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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 22nd May 2019 at 11:26 AM
Default How can I keep my save file safe for a whole legacy?
Hi there, apologies if this has already been answered. I've searched and found answers to speed up the game but I'm not sure about save files which is the other issue I'm having, so I've made a new post.

I've never been able to finish a legacy because either the game lags so much or eventually my save files become so large or laggy that they're a nightmare to play. The last time I tried I was midway through gen 2 before I got error 12s every other save, 2 second lags frequently and resetting the town and cleaning up inventories only seemed to do so much before I got another error 12.

I'll try to explain what I was doing and what I have and what I was doing. A friend built me a new PC with parts I bought that I was told had decent specs (will detail below) so I had a clean PC. I did a new install of base game and all EPs and SPs in order and applied the superpatch. From my back up I moved my store content and mods across (will detail below). I started my game in Legacy Island III and did some housekeeping with NRaas' StoryProgression Mod, all aesthetic so nothing that affected the amount of Sims, tourists or animals. I also added or edited some lots to include lifeguard seats or some store content I bought. My first gen had two sims and second was only two as well, they went to and from university fine, it was only when the second daughter because a teenager that I started getting error 12. I've got multiple saves so I haven't lost the family. Before then there was some lag but resetting the town seemed to fix it for a while, I don't know if it's my mods or the PC but it's getting very disheartening losing 30 minutes worth of progress over and over again. I tried the Save Cleaner as well and it did reduce my file size, but once again error 12, so then I tried increasing the amount of RAM the game can use as mentioned in another post, error 12. I honestly don't know how anyone has managed to do a legacy but obviously it must be something I'm doing so I turn to this forum for help. I can play a new town fine so I'm not sure if it's the amount of time I've spent in a town that might be doing it.

Any and all advice is most welcome. Thank you.

Here's my PC and mod information, I'm so-so on tech so please forgive my ignorance. The game is installed on an SSD. I have no non-store CC mods because I'm scared it'll cause more issues (I used to have loads and would love to again).

Computer
Intel i5-8600K 3.60GHz 3.60GHz
16GM DDR RAM
4G MSI GTX1050Ti
Asus ROG STRIX Z370-E
Windows 10 64 bit

Mods
NRaas Animator, Consigner, Debug Enabler, Decensor, Error Trap, Go Here, Master Controller (Cheats, Expanded Tattoo, Progression), No CD, Overwatch, Porter, Register, Saver, Story Progression (Career, Cops and Robber, Extra, Fairies and Werewolves, Lovers, Meanies, Money, Others, Population, Relationship, Skill, Vampires and Slayers), Tagger, Traveller, Woohooer
Aikea Guinea - No Drift Freecam Mod
ani_FridgeMod
Chicken0895 Unlocked Traits and LTR
cmar_XCAS_TattooLocations
cmomoney_AnimationPlayer
cmomoney_PosePlayer
dD-Lighting Tweaks - Balanced
dD-Lighting Tweaks - Dynamic Shadows
Ghost Reaction Remover
icarusallsorts.PoolLifeguard
Mummy Reaction Remover
nointromaxis
Potion (sell Chemistry set potions at consignment store)
ShimrodsPortraitHeightCenteringFix150
ShimrodsPortraitStillLifeMemSceneQualityFix157
SIMul8rReviews_TrunkofPoses (With Pose List)
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 22nd May 2019 at 1:38 PM Last edited by igazor : 22nd May 2019 at 1:50 PM.
One NRaas mod that helps to preserve game performance that appears to be missing from your list is Traffic. This one has options to prevent the overspawnage of vehicles that are unnecessary and never seen on-screen so that for most of us Overwatch no longer needs to cleanup thousands or tens of thousands of them per each overnight run as they are just never spawned in the first place.

In addition, we offer this page in case you are not familiar with it.
http://www.nraas.net/community/TIPS...AME-PERFORMANCE

As mentioned on this page among many other suggestions, some things that will help control resource usage as a game progresses would be disallowing scrapbook memories or controlling them with a mod, play offline (not logged in at the Launcher or in-game levels), switch off the in-game TS3 store shopping experience, disallow the hidden object startup game, check on the world resident population and don't let it get out of hand, don't have overly intricate lots with far too many objects on them in play, don't set up multi-purpose lots with far too many Role Sims assignments and rabbitholes all in one place. You may of course be doing several or all of these things already.

Your hardware setup sounds great, but TS3 has no functional built-in frame rate limiter. Your graphics card is strong enough to run wild on frame rates if the fps is not capped. Have you taken steps with the Nvidia Control Panel and Inspector (or some other tools) to accomplish this and have you checked your actual frame rates in-game to ensure they are staying at or under the refresh rate of your monitor? Most are 60 Hz, so the goal would be 60 fps, some can run higher.

Error 12 is an out of usable resources condition. It's usually RAM but can be something else that is triggering it, but one step to take is to use Task Manager to watch over the RAM that your game is using at startup after leveling off once the game starts moving forward smoothly and again throughout play. TS3 is a 32-bit application and can address no more than just under 4 GB of RAM (actually the hard upper limit is ~3.7 GB). There are no steps to take to lift that limit on any system. If your game sessions are starting out around or above let's say 3 GB and rising steadily from there, chances are something is wrong with the ongoing save that needs to be fixed as the danger zone above 3.5 GB (this varies a bit) would be far too easy to hit through routine play.

I can't say that everyone has been able to maintain an ongoing legacy style game without having to move to new worlds within it every other generation following the suggestions provided, but it is possible to do. I've been playing the same ongoing game since 2011, it has 16 Traveler mod connected worlds in it, they are each fine, and this has been until just now on a system that was not nearly as strong as yours. When all else fails though, there are the options to move the sims you care about to new (to them) worlds by way of Traveler or by using Porter to pack them all up (living and dead) and bring them to a new world all at once.

The whole RAM and resource management thing once we get beyond a certain point in an ongoing save's evolution is a royal pain in the neck. But it might help to think of it as actually part of the game. We are already balancing sims' time, money, career, skill, relationship management and other factors to move our storylines forward unless one cheats through all of these or is playing strictly for the game's design elements, so system resource management becomes part of the fun (?) juggling act required to keep our games moving forward properly.
Test Subject
#3 Old 22nd May 2019 at 7:11 PM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
don't have overly intricate lots with far too many objects on them in play


Igazor could you please elaborate on what would be considered too many objects? I have set up a minimall on a 50x50 lot that has 4 small shops. I have no registers or NPCs assigned to any positions on the lot. However, I do have 9 of Ani's Savvier Pedestals, approx. 15 of her rugs and some clothing racks from ats3. I have a pet store and an electronics store on this lot that have several smaller purchasable items. Now I'm wondering if I need to go back in and remove some of the content.

Also, is there a way to click on the lot to find a hard number for items, scripts, anything that will give you an idea if the lot needs to be scaled back?
Inventor
#5 Old 23rd May 2019 at 2:56 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
Generation 2? That's it? That's weird. You can at least get to ... iono 10 generations before major error 12 et.c..

https://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=626985

I'll tell you right now, I've mentioned in previous posts, reducing just a handful of package CC's texture to 512 is amazing for error 12 fix.

I mean, all I did was change some hair and accessory's texture to 512x512 and it massively reduced the RAM usage. Now I'm going to reduce the sim3pack hair and accessories.


Can you explain what you mean by reducing the texture to 512x512? Like your process for this. I'm all about cleaning my CC before loading it into my game so any way to reduce it more is greatly appreciated. After years of just dumping stuff in...I have taken the last year to really learn about CC and the death it can cause in a game. I now take all cc and drop it through TSRW (clothes) and make sure the textures are linked and I can't believe the amount of "extra masks and multipliers" I have found in these packages that once I convert them back to packages I go and delete out of the package (doing this through TSRW by looking at the package contents and trying to remove always causes TSRW to crash on me). It kind of made me wonder how many CC clothing creators don't even realize that these are in them.

Back to the original post. I have also the Kuree Save Cleaner that I drop my save file through before every load up. I delete the cache files before every start and I rebuild my CC magic folder. I also follow the Save As rule and do not save over the existing save file. This one step of not saving on the existing save and using save as has in my opinion been an extremely better process for keeping an existing save going. Also, this just might be my weird I think it helps but really it means nothing process. After building for a half hour straight I generally go back into live mode and do a Save As before I continue building. I will perform a Save As on general about 1 hour of each game play after 4 saves I quit the game clean everything out and only put back my most recent save after I clean the NHD file through save cleaner. I have a 2GB CC and Store content size in my CC Magic Folder and I have all NRAAS and other core mods running in my Mods folder at about 212mb. I have just about every NRAAS Mod with the KW mod in that folder.
Field Researcher
#7 Old 23rd May 2019 at 5:17 AM
turn off memories
Mad Poster
#8 Old 23rd May 2019 at 6:05 AM
Quote: Originally posted by HereKittyKittyKitty
Igazor could you please elaborate on what would be considered too many objects? I have set up a minimall on a 50x50 lot that has 4 small shops. I have no registers or NPCs assigned to any positions on the lot. However, I do have 9 of Ani's Savvier Pedestals, approx. 15 of her rugs and some clothing racks from ats3. I have a pet store and an electronics store on this lot that have several smaller purchasable items. Now I'm wondering if I need to go back in and remove some of the content.

Also, is there a way to click on the lot to find a hard number for items, scripts, anything that will give you an idea if the lot needs to be scaled back?

I was being pretty vague back there on purpose. There are no hard limits, what works well on some lots in some worlds and for some players will not for others. If your RAM usage is way too high, Error 12s are around every corner, or not so much that but the game suddenly becomes infested with intolerable lag and removing the mall lot entirely in a test session fixes everything, then of course it needs to be dialed back a bit. If doing so makes no difference, then there must be other culprits.
Instructor
#9 Old 23rd May 2019 at 7:33 AM
Quote: Originally posted by marydehoyos
I have just about every NRAAS Mod with the KW mod in that folder.


You have the KW mod? That is probably the problem, it doesn’t play well with NRass mods or long saves.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#10 Old 23rd May 2019 at 10:23 AM
Thanks so much for all of the information! That's loads to work with and improve, I'll give as much of it a go as I can.

igazor I'll check out the traffic mod and have had a look a the page that you sent. I'll try to go through the list as much as I can and also tweak some of the NRaas mod settings (I assumed having them would fix everything but now I understand I need to look at them further). With regards to world resident population, can you please explain how I can check on it and not let it get out of control? One thing I did notice is that Sims are usually in some kind of relationship by the time I tried to find a partner and have some children, so I'm thinking perhaps the families in town are getting huge without me realising.

I use the GeForce control panel that came with the card but I am woefully inexperienced. I'll go through the settings to see if I can limit the frame rate. I'm not sure how to check the frame rate in game but I will look into this also. I'll also see how it's performing in task manager to see if my save is eating up RAM. I'm not too far in thankfully so restarting won't be painful. I'll take your final paragraph to heart too and think about the traveller as a great experience for my Sims, I mean moving town is exciting!

nitromon thank you for the link. I'll check out CC magic as I have tons of store content packages that could probably do with merging. I don't create or edit CC myself but perhaps I'll give shrinking files a go if it makes a huge difference (hoping the store is efficient but who knows). Can I please ask what you mean by "jigs" and "mini-Sims" as I wasn't aware these things existed until now. Then I can find out how to deal with them. And thanks for including an outdated list I can refer to. Sorry for not posting in that other thread, I only read through the first few posts and thought it was about what the OP had created.

marydehoyos I'll follow your advice when I start my new game and cleanse my save file before loading. I haven't used CC magic but I will start. Can I please ask what you mean by rebuildling the CC magic folder or will that become obvious as I use it?

redandvidya I've always hated memories! didn't realise they were such a huge problem, glad I have never used them now.
Lab Assistant
#11 Old 23rd May 2019 at 2:09 PM
Do you delete your cache files? Deleting cache files before I play the game is essential for me because if I don't I get save errors. You can even go as far as deleting the files in the "WorldCaches" folder (DON'T delete world caches on Macs, For Windows only!)
Mad Poster
#12 Old 23rd May 2019 at 2:40 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Kokuei
igazor I'll check out the traffic mod and have had a look a the page that you sent. I'll try to go through the list as much as I can and also tweak some of the NRaas mod settings (I assumed having them would fix everything but now I understand I need to look at them further). With regards to world resident population, can you please explain how I can check on it and not let it get out of control? One thing I did notice is that Sims are usually in some kind of relationship by the time I tried to find a partner and have some children, so I'm thinking perhaps the families in town are getting huge without me realising.

Use MasterController to get a reading. On City Hall or an in-game computer, NRaas > MC > Demographics > Population > "X" to dismiss the filter. The important number on the report is Residents, although if those in the Homeless or Service categories are absurdly high relative to the resident population that can cause issues as well and should be looked into.

StoryProgression can be dialed back to slow down the tendency for all single sims in town to attempt partnering up far too soon if necessary, but that may be a subject for a different thread or perhaps one at NRaas.


Quote: Originally posted by Kokuei
I use the GeForce control panel that came with the card but I am woefully inexperienced. I'll go through the settings to see if I can limit the frame rate. I'm not sure how to check the frame rate in game but I will look into this also. I'll also see how it's performing in task manager to see if my save is eating up RAM. I'm not too far in thankfully so restarting won't be painful. I'll take your final paragraph to heart too and think about the traveller as a great experience for my Sims, I mean moving town is exciting!

GeForce Experience doesn't control frame rates, at least I've never heard of it doing so. In fact, many have found that its Optimize command makes a mess of things for TS3 generally and it's not recommended, but the optimization thing can be undone in one step. I think that one is really more about driver management (I only have AMD cards myself so have had to rely on such info from other players).

To check on actual frame rates one is getting in game, Ctrl+Shift+C to bring up the cheats console and type fps on (enter). As you play and move the game camera around, the displayed frame rate should never wander above the refresh rate of your monitor. Again most are 60 Hz, so the goal is 60 fps, some can run higher. To make the display go away, cheats console again and fps off (enter). The tools we usually use to fix this are, for Nvidia cards, the Nvidia Control Panel to set vertical sync to On or Adaptive for a TS3 profile, Triple Buffering On. And then Nvidia Inspector, a separate program that needs to be added if necessary, to explicitly cap the fps to 60 or whatever the refresh rate of your monitor is. There are other tools available if these don't work and for AMD cards. Uncapped and too high fps rates tend to lead to poor game performance, lag, graphics glitches, screen tears, crashes, and can ultimately burn out the video card by making it work far too hard constantly during gameplay for no reason.The reason this is such a huge issue for TS3 is that, as an older game, it has no functional built-in fps limiter (even TS4 has this). Back when the game was in development, there were far fewer graphics cards on the market and in popular use that would be capable of throwing wildly high frame rates than there are today.
Mad Poster
#13 Old 23rd May 2019 at 8:47 PM
I would also advise using AVG PCTuneUp to shut down as many of the background tasks as possible to save the RAM for running the game and because it allows me to switch modes from standard to economy or turbo which makes the game run off the dedicated graphics card even in windowed mode.I'm running my game on an almost seven year old laptop with over 800 Mod files which include 114 NRaas Mods and awesomemod to disable the autmated school assignments which can cause massive lag and sometimes break a save.I just played my Deery Meadows legacy and got a fast game in a folder with thousands of files of CC along with the Mods.I might need to clean that file up soon though.I also always use save as and save to a new file name each time and my memories are disabled by a Mod unless I make them manually.I've got story progression configured to force TS2 style rotational play as I found managing my town manually allows things to progress in a more realistic way.
Test Subject
#15 Old 25th May 2019 at 8:43 AM
Thank you Igazor for taking to the time to clarify. Well, that's too bad. I was hoping there was a clear cut way to know for sure, but it looks like it's a trial and error and some common sense. I have numerous backups of my world so at this point I'll continue on and just see how it goes. So far so good but if I run into problems then I guess I found out I need to make some adjustments to my game.
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