The good news is that the latest, tip or master branch of DXVK works, but the one on the DXVK releases page is busted. Hopefully a new release of DXVK will come soon and I can restore that link over D9VK's releases page.

For those who want to take screenshots: While FRAPS doesn't work, MSI Afterburner does.

Make sure to install RivaTuner, add the Sims 2's executable as a profile, and set its detection to high. Also don't forget to set a screenshot key in Afterburner's settings.

I mention this in my guide but I'll repeat it here. FRAPS really doesn't work for video either with DXVK/D9VK. I highly recommend OBS as an alternative but it doesn't have an explicit screenshot button. Though, I never realized people would use FRAPS for recording screenshots either.

I think Dxtory also has Vulkan support, at least in the newer versions. It costs money though.

Thought I should post here and say this is not a fix for Windows 7, it actually made my pink flashing worse and I have removed it.

Bumping this thread to mention that there was another instance of a modern AMD 5700 XT card made working by this guide:

https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=636374

What did help me and is worth it for anyone on an NVIDEA card is making the graphics card do the smooth edges instead of the game.

How to use hardware rendered smooth edges
https://celebkiriedhel.tumblr.com/p...h-edges-for-ts2

Hi, this might seem a little weird, but can I be credited in the guide? I'm a friend of Tannis who worked side-by-side with him to do a lot of the bug hunting and testing with d9vk and wined3d on Linux. I create all of my custom content using Linux, (https://redplaysthesims.tumblr.com/tagged/s2cc) I helped Alex to get TS2 to a playable state on Linux, and I am a little hurt because even tho Tannis said that he told you to credit both of us, you only credited him, which did hurt a little. I wouldn't want my efforts on getting TS2 to work properly be thrown like that. Thanks!

Oh! No problem. I'll put you in.

HI there.

I'm a bit at a loss. I've been playing the same universe of sims for over a decade now - and I just can't get my neighborhood/cc/sims working on my computer. I'm also not that techincally great with computer stuff honestly (my ex used to help me with all of these things) but is there anyone on here that can help walk me through this process? I'm terrified I'm going to mess it all up and ruin things, but I miss playing my sims game so much. Any help would be appreciated.

I think I got @KingFresca working. I'm still not sure if @KingFresca actually needed it though (The 1050 Ti has 4GB of VRAM) but @KingFresca is able to launch the game and it's not weirdly doing the purple stuff.

@crazysim - Trying DXVK again because the game keeps running out of video memory generating thumbnails.

I'm not sure if you use MSI Afterburner/RivaTuner, but if you do, have you any luck getting the OSD to actually show up on DXVK? I've set application detection level in Riva to 'high' and tried the different rendering modes, but I can't seem to get it to consistently stay up (although I have seen it briefly appear when changing settings). I like to be able to monitor the FPS.

Here's my current settings if you need them

I don't have any experience with RivaTuner. Some googling led to this: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/s...the-osd.427289/ . Maybe try this?

I actually got it working by setting the coordinate space to Framebuffer.

I also found that Raster 3D caused some weird crashes, while Vector 3D didn't.

I...think I messed up.



Weirdly enough, it did work when I tried it last month.

EDIT: I also had to use the 1.5.1 version as 1.5.3 caused instant crash on launch.

Can I suggest making one edit to the tutorial?

Backup userProps.xml file before launching the game with dxvk.

Granted, this is probably covered by the "backup the entire folder!" thing, but I've noticed running with d3d9.dll in the folder modifies both activeDeviceNum and activeDeviceList (and potentially others, but I didn't go through the file line-by-line), which may result in problems if the DLL is later removed.

Ooh I might have to veto that. The guide is already long enough as is. Like you said, the backup the entire folder thing should cover it.

you DID get me working!!!! Thank you so much!

Hi Crazysim,

I'm having a few difficulties running the sims 2. I followed the guide and also installed the d3d9 file (and the conf file) which crashed my computer. I then decided to edit the conf file and only allow 100 available memory. The sims 2 ran perfectly, however I noticed that the sim UI portraits, relationship sim thumbnails and the household family "portraits" (when picking a household in the neighbourhood when it first boots up) were gone. I tried to edit the dxvk.conf file to include more memory (I assumed there maybe isn't enough memory), but any time I increase it over 150 it crashes. I'm a little bit at a loss on how proceed and would welcome any help.

Thanks in advance

Edit - just some extra information: I'm running windows 10, graphics card is Geforce GT 710, and I have updated the drivers through the Nvidia app.

I would also include the Sims2EP9_d3d9 but I'm getting an invalid file type when trying to attach? It does show an error though (err: D3D9: Reporting out of memory from tracking) which I'm guessing is related to the memory in the conf file?

I heard about this two weeks ago from 1teslacourt in the PleasantSims Discord but just got around to testing it: boolProp disableTexMemEstimateAdjustment true in Graphic Rules.sgr . By default, texture memory adjustment is only disabled on Intel cards. Adding this seems to make the game no longer adjust its texture memory shenanigans to a crashing point. It doesn't help with the force texture memory stuff though as the game still erroneously detects 32Mb on Windows 10 so that will still need to be done. This is something I haven't seen been promoted before as a solution. The only place I've seen it mentioned is here which is also where 1teslacourt got it from: https://episims.tumblr.com/post/190...-helped-me-with. I believe only step 2 is effective which is boolProp disableTexMemEstimateAdjustment true.

This setting apparently makes the game not crash when forcing DXVK and/or The Sims 2 to high memory such as in the dxvk.conf to 4096 and the game to 4095 of texture memory. In fact, I'm able to run a super heavily loaded CC game without the weird purple stuff on Marnstar's, a heavy machinima creator, save. No crashes either. The performance was much crappier though. That said, I think DXVK still has a place in people looking for higher and stable FPS ("I shouldn't be getting 30FPS on my RTX 2080!") but it might not be required for stability. I'll give it a run over the next week or two and see how I might go about adjusting the guide. Also, this is a toggle that could probably be added to Graphics Rule Maker so maybe I'll send in a pull request to get it in there.

DXVK as a compatibility thing might not be required anymore. It still may serve a major purpose as a performance enhancement though.

Super excited!

@crazysim - you can't find other places that mention it because I found about that variable just a few weeks ago! (episims is my tumblr if that isn't clear). Which is kinda stupid since I've read through my Graphic Rules file so many times looking for something just like that, I can't believe I missed it before just now :'D especially when the note that's attached to that variable is pretty ominous after all.

I totally agree with you that DirectX/3D emulators still help with FPS drops. I noticed the same thing with a program called DxWnd when I tried to fix my game with it in the past. I have no idea why is that, though.

But I'm just very, very happy to see that this is actually working for so many. A part of me still can't believe it. I tried to fix my own game for a year or so when I still was on Win10 myself and finally just gave up and moved everything to Win7, and now I accidentally find something that works for Win10 too? Huh.

The Graphics Rule Maker dev is now aware of it. Without GRM support, the value is removed whenever GRM is used. So here's to hoping to a GRM version that is cognizant of that setting. I'll probably be making the changes to the DXVK guide, semi-retiring it as a compatibility guide and simply as a performance option guide and probably create a new explicit guide for this option explicitly if and when the newer Graphics Rule Maker tool is released. Hopefully not if, but if it comes to that, I'll look at forking it and patching it myself to support the option.

I've had sooooo many issues, even pink-flashing in Bodyshop - but adding that line to the GraphicRules (both of them) seems to have fixed Bodyshop completely! I've just been cloning a bunch of sims without seeing so much as a tiny piece of pink, despite having pink-flashing and/or crashing already happen after sim 3 or 4 the last time I tried.

I have yet to try ingame, but considering how well it worked for Bodyshop, I'm very hopeful it will work for my game as well.

Maaaaybe I'll be lucky and I don't have to restart my story hood. Maybe... *crosses fingers*
But probably best to do some sim backups first.

EDIT: My game is still in pink hell on-lot in my old neighborhood (neighborhood looks perfectly fine - not a single sign of any pink), but it did manage to load a lot it previously crashed on, so it could be some borkage from that previous time (before it crashed and died - so much for the hour I spent waiting for the game and lot to load up). Maybe the DXVK and all the other previous things I've tried are somehow crashing together into a heap of my game not knowing what to do with itself...
- Are lots affected by removing a light mod (or rather by not installing the old one I had)?
- And could the game be affected by trying to play a neighborhood from a CD-version (all games as singles) on the UC?

I hope not, but at this point I'm about 50/50 in the "should I restart the neighborhood and make it better (which would take a lot of time and effort) or should I try to fix the old one (which is probably a bit borked from having been played for about 9-10 years)?" On one hand it's very tempting to start over, but I know I'll need to clean up most of the lots, do the whole empty templates thing (Pleasantview is not the best hood to start out in, seeing as it's borked from the get-go...), remake a ton of sims, setting up everything, and so forth. But it would absolutely look nicer, and probably wouldn't be spread over 2-3 neighborhoods like it is now. Well, maybe two. And I could ditch all the sims and lots I don't need, using some nice neighborhood deco instead (unless pink-hell hits again).

@simmer22 The still pink hell neighborhood:

* (This will be incompatible with the stock DXVK configuration at the moment, rename DXVK's d3d9.dll away from that name to not use DXVK.)
* Ensure GRM or whatever GRM uses to force texture memory is at 4095
* Ensure that disableTexMemEstimateAdjustment directive is still in the SGR (saving in GRM will remove it)
* Ensure that before testing, the cache files are removed.

Though, if you want to keep using DXVK for a performance boost:

* Keep d3d9.dll the same name.
* Ensure the latest version of DXVK is used
* Ensure "d3d9.maxAvailableMemory" setting in dxvk.conf is at 4096

I haven't gotten around to writing a new guide yet as a beta. I'm waiting for GRM to come out with support for the SGR stuff first. That said, give it a try!

I think I finally managed to make it work. I'm so happy I could cry. Sometimes the UI portraits flash pink, but that's about it. I visited a bunch of community lots in a row, in a high CC neighborhood. I threw a big party. No pink. I haven't tried CAS so far, but I have big hopes.

What I did wrong before it worked:

- I didn't remove the dxgi.dll from my bin folder. The instructions mentioned that I shouldn't copy it, so I didn't copy it. But I didn't remove the one already in the folder. SO REMOVE IT

Everything worked perfectly. But the next time I loaded the game, the pink was back. What I did:

- I removed the dxvk cache file. I have to do it everytime before I load the game, but since then I had no problems. Well, I get the occasional crash, but as long as it doesn't happen too often, I'm okay with that.

Thank you so much for working on this fix, I can finally play my game on high settings in peace.