I've seen a lot of this and just sort of resigned myself to it. Yesterday it took half the morning to get two of my Sim kids to the school bus. They moved like they were going, just slowly with lots of pausing and waiting for the other sim kid to go through doors. I followed them to the school where they did go in. But by the time they got there it was after eleven. In another household, the kid took so long just to get out the door that the bus left without him and he rode his bicycle instead. Nothing freezes and nothing acts like it's locked up. They just pause.

The other thing that really gets to me that seems to be a common complaint is that they don't do anything unless you tell them to.  In one household they congregate in the basement by the back door and just stand there. In another it's a hallway. Again, I've resigned myself to it.

Before I go any further, I want to thank Pescado for the auto save feature. Without it, I would have uninstalled this turkey yesterday and been done with this entire EA fiasco. The auto save feature makes the CTDs bearable. At least until something changes or I figure out what the hell I'm doing to contribute to the problem.  I'm inclined to think it's my computer at this point. I have a Celeron Processor (yes, I know, I know. But the price was right at the time). It's only a few months old and I have plenty RAM and a compatible video card with adequate board memory. The game generally plays smoothly, without lags, the graphics look great, and, until this started, I had no real problems with it other than the rare error 13 code and the now rectified 1am freeze.  Everything is patched and all drivers are updated.

That said, since it's begun crashing semi-regularly, I've (finally) noticed a trend. The last several times the game CTDed the characters were in the park in Sunset Valley.  I've been tracking my CPU temperature and it doesn't appear to be any warmer after the crash than it was before. I'm using the 3booter and the fpslimter and last night I turned on Vsync just to be on the safe side.  After emptying all the cache files I played for a blissful couple of hours without a snag. This morning it ran smoothly during the thirty minutes or so I had to play it in. This afternoon it crashed just ten minutes into the play--minutes after I sent a character to the park.   

I'm just reaching here because I'm only just now beginning to understand some of this. Could this have something to do with the frame rate?  The park is a big place with a lot of activity--running water, cars passing, sims running around, etc. If I slow down my frame rate (and I'll have to look up how to do that)--do you suppose it will help?

Thank you.   Removing this mod apparently fixed the problem.

I have solved at least one mystery.  The family I was playing was at the hospital having triplets when a female sim walked up with a baby in her arms, laid it in front of the hospital doors, got in a cab, and drove cheerfully away. I'd never seen this before and was floored.

I waited and waited, sent my sim mother home with the triplets and kept the father at the hospital.  The woman never came back. To my dismay the baby began to cry and everyone ignored it (other than being unhappy about it).  I added the baby to my sim family and brought her home to raise.  (By the way, this is also how you get five dogs and six cats in real life).

The simological mother listed an insane trait and was single. 

I did wonder if family services would have come and picked up the baby or if the mother would have come back for it if I'd left it long enough.

Thanks Gary. Unfortunately this program kicks out errors when I attempt to use it. I suspect it's an incompatibility issue with respect to net framework and Windows 7.  I'll keep searching.

Minutes later--

Wait, wait. wait. I forgot to set administrator rights. It's working now. It's not showing any legitimate conflicts. 

Sigh . . .

I'm having a problem and would like to know if it's a conflict between mods before I go in search of other answers.  I'm patched all the way up to 1.4; my Awesome Mod was downloaded yesterday, and have deleted caches, etc.  Sometimes I play for a couple of hours and shut it down without a problem. Other times I play for fifteen minutes or more and it suddenly crashes to the desktop without warning. This is really enough to dampen one's enthusiasm for the game.

Yesterday I noted that someone here listed mods that were supposed to work with Awesome Mod. Unfortunately I didn't bother to note which thread it was, what page, or even what day. Could someone please point me in that direction or tell me if anything in the following list is suspect.


awesome
awesomized teen woohoo + tfb
chaavik children can read skillbooks
gain instant skills . . .
indieStone mod (not core)
perform guitar
playairguitar
playguitar
workhardx10

many thanks,
earthshoes


 

Wow! What a huge difference! Thank you very much.