#error 12

Also sims look like THIS at last lod, they don't need fancy

Just uploaded my tips and tricks for Error 12! I used to look everywhere for answers on how to fix it and I put together a list of things I did and I haven’t had error 12 in almost a year now!

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IM FUCKING

Been kinda busy so I haven't had any sims3 time lately :( but I'm back at it and lookin' at Error 12 again, this time with an ASI file you can use!

Here is a link to the memory "freer", spoilers, it doesn't really free memory. Please read the readme, but basically it just shows a message box/alert when you're getting close to the cap, and has a hotkey (f8) for setting max detail lots to 0 (sometimes helps free memory in a pinch).

To use it you'll either need the smooth patches ASI loader or dxwrapper's (recommended), then just pop it into your Bin directory (make sure LoadPlugins is set to 1 if you're using dxwrapper). I'm also going to update my performance tweaks post to fix some of the now-inaccurate information, but most of the stuff there I still recommend (just not dxvk).

If anyone knows anything that triggers a purge/cleanup lmk! It would fix literally all of this. I've tried traveling to other maps, entering into various editors, changing settings, chanting hymns etc, but nothing seems to work.

Unfortunately nothing I've tried on the memory-freeing front has really panned out, but I still have some avenues that I want to check out. The issue seems to be lot objects not being fully unloaded once the lot is no longer high-detail loaded, which causes memory to balloon over time as more lots are detail loaded.

Here's some things I've tried, in typical rambling fashion, a lot of this will be meaningless to 99% of people:

DXVK…. Nooooooo…. It seems like it does increase overall memory usage. I'm not sure if I've just stuffed a config option up or something, but it seems to have a substantial impact. I'd recommend just sticking with d9 for now, or using dxwrappers 3D9On12 (idk if it actually works tho)

HeapCompact/Clearing working set. Clearing the working set will let you save, however it wont actually remove that memory, you'll just crash instead of getting an Error 12

Obvious memory leaks. Sadly every alloc has a free assigned to it, so there's no easy, obvious memory leaks.

Setting D3DPOOL to DEFAULT, game no like, textures don't display

Manually clearing textures. Kind of worked, but there's no real way to selectively know which textures are safe to unload, because the game often reports things wrong. I might revisit this failing everything else

Deleting cache files/save cleaning. Not a fan, doesn't fix the issue, merely delays it and makes your game look like glitchy garbage in the meantime. If you're going to clean your save, just delete the _objects file in WorldCaches and then mark it as read only. The sims one isn't worth the limbless horrors that await you, and sims load in much faster than objects, which can sit grey'd for minutes (or until you save your game and they all load in at once and crash you)

Various config options and settings. I did find some neat hidden options and some useful settings, but nothing that really has a huge impact. I found ForceHighLODObjects which is what I was looking for in my initial performance tweaks post, which basically cures stutter, at the cost of much higher memory usage. Useless until there's an object free-ing fix, and even then probably a very bad idea on maps like Alpine County.

Been looking at the infamous error 12 today while playing bald gate and have made a lil bit of progress that I think I should put somewhere, mostly so I don't forget. (AKA just use dxvk for smoother gameplay AND less crashes!)

While none of this is really a complete fix, I think it's a step in the right direction and someone smarter than me might be able to skip a couple steps on their path as a result.

The issue: Sims 3 is a 32 bit game and has a hard limit of 4gb RAM. I have no idea what happens if it hits that limit because I don't have a save bloated enough (yet), but I'm guessing it'd crash. The base game on an extremely bloated save (for me) sits around 2600mb-3100. For whatever reason, saving the game causes a spike in RAM usage ranging from 50 - 400mb+, which if you're lucky will error 12 you, and if you're unlucky will crash you, throwing your last hour+ of gameplay into the bin.

In general, if you're around 3200mb usage, you should've saved 10 minutes ago.

A couple "fixes": Part of the issue is that the game seems to load certain objects/textures into RAM, with VRAM being capped at around 840~mb on a good day, and (maybe?) contributing to the overall limit. Easy way to fix this seems to be using DXVK, which, for me at least, removed the RAM bump when objects are loaded. 0 lots detail loaded? 2700mb, 13? 2700mb. I might write a proper installation guide for it, but for now there's a bit in my general performance tweaks post, along with my config. Another fix is, of course, the tried and true, quit your game every hour, clean your save, pray to god thing, but at certain family/save sizes it does seem like you're just kind of circling the drain. I would recommend if you are playing a 300 person household who own the entire town, dropping ObjectSizeCullFactor down in your graphics.sgr file (also in my tweaks). It's personal preference but 20~ should be mostly unnoticeable while greaaattly helping the initial bloating. I've noticed around a 250mb~ drop from the default settings, but that could just be luck. The rest of my settings don't(and shouldn't) have any impact as far as I can tell, but I'll look more later. Another thing that might help if you're already getting the error and desperately need to save, is unloading lots. There's probably a cooler way of doing this, and there's potential for a mod, but try flying your camera into a far corner, entering the map mode, pressing tab and looking up into the sky/towards nothingness before saving. This gets me around 150-200mb

Setting max detail lots to 0 also helps, but isn't exactly doable for most people (lowest is 1 in game). TS3W.exe+86C647 writes to the value if you're feeling zesty. There's other addresses that could potentially help but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Ideally this would be automatically set when saving, or even more ideally, we could just call a purge/reinitialize every so often. I'm pretty sure the game can reclaim memory, I've seen it happen, I just have no idea what triggered it.

Other basic render-based settings seem to have no impact on RAM/VRAM, which is in line with my sgr stutter findings about clipping distance and fog. Still need to test more tho.