The latest on Error 12 «1234...Next Go

KevinL5275

I'm just wondering if anyone has some new tips or info on how to reduce or eliminate the error 12 codes.

I've read here:

http://nraas.wikispaces.com/General+Issues+FAQ
http://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2011/03/error-save-errors-error-12-13-or-16.html
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Games/Guides/sims3performance/

I have all the usual NRaaS modes like Overwatch, Errortrap, MC, SP, Careers, Retuner, Dresser, HomeOpener, the one we can't mention, etc.
I have the most popular mods from Icarus, CinderellaMouse, Arsil, douglasviega, Ani, etc.
I have a lot of other CC dresses, hairs, clothing, shoes, houses, lots, etc from places like modthesims, aroundthesims3, thesimsresource, etc.
I've merged a few .package files, but unfortunately I still have over 100 files in the folder.

I have an i7-2600 processer, a ATI Radeon 7700 video card with 1gb ram, 8gb ram, 1tb hard drive, Windows 7 pro, etc.

I clear the caches every time I play. I delete everything in the FeaturedItems folder. I look thru my saves for the .bad and .backup ones and delete them. I tried deleting the _img and SNAP tags from my saves over the weekend, but my save files are still only about 100k. I have the options set to max resolution, high detail lots 2, mirrors and water reflections only, high detail sims, high visual effects, medium tree detail, etc. I do a "reset everything" in game at least once a sim-week.

I ran Sims3Dashboard and found one major conflict, which I fixed. There are other little minor conflicts that show between my mods and the base game.

I played two worlds over the weekend, Storybrook County, and Legacy Island III.

My issue is I can save 3 times in an hour or two of gaming, and it will Error 12 on me every time I try to save the 4th time. I figured out it was happening on the 4th save late last night so I didn't get to test that any further.

Am I just asking too much from the game with these large worlds and my custom content (clothes, lots, mods, etc.) ? Or is there anything else I can try?

Thank you!

JoAnne65

I never ever had an Error 12 error in my life and before you shout 'well good for you' (and rightly so ), I had my first one last week. And therefore I'm 100% certain the reason must be mods and cc (or too much of it). Because I never used those and now I have a 111 MB mods folder. Everybody knows Sims 3 isn't particularly cc friendly. What I do is cleaning the five cache files and making sure my currentgame folder is empty after closing the game. And easy on mods and cc from now on.

igazor

@KevinL5275 - One thing I do is check my game's RAM usage frequently in the Task Manager, while having retreated to Map View. I know my worlds pretty well by now, some of the smaller and less populated ones will start out at 1.7GB of usage or so and slowly increase to around 2.1 or 2.2 then level off. My heaviest, most densely populated world will start off around 2.7 and level off at maybe 3.0 or 3.1. Again, this is RAM usage for the just the game, not total or percent of total, although I do look at that too to make sure having a browser or something else alongside isn't going to steal too much away from the game.

A save will increase RAM usage slightly for a brief moment, then it should actually decrease a bit again. Travel transitions to/from other worlds will cause a longer and more noticeable spike and are always best run as close to a fresh loadup as possible.

We know that TS3 is 32-bit and therefore cannot handle more than 4 GB of RAM usage. It's really ~3.7 GB due to some overhead. But for most of us, the real danger zone appears around 3.4 or 3.5. If a long-running session is heading in that direction, it's time to save (as), quit to the desktop, and reload. If a world that never needs that much RAM spikes a great deal suddenly and something equally as sudden and unusual isn't happening right then, then that means something is wrong.

Of the mods mentioned, I would have to question the use of HomeOpener. It's a lot of fun, but if you have more than a reasonable amount of households to be kept open and their inhabitants animated all of the time, it's going to be a drain on resources. How many is reasonable becomes open to question, but I would never want to have more than 6-10 lots opened that way and the mod is all or nothing. If you do choose to remove the mod, note that won't close the lots again; on the next session in each world you would have to use MC to close each of them up. And perhaps use MC to open a couple of them that you like to have open, more selectively.

Other things to try to control runaway and unnecessary RAM usage -- a MC Reset Everything run from City Hall every few sim weeks can work wonders for worlds that are making the game engine run harder than it needs to. It seems to catch things that Overwatch and ErrorTrap either aren't able to or are slow in dealing with.

Also, if you use Dream Catching actions to switch active households, you may have too many Dream Managers running and these can be a huge resource drain as well. On City Hall, try running something harmless like MC > Family Tree but filter to Has Dream Manager and see how many inactive sims you get (if any). Unfortunately the inactive DMs can only be switched off on all of them at once, not by choosing from a list. NRaas > MC > Town > Drop All Dreams and Opps.

I understand these worlds are pretty large, but how many residents in the population and how many households? On City Hall, NRaas > MC > Demographics > Population > "X" to dismiss the filter. The more residents and households SP especially has to push around, the harder the game has to work and the more resources it will need. The numbers of Service Sims and Homeless are much less important, unless they go into the thousands or something. Also consider running SP on Slow or Snail if you aren't already to see if that lightens things up a bit.

The rest is on a page many of you have already seen linked to here, many times.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Tips+For+Better+Game+Performance


Edit: Just wanted to add to this, guess I'm feeling extra chatty today. Many of you have heard about my monster of a 5+ year old game spanning many generations and running in 15 linked (Traveler mod) worlds. But honestly, @KevinL5275 my specs aren't any stronger than yours. Although I am running on a Bootcamped iMac, it's still Win 7, it's the same game, I have 8 GB of RAM, and actually my processor isn't as strong as yours (i5, 2.7 Ghz) nor is my graphics card (Radeon 6670M with less video memory than yours). And of course I have enough mods in play to choke a medium sized moose. But I almost never Error12 unless I really overdo things in that one overstuffed, overly busy world with 250 residents while playing an over the top household of 16 sims or something. I get coughs, sputters, a tiny bit of lag here and there maybe, sometimes my sims are slower to respond to commands than I would like, but nothing coming close to making the game unplayable or unenjoyable. It can be done, just takes a lot of watching over (and Overwatching, yes ha ha), care, and tending to in order to solve townwide issues before they become serious.

KevinL5275

I'm seeing well over 3.0 gb on task manager, sometimes as much as 3.4 but usually about 3.2 gb. I have not noticed a difference in saving with this much ram being used. I have attributed it to just the game being open too long and running out of resources, even if I have only been playing for an hour or three.

I use HomeOpener to see inside businesses like consignment shops, to see if the clerk is there at the register or not before I send my sim over. Maybe its a fluke but I was not able to do so with businesses until I installed that mod. Is it only supposed to affect homes or all lots?
Edit: I'll try removing HomeOpener tonight.
Edit again: I see HomeOpener does open every lot in town. I'll use MC to open the lots I want open manually.

I mentioned I do a Reset Everything every sim week or so. I do save as first, then reset, then save as again.

No I do not use Dreamer or any other dream manager as I read it is resource intensive. I did notice while I was deleting the _img and SNAP files, that it looked like it was saving a few memories for other sims I am not playing, even though I have memories disabled in game (not using a mod to do so). I only noticed about 10 or 15 pictures of other sims, though. I never switch households, I only play one family at a time.

igazor

Are your games starting out at >3 GB of usage or is this where they level off after a few hours of play? That sounds too high either way and, as you are experiencing, 3.4 is too close to the Error 12 danger zone for comfort.

Sorry that I missed where you were already doing an MC reset regularly.

The Dreamer mod enhances the Dream Manager system, but it's not required. I would still check on inactives with DMs running, you might have some that were never intended to be. And let's see what impact removing HomeOpener has and closing all but a couple of lots. You shouldn't have to force open commercial lots though unless the lot is not open for business at the time or it's in a highrise building shell. There is often a delay, sometimes I have zoom in and out or go up and down a story, but commercial lots that are scheduled to be open for business tend to let me look inside whenever I want.

And I would also be curious what the populations of these worlds are, as mentioned (though I realize you have to load them up to see this, not many would have them memorized) and at what speed you are running SP.

Candyd

JoAnne65 wrote: »

I never ever had an Error 12 error in my life and before you shout 'well good for you' (and rightly so ), I had my first one last week. And therefore I'm 100% certain the reason must be mods and cc (or too much of it). Because I never used those and now I have a 111 MB mods folder. Everybody knows Sims 3 isn't particularly cc friendly. What I do is cleaning the five cache files and making sure my currentgame folder is empty after closing the game. And easy on mods and cc from now on.

@JoAnne65 "Just" 111 MB ?
Many crashes I had in the past were because of bad CC rather than plenty of it. (Fortunately I never had any bad game mods) Since then I managed to get rid of almost all my bad CC, I identified only two pieces of bad CC in 5 years. My game runs like a dream, no errors 12 or any high memory use, it loads in 2 to 6 minutes the first time and in 30 seconds to 2 minutes between saves, there is no lag... I have almost 9 GB of CC and mods combined I only had error 12 cases only with old saves that I didn't clean often enough or some very large worlds.

JoAnne65

Candyd wrote: »

JoAnne65 wrote: »

I never ever had an Error 12 error in my life and before you shout 'well good for you' (and rightly so ), I had my first one last week. And therefore I'm 100% certain the reason must be mods and cc (or too much of it). Because I never used those and now I have a 111 MB mods folder. Everybody knows Sims 3 isn't particularly cc friendly. What I do is cleaning the five cache files and making sure my currentgame folder is empty after closing the game. And easy on mods and cc from now on.

@JoAnne65 "Just" 111 MB ?
Many crashes I had in the past were because of bad CC rather than plenty of it. (Fortunately I never had any bad game mods) Since then I managed to get rid of almost all my bad CC, I identified only two pieces of bad CC in 5 years. My game runs like a dream, no errors 12 or any high memory use, it loads in 2 to 6 minutes the first time and in 30 seconds to 2 minutes between saves, there is no lag... I have almost 9 GB of CC and mods combined I only had error 12 cases only with old saves that I didn't clean often enough or some very large worlds.

Haha, yes, I know it's nothing in comparison to the average simmer I do think CC makes your game somewhat more sensitive, because it never happened to me before. But it's possible that currentgame folder (with a few files in there) may have been the problem as well (because I found out about that folder in the first place when I was googling Error 12, because I don't care for a repetition ).

I think people who are used to CC are more familiar with keeping their game clean. I had never removed any cache files or whatever before. Now I do and I hope it will be enough to prevent crashes like this.

Pary

I've had error 12 once, on my old dual core 5300, with only 4gb of ram. It's never happened since, and I have a couple of gigs of CC plus all of the store.
I'm also wondering if it's linked to long playtimes without saving. I am a compulsive saver, and usually save every 30+ mins, but there have been times when I've become lost in the game, or left it running while I see to something around the house.
Sometimes on those occasions my game will save, but when I try to shut it down, it errors out and crashes.

SimplyJen

I've never gotten error 12. However my game used to crash at the 5-6 hour mark, but no error message... Just the game hitting ram limit. I had 90% of the store installed paired with almost 5GB mods/CC. This could've been avoided if I quit sometime before then to reset the ram usage but I'm stubborn.

I've since then come up with a solution that so far has worked. I make separate folders for each save file only installing store content + mods/CC as needed. All of the content I have is archived and backed up onto my storage driver to pull from when I need it.

Karritz

I find my RAM usage for the game goes up each time I save. I usually can get 3 saves before I need to close the game and relaunch. I tend to use Save Cleaner before I relaunch and clear caches.

I use Resource Monitor as a guide and when the number in Commit (KB) column goes up above 3,200,000 I know I need to save or I'll get Error 12. However I can manipulate that number by moving to different, less complex places in the world. Or reducing graphic settings. Or moving to a smaller household with a very basic house. It all depends on how desperate I am to SaveAs at the time.



I can also manipulate that number by adding or removing lots from my game. I recently managed to get this particular save to sit on 3,400,000 by adding all Showtime lots plus a really complex build of my own. I ended up removing my own build and have kept the Showtime lots. This is the memory currently being used by the game.

EDIT: Extra info. I have all EPs and all SPs plus 99% of store plus 5.61 GB of mods and CC installed

The game is in Isla Paradiso and it is Week 10 Day 6. There are 16 sims in my household including 1 large dog and 1 cat.

KevinL5275

Karritz wrote: »

I find my RAM usage for the game goes up each time I save. I usually can get 3 saves before I need to close the game and relaunch. I tend to use Save Cleaner before I relaunch and clear caches.

Oh yes I use Save Cleaner, too. I was using S3PE also yesterday to try and reduce the save file even more, as I mentioned.

I am doing some testing now. I removed HomeOpener first. The launcher takes up 1,120mb of memory sitting there. I also have WinAmp, a music player, and NRaaS mod-updater running, each only using about 35mb or less of memory.

Sitting at the main menu, TS3W.exe uses 955mb of memory.

It takes about 13-14 minutes to load this Storybrook County game, and on first load it takes up 2,611mb.

Karritz

@kevinl5275 I don't open the launcher unless I want to use it to install something.

KevinL5275

I'm on Steam, I have to run the launcher first.

One sim day later, I am at 2,978mb of memory. I have not saved yet, going to now.

Edit: After saving, it jumped to 3,142mb.

KevinL5275

A female sim just aged up to Young Adult. I took her into CAS to adjust the horror the game put her in. Now I'm at 3,300mb. Going to save and exit now.

Edit: *just* before I saved, I got a crash to desktop. Sims was using 3,373mb of memory.

nolurk

I've had error code 12 messages in the past. However, most of the time it was on my old system (and I do mean old! Let me put it this way, someone at EA was actually surprised that I could even get the game running on that thing as we got into a round of technical details concerning CPUs and whether what I had even met minimum requirements on that front. I actually played on that system until sometime after Pets was released (which actually made it run better than it had prior to that expansion pack) and only stopped as I had to build a new system for an entirely different reason).

With my current build, I can't remember having had an error code 12 message probably since upgrading to Windows 7 Pro and adding more RAM (to bring my total up to 10GBs--I did both upgrades at the same time, so don't know if it was the two combined or one or the other that did the trick).

I may have had them still when I first built that system, however, as I originally built it with an old, unused copy of Windows XP Pro that I had (Windows 7 had already been out for years, but I couldn't justify the cost of it at the time, so had to stick to what I already had and watched for sales on Win7 Pro after it became apparent I needed way more memory than I had for the primary purposes I actually use that system for).

Regardless, I remember it as one of the most hair-pulling experiences of my life, to be honest, and can't count how many times I lost a beloved build or developments in a game because of them. Aside from EA/Maxis stuff, I only have recolors done within the game or patterns created using the tool EA gave us for it or EA/Maxis-content only sims from the exchange. No other custom content is in my game.

TreyNutz

I've read extended CAS sessions can cause EC 12 too. I guess due to increased RAM usage. I've gotten caught by EC 12 myself once or twice due to too much CAS use in a play session.

I've had a few games essentially terminated by EC 12. I could only save once or twice before EC 12 was pretty much guaranteed. Both times it's been in a world with a high resident population and an overstuffed household (over 20 sims). And also a long played game. The first game of mine that EC 12 killed was also regularly getting into high RAM usage. After 2 saves I was in the danger zone that igazor mentions and had to quit and reload or be hit with EC 12 on the 3rd save.

However, I almost never saw RAM usage get over 3 GB in the most recent game of mine that EC 12 killed. Some on the NRaas site speculated there were regular spikes of RAM usage into danger zone territory which might have been responsible. I was never able to verify that theory as I never saw RAM usage get that high in Task Manager. However, the town was over-crowded and my active household had 24 sims. (The family tree was also quite large as my main sim couple had 51 children in that game. I was going to go for 100, but then EC 12 hit and I wasn't willing to move just the active household to a new town the EA way and leave behind family members.)

In both of those cases I tried to salvage the games by using NRaas Porter and Traveler to relocate the active household (usually bringing along extended family). But that didn't help my EC 12 issues with those saves and eventually I had to abandon them because I could not count on the game being able to save.

Currently I just try to keep the town population as low as I can manage, and I'm trying to keep my active household under 16 sims (which is hard for me, lol). I also stopped playing large worlds and I stay away from worlds with a huge number of lots. I'm hoping those decisions will help ward off EC 12 for me. I do some of the stuff you mention, like clean my saves every once in a while. I don't clear caches every time I play though, and I leave the Featured Items folder alone. I haven't found those make a difference for me with regard to EC 12. I check for conflicts with Dashboard every once in a while. I also reset the world with NRaas MasterController regularly. I probably have over 50% of the Store installed (4.6 GB of .ebc files, I don't know how much of the Store that is). I have about 2.8 GB of CC and mods installed in my Packages folder. I try and prune out the CC I don't use every so often but I keep all the Store content in.

I basically just accept that EC 12 will likely happen the longer I play a particular save and the larger my sims' family and household get. I'm at the point where when I think about starting a long and involved game I really consider what I'm going to do when EC 12 hits.

Karritz

@kevinl5275 Save and Quit is not a good idea.
saveAs followed by Quit is much safer.

The amount of memory used changes dramatically and suddenly depending on the active lot and the exact location you have currently got on the screen.

KevinL5275

Oh yes, I never save and quit. I meant I will "save as", and then "quit". But it crashed before I got to do that.

This house currently has 11 sims. The mother and father, 2 teenage girls, 2 child girls, 1 toddler son, 2 toddler daughters (twins), and 1 baby daughter, and a plumbot.

Finally figured out how to get town population. I was stuck on the huge list of sims, not wanting to count them all manually.

I have 50 households, 120 residents, 184 service (seems high?), 27 homeless, 6 tourists. SP is on 2. (Slow)

JoAnne65

Pary wrote: »

I've had error 12 once, on my old dual core 5300, with only 4gb of ram. It's never happened since, and I have a couple of gigs of CC plus all of the store.
I'm also wondering if it's linked to long playtimes without saving. I am a compulsive saver, and usually save every 30+ mins, but there have been times when I've become lost in the game, or left it running while I see to something around the house.
Sometimes on those occasions my game will save, but when I try to shut it down, it errors out and crashes.

When it happened to me I was just in a save to make some screenshots, didn't play long. But I guess there are more things that trigger it. I've read once that saving as helps too? (instead of save)

Pary

It so strange the way the game behaves, and how differently it behaves for people too, isn't it. I always use Save As, even if I am just re-saving over an existing save because I heard the same thing too, that it is the best option to use.
Maybe there just isn't any real trigger. Maybe the game just pitches a fit once in a while when it feels like it

It's a real diva.

igazor

One reason that extended CAS and Edit Town sessions can lead to instability and Error 12s is that the game can only utilize 800 MB of video memory (this is different from RAM) and those tend to be graphics intensive operations. But it could be RAM usage as well. Basically Error 12 means out of usable resources.

@KevinL5275 - Remember that removing HomeOpener on a world that has already used it does not close the residential lots. You still have to do that once, with MC on each one or they will remain open indefinitely and all of their inhabitants may remain animated. But maybe you have already taken care of that.

The RAM that the Launcher uses is temporary and is dependent on how much sims3pack content it has to examine and load. It drops the RAM and makes it available again when finished and the game itself starts up. So your game sessions (or at least this one) are starting out at 2.6 GB, and rising to 2.9 after a sim day and then 3.1 GB (this is all measured while in Map View?). That's heavy, but not an impossible load. It may well be the overall map size of the worlds you are playing, and having an active household of 11 sims presumably on a rather large lot with lots of rooms and objects on it to accommodate them would not be helping. To test this out, you could try switching into another, much smaller household like maybe 2-4 sims and no pets, within the same world (do not use a Dream Catching switch) and play them for a sim day or two just to see what happens with resources, and do Save As a couple of times maybe but with no intention of playing that branch forward as it's just a test.

Although you have a heavy starting point, it's where you are getting to 3.3 GB that is the problem. Obviously "don't use CAS" is not much of a solution, but maybe restrict to shorter CAS sessions, use MC Stylist where you can if it's really just clothes you are trying to adjust at the time, try to use CAS towards the beginning of play sessions before things become really intense.

Your world's population is not that high nor is its average number of sims per household. That number of Service Sims would be fine too. But between the total resident pop and these rather large maps, with SP running, you may be demanding more than the game can really deliver. These worlds might function better with <80 residents than at 120 and with SP set to Snail (1). You might also try switching off SP's progression entirely for a sim day, make sure EA's story progression is off in Game Options as well because I'm sure you don't want that, and then start it up at Snail again. I've had to do this several times with my overly heavy world, it doesn't hurt anything but helps me figure out where other things might be using too much RAM along the way as things settle down again. Note that it can take a while for SP's progression to slow down or stop as things that already in queue with its various managers running simultaneously will tend to still happen for a while and at the former speed.

Hate to say it, but in the end you may find that you need to be playing in world with slightly smaller maps and/or fewer overall lots. Not tiny with your system, but more along the scale and number of lots of Sunset Valley than these larger ones.

KevinL5275

This testing was all done in Storybrook County, on a 50x50 lot, 2 story house with basement. This game is fairly old as I started with the parents only, and all the kids are theirs. The oldest daughter just aged up to young adult, with my aging settings that would make it about 100 days or so. (6 + 21 + 21 + 28 = 76 days to adulthood, plus the couple weeks without kids for them to get settled in skills and jobs)

I did try removing my .package file I combined my clothing into, but no effect, it still got to 3,400mb, but I was able to save and exit without getting 12 this time. I was going to bed anyway so I didn't want to push it.
Edit: No, not measured in map view, I was paused while viewing their home. I didnt try map view except to try saving when it 12'd, without success.

I will try running some more tests on my other game, (Hook and Elsa in Legacy Island) and I will try my game in Sunset Valley (Jamie Jolina and her home for wayward girls) to see what its RAM requirements are.

I don't remember having these problems in my legacy Riverview game, or my Hidden Springs game, so it is quite possible these two worlds (Storybrook and Legacy) are just too resource intensive for my game to handle. However, I haven't played those in a while, so it could also be the fact its the new stuff I have added recently from the store and various tuning mods.

And I can't say enough, thank you to all here who have helped.

JoAnne65

Pary wrote: »

It so strange the way the game behaves, and how differently it behaves for people too, isn't it. I always use Save As, even if I am just re-saving over an existing save because I heard the same thing too, that it is the best option to use.
Maybe there just isn't any real trigger. Maybe the game just pitches a fit once in a while when it feels like it

It's a real diva.

Lol, exactly

igazor

KevinL5275 wrote: »

Edit: No, not measured in map view, I was paused while viewing their home. I didnt try map view except to try saving when it 12'd, without success.

Sorry, I didn't explain this earlier. The reason for using Map View when "taking a reading" on RAM usage is so that you are comparing apples to apples. Of course we don't usually play entirely in Map View, at least I hope not, and the game does use more RAM to render scenes in Live Mode. But if the game camera is focused on all different places and at different zoom levels when checking on RAM usage at different times, maybe sometimes even outside on the world lot, you will get fluctuations in its usage just because of that and not entirely from what the game engine might actually be doing at the time.

TadOlson

I just recently had a session in Deery Meadows where I fully expected to get EC12 or have it crash and it never did either of those though I did end up crashing myself and had to quit because I was getting too tired to continue.I did way more than the things that caused others to get the EC12 and even kept playing a little beyond without any issues.
I used to get EC12's a lot back in my Mod-free days when I turned EA's glitch-ridden "story progression" on to see what it actually did.It ended up doing so many things to my towns that saves threw errors a lot and even the ones that didn't get errors ended up corrupted when social workers removed children.
I've got all EP's and SP's installed with a lot of store content.I've also got 109 NRaas Mod files and over 500 other Mods including that I just installed even more Mods recently before that extreme session that pushed the limits.I was able to load that game again and even played two days before quitting with it saving properly.

KevinL5275

Ok, Legacy Island now, on first load up in map view, its using 2,268k of memory.

It has 74 households, 154 residents, 180 service, 25 homeless, 17 tourists. There are 164 lots.

This save has 2 adult males, 2 adult females, 1 teen female, 1 male child, 1 female child, 1 male toddler, a plumbot, and a cat.