Error Code 12!!

I am sorry that you are having this pome :( It was never fixed

:disappointed:

When did you last do a backup? Try going back to your last uncorrupted save i.e. your backed up copy and try using that. Sadly you will have lost any progress made since your last backup but at least you have a clean copy of your saved game :) Good Luck getting it sorted.

An Error12 is an out of resources condition. Usually it means that the game's RAM usage has spiked above the danger zone of ~3.5 GB, even for a brief moment, and the memory registers (RAM only) are polluted with unusable garbage so a save cannot be completed. It can also happen during/after very long CAS or Edit Town sessions where many changes were made and the game runs out of usable resources of other kinds along the way. There are often enough no ways to recover from that within the current session.

What one would want to do if these are happening constantly on each game session is use Task Manager to check the game's RAM usage on startup, when the game clock begins moving forward smoothly, then again frequently throughout play. If the RAM usage is not leveling off at a safe point, well below 3 GB for most worlds, the eventual Error12 is inevitable. If one's session is running at or above around 3.3 GB, experiences will vary but the Save or Save As process itself will cause a temporary spike in RAM usage and can also lead to the same error.

TS3 is a 32-bit application only and cannot use more than 3.7 GB of RAM or recover from more than that trying to be used under any conditions even if the player's system has more RAM than that available.

This is common if you play without NRaas Mods and have the EA bugfest turned on as I used to get them a lot before adding the NRaas Mods to my game and using the NRaas Mod version of story progression in the place of EA's bugfest which was so overactive that it pushed the town over the edge and caused memory leaks.
I've not had any Error12's with my games and likely won't ever see them unless I foolishly overpopulated the town way too fast like EA's glitchy version of"story progression" known as the bugfest always did when I played Mod-free.I also have stopped trying to play long term multi-generational legacies in any EA worlds and only use empty custom worlds for those as I can just start out small and gradually build my town up over the generations.

In big worlds it happens to me too. I can't play in those worlds for very long before I have to close the game restart because once it goes over 3gb, I cannot save. Sadly there's no solution (that i've found).. it's 32bit and that's the problem.

It kind of depends on how big and complicated the worlds are. Some beautifully designed custom ones (most notoriously Alpine County, Setra, I think Vice City is one, there are others) will be unplayable for most all of us or at least become so after a while for this reason. Other simply large, rather than ginormous, or even medium sized worlds will max out if the resident population is let to grow too high. How high depends on the world and the player's system, but 300+ resident sims would be too heavy for most of us to carry and successfully stay under the RAM limit as well.

Yes, NRaas mods can help make the game run more efficiently and smooth out growth issues and of course are highly recommended. But they can't allow the game to use more RAM than it possibly can as 32-bit should it still keep calling for that much.

I had an Error 12 just once in 8 years time and never when I played vanilla so I can hardly imagine that has something to do with it? It indeed rather is space related. I have two drives now (C and D) and made the mistake to install the game on the smallest one, so now I do have this issue occasionally. In fact I noticed the driver is in the red yet again a few days ago, which will mean saving probably will be a problem when I won’t do anything about it. I’d reinstall if it weren’t for 1.69...

Lack of drive space is a different problem, although admittedly sometimes the symptoms can be similar.

Running Windows and/or the game on a drive that lacks sufficient space for both of them to maneuver properly will lead to stability issues on the part of the game and just about anything else Windows has to run. Even web browsers will malfunction under such conditions. We generally recommend at least 15% free space for Windows and at least 35 GB free, whichever is higher.

Error12s are more typically RAM and graphics memory related and pertain to the current game session being played, not drive space, but again when operating with not enough space to work with just about anything strange can happen.

sometimes if I keep playing and try saving again a bit later, it goes alright. It's like at that time it won't, but a bit later it will, whatever event it was getting through has passed.

"eliyeahyuh;d-941404" wrote:
Okay, so i know that there are lots of posts already about this, but i cannot find a solution at all. My computer is a 64 bit windows. i have 8 gigs of ram and 7.19 are usable, i just checked. everytime i save i get error code 12. i have used “save as” and a new name every time. i tried this in live mode and in edit town mode. i’ve played for an hour and i’m trying to save but i can’t and i really don’t want to lose all of this progress. if you have any ideas it would be greatly appreciated :(

I used to have this so much. I don't think it was ever fixed :'(
it can happen so randomly. I had to loose progress myself because of it.