Need help about package files or an idea about a crash.

First of all, I guess this should belong to tips and tricks section but as I read, members can not post in there.

I am experiencing a weird situation here. I removed all my custom content, to be able to use edit in game feature of CAW tool. My game with custom content was perfectly working at that stage. After I spent a few days building and exporting a world, I copied back my custom content and tried to start the game. Game crashes, while start up, without any screens. It's just a black screen but game does not load and i get an error message "sims 3 stopped working". When I remove my custom content however, everything is fine. I can not install my built world while custom content is on but when I remove them the world installs without problems. I tried to remove the caches and use dashboard to figure out what is going on. There are a few conflicts between packages but I already had handled them using the overrides file. Anyway, game was working without a hitch before I removed them in the first place. 

Here is the pain, I have over 4 gb of custom content, including mods, career packs, outfits, build tools and everything else you can imagine. Most of them are named like x01hgsafdh1623asfdj27170xxshgh.package, because I used sims3pack multiinstaller to convert all the sims3pack files to package files. So, having a clean back up in which I could see what is what, would be a smart move. Then again, I wasn't that smart. Now I have package clusters worth 250-300mb, and I have no clue which includes what. 

My first question is, does anyone have any idea or a suggestion regarding the crash that I mentioned in the first paragraph? Anything, worth trying would be appreciated. 

If that not works, does anyone know about any way to get me see the image or a thumbnail of the custom content, before installing it in the game. That way I could see what the jibberish named file is and I could re-cluster and arrange my custom content (you see I am trying to spend days instead of weeks here). 

Thanks in advance.

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EDIT:
Okay, I figured out the second one. I did not know that s3pe would already show me the thumbnails. So I am still looking for some advice about the crash. It makes no sense, game was working with the same cc installed, just a few days ago.

Hello,

Unfortunately the dashboard doesn't catch all of the conflicts. 
What you could dobat this point, is test your CC manually. You do this by splitting it up in (roughly) 2 batches. Test the game with either of these and find the offending batch. Split that one in 2 again and test. Do this until you are left with the package set(s) that cause the game to stop working. You can then open those up with s3pe to find whatever is causing the problem.
Though it is very strange that you're suddenly experiencing problems!

Thanks for your reply.

I tried to remove the custom content bit by bit, trying to figure out which is causing the problem. Now I find out that, everytime I remove some conflicting content, the other clusters conflict with other content also. I am assuming something went terribly wrong with my mods folder. I think I will have to re-build all those package files from the scratch. 

Thank you again, for the help.

Hummm.. 

Ok first of all, thank you for the reply and some strong points you have mentioned.

Following that, i might be embarassed, that I did not take my time to convert those files one by one in the first place. I just used the multi installer to convert them all at once, resulting in meaningless names per file, then I just used s3pe to group up those files in dbc. Only thing I really was carefull about, the groups not exceeding 300mb each. Other than, my work was quite rough. 

Here, you really have a point, I really do not need so many cc, I do not use many of them. But the truth is, because that now most of them have stupid names, such as 3x00ajashgdhjhagsjhdgsjah.package, I have no idea what it includes. I see them in game but deciding which is good or which is bad, requires opening them one by one with the s3pe, checking their thumbnails or icons and categorising accordingly. Which is huge work   It is a pain, because in CAS, its like I click on casual outfit section and go get a cup of tea until it loads -.-' I'm just lazy to re-categorize them in s3pe. Actually, you would be amazed to hear that I am preparing to download even more cc after my current project  I just love them! I am much of a builder in sims 3, I can spend 2 days to build one lot of 25x25 with only 2 stories, by spending hours in create a style   , even working on cc tiles. My last neighborhood, took me 2 weeks to build, before I place the household that I was going to play with. (caste system, houses befitting household styles, celebrities in mansions, restricting moves and careers, venues, parks, apartments with 16 sims in them etc..) Anyway, this much of explanation, would boringly explain why I use so much cc 0.0  

So I have a question here. I convert them into package files, rather than installing sims3pack files, because hundreds of people, who I want to believe to be wiser than me  , suggest that sims3pack files might include more bad files and they slow down the game when installed one by one. That is why, I really get into the trouble and pack them in 250-300mb groups with s3pe. It gave me no change in experience within the game but to be honest, doing that, I experienced a great reduce in loading times while in CAS. Same goes for build and buy mode regarding the loading times of tools. Grouping does some trick, I believe. But I have no clue if them being sims3pack or .package make any difference at all.It also had no effect in gameplay or the lag (which I will try to take care, after I handle this topic). 

So do you suggest, that the files being sims3pack or .package would not change anything regarding their loading speed or their effect on any aspects regarding the game? Because people suggest that game loads .package files even faster in some way, I do not know how or why or even if its true in the first place. And would you think, that grouping them in in s3pe makes a difference worth the pain?

For Delphy's dashboard, I would again ask you guys to reveal something for me. Many times, it shows a conflict, even corrupt files in some cases. Sometimes it just says a file is corrupt, because it has unsuitable age groups. But in the game, they just work perfectly. I mostly use it to see conflicts and I put the conflicted files to overrides folder to handle the issue. I only delete a file, if Delphy's dashboard says package has another package inside it. I always intended to think that, even if they work, they would have a bad influence or effect something in my game, which I don't see in a plain sight. So, am I wrong here? I am especially asking about this, because in this last occasion, I experienced some weird things happen. These conflicts came out of no where, while they were not present before and they are really weird. I mean, think about it, wohooer score mod conflicts with a panties package lol. Comedian career mod package conflicts whit my wooden floor segments while the nraas career mod, which makes that mod work, does not have any conflicts. Seriously! What would you think? I know there is no real clearance or nothing to suggest here. Just asking for personal guess or advice.


//EDIT

Hi

Just regarding the problem, in some later stage; I received a message at s3pe, while merging the .package files. The message says: "manual merge of xml files required". I never experienced it before. Does anyone know anything about this? Is it a problem or should I do something special?

Hello again nice people of the forum. 

I am, again and like a habit now, having difficulties in getting my game to work. I think game is trying to tell me to look for another game after all.

I used a few store items, including premium items. But I was so bored and tired of categorizing custom content. So I just merged them with other cc files, as .package files. I applied the store fix accordingly. Now when I quit from build buy to edit town view, my loading screen just tries to load indefinitely. I tried to go nuts and copy paste the fix files everywhere. All in overrides, all in packages and the ccmerged file in dcbackup also but its the same, every time I try. Any suggestions? Is it because I merged them with other cc? Or am I missing something here?

Hello.

First of all, thanks to both of you for your replies. And sorry for the post mistakes, I am really not used to forums, I can not find my way most of the time.

1- Regarding the mods, I am using many of the nraas mods, including master controller. I saw the option you have mentioned here. I just did not enable because I did not know if there was a way to use other styles while it is enabled. I will try it now. (or when the game decides to work properly again)

2- For the pc specs, I am really not sure but as per the recommended requirements, my pc should at least be enough to run every expansion in EA's list. But I am really not sure. So I will give specs, perhaps I am overrating the power my pc has. If anyone feels it is not decent, I would like to know that. Tho I am not prepared for a big investment now, I can work something out...

PSU: rm750x Corsair
Board: Asus 1150 intel
CPU: Intel Corei5 Haswell, 4670k
RAM: DDR3 8gb (2x4) dual, 1600mhz Corsair Vengeance
Graphics: Saphire r9 270x Dual-x 4gb 256bit
HDD: 1 x 5400rpm 1tb sata 3gb/s (2 partition in 500gb, system disc here) 5 years old - Partition 1 %50 free space, partition 2 %80 free space
        1 x 7200rpm 3tb sata 6gb/s (sims installations in this one) 4 months old - %30 free space
        1 x 7200rpm 3tb sata 6gb/s (irrelevant) 2 years old - %25 free space
       1 x 1.5tb External HDD usb2.0 (irrelevant tho) 6 years old
       All these HDD are newly tested with various benchmarks and all prove to be healthy atm. I even performed a physical scan on C:.

Regarding this, I did some searching on the web for some time in near future. Many people suggested many ideas but to be honest, I can not afford a complete system modification to 6.th generation right now, so its not possible (for my budget) to go for a skylake configuration with DDR4 modules. And I honestly can not believe that a 2009 made game would require skylake and ddr 4 for maximum %12 performance difference. Perhaps my system disc is problem here, but my board has only 2 sata 6gb/s and as far as I know, a physical shaft bearing HDD can not exceed 3gb/s alone. Above all, this does not feel like a so much low ended pc to me... It sure is not a powerhouse but.. I feel like I should be sufficient to handle a 2009 game...

Real problem is, I use a (actually a few) benchmark on the second monitor and I can see that there are no bottlenecks for my graphics card and my rams are not close to a full usage. CPU however, is overwhelmed at certain times but lag occurs, regardless the stress on the cpu. I limited my game to a 60fps on the radeon settings. If I do not limit that, it goes a skyrocket to 300-400 fps and those spikes are killing me. What I can physically see and let you guys know about it is, when I move to another location and zoom in, I can physically see the texture loads slowly and one by one. There are lags, even worse with crowded neighborhoods, and 64x64 lots with too much items on them. Lags are so bad in bigger neighborhoods that sometimes 3x speed is slower than a normal speed. I feel that, nraas progression is causing much of it. My evidence is that, major and longer lags end with some updates from nraas SP with messages. Off course these are game issues and not related to custom content but these are the real reasons that I am trying to fix things in my game nowadays. This seems to be a graphic cards issue, however benchmark tells me that my gpu usage is aroung %80 at max and my gddr usage is less than %25. (Note on this, I never tried to limit horse or pet populations before, instead this time I used caw to build a world with very little height and no routing errors, and I will try that if I can make the game work again)

So, you guys tell me, if its not enough to run so many packs and expansions or cc, for that matter, I will try to give up on some, reluctantly...

3- I am now, trying to run the game with all cc unmerged. If that works, I will update the result here.

It has become frustrating because it has been over a month now, I could not play this game (except for cc removed). Honestly, I regret that I tried to fix it. I would rather play it with lag if I knew this was coming. Anyway, I will try unmerging and if it works, I will update about both the state and the lag in the game. At worst scenario, I will cause you guys some more headache and will spam some more problems. But I have to make it work and get rid of this lag at the same time. I want to play sims 3 during this whole summer please.

Thank you guys again.

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EDIT:

So weird... I removed merged package files, and replaced the individual package files with them. They are same files, just not merged with s3pe and no different file.. Now the game crashes at start up. So game works with merged packages but it crashes with same packages unmerged...

Thanks for the "spamming" credit

I managed to unmerge them and get the game working with all of the cc files (as revealed, there were a few sims4 files among them, however s3pe did not warn me about them while merging and they did not crash the game whilst in merged packages, strangely). And applied the store fix as mentioned for .package files; ccmerged in the packages folder and the other 3 files in the overrides folder.

1- It still does infinite loading thingy. So still no luck with that.

2- I can confirm now that merging makes a real difference. With 3800+ unmerged cc files, game simply is a torture. Not only the cas, even the build and buy mode takes a minute to load tools for any section. It was never like this while merged. Actually, CAS was a bit slow but build and buy modes were fluent.

So, now that crash is solved, I will be looking for any suggestions about the store fix. I never used store or premium items before, this time I just wanted a basketball hoop in the back yard of the school, and the chicken & cow thingies in my farm, so i could get rid of planting eggs and milk, its so disturbing.

Yes I downloaded the files from the link below.

http://www.games4theworlddownloads.org/ts3/storefixes.html

I copy the storefix_fixes.package, storefix_decrap_fixes.package and XMLs.package to overrides folder. And the ccmerged.package to Package folder. I have no sims3pack's installed, all are .package files, both cc and store/premium content. I do not understand what is going wrong.

Well, we really do not need a supernatural expansion for sims 3. It is supernatural by nature! I just removed the store fixes completely and used the premium items without fix, just out of desperation... And they worked, without infinite loop errors.

Just another day with sims 3 ^^

Nice!!!

Oh I see. So the problem was nraas mods. 

Well, for the premium items, I only wanted to use the basketball hoop, chicken coop, dairy and the violin. I did not test enough to get the eggs but I could milk the cows and work out in the hoop also feed the chickens. So they seem working without fixes.

Thanks for your help. At this point, if there happen to be more problems in the future, I am inclined to give up on the premium content after all.

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EDIT:

I want to ask about something else, but since it is also related to my lag issue, I will ask it in this topic. 

I made a world, very flat and straightforward, to prevent lag. I fixed its routing simply, except for one occasion in which I have a hill with a nectary, all of the roads and routable area are flat and by flat I mean I made unroutable every single pixel which even slightly has a slope. Trust me, its ruler flat now. And for the hill, I examined it in CAW square by square and made unroutable whereever it seems problematic. So, I hoped not to have much lag. In the beginning, it seems working. Although I could not test it in crowded town or with many items yet. But there appears another problem. My town has a lot of highrise buildings. They all have hidden rooms. And the game, insistingly, spawns npc's in those rooms. Do you have anything to prevent that on the top of your head, or should I just deal with it until spawning npc's are done (which will be long as I will populate my town with community lots now). Because, only 2 sims with no routing options cause a lag, which is unexplainable, minutes of freezes (ok so it was explainable). And it is annoying to resetsims, while you are playing your game with a household of 8 sims and all of them have some queues in their action tabs.

Another, tricky question would be, I restricted pets, stray dogs, stray cats, deers and horses both in register and in game settings. Would that also effect the chicken coop? It doesnt seem to effect the diary as I could test. But chicken coop says, there are no chickens in it, while I can see the chickens on the window -.-'

Thanks in advance.

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EDIT:

My Sims 3 has quite a sense of humor. This one, I once again experienced for the first time. When I click create a style, it starts loading, says: "materialising materials"  , and it never loads. Infinite loading at create a style. Create a style is the place I spent %80 of my building time so... It kinda ruins my game here. So questions are:

1- Does anyone have an idea about why EA hates me so much? I have my reasons to hate them, such as them ruining westwood and my favorite strategy game series, or NBA series being immune to pirating and I can not play them anymore, but why do they hate me in return?

2- Does anyone have an idea on how to solve this? Or why it might occur?


//EDIT


Ok, for my latest problem, I found the solution. And here, I will share the solution, because after some googling, I found out that some members here too had the same problem. By the way, problem I mention here is the infinite loading known as "Materializing materials", whilst trying to create a style.

Diagnosis: After some hard work  , I found out that this error is caused by the process of converting sims3pack files to .package files with Delphy's multi installer. The reason is, in some sims3pack files, there are patterns which should be loaded via the launcher. While converting however, an error occurs and causes the "reskey" parameter to be converted in a false way. Precisely, there is a space in the middle of the reskey, which should not be there. It kinda looks like this:

reskey="key:0333406c:01000000: 4a7b770ef80b22c"

In this case, I am just writing random numbers, so do not take it seriously. The sequence however, is exact. it starts with the reskey parameter and is continued with the key value, "key:0333406c:********: ***************".

Solution: The best solution I found was to use s3ce instead. I found it while I was searching for my problem. It appears that, this commandline extractor also fixes this pattern issue, whilst installing the .package files. But it was already too late for me as I had gigabytes of custom content and it takes longer to re-merge them, instead of fixing them. So I found out that there was also a tool to fix these errors automatically but then again, because EA decided to end Sims 3 support "prematurely!", people also have gone wild and they stopped developing too. All the download links to that tool were also dead. I am not sharing the link to s3pe here, in regard to the forum rules. It can easily be searched in google however.

                               There was no other choice than manually fixing all the files. That is what I did. In my search, I found out that this issue might be found both in _XML and PTRN tagged files with type code 0333406c. If its the _XML, than good luck with that. But if it is the pattern files which is causing the problem, thanks god, they are not as much and relatively fixable. Here is how to do that:

                               Open the .package file you have converted from a sims3pack file with s3pe. Order the files by type and then by tag so that you can sort them. Go through the files one by one, to see their content in the right pane of the s3pe. _XML files are a bit confusing but pattern files are easy to read. When you see the reskey parameter, check if it has an unexpected space after the second ":" colon. If you find a reskey as defined, just right click on it, then click the "notepad" option and delete the space to make it a valid reskey parameter again. Just point your cursor after the colon and press delete lol. Then save the notepad file. S3pe will pop up a warning message, indicating that the file was modified. It asks you if you want to modifiy it in s3pe as well. Confirm that and s3pe will automatically delete the former while, while generating a new one. When you are done, save and exit. Resulting reskey should look like below:

reskey="key:0333406c:01000000:4a7b770ef80b22c"

so without the space.

                               The very favorable side of this operation is, s3pe allows you to do this even in the merged .package files. Does not matter how many there are in the merged file. After fixing all my pattern reskey parameters, my create a style worked like a charm.

I wrote these instructions, in case any other member or visitor needs an assistance regarding this issue. I did not post it in another section, because you guys should have learnt that I am so much a fail in finding proper section for my posts . So if anyone needs that this explanation should be in somewhere else or if anyone feels that it might be useful in the future, they may just move this post reply individually or modify it accordingly. I was going to add screenshots but a) I already finished fixing before I posted and b) I was lazy   .

My previous questions are still valid tho Thanks in advance for those who might have ideas for me regarding those problems.

Hello,

Actually I am using overwatch but it just warns me about the stuck sim. So I have to manually reset sim to get rid of it. Anyway, I don't think that 2 stuck sims is the main reason of a huge lag so perhaps I should focus on other problems.

I used store fixes but when I use them, I get that infinite saving/loading error. In another topic, you have mentioned that it is because of the nraas mods. I don't know how much a mess it costs if I try to get earlier versions of 20+ mods. So I just deleted the store fixes but I didn't try to play in my town yet so I don't know if those premium items will work or not. I am still building my town and it will take a long time before I can even start to play. (among other things, league of legends nowadays )

Does nraas mods still get newer versions ? Perhaps they fix this issue with some never versions of mods ?