I tried googling this myself and searching around for an answer and so far nothing, so I feel it's finally time to post about my problem.

My sims 3 game works and saves fine if I do typical activities like playing on my lot, my sims going to work/school, etc. But whenever I want to go out with my sims, like to the park or to a dance club or any other large, populated lot, I can't save at all. I tried every trick. I reset the town, cleaned my save, "save" "save as" "save and quit" all have similar issues. I can't even go into edit town mode because it also freezes. Could anyone explain what's going on? I made sure my game had enough RAM to work with and when I checked it's performance the ram in usage was only 2.15 GB.

My laptop's specs:

Model: MSI GF65 Thin 9SD
Operating System: Windows 10
RAM: 16GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.60 GHz

My educated guess is that the game engine can easily get overwhelmed and possibly build up a lot of memory without releasing it at times. On top of that, too many Sims and/or objects being rendered at once can typically cause error code 12 or crashing to desktop. If the computer is not the issue, then the game engine is at it's limit to what it can handle. Mods/cc can exacerbate this issue sooner than later as well.

Try backing up your lots and then downsizing those lots and using less objects/clutter and see if that helps. If you are using mods to increase Sims on a lot, then that will definitely affect your game performance or if you use certain lot types such as big park to bring in a lot of Sims. What I noticed with TS3 is that it seems to be coded wherever you send your Sim in the world, then that lot will begin to get simulated with townies to imitate a robust community, though is not always the case.

I had recently built an open diner for Hidden Springs but then my game kept crashing to desktop as it was labeled as big park and too many Sims would visit causing the game engine to reach its limit. So for now I just deleted that lot and replaced the old rabbithole lot and so far I've been to the park, the library, and the fishing pond with one error code 12 but was able to save and then quit. And that play session was around a few hours. However in my case, that neighborhood, to me, is overcrowded because of the baby boom so that save is delicate right now anyway.


Edit: Now I know why the base game and later EP's the developers decorated a lot of lots bare bones for this reason to not overwhelm the game engine. Let the players do that and then complain, lol.

Now that you mention it, I do have a couple of mods that are supposed to help the town feel more populated and I suppose it works better with the most ultra modern gaming PCs than my 2019 gaming laptop.I will uninstall these mods and then see how it runs. I don't believe it's the lots themselves because this is more of a recent issue, before I was able to run and save these lots perfectly.

I will come back and give an update on how the game runs with these mods removed.

Coming back to say that I'm still having problems. Again, this is a recent development and has never happened in other save files.

The more you play, the more possible issues begin to accumulate, which is why save management is important for long-term use. Playstyle is also an indicator of whether the save will run into problems sooner or later. All my saves at some point were fine but eventually they run into hiccups and it's inevitable because of the nature of the game.

https://www.nraas.net/community/TIP...AME-PERFORMANCE

Also, a modern gaming PC will not help TS3 run any better than the 32-bit game engine can allow and players would still run into game engine limitations regardless of how powerful the computer is. Whether one has a gaming computer or not, it is not wise to be irresponsible with mods/cc usage. A higher spec computer may help with incorporating more mods/cc but it will still eventually give the game poor performance caused by user error when not careful.

I cannot speak for anyone else but the reason why I have a high-end gaming desktop is because I play PC games that need those higher specs among games that do not.

Couple alternate things to try since this is recent and it's just that one lot:

First, have you tried resetting the lot? I have NRaas' Master Controller which makes it really easy, so I'm not sure how to do that without it.

Before going to the lot, try saving the lot to the bin, bulldozing the lot, and putting the saved one in its place.

After that, try putting the lot in a fresh world. I use Bigger Builders Island as my testing world because it's empty to start with.

Failing those, have you tried running the lot with no custom content or mod? Conflicts can pop up unexpectedly.

Coming back to this after taking a break from the sims to say that I'll try these methods! Hopefully they work.