Re: Random Crash to Desktop
@Darens-Stuff If you look at the crash log, you'll see the game ran out of memory. This is the relevant section:
Total virtual memory: 4095 Mb
Free virtual memory: 110 MbThe "virtual" part is misleading here: Sims 3 is referring to the memory it can use, the total value of which is 4 GB, minus some overhead. When you consider that the game's memory use can flucutate a bit from one moment to the next, and more than a bit if it's engaged in an intensive task like placing a lot in Edit Town (or saving, or loading CAS, or going through a travel transition), it's easy to see how you'd have hit the RAM limit.
Alpine County is a very large world both generally and in terms of the memory it requires to run. Many people have found it impossible to keep under the game's RAM limit when playing in the world for any length of time. One approach is to remove many of the lots and world details, but that kind of defeats the purpose of playing in Alpine County. Another is to build and create sims in a new save, then save your work to the in-game bin and place it in your existing save as efficiently as possible.
But neither of these fixes the issue, it simply postpones the problem. If you want to keep playing in Alpine County, you'll need to accept that memory management will always be somewhat of an issue, and get around it by saving often and keeping your play sessions a bit shorter than you might want. This will become more critical as your save progresses: the longer you play it, the more RAM it will use.
If you want more tips for improving performance, there are lots of good ones here; many but not all are specifically about conserving RAM:
https://www.nraas.net/community/TIPS-FOR-BETTER-GAME-PERFORMANCE
