Unusual type of freeze since BB

[Joria]

Ok, I'm not the first or only one to experience this.  What happens is your character freezes, for a minute or two, but everything else keeps moving.  Grass and trees sway, sprinklers, sprinkle, etc. but you are unable to do ANY commands including exit.  It eventually does a "click", and then starts working again.  It is intermittent and has only begun since installing Barnacle Bay, (although in my case it MIGHT have been with Fast Lane since I installed them both at the same time).  It happens most often when you speed up, but not as often on regular, normal speed.  It happens in all towns so far.  It doesn't stay stuck, and it doesn't crash the game. It just takes away time and is annoying.  Has anyone else experienced this or heard about it, or has any way to fix it?

[gerrr00]

I totally had that happen!  But I waited a good 5 minutes and my game never 'caught' up.  Though I had this happen before Fast Lane & BB but usually a 10 second delay, maybe 30.  The last time it happened it stayed stuck.  To recap, yes it has happened before, once actually I thought about it, but very short amounts of times, but since the new SP & BB it happened that once and never unfroze.

[Pam]

This has been happening long before Barnacle Bay and Fast Lane.  Let's not raise alarm that Barnacle Bay causes things that have been bugged in the game prior to its release.

[malteser60]

I have also had this long before BB. I just patiently wait for a minute or so then it all catches up. Also it doesn't happen at any specific trigger and is quite random. There are times when it happens often during a gaming session, and others when it doesn't happen at all. No idea what causes it though.

[Saltypaws]

I never really had it happen until recently, I will put it that way and I think, in my case anyway and maybe others too, is that doing this dynasty, it is on a huge lot and, let's face it, there are alot of things going on in this lot and more sims than most people are use to playing.  I am noticing it more as my house gets bigger and the more sims I have on my lot.  I have noticed very little lag in other games that are not quite as big as the dynasty lot.  Right now I have 6 sims on this lot and alot of house and decorations, which slows the game down somewhat anyway.  The more you have going on in a game, the more memory it takes.  So I think with so many people playing these big lots, it is just going to happen.  It is just annoying at times, but mine only lasts for a few seconds, so I am not concerned.  I was going to mention it on here and then read others are having the same thing happen.  I know most of our game files are getting quite large, so that is all the more reason to stop your game after a couple of hours of playing and make sure you clean your cookies and internet folders and defrag.  It does make a big difference in your game.  I also tried turning off some processes and that really helps, it is just a hassle to do it every time, but it helps not to have so much running in the background while you play.  Alot of small things combined that we do to make our games run better, the better.  We have spent alot of money and time on this game and every little thing we do to make it run better, means a more enjoyable play experience.

[Pam]

Yes, the large Dynasty files will get slower as we keep playing them.  There's so much more for the game to load and it will get sluggish.

[Joria]

It's gone beyond annoying now, and at the moment I don't have much of a house and only two people on it.  At least in BB.  I know it helps if you clean out the cache but WHICH cache?  That's what get's me.  I run PC Optimize and something Doctor and my defrag says it doesn't need defragging and I leave my game completely, frequently so it resets whatever it is that it needs to reset.  Pretty technologically challenged here so don't have the correct terms.  I really never had this problem before.  I do know the more you have on the slower it gets.  Sims2 became a nightmare to the point I could queue something then safely walk away from the pc because it would take that long to do what I asked.  I had TONS of stuff for that, but none of it is on this pc.  I'm going to try emptying cache files and if my dynasty etc. gets messed up from it, I'm not restarting it.  At least not for the challenge.

[Lenka]

I had the same problem with my dynasty attempt with very small and almost undecorated house and 2 Sims living in. As I have no extension packs installed, it has to be an error in the main game. Other families run smoothly after restarting the game but the one where I experienced this problem continued to freeze after about a 30 minutes of gameplay. As it was at the very beginning of Dynasty, I took it radically - I deleted that save. It was a week ago and it didn't reappeared since.
My little idea is that it can be a bug prior to the English version of game. It happened a day when I uninstalled my game in French to reinstall it in English...

[Joria]

Ok, emptying that cache file was probably a very bad idea.  When I went back into my game there were several items that had been changed and now do not show up in my downloads in game.  (Haven't checked downloads on the launcher yet.)  So I will have to re-download these items.  Strangely enough, parts of a set were there, but other parts weren't.  Bah Haus is what I'm specifically aware of.  Oh, and that Chinese floor lamp is gone and the $1 decoration was replaced by Atlas holding up the world, which is much more costly!  My pretty, and expensive, bed, also is missing.

EDIT:  Ok, not so bad.  Rebooted, re-installed my store stuff, and everything is back the way it originally was.  Now to see if I still have as many frequent freezes.  I don't mind them once in awhile, but they were getting more regular and of longer duration.

[Pam]

@Joria:

The file you need to clean out is the DCBackup file located at Documents/Electronic Arts/Sims 3 (Windows system).  The Cache file deletes your downloaded items, as you discovered.