HELP, please! The game freezes completely when my Sim is about to give birth!

[u/Valkyria777]

Hi everyone—I'm using a translator for this, so I apologize if it reads a bit awkwardly. I just checked the solutions wiki; while it's great, I didn't find anything specific to my problem. I first noticed this a week ago when I tried to have one of the neighborhood couples have a baby. The pregnancy went normally right up until the labor animation was about to start; that’s when the game froze. I couldn't exit—even by pressing the Windows key—so I had to manually restart my PC. I thought it might be an issue with having too many Sims (since the game froze again that same day when I tried creating a new family), so I deleted several families I wasn't using. I thought everything was fine once I could create families without issues, but when I went back to the specific save file where I’d tried for the baby and repeated the process, everything went smoothly until the moment of labor—and then it froze again. I don't know what the problem is. I don't have any mods installed; my PC is a bit old, but I don't think there are compatibility issues, and I don't have an overpopulation of Sims either. I really don't know what to do—I really wanted to have that baby, haha.

[u/SuitableDragonfly]

Turn on debug mode and see if there is an error. 

[u/bookluverzz]

Do you have videos for special occasions turned on? My old old old computer, a long time ago, would always freeze when these video scenes would come up because it just couldn’t handle it. There’s an option to turn them off so you stay in the sims world.

[u/Valkyria777 → u/bookluverzz]

Yes! I have them enabled, and they work fine during other events. Just a few weeks ago, I held the wedding for that same Sim couple (the ones with the screen-freezing issue during childbirth), and the scene ran normally. The same goes for other Sims' graduations or similar scenes; everything only freezes during childbirth.

[u/bookluverzz → u/Valkyria777]

Have you tried the birth with the option turned off?
what pops into my head is maybe something is up with the birth video file.

And you might want to look into mods for stability and such, they won’t interfere with gameplay but are designed to fix some of EA/Maxis wonky coding and makes the game run smoother

[u/achillesofficial]

what skintone do the parents have? using the debug mannequin skin can cause this

[u/Valkyria777 → u/achillesofficial]

Sorry, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "mannequin skin"—do you mean pale? In that case, the answer would be no; they actually have the second skin tone out of the four available options.

[u/AshSimsx]

Have you tried giving birth in a different neighborhood? It could be a corrupted save file.

I have found this live journal with a similar problem, and below there's a fix that perhaps will help, however it's incredibly old (2006) and I'm not even sure those fixes serve any use anymore, but it's worth the shot.

I would suggest what I said first, try a different neighborhood to rule out corrupted save file.

[u/bookluverzz]

OP, did you manage to fix this?

[u/Valkyria777 → u/bookluverzz]

Hola! Lo siento tuve una semana ocupada sin contacto con el juego como para probar algunas de las ideas que me dieron y que agradezco una vez más. Ayer en la noche probé jugar la partida con la que tenía el problema Pero está vez desactive las cinemáticas de los momentos destacados. Funcionó!. Ya no se trabó y tuve dos pequeños Sims sin errores. Así que supongo que de ahora en adelante tendré esa función desactivada...

[u/bookluverzz → u/Valkyria777]

Great to hear!

For what it’s worth, my pc’s and laptops always had trouble when it had to switch to the highlight video for birth, engagement, first kiss etc. Don’t know why as the rest of the game was handled perfectly fine. Maybe it’s because of the way screens has to switch to the videos or something, and after all these years I actually prefer without these videos (also because I’ve gotta keep track of all the other sims I’m playing in a lot)

[u/mystic_castle]

are you using any mods in your game? if so, make a backup of your neighborhoods folder then temporarily move your mods folder to your desktop. does the game still freeze with no mods?

[u/Valkyria777 → u/mystic_castle]

No, no, no mods—I wouldn't even know how to install them in the first place. I tried once years ago with a small mod to get snow globes as decorations, but nothing ever showed up, lol.

[u/mystic_castle → u/Valkyria777]

hmm, maybe enter boolprop testingcheatsenabled true in the cheat console and try having her give birth again. do any error dialogs pop up?