More Awesome Than You!

I was envious of this "why do you use the launcher?" stuff as a mac user, so I stumbled around in the directories until I found what controls how cedega/crossover starts up. It turns out to be really easy to change!

• find the executable itself - probably in /(your hard drive)/Applications/The Sims 3.
  
• Right click on it, and select "show package contents".
  
• Open the "contents" directory if it isn't already.
  
• You will see a file named info.plist. Open that by dragging it onto textedit. Don't move it out of that directory! You might want to take a backup first.
  
• Scroll down to the line after this one:
  <key>CedegaGameName</key>
  
• Change the last part to read TS3.exe instead of S3Launcher.exe. Be careful not to disturb any of the rest of the file or mess with line endings. It's XML and an extra return shouldn't matter ... but you never know.
  
• Save and quit textedit.
  

That's it - you will now launch directly into the game instead of going through the launcher. Note that this means you will not see the launcher again AT ALL unless you change the file back. But this is not a loss.

I did the same, but I found out that launching the game in this way will lead to horrible graphic glitches at load. It doesn't make much sense and I have no idea why; it started after the 1.3 patch, though.

Did you notice anything similar, or it was only my game for some odd reason?

Unfortunately, I couldn't even get far enough to check out the graphics when I tried this out. The loading screen keeps freezing on me. I wandered away from the computer for awhile to give it some time, but it sat with the green loading bar frozen and none of the words flashing across the bottom for probably 3-4 minutes. I finally switched out the old .plist for the edited one to see if it was something with my game, but that one loaded up in no time. This was with the most recent patch, 1.4.

I'd love to find a way to get around the damn launcher, though. Ugh.

I edited the plist and the game skips the launcher and loads and plays without issue. (1.4.6.2)

I wonder if problems might be related to using a crack? The only NoCD I have is AwesomeMod.

Can't be an issue with the no-cd crack since I only use AM.

Strangely enough, I finally got the game to bypass the launcher without issue. Since random voodoo sometimes seems to prove effective on this game, I cleared all the caches, deleted the thumbnails, and even tried removing and replacing the Packages folder. The mysterious freeze disappeared entirely, and I didn't notice any unusual graphics glitches during the few minutes of test gameplay. Prior to this, I tried it about three different times and couldn't get it to work so I have no idea why any of this would have helped, but apparently something did.

Weird. I've been playing it this way since 1.4 with no issues at all. The only time I ever had lockups at launch was from the launcher itself, which is why I wanted to do a bypass. For me at least, the game starts up exactly like it does when you click the play button in the launcher - you just don't see the launcher first.

Mine's a storebought copy, so it's certainly possible there's something with the cracked version that doesn't work if you bypass the launcher.

For me, this does work (and thanks for posting about it =). I'm running Razor 1.2.7. I've only started the game onece or twice since I edited the plist, though. But i figure even if I do get glitches on the long run, it's easy to revert.

I forwarded your tip to Mac Help at mts, as well: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=365310 -- no problems reported so far (but then not many people read Mac Halp).

Those are really good news, I'll try again, maybe it was only some voodoo glitch.

When I tried using this, I got a weird graphical glitch where every so often my screen would take on a cyan tint during play.  Other than that it worked great, but the blue was a little distracting.  This wasn't the kind of glitch you got, was it, Marhis?

Edit: Actually, it looks like this is just my old CRT in its death throes.  In which case the bypass has no problems for me (retail + patches through 1.4 or so).

When I tried this, it wouldn't start at all, ha.

It works!

With the game fully patched, up to 1.4 it works and has no graphical glitches; if any of you still has, it's probably because it's not patched. BTW beware, as the game patched from 1.3 onwards on Mac will be a PITA in terms of playability.


Check that you wrote correctly the path; if you have it correct, it will start, no matter what.

Just another "it worked for me post."  I've got the most current patch, I followed pet_peeve's directions, and the game runs without the launcher.

I just implemented this and it works like a charm; thank you for tracking this down!  Something worth mentioning, though, is that the game still tries to phone home so turning off your internet connection or having a program like Little Snitch is still appropriate.  Perhaps this was obvious to others, but I did not expect the game to phone home after bypassing the launcher, hence I thought I would mention it here.

I wasn't doing it to avoid phone-homeage, since I have a legit copy - simply because the launcher is a huge, unnecessary mess and I don't want to see it.

Phone-Homeage is BAD. "Legitimacy" is not a defense against spyware. While the launcher uses standard open protocols that can be analyzed publicly, unnecessary contact will still allow signal intelligence data to be extracted from contact, and should be avoided. Plus, the launcher apparently performs its own pointless CD check, just to be annoying.

I have a legit copy as well, so this phoning home thing isn't just symptomatic of arr'd copies.  As Pescado just said, phoning home is bad so you might consider turning off your internet connection while playing the game or getting something like Little Snitch to protect yourself during general internet tomfoolery.

Oh, I'm in total agreement about the evilness of phoning home - I just wanted to make it clear that skipping the launcher doesn't have any effect on phone-home behavior, since there seemed to be a message implying that there was.

Still goes through launcher for me. Still says insert disc. I can't create an alias of the TS3.exe file, obviously, because...it's still .exe.

I've searched this forum for other solutions to this no disc thing, I have awesomemod installed and everything. I really want to play this effing game, so if someone could help me out with a solution, that'd be great.

You either skipped a step or messed it up. The method described still works, as I'm using it right now on the macbook.

There is, however, one tiny thing that has not been mentioned in the first post. These directions are for base game only. If you want to bypass the launcher of an expanded game you will have to edit the latest EP's or SP's Info.plist accordingly and replace the Launcher.exe reference with the respective EP's .exe.

That's true, but since the game always runs from the newest EP rather than the base game exe, I wouldn't think that would be too big a surprise.

Never discount the almost superhuman capacity for people to become "surprised" when following simple directions.