jooliea wrote:

I recently got a look at some of Bluebell Flora's worlds and they are gorgeous. I have been considering trying to switch up to a smaller world to improve performance more - every time I go dollhouse-building, my game groans a bit in protest since I just glommed so many objects in there. I CAN'T STOP, THOUGH. MUST BUILD HOUSES. So I have been starting to wonder if maybe getting a smaller world is a really big improvement.

And, when you say full of sims you don't like, are you populating your worlds with your own created sims? I have never tried to play in a non-EA world, so I am sans-clues.

Hi Jooliea
I just switch off immigration with Twallan's Register mod (I think it is that one). You will still get the NPCs for the service personnel but my sims are not allowed to fraternise with the hired help (thanks again to Mr Twallan).

A lovely world that you might like as well is Winchester Farming Community by My SimsRealty. It is a very pretty world. I like rural places without big cities but they have other lovely worlds there as well. Check out Richdre's worlds as well. He makes his worlds specifically for the Mac so that they aren't resource heavy.

Once I choose my world, I then populate it with my own families that I have saved to my bin. I love seeing my own sims about town. :D

FABULOUS, thank you! I'm so ready to move out of Sunset Valley, yo.

Figwit wrote:Yoda, it works on my Mac and mine sounds similar, though older, than yours. What is happening with your's?

LadyRise, Twallan can be found here: http://nraas.wikispaces.com/

I highly recommend his mods. They have kept my game sensible and fairly stable.

I don't play in EA worlds at all. They may be pretty but they are big, have routing issues and are full of sims I don't like. I much prefer the smaller CAW worlds built by people like Bluebell Flora and Richdre (both Mac users).

Thank you Figwit for your reply
I keep getting crash, in CAS, (Sims who become black or transparent), crash in save game. In the game, red streaks appear on the screen, as if my graphics card was dead! the colors change and the game crashes! With only one world installed. It only happens with the Sims!
Tried NRaas_Overwatch.package : which seemed to cure some problems, the game is more fluid, but still have those graphic problems.
I've never tried a different world from those made ​​by EA, may be first I should try the mod you recommend?
A little discouraged as it is impossible to advance in the game,
I always restarts from the beginning, and ultimately the problems return ...

Figwit wrote:

jooliea wrote:

I recently got a look at some of Bluebell Flora's worlds and they are gorgeous. I have been considering trying to switch up to a smaller world to improve performance more - every time I go dollhouse-building, my game groans a bit in protest since I just glommed so many objects in there. I CAN'T STOP, THOUGH. MUST BUILD HOUSES. So I have been starting to wonder if maybe getting a smaller world is a really big improvement.

And, when you say full of sims you don't like, are you populating your worlds with your own created sims? I have never tried to play in a non-EA world, so I am sans-clues.

Hi Jooliea
I just switch off immigration with Twallan's Register mod (I think it is that one). You will still get the NPCs for the service personnel but my sims are not allowed to fraternise with the hired help (thanks again to Mr Twallan).

A lovely world that you might like as well is Winchester Farming Community by My SimsRealty. It is a very pretty world. I like rural places without big cities but they have other lovely worlds there as well. Check out Richdre's worlds as well. He makes his worlds specifically for the Mac so that they aren't resource heavy.

Once I choose my world, I then populate it with my own families that I have saved to my bin. I love seeing my own sims about town. :D

I would love to play with families that I have saved, but can use my sames games, I can't use CAS to create my own Sims, keep getting crash ;
Before last crash: the game interface disappears! :shock:

Marzupial wrote:MANY THANKS ARE IN ORDER HERE:

I want to start by give credit where credit is due: Thank you Love4Evathe5thch and Jooliea for your support when I was in a bad place (the initial rant that started this thread).

And thank you Kirkuk, Jooliea, and Figwit for teaching me the ways of modding!

I went step-by-step on this: first I installed the basic mod package and tested it. Success!

Then I installed Overwatch. When I launched the game and I say that it had been regognized by the game in a popup. It's like EA's game engine was asking "WHAT ARE YOU DOING DAVE?"

I tested it thoroughly and when I feld at ease, I went back to Twallan's site to add Master Controller. More tests. Once I felt everything was fine, I wanted more: ErrorTrap! You were right Jooliea, this is a god send. It's like EA's Engine was saying "MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF STARS!".

For me it was: "MY GOD, I'M SEEING STARS!".

These mods are freaking fantastic. So far, they have given a whole new dimension to my game, not to mention a lot more stability and reliability. I'll stick with those for a while and then go for AwsomeMode (although I couldn't find it last night). I'll experiment (very carefully) with other mods on Twallan's site (which I believe is now called NRaas Industries).

My last thank goes to you Jooliea: I really enjoy our small discussion on the future of Apple and EA. And let me say, you have some solid arguments! You gave me food for thought. That's how we learn! but I'm still firm on my conjecture that Apple will soon make us see a new future for computing. But for now you are right: let's us cling to the hope that EA will crank up their Cider layer to accommodate 64 bits machines. That would be a great start!

What are ARSs and AAR??? I don't know what you're talking about. that's my story and I'm sticking to it

Sul Sul everyone!

Thank you very much all of you to share your experiences! Agree with many things that were said! ^^

Problems seem to happen when there is something in this folders :
Exports and SavedSims - Simport

Edit: Graphics looks crazy & Code error 12 again!
Should I re-install all games?

if you reinstall your game i don't think it's gonna be fix ea keeps tell us to reinstall and reinstall but after all the times i did that which was alot so many times it ridiculous it didn't work. We need a patch that will fix the problems

Hi, did you ever get your issue solved? My problem is when I take screenshots, it's almost as if they were never taken. I've searched everywhere on my mac, reinstalled, everything I could think of.

yoda65 wrote:

Figwit wrote:Yoda, it works on my Mac and mine sounds similar, though older, than yours. What is happening with your's?

LadyRise, Twallan can be found here: http://nraas.wikispaces.com/

I highly recommend his mods. They have kept my game sensible and fairly stable.

I don't play in EA worlds at all. They may be pretty but they are big, have routing issues and are full of sims I don't like. I much prefer the smaller CAW worlds built by people like Bluebell Flora and Richdre (both Mac users).

Thank you Figwit for your reply
I keep getting crash, in CAS, (Sims who become black or transparent), crash in save game. In the game, red streaks appear on the screen, as if my graphics card was dead! the colors change and the game crashes! With only one world installed. It only happens with the Sims!
Tried NRaas_Overwatch.package : which seemed to cure some problems, the game is more fluid, but still have those graphic problems.
I've never tried a different world from those made ​​by EA, may be first I should try the mod you recommend?
A little discouraged as it is impossible to advance in the game,
I always restarts from the beginning, and ultimately the problems return ...

What kind of Mac do you have? I just got a brand spanking new MacBook Pro 15 inch with the 6750M graphics card and 512mb video ram, with 8GB system memory that we just put in (originally had 4). It's the lower end one between the 2 15 inch MBP's being offered.

I found out when I tried to play Starlight Shores for the very first time tonight that I am having the EXACT same issues as you. Red streaks, picture breaking up, Sims in CAS going black and white. Crashes...freezes. Same thing as you. I have one world installed by Rflong7 but I'm not currently playing it.

I played all my EPs and SPs successfully on my husband's 15 inch MBP that has similar specs, the only difference being an older core i7, slightly higher clock speed but with the older architecture. Otherwise it's the same graphics card. He does have a higher resolution screen though. I have the standard screen.

I played a very long time, long enough to get my singer sim advanced to about level 8 in her career. I had no crashes or freezes on my husband's MBP. We are both running Lion.

The difference gamewise is when I was playing his computer I brought over only one of my sims from my old computer. This time I saved several sims I like to the Saved Sims folder and I exported some of my favorite lots and households and reloaded them into this game.

Other than that, I'm at a loss. My husband is saying the newer model might be doing a switching of the graphics cards as we are playing. He just adjusted the setting to prevent that. I now need to test and see if this solves my problem...and I will get back to you with exact instructions...IF IT WORKS!

ebreezyx wrote:Hi, did you ever get your issue solved? My problem is when I take screenshots, it's almost as if they were never taken. I've searched everywhere on my mac, reinstalled, everything I could think of.

I did have that problem on my husband's computer but not my older 2009 MBP that was running Snow Leopard.

See, the thing was I've been playing for about two months without any problems. Then I installed all the expansion packs, and then BAM, it's like the pictures aren't being taken. I wonder if I could downgrade to Snow Leopard.

Well I definitely had/have all the EPs and SPs and tons of store stuff but NO third party CC. On my 2009 MBP I only have up to MasterSuite installed. I could definitely take screen shots.

The solution my husband tried did not help. He is continuing to research and now I am going to his machine and this time using identical The Sims3 folder to see if I crash his computer, too. If I do, then I will know it is something in one of my files that I brought over from my old machine that perhaps got corrupted somehow during the transfer, that is doing this to the new machine.

That would be the only answer because I definitely ran ShowTime just fine on my husband's MBP just a couple of weeks ago.

I fully agree with all your rants.

I have a heck of a lot of issues with The Sims 3 on Mac. I would have gotten a Windows 7 computer if I had a choice, but unfortunately, my school only permits us to use Mac, so for now, I'm stuck with my Macbook Pro, which has an Intel i5 processor clocked at 2.4 gHz, 4 GB RAM and Intel HD 3000, which kinda sucks since it costs $1,498 over here in Singapore, or about 50% more expensive than your typical mainstream Windows 7 computer, which could be two times as powerful.

First issue I have, is the all the bugs. I take screenshots and they won't save, my game comes up with a "Exception Raised Error" every few random times I open the game, which results me in re-installing it, and I have to re-update the game all over again, which takes me 3 hours on average since the built-in update manager likes to be lazy and refuses that to update, claiming that the game is already fully updates when the version clearly belongs to 2009. My sims come out all black before the 1.29 patch, which they thankfully fixed after that. All this from a game that costs close to $60.

Second issue I have is EA's atrocious greed. They charge $40 for an expansion pack, which comes with a whole load of problems that destroy game play instead of improving it. They give us sub-standard designed items in stuff packs, and charge us money to get custom content from the Sims 3 store, and make us pay $25 for a freaking neighbourhood that isn't even as good as some of the free ones from the Exchange. And to make matters worse, they destroy how custom content worked with the 1.29 Pets patch!

Lastly, I'm very upset with the way they treat their customers. What beloved Mac folk? They give us the "Too bad" attitude when we report a problem. They keep telling us to post in forum threads when a bunch of the exact same topics exist. This kind of a service for a game that would cost close to $440 with all the expansion packs and stuff packs. $440 for a game that is horribly glitchy and that comes with bad customer service? Wow. EA should let another company take charge of The Sims franchise if they can't even handle it.

That's it for my rants. There may be more, but I can't be bothered to rant further about a messed-up company like EA.

@Jenny -

Your Mac shouldn't be switching between the AMD and the Intel during gameplay. An easy way to check is to go to About This Mac then More Info whilst you're playing, it will show you which graphics card you're using at that exact time. I regularly have the game running in windowed mode with several Safari pages and Mail open and my Mac consistently uses the AMD rather than the Intel, even when I'm on Safari rather than the game. Turning off the automatic switching like you have done will of course make the Mac only use the AMD but the OS is smart enough to switch itself properly

Are you really, really sure you don't have any erroneous CC that you've downloaded unknowingly? Have you looked through all the installed content in the Launcher? Maybe it's a Showtime thing? That's the only EP/SP I don't have and my game is running smoothly at the moment (touch wood...). I have the same Mac as you but the higher spec one, in essence they are the same though

Dude. Best, most accurate rant ever. I have a BRAND NEW IMAC. ******* $1400 computer, and my $300+ worth of new sims games have so many ******* problems. Every time I get a new game is crash city. EA don't makes us mac users doubt you. Macs are gonna take over the world soon.