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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 19th Aug 2019 at 2:54 AM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 3, World Adventures, Ambitions, Late Night, Generations, Pets, Showtime, Supernatural, Seasons, University Life, Island Paradise, Into the Future
Default Error Code 12
ok so I've done some google searching and found on the sims 3 forums about Error Code 12 issues. I saw that igazor (hi!^.^) had said in a comment "Error 12 doesn't mean your computer has run out of usable memory. It means the game has, or at least thinks it has which amounts to the same thing."

So I was like ok cool! so i saw this video on youtube that helps with giving your game more memory ( shes says it at 3:37)
So my memory (RAM) on my computer is 24.0 GB and she said you can change the GB on the game to only half of what you have. So I followed the instructions and changed it and I still get the notice for Error Code 12. (I seriously acted like the teens when they have their mood swings lol)

So what could it possibly be that my game is still having issues?
is it mods? or my world is too big? I'm using Meadow Glen as my town btw (the one with 2 Updated version that also requires Ambitions + Late Night + Pets. This world has 126 lots.)
I didn't think it was the world since its not that huge.

Thanks for your help if you can help!

also sorry if this isn't supposed to be in graphics
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 19th Aug 2019 at 7:29 AM
Quote: Originally posted by flloetryresident
ok so I've done some google searching and found on the sims 3 forums about Error Code 12 issues. I saw that igazor (hi!^.^) had said in a comment "Error 12 doesn't mean your computer has run out of usable memory. It means the game has, or at least thinks it has which amounts to the same thing."

So I was like ok cool! so i saw this video on youtube that helps with giving your game more memory ( shes says it at 3:37)
So my memory (RAM) on my computer is 24.0 GB and she said you can change the GB on the game to only half of what you have. So I followed the instructions and changed it and I still get the notice for Error Code 12. (I seriously acted like the teens when they have their mood swings lol)

The "tip" in that video was an urban legend at one time, guess it still is. That part of the video was utter nonsense six years ago when it was produced and still is today. TS3 is a 32-bit application and can use no more than 4 GB of RAM no matter how much you have (the actual hard limit is ~3.7 GB), it will reach for what it needs when it needs it all on its own up to that point on Windows as of Patch 1.17 when EA made the game Large Address Aware (LAA), there is no way to improve upon that, and the Mac version of the game remains more restrictive with an upper limit of 2 GB.

What she is demonstrating in the video, besides having no idea what she is talking about (really, she says a system with 2 GB total which was not unheard of back then can use all 2 GB for the game itself; what was Windows supposed to run on in that case, magic fairy dust?) is how to change the the theoretical upper limit to the game's script heap. The default value is 20 GB (not 2 GB) and it really shouldn't be changed from that, but in her demo she changes it to 40 GB. If you accidentally lop off a zero while making such a change, the game will break. None of this has anything to do with RAM usage or Error 12s.


Quote: Originally posted by flloetryresident
So what could it possibly be that my game is still having issues?
is it mods? or my world is too big? I'm using Meadow Glen as my town btw (the one with 2 Updated version that also requires Ambitions + Late Night + Pets. This world has 126 lots.)
I didn't think it was the world since its not that huge.

Thanks for your help if you can help!

If your game is constantly or frequently hitting an Error 12 upon trying to save, then it is reaching for more resources (usually this means RAM) than it can possibly use. I will repeat, there is no way to get a 32-bit application to use more RAM than the just under 4 GB limit. The real trick is to find out why your ongoing game is requiring that much and find ways to lessen the game's load. Play offline, disallow the TS3 store in-game shopping experience and the hidden object startup game, disallow scrapbook memories or control them with a mod, use NRaas mods to help preserve performance (Overwatch, ErrorTrap, Register, Traffic), run a MasterController Reset Everything from City Hall's Town menu every few sim weeks, keep an eye on the total resident population so it doesn't get carried away over time, don't use "bad" CC (easier said than done, I know), use Save Cleaner or an equivalent procedure by way of S3PE on one's game save files every so often, Save As and change the name of the game save file often (not regular Save and not Save And Quit).
https://www.nraas.net/community/TIP...AME-PERFORMANCE

If still no good, then use the Task Manager to find out how much RAM this ongoing save is using at startup, after a real time hour of play, and then after that. If it's creeping into the danger zone above 3.4 or 3.5 GB (for most of us), a crash or Error12 will be coming down the road shortly.
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#3 Old 19th Aug 2019 at 4:34 PM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
The "tip" in that video was an urban legend at one time, guess it still is. That part of the video was utter nonsense six years ago when it was produced and still is today. TS3 is a 32-bit application and can use no more than 4 GB of RAM no matter how much you have (the actual hard limit is ~3.7 GB), it will reach for what it needs when it needs it all on its own up to that point on Windows as of Patch 1.17 when EA made the game Large Address Aware (LAA), there is no way to improve upon that, and the Mac version of the game remains more restrictive with an upper limit of 2 GB.

What she is demonstrating in the video, besides having no idea what she is talking about (really, she says a system with 2 GB total which was not unheard of back then can use all 2 GB for the game itself; what was Windows supposed to run on in that case, magic fairy dust?) is how to change the the theoretical upper limit to the game's script heap. The default value is 20 GB (not 2 GB) and it really shouldn't be changed from that, but in her demo she changes it to 40 GB. If you accidentally lop off a zero while making such a change, the game will break. None of this has anything to do with RAM usage or Error 12s.



If your game is constantly or frequently hitting an Error 12 upon trying to save, then it is reaching for more resources (usually this means RAM) than it can possibly use. I will repeat, there is no way to get a 32-bit application to use more RAM than the just under 4 GB limit. The real trick is to find out why your ongoing game is requiring that much and find ways to lessen the game's load. Play offline, disallow the TS3 store in-game shopping experience and the hidden object startup game, disallow scrapbook memories or control them with a mod, use NRaas mods to help preserve performance (Overwatch, ErrorTrap, Register, Traffic), run a MasterController Reset Everything from City Hall's Town menu every few sim weeks, keep an eye on the total resident population so it doesn't get carried away over time, don't use "bad" CC (easier said than done, I know), use Save Cleaner or an equivalent procedure by way of S3PE on one's game save files every so often, Save As and change the name of the game save file often (not regular Save and not Save And Quit).
https://www.nraas.net/community/TIP...AME-PERFORMANCE

If still no good, then use the Task Manager to find out how much RAM this ongoing save is using at startup, after a real time hour of play, and then after that. If it's creeping into the danger zone above 3.4 or 3.5 GB (for most of us), a crash or Error12 will be coming down the road shortly.


thanks so much so far my gameplay is a lot smoother since I've done some of the things in the link for better game performance. I haven't gotten the error code yet, but i'm gonna frequently save my game just incase^_^ thank yous!
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