Saving errors #12 and 13 are giving me massive headaches!

[bshag]

Hi there, all of sudden, out of nowhere in my oldest neighborhood I'm getting save error 12, repeatedly.   I can't even "save as..."  I just went out of it and lost about 30 minutes worth of work, which not a biggie but I'm really hesitant to do anything in this neighborhood.  This is the oldest neighborhood in my game, the one I started out with last June and the one the patch brought back when they had the WA debacle.    I wasn't going to play it, just delete it as there's several other small issues it has.  But now, in one of my newer neighborhoods I just got save error 13.   What is going on??  I was able to save as, but am becoming fearful for my other games.  Does anyone know if deleting the offending neighborhood will make a difference?  Or any ideas as to what the devil is going on?

I've never had this much of a problem, maybe a save error 13 once in a blue moon.  Now this...    

[Asleep]

Maybe you're out of disk space? Or is that 15?  

[bshag]

Hey simstar...thanks for the response but out of disk space isn't a problem.  

I'm afraid my borked neighborhood is leaking over to my other neighborhoods so I'm just going to delete it and hope that my save errors go away.  It's strange that it picked now to show up, after almost a year.

[Metropolis Man]

Hey simstar...thanks for the response but out of disk space isn't a problem.  

I'm afraid my borked neighborhood is leaking over to my other neighborhoods so I'm just going to delete it and hope that my save errors go away.

Hopefully it's that simple. I suppose there's a chance that a messed up neighborhood can have more global impact and mess up the game files itself. So, problems would remain after deleting the offending culprit. In that case it would time for a wipe/reinstall.

[Swede1992]

Every save error I've ever had have been 12's and 13's; they nearly broke my whole gaming experience when Sims 3 was new.

SE 13 is a call-back error, i.e. the game cannot verify that the saving went correctly and therefore aborts it prematurely, leaving a smaller file in your save game folder that has the ending ".bad". Delete this file immediately; it can have a bleeding effect afterwards (for some people). This may happen to SE 12's as well, delete that too. Other than that, this SE can fade off and become more rare after a while (often starting a new game may help you). People have also found that going into Edit Town and changing something (moving a bench one square to the left in the park for instance) can help with saving when you want to close after a long playing time. If you succeed to save, restart from desktop: Your chances to successfully save diminishes the longer you play (this is always true for SE 12 though).

SE 12 is a world cache failure, i.e. what the game has to presently keep in its head is too much (more than 2 GB no matter how good computer you have). The computer resets the cache when you start from desktop, so this error occurs after long playing-strokes and can be limited (or removed) by simply restarting from the desktop every 1-2 hours. Also, there's apparently an "objects cache" or something (haven't found it) that supposedly doesn't reset itself normally, so if you have had Sims 3 installed for a long while, deleting this, or moving it out of the folder, (can be very large) will make your game feel like new. I cannot help you with that, I can't find it myself; it's something I've heard about. Also something I've heard about is to increase the game's allowed cache size to more than 2 GB. I'm no computer whiz, so I can't help you with that either. What I can help you with is to decrease the High Detailed Lots in the Options menu to as low as possible (I have just 2), since this limits what your computer needs to hold in its head at any given time. This does not affect your gameplay more than having to wait 2 sec. for your computer to establish a full graphic representation of another house if you quickly scroll over it.

With these changes, I've managed to keep playing all this time without re-installing my game. I still feel these errors if I've been careless, bt it's so rare that it doesn't ruin the fun!

[mtglady]

quote from Swede1992:  Also something I've heard about is to increase the game's allowed cache size to more than 2 GB. I'm no computer whiz, so I can't help you with that either.


To increase the game size follow the instructions in this link: http://www.simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Crash_workarounds.  

I have always done the DEP changes but never knew about the CFF changes until I read about it on a forum.  I was constantly crashing with Ambitions and now I have been able to play for hours and no crashes.  Good Luck!  

[Swede1992]

Thanks mtglady! I remember reading about people's solutions when my game practically broke and that method seems to be what I read (I forgot though where I first read it). It'd be great to have that as a reference point if my problems get too big again!

[Saltypaws]

I also got another error 12 the other night.  I have my graphics turned down, but to 4, anyway, mine also was an original game file that I had brought back after the patch and the SE 16 problems.  Thanks to this site, I was really excited I got it back.  So I have been playing this lot and had put quite a few spawners on the lot, (this was after I found out about them), and the game started taking forever to fill in again.  This is the large lot in RV across from Jon Lessons house.  I got error 12 and lost some, removed the bad file, and got it back, and it really got slow, so I packed them up and moved them out before anything else happened and now, I still have my original family and carls site saved the day again because of the help and information I got here.  I do know one thing though, if a person can increase their memory to 4 gigs, it does help tremendously and do regular maitenance on your machine and have a good graphics card, the game runs great.  So far, I have not had to uninstall and reinstall either.  I do know about the DEP and I think I did have to change that at one time, but it was with another game, but that is another issue people do not know about.

[Branr]

I'd been running Ambitions without an error 12 since release (I went and used CFF Explorer to increase the memory usage at release), and sure enough, after the patch yesterday, I got my first Error 12 on saving.  This morning I went in and looked, and sure enough, the >2GB flag had been reset by the patch.  Fortunately I have a notification that tells me to save every 1/2 hour, so I only lost 1/2 hour of play.