I was able to get rid of the sound popping issue permanently in Isla Paradiso.  First I disabled SmarterVehicleChooser.  That by itself doesn't stop the sound popping.  To stop that required resetting everything.  I don't know if AM has that ability built-in, but I already had Nraas MasterController installed and it has a "Reset Everything" under Town.  I was able to confirm this works on two different saves on two different machines and the problem did not reoccur even after 4-hours of gameplay.

With smarterVehicleChooser now working properly, a reset everything is probably all that's necessary to fix the sound.

They can dive without running out of air or needing to depressurize afterwards.  That's about it.  Everything else is annoying and they are more needy than a regular sim.  A hydration bar replaces hygiene and they'll pass out and eventually croak if there are no other sims around to dump a bucket of water on them.  They also gain voracious appetites that can only be fully satisfied by eating foods containing kelp (anything else only fills the hunger bar about 1/4 or 1/3rd of the way).

You're probably fucked.  It's a 32-bit binary, so it can't address more than 4GB of RAM.  I see Error 12s start to pop up when the game is using anywhere around 2.6GB of RAM or more.  Do your sims travel much?  I've noticed the game guzzles RAM when traveling.  In my game, it's not safe to travel more than once per game session, and it works best to save and quit, then restart and reload your save after each time you travel.

I've had my sim travel before and saw RAM usage skyrocket to 2.9GB or so.  If I manage to save, restart the game, then reload the save, RAM usage will only be around 1GB.  The game is not very good about freeing up RAM it no longer needs.

If you're not traveling, then I'm not sure what you can do except periodically monitoring RAM usage, save when it starts creeping up over 2GB, then restart the game and reload.

I'd like supernaturals and simbots to skate like humans, on roller skates, instead of flying around in circles like morons.
I'd settle for "no autonomous supernatural & simbot skating".

Twallan's Porter is probably your only hope, assuming you want to save most of the residents and their relationships.
It fixed my 2009-era bloated save.

Have you switched houses very often?  Every time I switched to a house I hadn't played before added around 5MB of additional bloat to my neighborhood .nhd.

The only way I've found to fix this is to use Twallan's Porter to port out the sims I wanted to keep and re-import into a fresh new hood.
I'm not sure what causes this kind of save game bloat, but it seems related to how many households have been made active.

Got it.  I knew there wasn't one posted here, hence the "wcif".

It looks like one does exist:
http://store.thesims3.com/setsProductDetails.html?scategoryId=11488&index=0&productId=OFB-SIM3:38517

WCIF the unmodified sims3pack version of the August 2011 compilation?  I was able to find July and September, but every link for August is the .package version.

I like the skintones, but in TS3, the freckles look a lot more grayish and stand out more.  In TSM, they more closely match the base skintone in hue (more brownish than gray) and are a bit more subtle.

WizardDani's method to recycle the kingdom seems to work for me.  Only issue is you can't use a save game where you've exhausted your quest points.  I have no idea what it will do if the ambition involves things that were already accomplished.  My guess is you'll just never be able to complete that ambition.

If it weren't for that trick, I would already be very bored with the game.

The problem with that is LCDs look like fuzzy crap at anything less than native resolution.  The only solution for those who can't handle fuzzy crap is not to be a cheapskate and buy a bigger monitor.  The fonts looks just fine to me at 1920x1200 on a 24".

Anyone who thinks LCDs don't look like fuzzy crap at less than native resolution are wrong, you just have a high fuzzy crap tolerance level.

That would have been the smart thing to do, but I wasn't smart enough to know about the Grid button!

Did you remember to put d3dx9_31.dll in Game\Bin?

Using a hex editor like HxD, look for 9F F7 C4 2B, change it to 16 B7 E5 E3.  I extracted and re-imported the S3SA, but you might not have to do that because those bytes are clearly visible in the hex editor if you load up the entire .package file.

Apparently, so you can make tranny sims like the one pictured.

Yeah, that's because each WA town has its own .nhd (neighborhood) file.  The game won't load your bloated main hood until your sim comes home.


It's possible.  Come to think of it, my awful 460MB save folder that literally took 45-minutes to load was one where I had built several huge houses (main hood .nhd itself was 260MB).  However, I'd saved the houses to the library and put them back into a fresh hood, used Porter to restore all the old sims into the fresh hood, and the new save folder ended up only 30MB and taking under a minute to load.  Same hood, same houses, same sims, more buildings (added the Ambitions lots), but a lot smaller file size.  It seemed like the houses themselves don't bloat the save, but perhaps the save gets more bloated with every modification to the lot.  I haven't tried changing a lot and checking to see if the save file grows or not.  I do know that the more famblies you've made active does result in a bloatier save file.  About 5MB per fambly made active in my case.

I don't think slow game load times has anything to do with HDD access speed.  All slow loading save games I've had actually exhibit very little HDD access.  The LED just kind of flickers occasionally and remains dark for a great deal of the loading delay.  Pes once mentioned a save game can be bloated with an excess amount of compressed crap which keeps your PC busy uncompressing aforementioned crap.  You might try Twallan's Porter mod.  Export your entire hood using porter, then create a fresh hood, destroyallhumans with AM, place your Portered save, and use Porter to extract.  That should leave you with a new hood with your old sims that should load as quickly as a new, fresh hood.

I used to have an old Nvidia 9800GT 512MB and it was great with TS3 at 1920x1200 resolution.  I have since upgraded to a GTS 250 1GB, and don't notice any difference at all with TS3 over the old 9800GT.  It did make a world of difference with GTA IV, so that tells me there's a point where TS3 just doesn't take advantage of increased GPU speed or video memory.  The GT240 seems to be the modern replacement for the 9800GT and I've seen those around $20-50 (if you're in the US).  I would say something like that should be more than adequate.

If you have LN, then LN will patch the base game only.  You'll need to download and install the patches for your other EPs and SPs separately.
No extra tweaking necessary, though some people recommend the DEP change in Windows.  I left my DEP in the default setting and have never had a DEP-related CTD, so not everyone has to mess with DEP.  I don't know why some people do and some don't.

LN and the patches released at the same time no longer require the CFF Explorer setting.  They are already set to be LAA aware.  It took the EA people long enough to figure that one out.

Usually it's the ugly faces of the spawned NPCs that I want to change.

I spoke too soon, the NPC I used bodysnatch on broke and became a regular sim.  She never came back to perform her Mixology job.  With some experimentation, I discovered selecting an NPC immediately removes their Role, effectively turning the sim into a regular, non-NPC sim.  So selecting an NPC and using bodysnatch definitely won't work.

I didn't see anything in the way of debug commands or debug interactions to give a sim a role.

Spacemouse got it right.  A Core 2 Duo at 2.1GHz is very much within specs.  Minimum system requirements for Late Night on Vista/Windows 7 is a Pentium 4 2.4GHz.

For example, the PassMark benchmark of a Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz is 1270.  Pentium 4 2.4GHz is 315. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/common_cpus.html
The C2D at 2.1GHz is significantly faster than minimum requirements.

CPU being below spec is definitely not the problem.

I didn't have Master Controller, but I installed it after you mentioned it.  Stylist won't do the job because it looks like the career outfit isn't a selectable category.  The "Edit in CAS" feature does the job and also works when the sim is working.  It didn't lose the career outfit either, until I went back in a 2nd time and made all kinds of slider changes, skintone, voice, life want, etc.  Then for some reason, like editsim in AM, it lost the career outfit.  It's definitely more foolproof as it never once hung the game no matter what I did, but the end result of losing the career outfit is the same, which is acceptable.  One thing I do like is the body weight and muscle sliders do work with Master Controller's Edit in CAS.  I verified with bodyinfo that it sets the sim's genetic weight and muscle.  Nice!  That makes it unnecessary to use setfitness and setfatness.