The Sims 3

What works

What works

- Install from CD (see workaround)
- Launch the game directly (not the launcher)
- Keyboard input
- Mouse movement
- Navigating in menu
- Changing settings
- Graphics
- Sound
- Videos

Game playing quality :
- No visual glitch (see workaround) / No slowdown
- Sound is perfect

My game run is some day old, and i use something like 150 mods (including the well know StoryProgression), and never encountered a crash.

Well to be honest most mods are objects / sims, i've limited the gameplay mods to avoid problem, i do have ~10 small gameplay improvement mods (like calling the family for diner, or adding cost to adoption), and ~3-4 one that change the game behaviors a bit more.

What does not

The launcher refuse to launch ^^

Workarounds

For installation from CD :

Everything seemed to be fine after installing all extensions to date + latest update, but while in game the hair / cloth color was locked to black. I tried almost everything (new prefix, reinstalled 4 times, dxvk override, changing graphics settings), nothing seemed to fix the problem. So followed the same path for install + update but on Windows 10 VM, then imported all files + registry to my prefix, and the color problem was fixed. Don't know exactly what happen with the install from CD...

For the launcher :

I installed dotnet40 (20 is fine, but  i wanted 40 for CC Magic), set version to xp for launcher .exe, and it run fine. I can also install content. I recommend using CC Magic for manage mods, but if you want the worlds they need to be installed from official launcher, after installation just move to CC Magic to manage everything.

What was not tested

Playing for some month :p

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: AMD
• Driver: open source

Additional Comments

I you have a recent graphics card, applying a fix with "TS3 GPU ADDON" correct almost all slowdown / fps / crash problem (not a WINE problem, exist on Windows too).

CC Magic work perfectly fine for managing all installed mods, just need vcrun2010 & dotnet40.

On wine-staging 5.10 / 5.11 / 5.12, running the game just make my computer crash, but a hard lockup, like no more keyboard / mouse / display, just nothing.

If you want to prevent any save corruption, just install NRaas ErrorTrap, if will catch all errors, keeping your save safe.

I recommend also NRaas Saver, who allow to save automatically at specified interval, in 4 different slots, this + ErrorTrap is simply a must have !

Info on my hardware settings :
- AMD Ryzen 3950x + 5700 XT + 128 GB RAM

Info on my driver version :
- Mesa 20.1.2

Info on my software settings :
- xfce desktop with compositing enabled

Info specific to WINE :
- 64 bits wine profile
- Window version set to 7 (and xp for the launcher)
- Clean profile (i use one profile per game)
- No DLL overrides (except dotnet20 is you want the launcher)

Videos of the gameplay on Linux, courtesy of Jake Ward:

• Video 1
• Video 2

• If you make a new starter on your desktop, then type "xgamma -gamma 1" (w/o quotes) as the command to run. Quickest way to reset gamma.
• You should leave the game set to fullscreen and set the "Screen Size" option to the resolution you chose in winecfg. The game will change your screen's brightness, which is annoying, but attempting to run it windowed inside the virtual desktop causes odd problems. Although this is dependent on your video card and I myself did not get the problem.
  
• "Enable Advanced Rendering" may not work for some. It's worked fine in 1.1.21, but had some odd problems with it in 1.1.23. Sometimes the screen, starting at the top left corner, would become tinted with a colour, usually red, purple, or white. This hasn't happened to in the slightly older wine, only 1.1.23.
  
• Lighting and Shadows is slightly buggy at higher settings. Specifically, there is a lot of flicker at times with certain shadows.
  
• SAVE OFTEN. There still seems to be another memory leak, even with the patched source. Try to save once or twice a day, game time. Depending on what you're doing, the game may crash often or may only crash rarely, but it will eventually crash. Large events, frequent travel, and build mode all seem to cause this to occur faster. *Please note this may be fixed in newer wine versions
  
• Downloading content doesn't work, but the launcher itself does, and can be accessed easily from within Sims 3 (the "Open Launcher" menu item). If you have access to a windows PC with the game installed, you can download content, such as the Riverview town, there and then transfer the .Sims3Pack files to your Linux install. Put the .Sims3Pack files in My Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Downloads\ ('My Documents' being the path you set My Documents to above) and the launcher should be able to install them. *Please note this may be fixed in newer wine versions
  
• If the Sims3Launcher crashes of an error such as "Unhandled Exception: System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write protected memory" it's probably a truetype font problem. See appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=3754 for details on how to fix.
  
• Seting OffscreenRenderingMode to fbo in regedit, the texture problems seem to have disappeared altogether

To use the launcher you need to install dotnet20 via winetricks!

Receiving the following?
fixme:actctx:parse_depend_manifests Could not find dependent assembly
L"Microsoft.VC80.CRT" (8.0.50727.762)
err:module:attach_process_dlls "MSVCR80.dll" failed to initialize, aborting
err:module:LdrInitializeThunk Main exe initialization for
L"\\Program Files\\The Sims 3\\Game\\Bin\\TS3.exe" failed, status c0000142

Fix by installing vcrun2005sp1 with "winetricks vcrun2005sp1"

If you have nvidia card and are having brightness issues, after entering the game, use the command 'nvidia-settings -l' (in terminal) or just launch the nvidia panel to solve the brightness problem. If the problem appears again, just repeat the command.
For ATI on Ubuntu 10.04 x64 the following works fine; Go to System->Control Center->ATI Catalyst Control Center->Color and click the Default button. The colors now change back to normal.

Bug 18991 (crash loading a town) fix:
env WINEPREFIX="~/.wine" TZ="America/Bahia" wine "TS3.exe"
Note: It might be best to change America/Bahia to your own TimeZone

Note that Greg Noe was able to download content (at least the Rivertown) by launching the Launcher from within the game, killing the TS3.exe process (launcher won't let you download while the game is running), and then just downloading like usual.

Here are the patch links: (if you have any more, feel free to post them)

PLEASE VIEW HERE FOR MORE PATCHES: http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/175477.page

1.0.631.00001: http://na.llnet.eadownloads.ea.com/u/f/sims/sims3/patches/Sims3_1.2.7.00001_from_1.0.631.00001.exe

1.0.631.00002: http://na.llnet.eadownloads.ea.com/u/f/sims/sims3/patches/Sims3_1.2.7.00002_from_1.0.631.00002.exe

1.0.631.00003: http://na.llnet.eadownloads.ea.com/u/f/sims/sims3/patches/Sims3_1.2.7.00003_from_1.0.631.00003.exe

1.0.631.00005: http://na.llnet.eadownloads.ea.com/u/f/sims/sims3/patches/Sims3_1.2.7.00005_from_1.0.631.00005.exe

1.0.631.00107: http://na.llnet.eadownloads.ea.com/u/f/sims/sims3/patches/Sims3_1.2.7.00107_from_1.0.631.00107.exe

1.3.24.00001: akamai.cdn.ea.com/eadownloads/u/f/sims/sims3/patches/sims3_1.3.24.00001_from_1.2.7.00001.exe

1.3.24.00002: akamai.cdn.ea.com/eadownloads/u/f/sims/sims3/patches/sims3_1.3.24.00002_from_1.2.7.00002.exe

1.3.24.00003: akamai.cdn.ea.com/eadownloads/u/f/sims/sims3/patches/sims3_1.3.24.00003_from_1.2.7.00003.exe

1.3.24.00004: akamai.cdn.ea.com/eadownloads/u/f/sims/sims3/patches/sims3_1.3.24.00004_from_1.2.7.00004.exe

1.3.24.00005: akamai.cdn.ea.com/eadownloads/u/f/sims/sims3/patches/sims3_1.3.24.00005_from_1.2.7.00005.exe

1.3.24.00107: akamai.cdn.ea.com/eadownloads/u/f/sims/sims3/patches/sims3_1.3.24.00107_from_1.2.7.00107.exe

Simply type the following into a terminal which should fix the brightness/gamma change the game performs: xgamma -gamma 1