MacTech
17th Mar 2012, 12:15 AM
I've discovered that I like them *BOTH*, each has it's advantages and disadvantages....
I love AM's configurability, features like the "Hand of god" "NPC change out of work clothes", the fixing of the brain-dead pathing issues and the ability to turn off the "nagware" confirmation screens, I selected that option, YES I want to do it, that's why I selected it...
AM makes the game generally more playable and does it in an unobtrusive, behind the scenes way, it's there when you need it, but it's not in the way
However, there is one rather MAJOR downside when I run AM on my system (2.5GHz 21.5" Intel i5 iMac)....
AM seems to get more and more unstable the longer I run the game, eventually crashing out with an unexpected exception error
It's not my other hacks and mods, I've run the game completely mod free, with AM, and with AM and my other mods, even just the AM only game shows instability, can range from minutes to hours, but the game does eventually crash
No, this is not a "help me fix this" thread, I'm simply posting observations
Before I narrowed down the crashing to AM, I thought it was a memory leak or other glitch, but it wasn't, I've narrowed it down to AM itself
My fix is basically to trash AM and reinstall a fresh copy from the .dmg file I have archived
So, on a whim, I decided to perform a little experiment, I downloaded the equivalent NRaas mods, and had the game create a fresh userfile, copied my hacks and CC over to this new userfile, created a new family, and used NRaas mods instead of AM
I've now had the game running continuously for *three days* without even so much as a hiccup, NRaas mods *ON MY MACHINE* seem to be completely stable and reliable
I miss the playability enhancements of AM, but the stability makes up for it, no, I can't option-click a Sim to switch between houses, and I do have to click through those hated confirmation dialog boxes when I change households, and I had to download a "no bills/autopay bills" hack, I have to have my Sims clean up after themselves, and the like, overall things have gotten just *slightly* more aggrivating, but I'm not getting aggrivated by seemingly random CTD issues
On the upside though, I can finally Shift-Click on my Vampire sims and edit them in CAS after they've been turned (couldn't do that in the base game or with AM....), handy for whenever I have to do subtle genetic/facial structure tweaks....
A couple minor bits of irritation overall with TS3 as a game though, I hate how "Dumbed Down" the genetics system is, in terms of facial structure, it seems to do one of two things....
1; one parent's facial structure will be perfectly duplicated on the offspring
2; it takes "bits" of each parent's facial structure and puts them on the face, Dad's face shape, Mom's eyes and nose, Dad's mouth and chin, or a random mix of Mom and Dad facial structures, but each structure is a perfect duplicate of the parental structure
skintones generally show an acceptable mix, if a dark and a pale sim reproduce, the offspring can have a wide range of tones available, it's just the facial structure that seems a "this or that" setup
In TS2, it had the ability to merge and blend disparate facial structure, creating offspring that shared both parents facial structures, but were not just a simple either/or of TS3
then again, on the other side of the coin, I find the personality subroutines in TS3 far more amusing, TS2 was a great genetics petri dish, but the overall personality profiles were limited, TS3 is superior in the way sims interact emotionally, but inferior in how they react genetically
I love AM's configurability, features like the "Hand of god" "NPC change out of work clothes", the fixing of the brain-dead pathing issues and the ability to turn off the "nagware" confirmation screens, I selected that option, YES I want to do it, that's why I selected it...
AM makes the game generally more playable and does it in an unobtrusive, behind the scenes way, it's there when you need it, but it's not in the way
However, there is one rather MAJOR downside when I run AM on my system (2.5GHz 21.5" Intel i5 iMac)....
AM seems to get more and more unstable the longer I run the game, eventually crashing out with an unexpected exception error
It's not my other hacks and mods, I've run the game completely mod free, with AM, and with AM and my other mods, even just the AM only game shows instability, can range from minutes to hours, but the game does eventually crash
No, this is not a "help me fix this" thread, I'm simply posting observations
Before I narrowed down the crashing to AM, I thought it was a memory leak or other glitch, but it wasn't, I've narrowed it down to AM itself
My fix is basically to trash AM and reinstall a fresh copy from the .dmg file I have archived
So, on a whim, I decided to perform a little experiment, I downloaded the equivalent NRaas mods, and had the game create a fresh userfile, copied my hacks and CC over to this new userfile, created a new family, and used NRaas mods instead of AM
I've now had the game running continuously for *three days* without even so much as a hiccup, NRaas mods *ON MY MACHINE* seem to be completely stable and reliable
I miss the playability enhancements of AM, but the stability makes up for it, no, I can't option-click a Sim to switch between houses, and I do have to click through those hated confirmation dialog boxes when I change households, and I had to download a "no bills/autopay bills" hack, I have to have my Sims clean up after themselves, and the like, overall things have gotten just *slightly* more aggrivating, but I'm not getting aggrivated by seemingly random CTD issues
On the upside though, I can finally Shift-Click on my Vampire sims and edit them in CAS after they've been turned (couldn't do that in the base game or with AM....), handy for whenever I have to do subtle genetic/facial structure tweaks....
A couple minor bits of irritation overall with TS3 as a game though, I hate how "Dumbed Down" the genetics system is, in terms of facial structure, it seems to do one of two things....
1; one parent's facial structure will be perfectly duplicated on the offspring
2; it takes "bits" of each parent's facial structure and puts them on the face, Dad's face shape, Mom's eyes and nose, Dad's mouth and chin, or a random mix of Mom and Dad facial structures, but each structure is a perfect duplicate of the parental structure
skintones generally show an acceptable mix, if a dark and a pale sim reproduce, the offspring can have a wide range of tones available, it's just the facial structure that seems a "this or that" setup
In TS2, it had the ability to merge and blend disparate facial structure, creating offspring that shared both parents facial structures, but were not just a simple either/or of TS3
then again, on the other side of the coin, I find the personality subroutines in TS3 far more amusing, TS2 was a great genetics petri dish, but the overall personality profiles were limited, TS3 is superior in the way sims interact emotionally, but inferior in how they react genetically