I've had a tremendous amount of crashing over the last few days. I've done a package cull and thought I had everything calmed down, and then last night I had a couple more crashes. Thinking back over it this morning I noticed that the crashing started after I found out how to use testing cheats and buydebug to place garden plants on a lot before I move the sims in: and the last two crashes (the ones after I thought I had fixed the issue) were on a lot where I had placed a couple of apple trees and some common plants (I had already suspected that using buydebug to plant large gardens and/or gardens with uncommon or rare plants might cause a problem).

Other things I know about the situation: Error trap doesn't report anything remarkable (or I would be posting at Nraas, naturally), except it notes that there are some offworld and "destroyed" pants, and it is true that I changed my mind during the build and eliminated half the plants so the garden would be smaller. And it is also true that I failed to eliminate a ginseng plant because the game considers it a "contained" item and says nope. I own two custom harvestables, the strawberry plant and the coconut palm, and I updated CC Loader a couple of days ago (thanks to iIgazor pointing out that a new edition was available): but I hadn't used either of them on the lot. One of the other two houses that I made and played last night did crash, though.

I noticed that when I sent my sims to the computer to sign up for self-employed careers, most of them were greyed out (including the ones I wanted them to sign up for), but I don't know if that is related.

So the question is: could the crashing be related to using buydebug this way?

Thank you for the pointers! I've read those two threads now.

Alas, no, the crashing is not at loading or saving. I'm playing along, it feezes briefly, and then crashes to desktop. I haven't been able to recognize a particular activity druing which the crashing takes place, but I have a sort of feeling there probably is something. I don't have "ProprietorPlacementMat" (I don't have Showtime), so it's not that either (though I must be having a poor-reader day because I am not sure how that came into that conversation).

I did play with a clean game at one point without crashing, and gradually added things back in till they seemed to work well. Mostly all the mods I have are either from Nraas or they're relatively minor mods from here. I did end up removing the food and harvestable mods I had (though I added back in those two plants).

I just noticed that in fact I have added the Nraas Careers mods (not all of them, Assassination is gross) between when the game was not crashing and when it did crash, and that I had noticed some odditiies relevant to that. So I'm thinking I must have either already had something that conflicts with it, or else I messed up the installation (though how one messes up "download, unzip, copy, paste" I don't know)> So I guess my next step is removing those, or alternatively something non-Nraas that appears to deal with careers, if I find one and I think I want it less. Edit: I have even fewer mods than I thought I did, and none of them relate to careers except the Nraas ones, so I guess they're coming out for now.

I'll report back after I do that, in case it's ever relevant to someone else.

Not sure what the deal is, but if it was something NRaas Careers related, we would have gotten reports on our site that something was up with the mod. I have most of the NRaas mods (including Careers and all its modules) and can say, after my ventures in Buydebug mode when making a community lot, I haven't experience the things you mention.

For this part:


Self employed jobs are age/skill related, if your active Sim doesn't meet the requirement of having a lvl 1 Skill of such desired job or in some being an Young Adult, then it will remain greyed out till your Sim does. Can you confirm this?

Placeholder reply: Stevset, you are right, and the issue was that the sims had not gotten their first skill points yet. Also, I can confirm that the crashes are not related to Careers.

I finally got an intelligible error message: Directx fail, and so I have downloaded the drivers again again again. Got the message that nothing was installed because it was all there. My undersrtanding is that I want Directx 9, but that what you have to do is to download this special runtime edition that Microsoft has available just for people who play older games. I had already taken care of this months ago, but thought I might have lost it: but no.

I am currently confirming whether I really have done all of the recommended things. I found a couple of settings in various places that weren't the recommended ones and changed those, but I had done most of this long ago.

edit: One of the recommendations was to play in windowed mode, so I'm doing it. I hate it. I love edge scrolling and also I have a tiny screen so the only way I can see the whole UI (because otherwise it slips behind the task bar)is to make the window really small and it's just boring that way. After I have resolved this issue I'm going back to full screen to see if it works that way.

2nd edit: crashed after four minutes of actual play. No Error Trap messages: just the usual correction log and woohooer list of settings.

Microsoft says this about the crash:



And it occurs to me I'd never posted my system:


I already see a potential problem: although I have repeatedly attmepted to change to DirectX 9, there is no sign of that. Also, and more importantly, it seems to be listing the wroing graphics card (the correct one is NVidia. So my next job is to try to get it to recpognize the NVidia graphics card. Which I am certain it was doing before. Probably why it wasn't crashing before.

Oh, right, I got confused looking at older recommendations.

I'm installing new graphics drivers right now. It's been an adventure so far.



I have some questions. Why are some of the settings repeated? (age stage length and seasonal settings) And some of the settings do not match what I have set in the game (I noticed this before, but the ingame settings continue to desplay what I set, so I shrugged it off).

Can I safely start out by removing the extra lines (with repeats of the settings) and correcting the settings to what I have ingame?

Sorry about the length of time between updates.

Yes, a clean game without mods runs. A game with nothing but Nraas mods in it crashes. I do not think this is the fault of the mods.

Other answers: I have compatibility mode set up because Sims 2 needs it and I still play that. I did the texture memory fix because it was recommended to someone else here not long ago and I'm to the point of doing whatever anybody asks. Even if it's someone else they ask to do it.

I have always started a new game when testing, so the save game can't be it. I've removed the downloads folder as well as the mods folder (I had a few sims3packs, though I have converted most to packages before installing them). I installed a new mods folder from the beginning, redownloading the framework and all, before I replaced the Nraas mods.

I did try restting the town with Master Controller. It didn't prevent crashing.


edit: I found a suggestion to remove the folder that that Nvidia bit is in and let it regenerate with a restart. I did, no more nagging. But the game crashed. I now know that those 5 cache files are created within the first minute of loading.

So. I'm going on a new theory that maybe in fact my copies of the Nraas mods are corrupt, and installing new ones.

Can I take a second here and whine for a bit? Okay, whining now. Thank you for your indulgence.

edit again: nope, that didn't do it. But I got through a half a Sim day this time instead of crashing on loading.

and another edit (I hope you guys don't think this is too obnolxious. I do) Since all the mods I have are Nraas, I took out the less-essential ones. Crashed again. Done for the day. I have to buy toilet paper.

And also: having knee surgery on Wednesday, so I'm probably done for the week. Fooey: I wanted to play while I was recovering.

Dropping in on my way to bed. Actually, I did just today check that my Nraas mods were up to date, and as far as I can tell they are.

So what was in the folder the last time the game crashed were:

Story Progression v267
SP Career
SP Lovers
SP Money
SP Others
SP Relationship
SP Population
SP Skill

(I could totally take out a bunch of those but I didn't try that yet)
Error Trap
Overwatch

Master Controller v132
MC Cheats
MC Integration
MC Progression

And that's it.

I no longer remember exactly what lead me to set up Sims 3 the way I did in the beginning (compatibility mode, etc): it did work quite well for a while. This crashing is new, which is why I originally suspected my new mods.

Do you think that the compatibility mode could be causing relevant problems? I might try changing it since I've tried so many other things. Or I could undo the other things you thought were questionable.

By the way, I've forgotten to thank you for your patience and guidance. It must be just as frustrating for yoyu to read this as it is for me.

Stacking onto @Nitromon's post, it would be interesting to see what the versionnumbers are of all those add-on's of the SP and MC mods. But since you gotten a fresh new downloads of mods+modules (correct?), I would assume they are the correct ones that requires the latest stable Base versions of SP and MC to run.

And if you're going with the 1/2 method Nitromon suggested, be sure to leave MC's add-on Progression module out of the mix, if you're just testing MC Base and its modules alone. The MC's Progression module requires both SP Base and MC Base installed for your game to run properly.

Another thing I am leaning on is that your Mods Framework isn't set up properly, if my assumptions are correct. Do you have the resource.cfg file in your Mods\ - folder?

If a clean game (No CC, No Mods, No Store Content, new Town) runs correct, start over again:
1. move your Mods\ Folder from your Sims 3 userdirectory to your desktop
2. rebuild your mods framework with this guide: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...Setup_and_Files, confirm that the nointro.package and the nobuildsparkle.package works, then move on
3. start small, get ErrorTrap and Overwatch, clear your cache and start game, confirm it works.
4. If it does, then add: MC Base + Cheats + Integration and again clear cache and start game, confirm the game loads. (When you confirmed you have SP Base installed then at that point you are able to run the MC's Progression Module on your system).

If from there on, you don't experience any crashing go ahead and get the mods you want your game to run on, but be sure for the larger NRaas mods (Careers / SP / MC / Woohooer) that you have the right version modules for the Base Mod version to run on. In each of the download page of such modules there are references which Base mod you'll need. Be sure to clear out your Cache file, each time your modsetup changes and start the game.

We also have a Mod Updater on our site that can do the NRaas mods installing and updating for you.


EDIT; Might be useful to know how you can confirm the NRaas Mods are working on 3 and 4:
-ErrorTrap; Will try to clean up a loaded new Town or loaded Save of any unused data that been kept on the world or SavedGame, unused data are: removed Sims (if you purge Homeless from the bat), any items that's been removed while the game was created, any changes to your modsetup. This will be reported after 2/3 RL min of gameplay in a ScriptError file that will be generated in your Sims 3 userdirectory
- Overwatch and MasterController; Click on the CityHall or any ingame computer> and see if you have NRaas in the piemenu with the mods name listed under there, try some features out with MC, such as status reports on Sims, or Focus on Sims.

Taking a break from surgery preparations (have to move downstairs for a while after the new knee) so I can answer questions and process all the new advice.

Let's see. I did make sure all the add-ons were the right ones when I downloaded them. Not every add-on was updated at the same time as the base mod, so I figured that that meant the most recent version was deemed to be compatible with the new version of the base mod.
I did install a new framework following those steps. I also clear out those caches every time I open the game.

I've been monitoring Error Trap, and until this last time all I was getting were the "correction logs" that I was told weren't relevant. This last time it threw out two errors on non-active sims that didn't look fatal (Christopher Steel and Bai Park had routing faliures with vehicles involved). This last time Nraas was apparently functioning properly (I even changed traits on one of the premade sims I was testing with because he had the trait "dislikes children" and I will not play a sim with that trait).

So if I understand right, I'm going to run a test with only Error Trap and Overwatch. Right? And then a test with either MC or SP, but if MC, then not MC Progression unless and until I've got SP in also.

Shuffling a little up:


Yes, correct on your quote.

This clean game of yours is it a new created Sims 3 userdirectory, or is it your original folder but did you cleanse it? By new I meant did you move your original Sims 3 folder and place it on your Desktop and let the game regenerate a new The Sims 3 Folder?

If it is the Original there are 2 other things I can suggest:
1. Move the content within the Thumbnail folder in your Sims 3 Userdirectory to a newly temporary folder on your Desktop. These are also Cache files that will regenerate once you get in Buy & Build Mode or in CAS. These Cache's overtime can also become overbloated, so its relevant when you remove CAS or Buy & Build mode items to clear these aswell once in awhile.
2. If there are still CC or Store Content installed through Sims3Packs, that might in anyway be corrupted it could affect the mods as well. By clean game we do mean a newly created The Sims 3 Folder, where you can test those mods on your game:
- Rename your Existing Documents\Electronics Arts\The Sims 3 Folder to something like Documents\ORGElectronics Arts\The Sims 3 Folder
- Start game, this will let the game rebuild a new Userdirectory for you
- Rebuild your Framework and test those mods out.

If the outcome is positive then there is something installed through Sims3Pack that doesn't play well with NRaas mods in your Original Sims 3 Folder. What? I do not know, but you might need to look into your Custom Content Sims3Packs you installed through the launcher.

To go back to your Original Sims 3 Userdirectory, simply delete the new directory and rename the old ORGElectronics Arts back to its original name, this way you won't loose anything precious from your current game.



Wish you well on the coming surgery and hope recovery goes fast.

I have regenerated my Sims 3 folder twice in this process, one of the times was yesterday (the day before? things are running together). That was when I regenerated my Mods folder again, too. I mean there was no type of downloads in the folder when I played a "clean game." I delete thumbnails and cache files every time I play.

No real new information to impart: when I got tired of cleaning I ran the game with newly downloaded Roaring Heights and Error Trap and Overwatch. I realized after I played that I should have left Roaring Heights till later, because if it had crashed I wouldn't have known whether there was a conflict with it. But it didn't crash. I might get one more round of tests in before bed, otherwise the earliest will be Saturday.

Thanks for your good wishes--I'm expecting it to hurt a lot but it will be more than worth it. There's some hiking trails I haven't visited in years.

So here is my interim report (had my surgery on the 17th: came home on the 19th: and I am here to tell you, surgery can be fun! That is, if they use the right drugs on you and put you into conscious sedation instead of general anasthesia. I had no idea I was going to actually enjoy myself. The happy juice has of course wirn off and I am trudging through my exercises rather than chortling now, but it's all good).

So anyway. What I've done so far:

Run with MC base mod, nothing else.
Run with MC base mod and an assortment of addons not including MC story progression.

Run with that plus SP base mod.
Run with that and SP addons and MC story progression. This combination crashed.

My current plan is to take everything out and run it with SP base mod only and then add in its addons one at a time to see if one of them crashes without MC.

If it doesn't, as I think it won't, I'll put MC and its addons in, and SP base, and add in the Sp addons one at a time without the MC story progression until I either find a crash or don't. If I don't, I'll add in MC story progression and do it over.

Good to hear that all went well and hopefully you are able to do a 1 mile run within 4.15 seconds (amateur WR) pretty soon . Wishful thinking, I know, but hope rehabilitation on the knee will go smooth, don't forget to get yourself some good rest as well.




If *MC Progression* is failing your modsetup to load (with MC Base and SP Base installed), I can only assume that some other modules you have are outdated and won't run or with errors on your current Base Mods of MC V132 and SP V267. I would suggest redownloading the modules over again (add-ons) of the ones you have and do make sure they are compatible with your latest Patch (I assumed 1.67), SP Base V267 and MC V132.

Also you might have missed my earlier post we do have a NRaas Mod Updater on our site, that looks into your current patch and compatibility on add on's versions of all NRaas Mods.

Cheers ;-)

Well, that seems to have done it. I did miss out one component when updating: apparently several times. I couldn't get the updater to work at first, until I restructured my subfolders. No crashing this time. I'm going to go ahead with returning and updating the other Nraas mods and if there are no more problems I'll look at my build-and-buy pretties. Thank you! I was so sure I had updated everything. The addon I missed was SP skills.

Edit:and I found one more, which was not outdated, but which had a question mark on it so I assumed that meant it was corrupt and I replaced it. Nolw that I have the updater working proprerly I'm going to run it all the time!

Thank you so much for posting this....wow, I had 8 out of 13 NRaas mods that needed update.
What do you know...

Oops....those updated versions crashes my game. lol
Ok then..might not be that reliable if not patched up to date. Put back my working 1.63 NRaas bundle, and all is well.