Resolved - It's lagging

[AxelVal]

Just recently my game began to have a serious lag time, but only in one neighborhood.  It's my second custom neighborhod, and the first one only lags due to the 'stalker syndrome' which is easily cured.  I only play in these two towns, and not the Maxis ones.
This neighborhood is used for my "Without Divine Intervention" story, so there is only one family.  It is also affecting my story as I can only stand to be in there for a short amount of time before it drives me insane.  What could cause a lag time in this town but not my other?

[Micco]

Do you have a lot of decorations? The more eye candy you have the slower it gets.

[AxelVal]

I'm pretty (99.9%) sure that I have little/no windows and I know that I have no decorations put up.

The only thing I can think of is that it would be due to the house size.  I have five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a backyard with a pool, and a huge living/dining/kitchen.

[Micco]

By decorations I mean trees, signs, water, towers, balloons, airplanes, etc in your neighborhood. How many buildings in your hood? Is all that visible from inside the lot? If it is, that can really slow things down.

Your house isn't doing it; if you turn off (or at least down) the visibility of what's in the hood and that still doesn't help I'm not sure what your problem could be. System specs?

[AxelVal]

I don't about the system, but my other neighborhood is full of houses.
This one has maybe three other houses, all empty so I can delete them if I have to, and no decorations in the town.  It was made specifically for my story and I didn't feel like bogging it down with stuff for no reason.  I have everything I can on the graphics turned to 'low' or 'off'.

[Micco]

Ok, open up the Task Manager with your game running on the lot in question (if you don't know how to open it, right click on the task bar WinXP otherwise Ctrl+Alt+Delete) and see what your system is using to run that lot. With hardly anything in it and graphics set low, you shouldn't be using much; certainly nothing like this:


If your usages are that high there is something bugging the lot or the game because the lot I got the screen from is excessively overloaded.

[Rogue777]

Wow, Micco, how much RAM do you have? My Sims2 game only ever uses 200K-500K and it gets a little laggy at the high end of that.

I need more memory.

Axel - I find that the more trees on a lot, the slower the lot plays for me.  On one lot that I found troublesome, turning off shadows and neighborhood views helped, as well as reducing the graphics resolution settings. It sucks to have to play under those conditions when you have a decent graphics card, but what can you do?

[Micco]

Wow, Micco, how much RAM do you have? My Sims2 game only ever uses 200K-500K and it gets a little laggy at the high end of that.

My RAM is a subject that is almost best left untouched but since you ask...

Warning! Do not try this at home!
The system thinks I have 1.25 GB; the commit charge in that screenshot shows more. At that time I had about 4% of the physical RAM left available. Plugged into my MB are four 512 MB RAM chips, two run at 400 MHz the other two run at 333; both are matched pairs all from the same manufacturer. I set my system BIOS to run the memory at 333 MHz and that is what I get. It was a quick, cheap (free) fix for more ram.

[AxelVal]

Micco, I have to wonder if that will work on a Mac.  Many things the PC Simmers have/do sometimes don't work for me.  I think I'm going to delete everything else in that town and try everything I can.  Losing pictre quality might be bad for the story, but the lag is bad for my mental health. :grin:

[BeosBoxBoy]

Micco I hope that Fireworks.exe I am seeing in your processes is Macromedia Fireworks and not the Worm.P2P.Lolol.c

[AxelVal]

OK, I think it'll work now.  I deleted every other house and empty lot and it started to work better.  The only problem now comes when all five of them are on the same floor together it lags worse than before.

wow...I never thought I'd see an admin in one of my threads 'til I at least left the Moo-Bunny status. :blink:

[Micco]

Micco I hope that Fireworks.exe I am seeing in your processes is Macromedia Fireworks and not the Worm.P2P.Lolol.c

MX version; for working with screenshots it beats Photoshop CS2 in speed and ease of use.

Axel, you would have saved us all a bit of time had you mentioned at the beginning you were running it on a Mac

[BeosBoxBoy]

AxelVal:  try turning off the Anti-Virus and make sure you have as close to nothing else running in the background as possible.

another thing to think about is on the lot - how many shrubs, bushes, hedges, trees, and flowers do you have?

How many floors?

Do you have mirror reflection on?

Do you have a bunch of furniture?

all the little things can add up.

Then think about your Sim's hair style - is it a custom mesh?

And jewelry?

Angel wings? Demon wings?

Really complicated clothing maybe?

try to think about things you don't usually notice.  I know that after I ran Windows update one time - it installed a crappy video card driver without me knowing, and I was 3 weeks figuring it out.  I have heard of similar experiences from Mac users and lopsided updates of core system files.

So check to see if there is a new version of the video card drive available at the manufacturer's web site.  if there is - install it - it won't hurt.

Also check your hard drive - it may have too much slack.  Try checking it with a utility.

[AxelVal]

That's what I thought of as I was playing.  Two of the people have custom hair, but the clothes are Maxis made.
Sorry, Micco.  I always forget to say something like that when it could be crucial.

[AxelVal]

It reolved itself in a way.  Some people finally kicked it, and I delted all three of the Maxis towns as I never used them anyway.  Like a hot knife through butter now.