The Sims 3 might be about to make a huge comeback thanks to new mod

An upcoming mod for The Sims 3 might be about to bring the game back in a huge way thanks to a big improvement.

Many fans agree that while The Sims 3 was incredible for its time, a lot technical issues were present that got in the way of that potential.

The open world gameplay, combined with the huge amount of customisation options was incredibly taxing on computer hardware at the time.

For example, the game only ran on a maximum of two CPU cores, meaning it couldn't take advantage of computers with more advanced CPUs, which would lead to performance hitches and crashes when too much was loaded in.

It was also made on a 32-bit engine, which was pretty normal for 2009, but for a game with a huge custom content and modding community, presented some big limitations when it came to loading content.

All of this to say that The Sims 3 had incredible potential, even if the technical issues the game faced got in the way of that sometimes.

A new mod may be about to change all that though.

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The Sims 3 is getting a 64-bit engine upgrade as part of a mod

OpenTS3 is a mod currently in development which upgrades the engine to 64-bit, using your own installed content and the original gameplay code.

This should improve many aspects about the game, such as how assets are loaded in-game, how responsive it is, as well as improving overall performance.

The big thing here is the removal of the 4 GB of RAM limit.

32-bit engines can only access 2³² bytes of memory, which translates to 4 GB of RAM. If you have a lot of in-game objects trying to load, either official or modded, and it goes beyond this limit, your game may slowdown or even crash.

However, an upgrade to 64-bit essentially improves this by expanding the available memory a program can use to 16 exabytes. For PCs with 8 GB, 16 GB, or 32 GB of RAM, you'll be able to load in a lot more content without the game suffering any slowdowns or crashes.

Other improvements that the engine upgrade should see includes higher minimum framerates, as well as compatibility with future operating systems and hardware.

There's no release date for OpenTS3 yet, but you can keep track of the project over on the mod's official website.

Game engines being upgraded from 32-bit to 64-bit is pretty common for any franchise that has a heavy modding community.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim famously upgraded to a 64-bit version of the Creation Engine when Bethesda released Skyrim Special Edition in 2016, allowing more mods to be loaded in without players running into errors.

Other games that have received 64-bit engine upgrades include World of Warcraft, Half-Life 2, and more recently, Payday 2.

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