More Awesome Than You!

Whenever I play a game now on the sims, I seem to be unable to save my games. The screen doesn't crash, as I can see the mouse swirly icon thing go round and round, but it seems to be stuck like that for as long as I can stand looking at it (so far it's been 10mins). The only mod that i have installed is awesome mod. I have the WA expansion installed, but this problem also occurred when I had just the core game installed.

As what I said before I tried it with both the expansion and the core game, I've also cleared my cache files. Still am unable to save (or I have to wait for several hours).

For those interested:
I run windows 7 64-bit
Sims running with patch 2.6.11

Not an AwesomeMod issue, although saving is very slow. Just wait for it.

You haven't given much detail about your system.  If you have a sub-par CPU, low RAM capacity and even a slow harddrive, it could easily take a while to save.

It also appears to depend on how many changes you have made in between saves as to how much extra information needs to be saved.  I have seen this within my game, if I make major changes to a building, or add new family members, etc, saving takes longer, otherwise it isn't too bad.

As Pescado, and you have said, it isn't an AM related issue, so probably a system problem.

TS3 doesn't perform delta-saves. No matter what you do, the entire thing has to be rewritten out, which is why TS3 saves take so much longer than TS2 saves. What you gained by avoiding load screens, you lose out in horrible save times. But while it's entirely possible with careful play to dodge loading screens, there are no circumstances under which it is wise to not save for too long, so ultimately, I think TS3 is the loser here.

Interesting.  Must be something my system doesn't like from time to time.  I get save times varying from 10-15 seconds up to 2 minutes.  After a lot of building work, I end up with a long save time, which seems reasonable, but if I save again 15-20 minutes later, without doing anything major to the game, it tends to save very quickly.  Given the way EAxis manages to screw things up, I am not surprised by anything the game throws at me these days.

In reply to wizard_merlin: I have a intel core i7 2.66 GHz CPU, a Caviar green 1TB HDD and 4gigs of RAM (for some reason windows wont reconise the last 2gigs that I have installed). The changes that I had made for my save was my sim walking from one room to another.

If it is a system problem, any ideas on how I can make it quicken up again?

I an running an Intel i7 965 3.2 GHz CPU and 12 GB RAM with Nvidia GTX295 (Dual Board) graphics card, and it can still take a while.  I have been advised by my local computer shop that the Caviar Green drives only spin at about 5000rpm, not the usual 7200rpm of regular drives, but can't verify at the moment.  That could be part of the slowdown you are seeing in saves.

If your system isn't recognising the extra 2 Gb of RAM, that could also be contributing to the problem.  Are you sure the extra RAM module is installed properly and working?

Edited: fixed your = you're = you are

Also need a 64-bit version of windows for more than 4 gigs (more or less 3.5 actually) of ram to be used. From what I've gathered Vista and later will see the ram but not use it. If you have 4 gigs installed but it is only seeing 2, that's another problem.

As for long save times, my machine (which is a bit of a beast) has only experienced long saves if my 'hood went BFBVFS. Although that's probably not much help to you.

wizard_merlin: Your/You're: You're doing it again

I was so trying to resist the urge to nag.

Damn it.  Nag away.  I have been working on it.

I have a problem if I 'save'
I usually do 'save as'

Occasionally the game will bork during a save. Once it does that you need to quit out and check your save game folder. If one of the saves says for instance "Lalaland.save.bad" then the save is borked and you need to go back to a previous save. This is an EA sucks issue, rather than an AM problem.