directory...  works fine.  I unzipped the fpslimit to the same place as 3booter.. root install directory.  But with fpslimit installed the game will not boot up.  I see a dos window flash open for a second but no game start up.  If I take out the fpslimit files and start the game with 3booter it starts up with no problem.

I tried seeing if the game would boot up if I took 3booter and fpslimit files out of the root install directory and placed them in the Game/Bin folder... same thing happens I see a dos window flash for a second then nothing but when I take out the fpslimit files and the game starts up fine by way of 3booter. 

Not sure what I am doing wrong.

What directory did you install the game in? Because I can't reproduce this issue at all.

All my programs are installed on Local Disk (H:)(due to some things this computer case has added to it)  so the game is installed at H:Program Files/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3.   I had a feeling mine being H: not C: could be the problem but not sure how to go about making changes... lol

Try the new version. I wonder if it's stupid space-name related. SPACE NAMES ARE EVIL.

Something is wrong with your game if it is being jerky: Don't use a framelimiter if your computer sucks. Besides, it can't be jerky, the game itself has an internal tickrate of 30 fps, meaning even if we rendered faster, the game would only be drawing identical frames of unchangingness. Besides, humans cannot even see faster than ~30 fps. If you're getting jerkiness, you probably shouldn't be framelimiting.

From your description, it sounds like you are trying to start the game by double clicking on the fpslimit file, is this correct?  I believe you are still supposed to start with the 3booter, which I believe would check for the fpslimit file and execute it.

I suspect 3booter won't work if you aren't using a nointro pack, since you have to sit through the ea games logo and hit a key to skip the movie, that will probably take longer than 30 seconds.  (I was going nuts before my no intro mod!!)

I tried to install FPS_Limiter, and Windoze wouldn't let me. It gave me a warning about needing something called Hookhelper and then refused to install the program. I have no idea what Hookhelper even is. I'm new to Vista, and the learning curve has been very steep compared to XP. I've been running the game from the TS3.exe file, but would prefer to use 3booter. Both 3booter and FPS_limiter are installed to the root The Sims 3 directory under Program Files, not the bin. Plz halp, kthxbai.

The fpslimit.zip contains the necessary DLLs, including Hookhelper.  Just extract everything from the zip file and place it in the same location as 3booter.exe.  Then, run 3booter.

Ah, that makes sense. I had DLed to a different directory by mistake, and only moved the FPS_Limiter.exe file to the correct directory. Why, no, I'm *not* always the sharpest pencil in the box. Why do you ask?

No, that can't be the problem.  I'm running with TS3 installed on a drive which isn't C: and I'm not having this problem.

It's not drivenames. The only thing I can think of and tried fixing in the new version is people who install to VILE SPACE NAME directories.

I've installed it and all seems to be fine. No problems to report, that is. Of course, my game wasn't crashing to begin with and I have no clue how to check the FPS. Since I have a pretty new system and video card, I'm not taking any chances. Thanks for the head's up and the fix.

I have no problems with 3Booter, in fact, I love having it for those times when Sims3 refuses to boot up properly.   It's the fpslimiter I have a problem with but no biggy.  :)

Can you please tell me where the root install directory is? I would like to install this but I have no idea where to find the root install directory.

I downloaded the Awesome fix and then had to install the enablescripterror because my game kept crashing. Things were fine for a few days, but then today the crashing started again, and also I went back to a family I had made Sacred and they had done things on their own, including the husband getting a job, the wife going to the cemetary, and the two of them had hired a babysitter. Somehow they had become Unsacred.

Should I uninstall everything and then reinstall, along with the 3Booter?

C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3

HI pescado when I moved the booster out of the game bin and into the root directory it would launched but hung on the opening screen and I had to crash it to close it, when I moved it back to the bin it worked fine, the fpslimit I thought I'd try out but the game wont load at all with it in ???. Thanks so much fir all your game help, we'd be lost without you. :-*

My 3booter isn't even working, now that I've installed the FPS_Limiter. I moved all the needed files to the root directory, installed FPS_Limiter, and created a new shortcut for 3booter that points to the new location, but nothing works. I give up.

Try the new version that just went up a few hours ago. I eliminated a race condition that could make it not function on possibly slower computers...although if your computer is that slow, you probably don't need a limiter anyway.

I've had a ATI Radeon 3850 installed last week. Is my video card good enough to be in the danger zone?

(Man, crap like this is why I'm sticking to Sims 2 til the bitter end.)

Well, a 3850 is probably better than my old 1950, so yeah, you're probably well into the danger zone.

I think this probably happens in TS2, too, except that TS2 is CPU-bounded and therefore will crap your CPU out before it can crap your graphics card out. CPUs, however, are generally given better heat dissipation than graphics cards.

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.

This is wonderful. Couldn't get awesome mod to work before - game kept crashing. Saw this and thought I'd try yet again because only you can fix this game and was determined to get it up and running. So I now use the 3booter.
And lo - it loaded
Oh most gracious high lord of All Sims  I bow down to your greatness.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

So does fpslimit require 3Booter or what? I haven't had overheating problems so far, but I don't want to risk it, and I'm not having crashing problems.

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.

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"...

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

   

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

Not running windowed - is that recommended, then?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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! ;D

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

It's a Buttism. Figure it out.

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

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...

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.

It's good to be bad.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Hehehe. Besides the night sky is so "awe-inspiring". It's practically the only time you notice it's brillance and vastness, never mind it's ever changing  "surprises". Unlike practically everyone else I know but my hubby, I never miss the meteor showers and the lovely light shows the "Northern Lights" provide us New Englanders. I don't live underground though, but in fact very much above ground - partway up a mountain, atop a foothill of the White Mountains and the White Mountain National Forest.

It works well for me as my pets of choice are Cats - I have 13 which are night creatures themselves. It seems their idea of the only good reason to have sunshine is to grow them herbal grasses and catnip, and as something that provides them a warm and toasty spot to nap away their day in a window.

What do the flashing numbers mean? Now that you told me about pointing the shortcut to the 3booter, I guess the programs are working and I'm getting the flashing numbers. I can put up with it since I don't want to fry my graphics cards, but am just curious about what the numbers mean.

If running it at that speed is the best thing for my graphics card, then I am grateful the program was created. Even though my computer is not exactly new, I bought it because of the graphics card, among other things, so I want to protect the card. I just didn't know what the numbers meant.

Minonda, you shouldn't be seeing large green flashing numbers. I had those and didn't need to have them over-riding the game screen. I tried re-downloading the fpslimiter and that seemed to get rid of them. In the cheat console/command line, you can type "fps on" which puts a tiny framerate number at the top right hand corner of the screen and doesn't dominate the game.

The large flashing green numbers thing is caused by the FPSlimiter display attaching itself to the wrong window. This seems to just happen randomly. There is not much we can do about it since it is a third-party program with no source.

Thanks, witch. I'll re-download it, put 'fps on' in the cheat console, and see if that changes things, keeping in mind Pescado's comment that seeing the numbers is a random thing. It's always something, right?

The "fps on" has no connection with the fpslimiter, it belongs to either EAxis or awesomemod, probably the latter. You don't have to have it on, it's just a way of seeing the frames your game is running at.

The green flashing numbers belong to fpslimiter and Pescado just explained why that happened.

I stopped using fpslimiter for a while, then went back to it. Don't know if that made a difference. Oh and I also re-downloaded 3booter. I did go back to using it because I was sick of hearing my new, good video card labouring away for no good reason.

Okay, I thought they were connected. I deleted the fpslimiter and reinstalled it, and as happened when you did it, the flashing numbers stopped.

I feel stupid...But how does this work without 3booter? I keep trying and I still get to 80 with vsync. And when quitting I get 500 all spastic up to 600...EA WTF.

...but yes, I can't get it to work. I put in the root, directory, and everything do I have to change anything other then plopping it down?

I've got both 3booter and the FPSlimiter in root directory but every time I start up with 3booter the game gets to loading screen and crashes about midway through and then nothing happens. I have to manually delete the cache files in my documents and open 3booter again which then the game loads completely. I thought it would do this automatically? Using the newest version

I feel tardy for asking, but here goes.
I'm playing sims 3 on my laptop, am i still in danger of a melt down?
Do i still need to download this, on occasion i will get the game freezing and colours bleeding in to one.

Yes, your laptop still has a graphic card. And those colors are probably a sign of overheating, leading to a death in the end.


Download it.

Ok, i'm trying to download it to root file, but i am getting a message saying i need admin privileges may be rquired.
Ant advice please? ???

Download it to your desktop.  Then just copy/paste it to the root directory.

I hadn't been using FPS Limiter with 3Booter, then for the heck of it I typed "fps on" in the command console.   It was at that point that I had to pick my jaw up off the floor.  It seems that my computer is far better than TS3 needs... in the upper right hand corner it read 255.  Needless to say I am using FPS limiter now, even though the randomly visible FPS in the upper left corner is a bit annoying.

It helps if you look at another window while this is happening, so the green crap ends up nailed to Furryfox or something, and vanishes.

I am playing TS3 on a laptop - Intel Dual Core (I forgot the ghz) with Mobile Intel (r) 964 Chipset Family. Does this count as a piece of shit computer?

Yes. Your computer has no graphics capability and cannot be used for games. Don't even bother.

Apparently, unbeknownst to me, my Thinkpad actually has a Radeon inside it as well as a crappy onboard graphics card - if I hadn't reformatted, there was apparently a utility in Vista to swap from one to the other for gaming. If your computer has that, you probably need the frame limiter.

Are you going to make a new version for the upcoming ep? I'm gonna really need it, as I refuse to play without my fpslimit. :)

There is no upcoming EP. These claims are nothing more than lies and propaganda created by the Liberal-controlled media.

Denial?


Is there any way I can edit the file so that the highest is like 60 or 40? I find the drop from 31 to 26 is a pretty jagged switch, it only happens when moving one pattern thing from an object to another, but yeah :). And then sometimes I hit 28 in game and it just seems to be jagged-ish. I'd like to be safe but also have a complete smooth experience that I had before. Also, I heard that eyes can see up to 60-more, so wouldn't 30 appear pretty jagged?

Hehe, but if I can't I can live, when I saw my constant frames I was afraid for my own life. Even though my card has never reached 70c.

No, I simply don't see any actual expansion pack. Do you? I dare you to demonstrate otherwise.

No. You can't see 60-more. That's ridiculous. Try it. Run a 60-frame clip where one of the frames is unrelated and contains a message. I dare you to read that message. Bet you can't. Because you can't see 60 fps. As for the drop from 31 to 26, if you're experiencing frame drop at ALL, nothing will help. If it can drop BELOW 30, that means it would already have done so anyway.

My game started crashing on the startup, so I loaded 3booter and while I was at it I loaded fpslimiter. The game started great but within a few minutes of play, I would get an extremely long message "Exception: The maximum stack depth for the interpreter has been exceeded........" I'm not sure how to get a copy of the whole message for you. I quit out of the game and restarted several times but keep getting the same message within minutes of playing. I removed fps limiter to restart the game and see what my rate was but now the game crashes when loading the neighborhood I want to play. I put fps limiter back in and same problem. The game loads to where I select my neighborhood but crashes then. Any suggestions?

Err...I can't say I've ever seen that. Stack overflow isn't normal, though. Screenshot the behavior and I will take a look.

If you're getting a crash BEFORE then, 3booter will not help because that is a different type of crash.

You could make a batch file that goes something like this:

cd "C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\My Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\"
del scriptCache.package
cd "C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\"
3Booter.exe
exit

That's what I've ended up doing.

I'm confused  ;D.

I never reached 30 before so how would it have gone lower? I usually never went lower then 70. But my usual, 100 was way to high. Then in CAS I would reach 300 and in map view I got up to 500 at times.  :-\ I'm gonna try taking the fpslimiter out and trying my game with vsync.

At the moment I can't get back in my neighborhood unless I remove the 3booter and fpslimiter. Then I don't get the Stack Overflow message. If I put them back in, the game crashes when I click on the check mark after picking any of my saved games (neighborhoods) so I can't try to get the exception message again. I took a screenshot when the message first appeared but the message isn't on the screenshot. Don't know where it went. I'm trying different combos of stuff to see when the game will load and when it won't but when it does crash it isn't at the normal spot, it's when selecting the saved game to play (and it does it on all 3 saved games).

Oh I get it perfectly fine :)

The thing is, if my game never goes lower then 30 without the limiter, how the heck is it going lower now? I checked without it quickly, making sure my temps didn't go to high in the process  ;). And I got over 100 with vsync on in map view while playing. Then went into create a sim, and I was still hitting 200. As far as I know that isn't static, and 200 for a computer with vysnc on is pretty high. I don't think the game would have any issues on my computer since my card is fairly recent: Nvidia geforce 9600gt OC 1gb.
Meh, how much does the limiter and 3booter strain the cpu? That's the only thing that could be really doing it other then if it's taking up ram as well. Because my 2gb is pretty low :D.

Aha, I see. I was wondering why it was scattering then going up so quickly. Usually when I saw a framerate drop before, it would stick. Before the fpslimiter by the way. But now like in the instance I said when I drag a full pattern to a new object in drops down and flies back up.

:D Thanks

I had a gpu crash which scared me back to fpslimiter. I haven't had any problems since.

Was suggested to use this fpslimiter by someone because of my problem.

Here is a quick rundown of my computer:

Intel Core i7 920 Octo-Core Processor 2.67ghz
EVGA x58 SLI Classified Motherboard
12 Gigs DDR 3 ram
Nvidia GTX 295 GPU
1000 Watt PSU

All drivers up to date.  Games that I have on this computer that run perfect on highest settings - Oblvion, Fallout3, CivIV

Games that crash:  Spore, occasionally.  Sims 3 - CONSTANTLY crashing to a blackscreen which it recovers from sometime, error message from windows is that my video driver failed and was rebooted.

I have been working with EA tech support until they finally gave up on me and offered me a free downloadable game from their store, which I refused.

I have been through all sorts  of troubleshooting, my GPU temp never goes above 55c when playing, so I don't believe it is an overheating problem.

When I run this fix, my game freezes and stutters after playing for less than a minute.  The only way to get it to work again is to short bar and bring it back up, it will run for another 30 seconds or so then freeze again.

This is the same thing that happens to the game if I try to force VSYNC on with the Nvidia control panel for this game.  Also noted that the game runs using a SINGLE GPU, tried to force it to multiple GPU like all my other games, but that doesn't work.  Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

Well Sims 3 isn't compatible with the i7 so I believe that would be your issue.

I don't remember where I heard this but someone sent an email to EA asking why the i7's aren't on the supported list, EA then responded and told them it hadn't been tested. So it's not unsupported but rather not on the supported list. Also i7's usually fail the 'canyourunit test', which sucks anyway, but still.
That was the only reason I could think of as to why this dudes computer was flipping out for no reason.
Oh and what drivers are you using? I've heard of some of the newer drivers being crap at the nvidia forums.

I have tried the all drivers that have been available since May and I have had the same problem with them all.  And yes, the 190.XX drivers are kinda glitchy with windows, but not with any games....so far.  Fallout 3, Oblivion, Spore, and Civ IV all run fine for me.

It's not on the supported list because it didn't exist at the time the game was made. This isn't really new. They obviously cannot test and claim a game is compatible with something that didn't exiat the time they tested it. The game will run.

For people who get that big green onscreen FPS display or who want to change the frame rate.

I am not sure what J. M. Pescado  has taken out of the FPSLimiter.
But as it was when posted originally on this thread;
 (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15092.0.html )
You were able to control the Max limit and on screen display.

I suspect that these keys may still work and maybe worth a try.
"keys to change the desired fps (F10 decrease / F11 increase)
 ingame fps display, show or hide with F12."
Hope this helps.

After using this tool, my art gallery is now a Riddler Gallery. I did not change anything else in my game.

I've yet to see anything about this issue with Macs. Are Macs affected? I have a nehalem MacPro with an ATI Radeon 4870, so I know if my specs were PC, I'd worry.

Unfortunately, the ATI driver for Mac is a dummy driver with no settings....bastards! I haven't had any issues whatsoever with my Sims 3, and I play frequently. I know that graphics are handled "differently" on Macs than PCs, but I have no idea how.

Thanks

It's possible that Macs are also affected. It's also possible this program will work on Mac, but I have no way of knowing.

How do I find the fps rate on a Mac? If you can tell me this and where exactly to install fpslimiter, (I know about "Show Package Contents") I'd be happy to test it and share my results.

Type "fps on" into cheat console. If you're seeing values in the 80+ range, that is bad. If you're seeing values consistently below 20, your computer sucks too much to worry about this problem.

Ok, I checked it out and ultimately, it depends on my settings. I would get anywhere between as low as 8 fps up to over 70, depending on action, zoom levels, and speed, with smoothing off. I tried different settings, and higher details slowed it down, but it was smoothing that really made it more consistent, though I didn't go higher than the low setting. I'll still go as low as 12-15 at some times, but it's usually in the 30s to low 40s now. I have a 24" screen set at 1920 x 1080. Between that and emulation, bringing ALL the setting to high makes it too laggy.

I'm glad to have learned about this. Thanks. I know Sims 3 doesn't perform as well on Mac due to it being emulated, but it still looks great! I've run it in bootcamp, (much faster) but I need 64bit Windows to see my RAM.  ::) Anyway, I WON'T run it on bootcamp without fpslimiter now.

For anyone who still has the problem of the flashing green numbers showing in the upper corner, none of the solutions posted previously worked for me,  but having the task manager open (this only works for Windows, obviously) when I start the game gets rid of it. Probably any "always on top" window will work.

Tested it and here is the correct keys. Pressing F10 toggles the green monsters.:

keys to change the desired fps (F11 decrease / F12 increase)
ingame fps display, show or hide with F10.

Not sure why this is in the "lesser" hack section, since to me it is pretty much essential to playing the game and not having my computer kill itself.

Basic specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0 GHz
4 GB RAM
512 mb nVidia 9600 GT, factory overclocked to something...can't remember/too lazy to check.
Lots of hard drive space.

My game was running at somewhere over 100 FPS during play, more when paused, and I didn't even check out CAS. Although, sometimes when in CAS, my sim's face would get all distorted and have blocks of colour and/or vertical stripes. I eventually noticed some soft, high-pitched whining/whirring from my machine and things just seemed off, so I googled for a bit and was convinced that the Sims 3 was overheating my 9600 GT. After more searching, I found this thread.  Now I'm using 3Booter + Pescado's FPS Limiter and my computer is whine-free and stays solid at 30 FPS, so I'm no longer scared of anything overheating. I haven't checked CAS yet, but I was more concerned about my video card overheating while playing, anyway.

Would it be possible to make the program have various frame-limit defaults depending on what the user prefers, i.e. 30, 40, 50, 60?  Things just seem a bit "slow" at 30 FPS, though that may be a psychological effect from knowing I have a frame-limiter...? For now, I'm manually increasing it to 50 FPS by pressing F12. Would 60 FPS be a safe configuration based on my specs?

EA needs to fix this somehow...haven't there been 3 patches already?  I didn't even know Pescado's FPS limit existed - or that there was a FPS issue - until I found a post that said "I am using the fps limiter remade by Pescado just for the Sims 3 from MATY" :-\

It's purely psychological and pointless. The game itself does not generate information faster than ~30fps tops, so drawing at higher speeds simply means pointlessly rerendering the same frame multiple times.

You're ignoring the fact that regardless of how fast your particular eye may be capable of going, the GAME ITSELF does not generate actual data to display that fast. Since the internal clock rate of a Sims game isn't fast enough to generate 60 fps worth of data, any perception that it "looks better" is purely a placebo: Imagine a film of a digital clock with a seconds indicator. Now, such a clock displays new data once per second. This means that if you film at one frame per second, it looks EXACTLY THE SAME as if you had filmed at 30 frames per second, and what you have instead are 29 duplicate frames of the clock saying the same thing it did before. If you think the resulting movie thus looks smoother, YOU ARE IMAGINING IT.

It's from the source code. The game itself has a simulator tick rate that is only so fast, running at ~30fps.

Yes, this would significantly improve quality of motion because previously, the thing restricting you was the quality of your computer. If the computer is not capable of consistently turning out 30 fps to begin with, then setting a cap on it will not have meaningful effects. Since your new computer *IS* capable of maxing out your output, you *DO* see the effect. Your previous computer was CPU-limited. Your new one is not, and this makes everything look smoother.

Correct. That is the rate at which the action in-game occurs. Since action is not occurring any faster, about the only thing you MIGHT see going faster is you waving the mouse cursor around.

No, this has pretty much been the standard tick rate of the Sims series since forever. Having the game calculate at a higher resolution will impose larger hits on your CPU, jacking up the minimum system requirements significantly, as the game is already CPU-bounded.

Based on the description of your original computer, your computer was simply not able to consistently achieve 30 fps anyway. Vsync would lock the thing at 60-80fps, depending on the refresh rate of your monitor, and even at peak performance, your computer is unable to achieve this. As for "same scene", I find it very difficult to believe you could so precisely replicate the EXACT conditions of the simulation that your 15 fps scene was completely equivalent in every way to the 40 fps scene. Especially if you did anything like pausing it to take measurements, as pausing the game raises your frame rate because the action is now STOPPED and the game no longer needs to calculate actions.

Same way every other modder does. We decompile it, which renders it into a somewhat legible, if not particularly usable, form.

Based on how things work, even if it were POSSIBLE, it would not be considered a desirable outcome.

You could try putting it in simply your TS3 install directory.

First off, I would like to give thanks to Pescado for this info. I am brand spanking new to this site, and new to the Sims3 as well. I always wondered why my high end gaming notebook would run so hot every time I would play TS3. So I took the time to read every post on this subject and READ EVERYTHING Pescado instructed. I installed both programs and found that without the program, I was running a whopping 500 FPS!!!!! Damn EA to hell for their shenanigans!!! My Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX Video Card thanked me, and I am happy to think that I am in the clear for now. By the way.... I had absolutley NO PROBLEMS with the programs and they work great. The graphics are smooth as silk. So my advice to other noobs is this............"Take your time and do the research before you get all hasty and start downloading stuff and get it all wrong."

My game hangs and crashes a lot. I think I should give the frame limiter a try. I got it to work, alone or together with 3booter. Now my question is whether I can make it work with this Auto Cheater (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=351293) from MTS2 that assigns hotkeys for cheat codes. The auto cheater works wonderfully, and I wonder if there is a way to use it together with 3booter or the fps limiter bat. Thanks for any suggestions.

I just run AutoCheat (leave it running), then run 3Booter; seems to work just fine.

Yes, it does! Thank you for this tip. You saved my sanity.

I was wondering if anyone can tell me since world adventures has come out, does it lack v-sync like the first, and if so can I use these same tools for the expansion?

Probably. And you'll have to wait until I get to the part where I can even ATTEMPT to boot the game. At this point, we are still working on a patch tool.

If we still need to use the 3booter and fps limiter, do they stay in the base game root directory or do they get put in the expansion directory?

I have no idea. You'll have to wait until I can address that problem.

Ok JM, thanks for the feedback. :)

The game still needs a FPS limiter, I just tested it then with my GTS250 1gb, and I was getting frame rates between 200 and 3500. My GPU temp jump 10'c before the game had even loaded properly. I'm using the manual FPS creation tool for now, and it's keeping my game to 30fps happily.
Stupid Fucking EA. Why can't they put Vsync in?  >:(

TS3EP01 now supported in 3booter, simply move the 3booter to TS3WA's root, same story.

Thanks for this, I've been having a few random crashes since I got world adventures and I want to try this out now. I tried the "fps on" cheat and in the top right corner the number was going usually from about 60 to 100 and the highest I saw it go was 124  :o

So that doesn't sound very good at all, hope this works

edit: I put 3booter and the fps limiter in the root sims3:WA directory is next to the mods folder and resource.cfg but it doesn't seem to be making a difference to the fps count when I put in "fps on" in the game...the number is still between 60 and 100 most of the time...

You are actually RUNNING it, right? That part is very important.

Oh.......for some reason I thought it was something you're just supposed to have in the folder and then it works itself when you're playing the game....

Slight mistake there  :-[

I double clicked both 3 booter and the fpslimiter and dos appeared really quickly for both of them, that mean they're running now?

Edit: It must not be working because it's still going at 60-100 fps. I don't know how else I'm supposed to run it, I double clicked them(3booter and fps limiter) but it's not making any difference  :-\

In your first post what do you mean by "point your shortcut at 3booter.exe"? Am I supposed to connect the Sims 3:WA Application with the 3booter.exe in some way?  ???

Honestly, all I thought I had to do was drop it in the appropriate folder, too.

You need to click on 3booter, which will then launch both the FPS limiter and your game.

I clicked on 3booter though and the black screen(ms dos) appeared for a split second then disappeared and then nothing happened after that.

Do you think something might be stopping it from launching?

If I move the files to the WA root folder, nothing happens when I double click 3booter.exe (game doesn't start). When I move them to the Sims 3 root folder, 3booter opens the game, but the FPS is still going way over 30.

Make sure you have the new version. A slightly older version would do that.

So is the 3booter and fps limiter in this thread the newest version? Because I downloaded from the links in the first post

I have them stored here on the harddisk: Boot (C:)\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Sims 3 World Adventures

Is that the right place to put it?

All I want really is a way to lower the fps, since ever since I got the patch/world adventures the game has been randomly crashing while I'm playing it. Just in case I can't get this to work....is there anything else that might work to lower the fps?

Well, you can run fpslimiter manually, it's actually a third-party program that can be used with other games as well. However, the configuration you described SHOULD work, and it works for me.

The fpslimiter does the same as the 3booter when I click it.

Would something be blocking it from working? Like uac or something?

I tried taking fps limiter out to see if 3booter would work by itself but it did nothing when I tried to load it, the black box didn't even appear.

I'm going to try taking screen pictures of the boxes that pop up and see if it helps anything

Edit: I got a picture, it doesn't include everything since it appears so quickly I wouldn't have had a chance to scroll across

(http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa285/Sabrewulf238/3booterfilenotfound.png)

Make sure you're using the latest, an older version would do that.

I posted a picture above, it seems it can't find the file

Oldversion, get new version.

Where can I get the new version? I downloaded the version that was in one of the first posts in this thread

The second post in this thread has the download for fps limiter version 0.2 which is the version I was just using.

Day before yesterday I re-downloaded the files from the first two posts in this thread, installed them, and they worked fine.

Edit: Sorry, Sabrewulf - "install" as I used it = unzip files to World Adventures root install directory...Glad you got it to work!

I never got an option to install them.....

Delete everything you have right now.

Download 3Booter and FPSlimiter.

"Install" them to the same place you just deleted from. There isn't an installer ,you just put them where they go.

Click 3Booter to launch the game.

Thanks kuronue, that worked :)

I downloaded the files from the first two posts of this thread again.
I extracted all the contained files into C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 World Adventures\ folder.

Clicking on 3booter.exe does nothing (a command prompt box doesn't pop up, not even for a split second), however double clicking FPS_Limiter.exe briefly displays the following:

(http://i573.photobucket.com/albums/ss171/byronh29/Sims/3booter.gif)

However, if I move all the files to the Sims 3 base game's root folder, then double clicking 3booter.exe loads up the game but the FPS is not limited (it goes to about 50-60 most of the time).

I have Windows 7 and the latest patch of World Adventure and the newest version of 3booter/FPS limiter.

Edit: Sorry about the big images again. Here's a screenie of my WA root folder.

(http://i573.photobucket.com/albums/ss171/byronh29/Sims/WAfolder.gif)

Edit 2: Same result regardless of whether or not the Sims 3 launcher is running when 3booter.exe is clicked.

There are 4 cache files located in My Documents ...The Sims 3. To avoid problems they should be deleted whenever you add a new or changed mod to your game.

The easiest way to do this is to create a batch program file n your Desktop. I have created one that also runs 3booter.

Follow these instructions if you want to do the same:

IMPORTANT NOTE.

This version is for Windows XP only and uses the C drive.

If you have a different operating system or use a different drive, change the TWO lines that start with "cd" accordingly.


1. Update 3booter and fpslimit as per Pescado's instructions.


2. Right click on your Desktop, select New and Text Document.

3. Double click on the "New Text Document.txt" icon that has been created and copy the following in to the text file:


cd "C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\"
del scriptCache.package
del simCompositorCache.package
del compositorCache.package
del CASPartCache.package
cd "C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 World Adventures\"
3Booter.exe
exit


4. Select File and Save As. Replace the filename with:  "Sims 3 WA.bat" and Save.

5. Select File and Exit or click on the X.


Now to clear your caches and run 3booter, just double click the "Sims 3 WA.bat" icon on your Desktop. Look for the icon that
shows a cog wheel in a window.


Warning DO NOT attempt this if you are unsure of what you are doing. No refunds are given.

Your screenshot shows 3Booter.exe with a date of July.  The date should be November.  You either haven't downloaded correctly, or you haven't replaced correctly.

Okay. I found out the problem. Google Chrome consistently downloads the old July version. Downloading from the same place in Firefox downloads the Nov. 25th version. And yes, I was downloading the versions from the first two posts in this thread.

Just in case anyone else also using Chrome was having that problem. I can't imagine why it would be doing that however.

Failure to clear cache, no doubt.

I have this info on my desktop in a file. I think I got it from the official Sims 3 site.


.......

Let's start with clearing your browser cache and Temp files.

Here's how to clear the browser cache:

Internet Explorer 8

   1. From the Safety menu, click Delete Browsing History... .

   2. Check Temporary Internet files and History, and then click Delete.

Internet Explorer 7

   1. From the Tools menu, select Internet Options... .

   2. Choose the General tab.

   3. Under Browsing history, click Delete... .

   4. Next to "Temporary Internet Files", click Delete files... .

   5. Click Close, and then click OK to exit.

Firefox 3 for Windows

From the Tools menu, select Clear Private Data, and then check Cache. Click Clear Private Data Now.
Safari

   1. From the Safari menu, select Empty Cache... .

   2. When prompted, click Empty to confirm that you want to empty the cache.

Firefox 3 for Mac OS X

   1. In Firefox, from the Tools menu, select Clear Private Data.

   2. Make sure Cache is checked, and then click Clear Private Data Now.


For your Temp folder, navigate to your hard drive, then the Windows folder.  You should have a Temp folder inside the Windows folder; double-click on it, then hit Ctrl-A to select all, then Delete.

........

That may be the way to solve the problem, if others encounter it.

Ok... First of all Thanks very much not only for the for the fps limitter but for the hole thread as well , it did enlighten me very much
I do not have a need for booter  but i installed anyway. However when it comes to fps limiter, I really needed it.
I'm currently running on an ASUS ATI HD4870x2 (2GB) -payed plenty of moolah to get this babe- on Vista Home Premium 64bit.  Unfortunatelly, teh makers of this GC decided to not include the fps option for Vista 64bit systems since they claim that that OS manages fps better.. Result? After installing WA major lag and freezes when my sim was running across town even on normal speed..not to mention the crashes.whenever my sim travelled form the one lacation to another i had to zoom out to town view and once she was ther i had to go back and touch nothing until it "loaded" averything on screen, to avoid crashing. Above that U could hear my GC fans working on full speed form miles away. I had no idea about vsync and of course i couldn't figure out how the hell this Game managed to overwork this GC. Once when i shut the game down i freaked out cause i found myself infront of a very greenish dasktop.. After reading this thread i checked my fps... 450+ fps on CAS. I downladed and "installed" immidiately. No lags and crashes since then. However when my sim is travelling on high speed it looks like there are missing frames. Before fps limiter (when i followed my sim around) i could see everything - then i crashed of course - now i can only see parts of it. My sim is at the lake, my sim is at the beach, my sim is at her house , there is nothing inbetween.. is there any way we can change the fps form 30 to 50-60?

What a difference the FPS Limiter tool makes.  Now I know why my card was getting close to strokeout temps as I watched a Sim prepare French Toast...Average FPS were around 90-100 FPS in-game.  Average temperatures were 85-90 Celsius.  Since using the FPS Limiter, temperatures are averaging at 65-70 Celcius.

Pescado,

I have a Question here?

After I installed WA, I had to move my limiter and 3 booter to the WA folder and make the start up short cut to that in order for it to run, as they no longer were running installed as originally directed - in the base game folder.

Maybe I missed some post here that stated we needed to move them - but I just want to know if the Limiter and 3 booter is supposed to be move to each EP and sp as they come out or not? They both began functioning normally once they were moved - but it bothers me that there is now nothing in regard to them in the base game folder. Is this right?

I'm glad I ran across this. Haven't had many issues with the sims, but noticed just lately that my PC is running hotter then normal. Hit the fps on after reading a few threads, and saw it topping out at 270. Must give this a try and seeing how it works out.

Heh, someone linked to a MATY thread in that conversation. Here was the EAxian response.


Adult content, I thought? He must mean the above average intelligence and maturity of many of MATY's posters.

"Big Guy". Snork.

I skimmed through this thread, so apologies if this has been mentioned and I missed it:
The 3booter doesn't do anything for me. The game crashes at the very beginning of loading time and doesn't reboot. I've tried putting the 3booter in the 2 locations mentioned, I've used it with and without the fps limiter, to no avail.
So what am I doing wrong?

MATY contains adults, therefore, it is adult content, as children are not appropriate for MATY.

I used FRAPS (http://www.fraps.com) to check the FPS and it was getting as high as 800 during the startup movie and sitting squarely at 575 during the startup loading screen.
Oddly regular gameplay was "only" around 75-85... Shutting the game down was at 675 during the black screen. >:(

I built this computer specifically for TS3, and have already replaced the video card once thinking it was faulty when it died within the first 30 days. Maybe it was the game.

Thank you for FPSlimiter. My game is now running merrily at 30 FPS.

All hail the mighty Pescado!

I usually don't get major heat issues as my case is completely open, but I noticed with TS3 that my fans would start grinding away at max speed periodically. 'Twas like a jet gearing up every 5 minutes, and frankly, annoying. I turned on FPS to find it was bouncing between about 70 and 120 in live mode, so chucked 3booter and FPS limiter on.

When paused, it hovers around 30. Scrolling and camera rotation is smooth. But when unpaused it tends to oscillate between 12 and the low-twenties, which makes for a  jerky, lagtastic experience. It looks like FPS limiter is working too well. Any ideas as to why this might be? I know very little about video card stuff.

Eh, and after installing, I still had a CTD and a freeze over 2 hours of gameplay. At least the fans are quieter though - my computer room no longer sounds like the inside of a factory.

I have never seen that happen in live mode, but if your computer cannot even reach 30 when looking at things, it is already operating at full power and fpslimiter won't help.

So, you're saying my card is too crap to bother with the limiter even though my FPS is 70+ without it? It normally runs much smoother unpaused - I generally only suffer from explainable lag on lots with too much decor or too many sims when not using the limiter.

Is there a way to apply FPSlimiter to the launcher? I'm clocking up to 1200 FPS when installing Sims3Pack files.

You get frame rates in the launcher? The Launcher is not a 3D app and does not utilize your 3D card for anything, so it is harmless. Your 3D card should not overheat from anything the launcher does because the launcher is not a 3D app.

The actual launcher itself doesn't have a frame rate, but the background install loading screen (when it runs the mini-window of the plumbob loading screen then says "success!") ... according to FRAPS (http://www.fraps.com) that does run with FPS. The major FPS numbers are all happening during the loading/shutdown sequences. With FPSlimiter installed the game is now safely capped, but there is no limiter on the Sims3Pack installer so I'm still getting crazy high numbers there.

Just pay no attention to that. It's not a 3D application and therefore can generate ridiculously high frame rates with no effect whatsoever, since it is not using your 3D card to do so. If you can actually manage to slag a computer doing just THAT, the computer was really defective to begin with.

Any idea how to stop a large green font 30 from flickering when my sims 3 game is running? I presume its presenting my current fps, but the corner of the eye flickering is kind of annoying.

Usually, if I quit the game the first time the numbers show up and restart the game, the "large green font" doesn't show up. It can't hurt to try that.

Push F10.

lol.. i don't know why that's funny.. seems like a RTFM answer.

AwesomeMod isn't working for me. The game won't load at all. I installed 3Booter and it still won't work. I have Delphy's Framework Install Monkey as well.

My game version is only 2.0.8. So would that be the reason why it's not working?

Thank you.

Yes, that would be the reason.

Oh so very restrained. Most elegant. I can barely hear the grinding and the gnashing of the teeth.

Must be pretty loud, then, since I don't have my microphone on.

Cows chew very loudly, yes.

I tried the 3booter it is in the root directory but to no avail my game crashes and doesn't start up every single time...:-( I love awsomemod it is awsome work..But i can't play ..It feels like when awsomemod comes out with and updat sims3 comes out with a patch to keep  the mod from working well with it..

Happy Grammar Day!

Further edit.  Happy Grammar Day!

I've been having problems playing TS3 for weeks. I called Alienware and they said it was because too many people in our house were using wireless. EA games said I needed to update my Radeon Ati thingy, which I did. (Of course now that I did update, I get a message in-game telling me to update, which never happened before).

Anyway, I came across your thread here through TS3 and once I typed "fps on" in the cheat box, the numbers were between 150 and 300, and I totally freaked.

Downloaded the 3booter and fps limiter tonight and the number stays at 30, no lag or stuttering, and the damn game is working okay...(still worried about that in-game message though!).

Anyway, just wanted to say thank you. I shouldn't have to be a fuckin' rocket scientist to play TS3, I should be able to just load the damn game and play...but if that's the way EA wants it...

Thanks so much for all the info and the links...you are def more awesome than EA!

Thank you for sucking on Grammar Day 2009!

(http://wikka.moreawesomethanyou.com/images/3/32/Ellipsiscat.png)

There is a thread especially for "thank you" posts, as well as a pretty little button. Please use that in future.

 :-\i just loaded my game after the latest patch and along with all the other issues i'm having with cc not showing up fps limiter is not working anymore... topping up to 600fps at CAS

gaah never mind that.... looks like for some reason rar extracted half of the files in the zip... *facepalm

I have tried 3 different FPS_Limiter downloads.... and also re-installed JAVA. None of them run. I get a quick "maybe 1 second" DOS window, then nothing at all.... :/

I didn't even know I needed the FPS Limiter because I have an ancient video card (Radeon x1900) but after lots of CTDs I decided to try it out. It now runs steady at 60 fps and I haven't had any crashes in awhile now.

Last I checked this is not school.... I am pretty sure I was understood as well. for some reason or another awsomemod doesn't work with sims3 no more even with these things that is supposed to make it work..I got the sims3  expansion and when using the awsomemod as directed the game does not load..Maybe someone has and answer for this problem..Reguardless of my "bad Grammar"..I learned one thing about people  is if they have nothing else to complain about they resort to trivial and  petty  stuff to feel their own egos in reality only makes the person look stupid and childlike.

Blimey, I really couldn't do much with that last garbled section. I suspect it's intended as an insult, but as it's obviously written by a child, or a certified moron, consequently it's a little difficult to decipher. This may not be school, Missy, but the site FAQ will clearly show that grammar is important here. Read it.

A simple rule to start with, Missy, is 'one' full stop after every sentence and 'one' space after the full stop before the next sentence starts.

I wanted to make a sort of request/suggestion on the plausibility of FPSlimter usage with CAW. More specifically, with edit town in-game mode to cap the frame rate. Is it possible at all to mod CAW to cap the FPS when it loads TS3 with a sort of CAW booter? Editing the map in-game for even a short time (30 minutes) causes my computer's temperatures to rise and graphical lag because the FPS is back to 93+.

I have WA but unzipped the FPSLimiter into the base game root install directory.  Is that the correct way?

EDIT:  Never mind.  I just needed to READ MOAR.  :D

I was just wondering if I can use the 3 booter and fps limiter that is meant for world adventures for the high end loft stuff.

3booter updated, should now work for all future expansions and SPs up to 99.

Cool thanks , thats awsome so all we do is install it agian and put it in the new games folder? and this might be a dumb question but what does up to 99 mean?

It means it shall work up to as many EPs up to whatever is defined as EP99.

Hopefully we won't ever need to get that far. But it's nice to know that we have one less thing to worry about.

Well I discovered the 3 booter and limiter did not work when I moved them to the new stuff pack - but I see you have updated the 3 booter - so where do I put them this time? I assume it should be the sp seeing we have to use that disk to start the game, or is that wrong?
 I had to move them into WA to work with that  xp and that worked fine - but the stuff pack doesn't.  I just got the stuff pack tonight, but it did not take long for my card to start running a bit warmer than I liked it and my framerate went sky high several times.

Writin_Reg - I downloaded the latest version of 3booter.exe from the first post here (looks like it was last modified on February 3) and put it in the HELS folder.  I then deleted the old version from my WA folder and then moved the FPS_limiter, HookHelper, Limiter_D3D9 and Resource.cfg files from my WA folder to my HELS folder.  Then I deleted the old desktop shortcut to 3booter and made a new one from the new file.  Then I ran the game and my fps stays around 30, like it should.

Edit: Don't forget to move your Mods folder (if you have one) from the WA folder to the HELS folder so the Resource.cfg file can find it.

You don't have to move your mods folder. Mine is in the same place it has been since the original base game. The officially recommended solution is that it stays there.

The only reason I moved the Mods folder was because a lot of the store/custom content wasn't showing up in game until I moved it.  I am a techtard, however, so listen to Pescado, as correlation does not always equal causation.

Edit: I moved the Mods folder and Resource.cfg file back to The Sims 3 folder, and everything works fine.

I agree with that 1000% ...I just loaded my CAW tool, and as soon as I went to "edit in game" mode, my ATI could be heard from miles away...I quickly exited and my screen had lovely greenish flickering colors all over it...Is there any way we can make CAW not to bypass fps limiter?
Someone would have expected the latest patch would fix something so importand, but hey it's EA after all >:(

Anyway can I please alaborate on the above question about the updated booter and limiter? We just move the files to the newest EP/SP folder each time, or we just extract in the base game folder and just leave it there? Just to make sure my GC doesn't blow up...Yes i'm blonde- bare with me

Where the hell is the root install thing?

I'm having problems with this setup myself. Downloaded the booter and fplimiter tonight and tried them in both the WA root, and the HELS root. Either way gives me a securom error. Anyway around this?

SecuRom errors are unrelated to 3booter. 3booter is not a noCD. You will need to use an integral noCD, such as the one in AwesomeMod, or the Twallanian version.

Hmm...well I haven't been running a noCD since I have the digital downloaded version. I have awesomeMod installed as well. Will check further.

Ah, we don't deal in Spyware Edition. Get the real thing.

It runs the game without any custom content. Sure, it's fast but what's the point of playing it? Do I need to do something different?

Custom content was installed in the WA folder and after reading the prior posts, I moved it back to the base game folder... resource.cfg is still iin the root folder and the .dll file in the bin. I have an updated game, all patches installed. But 3-booter doesn't register the mods at all. How do I play mods and 3-booter?

Put everything back in the place where it always was, including your resource.cfg, and LEAVE IT THERE.

Sorry J.M if this is a stupid question, but how do I know if the fpslimiter has kicked in?

The absence of the burning smell, usually.

I'm trying to get FPSLimiter to work in my game and not having any luck.  I have both 3booter and fpslimiter in the correct location, as well as my mods, framework, and config file.  3booter loads up the sims just fine but does not appear to run fpslimiter.  I'm on Windows 7 64 bit, so I suspected it was an issue with security and/or compatibility, so I made sure all files in question (3booter, fpslimiter, and ts3) were set to run as administrator.  However, there was no change.  I went to the command prompt and ran fpslimiter from there turning on the switch to show fps and to set fps to 60.  The game loaded, but again does not actually seem to be doing anything to fps, and I get no response from pressing F10/F11/F12 (F10 hides/shows the UI in the game as usual).  There must be something I'm missing, but I'm not sure how to proceed from here.  I would really appreciate help as my frame rates are quite high, and I'm getting more and more CTDs.

I think Win64 uses completely different DLLs, so FPSlimiter may not be affecting those. As FPSlimiter is a third-party product, there is nothing we can do about it here.

I am running Win7 64-bit with the FPS limiter, and it appears to working fine, and holds the frame rate where it should.  I kept an eye on it when I first started using it, and as it was working haven't bothered checking recently.  Next time I run, which will be shortly, I'll bring up the frame rate and keep an eye on it.

Edit: Just ran game for a couple of hours, FPS didn't go above 30.  Graphics card is an Nvidia GTX295 dual board.

Okay, well, in that case, PEBKAC.

well I couldn't get the FPS limiter to work at all after I downloaded TS3 Ambitions (I have the full game not a rip just its the digital download from ea store). I have moved it to every root folder I just got pissed off and got Riva Tuner 1 to show my fps in game all the time and 2 for the D3DOverrider that comes with the Tuner it allows you to cap at 30 FPS with triple buffering on as will in D3DOverrider Im get 60 FPS max. If FPS Limiter is working for you then cool but just thought I would add this for anyone its not.

This needs to be fixed by EA I didnt have crashing at all befor I ever ran FPS limiter or D3DOverrider but was told by a friend that it over works your GPU. I looked and I was getting 400-high 600 with my 4850x2 2GB

I disagree.  Just installed FPS limiter and 3booter into Ambitions and it runs just fine.

Does this require the framework? Because I still want to use 3Booter & FPS Limiter, but I just installed Ambitions and I did the new install method in My Docs/Mods and I removed the old framework.

ShortyBoo I don't have the frame work in I took all my mods and packages out to try Ambitions.  When my card started screaming and going at over 150 fps I decided to try the limiter.  It worked first time just put the file in your ambitions directory this includes the 3booter execute, fps limiter execute, HookHelper dll and Limiter D3D9 dll those are the files I used.

Thanks. As soon as AM is working correctly, I'll try it out.

The point, you missed it. You can run FPS limiter, using the files Kraken listed, without having Awesomemod installed.

I know that. I just refuse to play my game without AM.

Well, in that case, I know what you mean.  :D

I ran Ambitions without mods. Because my former graphics card blew up I turned fps on to check. I seldom saw more than 60 fps, which was different before Ambitions. Could it be that EA worked a limiter in with the newest patch?

It could be they did something. I pulled the limiter to test it out and ran about 2 hours and rarely went over 60. Stayed pretty consistently between 50-60fps.

eta: CAS bumps me up to a steady 100+ fps without the limiter.

In a Vanilla game but running with the Vitality exe I saw more than 150 fps and that was just on the loading screen.  I left to grab a coffee and when I came back the air blasting out of the case, and it has five fans, was very hot and the game was running in map view.  I checked via the cheat menu and it was still whopping up over a 150 fps.  I would be interested to know if this was a fluke but I was not taking a chance with my card screaming at me. 

What should the resource.cfg look like that we leave in the root folder with this mod? The same as the new Documents/Sims3/Mods one?

I'm banging my head against a wall with this. I've installed the four files you indicate above into Program Files/Electronic Arts/The Sim 3 Ambitions and then I tried creating a Mods folder there and putting it in that. No luck. What am I missing?

Edit: Re-downloading 3booter did the trick. Not sure why, but I'm pleased anyway.

If you have the 4 files in C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Ambitions and are using 3booter.exe to start your game, it should be working.

I unzipped the 3booter tool in my directory right where the resource is as you said would prevent the crash, but it didn't
the game still crashes when loading. Do you know why?

He never said it would prevent crashes.


All it does is automatically restart the game if it does crash at the load screen so you don't have to.

Also, there are a lot of causes of crashes and yours may or may not be the well known load screen crashes that everyone just has to live with and keep re-trying until the game loads.

If, for example, this is your first time using mods and in particular awesomemod then there is a specific process for setting things up that varies depending on which version (expansion pack and patches) of the game you are running. You also need to make sure to run the version of awesomemod that's appropriate to your game version.

Search around here or Mod the Sims for more information regarding setting up your game to use mods correctly.

I see now. Thank you.

But how would I solve this?  :(

It turns out I did need the fps limiter after all. I've got it running fine (via 3booter) with Ambitions but how do I run it windowed? I tried the obvious of creating a shortcut to 3booter and passing in the -w command as normal but it still ran fullscreen.

My guess would be to add the -w to TS3EP02.exe I run Sims 3 windowed (set from in-game) and 3-booter loads it windowed when I have it set up windowed from in-game.

You guessed correct, cheers. I just carried on using the -w command line arg from Sims2.

Windowedness is set as an option in-game, you do not need to futz with switches for it. Just uncheck "Full Screen".

I should have said that I switched to the in game option that I didn't realise was there. I always run windowed and was using the -w on the direct shortcut to the exe (as per Grimma's guess) and assumed incorrectly that any command line args would be passed through to the game when I ran via 3booter.

do we have any updates on fps limiter working with CAW as well?I 'm afraid of even openning it, cause i can hear my GC blowing up just by the thought of it...

After triple checking it appears that the FPS Limiter is no longer working in my game. I always start my game with 3Booter(installed as directed in the Sims3 root) and a couple patches ago I noticed that I wasn't getting the big green 30 in the top left corner of my screen anymore. I checked recently in game with "fps on" and it reports frame rates of 80+. I re-downloaded/installed and checked again in game and I'm still getting high frame rates ...

Help?

Have you re-downloaded 3Booter? That worked for me.
Also, FYI, hitting F10 toggles the green numbers and you can do it on the loading screen to check if it's working.

Re-downloaded and installed 3Booter - Frame Limiter still not functioning ... Thanks for the F10 tip.

Edited to add: I've rechecked, re-downloaded and re-installed 3Booter and Frame Limiter and Frame Limiter is still not working. It's currently very hot where I live and I fear for my video card. Any more help would be wonderful.

Finally found the solution. After trying and trying to keep everything in the Sims 3 directory I was forced to move it into the Ambitions directory instead. I should have thought of this solution sooner. Now both Frame Limiter and Awesome work. Hopefully if anyone else runs into this they can try what I did and maybe it will work for them.

Thanks cassblonde. You answered a needed question. I am just about to try 3booter and FL for the first time. Thought it was pretty obvious that it would have to go in the root of the lastest XPack or StufPak, but confirmation is always helpfull.

my game actually got faster after using the FPS limiter.
without it the FPS can get real high when i am not moving the camera, which you won't play the game that way.
and FPS can even drop under 10 when the camera moves from one sim to another who is across the town...

now the FPS is more constant.
even moving the camera across the town can keep it around 10 to 20. ;)
thanks.

Sentences begin with capital letters, and you always capitalize the personal pronoun "I".  Sentences end with periods, not ellipses.  Also, stop hitting "return" at the end of every sentence.  That entire post was painful to read for anyone with educated eyeballs.

I was wondering I bought the sims 3 late night and iam using the fPS limiter and 3booter. I check my temperature and my video card usage for every new game from the ccc for ATI. Well before i got Late night the usage was 30-50 percent on my 4870HD 512mb video card, but i also have another one but have the crossfire turned off for the game. Now when I play i noticed the usage stays around 90 percent but flucturates to 60 or 82 and so on but mostly stays at 90 percent even if i turn crossfire on. The temperature has always remained at around 70 degrees but I dont understand why the game is using so much of the video card when i know FPS limiter is working at 30 FPS. The game runs smooth but im just concerned with my video card overworking. The CPU usage is only about 9 percent being used and only about 2gb of ram are being used so that is fine, but whats with the spike in usage with the video card for one expansion. Does anyone know why this is happening is it normal?

Now Medieval-enabled.

Great !  I'll forward the info in the french community ^^

its not working very well for  for me for medival  it cuts down the framerates etc fine but i keep  geetinga green icon on the left hand side??? is it something im doing???

Yes, yes it is.  Or maybe it isn't.  Try searching a little, I'm sure I've seen that issue mentioned before.  Protip: The locals like it when you use proper spelling and grammar.

I just found about a fix for blocky shadows with ATI cards (http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/300915.page ) but unfortunately does not work with 3booter.
I have no idea why an edited .sgr file, referring to GC rules, would conflict with 3booter. As soon as I edited the file, I tried to open my game through 3booter and the only thing that happened is that it just kept booting itself, with the command prompt box openning and closing. The only way to stop this was to kill the process tree , since just killing the process was giving me an "access denied" error. Of course the game never started.
To make sure it did conflict and the file did not just mess up with my game, I started the game through the launcher. Launcher crashed  , as it always does, but the game started with no problem. The blocky shadows where gone (general graphics were not as sharp as before though), my ATI was at 75 fps tops (CAS) - i have "wait for vertical refresh" enabled - at 76C and the fan was going insane and loud slowing down and speeding up within seconds, at an average of 84%. Also had a random crash to desktop for no reason at all, like the ones I had before FPS limiter.
Even though "wait for vertical refresh" is keeping my frame rate way below the 450 fps  i used to have without it, the card still seems to get stresed, and I'm not confortable enought to get rif of the fps limiter, since my card seems less overworked and it's fan speed is always stable at 80% tops, at 74 C which instantly drops, with it. Also, since this option is only active during gameplay, it's getting inactive a second before the game closes, resulting the fps to skyrocket back to 450, in that single second. No idea if it is risky for the GC to suddenly run at 450 fps and back to less than 20 in a single second, but it doesn't look good to a n00b like me.
Blocky shadows has always been an issue for ATI card users with Sims 3 , and crystal clear graphics with blocky shadows looks kinda weird. It has been reduced with the newest drivers , but it'still there. Anyway the fix can work with 3booter?

I can't think of any good reason why that would happen. If it repeatedly does that, it's because the game doesn't boot or because you put something in wrong.

Ok, I think I'm so blabby that people don't get what i'm saying ... That was exactly my point. With this fix the game won't boot through the booter, but it boots fine through the launcher. If I had put something wrong , the game wouldn't load from the launcher either. So I'm guessing there must be a weird conflicks with the fix and the booter , even though , in my n00b mind, why would that happen doesn't make sence at all

It doesn't make sense to me, either, so you are probably Doing It Wrong. 3booter and Fpslimiter are agnostic about your sgr files: They do not possess the ability to detect, read, or otherwise interact with those files, so their presence or lack thereof means nothing to them.

I see. I still don't get why it did boot from the launcher fine though. Any chance that booter might be seeing something glitchy or buggy with the booting of the game that the stupid launcher does not recognise? Well if i'm doing it wrong, I don't think I have the skills to figure out what I'm doing wrong so I'll have to decide... fps limiter vs normal shadows .... I think I suddenly started liking blocky shadows, they give the game flavour  :P

How many times did it do it? Maybe you just lucked out.

I tried 3 times to run the game from booter. First time the cmd box came up and closed, second and 3rd time it opend and closed indefinatelly, untill I killed the proccess tree form task manager.
Then I tried through the launcher. First time the launcher crashed before it booted the game, second time it crashed but booted the game fine but then the game closed on me with no warning - crash to desktop - and third time launcher crashed again ( it always does since Ambitions) but booted the game fine and the game did not crash at all. Both times that I managed to open up my game, the shadows were perfect, but the GC was loud even with 75 fps tops. Skyrocketed to 450 though for a mere second though just before the game closed

This is a stand alone version of D3D Overrider ( which is usually a plugin for RivaTuner ) and some may find it useful as another option instead of FPS Limiter ( and forcing V-Sync through your graphics card drivers is often unsuccessful ) . With this you can force V-Sync AND Triple Buffering with it if forcing the V-Sync brings your performance down a little too much ( Triple Buffering compensates for it ) . You have the option of turning on V-Sync with or without Triple Buffering though with whatever game profiles you may wish to add to it ( or just load it with the global option ) . It's also easy to use in that you just load it up , select your profile , minimise it if you wish and then load your game as normal . No adding files to game directories involved . I'd suggest unzipping it to your normal Program Files folder for ease of use but I guess it should run from almost anywhere . I wouldn't suggest leaving it running permanently because it has compatibility issues with some programs ( as you can see by some of the profiles that are included with it that switch it off automatically for certain programs ) .

Works for XP upwards and both Radeon and NVidia Graphics .

And here's some discussion about it ( http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=208499 )

( PS . I take no credit for either this program made by the makers of RivaTuner nor this standalone version that was made by someone . I'm just posting it here for the benefit of you guys to help with your game ) .

I used the same fix you linked to in your post, yet I haven't experienced any issues launching from 3booter. The FPS limiter has also been functioning normally since I applied the fix. The method seems to work as described in the thread and I didn't observe an overall decrease in graphics quality.

Did you add the missing parentheses after you pasted the replacement code? I'm clearly a big fat n00b, but I imagine their absence might cause problems.

I'm obviously a bigger and fatter n00b than you - what missing parentheses and where should they be added?

ETA: On having a closer look, I noticed that the official forum directions appear to have a bunch of smileys in them. For those experiencing parentheses issues, here is the original post for the fix (http://devforums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=233&threadid=142028&messid=1184096&parentid=0&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Single) without stupid smiley crap.

Can 3booter be changed to work around this problem (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,20249.msg572967.html#msg572967)?

Already has been done. Put it in your main Sims directory and it will find and launch TS3W now.

Stupid question, when you say main sims directory, do you mean latest EP/SP or the base game?

Base now.

Nevermind, I just read that fps limiter needs updating.

yes it isnt working at all

Are you using the current version? There have been several updates since.

FPS isn't working for me either. 

Redownload 3Booter and FPS Limiter.  Watch the command prompt to be sure FPS Limiter is running the right program.  It works.

Yea, I suck, it works.

What I found is that using the old 3Booter and the FPS limiter in the generations folder to launch through the TS3EP04.exe won't trigger the FPS limiter, although the game will launch and run fine.  When launching with the new version of 3Booter from the base game folder where is launches through the TS3W.exe then the FPS limiter kicks in and works just fine.

When people say the FPS limiter isn't working, might need to check from where they are trying to launch the game.

Where exactly should the files be put when we're talking of Medieval?
I've tried both old and new ts3 locations, yet the card is still overheating.

Read Page One, and if that doesn't help - Grow A Brain.

Probably needed to put more info.
I am well aware of how this particular set of files works, being that I've went through activating them several times on different machines.
I am also aware how the mistake being made is my own, and went through this whole thread a couple of times already.
Anyway, when it comes to The Sims Medieval, no matter where the files are located, the graphics card is overheating (rendering at about 120 frames at average).
Could it be something other in question? Other than the wrong installation location?

As medieval is a stand alone game, it is possible that the fps limiter here will not work with it.  Have you seen anywhere that says the fps limiter will work with medieval, or other people posting to say it is working with medieval?  if so, then you are doing something wrong and should start again.

Thank you for your reply, wizard_merlin.
After some searching, Google results have directed me to this thread.
The replies consist of complaints, however, none of them is exclusively talking of the limiter's primary task. In fact, it has been said that, when it comes to cutting down the fps, it's doing the job.
I shall redo everything, as suggested, just after i finish a couple of quests.

It works - you just need to remember to either run it or use both files.

Good chance I'm pointlessly kicking the topic again, but, I have noticed that f10-ing ingame does not turn the greenery on.
Command "fps on" brings out the regular white numbers, which can be lowered down by pressing f11. This, however does not affect the card's ridiculous temperature.
After giving up on the stripped version, I've reverted to the old-school FPS Limiter. Not so surprisingly, nothing happened.
To add, the overheating is solely caused by this particular game (it even cools down when the window is minimized).
If it's not the rendering speed, I don't know what is. To be honest, there's not much else to cause such malfunction.

If F10 doesn't turn the green FPS numbers on or off while the game is loading or a save is loading, then you are doing something wrong.  It does work just fine with Medieval, so long as you have both files from this thread in the right folder.  It shouldn't be that hard to figure out where they need to be to run The Sims Medieval.  If it is, perhaps a charred video card is for the best.

(http://i52.tinypic.com/25zsfvc.jpg)
Yes? No? Yes?

I have said that the regular FPS Limiter (http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic/26943828) didn't help either, haven't I?

Just a guess here but maybe your fail at framework installation is preventing the FPS from working. Or it could have nothing to do with it.

It's not a framework issue.  I know it will work on Windows 7.  No clue why running 3Booter from that location wouldn't work.  You are running 3Booter?

Indeed it's not a framework issue.
Doubleclicking 3Booter to run the game, yes.
I'm currently running some other games to check the previous assumption that the game itself is the issue. Unfortunately I'm forced to admit I'm running on Vista.
Haven't tested it on w7, because I'm still on a boycott against it (and there's no way i could infest my precious kubuntu with games), so it just may be an issue, even though i don't see why/how.
Thank you for replying.

No, what I'm trying to say is your framework IS IN THE WRONG PLACE, maybe this is affecting fps for some reason. Try putting your mod framework where it belongs and see what happens.

Does the command window that pops up say its running from tsm.exe?

I haven't seen it mentioned yet but the use of the TS3W.exe (w3booter) is necessary after the recent patches even for those without the Generations EP.

Keep up with the times, the current discussion is about the FPS limiter running in Medieval, NOT TS3, so unless medieval also has a TS3W.exe, STFU.


Why would you boycott Windoze 7 for Vista?  7 is so much better than Vista, but it does have it's issues, which are not that problematic.  At least I haven't found them that problematic, but others have.  As kissing toast has mentioned, what information is being thrown up when 3Booter fires up?  What frame rates are you getting?

(http://i51.tinypic.com/107q26s.jpg)
Edit, because I'm an idiot: fps shown in game is about 30-something, after forced down by f11.
Card temperature stays the same.

Because Microsoft is the source of all evil? Besides, i still remember the moment Vista had bedazzled me with it's fabulous gui. I am aware I'll have to convert to w7 in the end/near future, but allow me to live of the memory for just a little longer.
As for the issues, I'm sure there's nothing strong will can't handle.

Who said you had to give money to Microsoft?  Windoze 7 is far better than Vista, and you are doing yourself a great disservice by holding on to that piece of crap.

Who said I'm giving money to Microsoft? Yes, I'm aware of your point, but, there's a masochist in all of us and some are just unable to resist it's influence.

Back on topic, I haven't yet found a solution to the card overheating and will continue using the household fan for the time being.
If, however, I manage to resolve this problem, I will come back and edit this post.
Kicked up the fan speed to 85% and the problem was killed.
Now it even cools my feet at these warm summer nights, ahhh.

Framework cannot affect 3booter at all, the two issues are unrelated. However, 30 FPS is normal and therefore everything is working correctly.

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/7126-The-Official-Windows-7-Repository - Seriously, free Windoze. Get rid of Vista.

Hi there,

I hadn't played Medieval for a while and want to go back to it.  After I just double-clic on the Booter-Link to launch the game I got an error message saying (french translation) :
With an option to analyse the problem.

So I try to figure what was wrong and after the analyse this EA-thing just ask me to send the report to SECUROM !!! WTF  :o


If I try to launch the game WITHOUT the Booter but via the .exe, it's working.
Why ?  I don't want to burn my GC  :'(


Thanks guys ^^

I'm having the same problem as Ange with TSM. Any help would be appreciated.

Also I was experimenting on how much FPS CAW and CAP are using and found that CAW uses around 600+ FPS and CAP is around 450+ FPS.

I tried using the FPS Limiter on CAW and it maintained at 30-31 FPS but when I tried using the Edit in game function TS3 ran at 1100+ FPS.

Just wondering if anybody has a solution for these? Or does anyone know any memory resident FPS limiter that would automatically activate? Thanks in advance.

Hey, I'm using 3booter and the limiter, too, also with Medieval, but now I checked these days and saw, it's not working...
I mean, I start the game with 3booter, but the framerate still meets the 100s, on main menu it's even around 3000! O.O" Same thing with Sims3...
So what to do? Somewhere they said to hit F12, but nothing changes.
At TS3, the 3booter is in the newest addon-folder, but the medieval addon pirates and nobles has only launcher-startups, so it doesn't work there.
Please, has anyone an idea?
Thank you forward!

I can't say about TSM as I don't have it, but if you look back a page you might find the reason it isn't working with TS3.  I had a similar issue with TS3 and found the solution, which worked for me.

I have been getting issues with the frame rate going above 100 after installing World Adventures, Ambitions and Generations on top of the base game.

Was running the base game just fine with 3booter until a few days ago when AwesomeMod was updated again, I got the latest version, tried to patch my game and got errors related to the game not finding QtCore4.dll. This led to installing the above exp packs in the hope that I'd be able to play again.

I really don't want my video card frying, so to that interest I have a few questions. The Sims 3 and exp packs are installed to my G:\Program Files directory. No stuff packs currently and no Medieval. I'm using Windows XP.

1. Which directory should 3booter be in? G:\Program Files\The Sims 3 Generations, or G:\Program Files\The Sims 3 Generations\Game\Bin? Or somewhere different altogether?

2. My 3booter.exe file has a file date of 2/3/2010; is there a newer one I should be using?

3. I downloaded FPS Limiter 0.2 but even after reading this thread am a bit confused over where to a) extract it, and b) install it.

Thanks, all. :)

It needs to go into a different directory for the FPS Limiter to properly kick in, in my experience and experimentation.  Try reading a page or two back and you will find the answer.

Same thing, read a page or two back and all should be revealed.

So the 3booter files should be extracted to (and run from) the G:\Program Files\The Sims 3 directory? That's what I'm getting from the posts on this thread. (I have G:\ as a secondary partition of my HD) Sorry if I'm being obtuse, I just want to clarify that I'm doing the right thing here.

Should the FPS limiter also be in the above directory?

Yes, I'm a n00b with computer stuff, but really don't want my video card burnt up. I had to replace it last year and can't afford another one. No matter where I've been putting the above files I haven't been seeing the green numbers show up and the frame rates are climbing above 100 (and pressing F12 doesn't seem to do anything to bring them down).

Thanks again.

EDIT: It seems to be working now, in the base game directory, for both the 3booter and the FPS limiter.

I'm getting a strange error when trying to use 3booter and FPS limiter to start TS3 on my laptop. The dos prompt will show up as usual, then I get the error message "The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000005). Click OK to end the application." I have a desktop that runs FPS limiter just fine, so what's going on with my lappy?

Laptop specs:
ASUS U31SD-XA1
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
Core i3 2.1ghz
4GB RAM
nvidia geforce gt520M 1GB + Intel integrated (optimus)

Desktop specs:
Windows 7 Professional 64 bit
AMD Phenom II x4 Black 3.2ghz
4GB RAM
nvidia geforce 8600gt

It's Optimus. You can't disable it, so you can't use 3booter with fpslimiter.

However, since you do have an nVidia card, you can make TS3W.exe use your nVidia card (it defaults to integrated) and then in the settings change the Vertical Sync setting to force on. That'll force it to keep 60fps, which is a hell of a lot better than letting the game run as fast as it wants to. Sure it's double what the game uses, but I'd rather run it at 60fps over 100fps. I'd prefer 30, but Optimus gets in the way of that.

Thank you, IAmTheRad. I had a sneaking suspicion it was optimus. I had been doing exactly what you said and I'll continue to do so. The nvidia card only runs TS3 at a maximum of about 70 fps anyway but I didn't want to take any chances.

FPS limiter does not appear to resolve overheating problems for me with Pets, no matter where I put it. (old instructions or new - to be clearer). Lot view is at between 45 - 70FPS, hood view isn between 100 - 130FPS.

Is anyone else having this issue?

If you press F10 after it loads, do the green numbers flicker in the corner?

I've not noticed any issue with it; it's in the same place I had it for Generations.

No green numbers. Interesting.

FPS limiter stopped working for me once. Have you already tried deleting 3Booter, FPS limiter and your desktop shortcut, then redownloading them, reinstalling and creating a new shortcut? Sounds like voodoo, but it did the trick for me.

Also, the F10 thing doesn't always work with my game, even when FPS limiter is working. I use the 'fps on' cheat at the menu screen if I feel the urge to check fps, and sure enough, it'll be capped at 30.

will give redownloading them a try. Always download a fresh batch once I install a new ep/sp anyway just to be on the safe side, but you never know with downloads.

FPS Limiter isn't working for my game, for some reason. I'm working on a new hard drive so I just installed Base, WA, Ambitions, LN, and Pets. Everything is patched up to 1.29 (Dec 14, 2011 patch).

I downloaded a fresh copy of FPS Limiter & 3booter, and all files are in the root directory (C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3) and the Pets shortcut links to 3booter. I downloaded FPS limiter & 3booter 3 times, deleting the previous set before adding in the re-downloaded ones.

I'm not sure what else to check. I used the FPS cheat and was getting 98+ in just the neighbourhood screen, with the camera not even moving. Any thoughts as to what I've done wrong? I'm assuming I've overlooked something because that seems more likely. Thanks :)

For anyone having trouble with the booter not working - check the graphics settings and set vertical sync to 'force on'. It should lower the vertical sync to your current screen fps setting. Mine went down to 60fps. I haven't tried without the booter though, as I'm keeping it in for now.

Thanks for that bit of advice, Crash. 3Booter currently is allergic to CC Magic, and the Awesomemod updater, which allowed me to use it, isn't updated to the new patch (quite understandably, due to holidays and sudden patch release).

I'll update in this thread if I notice anything on my end for those of us using this method.

There's been some talk on a German Sims 3 forum recently that using FPS Limiter with a DirectX 11 graphics card can lead to the card burning out. The thread is here: http://www.simforum.de/showthread.php?t=184232 but it's obviously in German. In short, it seems like the program is forcing backward compatibility with with DirectX8 which can lead to card burn out. I admit, I don't understand all of it. Perhaps someone smarter than I will find that it's just a bunch of hullabaloo over nothing, or maybe it's useful information for people with DirectX 11 cards.

I find this line of reasoning implausible, since what this would mean is that those new graphics cards would burst into flames upon encountering older DX8/9 games. What is PROBABLY happening is that FPSlimiter simply isn't working as it relies upon old hooks that may or may not still exist in new 64bit OSen, and the game is thus doing the natural thing of causing your card to burst into flames through overwork like it usually does. However, I wouldn't entirely rule out the possibility that new shit really is simply that badly made.

However, we can't really do anything about this: FPSlimiter itself is a third-party utility and not made by us. You are not required to use it with 3booter. In fact, you may not need to use it at all, as the original purpose of this program has sort of faded and I only really use it to launch with FPSlimiter now anyway. It's up to you.

So are 3Booter and FPSLimiter still being supported?  I tried running my game from just the TS3W.exe, and my FPS jumped into the 90s.

3booter is still supported and works in all setups. fpslimiter, however, is a third-party tool and cannot be supported from there, although I'm still using it and it still works for me. Reports are that it doesn't work for people in Windoze 7 and shit, though. I wouldn't know, because I haven't seen any good reason to switch. Even Microsoft isn't a big fan of their own OS, because they're reportedly already dumping it.

Everything the FOJ said... I'm still using it with Windoze 7 all works well.

Well, I ask this because my game keeps crashing.  The exception info in crash logs seem to indicate a problem with the TS3W.exe, so I tried launching the game without 3Booter.  I recently upgraded to Windoze 7 64-bit (yes, the FPSLimiter still works) and have 6 GB of RAM.  Before upgrading, I was running on 4 GB of RAM; and the crash logs at that time indicated available system memory was around 300 MB.

Now when the game crashes, the log indicates I still have over 3 GB of RAM available.  I'm really confused -- and getting ready to chuck this worthless pile of plastic and metal out the window!

ETA:  I'm also testing my Mods folder for bad CC, a little bit at a time.

I've never experienced crashes due to 3booter/FPS Limiter with Windows 7 64-bit (nor with XP, nor that matter). In fact, every time I had random crashes, it was a bad piece of CC.

The amount of memory remaining under x64 is not really relevant to the game, as the game remains a 32bit program and is still subject to its limitations even under a 64bit OS. It will therefore still run out of memory and crash at the 32-bit limits as before, because it is not natively compiled for x64.

So I'm STILL running out of RAM???  (Insert your choice of curse word here.)  Is there something I can do about that?  Besides shutting down things in Task Manager, which I already do.

Have you made TS3W Large Address Aware? It modifies the .exe to allow it to use more than 2gb. You might need to restore it when you want to update, but it should help. Otherwise, I think I've seen Pescado mention making a virtual RAM disk and installing onto that, but I don't think you have enough RAM to do that comfortably.

None of those will really help. Ramdisking only improves your computer's speed when it tries to use the swap file. LAA is already default and only increases your RAM crash point to the maximum of 32-bit unsigned instead of 32-bit signed, but may cause other issues if the game performs signed math on memory addresses. None of these are magic bullets.

Are you sure the crashing isn't caused by some issue other than RAM?

Seriously, I never had a RAM crash on TS3, even when I only had 3 GB.

I'm working on figuring that out.  I have an Intel Core2 Quad 2.4 GHz processor, as well as an ATI Radeon HD 3870x2, 1 GB video card; I'm pretty sure it's not those.  I've also just turned down some video settings in the game; and as I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm in the process of checking for bad CC.

I am rather new to sims 3 and have been on the hunt for a few answers when I came upon this thread of a similar issue...

My game and system:

Game: Sims 3 base, WA, HLS, AM, LN, OL, GEN
System: Custom x58 gaming build, Core i7 950 quad, 12Gb DDR3 SDRAM, 2Gb Radeon HD 6950, Catalyst 12.1, Win 7-64

I do have many mods and packages installed mostly clothes, furn, and decorations.  Cleaned out bad and blacklisted cc to the best of my ability.

The issue I am experiencing is a number of FPS and GPU usage spikes.  Frequently, while playing, the GPU usage drops to 0% when technically should be working, then it starts and moves to around 50% to 60%, then suddenly back to 0%. Temps however never exceed 55C despite FPS spiking at around 600, probably due to factory custom  GPU cooling (MSI Twin Frozr III).

The game does tend to lag a bit and these spikes occur even while running with no cc at all.  

The game remains playable, albeit barely, but the spikes are irritating and I cannot figure out why the GPU usage hits 0%.  FPS limiter seems to have no effect.

I am an avid gamer on this PC (Elderscrolls games, SWToR, COH, WoT, AION, MSFlightSim, etc) and the Sims 3 is the only game I play that has this issue.

I wonder if any of you have this issue as well, or if this issue is related to the issues being discussed on this thread.

Danke!


(Postscript--discovered another EA gamer at evga.com forums that is experiencing a similar issue with battlefield 3 which leads me to believe this may be an EA coding issue and if so, not much can be done unfortunately.  Nevertheless, the issue continues.....)

Hello , I have a question about this tool .

So I been ussing it for a while before Show time was out , made a big diffrance in my game !

My question is now with the last patch 1.33 + showtime is it safe to use?

do I need to wait for a new version that is good to go with show time?

Just been getting tons of bugs with showtime which are probably not related but still woul'd love to know answer about it.

Did you ever need to update it before? If you're still getting the 30 FPS then it's working as intended.

Did you write this badly on purpose? *shudder*

currently getting up to 80 fps with ATI's vsync on. No idea what's happpening. it was working up to patch 1.32

FPS Limiter is still working for me on 1.33, haven't changed a thing since the Generations patch.

me neither , but there might be a chance that something got corrupted somehow...I was playing till 4am last night with no issues, and I even had the heating on. I will redownload and check again, once my GC cools down a bit.

ETA: Found culprit. Somehow an old version of booter has sneaked in my recent backup folder. The question is, how the heck was it able to kick the game? I thought last time that Pescado updated booter ,  he did so because the old one did not work anymore since they changed the TS3.exe file to TS3W.exe... I'm completely confused.

my screen turned pink - and my Nvidia driver stopped responding -than I was reading the geo force 550 gtx ti with sims 3 can't work for long time without getting hit when all the game options settings are set to the highest . just need to remember to close the game after use and never leave it open for long time - anyhow I download the latest nvidia beta drivers and removed the old ones and all looks good for now .

I have some advice for people struggling with problems caused by Nvidia Optimus. I am not sure if all systems with Optimus have this capability, however, I felt that it caused me enough frustration that I should let others know. After much disappointment with my new laptop, with Optimus causing crash issues with most automated AwesomeMod tools like "3Booter" and "AwesomeMod Updater", I found that you can shut optimus off.

*Note: The process may be somewhat different on your system. As long as you know how to get into the Bios menu of your system you should be able to do it from there.
*For reference my laptop is a Lenovo ThinkPad T520.

1. Enter your bios menu by pressing the correct function key when you boot your computer (usually "F1").
2. Use the arrow keys to highlight the "Config" tab at the top of the screen.
3. There should be several menu options listed below. Scroll down with the arrow key to "Display" and press "Enter."
4. On the new screen use the arrow keys to scroll down to "Graphics Device" and press "Enter."
5. A pop-up dialog should appear with the options "Integrated Graphics", "Discrete Graphics" and "Nvidia Optimus."
6. Use the arrow keys to highlight "Discrete Graphics" and press "Enter."
7. To the right of "Graphics Device" it should now say "[Discrete Graphics]," this indicates that the system will now use the dedicated graphics card only.
8. Press "F10" to save the new settings and exit the Bios.
9. Start your computer normally and test. 3Booter, AwesomeMod Updater, etc. should run properly and no longer cause the "The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000005). Click OK to end the application." error. Your game should also run better.

STUPID QUESTION ALERT!!!!!!!

Will the high fps kill a 660m?

Why the heck ask? Why don't you just USE IT ANYWAY. The worst it can do is nothing. The best, save your card.

Yes, why shouldn't too much heat melt it?

I just installed 3booter. When I first fired up the game in the upper left corner of my game was a small, black box, with numbers. I'm assuming that's normal? Well, when I loaded up my game for the second time the box wasn't there. I hit F10 (not sure if that was right or not), and no black box showed. Does that mean it's no longer working?

You should always get that "little black box."

O.K. I just need to figure out what went wrong then. I have all the files placed in  Program Files>Electronic Arts>The Sims 3. Or should I move them to my Seasons folder?

No, everything is now ran from the base game folders. You are using 3booter.exe to run the game, right?

Yes, I'm using 3booter.exe to run the game.

I think the poster is talking about the fps numbers, not the command prompt window. I think it's something like F12 to turn it on and off and my numbers don't show at all. No, it's not F12, but I know there's a toggle.

Okay! Thanks for the info. I have no idea why it worked the first time then decided to stop working. But on the bright side I can play my game longer before it crashes.

Having the FPS numbers displayed has always been kind of random for me, they occasionally make an appearance, but not since Win7.

If I want to check the FPS numbers, I just enter "fps on" or "fps off" in the cheat window.  I don't like the numbers being up all the time so only do that when I want to check that the limiter is actually working.

Yeah, but then there's the thing where you sometimes get green numbers instead. That one's related to being toggled by a F key.

F10 if I'm not mistaken.

Okay, never had the green numbers before, always just the little white ones from the cheat.

I know this thread is very old, but I just stumbled upon it.
I was looking for a FPS limiter for TS3 since my FPS are insane high (>1000 sometimes), and I know this is not how it's supposed to be. Google brought me here and I DLed and installed 3Booter + the FPS limiter, but with 3Boother my game won't start. At the beginning this DOS-Box-thing pops up, about 20-30 seconds later I get a blackscreen which short time later collapses bringning me back to the desktop while an application called The Sims 3 (Supernatural) is "running" in the task bar. Whenever I try to open it I get a blackscreen again for some seconds which collapses again to the task bar.
This happens with or without FPS limiter in my folder, so it must be 3Booter to blame (is there a way to run FPS limiter for TS3 without 3Booter btw?). I hope someone out there can help me.


PS: English is not my native language, so apologies for any mistakes

You also have to install a No-CD hack, like Awesomemod, or Twallan's No-CD.

Okay, I'll try that out, thank you!

Please don't flame me!

How do I get 3-Booter to work with the stupid Origin starter?

Origin isn't the only thing here that's stupid. Why in the world would you want to start the game through Origin? Don't do that.

(http://moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/helpdeskwarning.png)

I want to work at that call centre.

Let's all take a moment to bask in the Titlit schadenfreude.

I wanted the updates: not being a programmer I couldn't see what they were but I reckon that with each iteration of Sims the final patch comes nearest to fixing what is still broken.
Having got the patches meant I HAD to have the Origin thing. Since I bought my games, I have no issue with that, other than that it seems to have stopped the 3booter from controlling the FPS of the game.

I was asking how to get the 3booter to work WITH the final version of Sims 3. Doesn't seem particularly unreasonable to me; of course Jezzer will try to make fun to cover the fact that HE hasn't a clue. If you don't want to help me, fine, go boil your head. Strangely, I have the impression that there are still a few people here who DO know what they are talking about.

The last patch doesn't do anything other than connect the launcher to Origin. There is no fix or anything you would miss if you didn't get it. And it's easy enough to roll back to 1.67 and have the 3Booter working as usual.

This is an excellent line of logic! While it figures that out for us, I have completed preparations for obtaining a solution to another, similar question for which there is no confirmed answer; does a sighted creature continue to perceive the world after being beheaded? Not to worry, I've taken care of the setup, and the axe man is on the way! I look forward to reading Titlights' write up on the experiment's outcome.

It's hysterical to me that the Betatard can be on this website this long, see a zillion posts about how Origin is the devil and no one should use Origin, and still come drooling into a thread with a question about getting something to work with Origin. And THEN get all shirty when she's rightfully mocked for it.

Well Jezzer, if you had just decapitated yourself, you could answer the question for us, and indeed the whole world! But since you don't know the answer, we have to rely on Titlights. Honestly, you ought to be ashamed of your ignorance in this highly important matter!

I wonder where her alleged "silent majority" is. Surely someone has stepped up and told her how to do it in a personal message, because you know, they are "too afraid" to post publicly.  ::)

Wait what? Jezzer decapitated himself? And I MISSED it? Bring back Madame Guillotine.
/me gets out her knitting.

I don't care how you feel, even decapitated, Jezzer. I feel GOOD!

Uninstalled and reinstalled all the EPs and SPs. Ran CCleaner and the SuperPatch, put in the FPS limiter and 3Booter and it now runs like a DREAM. Where I had FPS of up to 282!!! before it now runs at a very smooth 30-33, on a high graphics setting. Origin is HISTORY.

So, many thanks to those that helped with this request. My game is fixed and more thrilling stories are forthcoming!

I am not a native speaker and this is too gibberish for me. Does anyone feel like helping translate it into English so I can find out what I'm doing wrong?

Checking for updates...
ERROR: cannot verify dl.dropboxusercontent.com's certificate, issued by `/C=US/ST=Arizona/L=Scottsdale/O=GoDaddy.com, Inc./OU=http://certs.godaddy.com/repository//CN=Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority - G2':
  Unable to locally verify the issuer's authority.
To connect to dl.dropboxusercontent.com insecurely, use `--no-check-certificate'.
Unable to establish SSL connection.

What are you trying to do?

Start the game via the updater as usual. The message changed recently -- I am trying to determine if the issue is on my end or dropbox'.

It's a SSL certificate issue. Have you changed anything on your computer lately? New firewall? Antivirus software? Is the time/date correct?

From dropbox's site:
https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/159

For more information than you ever wanted to know about SSL certificates, check out these links.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_authority
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_certificate

 

Yes but...

WHY is your game calling for an SSL certificate?

That's a very good question. I'm glad you asked it.

>> 

<<

Any other questions?

Bad jokes aside, I have no idea. Until this week, fps limiter and AwesomeMod updater just did their thing, spawned a couple of console windows, fetched updates if they needed them, and just...did their thing. I haven't changed anything except upgrading to Windows 10.

Maybe I should have followed my gut instinct and refused to do that. :/

I suspect that might be your answer. You DID know Windows 10 is avoidable, right?

But why does your game want to call Dropbox? That would keep me awake at night.

Old engineering proverb: "If it ain't broke, .........." fill in the blank.

Never10

https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

Yeah, I feel kind of idiotic now, I'll admit. I had this impression that I might as well get the fucking update over with since it was inevitably going to be forced down my throat anyway. I guess I should have fought harder. Where was Witch's link two weeks ago!

Oh well.

Going to try to reinstall fps limiter and awesomemod updater from scratch, see what happens. I'm guessing either of them is hosted at dropbox and that's why it wants to call? Still makes no sense to ask for all sorts of verification and whatnot. It's hardly state secrets being transferred here.

Awesomemod updater no longer works. Manually download and insert.

Hi folks.
I want to use fpslimiter, but I don't like that it doesn't support -W option to launch Sims 3 in Windowed mode.  I don't play in Windowed mod, I just use it when game loads, so I can do other things instead of watching loading bar, when it's fully loaded, I just press alt+Enter to play the game. I read all topic and understand that tool doesn't support passing -w to the game, the only way to launch Sims 3 in Windowed mode is to set it in options in advance, but I don't want to uncheck full-screen every-time I quit Sims 3.

Maybe any other ways/hacks to achieve what I want?