Looking for a pair of lost men's boots
A few months ago I began playing The Sims 3 in earnest again and, to my dismay, my favorite pair of men's boots had vanished! Since I have all the Expansion/Stuff Packs installed that I had before as ...
Forum Discussion
"puzzlezaddict;c-16420604" wrote:
@pax1sw The point igazor was making (or one of them, anyway) is that TS3 as currently built is inherently limited and close to its breaking point partly because it is 32-bit by nature (also because bugs, glitches, lack of optimization of various functions, etc.). No matter what the specs of your computer, any 32-bit program can by definition only utilize 4 GB RAM at any given time. (32-bit: 2^32 addresses, or 4,294,967,296) Furthermore, the game doesn't release all the RAM that it's done using as you play, so it hits the limit even sooner. In practice, TS3 can only get up to ~3.5 GB before it becomes unstable and is in danger of crashing from lack of RAM, which leads to an Error 12 (out of resources). Adding more EPs would probably push the game so close to the RAM limit on startup that it would be essentially unplayable for any meaningful length of time. A 64-bit program is not limited in this way, as 2^64 is obviously a much larger number of addresses.
In theory, TS3 could be remade into a 64-bit game. Exactly how much work this would require seems to be at least partly a matter of debate, but what is clear is that it would take more resources than EA has shown any interest in investing. This is one of the things that's so frustrating to many TS3 fans—that instead of taking the time to optimize a wonderful game, EA decided to make TS4 as it is. Without taking any unnecessary shots at the newer game (we do that enough around here already), TS4 represents a decision to make a new imperfect product to sell instead of fixing an older one that's still popular but in need of some serious work to function as it should. But that's the kind of discussion that brings out anger and bitterness and gets threads closed all the time.
That was amazingly informative, thank you!
I certainly wasn't questioning Igazor's superior knowledge on the subject! Though I did understand what he was saying, I was questioning the inability to salvage it (my "planned obsolescence" query). Like Star Trek, some things just won't die easily, the fan base is too large and, well... fanatical. :wink: TS3 is in that fandom category. Logic is suspended.
Wish they'd pay a team of people who knew TS3's guts (like NRaas) to fix the darned thing. It's not like the upgrade wouldn't pay for itself with dividends. Of course, it would probably drive a stake through TS4's heart when it went public.
