If you're having trouble with any Sims game, I would suggest making a post in r/Sims2help on Reddit, creating a thread over at ModTheSims, or discussing it with someone through Discord, Simblr, or Livejournal/Dreamwidth. I'm sure someone will be happy to help!

There are a few standard practices that people attempting to play The Sims on modern hardware should follow to keep their games running smoothly. I can't really give indepth knowledge in a single article but I'll mention some things that tend to often go wrong. However, if your problems aren't any of these I've added tons of resources at the bottom of the page to help out should you need it.

That being said, you may have to make your own post on a forum or subreddit if you haven't seen your problem already mentioned there. Despite how old these games are, sometimes something goes wrong that very few other people have ever seen before. It's unlikely that your bug is rare though so remember to search the forums before you make a duplicate post about your issue.

 

 

If you're having an issue with any of the mainline sims games I would recommend checking out the following resources:

• The Sims 2 Help on MTS
• The Sims 3 Help on MTS

The Sims

• Running The Sims on modern hardware can be done but you'll need the fullscreen patch.
• It's easier on Windows 10 but Windows 8 has some odd graphic glitches.
• Running the game with FreeSO's Simitone will probably be the best solution.

The Sims 2

• Most modern graphics cards have a problem with "pink flash". There's no easy fix for every modern graphics card but Nvidia users seem to have a fix. Generally, it seems like flashing comes from the game believing it doesn't have enough texture memory. The current work around seem to be not putting to many objects on or around a lot, having too many sims on the lot, etc.
• Remember to use the Graphic Rules creator to create a custom graphic rules file for your game. The ones generated by the game won't work correctly due to being incapable of recognizing modern graphics cards.
• DON'T use the in game delete tools, don't remove custom memories mods from your game if you plan to continue playing your saved games, and absolutely under no circumstance should you add NPCs to your households. Doing so will corrupt the whole game
• Game loading times can be greatly improved by compressing CC into multiple larger files and not using special characters in package names.

The Sims 3

• I've found that the best performance is based on having an i7 or above. You can get good performance out of an i5 but i7 and up seems to work under almost any circumstance.
• Use Lazy Duchess's smoothing patch. It does wonders for the game optimization but once again, this is still very dependant on you using GOOD hardware.
• Always turn off memories. They do nothing but bloat your save files.
• Again, merge your downloads, you can do that for TS3 using S3PE.