TOOL: 3Booter, the Incooperative Game Kicker

[J. M. Pescado]

OK then, so you're saying that the game can only generate a maximum of 30 unique frames per second?

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.

That was a bit of a bad choice by EA wasn't it?

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.

I found force locking Vsync drops the frame rate too low at certain times in game, I saw a low of 15fps with Vsync forced on, where as without it the same scenes would run at 40 fps (so at least meeting the 30fps minimum).

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.

How did you manage to get a peak at The Sims 3 source code??!!

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

[J. M. Pescado]

Wowzer, not for the faint hearted then!!?!  Shame you can't recompile it with the limits removed huh?

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

[J. M. Pescado]

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

[wepaman]

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."

[Lion]

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 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.

[Mootilda]

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

[Lion]

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

[Checks]

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?

[J. M. Pescado]

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.

[Noenmity]

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?

[J. M. Pescado]

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

[Noenmity]

Ok JM, thanks for the feedback.

[Skadi]

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? 

[J. M. Pescado]

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

[Sabrewulf]

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  

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...

[J. M. Pescado]

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

[Sabrewulf]

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? 

[coltraz]

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

[Skadi]

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

[Sabrewulf]

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?

[byronh]

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.

[J. M. Pescado]

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

[Sabrewulf]

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?

[J. M. Pescado]

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.

[Sabrewulf]

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