Long pauses

[tms]

Along with the many other problems I've been having lately there are random long pauses in the action. The sound continues and any other kind off animation like TV channels, the Zzz's from a sleeping sim, and the green diamond above the head continues. But the time and the sim freezes. They were bearable before but they're getting more frequent and longer and are beginning to make the game unplayable.

[J. M. Pescado]

Possibly the Limozeen Bug? Try "towderelicts true".

[tizerist]

I had this before, when I had too many harvestable trees on a lot.
The sprinklers were still going, but the world around them had stopped...

[tms]

Possibly the Limozeen Bug? Try "towderelicts true".

No dice. 

[kirtai]

I am having this same issue, just so you know.  I tried adjusting the graphics properties, thinking it was some sort of overload that was doing it, but no good. Just started this weekend, and I did mega-update this weekend. So, I don't know if it's the patch or what.  I'm calling it the Excorcist Bug myself, because the most common issue I have is that my sims will freeze, mid-action, all except their heads, which slowly look from side to side and their eyes roll around. Quite freaky, actually.  So, yeah, me too.

[hillypoo]

I have the same problem. It only occurs when my sims head to the carpool/school bus to leave the home. Their heads and upper bodies can move (they wave at others while frozen), but their legs are frozen. Then they move a couple steps and are frozen again. It's not my graphics settings or computer because when I take out Awesomemod it doesn't do this. I tried towderelicts and it didn't fix the problem.

I have the latest version of Awesomemod and I have my game patched to 1.4. I deleted cache files. I took out IndieStone and just used Awesome mod, both the AwesomeStory and the EA story fix and this still occured.

I even allowed one sim to stay home until all others left the lot, then I had her take the family car to school and she still froze for a few seconds every couple of steps on her way to the car.

[kirtai]

The only thing is, on mine, the clock DOES move. I'd not have as big an issue if it didn't, but as it is, I can initiate an interaction, like tell a funny story, and it might take up to an hour to actually start. The minutes go by in chunks of 3-10, not slowly and rythmically as normal. It does seem to be a load issue- threw a party with 6 guests to test it out, and it looked like a zombie rave. Definitely gets worse with more people.

[Tangie]

A lot of us reported this same issue under the "Work/school zergswarms and game performance" thread, listed further down from this one. In one family I have, 2 teens, 2 kids, and an adult all leave for work/school at the same time and it takes them hours to get out to the street. Usually it's between at least 9:30 to 10:30 before they all get out there, and by that time the bus has left and they then take the car or a bike to school. Over the weekend, one day my adult Sim, a level 10 scientist, didn't manage to leave for work until 11:30 (in spite of the fact that he started toward the door at the usual 7am time). He got paid about half his normal salary for the day. The screaming toddlers and babies are almost worse. They'll be in red status before the Sim, who stands holding the screaming infant for an hour or more, finally gets around to feeding it. It's very frustrating because something with game performance prevents your Sims from accomplishing what you tell them to in a timely manner, but the game is still punishing you for not doing it. Effin' stoopid game. 

I started a new 'hood and nuked everyone to start off; there are only about half a dozen households at this point but so far I am not experiencing the awful game-nuking lag. I'm hoping that the same thing won't happen with this one, or else someone will find a way to fix it if it does.

[J. M. Pescado]

I cannot reproduce this bug at all.

[TrueLou]

I have a slowdown every working week day between about 8am and 10am, it's not considerable but it is noticeable. I put it down to the sudden mass exodus because so many jobs start at 9am, I have the same slight slow down between 2pm and 3pm as they're all knocking off and then the Pro Sports and Culinary sims are all mass exodusing to their jobs between those hours. It's just another example of the stupidity of EA to have not staggered the work start times as I suppose they thought the average player would play for a few sim weeks then give up, start over, play something else. The more I play it the more I think this game was not designed to be played for any considerable length of time.

On the idea side what would be the likelihood of some majestic soul tweaking the work start times so they're staggered and there would be a constant flow rather than an 'all rush for the rabbit hole at the same freakin time'. If only I was an expert modder 

[Doc Doofus]

It happens to me all the time, too.  In the morning, heading for the bus/carpool.  They take a few steps running, freeze, then take a few more, freeze.  It's maddening.  I want to get in the game and roll them out on a dolly.

It seems that the slowness that affects them isn't uniform.  Maybe I'm wrong about that, but that's the impression I get.  In TS2, the timing of the game was always in sync from one sim to another.  In TS3, it seems as if sometimes time will run more slowly for one sim than another.  I suspect TS3 is spawning separate threads for each Sim in the household and the threads are not locked in sync with each other.  It would explain a lot of the weird graphical behavior, like the spinning heads when they stop moving.

My suggestion for a crappy fix, but one that would work wonders:  I think it would be good if there were an option to have all townies beam themselves to work, ala Star Trek, and thus keep them off the roads and away from swarming school entrances.  (Swarming the school entrances is another big pain in the ass.)  It might seem like a step backwards and not an ideal solution, but it would probably solve the problem so we could enjoy the rest of the game.

[aspinL]

You can "beam" them, well "teleport" them. Turn testingCheats on and rightclick the ground to teleport there, you get graphics, sound and all with it!

The only time this has happened to me, is when my family moved to a new house (via the computer) and the kids and teens were at school, dad at work, so mum went to the house in her taxi. 10 Minutes later it was dad's turn to get home from work and instead of going to the new house, he went to the old one. I didn't notice until I realized he hadn't gotten home yet and once aligning the camera to him, he was standing at the old house in front of the door. I told him to go home, but he stomped and got the bubble with the footsteps on it. I tried everything, including the teleportation trick, but he stayed there. Meanwhile my kids were on the school bus, and yes on their way to the old house, so I made them stop and get out on the side of the rode for the risk of having them stuck at the house with dad. They could walk around and do whatever but when I told them to walk into their new house, they stomped their feet and didn't go either. I had to end up not saving and waiting until they all got home to move again.

[MacJake]

Doc Doofus I think your impression is correct. I have the same problem and can't seem to identify a pattern either. I will say that the freeze issue is more prevalent in my largest (5) household. However the time/action issue is sporadic. Some actions are quite normal but others take forever.

I'm also starting to get the zombie townie syndrome. A lot of standing around doing dick. It's getting a little creepy.

[Tangie]

I cannot reproduce this bug at all.

I'm not convinced that it's AM related, since I swear I tried playing my 'hood again after taking AM out and I still experienced the excessive lag and freezing sims. It's possible I didn't clear caches, however, since I only do that on rare occasions, and it could have still been under AM influences. I'm going to delete caches and try again without AM to see what happens.

@Doc: I agree, it's not synchronized between sims. Sim A will be running for the front door with Sim B right behind them; Sim A suddenly freezes mid-stride, so Sim B, who does not become frozen in place and is proceeding normally (relatively speaking) toward the door, stops behind the frozen Sim A, who is blocking their path. This is causing even longer delays, of course, because we all know how long they stand around after route failures.

ETA: OK, I take it back. I took AM out and played one sim morning. Things were a little slow and choppy, but it didn't seem quite as bad as it was previously. Put AM back in and confirmed; there was a noticable increase in the lag/freeze problem. I was also getting a lot of AM story mode notices, if that's relevant.

BTW, after putting newest version of AM back in, I experienced 3 CTD's, which I really haven't experienced more than a few times before. Voodoo du jour was to close out the launcher, which was running in the system tray due to installing new store content. And now I have to stop typing because my 11 week old kitten is trying to eat my arm.

[hillypoo]

Glad to know it's not just me. I also noticed a much more insignificant lag when my sims spin around to change outfits. They stand there for about 5 seconds.. it gets really bad when they all head out at the same time and all need to change at the same time. I have no idea what causes this, but I took out AM and it works much much better. There's still a small lag, but nothing like what I was experiencing.

[tms]

It seems like all you guys are having differnet problems than I am. My pauses have no pattern and don't occur at any specific time. It affects the entire game except for animations like the diamond or the Zzz's from a sleeping sim.

[kuronue]

It seems like all you guys are having differnet problems than I am. My pauses have no pattern and don't occur at any specific time. It affects the entire game except for animations like the diamond or the Zzz's from a sleeping sim.

This sounds like my 1AM freeze with EAStory. I recall reading that AwesomeStory tries to spread out the story actions to avoid the 1AM freeze - could your game be locking up while AwesomeStory does its thing?

[J. M. Pescado]

Glad to know it's not just me. I also noticed a much more insignificant lag when my sims spin around to change outfits. They stand there for about 5 seconds.

This is normal. When your sim tries to change its outfits, the game must now load that outfit. Rather than stopping your entire game, it will stop your sim and he will stand there until his outfit loads. If you pause the game when this happens, the loading process can occur without running down the game clock and your sim will no longer stand there uselessly while it happens. Same story with sims going into showers.

[bluegenjutsu]

It's the latest patch doing this. I'm having all the freezing and route problems, too, since the patch. When I was running my game after the patch without any core mods, I noticed some of these bugs, but they weren't too bad that the game was too hard to play, after I put in awesome mod (last two versions) with the indie mod, everything became even worse and to the point where it's very hard to play. I think the patch is bad and anything else added to the game will just add to the problems.

[kirtai]

That's what I was thinking, as it didn't start until this weekend, when I patched.

[ElyZap]

I think I have a similar problem. My sims occasionally stop on the way to work or places I send them and half the time they just drop what it was they were going to do after standing around for a while blocking the path for other sims on the lot. I didn't think it was a freezing issue since it doesn't look like they actually lag, but more like some sort of pathing issue. What's worse is that it seems to happen to lots I'm not currently playing as well, but I'm not there to get them back on track and very few of the sims are actually making it into work/school. Almost every sim in the neighbourhood is well into the negative side of the performance meter and a few have lost their jobs already.

If this is too far off the issue in this thread, or has been mentioned elsewhere, I apologise.

[snowbawl]

I can not reproduce the freezing issues in my game, but I will second the path issues.  All of a sudden, everyone is swarming the same path, dropping their queues, missing work and school, and standing around for hours.  I have to manually reset them or they would still be there.  Mind you, I have multiple doors to every room, multiple exits for houses, and multiple stairs for every level. 

This was yesterday's build.  I will update again, today, before I play.

[bluegenjutsu]

The thing is, I only play one sim, unless I later marry them off and I've only been playing one sim since last evening and had the freezes happening. The music from the stereo will keep playing, his plumbob spinning and his eyes seem to be moving and sometimes I see a little movement in the upper body but his legs are frozen and time stands still. If I wait a few minutes, he will start moving again. The pathing problems I have, I had with a couple I was testing for the inseminator mod w/awesome/indie, who I had a hard time with getting to the bed to woohoo. And then when I played the later game with the one sim, I would send him to town and the townspeople would sometimes be lively and talking but then other times when one of the town sims or my sim would move somewhere, it would seem to cause a big pathing problem and then everyone would just stop doing anything and just stand around silently. No one is getting to where they are going without me having to cancel my sim's actions/movements so that things will go back to normal.

And to add, this is happening with new games I'm starting and they shouldn't be having lots of homeless sims, extra cars or any other stuff that would be causing a big lag in the game.

[Doc Doofus]

You can "beam" them, well "teleport" them. Turn testingCheats on and rightclick the ground to teleport there,

I wasn't suggesting teleporting MY sims to work.  I was suggesting that the game teleport all the TOWNIES to work.  I'm quite happy with my sims taking the carpool or bus to work.  I just wonder if it wouldn't be less laggy if the townies took a shortcut.  I rarely follow townies from home to work, so it wouldn't be no big loss and it would keep them off the roads in the morning.

[witch]

....and it would keep them off the roads in the morning.

If only that could happen in real life.