"Writin_Reg;c-16592669" wrote:
"Lustianicia;c-16591722" wrote:
When playing any kind of simulation game (especially The Sims), it's always VERY important to remember to save the game every 5-10 minutes! In my honest opinion, losing progress in a simulation game is much worse than any other! This is mainly because these kinds of games revolve around creativity, building, etc. Also, I understand that it's actually very easy to forget about saving. Especially when you're "in the zone" while building or creating a family. This has happened to me several times while playing The Sims... and I was always so upset! Sims 3 was the worst though! That's because it always took a long time to build or make Sims (due to Create A Style being available). Also, the game itself didn't really make saving very easy... especially when you need to go into live mode to save the game at all. Plus, and I'm sure almost anyone who has played Sims 3 knows what I'm talking about, let's not forget about the dreadful "Error 12" message that would occasionally popup while trying to save the game... THAT always angered me!
Regardless, I understand your pain... and I'm sorry for all the progress you lost! :disappointed:
Error 12 is a memory error - so your game is either out of memory or you don't have enough ram for your pc. If windows runs out of memory it will shut right down to desktop to recover itself - then you lose - because windows shuts everything down. Always give window plenty of ram - and when you save a game often it frees up ram that is being used to hold the info in place - but when it has no ram left to hold more - windows protects itself and closes to an Error 12. Rule of thumb - having as much memory as your pc can have - is a good idea. Even I fail at following my own advice though - my pc can have 32 gigs - I have 16 gigs - but I believe 16 is sufficient, for now anyway. LOL.
Yes, I know the error is caused by memory issues... but it has almost nothing to do with lack of RAM on a PC... it's more caused by the fact that Sims 3 is only a 32 bit game (which means it can't access more than 4 GB of memory). I've played the game on PCs with 8-12 GB for RAM... and still get the error. Especially with larger files.
Sims 3 is a terribly optimized game. Not only that, but it's filled with numerous bugs and glitches that the developers obviously NEVER cared enough to pay attention to... in most cases, when an error occurs with Sims 3, it's almost NEVER a problem with the PC. It's almost ALWAYS the game itself. Most games that have issues running are mostly that way because of the PC... but Sims 3 is often a major exception to that rule. There are people with extremely high specs who still have several problems with running Sims 3.
EDIT: By the way, I love Sims 3. It's a really fun game... however, it would be very foolish of me (or anyone) to even try making it seem like the game isn't broken. The game still has A LOT of problems, despite being a mostly fun experience. Honestly, anyone who claims to have a perfectly smooth experience while playing Sims 3 is simply lying. That game just NEVER runs smoothly... no matter how good your specs are.
