Tag: Mac

Sims 3 and Sims 4 – testing in Big Sur and on an M1 Mac

Published on by BluebellFlora22 Comments

My entry level MacBook Air has finally arrived so I can start playing around with Sims 3 and Sims 4. This is my Mac:

2020 13″ MacBook Air
Apple M1 chip with 8‑core CPU, 7‑core GPU and 16‑core Neural Engine
8GB unified memory
256GB SSD storage

I have all packs up to and including Snowy Escape installed. Settings are maxed out in each game.

Origin

No problems downloading Origin from https://www.origin.com/gbr/en-us/store/download. I am aware that there were reports of Origin not downloading in Big Sur. This appears to have affected those using Chrome. If you’re still having an issue use Safari or Firefox and you will be able to download it.

When you launch Origin you will get a pop-up asking you to install Rosetta, go ahead and install it. Rosetta is the software developed by Apple to translate Intel x86 apps into a language the M1 ARM chips can understand:

Origin should now run and you can start downloading your games (at the time of writing there is a bug in the Origin beta/technical preview which prevents packs from being downloaded. Opt out of the beta in the Application Settings then restart Origin and you should be good to go).

The Sims 3

After installing all the packs the game was still showing as Finalising in Origin. I launched the game by double clicking the app in my Applications folder instead and the Launcher immediately came up (repairing will also fix this). After clicking play in the Launcher a couple of times the game finally started to load. Managed to load a household fine and get into the game and play. One thing I did notice is awful pink lines around some of the screen and sim icon edges. It doesn’t affect gameplay but doesn’t look great.

Overall performance was ok and stable. Having the 64-bit version now is fantastic but it’s no doubt still pretty buggy overall.

The Sims 4

With all the packs downloaded I could press play and start a brand new game. CAS loaded fine and I managed to move a sim into their Lot. There are a lot of reports of users having crashing issues in CAS or when leaving CAS to move their household into a lot. If this is happening you need to enable Vertical Sync in the in-game options (I have no idea why). As well as testing a brand new folder I also copied over my existing Sims 4 folder from my MacBook Pro. This folder is around 5GB in total with a ton of high poly CC. Still loaded and ran beautifully. Really smooth gameplay.

If you’re having issues please leave me a comment or report over in the Mac forum at Answers HQ: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-Mac/bd-p/The-Sims-Mac

How to successfully buy the Sims 4 in Origin

Published on by BluebellFloraLeave a comment

If you’re looking to buy the Sims 4 you need to be aware that buying it through Origin isn’t currently as straightforward as it should be. EA are really pushing Origin Access subscriptions at every step of the purchasing process, trouble is that Origin Access (OA) is not available to Mac users so a lot of new Sims players are unwittingly buying the OA subscription which is completely useless to them. The trial version of the game is also not available to Mac users so don’t even bother trying to download it.

  1. Go to Origin.com or download and install the Origin client. Log in with your EA/Origin account if you already have one or create a new one.
  2. Find the Sims 4 base game and click Get The Game:
  3. Ignore the massive adverts trying to get you to buy Origin Access and click on the Buy Now button:
  4. You will then be taken to the next option asking you which version of the base game you would like to buy. Click the one you want and follow the rest of the instructions. Ignore the Origin Access advert at the bottom of the page.
  5. For further help installing the game see full instructions here.

If you have unwittingly purchased an Origin Access subscription  and want to cancel it:

  1. Log into your Origin account
  2. Hover over your name in the bottom left corner and select EA Account & Billing
  3. In the web browser window that opens to your EA account page select Origin Access from the menu on the left side and follow the instructions to cancel the subscription

New day, new patch, no apparent Mac fixes on the horizon

Published on by BluebellFlora2 Comments

PC: 1.60.54.1020/Mac: 1.60.54.1220 has just been released with various bug fixes, none of which seem to address the multitude of Mac specific bugs starting to pile up.

If you’re on a Mac and no longer experiencing one or more of these issues please let me know so I can feel slightly happier that we’re not seemingly being overlooked again:

  1. Cannot run the game in macOS 10.11 El Capitan
  2. Cannot run the game in macOS 10.12 Sierra with AMD GPUs
  3. Static type lines across game screen
  4. Lines appearing over UI at bottom of the screen
  5. First Person View off centre
  6. Glitchy UI (not attributed to Mods)
  7. Shadow line following your Sim indoors
  8. Black square shadow under Sim

1 & 2 – are game breakers unless you update your version of macOS through the Mac App Store.

3 – may be fixed by turning off Edge Smoothing.

4 – can be fixed by playing in windowed mode.

5 – can be fixed by disabling Retina display in the in-game graphics options

6 – can be fixed by not skipping through the loading screens when launching the game

7 – no fix

8 – can be fixed by editing the GraphicsRules.sgr file (follow link above)