I need expert technical help - The game clock doesn't keep time.

[Pam]

To clarify, if you can run TS3 comfortably, you should be able to run TS4 well. TS4's engine is way better than TS3 as far as reports go. It's built on GlassBox, the same engine as SimCity 5.

My concern about the ability to run The Sims 4 was just the fact that the specs haven't been released.  It sort of bugs me that a guy at a computer would make that claim when, as far as I know, nobody has that information yet.  It's premature for us to really discuss this, but I think it has already come up on the Sims 4 thread that it will likely run better than Sims 3.  That's not the point, though.  If I was at a store shopping for something like this and the guy told me it will run Sims 4, I wouldn't make the purchase because I wouldn't trust that he knows what he's doing.

Forgive the random tech nerd ramble, but C:\ is by default where Windows is installed. That's essentially it. Assuming I had a drive mounted and partitioned at drive Q:\, I could run TS3 off that if I installed it there in the first place. You install it to a separate drive when you install the game, it's an option. In fact, you could, in theory run the game off a USB. I do not recommend this. Next time you reinstall, take a gander at the option. It defaults (on Windows, at least) to C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3. Don't change it if you don't know what drives you have.

I set it up this way at Carl's recommendation.  He said to leave Sims 3 running on C Drive and let the new 2 TB drive carry everything else (music, photos, Sims 3 backup files, etc.).  I know what drives I have, but don't feel comfortable changing things around.

[nomad]

If your only getting this on IP then it sounds very much like it could be down to routing issues in that world. There is a fix for some of them available here: http://www.modthesims.info/d/513265 which is the best available to my knowledge at the moment; there's very little chance EA will provide one as previous worlds also have routing issues that where never fixed.

@Seabody btw Glassbox is only speculation and I really hope it isn't used

[beardeux]

Thanks everyone.  I have installed Sims 3 to my external drive.  I see no difference in game play when it is working properly.  This problem has occurred in all my towns, not just IP and will begin randomly anywhere.  I've gone back to older saves or started new towns only to have them eventually break down.  I have the latest update 1.63 but this occurred back in mid july.  I really love the traffic mod because of the professional cars and also the number of trumped up cars, specifically taxis.  The game was clearing from a few thousand to over 90,000 vehicles per night.  The roads were yellow.  I'm back down to less than 100.  The cars began with the Seasons install.  I played without the mods for several days at different times without a positive game response, so I don't believe it's the mods causing anything.

I've never used modthesims.  I was reading about it and I'm not sure I have the savvy to achieve the install.  It sounded quite complicated.

You know, I've also been contemplating, is it possible I have bought a corrupted game disc. 

[Randox]

Wondering what your processor is? (make and speed)

A lot of the game, like pathing, is all handled on the CPU. If the GPU were having issues, your frame rate would be horrible and erratic, and if your hard drive is not loading quickly, I would expect that things would be invisible (until textures could load), or you would see the game freeze, and when it resumed a whole bunch of objects would be appearing from thin air.

And I think you mentioned this, but make sure all your mods are for the patch your game is running. Bad things happen if any of them don't match.

[beardeux]

hi Randox, I have windows 7 Professional, 64 bit, 8192 mb ram, directX 11, 3.1 Ghz.  The ram is 8mb.  I have just installed an MSI 7770 (prior - AMD Radeon HD 6800) video card.  Approx. total memory 710 MB.
I don't know what a GPU is.  The graphics appear to be fine.

[Pam]

You know, I've also been contemplating, is it possible I have bought a corrupted game disc.

If you've registered your game on the official Sims 3 site, you can download a digital copy through Origin.  That might be worth trying.  Just uninstall Island Paradise and reinstall it using the digital download.

[Randox]

Sorry, GPU stands for Graphics Processing Unit, it's another term for graphics card.

Since it's island paradise that is giving you so much grief, I'd definitely try using the digital copy.

And just to double check, assuming your game is up to date, you should be on patch 1.63.5, so all mods need to be on that version as well (and if a game was saved while using a mod from the wrong version, try creating a new game to see if that works better).

[beardeux]

Hi everyone.  I'd like to thank everyone for trying to figure this out.  I just wanted to let you know what has taken place.  Yesterday, I used a program called CCleaner that was recommended to me and it cleaned over 1400 files off my computer.  My son spent the afternoon with me today and he was in touch with an online gaming friend (and computer guru) from across the big pond and the two of them put their heads together.  They came up with two things.  My game monitor settings were set for a much lower resolution than the computer monitor default calls for.  So he changed that.  I always thought I had a pretty good image particularly all the town and background things, except I always thought the characters themselves were pixely.  After changing the monitor settings in the game there is a substantial difference with both.  Wow even.

The second thing was to run a program called MalwareByte.  I have no idea what that is, but it looked at everything on the computer (all drives) and cleared out just over 200 'infected objects' and the vast majority of them were from the registry called 'registry key', I don't know whats. ;-)  So I believe my registry was really out of whack and I'm hoping the problem is solved.  So with that:

Prior to this cleaning - I opened a large game file last night and had seen the clock starting to become sporadic which is the signal for failure, and I thought I would lose it.  But, tonight after the cleaning, I've been playing that town for a couple hours now and the clock is running fine, the speeds are fine and the characters are doing as they should be doing.  Looks good so far.  We did try to put an old save back in, but the problem was there,  so I took it out.  I was only able to salvage 4 town scenarios.  So I have quite a bit of rebuilding to do.  However, I did save every household, house and community lot that I've developed/built into the library and they seem fine when I put them into a new town.  So really, it's just placement and relationships I have to rebuild.  Thank goodness for small mercies.

I will report back in a couple days if all is well.  Or not! 

[Randox]

Glad to hear you got something working, even if you couldn't save everything.

Just remember to run malwarebytes regularly (I'd say no more than a week between scans, at least until you can go a month without it finding anything). It's a good rule for any anti-virus, but it goes double here because malwarebytes will only find things during scans, it has no real time protection (the upside is that the program doesn't burden your computer except during scans).


Registery cleaning is good, as is running your monitor at the correct resolution (the term is 'native resolution', and the picture will always look better if you use it).

I hope it's smooth sailing for you form here on out!

[beardeux]

Thanks Randox, I've been playing all evening.  The game seems to be running much better.  The only thing I'm noticing now is that it is very sluggish to respond to the mouse.  It can take a second or more after I click on something before it gives me a menu and another second before my choice is highlighted.  It's also much jerkier than before.  Lots of very short freezes.  I'm hoping it will settle down.  Maybe it's feeling it's new legs.  I didn't know Malware is an anti-virus.  I'll be sure to run it weekly.  I also never adjusted the monitor settings from the initial installation.  Figured the game knew what it was doing.  Silly me.

[Blackrosea]

Thanks Randox, I've been playing all evening.  The game seems to be running much better.  The only thing I'm noticing now is that it is very sluggish to respond to the mouse.  It can take a second or more after I click on something before it gives me a menu and another second before my choice is highlighted.  It's also much jerkier than before.  Lots of very short freezes.  I'm hoping it will settle down.  Maybe it's feeling it's new legs.  I didn't know Malware is an anti-virus.  I'll be sure to run it weekly.  I also never adjusted the monitor settings from the initial installation.  Figured the game knew what it was doing.  Silly me.

I have this happening to me from time to time.  I turned off a couple of my expansions I am not using at the moment hoping that would help and it has.  The newest expansions take up a lot of Ram to run. Also clearing out your DCBackup file has helped as well.  I think with the lastest patch there were bugs created as well that will slow up your game a little. Hoping the new patch (if they fix some stuff) will help when it comes out.

[beardeux]

Hi Blackrosea, by turning of expansion packs, do you mean uninstalling them?  I've just cleared the DCBackup files - over 800.  Will play later tonight.  I'll see how it runs then.

[Blackrosea]

Hi Blackrosea, by turning of expansion packs, do you mean uninstalling them?  I've just cleared the DCBackup files - over 800.  Will play later tonight.  I'll see how it runs then.

It is a program I use before opening up my game that let's me switch on or off what expansions or stuff packs I want to use. It saves my settings until I change it again.