How Does The Sims 4 Work and Why are Sims Sometimes Slow?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 3 сер 2024
- Let's learn a bit about how The Sims works under the hood. Why do they fail to respond, or do idle animations instead of what they are told?
Link to GDC Talk - Multi-Actor Behavior Sequencing in The Sims 4: www.gdcvault.com/play/1020355...
Support Me on Patreon: / carlssims4guide
Follow Me on Twitter: / carlssims3guide
All My Videos: / @carlssimguides
#Sims4 #TheSims #VideoGames - Ігри
The worst is when the game decides your sim should wait for a toddler with the movement skill of 1 to come over and interact with you
This, or autonomously queue up "chat with" random townie 2735, who has just materialized at the farthest edge of the neighborhood
I feel like Sims shouldn't "wait" for other Sims at all. Meet in the middle dammit, it's faster for everyone!
Or even worse- the toddler comes climbing down the stairs.
@@BecciTK toddler: *starts climbing down the stairs*
Me: 💀
@@MissFruityPie I literally want to punch the screen 😃
I love it when my sim stands in the middle of her living room bobbing back and forth for 5 hours while her baby wails because I told her to pick up her dishes after turning off the tv.
I guess based on what I learned, if that happened I'd pause to give it a moment and avoid speed 3 for longer durations. At times Sims 4 isn't using a lot of CPU but it's very spike prone if multiple SIms start needing to "make a move" at the same time.
Literally!!! Though!!!
Or T-Poses with a serious face lmao
Some simulation lag mods were causing sims to freeze for few hours when told to interact with empty dishes. I prefer using coolspear1's Quicker Autonomy&Simulation Lag improvements mod, it's so much better.
that me irl
I love when my sims just stand in the bathroom for 24h after I send them to take a shower 🤣 barely unplayable. And i have many expansions and cc.
that used to happen to me without any expansions and without any cc
I hate when this happens. When I put the sims to do something, and they stay there stopped while the time rolls. I know why this happens, it's because I have a lot of CCs and mods. But I'm so lazy to erase what I don't want, and don't use. I swear I already tried, but there are many.
@@xyz_7505 I play on console with no CC and mods, and this STILL happens to me
My PC isn't low end for the sims 4 yet mine always just stand there dumb. It's the game it's a pain in the butt.
@@andrewi.crocker8675 samee! It's so annoying :(
Do you have the problem where if you tell your sim to watch TV or eat, the game will just randomly cancel the option?
There's still no excuse for having half of my sims stand doing nothing at all with full autonomy. Sometimes I wanna focus on one or two sims in my house but when I do the rest just stand there and starve
I have this problem too often. I end up just cheating fill all needs.
@@emaline1548 Oh you have this problem too! I don't want to cheat but sometimes I want to focus on one or two sims without having to worry about the rest of them dying. I also like to play with big households but it's like when there are eight of them everyone is suffering. It really bothers me.
I really hate when I throw parties and everyone is interested in making destressing concoctions, makes zero sense, I walk outside the next day and see 10 glasses on the ground from guest making drinks
same! it's actually a bug, you can read some more info on it here: answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/NEEDS-SAVES-OR-ECO-Sims-constantly-making-De-Stressing-Decoction/td-p/9186580/page/3
If you're experiencing really bad simulation lag, pause and save. Look at the screen while it's saving. In the last seconds of th process you literally see unfinished stuff happening, including lighting suddenly adjusting, thought bubbles coming and going, it's pretty interesting.
I’ve had sims literally die with that technique 😭 one specific glitch was my child sim drowning in her own puddle (which was also created after the game paused) while all I wanted to do was check her family tree :(
the same happens if you go to the city map screen (traveling) which is what is use for the lags
I open the calendar. It takes less time although not always work.
Or move your household to another lot. That's what I always do if it gets too bad
I also will save and exit to main menu and then go back into a save if things in general are hinky--Sims will reset themselves. Less of an option for low end PCs but a must if it doesn't take you that long.
At least in the Sims 3, I can trust my Sims to do what they are told instead of cancelling their actions, doing an idle animation or standing around doing nothing for 2 hours even if the game runs kinda slow.
Yeah this is a terrible system, wouldn't it be much better to make the game calculate the meeting point as the sims themselves move, so there's no time wasted?
Of course there's mods for this. Of course.
bad for me cause i have it on ps
@@laurasauceda5311 same haha need to grind to get stuff haha
Or you could use cheats
@@jj2002ful if todd howard worked for ea
@@grantryder352 I'm pretty sure half of Ea work force are Todd Howard clones stolen froim Bethesdas dungeon
This is one of the few channels where I will stop whatever I’m doing just to watch your videos.
Why thank you, Hannah.
Same here... there's something very entertaining about Carl's delivery, no matter the subject.
ditto on it all!
It's almost like someone cancelled everything else in the queue and directed us to watch it. ... ... Hey!!
I do too!
Yeah, that's the reason that my Sim can't go to Catrina Lynx's house. The 5+ cats, (Her default cats gave birth) all the items and decorations, the fact that stray cats show up constantly, AND the passerbys makes it so that even when my Sim is back home, they end up taking a few minutes to make coffee.
I thought they had PTSD from when I had them basically spend the entire day at her house because I couldn't stand how Catarina just lets the litterbox get full and the food bowls are never full...
I generally run into the common issue that a queued action will just immediately be dropped sometimes.
Example: a sim won’t go to work, or a child will not go to school. When ‘telling’ the selected sim to Go to Work, etc., the action drops and drops over and over again, like a syntax error.
Generally, I’ve learned that I either have to have my sim visit another lot, or if the problem doesn’t resolve, I have to move them out of their home into a new one. I’m not sure if it a lag issue, or a glitch. I’m pretty impatient sometimes with my sims, so I speed up to the fastest speed that I can a LOT.
I have this issue too, tried so many things, eventually just quit playing
It happens to me all the time, also when I want them to eat breakfast before going to work they would just be sitting down watching their meal for 3 hours...
This problem has been in Sims 4 since day one and still exists today. I never had this problem in Sims 3. EA really messed up on this game. There is no excuse for these problems.
I've had that problem too! It's extremely infuriating and makes the game damn near unplayable. The whole point of The Sims is that "you control life" but in TS4 they just autonomously do a bunch of stuff you don't want and then refuse to obey your commands or cancel ongoing actions.
I rarely speed up my gameplay for the very reasons you stated.
There was a mod back then that helped mitigate this lag, I think it was “Simulation Lag Fix”. It pretty much opened another “line” for the sims to do actions instead of the only ONE. I would much prefer my sims walk through each other, if it means I can play the game.
Edit:
Oh, the mod was mentioned later in the vid.
The mod did not work for me, my Sims kept picking up washing or rubbish and would just stand there and do nothing for hours on end. It could have been clashing with one of my other mods mind you 😂
@@nikkimae813 the mod made my game slower 🥺🥺
I'd love the RL skill to walk through people who I don't care about and are in my way. The time I'd save in a day lol.
LMFAO
I still think the design choices directed towards slower machines stems from them wanting it to be always online, then because of how poorly Simcity was received they back peddled.
Maybe it's just me, but I always figured the majority of people who like to play simulation games are the type of personality that DON'T want to deal with other players if they can help it. Or at very least, the online option is only optional and not mandatory. Even without the terribad launch, I knew the always online Simcity would suck from the moment it was announced.
they backpeddled, instead of starting over. simulation games are singleplayer, there is the sims online, but isnt that more of an mmorpg than a true simulation game? are there other simulation games that are online?
Thanks for explaining what simulation lag is, I never really understood it before now. Now that I know I can edit down some of my more problematic lots. Maybe my arcade doesn't need 25 computers in it
This is what I was hoping some people might take away from this video :)
But why did they program it like this in the first time. Now we have to delete objects from our game just so that our Sims don't stand around for hours. It's like Maxis didn't really playtest the game.
i remember one winterfest when father winter simply never left and stayed living in the house. i tried saying goodbye a million times and he just stayed. i had to move the household to a different lot.
You still get simulation lag that will make sims starve themselves to death with a household of 8. If their needs get too low, they stop doing anything to take care of themselves.
I just experienced the WORST lag when I was playing yesterday. Made me turn off my game :(
Thank you for making this video 🙏
What happened? I experience it to
Same but it’s been that way for me since around nifty knitting.. can’t get past 20fps when my rig should easily handle it at highest settings for it to run at a stable 60 fps
@@Moonlight-x5z my sims just kept standing there for ages and I couldn't fix it for the life of me! When they did move they were free-will all over the place, did not obey at all. It's frustraiting and really makes the game unplayable
I usually play with more than four Sims at once, often full house, and these issues have been getting worse throughout this year, I'm fairly certain about that. Sometimes I test functionality of certain objects or interactions in a new save with just one sim in order to make sure it's not just generally broken (like the help toddler-adult interactions, those are just generally borked since June) .. anyway, I've seen how Sims 4 gets slowed by playing multiple Sims and multiple generations in succession .. which is also what makes me not really want story progression UNLESS they fix the parts of the engine that make these issues occur. Also, they need to make family trees better before anything else with families .. imho. E.g., if you have an immortal sim they can meet their descendants and not know they're related at all, which is wrong in so many ways .. o.O
Some of the toddler interactions were fixed in the 1.67.45 patch.
Agreed my rig should easily run the sims 4 at a stable 60 fps it’s done it before at ultra settings.. yet over the course of last year it’s gotten worse and worse to a point where now i’ve not touched it since just after nifty knitting came out as the game became unplayable for me with it sitting at a horrible 15 fps never getting past 20 but sometimes getting to 20.. it’s defenitely not my rig’s fault but rather poor optimalization that has taken it’s toll
I definitely think all sims games work best on desktop PCs.
Another Thing to try is slowing down the Timescale of the game using a mod like MC Command Center. My sim game runs at about 9 real seconds per Sim minute. So it gives them heaps of time to do stuff, get around and synchronise.
Thank you for mentioning this. I'll give it a try myself :)
@@emmyn9574 Youre welcome. The only downside is that fast forwarding also takes longer and it screws up your calendar events that you will have to delete and do again, but only once. You might find that it takes the game back in time by a few weeks at first too. But IMO its a small price to pay for what you get out of it.
I did increase the milliseconds-per-Sim-minute with MCCC, but my idea was to simply increase the lenght of the day, because it was otherwise frustrating trying to get everything done, namely in active careers, even staying late. The default is 25, I increased it to 35 which is not a whole lot but I'd rather err on the side of caution, and already made wonders to Sims' behaviour, and actually allowed them to have some free time. Now you've made me curious to increase it even further 🤔 but I already play on long lifespan, so I might end up with too much free time. If that happens I'll just reduce it again 😜
This is good advice but changing the timescale is many times the culprit for LastException errors so be careful with it.
@@GeoMusic99 Ive Never had any errors from it.
i think a lot of the people i watch tend to play this game on high end machines and the routing/lag is still god awful. your sim will refuse to do what its being told, to go and do something else and even if you cancel that action the sim will proceed to do it anyway. or that annoying thing when your sim is tired and theyre on their way to bed, but cancels the bed interaction to crash next to it instead. ive literally never seen a sims game be this unresponsive. sims 3 can be laggy and sims around town tend to get stuck yes, but at least the sims will go to bed when you tell them to or stop an interaction when you remove it from the queue etc. sims 2 is also highly responsive and in both games neither sim will have any issues taking care of themselves once they get hungry, need a shower or any of the sorts whilst sims in 4 will rather drown in their own piss. its sad, really.
My sim layed in bed to get up stood next to it then passed out on floor. 😐
Those are really "smart" Sims, we got with 4 😂
@@Moonlight-x5z oh my gosh yes. It makes no sense! I not only have a problem with that but I would have my sim take a toddler out of the high chair after they are done eating only to put them back in, take them out, put them back in. It got so annoying. Needless to say, I don’t play with a high chair anymore.
Alexis Cormier Same with me.
Yep.. my pc should EASILY handle the sims 4 at ultra settings but no since a few patches it just won’t get higher than 20fps.. if i were actually playing on a potato fair enough but my rig can handle games twice as hard to run without issue mainly just because those games are actually well optimized.. i’ve reverted back to the sims 3 now because at least my sims 3 runs at a stable 60fps with little to no lag (apart from the occasiona 3/4 am lagg but that’s something that only happens what once every 20 simdays so i can live with that)
I learned the 'pause to let it catch up' trick back in the sims 3 and I was so excited to never use it again when the sims 4 was announced... lol
I'm new to your channel and have subscribed, because you explain things about the Sims4 in a way I can understand. I'm not tech savvy - and I've been playing the game for about 3 years - so finding out why lag occurs, makes life easier for me, as previously, I'd just shout at the monitor, begging the sim to hurry up and do as I ask it to! I'm also very grateful to you for your video on the 50+ mods. Thank you!
And it's funny when this issue becomes worse with every new pack.
I have tons of mods as I need them because I find the game boring without, and I'd love to have get famous but I'm scared my PC couldn't handle it.
This is a problem with updating many things. I see it with Apple, adobe, google, and every single game. You try and patch something, but you are rewriting the code, and any time you rewrite code the probability of something going wrong gets higher. Then, you make entire game packs and expansion packs over your written code for the latest update of your multi-expansion multi-game pack mess of a game. At some point, it becomes a bomb like the sims 3. Also, it's inevitable that with a one at a time animation system things will get bottlenecked. I don't know why they went that route.
@@emaline1548 i think most of this still comes from the fact that it started as an online game during development, but then simcity failed, and they backtracked with sims4, instead of starting over completly
On a really good computer, the sims 4 just lags and overheats my computer, even after making the necessaru fixes. Whereas with the sims 3, just keeping all the fixes modders have developed keeps the game going 100% better, without frying my computer lol.
"Sometimes" slow.
My number one tip if you want a large amount of sims at a party (from a mod or you have the longer parties mod) and you see that they are struggling to use the bathroom is to just place down a mailbox turn on cheats and (make world happy)
Saves lives.
Annoys me because my sims are on a schedule with their needs and this throws it off completely but it works in a pinch. ;)
I really enjoy your videos! I wish EA would be honest about system requirement. Those minimum specs are a joke.
In the early days of Sims 3 I had a run in with EA tech support. They gave me the runaround for weeks when all they could have told me was my system, despite being better then their minimum but not as good as their recommended, still wasn't good enough. Sure, I would have been grumpy about it but not nearly as infuriated as I was with all the running around, weird "fixes" they had me do and just straight up lying. All I really needed was a better GPU.
Hey carl, love that you get more in depth! Maybe do a video about good modding practices for users sometime? (Like finding outdated CC, what can be replace or delete first, understanding last exception etc) Thanks!
Definitely something I'd consider. Just have to feel out topics to see if I can make them interesting enough, and if I have enough good advice to offer.
@@CarlsSimGuides that would be really nice, thank you for considering it 💚
You're explaining all of this which may seem helpful to some to understand why the game does what it does, but overall the game is just broken and glitchy honestly. People have already complained about lag and other issues with the game, even before Eco. If EA just would fix each game instead of constantly layering one broken pack on top of one another, then the game would be playable. Even though I have a high end computer, I still deal with lag so its really an issue with EA not doing their jobs.
I went back to the Sims 3 and it doesn't really feel that different from the Sims 4 in terms of lag. In fact I found Sims 3 to be more responsive.
So their excuse that they removed so much stuff for the sake of performance feels like bs.
Same, sims 3 also runs smoother than sims 4 thanks to smooth patch like how is the fourth sims game became laggier than the third one(despite sims 3 is laggy but not that much lag as sims 4), even sims 1 was smoother than sims 4
After playing both game for a long time, Sims 3 handled simulation lag better. It will freeze/pause the time whenever lag happened, so no wasted time in idle animation. That's why Sims 3 feels more responsive.
On slower machine, most of the time 2x/3x speed is faster than 4x speed, since on 4x the game freezes a lot trying to catch up with the lag and end up taking longer than smooth 2x speed
The downfall this kind of lag handling for TS3 is the game feels more stuttery whenever lag happened
tfw in my Sims 4 games the idle animations almost always cancel out the action, that's why I stopped playing with families, cuz I can't constantly switch between Sims to make sure they are doing the action I selected for them to do.
It's such a coincidence that I've recently discovered your 100 Sims in one house video. It's seriously the most hilarious video I've found on this channel so far lol I wouldn't complain if you did something similar again.
And yeah I'm running The Sims 4 on a Sony Vaio laptop probably from 2012. I use a Chromebook normally so that old laptop is all I had to run it! I know nothing about computer specs so I don't know how bad my laptop is but I assume it's pretty pathetic. I read the list of system requirements, had no idea what any of it meant, tried to google if my laptop had those things, but made no progress. So I also assume that there is a cap on how many packs I can download and mods I can add.
Oh and also! Thanks for your services to the Sims Community. I found your channel after I went to your site a couple times for information/gameplay help. And this video was informative and helpful as always!
You can use Can I Run It? to automatically check if the game runs properly on your laptop. It's not 100% accurate, but it helps
Trying to dine in a restaurant with dine out it’s literally just simulation lag 😂
Thank you so much for this video. I'm experiencing really bad lag since the last update and it's the first time my game has become borderline unplayable. It is so frustrating, so I cannot thank you enough for recommending the two mods! I'll try them next time I play.
The most frustrating for me is when my babies get taken away even though I didn’t tell my sim to do anything else but feed them😅
Or starve to death because I simply asked them to put the clothes from the washer to the dryer and they had to think about it for 2 hours😂
Honestly I wish there was a way to make the game use more processing power, because it's just ridiculous.
The game is unplayable without mods 😂😂
Wickedwhims for the win
I have literally no mods because I pirated the game so long ago 😂😭
When you don't have mods bc your game is being stupid :D I couldnt see my old mods/cc so I had to delete it all after the Nov update):
It's just great when you like watching Carl and then he also mentions GrayStillPlays!😀😀😀
"Fifteen minutes to walk, and five minutes to bob my head!" lmfao
I have a great machine and it still lags on lots with craploads of objects. This machine can play any game on ultra settings for the most part but my game will be laggy on my legacy lot. I run 2 instances of ESO (MMO) my main account and alt account and even that isn't as laggy as the sims lol.
Same here. I had to lower my processor's speed a touch to get simulation lag a bit more reliably (and add Sims) but the game's capped on how many threads it can use .You'll see you're only using 25% of your processor yet the game's working at its maximum. With tons of objects AND more Sims it gets really bad. I mentioned system requirements because I feel if you own all the packs you should expect to be able to play at speed 3 without any major issues, and based on my testing I don't think that's possible with a dual core 2ghz machine.
@@CarlsSimGuides See here's the thing. The minimum specs for a program are called the MINIMUM specs for a reason. As you mentioned already, the Sims 4 needs AT LEAST two threads in order to run properly. That's the reason why The Core 2 Duo is listed as the minimum requirement because on a purely *technical* level, you only need a Core 2 Duo in order to "run" the Sims 4 (Whether or not it's playable is another matter entirely). There's a reason why nowadays most games have a Minimum Requirement and a Recommended Requirement. If you're actually planning to play the game for any length of time you should ALWAYS try to aim ABOVE the Recommended Requirements. For all intents and purposes, the Recommended Requirements ARE the Minimum Requirements while the Minimum Requirements are the "We're making sure your PC doesn't choke on its own bytes" Requirements.
Honestly they need to up the CPU requirements and just come to terms like Bethesda has that mod authors hard carry their game and will need to force open certain resource pools especially for people with decent machines who just want to play vanilla with all dlc content.
Suggesting a core i2 or whatever is just absurd. I know people with budget PC and most of them have a ryzen 5 of some sort of a mir range Intel core i5 and yet i5 struggles with mods and dlcs
I really shouldnt be struggling to run a super modded ts4 game with only a few expansions and a few stuff packs with a ryzen 7 2700x and I've tested it on a ryzen 9 3700x I believe. The ryzen 9 build had a 2070 super in it but the Sims has little to no demand on gpu rendering power. Like none of it is 2k or rivals the visuals from an ENB software.
The performance difference was abysmal for Sims but getting these two cards I mentioned in tandem work great together for 2-4k gaming with the proper Monitor to display all those pixels and enjoy what you paid for.
Lilsimsie has a great PC but the fact that her unmodded vanilla game causes crashes is a nono :( and she showcased just how bad some EA restricted lots are in terms of design and furnishing it makes me mad
I get very little lag. But I am afraid to say I have a high end machine, I have no CC and I hate clutter (in RL too) so .... what can I say? Not everyone cup of tea is it? BUT no lag . I do have all the packs though.
@@Alarycia The thing is, from what I can gather from this video, the problem really isn't the CPU bottleneck (at least, not in the way you think). I've never looked into the Sims 4 code but from what I've seen in this video...EA just has some incredibly incompetent/lazy programmers. Seriously, the best solution they could think of for one of the CORE MECHANICS of the game is a simple FiFo (First in First out) queue? That's sad.
Now, the ACTUAL smart way of doing this, would be to make it so that the Sims interactions were performed on priority. So, in this system, after every game 'tick' the game would check every Sim on lot, check their own individual action queue and give them a priority value based on factors such as type of interaction they need to perform, the length of the interaction, the Sim's distance from said interaction and whether the Sim was the active Sim or part of the active household etc. A lot of those priorities would obviously be hard coded during production with only things such as the active household, distance and the active Sim flag being assigned on the fly to minimize lag.
After the priorities are assigned, the game would simply execute the interactions with the highest priority and then go from there. Now... What difference would this change would make? Well, for ANY game to be enjoyable the player's actions must be seamless and this system is designed around that. Since the Active Sim and Active ousehold would get popped to some number near the top of the queue every single time, the player would "feel" that the game is much more responsive, even if their processor is crying in the background.
Now, the AI would still lag. Unless, the interaction system is rebuilt from the ground up, I don't think there's any way to completely eliminate that. But remember, the AI won't complain if it it has to stand around for fifteen minutes before it gets the all clear to head to the bathroom and since the player can't see the NPCs interaction queue, 9/10 times they won't even realize that the game is lagging. Now, the player MIGHT feel a bit weird seeing the NPCs just standing around but if they do a bunch of idle animations while they're in the queue then the player will notice the AIs odd behaviour even less. Heck, if they really wanna sell the illusion, they could add in a bunch of "default" idle NPC tasks such as pacing or washing hands which would eliminate the "Sim standing around like a creep" problem entirely.
Sims 3 lags a lot less than sims 4 for me. Even having 3 sims in a family makes it lag a lot. I end up cheating their needs with weerbesu's UI Cheats mod instead of waiting a few hours for them to move
Maxis: 34 years of experience designing simulation games. Generated $1.2 Billion in sales from TS4 on Origin alone.
Also Maxis: Can't get the Simulation part of the genre they helped pioneer since its inception right.
My biggest pet peeve in Sims 4 is when the sims go and pour glasses of water and just leave their glass on a random shelf
The Sims: We are making sure this game is playable for low end computers...
If you are willing to wait 12 hours for your sim to take a shower
This explains why in "GrayStillPlays" the more sims he spawns the more it looks like they all share the same brain , so the more he spawns the harder it is for them to "think" lol
This was super interesting! Thanks so much for making such an accessible video from some 'dry' material. I'd definitely like to hear more about this kind of stuff in the future if it's something you're interested in too. Thanks again for all your great work over the years! 👍
[ insert joke about 2020 being the result of simulation lag in our world ]
its funny because in real life people also get very dumb when grouped in large numbers
@@renasouza8261 I just get over stimulated and stand there incapable of perceiving anything therefore preferring not to do anything in case of me accidentally causing issues.
(wow now that I type it out that almost sounds like simulation lag XD)
Well, the game should use a core per sim to process actions, or divide them evenly among cores. And always should prioritize the player, not the NPC. So a 8 core processor would work like a charm with an 8 sim's family
I love your jokes and voice, Carl. You always make me laugh and teach me a lot. Love this technical stuff!
Well, this explains a lot, and it's helpful! Imagine my shock when you said that speed 3 causes simulation lag more often! I had a feeling that they froze a lot when on speed 3! Just before watching this video, I saw my sim lagging when I gave her several commands to do laundry and went "oops, she's just standing there, just go speed 1 until she gets on the go". I just knew it worked, I didn't know what was behind it!
You make a lot of content I don't see with other Sims 4 creators, and you make it entertaining!
remember when the new style was supposed to be so even low end machines can run it? yeah...
Or when they removed CAS and open world?
This dude has a video for everything. I love this channel.
Carl, your videos get better and better. You deserve every one of your subs and so many more. I'm so happy for your successes! 🤗
I don't usually have many problems with the game. but the one thing that always happens is that sims just take four hours to eat their cereal because they spend half the time standing in front of the fridge with their little bowl and then walking to whatever seat is the most inconvenient (preferably up or down a few sets of stairs into their teenage son's bedroom or so) where they will again sit around and watch their food, look at the wall and take forever to eat like three spoonfuls of cereal. and my households really aren't that big, I rarely have more than four or five sims.
This was always something I was interested in. Thanks a lot for making this video!
Very informative, thank you for making this video.
This explains a lot. I was recording a challenge for my gaming channel last night and around the 5th video, the game began to lag and even went "Not Responding" a few times. My current pc ranks in the 300-500's as it is. Thanks so much for this highly informative breakdown of why the game does that.
Other thing. My sim must be the first in this queue when I order it to do something. Process my sim and I won't notice others being idle for some time. Actually sometimes I want them to be more idle than my own sim.
Finally this is brought to attention, I don't ever expect the console version to run smoothly even on next gen but I hope they figure it out on PC.
This is my favorite video of yours, Carl! Definitely demystifies some of their behavior, thank you for the insight!!
Great video Carl. Been waiting for a new video from you. I love your channel most of all.
I love when the circle around the sleep action is fully green and my sim continues sleeping for about 8 hours
Man this is the video I needed!! I haven't been playing often because my family has gotten so big the game runs irritatingly slowly. Thanks for explaining Carl!!
I just looooove it when my sim stands in one spot doing nothing for several hours, get's even better if it happens more then once and it just throws out the command i gave them every time
Thank you for always explaining everything so simply and easy to understand. I downloaded the mods to help with the lag, hopefully they work.
This is an incredibly useful video. I am really curious about the ways Sims work. Also I have a not so good laptop so it's always nice to know what to do to avoid lags as much as possible
Wow absolutely fascinating. Thank you for researching this and sharing!
This has been very enlightening ! THANK YOU !
my favorite thing is when i make my sim go talk to someone instead of walk up three flights of stairs
so i cancel the animation of walking up three flights of stairs, but they walk up the stairs anyway and the other sim goes home from waiting too long :)
Talking about the speed, years ago I once asked my cousin how could she play the Sims 3 smoothly on her old laptop and she told me she always play in speed 1. Like wtf are you for real! and she was dead serious. Occasionally she would use speed 2 and 3 where it's mostly when the Sims was far from the destination like from house to a cafe or the Sims was doing the same thing for hours e.g exercise etc. Turned out it's one of the ways of how I knew she's really a patient person xD
Edit: then we used to sleepover a lot and there were times I saw her playing the Sims 3 and yep, she would always play on speed 1
This is helpful information. Thank you, Carl!
Love these informative videos, thank you!
Thank you for that explanation! It gave me a clear view on the sims 4 and how to play it correctly
Dude, you're so much fun. You're also a great teacher. I've always wondered why when I speed 3 that sometimes less happens than if I went speed 2 or kept it speed 1.
As much as the lag is annoying, this look at how the game actually functions is really cool. Thanks for this!
I really enjoy your content... always informative but interesting
I've actually been getting my sims not caring about walls/objects recently, haha. When I get lag like this it helps me sometimes to zoom out. And sometimes when they start moving again, they'll just walk through the wall to go to what they're supposed to do, lol
I wish I could just delete all idle animations. They wreck my game and take way longer to play out than they should. But who am I to complain im playing on an $80 walmart laptop. I just have to avoid the fast forward if I want anything to ever work.
I had to upgrade to something similar just to get Sims 4 to play. Now saving up again.
@brian pagsibigan you just cant please everyone. and with 20 million sims 4 owners there will always be a lot of unhappy people.
yes lol Im fully aware that it's just my computer messing the game up but because of how they work theyre the most noticable and difficult thing to work around on a slow glitchy laptop. Cutting out the problem area, and I mean with a mod if thats possible, would let things run much more smoothly and make the game more realistic than seeing sims stand around for 4rl minutes until their idle animation loads then doing what I told them. It's like my computer takes 10x longer to choose the animation than it does to play it, defeating the purpose of idle animations syncing up with the other sim.
@@Hope-un5wv yeah ive been saving up too. I actually have enough money for a nice pc but I have no idea what to get or how to even start deciding.
@@andyv2209 Perhaps ask Carl to give you some advice. He would know what specific software might work best with Sims 4 for a reasonable price. Failing that find a computer savvy person within the sims community that you could trust ( not just anyone) and ask them. :)
This is an amazing vid!!! 👏🏾 🤩
Would think they could run it on a parallel system. One for the player's character and one all the other sims. And whenever the player character talks to a town, it pulls them into the line the player character is on to sync them up.
Hi love your vids!!!
This was really interesting, I like learning more about how it all works!
Or doesn't work 😂
Helpful! I have a potato-esque computer and this was enlightening.
Such great info!!! I have a greater appreciation for the game too - and I"m coming to the realization that my late 2012 iMac is starting to reach it's limits with this game (well at least playing it on ultra definition) - also Gray Still Play's videos make way more sense now hahahaha
omg this video is so helpful. Thank you so much
Thanks so much carl!
Haha, I have the Extreme Violence and Armageddon mods, and a few expansions. It's happened that instead of completely freezing, my Sim was stuck in one animation, and was just beating up a GHOST forever! I couldn't cancel it. xD Poor ghost, even in the afterlife, he had to suffer.
Oh, just like me. I also can't think properly when there are too many people around me.
Thank you for explaining.
So firstly, love the Gray's still plays mention. Secondly I'm on a low end unit and yeah that simulation lag hurts my soul even when I have the lowest number of Sims and only use speed 3 for work/school/sleep
I personally prefer to use the normal speed , because I want to know what's going on .
What I don't understand is that the sims 4 cut back a lot on animations, features, gameplay, etc. Why is simulation lag even a thing? Sims 3 had a lot more going on and certainly wasn't perfect but interactions were smoother. The sims 4 sims move so robotically. For the game to be so basic I don't know why it has so many issues. Sims 2 and 3 were great and offered a lot more so a little glitch here or there was tolerable. The sims 4 however is just a continuous disappointment.
I've heard in an other video that the Sims 4 could be laggy is because of multitasking ...... the Sims can do 2 or 3 actions at the same time .
The sims 4 without a load of mods is basically rubbish.
Sims 3 was way more laggy.
@@Baliaur yeah, but still Sims 4 is way more laggy than Sims 2 and 3
I agree Sims 2 and 3 lags and bugs lesser than Sims 4, even Sims 1 is smoother
Very interesting! Thanks!
Thank you for making this video
Well timed video - it seems to me after a couple updates ago, my simulation lag really increased!
Me playing The Sims 4: *pause game*, *select action*, *play game at speed 1 until the sim moves*, *change to speed 3 until the sim arrives at the destination*, *slow down to speed 1 again*
The nerd in me loves videos like these
Love your UA-cam Carl!! I've played sims for 20.5years.. Sims Online Beta Tester as well ..
You're my go to guy for all things sims that I didn't know or forgot ! Your content is stellar!
My opinion watching things as they have developed the past few months especially I realized something huge!
When Will Wright left and EA took over the heart , soul, and spirit of the Sims we love so much left with him....
Just my observation...
I ❤ GrayStillPlays !
"STAY FOXXY"!
#PeaceLoveBlessings ✌❤🙏
This is so helpful! No wonder my biggest sim family is freezin all the time... the house is like a castle on a 50x50 lot and with thousands of objects...