Log generated on 8/22/2019, 11:47

Kiri: Reset Texture Memory
Kiri: Force Low settings because Intel removed
=== Application info ===
Name: The Sims 2 EP9
Version: 1.17.0.66
Build: ReleaseSRT
=== Machine info ===
OS version: Windows NT 6.0
CPU: 3360Mhz, Name:GenuineIntel, FPU:1, MMX:1
Memory: 2048MB
Free memory: 2048MB
User: jonip
Computer: DESKTOP-I574TES
=== Sound device info ===
Name: Unknown
Driver: Unknown
=== Graphics device info ===
Number: 0
Name (driver): Intel(R) HD Graphics 520
Name (database): Intel(R) HD Graphics 520 <<NOT FOUND IN DATABASE!>>
Vendor: Intel
Chipset: Vendor: 8086, Device: 1916, Board: 80d1103c, Chipset: 0007
Driver: igdumdim32.dll, Version: 21.20.16.4821, GUID: D7B78E66-5A56-11CF-5961-C1A0BCC2D835
Driver version: 4821
Monitor: \\.\DISPLAY1
Monitor aspect: 1.775757, 16:9
Screen mode: 1366x768x32BPP,60Hz
Texture memory: 1664MB
HW T&L: Fixed function:1 Programmable:3.0
Pixel program: 3.0
Texture stages: 8
AppControlledAA: 1
Kiri: Selecting High base level

Is this the part that has to be changed?

Memory: 2048MB
Free memory: 2048MB

Yes, plus Name (database): Intel(R) HD Graphics 520 <<NOT FOUND IN DATABASE!>>

Do you have a graphics card? Either way, you need to do the graphic rules

OK, and what do I write there instead?

According to my diagnostics, my computer has a Intel HD Graphics 520 card. Total memory is 4177 MB and shared memory is 4044 MB. I'm not sure which numbers I should put into the log.

You need to do the graphic rules as shown in the video, the log is simply showing you how things are currently set.

Very helpful. Huge thanks as always, you're the best.

Hello, is this thread still alive? Because i've encountered the same problem as jonipoon's
I've applied the 4GB patch for the first one month of playthrough, everything went flawlessly even in big lots with Lots of CCs
But recently this morning, the game crashes again.

At first, i thought it's the texture memory being the problem, and sure enough, it was 32MB. When i first installed the game, i used the Graphic Rules Maker to create the graphic rules before applying the 4GB patch, so i assumed that the maker forced the graphic rules to use 32mb. So i thought that changing it would solve the problem.
I haven't tried the memory allocation fix but i doubt it'd fix the problem and I won't raise the virtual memory amount as I am using a 500GB SSD.
I used DXDiag to see my Display Memory and this is what i got:



So I changed the value from 32mb to 2032mb in the graphics rules from this link (in the Anti-Aliasing part): https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Sims_2
However, that didn't work. Tried deleting thumbnails, didn't work. I also tried giving TS2 exception in Data Execution Prevention (as per Jessa's instruction), but it also did not work.
I don't know what to do for now......any solutions?

I have attached my config-log into my post. Thank you for anyone who reads and answer this ><

Log generated on 8/26/2019, 10:06

=== Application info ===
Name: The Sims 2 EP9
Version: 1.17.0.66
Build: ReleaseSRT
=== Machine info ===
OS version: Windows NT 6.0
CPU: 3214.399902Mhz, Name:AuthenticAMD, FPU:1, MMX:1
Memory: 4096MB
Free memory: 4096MB <== Before crashing, this worked flawlessly
User: USER
Computer: DESKTOP-00GP85O
=== Sound device info ===
Name: Unknown
Driver: Unknown
=== Graphics device info ===
Number: 0
Name (driver): AMD Radeon(TM) RX Vega 10 Graphics
Name (database): AMD Radeon(TM) RX Vega 10 Graphics
Vendor: ATI
Chipset: Vendor: 1002, Device: 15d8, Board: 85de103c, Chipset: 00c1
Driver: aticfx32.dll, Version: 25.20.14120.1001, GUID: D7B71EE2-5698-11CF-6570-F6927AC2D435
Driver version: 1001
Monitor: \\.\DISPLAY1
Monitor aspect: 1.775757, 16:9
Screen mode: 1920x1080x32BPP,60Hz
Texture memory: 2032MB <== previously 32MB
HW T&L: Fixed function:1 Programmable:3.0
Pixel program: 3.0
Texture stages: 8
AppControlledAA: 1

additional info:
OS: Windows 10 1809
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx (8 CPUs), ~2.3GHz
GPU: AMD Radeon(TM) RX Vega 10 Graphics
CC Contents: 1.67GB

EDIT: If you're reading this post, you should know I've made another thread specific to this approach: http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...572927&posted=1 . Please follow that thread and/or document for the latest updates and errata on this approach. What's below is simply preserved for the historical record and should be considered out of date.

After a year after my last attempt to get The Sims 2 working with my Nvidia RTX 2080 on Windows 10, I'm pleased to say I have a semblance of a stable setup with no flashing purple textures and crashes. The 8GB of memory on it might have been too much and I'm not sure if the driver for 1080Tis have had internal workarounds that make it work for The Sims 2. Either way, my RTX 2080 wasn't very compatible. I've tried Jessa's exe. 4GB patch. They work for a moment, but not for any extended period of time. And usually break jumping between neighborhoods. Etc. etc. But now...

Another game I've been a fan of is the Hitman series. Recently, their latest incarnation has been plagued by Nvidia driver crashes from the DX11 mode. A workaround for stability at the cost of a little performance stutter was to use the DXVK wrapper. This wrapper translates DX11 (or 12) to Vulkan, an alternate graphics card driver API. Other than a little stutter on level load, it is graphically identical. I wondered if an approach like this could be applied to The Sims 2 so I found D9VK. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me and my 2080 when I initially found it so I tabled it. Some weeks ago, I noticed a user had posted to a Sims 2 Wine Patch GitHub repo that D9VK was working for Sims 2 on Linux.. The Sims 2 working on Linux has been considered a holy grail for more than a decade. Seeing this Just Work is quite unbelievable. So I tried it with my copy on Windows, and it still didn't work. I tabled it again until recently when I decided to check it out again on a whim and noticed users of other older games reporting issues and looking to D9VK for help with modern Windows 10 or hardware compatibility and made the effort to report my issue.

So while there is an option to force a maximum amount of texture memory to be used, The Sims 2 goes a bit bonkers on startup. From what I've been told, some games of that era, Sims 2 included, balloon their memory until failure to determine addressable space. The RTX 2080 has 8GB of space and that freaks 32-bit The Sims 2 out. It also probably doesn't help that in my case, I have 32GB of RAM. In that era when Sims 2 came out, graphics cards were topping at 768MB of RAM at most. RAM? Also some smaller number than now. Also as for the current era, I don't think high end cards such as this are too common so I think some here are naturally "protected" from this large amount of RAM which is why some of these other solutions posted in this thread or elsewhere work. I couldn't find a way to limit this RAM-like thing in a way that genuinely fools The Sims 2 until recently.

What's very nice about D9VK is that it is open source and configurable, and has controls to emulate lower amounts of memory for the video card/DirectX. I worked with the D9VK developer and tried emulating a lower amount of memory for the video card/DirectX and I'm now able to play The Sims 2! The developer has hardcoded this default adjustment into later versions for Sims 2 EXEs. It's wild to throw out the whole Microsoft DX9 stack just for this but I couldn't find a way to do the same lower MaxAvailableMemory emulation limit with the Microsoft DX9 stack. This MaxAvailableMemory emulation might also be a workaround to not require fiddling the whole OS to ditch cached/standby memory which is super bad. There can be rendering differences, but since D9VK is open source and able to be debugged, we're also in a much better position to address these rendering differences when they come up.

Point is, if your Vulkan supporting graphics card has more than 3.5GB of VRAM and/or you have a lot of RAM and/or you're still getting purple textures, crashes, and other rendering hi-jinks, give the latest master branch of D9VK a try. As of this post it isn't in a released version so you'll have to download the latest compiled artifacts from the build server itself: https://git.froggi.es/joshua/d9vk/-/jobs. Put the 32-bit DLLs next to Sims2EP9.exe (or some other Sims 2 EXE you are using ), and you'll be rendering The Sims 2 via a configurable DX9 powered by Vulkan. Also, I've been a little unsure of the 3.5GB of MaxAvailableMemory that was chosen to be hardcoded for Sims2*.exe (" In that era, graphics cards were topping at 768MB of RAM at most.") and also its implied necessity for a 4GB patched EXE, so you might want to add a dxvk.conf next to the DLLs and EXEs with some even lower MaxAvailableMemory settings if issues are still being encountered like "d3d9.maxAvailableMemory = 1435973836".

I can't seem to get this to work :/ I load up the game after dumping all the DLLs into the folder and it sits on a black screen.

EDIT: Ok I've gotten a little further - game gets to the main loading screen but halfway through the screen suddenly goes purple with a spinning cursor like it does when you tab out and back in again then eventually crashes :c

Could you post the log that gets generated in the same folder as the EXE? I would also make sure you're using the latest graphics card driver. Also, try adding dxvk.conf with the conents of "d3d9.maxAvailableMemory = 1435973836" setting to the same folder.

I tried the 4GB patch multiple times, and every time I start the game up, the log file says Memory: 2048MB, Free Memory: 2048MB. I tried CFF explorer, and the checkbox for >2GB of memory was already checked. Nothing I do changes the log file. Oh well. My only issue with the game is a very long startup time (4 minutes as it slowly loads into RAM). I was just hoping I could do the memory allocation fix and maybe that would speed up the launch.

I've attached my log file - seems to be giving a device lost error. And reporting way too much available memory. I do notice that whenever I launch the game it uses up literally all my VRAM.
Does the dcvk.confg file just need to say "d3d9.maxAvailableMemory = 1435973836" in it or is there some sort of template or formatting I need to follow?
Thanks for finding this by the way even if it's somewhat convoluted now any way to get The Sims 2 working on an RTX card is worth the trouble.

Edit: I have no idea if I did it right, but making a dxvk.conf while with that line in it seems to have worked some sort of magic. Game loads into a neighborhood and even lots successfully now! The game does seem to freeze a little bit for a few seconds on loading screens but gameplay actually seems to be smoother than I remember. Like larger more detailed lots don't lag nearly as much as they ever used to and the game feels like it runs smoother.

I've landed an adjustment to set the VRAM default for the Sims2 exe to 2GB. Could you download the latest master from https://git.froggi.es/joshua/d9vk/-/jobs and give it a try? Don't forget to remove the dxvk.conf file. No more adjustment should be needed. Also, I still can't see a log attached to any of your posts not that it matters that much now but it would have been helpful. It would have told me what RTX card you have.

Oops sorry - I swear I had attached it. For what it's worth I have an RTX 2080 too. I'll give that new version a try will report back shortly

Edit: nope same result unfortunately. The game loads and plays all the opening videos gets about halfway through loading the main menu and then screen goes purple and I see that my VRAM has been maxed out again. As soon as I put my dxvk.conf file back into place the game starts working again.

Darn. Oh, can you attach the new log file with the newer version of the DLLs? I guess I might be submitting another pull request to get it even more down.

Hi! I've also been looking for solution to crashing and pink flashing for roughly a year now, I have old thread about my issues buried somewhere, but in TL;DR it is crashing, pink flashing soup, nothing helps. I also have dedicated GPU with 8gb of VRAM (namely, AMD R9 390), so this piqued my interest:



Many others who have GPUs with vram higher than 4gb, seem to be having these issues, so that may actually be one factor in this whole mess.

Anyhow, I quickly tested the latest master of D9VK before heading off to work. First I loaded Belladonna cove, and those apartments with carages. Lot loading took maybe a bit more time than with windows 7 and native dx9, but otherwise no problems. Then I took it to a real stress test and downloaded the Cybersys Prefecture by Zarathustra. Loading the lot took 4 minutes and the initial view of the lot with all floors and objects rendered had only 1-5 fps (lol), but otherwise no issues. I moved the camera around the lot for a while and when hiding objects from other floors or being on the first floor the fps was about 30-50. I'm eager to throw in my old neighbourhood and do some serious play testing, but this seems to be a viable solution for everyone and anyone who doesn't want to downgrade to earlier windows or install windows 7 to another drive for dualbooting.

Sims 2 (and sims 2 UC), in my experience, has ALWAYS (well, I've been actively monitoring it's ram usage since windows 7 so.. 8-7 years?) crashed when the RAM usage has been 1,5-1,9 gbs. It has never in my computers used anymore (despite the 4gb patches and such), and has showed only minor pink flashing or other graphical issues before crashing. Interestingly, with D9VK, Sims 2 utilized total of 2,7 gbs of RAM and from the start reserved 3,7 GBs of dedicated gpu memory. RAM and VRAM usages fluctuated properly too, being highest with the Cybersys Prefecture loaded and lowest while in neighbourhood. It's probably a good thing that with Vulcan the game can use more resources, but I shall test more to see if it is stabile.

Maybe this solution deserves it's own research topic though, so we don't clutter this one and it's easier to track progress? Thanks for finding this!

Just gave the newest master of dxvk a try - seems like my issues are resolved took out my dxvk.conf and the game loaded to the neighborhood menu and into a lot with no issues at all.

I'll make another thread soon and link to https://docs.google.com/document/d/...=h.3rbjiqn6p865 as the OP but the D9VK developers have requested holding off posting until they fix the flickering issue which I haven't noticed yet.

Looks like a solid guide if you want more information to go with my system I'm running Windows 10 1903, 16GB of RAM and a Ryzen 3800x.

Hi, i am really thankful for all the help you provided to make the sims 2 work on Windows 10 again but all I did so far didn't work out for me because my game is still crashing and it says it's a problem with Villa and garden stuff. So I downloaded the Ultimate from Origin. My game starts and crash, sometimes soon at the beginning, sometimes later when I want to go in a neighborhood or even later when I try to load a household, buuut it's always related to this expansion pack!! What can I do? I can't find any of my issues in the net!

Probably because the game runs on the last EP, and M&G is technically considered to be an EP and is the application you're running the game from if you have M&G or the UC installed. Errors may seem like they are coming from this particular EP/SP, but it doesn't show you the actual cause of the crash, just which application crashed (it won't say "Pets crashed" even if there's a problem with Pets, or "Mod X made your game crash" if the issue is with a mod - computers aren't that smart...).

If you had the CD version of Sims installed, and then installed UC, make sure you properly uninstalled the CD version first (you may need to clean out the registry). The two versions technically aren't compatible, and can potentially cause errors if the computer registers both.

Changes done to your CD version will not transfer over to your UC version, so if you install the UC you'll have to redo the process with the Graphic Rules and Video Card files (you can most likely copy files over if you're using the same computer), 4GB patch and possibly also check if the memory allocation fix still works (I think the latter technically works outside of the game, though)

Nice guide! Glad to see that those horrible pink pictures got some use x).. I have managed to play a few hours in between work and other IRL stuff though, and the game performs perfectly with D9VK. I'd say that there's much less stutter on big lots (as an example, my ISBI legacy family mansion, which has always ton of sims on it + all the other stuff, ghosts, memories, whatever the game stuffs in it..), than there is/was on earlier working setups. Bigger dorms were also problem for me before, but no problems now, that the game can actually use more resources.

I have tested all windows 10 builds/versions, and the sims 2 refuses to work properly on any above 1607. I'm currently on build 1809 (after testing the 1903, I felt that this was more stable and had all the security features that earlier versions didn't). I can add some more info of my testing and system for you: my PC components, besides the gpu, are 970m pro 3 mobo, AMD FX 8350 cpu at stock clocks (4ghz), DDR3 1600 mhz RAM 32 GB, couple of SSD's and one HDD for archiving and making backups. Windows is installed on separate SSD from games, so Sims isn't installed on the default path of program files (x86). I also have windows 7 installed for dualbooting on another SSD, fo I can do some comparing of load times and performance when I have time.

I had few issues getting sims 2 to work with D9VK at start though. Even after I updated my graphics card drivers to the newest one, I had some error about missing vulkan stuff. So I googled it and found out that I had to download newest vulkan runtimes (filename VulkanRT-1.1.114.0-Installer.exe) from URL=https://vulkan.lunarg.com/sdk/home . Anyone else with a vulkan ready/supported GPU having problems might want to try that too, since I guess not all the runtimes needed were installed with the graphics card driver. After that the game ran fine, but didn't recognize my graphics card anymore. I noticed that it treated it as an Nvidia now (in the "MY-PC-NAME-config-log") so I just added an entry for it under Nvidia cards on the "Video cards" file. I've had no issues with it so far, but I might try to tinker with it sometime, as I noticed an entry about the graphics card vendor in one D9VK file earlier that said "0x10de" which is for nvidia. So maybe with that entry it is hard coded to recognize all gpu as nvidias?

I do have few pictures of the game running and of the RAM and gpu memory usages from process explorer. I also did stress test it further with the same Cybersys prefecture lot as before, but this time moved a sim there and let the game spawn other sims to rent apartments. I admit, the gameplay was slow, but it did actually work! And set a new highest record of RAM usage for this game at least on my computer (over 3 gbs!). After a while I had minimal pink flashing on some objects, but that disappeared by toggling in-game textures option to medium. No crashing! I eventually switched to my main neighborhood with my old ISBI family and continued playing as normal.. So I would say that it works as intended. I haven't noticed any sims flickering yet though, but apparently it is a nvidia thing?

I've posted a separate thread for the D9VK approach: http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...d=1#post5572927.

I'm not sure if anyone is looking at this anymore but I need help with getting the sims 2 to work and I'm not sure what to do. I've applied the 4gb patch, set the graphics with the graphics rule maker, installed the "d3d9.dll" file and it still won't work. I'm able to actual load the game now; I can hear the game running and can hear the clicking of options when I click the screen with my mouse but it's just a blue screen. So it hasn't really crashed but I have to restart my pc to be able to exit the game. Does anyone know what could fix this?

Try window mode, some people have luck with that. Go to your desktop shortcut and right-click> properties. In the small window where you can type, go to the end of the text and do one space with the space bar then type in -w. try running the game like that to see if it makes a difference.