Game Help:World Routing Lags

Issue

Based on these threads,

• Target NPC's over yonder
• Stupid Bridgeport Routing Fix (Experimental!)
• Weird freezing in China after generations install

and that games needed to be reset, every few hours, even with the suggestions in Game Help:Intermittent Freezes, I took a look at more .world files and found the same Routing breakdowns that HP did in her Bridgeport Fix. I even found more breakdowns in Bridgeport.

These .worlds Routing breakdowns are found in all the default worlds:

1. Base game's Sunset Valley: \Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds\Sunset Valley.world
2. WA's 3 Adventure destinations:
   • Shang Simla (China): \Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 World Adventures\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds\China.world
   • Champs Les Sims (France): \Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 World Adventures\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds\France.world
   • Al Simhara (Egypt): \Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 World Adventures\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds\Egypt.world
3. Ambition's Twinbrooks: \Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Ambitions\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds\Twinbrook.world
4. Late Night's Bridgeport: \Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Late Night\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds\Bridgeport.world

Cause

• The lags and freezes are caused by broken routing in the worlds.
• This is explained in Armiel's tutorial on routing in the CAW tool: Tutorial: Basics on sim-routing in Create a world-tool

See the image (click to enlarge) gallery below for areas where the routing is broken. You can use this as a guide when choosing the DIY solution. Or, when you get lags, these are the areas to look for stuck Sims that need to be reset.

• Spots denoting areas with problems
• 

  BG - Sunset Valley
  Yellow Dots - Routing
  Red Dots - Road

• 

  WA - China

• 

  WA - France

• 

  WA - Egypt

• 

  AMB - Twinbrook

• 

  LN - Bridgeport
  Yellow Dots - Routing
  Red Dots - Road

What you need

• Willingness to read the guide carefully and following instructions to the letter.
• S3PE and the knowledge to use it.
• A machine capable of running CAW and a rudimentary knowledge to use it. Get the Create-A-World tool. Tutorials on how to use CAW are available in
  • Tutorials:TS3 CAW Tutorials
  • CAW Forum Tutorials section
• Learn how to use CAW, and editing premade worlds by reading this guide Editing Premade Worlds (and its original thread for more tips and background info)
• Understand the business of routing and painting an area to be non-routable by reading this guide Tutorial: Basics on sim-routing in Create a world-tool

Solution

STOP! Read before proceeding! These files are not meant to be placed in /Mods/Packages! Make a Backup of the .world files you planned to edit. Edited game files in Program Files paths will prevent the patch to update your games! So, these files need to be restored before you do any updating.

Step 1: Backup .world

• Do a backup! Please do a backup before continuing with the rest of this guide. Go to the path provided above for the location of the .world file.
• Select the .world file and Copy
• In any empty spot, right-click and Paste.
• Rename this file to have another extension so you won't get duplicates in the New Game screen. I usually put ".orig" as the extension for my backups.
• This <town-name> - Copy.world.orig is your backup file. Keep it safe! This is the file to restore when you need to update.
• Repeat the above steps for each game whose .world you want to edit.

Step 2: Backup Saves

• Next, backup your Save games. Go to /Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/, and backup the Saves folder by either
  • Copy+Paste so you have a copy of this folder and its contents to Desktop (or in another drive, preferably)
  • Archive it in a zip or rar file.
• You can also do a full backup of the whole user folder if you like, see this Backup Guide.

Step 3:

• I offer you 3 solutions:

1. DIY in CAW - if you're pretty handy in CAW and do not like to wait for others or simply like to do things yourself.
2. Edit in S3PE - downloading the resources (@10MB) and editing the .world files. Would need to ensure you download and import the correct resources for the world you're editing. For instance, importing Sunset Valley.world's resources into China.world is a Very Bad Thing!
3. Download the .world files - the simplest way of having fixed worlds, BUT you have to
   • rely on someone to do the "DIY-ing in CAW" & the "Editing in S3PE",
   • have a fast Internet connection to download a huge file (@100MB) for each world, and
   • know what to do with multi-part files.

Let's get to it then...

Solution 1: DIY in CAW

The only sustainable solution is to open up the world in CAW, and edit the non-routable areas so Sims would not go there anymore. To edit the .world file yourself, you need to do the following steps. They are not that complicated if you know CAW, but it is tedious. STOP! Backup before proceeding! Have you made BACKUPS yet? If not, go do so Now! These are summarized instructions. If you don't know what I mean or how I get from step A to B, read the tutorials first and learn how to use CAW separately, which is out-of-scope of this FAQ. The CAW tool is extensive and this is not meant to be a step-by-step guide, so be warned! PREP: Make a project folder for yourself, either on Desktop or however you organize your modding projects. This is just my methodology, you might have your own and don't have to follow mine. But if you don't, this is foolproof. I'd know - I'm the fool who made all the mistakes and have refined the steps to the ones below. :) I have 2 subfolders in here named "World Orig files" containing untouched copies of all the worlds I'm editing subfolders named "<town-name> resources" for each world I'm editing "edited resources" containing copies of the world saves from CAW's path "\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Create A World Tool\UserToolData\Worlds" subfolders named "edited <town-name> resources" for each world's resources I extracted In CAW: Using the original method from the "editing premade worlds" guide to create a new world in CAW, give it a name and save. In S3PE: open this newly created world, import the original game world, I have an extra step to prepare for the next patch, extract all the 4 named resources to the "\World Orig files\<town-name> resources" folder so I can do a FileDiff with the next version, in case EA make changes to them in a patch WPID 0xF609FD60 (World - World info: ID, name, desc) UNKN 0x296A6258 (World - Type: city, vacation etc) UNKN 0x05CD4BB3 (World - Routing info) UNKN 0x05DA8AF6 (World - Routing info) remove the 2 resources identified, and save. WPID 0xF609FD60 (World - World info: ID, name, desc) UNKN 0x296A6258 (World - Type: city, vacation etc) close the world in S3PE and exit. Back in CAW: open this world in CAW again, input the info like name, description and thumbnail and Save As under a different name, now that you've saved it, scroll around to the various spots I identified and just repaint with the blue non-routable paint. Read over Armiel's Routing tutorial as needed, save when you're done, close the world and exit CAW. Back in S3PE: Open this file back in S3PE and extract these resources, use the Filter options. UNKN 0x05CD4BB3 (World - Routing info) UNKN 0x05DA8AF6 (World - Routing info) UNKN 0x9063660E (World - Roads & Walkways) _IMG 0x00B2D882 0x00000001 (DDS Image) MODL 0x01661233 0x00000002 (Object Model aka Object Geometry) you can close this world and exit S3PE. proceed on with the next solution, except you don't need to download any "<Town>FixedRouting.zip" as that is the output of the steps you've done here in this section.

Solution 2: Edit with S3PE

Download the "<Town>FixedRouting.zip" for the world that you want to fix and extract it. Base game's Sunset Valley WA's 3 Adventure destinations: Shang Simla (China) Champs Les Sims (France) Al Simhara (Egypt) Ambition's Twinbrooks: [link here] Late Night's Bridgeport Be sure you have the correct resources for the correct world! If Windows Explorer don't show same number of files as stated in the download thread, logout from MTS, remove cookies and try re-downloading. In S3PE: Open S3PE as Administrator. Now go to the path for the game whose world you want to fix. STOP! Backup before proceeding! I hoped you have made that backup by now, because we're about to make changes to a game file here. Screwing up at this stage without a backup means you need to uninstall, reinstall + patch and start the whole process over. OK, warning done, Ready? To save you some scrolling up-n-down, here again are the paths: Base game's Sunset Valley: \Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds\Sunset Valley.world WA's 3 Adventure destinations: Shang Simla (China): \Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 World Adventures\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds\China.world Champs Les Sims (France): \Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 World Adventures\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds\France.world Al Simhara (Egypt): \Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 World Adventures\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds\Egypt.world Ambition's Twinbrooks: \Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Ambitions\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds\Twinbrook.world Late Night's Bridgeport: \Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Late Night\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds\Bridgeport.world Open the appropriate world file that you downloaded the "<Town>FixedRouting.zip" for in S3PE. From the Resource menu -> Import -> From file, navigate to the location where you have the "<Town>FixedRouting.zip" extracted. Select all (Ctrl+A) the extracted files and click Import. Ensure the dropdown for the filetypes show all *.* as we want to import everything. Save the file and exit. Remember to simply do a Save, not a Save As. Remove caches and test the game.

Solution 3: Download .world file

You can also download the .world file itself if you don't know how to or cannot use CAW and place it in the respective paths above. Base game's Sunset Valley WA's 3 Adventure destinations Shang Simla (China) Champs Les Sims (France) Al Simhara (Egypt) Ambition's Twinbrooks: [link here] Late Night's Bridgeport: [link here] STOP! Backup before proceeding! I hoped you have made that backup by now, because we're about to make changes to a game file here. Screwing up at this stage without a backup means you need to uninstall, reinstall + patch and start the whole process over. OK, warning done, Ready? Download all parts of the world, and rename them to get rid of the "MTS_ellacharm3d_<numbers>_" portion. See Game Help:DFDD4 Download the File#Content with Multi-part files. Right-click on the file with "part1" in its name and "Extract here", or whatever command your program uses. See Game Help:DFDD5 Extract from Archive#Multi-part files. Place the extracted & joined .world file in the appropriate path and replace the default version. Delete caches before starting game (though might not be necessary).

Step 4: Preparing for a patch or restoring the original

When the next patch is released, you simply rename the extensions.

• Rename the fixed <Town>.world to "<Town>.world.fixed"
• Rename the original back by removing the ".orig" so the file name is restored back to "<Town>.world", and you're good to go.
• If you don't want the fixed version anymore, simply delete it from your system.

What's Next

Well, I appreciate any feedback. You can post in the download thread's comment area if you have any issues :

• with repainting in CAW (although CAW forum might be better for this)
• with importing the resources
• with lags due to broken routing or areas I missed, preferably with an image so I can see exactly where.
• with the instructions, need clarifications or whatever.

If That Didn't Work...

• Have you reread and gone through the instructions again, carefully? If you tried the DIY or S3PE solution, perhaps easiest is to wait for the downloadable .world(s) to be made available.
• Please post in Sims 3 Help forums if you have issues with the game, especially if not related to routing lags.

Related Pages

• Game Help:Intermittent Freezes
• Game Help:TS3 Back Ups