Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
e3 d3 Ne2 Nd2 Nb3 Ng3
retired moderator
#26 Old 13th Dec 2020 at 11:28 PM
The trees usually end up at co-ordinate 0,0 if they glitch. So dead centre of your world is where they will be if there are any.
Island Paradise made a lot of changes to the world routing, I remember hearing a lot of people saying that the water taxis were very costly performance wise, so I wonder if that pack is costly even if you don't have any ports/ boat lots? I never played with that one much so I don't really have any info, perhaps others who have made worlds with that pack could advise.
I've never noticed issues when building lots on chunk boundaries, but that one house is on a boundary of four, so perhaps that's significant. The issue with the trash can and the errant wall is very odd, perhaps the items are considered to be on the world layer instead of actually part of the lot for some reason? That could explain why they couldn't be deleted. Not sure why that would happen though, I never had anything like that when building across chunks, so maybe a glitch involving Island Paradise?
For this picture- it looks as though you have 12 or 13 buildings with shells on a single chunk, so when that chunk is in focus the game will be attempting to play the sounds associated with those shells and any markers/ trees/ effects also. This could be quite taxing, remember that Bridgeport is very much more spaced out, and though I built a world with several shells in close proximity, I had no where near as many disparate lots as you do. I wonder whether this is just too much for the game to deal with at one time, hence the sound glitches? A rough and ready way to test would be to use a copy of the world and delete half of the lots in the affected chunks, and see if that makes a difference when you reboot. If it does then you may have to make a choice, perhaps reduce your lot density or make some lots with dummy shells, or otherwise reduce the processing cost of the world. In this picture we can see how you've created an absolutely beautiful and very realistic city, but going back again to Bridgeport, we see that the EA worlds are not realistic as they are less dense and simpler. Could be that you are pushing what a 32 bit game can do.

Edit: Forgot to say that I think the terrain paint thing is a red herring, if you hadn't assigned a sound to the terrain then the game would just have defaulted to the grass sound anyway, I don't think it's possible to not have the sim make a sound when walking/  running.
Advertisement
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#27 Old 14th Dec 2020 at 2:56 AM
@simsample:

Yes, I do think that some of it is an Island Paradise issue, and as much as I love it I kind of regret having installed it. The EP adds a brand new system of public transport/vehicle. You are right--even if you have no boats or ports, they will spring up automatically. This is why there are so many roads in this world. If there's no nearby road near a destination, IP will generate a water taxi.

Regarding chunk density, I'm experimenting with spacing out some of the sub-hoods, and I will most likely eliminate some houses and townhouses. I don't really need 210 lots when you think about it. My other worlds top out between 160-190 and still feel "alive", so going so high isn't all that necessary. I'll spend the next week or so moving things around, spacing things out, play testing, etc. and let you know how it goes. Again, this will take me awhile.

Quote: Originally posted by simsample
In this picture we can see how you've created an absolutely beautiful and very realistic city, but going back again to Bridgeport, we see that the EA worlds are not realistic as they are less dense and simpler. Could be that you are pushing what a 32 bit game can do.


Thanks. I figured as much. I'm really annoyed--and scared, because I have another similar large-scale world like this in the works and now I'm feeling trepidation. I was hoping that one would be even grander than this one and now...looks like I will have to scale that back, too,

Anyway, thanks for all of your help. If it weren't for you and everyone else in this thread, I would've just quit the entire thing and never look back. Things were getting that dire. In any event, I'll definitely return when I can get this darned thing finally working right!
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#28 Old 17th Dec 2020 at 9:07 AM Last edited by thesims1depot : 17th Dec 2020 at 10:12 AM.
@simsample:

I'm back and...OMG...you'll never believe what happened!

Know how I've been going through every tried-and-true method of cleaning up the world, only to have the glitch return? Well, I think I found the last piece of the puzzle.

When we last spoke, I went back to the world, started rearranging lots and taking some others out. Then I deleted all the builds to add lots from the save bin back into the world a batch at a time to monitor progress. By the time I added in a second batch of lots, the sound began glitching again. I didn't have more than a handful (maybe about 30) when the sound started going out, and I was nowhere near the Downtown area, which had that highly packed area of LN shells we had discussed earlier. I was just in the beach area, where sub-hoods are spaced out.

So then I said, "What happens if I open this world in SuperCAW?" The reason why I wondered about it is that clearly something had gone wrong with this world but CAW kept smiling at me the entire time, cheerfully telling me my world was successfully saved. Maybe SuperCAW would yield me some clues.

So, I opened the world in SuperCAW, and for the first time I got the error message "Attempted to read or write protected memory." I never had that issue before with this world, researched the message and learned that this usually happens in CAW when there's some kind of incompatibility issue between the game and CAW if you installed Origin vs disc. This was when I remembered that in the last weeks of building, CAW had kept crashing repeatedly when I typed a search in metadata. It got to a point where I had to uninstall and reinstall CAW. Then at some point, I had to reinstall my game completely from digital via Origin when I reinstalled my OS, as opposed to by disk.

So then I began wondering if something hadn't gone buggy when I reinstalled CAW and TS3. This is when I suddenly started remembering odd changes to Pottersville that had started popping up in the last few phases of completion. When you have IP installed and open up the world, the first thing that generally happens is that your sims have the wish to go play in the ocean. That's what happened with the world, too, initially. But after a few saves, this would happen--every time I opened a household that had fountain water and fountain jet, the sims would initiate the "Observe New Object" action, look at the fountain, cheer and regard it as a pool object, like I had just placed a new pool there. Weeks ago, I had deleted pools from every lot for this very reason to no avail. This time around, I wondered if the problem weren't the fountains. Like, why would sims regard a fountain as a pool object?

I had tons of fountains in this world, especially in the Downtown area, so I started deleting them. Some of the fountains were able to be deleted in one shot with the hammer, but others were not. I had to first delete the fountain jets, then the fountain itself. This suggested that maybe they were glitched like the mailboxes on those two lots from before. After I did this, I experimented with a few lots at a time because I didn't want to go through the trouble of removing fountains from dozens of lots, only to play test and be back to Square One.

So, are you ready to find out what happened when I started play testing this world with a fraction of the fountains removed?

The sounds came back again.

BUT...I'd been through this b.s. before, remember? Where I'd fixed up the terrain paint and things were good for awhile...or the public markers...or lots...and then within a few minutes, the sound would glitch out. For all I knew, this could be another fluke. I could be going, "YIPPEEEEE..." and then a few sim hours later, boom--back to Square One.

Well, that's exactly what happened. The sound came back for a bit, then started glitching, particularly the TV set (again, with the loud booming volume and inability to be paused).

=HOWEVER= for the first time, I was dealing more with normal sound lag than a sound glitch. Meaning: if I switched back and forth between households, the sound would glitch out for a bit, but then reset itself back to normal, as if the game could finally keep up with the sounds enough to cache them properly. The glitching hasn't been completely fixed, mind you, but this was a 75% improvement over before, where the sound was completely out of whack.

I am still in the process of stripping out fountain water, and then next will be actual fountain objects and then pools. The reason why I'm deleting fountain objects is that I noticed that some of them had fallen beneath the first level. I know that you said that this was a mere visual glitch but I do think that they're objects that have suffered the same fate as those glitched garbage cans. They're objects, I think, that are in a sort of limbo where they're half world objects and half lot objects but don't belong to any layer.
Screenshots
e3 d3 Ne2 Nd2 Nb3 Ng3
retired moderator
#29 Old 17th Dec 2020 at 10:52 AM
interesting! Of course the fountains make sound too, so maybe that's what it is... perhaps the game glitches because they are between ground levels? The protected memory thing shows the world is using a lot of memory, CAW is trying to utilise system memory. I think that the SuperCAW exes had the 4GB switch done on them, but it might be worth checking that, especially if it's one you compiled yourself.
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#30 Old 17th Dec 2020 at 1:39 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simsample
The protected memory thing shows the world is using a lot of memory, CAW is trying to utilise system memory. I think that the SuperCAW exes had the 4GB switch done on them, but it might be worth checking that, especially if it's one you compiled yourself.


I don't understand this last part, about SuperCAW and the switch. How would I check that out, in any event? And no, I didn't compile it myself, because I am lazy.

Quote: Originally posted by simsample
interesting! Of course the fountains make sound too, so maybe that's what it is... perhaps the game glitches because they are between ground levels?


Now, get this!! Here is something that I stumbled across years ago that may pertain to this entire bizarre situation: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/di...ing-boxes-paint

In that thread, there was a very strange once-off date debate between Rflong and Writin_Reg. It was so strange that the topic was never broached again. Writin_Reg said she was helping troubleshoot someone's world of massive lag. What brought the debate up was her contention that the terrain paints on the lots from Build Mode were counting towards the number of paints in CAW. Meaning: if you had, say, 7 layers per chunk and then the lot itself from Build Mode had two, those two paints would count towards the 7 and put you over the limit for a grand total of 9.

Rflong was skeptical, too, and so was I when discovered the thread. His/her stance was in so many words "that doesn't seem possible; how could the terrain paints on the lots contribute to the paint per chunks in CAW?" Putting this entire fiasco with the fountains and garbage cans into perspective, I am now wondering if there isn't a rare bug that makes things on lots accidentally fall into limbo? So, in Writin_Reg's case, she was thinking that CAW itself counts terrain paints on lots as part of the chunk count when what might have happened is that the paints accidentally blended with the global layer, causing CAW to count those lot paints as terrain paints, causing the entire world to glitch badly.

Crazy, huh?
e3 d3 Ne2 Nd2 Nb3 Ng3
retired moderator
#31 Old 17th Dec 2020 at 2:32 PM
Quote: Originally posted by thesims1depot
I don't understand this last part, about SuperCAW and the switch. How would I check that out, in any event? And no, I didn't compile it myself, because I am lazy.

Don't worry, there's no point in compiling it yourself if someone else has already done it! Andrew and I started off by having users compile the exe themselves as we were worried about repercussions if EA found out we were offering the exe on MTS, but then Inge let us put the compiled files on Simlogical, and once Sims 4 was released it didn't seem to matter so much.
The 4GB thing is just to allow SuperCAW to use the maximum amount of RAM it can... details here. Are you running the 1.67 version of CAW? If so, I just checked and the version at Simlogical (linked here) does not have the 4GB switch, so I just updated it and reuploaded here. So, as long as you are on 1.63 to 1.67 this will work for you; delete the SuperCAW exe and replace with the new one. Might be worth you checking your normal CAW exe too, to see if it's done.
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...s-aware.112556/


Quote: Originally posted by thesims1depot
Now, get this!! Here is something that I stumbled across years ago that may pertain to this entire bizarre situation: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/di...ing-boxes-paint

Seems like there was a custom terrain paint involved, could be that someone made it high res or huge filesize or something. Even something like having a file named incorrectly can cause lag and issues in Sims 3. The lot terrain paint seems to have no effect on the chunk boundary count- whether it turns red or not- but of course everything in the world affects the performance, especially when it is in the active chunk.
Test Subject
#32 Old 17th Dec 2020 at 4:30 PM
I'm following this thread. It's interesting. Caw is interesting ... and fun ... and can make you tear your hair off your head and lie sleepless at night ... but fun. Anything that can go wrong goes wrong ... but Caw is fun.
I would like to test Pottersville and see if I can find any clue. At least we should be able to get answers as to whether it is a driver issue or not. Trashing the world is not a option.
My own world is the same size. about 210 lotts. I have the same expansions installed, and I also have a chunk with 9+ high-rise buildings on it. This makes it even more interesting for me.
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#33 Old 17th Dec 2020 at 4:30 PM
@simsample: Thank you very much for the info! As usual, you have been a tremendous help. As usual, I'll report back as soon as I notice any improvement or any new fascinating hiccups come up.
e3 d3 Ne2 Nd2 Nb3 Ng3
retired moderator
#34 Old 17th Dec 2020 at 4:51 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Eva-Lulu
I would like to test Pottersville and see if I can find any clue. At least we should be able to get answers as to whether it is a driver issue or not. Trashing the world is not a option.
I agree! I'd like to test it too, but I think it requires EPs I don't have.
@thesims1depot Which EPs and SPs does this world use? I don't have Sims 3 installed nor CAW at the moment, but maybe I can acquire some of the EPs if I don't have the discs.
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#35 Old 17th Dec 2020 at 6:34 PM Last edited by thesims1depot : 17th Dec 2020 at 7:01 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by Eva-Lulu
I'm following this thread. It's interesting. Caw is interesting ... and fun ... and can make you tear your hair off your head and lie sleepless at night ... but fun. Anything that can go wrong goes wrong ... but Caw is fun.
I would like to test Pottersville and see if I can find any clue. At least we should be able to get answers as to whether it is a driver issue or not. Trashing the world is not a option. My own world is the same size. about 210 lots. I have the same expansions installed, and I also have a chunk with 9+ high-rise buildings on it. This makes it even more interesting for me.


@Eva-Lulu: Thanks for offering to test Pottersville out. As it turns out, I don't think it's a driver issue anymore. It's looking more and more like something wonky happened during one of the saves. In the last post, you'll see that I became suspicious about fountain water having glitched like the mailboxes and trees from before, where they sIipped in between the ground floor and basement levels. I then started removing them and the sound gradually came back in fits and starts. So, the running theory is that the fountains and pools were glitching the sound, since they have sounds attached to them. They were, as it were, interfering with the other sounds in the world.

Right now, I'm in the process of deleting all the fountains and pools in the world. The sound is still glitching here and there, but it's more of a slight lag now than a full out glitch. I can hear the sims interact, their movements (footsteps, placing things on counters, etc.), radio and public audio stations, so that's a good sign.

Regarding the high density buildings and such, I've built high density before, but the difference was that in other worlds, I had always placed plazas here and there to break up the monotony. So, there was high density, but the plazas helped reduce performance issues.

For example, below is Sim Acres. It has just as many high density buildings as Pottersville =BUT= you can see in the red areas below how there are little green spaces and plazas here and there:



I don't have any green spaces and plazas in Downtown Pottersville, so therein lay some of the problems.
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#36 Old 17th Dec 2020 at 7:00 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simsample
I agree! I'd like to test it too, but I think it requires EPs I don't have.
@thesims1depot Which EPs and SPs does this world use? I don't have Sims 3 installed nor CAW at the moment, but maybe I can acquire some of the EPs if I don't have the discs.


It uses:

World Adventures
Ambitions
Pets
Generations
Showtime
Late Night
Island Paradise
Seasons

It also uses Riverview from the TS3 Store
Page 2 of 2
Back to top