I FOUND THE SIMS 3 README!!! (Link included, plus save-game error code summary)

DarkSuperNinja

Basically, I was reinstalling the disc version of TS3 (because I've lost hope with Origin at this point, so I'm just installing it all via disc so I don't have to deal with Origin's mess) and I got the readme open at the end of the install menu.

Now you may all be wondering "Why is this such a big deal?", well, you know those mysterious error codes during saving that you can't find anything about online? THEY'RE MOSTLY HERE! (I say mostly because even EA don't know what Error code 15 is, they wrote the freaking game code and even THEY don't know!)

Here is the readme for people who can't find/read it because they have the origin version: https://drive.google.com/open?id=10mAA6sX_zIA2E7ZRGrxaa9tfhPh5ug-n

Note that this is from 2009 so obviously certain parts of it (such as system requirements) are REALLY outdated!

Anyways, to save time for anyone panicking about save error codes, this is it directly from 2009 EA:

Save-Related Error Messages

---

Below are some error messages that you may see from the game.
Please contact customer support if you encounter any of these errors.

01: No save file information.
02: No active world.
03: The save path is empty.
04: Cannot save directory.
05: Cannot find the requested file.
09: Failed to create header record.
10: Failed to write header record.
11: Pre-save callback failure.
12: World file save failure.
13: Post-save callback failure.
14: No load/save manager found.
15: Other error. Sorry.

So there you go! I hope this helps someone, since I've had A LOT of Sims 3 save errors over the years, so something like this would have saved me a lot of time instead of online speculations of what each error means (especially the earlier, less common, ones)! This post might be a little pointless, since you can probably find it somewhere else on the internet, but if you're looking for it and you found it here, you're welcome!

phoebebebe13

I believe EA has fixed most of these errors from 2009? i haven't seen anyone posts most of them in a long time. @igazor input

The most common still is error code 12 which is the game running out of memory to save. This can be caused by a computer not having enough memory to run or save the game. Another is when people play the game too long without saving and then the game runs out of memory to save

igazor

I appreciate the effort on the part of the OP, but I don't really see anything in that ReadMe that is truly helpful today (could be missing something). Seems like the error codes ought to be, but how is the player supposed to for example equate "Post-save call back feature" (Error 13) to hey, your hard drive is damaged or you have a faulty patch job in place -- but no, we don't hear about those so much anymore. Error 16 is a tiny bit more common, but it isn't even listed.

Personally I think Crinrict and a few others did a much better job at cataloging these things and explaining what to do about various errors throughout the game's history. Her blog should be regarded as a highly useful resource.
https://sims3.crinrict.com/en

phoebebebe13

@DarkSuperNinja Did you clean your computer registry before trying to reinstall the game? Sometimes when you uninstall the game leaves files behind and those files have to be removed off your computer registry before reinstalling the game

DarkSuperNinja

phoebebebe13 wrote: »

@DarkSuperNinja Did you clean your computer registry before trying to reinstall the game? Sometimes when you uninstall the game leaves files behind and those files have to be removed off your computer registry before reinstalling the game

@phoebebebe13 Don't worry, I've uninstalled and reinstalled Skyrim so many times that I've got uninstalling/reinistalling games to an artform at this point! :P

DarkSuperNinja

igazor wrote: »

I appreciate the effort on the part of the OP, but I don't really see anything in that ReadMe that is truly helpful today (could be missing something). Seems like the error codes ought to be, but how is the player supposed to for example equate "Post-save call back feature" (Error 13) to hey, your hard drive is damaged or you have a faulty patch job in place -- but no, we don't hear about those so much anymore. Error 16 is a tiny bit more common, but it isn't even listed.

Personally I think Crinrict and a few others did a much better job at cataloging these things and explaining what to do about various errors throughout the game's history. Her blog should be regarded as a highly useful resource.
https://sims3.crinrict.com/en

@igazor The error codes are definitely better summarised by Crinrict than EA, that's for sure!

Error Code 15 still makes me laugh, like did they even BOTHER trying to work out what Error Code 15 was?! I feel like they just gave up halfway through typing out the error message section, thinking that nobody would read it! xD If the rest of the internet worked out Error Code 15, how did the devs not know what it was?

phoebebebe13

DarkSuperNinja wrote: »

igazor wrote: »

I appreciate the effort on the part of the OP, but I don't really see anything in that ReadMe that is truly helpful today (could be missing something). Seems like the error codes ought to be, but how is the player supposed to for example equate "Post-save call back feature" (Error 13) to hey, your hard drive is damaged or you have a faulty patch job in place -- but no, we don't hear about those so much anymore. Error 16 is a tiny bit more common, but it isn't even listed.

Personally I think Crinrict and a few others did a much better job at cataloging these things and explaining what to do about various errors throughout the game's history. Her blog should be regarded as a highly useful resource.
https://sims3.crinrict.com/en

@igazor The error codes are definitely better summarised by Crinrict than EA, that's for sure!

Error Code 15 still makes me laugh, like did they even BOTHER trying to work out what Error Code 15 was?! I feel like they just gave up halfway through typing out the error message section, thinking that nobody would read it! xD If the rest of the internet worked out Error Code 15, how did the devs not know what it was?

I have never gotten error code 15. Now 12 and 13 use to hit me up all the time when I installed and tried to play IP when it first came out.

igazor

My guess is that Error 15 was designed, in an original unpatched base game, to be a catch-all for an error condition that doesn't meet the descriptions of the 14 that came before it. That's not unusual for programmers to do, but more commonly one would call such an unclassified thing Error 999 or something like that -- in the optimistic hope that they haven't designed something that is so strange that there would be more than 1,000 categories of errors to classify someday.