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Original Poster
#1 Old 7th Jan 2022 at 2:16 AM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage, Free Time, Apartment Life
Default Help with pink flashing
Hello! I changed a few things and the pink flash that I had controlled is now all over the place, and I also have crashes. I always forget how the graphicrules.sgr file works, so I'm sure it could be a disaster. Could someone look at it and help me see if there are things that are wrong? I have the 4gb patch, the new version of graphic rules maker and I have watched all the videos. Hopefully someone who knows how to read the files can help me ^^
Attached files:
File Type: rar  graphicrules.rar (16.6 KB, 3 downloads)
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 7th Jan 2022 at 3:40 AM
If you're using GRM, make sure to tick the "Disable Texture Memory Estimate Adjustment" box. If you don't, you get the "pink soup" issue where your entire game starts flashing pink almost the moment you start it up. It's a bug in the GRM that the 2.0 version fixed with this tick box.

I think that the tick box "Enable driver's memory manager" also helps with random crashing, as it forces the game to rely on the graphic card driver for memory management.

You probably also need the "Force Texture Memory" and set it to whatever amount of RAM your computer has available (Auto detect, or use device info - see the help text further down)
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Original Poster
#3 Old 7th Jan 2022 at 4:25 AM
I have everything you say, however the flashing keeps appearing. About texture memory, I see that everyone says something different in each site, if I have 16 gb of ram should I put something like 14000? In some places I have read that the game cannot tolerate it and that it is better to put something like 1000 or 2000.
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retired moderator
#4 Old 7th Jan 2022 at 11:56 AM
Have a look at resource monitor whilst you run your game. There are a number of ways to run this, one is to right click the taskbar and open task manager, then on the performance tab click 'resource monitor'.
If you click on the memory tab you should see something like this:

If your memory fills up, the game will lag and possible crash as it does not have the resources to continue. As you can see I still have some free memory to work with. (Please don't laugh at my Sims computer, he was built by me a decade ago with cheap parts and he has performed admirably, I had to buy him a new CPU fan a few months ago but he is still going. If I wasn't so miserly I would have built another computer for Sims, but this one still works and he is part of the family! )
Also, check the CPU tab:

My computer has two cores (four hyperthreads) as it's old and low powered; so if I'm running a browser and the game simultaneously, I can set the game to use a specific core(s), that way the load is more balanced. If these graphs show too much load on one or more cores, I start to get lagging as the computer cannot process the game data. I use a startup script for the game to do this.

Windows (under default conditions) uses a page file to manage memory; this is like having a notepad by your side as you are doing something- when someone tells you their phone number in a conversation, you write it down, and then later, you put that written down number back in your memory when you think about it to dial it. In the same way, Windows writes down memory information in a page file, onto the hard disk. It does this when it does not have enough memory free to use. Later, when there is some free memory, it will access that page file and read that information to memory. This is called 'paging' or 'swapping' or 'virtual memory'. But, this uses CPU power and GPU power too, as the computer needs to process the information to get it in and out of memory. So, having optimal CPU useage is important too, as well as having lots of free RAM. Otherwise things take longer, which is when you get lagging, and you also get bottlenecks (when one bit of the computer works slower than the other)- and this is when I see pink flashing, when there isn't enough RAM to get the texture information to the GPU. So the computer has nothing to show me- the game responds by giving the display some flashing pink, without the animations. The GPU is working fine, but the rest of the computer can't find the information to send to it.
So what you need to do is to find out what causes your game to struggle.
First things I would check it seems that you have already done- set the graphics rules file so that the game knows what hardware you have. Make sure your RAM and GPU are accurately identified.
Next, check your graphics chip software to see if there are any overrides. I use an NVidia chip so I have an NVidia control panel, where I can set the 3D settings for a particular game and override the game's settings (such as antialiasing). If you have pink flashing, make sure that is set to default, or game controlled. Same for any NVidia Experience settings (or the equivalent if your graphics chip has them). Let the game control everything, at least until you have it all working.
Thirdly, look at what else is running on your PC. Are you using any post processing software, reshade or anything like that? Running other applications, like a browser, or discord, or solitaire game, or iTunes? Shut them down, just until you get things sorted.
Lastly, look at your custom content. Are you using anything that can cause the game overhead to be higher? Things I can think of are- Mods that increase the resolution of in-game terrain textures, snow textures, water textures/ reflections, lot impostors, tree impostors. Remember that if you play with neighbourhood view on, everything you do in-game is impacted by the resolution of the background scenery. If you have all of this jacked up to high-res, this can eat available memory very quickly. Also, hi-poly hair can affect things, especially if you have a party or go to a community lot where 40 sims turn up with high detail hairstyles.

I don't know if any of this will help you as obviously your computer system is very different to mine, but for my low-powered, ancient thing these are the things I need to take into account. Things like Pineapple's post processing and high res snow are lovely for photos, but using whilst playing can tank performance.
Screenshots
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Original Poster
#5 Old 8th Jan 2022 at 11:54 AM Last edited by Sokisims : 8th Jan 2022 at 1:24 PM.
@simsample Thanks for your explanations! I did the test and I still do not understand anything, it seems that I still have a lot of available memory, but the blinking continues ... I do not know what to do, I do not think that deactivating the shadows and the landscape will help since I tried it and things remained the same. A funny thing is that if I enter neighborhoods without cc, like Emerald Heights, everything works fine. Although I do not dare to leave things like that because if it appears in this it will also begin to appear in the others when I play them for a while.





I still don't know how much I have to force texture memory in graphic rules maker ... 1000 or 14000? i have 16gb of ram.

Quote: Originally posted by simsample
Make sure your RAM and GPU are accurately identified.

I do not know how to do it :/


I have this in my user.startup because of some tutorials that I followed a long time ago, although they made my game work quite well, would it be time to delete some things?

uintProp lotSkirtSizeIncrease 120
boolProp allow45DegreeAngleOfRotation true
boolProp controlPets on
boolProp petActionCancel true
boolProp specHighlights true
boolProp floorAndWallNormalMapping true
boolProp bumpMapping true
boolProp skipTangentsInVertexData false
boolProp dontMergeNHFlora false


edit: I set the grm texture to 14gb and for now everything works, I noticed that when loading chrome to write this the memory fires, maybe my problem is that I open too many things in the background ...


edit2: everything is still broken


edit3: I don't understand it, I'm playing in downloaded neighborhoods without cc (fellbrige, emerald heights, jeans shaker) and everything works fine, I go from one community lot to another and no pink flashing ... only if I go to my custom neighborhoods with downloaded houses or cc buildings my game explodes. Am I doomed to play maxis match forever?

edit4: Ok, not true, my game has pink flash everywhere, only in cc free neighborhoods it takes a little longer to appear. I definitely did something that tore everything apart.
Screenshots
Mad Poster
#6 Old 8th Jan 2022 at 2:22 PM Last edited by simmer22 : 8th Jan 2022 at 10:47 PM.
I had the same problem, and this looks absolutely like the pink soup issue the tick box should fix - you definitely want to check if that line is properly enabled in your new GraphicsRules file. Check spesifically if this line is there (yes, even if you've ticked the box) in the GR files you've saved in the location of your latest EP/SP.
https://episims.tumblr.com/post/190...-helped-me-with (#2)

If you've saved the file directly to the ProgramFiles location (unless you've installed your game elsewhere), and you have Windows 10 (Windows in general could be an issue), it could be that the file hasn't saved properly. You usually need admin access to change files in there, and access may be blocked.

Ways around this could be to open GRM with admin priviligies, or save the GR files on the desktop and manually switch them out.

You can also try to change all the GR files for your EP/SPs - but in theory it should be enough to change it for the highest one (M&G if you have it, if not then whatever is your highest by release. Possibly the Store version if you have any of the original collection packs - don't know if this one comes with a GR file, but I think it's considered the highest if you have it).
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retired moderator
#7 Old 8th Jan 2022 at 4:12 PM
@Sokisims Could you show a screenshot of your C:\Users\[username]\Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Logs\ COMPUTERNAME-config-log.txt file? Also tell us what is the name of your graphics card, how much memory it has, and how much RAM your computer has? Should look something like this:



As you can see my poor old computer only has 4Gb RAM and a 1Gb Nvidia card, but the important thing is that the game has identified it correctly.
Screenshots
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#8 Old 8th Jan 2022 at 9:11 PM
How much CC do you have? For me pink flashing ramps up if I pass 14 gigs or if I have a lot of high textured defaults, trees or water.
I had to switch to lower default trees, remove some default hairs, compress some recolours, down the amount of overall water in my custom hood, remove a large ocean overlay that I had. Right now I have 13.8 and no pink in my Ubber hood. I find my custom hood still has some with the same download folder, it like it remembers being pink so I plan to do a remake of it and I plan to reduce sub hoods by one, the sub hood with the most water, Dolphin point.
Pink flashing often tends to be a collection of small things adding up. Even the SkirtSizeIncrease 120 may be adding just that tiny amount of extra to the list.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
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Original Poster
#9 Old 9th Jan 2022 at 6:54 AM
Hello! Thank you both to keep helping me with this. Somehow I managed to fix it. Thanks to your advice I was able to discard some things and I realized that I have a lighting mod. From the looks of it, the mod required some configuration in user.startup and it didn't have it right. So I fixed it by adding it to my file. (I also added the ones from pleasantsims). On the other hand, I had GRM give me an automatic configuration and it suggested disabling the shadows and raising the ram to something more than 14gb, I decided to give it a try and now the game works quite well until it reaches about 10gb of used memory. The pink flash still appears if I go with too many families or play too many hours, but of course my game has returned to its previous state and is playable well. I will take the opportunity to clean the clothes and optimize them more. I will also check my config-log.txt just in case.

This gave me a kind of answer to the pink flash problem. The memory gradually rises and does not go down until the game is closed. Maybe the solution would be to create a mod that clears / manages game memory while on?
Mad Poster
#10 Old 9th Jan 2022 at 7:34 AM
The Memory Allocation Fix is supposed to help with the memory issue by clearing the standby memory every 5 minutes, so you could try that: https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=610641
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#11 Old 9th Jan 2022 at 7:49 AM
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
The Memory Allocation Fix is supposed to help with the memory issue by clearing the standby memory every 5 minutes, so you could try that: https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=610641


I have it! If I didn't have it, my game wouldn't even last 2 minutes! xD I was referring to the fact that I verified that the memory in use, which I assume belongs to the game, keeps increasing even if you go from a huge house to a small one. It's as if the game saves every house and neighborhood I go to instead of removing them from the "cache."

I'm really just rambling, I already fixed the problem, my game already works as well as it can with current solutions.
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