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Mad Poster
#76 Old 16th Dec 2019 at 4:30 PM
Quick question- do festival lots perform the same way Big Parks do?
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Top Secret Researcher
#77 Old 16th Dec 2019 at 5:29 PM
@jje1000 No, they don't. Unlike parks they have opening hours (8 - 21); festivals attract only Loves The Outdoor trait sims whereas parks also attract Angler and Green Thumb trait sims; festival lots don't encourage sport career or athletic sims. Festival sims attract slightly more sims overall. They are similar in other regards (babies cannot visit, open for cats, dogs, horses). Not sure about buffs and moodlets, I would think they come from the objects on the lot and not the lot type itself.
Mad Poster
#78 Old 16th Dec 2019 at 7:07 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Norn
@jje1000 No, they don't. Unlike parks they have opening hours (8 - 21); festivals attract only Loves The Outdoor trait sims whereas parks also attract Angler and Green Thumb trait sims; festival lots don't encourage sport career or athletic sims. Festival sims attract slightly more sims overall. They are similar in other regards (babies cannot visit, open for cats, dogs, horses). Not sure about buffs and moodlets, I would think they come from the objects on the lot and not the lot type itself.


Hmm... interesting- do rabbitholes work on festival lots?
Top Secret Researcher
#79 Old 16th Dec 2019 at 9:10 PM
They do, but sims might be stuck inside when the festival lot closes at 9 p.m. (they are in regular buildings). I've never tried it though.
Scholar
#80 Old 20th Dec 2019 at 1:19 PM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
It is all about population count really. I mean, I use to do the thing too where I made sure all the rabbithole lots are "no visitors." In many worlds, this is the default. The main reason for this is because of 2 concepts.

1) Less available lots to visit means more sims on lots that allow visitors.
2) Rabbithole lots are essentially blank lots, so having sims stay there is pointless. Also, rabbithole are "attractors" so by allowing sims to stay on a rabbithole lot, they are attracted by rabbithole then linger on a blank lot.

Now there's a couple things to notice about this.

1) If you notice, a lot of times a lot can seem "blank" until your sim arrives. Then all of the sudden sims start showing up. That's because TS3 has a "stalker" mode simulation. Sims actually follow you around. Awesome mod can disable this function and I've done it before. This makes the simulation more real, sims are not pulled to whichever lot you are on. However, I find that then a lot of times lots are not being filled. This doesn't mean lots will always be filled b/c you are there, but it does mean that sims on other lots may be pulled from that lot to your lot. So in this case, it really doesn't matter how many available lots you have and so having a lot of the "no visitor" lots won't really matter.

2) Your available visitable sims are based on your population count and time of day. My town is overbloated with 300 residents, this alone keeps my lots full no matter what I do with it. The two mods above which pushes services and townies to community lots will also increase your visitable sims population. Now keep in mind, after 8 am typically, most sims are at work or school, so your visitable sims counts are down, especially if you are using NRAAS SP and has "push to work" on. This is why in vacation worlds, they refuse to assign jobs to the locals.

So with this information, what I'm saying is, do not be too concerned over how many available lots you have for visitors and how many you should turn off. I actually convert all my rabbitholes to real lots, so I virtually have no "no visitor" lots and my lots populate just fine without any other mods to push sims to lots.

Also, remember, rabbitholes are strong attractors. Use that to your advantage and combine lots. I combined a food register market with a diner rabbithole, a cafeteria with a bistro rabbithole, etc.. and they're always packed.





When I create megamalls, rabbitholes are essential to populating those malls. Rabbitholes can break the max sim threshold coded in lot type. Virtually you can have unlimited sims attracted to those lots.



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Mad Poster
#81 Old 21st Dec 2019 at 2:05 AM
Was thinking about this issue last night when working on a pretty darn cool if I say so myself LOL community lot in the world I am working on again now. Was thinking all this work and nobody will be there! I need to reread this entire thread again.
Mad Poster
#82 Old 21st Dec 2019 at 4:14 AM
On an aside, another question- do food truck parking spaces, or even normal parking spots work outside of lots?
Mad Poster
#83 Old 27th Dec 2019 at 5:45 PM
Quote: Originally posted by SneakyWingPhoenix
Attracting:
- More Sims In Clubs.


This mod is broken, right? Is Shimrod's Townies out on the Town a good alternative?
Mad Poster
#84 Old 6th Aug 2020 at 7:36 AM Last edited by jje1000 : 6th Aug 2020 at 8:03 AM.
Final report regarding lot combinations. Total number of active households in the world was around 72 active resident sims + a dozen or so service sims, with a total of 73 lots. I utilized NRAAS Tagger to keep an eye on the distribution of sims.

Desired High Traffic (Need at 6-10 sims)
Parks
- 1 Big Park (Central park) - was usually busy, but I attribute this to the huge number of rabbithole rugs on the lot. Not super packed, but I attribute it to the huge size of the lot.
Bars and Clubs
- 1 Arcade- (Comic Store + Snookers Bar) - was usually busy - good success.
- 1 Hangout (Basketball Court) - was sometimes busy - good success.
- 1 Watering Hole (Local Bar) - was usually busy - good success.
- 1 Rebel Hangout (Bowling Alley) - usually busy - good success.
- 1 Exclusive Lounge (Private Club) - not that busy - occasionally had groups of sims there, but was far quieter. Celebrity sims did not seem to visit this lot more than the others.

Desired Medium Traffic (0-6 Sims)
- 1 Gym - was not that busy- sometimes a sim or two using the machines.
- 1 Library - was sometimes busy- usually a least a few sims in there playing on the computers.
- 1 Stylist/Tattoo Shop - was sometimes busy, occasionally a few sims on the lot talking to the stylist and tattoo artist.
- 1 Laundromat - was sometimes busy, usually one household on the lot.
- 1 Festival Grounds (Waterfront park) - unfortunately was rarely busy even during festivals, may work better if it replaces the main park.
- 1 Visitor-Allowed lots with Grocery + Bookstore - occasionally populated with a few sims.
- 1 Visitor-Allowed lots with Diner- Usually populated with a few sims.
- 1 Visitor-Allowed lots with Restaurant- Sometimes populated with a few sims, usually during the evening.
- 1 Resort - was rarely busy, unfortunately - no one actually used the resort on its own.
- 1 Basecamp (for NRAAS Traveller) - was rarely busy, moreso with tourists; sometimes some homeworld sims visited.
- 1 Art Gallery (Do sims even use art galleries?) - was never busy.
- 1 Small Park (School) - was rarely populated, sometimes part of a household or two using objects on the lot. Kids did not seem particularly drawn to the lot.

Story-telling (Only populated if your sims is active there?)
- 1 Fire Station- was never populated except during its career hours.
- 6 Visitor-Allowed lots (with varying numbers of job rabbitholes) - rarely had visitors despite the rabbitholes. Usually the only visitors appeared when the active sim was on the lot.
- 2 Ports- no one ever visits the lot on their own.

Overall, I'd consider it a success as the world felt lively enough, though I wish sims with appropriate traits would pushed more heavily towards their respective lots. For instance, I had several artistic sims, but they never visited the art gallery on their own. Sporty sims did not seem particularly drawn to the gym lot. Pets never left their homes, since there were no pet-specific venues for them to visit.

I do wish that there was a non-Awesomemod-bundled mod that stopped pushing other sims to visit lots your active sims were on, just to keep a more natural distribution.
Inventor
#85 Old 6th Aug 2020 at 10:18 AM
I tend to add very few new community lots to EA worlds. I instead modifty the existing ones to feature more activities. For example, I usually turn the "The Water Hole Juice Bar" in Riverview into a sports bar, the "River Front Swim Club" into a Poolside Club and the "Octagon House" into an exclusive club (because museums are most useless lots in the game). I also try to replace useless rabbit holes. For example, I add the bookstore cash register to the library and I build instead and arcade + coffeehouse (the UL one). I have always had better results when I don't add too many lots, only a few I know don't attract many Sims like the firehouse and horse-related stuff (only to rural worlds like Riverview; I disable horses altogether for more urban worlds).

With this, I usually get an insane amount of Sims on each lot, to the point it's just too many people and I can't even order a drink or they don't have space to walk. I've also been getting even MORE Sims than usual (the usual were 10) since I upgrade my CPU to a Ryzen 5 3600X (I've gotten up to 20 on some lots), so I'm thinking the extra clock speed (4.4 Ghz) is helping the game in ways I didn't predict.
There aren't any idle Sims anymore. Everyone starts talking to each other or doing any activities they can on the lot.


PS: The MSC Mod is BROKEN. DO NOT USE IT. My game was running perfectly fine and practically lag-free, I added it and I started to get random lag spikes and stutter, as well as script errors. I removed the mod, cleaned the caches, and the stutter is gone. The game runs really smooth now. I also don't really need it right now, since I'm getting a ton of visitors at every community lot, though I haven't played yet in Bridgeport, that has the most bars/clubs and all those damn ropes I'll have to remove.
Field Researcher
#86 Old 7th Aug 2020 at 10:11 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Naus Allien
...


Can I ask how many residents you have in your town? I usually have ~5 sims on any lot. I wonder if its because I'm not fixing up my lots correctly or my population is low (60 residents). I have a pretty good CPU so hopefully that isn't the issue...
Inventor
#88 Old 7th Aug 2020 at 10:57 PM Last edited by Naus Allien : 7th Aug 2020 at 11:17 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by tysika
Can I ask how many residents you have in your town? I usually have ~5 sims on any lot. I wonder if its because I'm not fixing up my lots correctly or my population is low (60 residents). I have a pretty good CPU so hopefully that isn't the issue...


According to NRaas, there are 79 residents, 43 households, 85 service Sims and 28 homeless in Riverview (my current household). If you aren't getting enough Sims maybe you have too many community lots that allow visitors. Make sure that community lots that have rabbit holes are set to "No Visitors Allowed."
Field Researcher
#89 Old 7th Aug 2020 at 11:16 PM
Nitromon, 230? Wow that's a lot.... I manually populate so I rarely have more than 80 people in my town.

@Naus You're probably right on the community lots thing. I think they're all set to no visitors allowed but I still get a lot of sims loitering around the rabbitholes. I think they go there for work or whatever and then just kinda hang around. I have bookstore and grocery right next to each other and there's 10+ sims there all the time. I think I will try what you did and remove some rabbitholes and just put a cash register/rug instead.
Field Researcher
#91 Old 8th Aug 2020 at 3:28 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
I made a mistake, that should be 230 total population including service sims, putting residents usually around 100-150 area. Game doesn't run well when the pop is higher than 200, so I don't actually recommend it. In fact, it would generate more "idle" sims as the game's 32-bit engine tries to manage all of them.

Can you post the graphics/processor log section from your deviceconfig log? There's a setting in the cfg file which determines how populated can your community lots be based on your CPU strength. This can be manually set to a higher number to increase community lot sims.


Just got back home and found the file:

=== Application info ===
Name: Sims3
Version:
Build: Release
=== Rating info ===
GPU: 5 GPU Memory: 4 CPU: 4 RAM: 4 CPU Speed: 3400 Threading: 3
Adjusted CPU: 4134 RAM: 16316 Adjusted RAM: 15804 Cores: 4
=== Machine info ===
OS version: Windows 8 6.2.9200
OS prod type: 0
OS major ver: 6
OS minor ver: 2
OS SP major ver: 0
OS SP minor ver: 0
OS is 64Bit: 1
CPU: GenuineIntel
Brand: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Family: 6
Model: 12
Cores: 4
HT: 1
x64: 0
Memory: 16316MB
Free memory: 13358MB
User: Elsinore
Computer: Peach
=== Graphics device info ===
Number: 0
Name (driver): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660
Name (database): Geforce GTX 1660 [Found: 1, Matched: 1]
Vendor: NVIDIA
Chipset: Vendor: 10de, Device: 2184, Board: 554319da, Chipset: 00a1
Driver: nvd3dum.dll, Version: 26.21.14.4575, GUID: D7B71E3E-62C4-11CF-B56B-4D751BC2D735
Driver version: 4575
Monitor: \\.\DISPLAY1
Texture memory: 6880MB
Vertex program: 3.0
Pixel program: 3.0
Hardware TnL: 1

Actually is it bad that my CPU only has 4 cores? :/ I think most now have 6.
Field Researcher
#93 Old 8th Aug 2020 at 5:33 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
No, your system looks very impressive. It's an i7 with 4 cores, means it is hyperthreaded to 8 cores. TS3 only need 2 cores.

So everything looks fine, your issue really is "in game" and not your setup. Follow the advice given by others, see if that improves it. Else, you should try to increase your population. Um, have you done core unparking?

CPU cores are shuffled in Win OS around when in operation constantly turning off some and turning on others. This is designed to reduce power usage to the CPU. Though this is good in saving power, but it creates a latency each time a core is shuffled. In most applications this is unnoticeable, however in TS3 because of the way it is designed running multiple agents (sims) the latency is highly noticeable. Unparking the CPU will make then more active, "less idling," and especially when they're changing clothes.

https://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=571180

So in sense, you can have a 10 sims called to a lot, but 1/2 of them are idling at home or somewhere b/c of the latency. By the time they decided to go to the lot, you probably go bored and left already.


I actually replied to your helpful thread and unparked my cores a while ago (Via a program called "ParkControl"). I usually just leave it on all cores active even when I'm playing other games. I guess I will just need to revamp my town, maybe lower the amount of community lots all together.
Mad Poster
#95 Old 8th Aug 2020 at 7:36 AM
So is having Role Sims staffing the objects like cash registers, bars, and barista counters who actually bathe at least occasionally. (probably not one of my more helpful comments, to be fair)

The lot attractors can also be trait based, or at least some of them are. If you by chance or design have a town full of rebels, they will want different kinds of experiences and be attracted to different kinds of lots than say divas, the avant garde, athletes, those who love to swim, or the socially awkward might. Having a lot of sims in town who work night shifts would tend to not leave as many available to populate venues after hours, and of course the reverse in the daytime.
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