TOOL: 3Booter, the Incooperative Game Kicker

[OC]

my game actually got faster after using the FPS limiter.
without it the FPS can get real high when i am not moving the camera, which you won't play the game that way.
and FPS can even drop under 10 when the camera moves from one sim to another who is across the town...

now the FPS is more constant.
even moving the camera across the town can keep it around 10 to 20.
thanks.

[jezzer]

my game actually got faster after using the FPS limiter.
without it the FPS can get real high when i am not moving the camera, which you won't play the game that way.
and FPS can even drop under 10 when the camera moves from one sim to another who is across the town...

now the FPS is more constant.
even moving the camera across the town can keep it around 10 to 20.
thanks.

Sentences begin with capital letters, and you always capitalize the personal pronoun "I".  Sentences end with periods, not ellipses.  Also, stop hitting "return" at the end of every sentence.  That entire post was painful to read for anyone with educated eyeballs.

[Checks]

I was wondering I bought the sims 3 late night and iam using the fPS limiter and 3booter. I check my temperature and my video card usage for every new game from the ccc for ATI. Well before i got Late night the usage was 30-50 percent on my 4870HD 512mb video card, but i also have another one but have the crossfire turned off for the game. Now when I play i noticed the usage stays around 90 percent but flucturates to 60 or 82 and so on but mostly stays at 90 percent even if i turn crossfire on. The temperature has always remained at around 70 degrees but I dont understand why the game is using so much of the video card when i know FPS limiter is working at 30 FPS. The game runs smooth but im just concerned with my video card overworking. The CPU usage is only about 9 percent being used and only about 2gb of ram are being used so that is fine, but whats with the spike in usage with the video card for one expansion. Does anyone know why this is happening is it normal?

[J. M. Pescado]

Now Medieval-enabled.

[Ange]

Now Medieval-enabled.

Great !  I'll forward the info in the french community ^^

[carlymichelle]

its not working very well for  for me for medival  it cuts down the framerates etc fine but i keep  geetinga green icon on the left hand side??? is it something im doing???

[trenchmouth]

its not working very well for  for me for medival  it cuts down the framerates etc fine but i keep  geetinga green icon on the left hand side??? is it something im doing???

Yes, yes it is.  Or maybe it isn't.  Try searching a little, I'm sure I've seen that issue mentioned before.  Protip: The locals like it when you use proper spelling and grammar.

[geminia]

I just found about a fix for blocky shadows with ATI cards (http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/300915.page ) but unfortunately does not work with 3booter.
I have no idea why an edited .sgr file, referring to GC rules, would conflict with 3booter. As soon as I edited the file, I tried to open my game through 3booter and the only thing that happened is that it just kept booting itself, with the command prompt box openning and closing. The only way to stop this was to kill the process tree , since just killing the process was giving me an "access denied" error. Of course the game never started.
To make sure it did conflict and the file did not just mess up with my game, I started the game through the launcher. Launcher crashed  , as it always does, but the game started with no problem. The blocky shadows where gone (general graphics were not as sharp as before though), my ATI was at 75 fps tops (CAS) - i have "wait for vertical refresh" enabled - at 76C and the fan was going insane and loud slowing down and speeding up within seconds, at an average of 84%. Also had a random crash to desktop for no reason at all, like the ones I had before FPS limiter.
Even though "wait for vertical refresh" is keeping my frame rate way below the 450 fps  i used to have without it, the card still seems to get stresed, and I'm not confortable enought to get rif of the fps limiter, since my card seems less overworked and it's fan speed is always stable at 80% tops, at 74 C which instantly drops, with it. Also, since this option is only active during gameplay, it's getting inactive a second before the game closes, resulting the fps to skyrocket back to 450, in that single second. No idea if it is risky for the GC to suddenly run at 450 fps and back to less than 20 in a single second, but it doesn't look good to a n00b like me.
Blocky shadows has always been an issue for ATI card users with Sims 3 , and crystal clear graphics with blocky shadows looks kinda weird. It has been reduced with the newest drivers , but it'still there. Anyway the fix can work with 3booter?

[J. M. Pescado]

I can't think of any good reason why that would happen. If it repeatedly does that, it's because the game doesn't boot or because you put something in wrong.

[geminia]

Ok, I think I'm so blabby that people don't get what i'm saying ... That was exactly my point. With this fix the game won't boot through the booter, but it boots fine through the launcher. If I had put something wrong , the game wouldn't load from the launcher either. So I'm guessing there must be a weird conflicks with the fix and the booter , even though , in my n00b mind, why would that happen doesn't make sence at all

[J. M. Pescado]

It doesn't make sense to me, either, so you are probably Doing It Wrong. 3booter and Fpslimiter are agnostic about your sgr files: They do not possess the ability to detect, read, or otherwise interact with those files, so their presence or lack thereof means nothing to them.

[geminia]

I see. I still don't get why it did boot from the launcher fine though. Any chance that booter might be seeing something glitchy or buggy with the booting of the game that the stupid launcher does not recognise? Well if i'm doing it wrong, I don't think I have the skills to figure out what I'm doing wrong so I'll have to decide... fps limiter vs normal shadows .... I think I suddenly started liking blocky shadows, they give the game flavour 

[Madame Mim]

How many times did it do it? Maybe you just lucked out.

[geminia]

I tried 3 times to run the game from booter. First time the cmd box came up and closed, second and 3rd time it opend and closed indefinatelly, untill I killed the proccess tree form task manager.
Then I tried through the launcher. First time the launcher crashed before it booted the game, second time it crashed but booted the game fine but then the game closed on me with no warning - crash to desktop - and third time launcher crashed again ( it always does since Ambitions) but booted the game fine and the game did not crash at all. Both times that I managed to open up my game, the shadows were perfect, but the GC was loud even with 75 fps tops. Skyrocketed to 450 though for a mere second though just before the game closed

[Bruce Banner]

This is a stand alone version of D3D Overrider ( which is usually a plugin for RivaTuner ) and some may find it useful as another option instead of FPS Limiter ( and forcing V-Sync through your graphics card drivers is often unsuccessful ) . With this you can force V-Sync AND Triple Buffering with it if forcing the V-Sync brings your performance down a little too much ( Triple Buffering compensates for it ) . You have the option of turning on V-Sync with or without Triple Buffering though with whatever game profiles you may wish to add to it ( or just load it with the global option ) . It's also easy to use in that you just load it up , select your profile , minimise it if you wish and then load your game as normal . No adding files to game directories involved . I'd suggest unzipping it to your normal Program Files folder for ease of use but I guess it should run from almost anywhere . I wouldn't suggest leaving it running permanently because it has compatibility issues with some programs ( as you can see by some of the profiles that are included with it that switch it off automatically for certain programs ) .

Works for XP upwards and both Radeon and NVidia Graphics .

And here's some discussion about it ( http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=208499 )

( PS . I take no credit for either this program made by the makers of RivaTuner nor this standalone version that was made by someone . I'm just posting it here for the benefit of you guys to help with your game ) .

[neuroticrobotic]

I just found about a fix for blocky shadows with ATI cards (http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/300915.page ) but unfortunately does not work with 3booter.

I used the same fix you linked to in your post, yet I haven't experienced any issues launching from 3booter. The FPS limiter has also been functioning normally since I applied the fix. The method seems to work as described in the thread and I didn't observe an overall decrease in graphics quality.

Did you add the missing parentheses after you pasted the replacement code? I'm clearly a big fat n00b, but I imagine their absence might cause problems.

[Engram]

Did you add the missing parentheses after you pasted the replacement code? I'm clearly a big fat n00b, but I imagine their absence might cause problems.

I'm obviously a bigger and fatter n00b than you - what missing parentheses and where should they be added?

ETA: On having a closer look, I noticed that the official forum directions appear to have a bunch of smileys in them. For those experiencing parentheses issues, here is the original post for the fix without stupid smiley crap.

[jfade]

Can 3booter be changed to work around this problem?

[J. M. Pescado]

Already has been done. Put it in your main Sims directory and it will find and launch TS3W now.

[kissing_toast]

Stupid question, when you say main sims directory, do you mean latest EP/SP or the base game?

[J. M. Pescado]

Base now.

[Morlock]

Nevermind, I just read that fps limiter needs updating.

[carlymichelle]

yes it isnt working at all

[J. M. Pescado]

Are you using the current version? There have been several updates since.

[kissing_toast]

yes it isnt working at all

FPS isn't working for me either.