Yo Brynne! and others that play with a bazillion sims on lots

[simmiecal]

How did you figure out how many sims your system can handle?  I'd like to play a couple of larger lots and would like to push the limits of what my system can handle, but at the same time I don't want to damage the sims. What's the worst that can happen - the lot just becomes painfully slow? Even if you couldn't reload the lot later, you could use Inge's shrub to "rescue" them and move them onto another lot, right?

[SaraMK]

I've never had anything bad happen from overstuffing a lot. The worst that will happen is like you said it will be slow. I've never had one not load.

But beware of yanking the sims out of the house and into the sims bin. I've heard people say that sometimes clicking on them in the sims bin will cause a crash. Never happened to me though. If that happens you would have to use the shrub to rescue them.

Another thing to remember is that even with the LotFullOfSims hack, there are some glitches with moving out / moving in, once you have more than 8 sims in the lot. Namely you can only move in/out one sim at a time, or suffer a pretty bad glitch that will probably cause you to have to terminate the game without saving, unless you have a hack that will reenable Save/Exit options.

As far as the limit... that's up to your computer. I had a 64MB integrated video card and 512MB RAM, and could still play a house with 20-30 sims with no problems. Now I have a great video card and 2GB RAM, and 30 sims still seems to be limit before lag starts. Honestly, I get less lag for having 30 sims on a lot than I do for having 3 floors in my house! My game seems to hate that for some reason.

[simmiecal]

As far as the limit... that's up to your computer. I had a 64MB integrated video card and 512MB RAM, and could still play a house with 20-30 sims with no problems. Now I have a great video card and 2GB RAM, and 30 sims still seems to be limit before lag starts. Honestly, I get less lag for having 30 sims on a lot than I do for having 3 floors in my house! My game seems to hate that for some reason.

Interesting that you should say that. For the MATYhood in the downtown area, I've built or imported some skyscrapers to give it that "downtown" feel. I have 2 gig of ram and 256 onboard video ram and the higher floor lots also slow down tremendously. I was going to put a bunch of the single sims into apartments in the downtown area, but I figured with my specs and the lots were slow, it would be painful for others to play the lots. Most of the high rises exist more as neighborhood decoration than as playable lots.

But, this also goes to the heart of why I wanted to stuff a bunch of sims on a lot. When I start playing my hood, I wanted to make several three or four floor apartment buildings like in Chicago where I grew up. The lots that were lagging in downtown were 6+ stories high. I will have to see how the three story lots play on my system.

[Brynne]

Well, since my name is in the title of this thread, it would be nice of me to answer the question.

For me it was trial and error. My game doesn't show signs of slow-down until I'm well into the 20's, and I play on a laptop! On my old pc I had to keep it to around 4 sims per lot. With Nightlife, it's nice because you can teleport sims in and make them selectable. While they're selectable, they're treated as residents, so you can get a feel of whether your system can handle adding him to the household.

I do keep decorations and things under control, though. If I add a lot of plants, my game will stutter.

[flowerchile]

Well, since my name is in the title of this thread, it would be nice of me to answer the question.

For me it was trial and error. My game doesn't show signs of slow-down until I'm well into the 20's, and I play on a laptop! On my old pc I had to keep it to around 4 sims per lot. With Nightlife, it's nice because you can teleport sims in and make them selectable. While they're selectable, they're treated as residents, so you can get a feel of whether your system can handle adding him to the household.

I do keep decorations and things under control, though. If I add a lot of plants, my game will stutter.

Hey Brynne, would that be a lot of plants to the lots or neighborhoods, and are they custom or Maxis, coz I have heaps of plants in both; Hmm this may explain the stuttering.

[Brynne]

I'm referring to plants on the lot itself. Both Maxis and custom.

[Dea]

Plants are ok for me...Trees cause problems for some reason...I have to remove them from all my lots...I put 45 people on one lot once to move them to a new neighborhood...Well having no objects on the lot made it ok though...

[flowerchile]

I'm referring to plants on the lot itself. Both Maxis and custom.

I love plants, but I might try fewer in my next house, just to see what happens.  Maybe I'll cut down on the obligatory greenhouses and conservatories...

[Sleepycat]

Another thing to remember is that even with the LotFullOfSims hack, there are some glitches with moving out / moving in, once you have more than 8 sims in the lot. Namely you can only move in/out one sim at a time, or suffer a pretty bad glitch that will probably cause you to have to terminate the game without saving, unless you have a hack that will reenable Save/Exit options.

heh, wish I had known that the other day 

Thankfully InSIM can reenable the save/exit options but the Lot is buggy now so I'm gonna have to move my orphanage after I build them a new one (moved my orphanage and a number of other sims to a different n'hood, did it the right way so no worrys with that)

That was the first time I had 17 playable sims on 1 lot, it was soooo weird. They all seemed to love it specially the children Thankfully for the short time they were together on this Lot for the "big move" only 1 sim got caught cheating out of the 8 adults  *laughs*