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Vulkan on Sims 3
Short story: it works (for me) and there’s some improvements YMMV.
Semi-long story:
If your computer / Sims 3 knowledge is basic avoid doing any of this, there’s very little support on the web and I won’t take any responsibility if you end breaking your game / computer.
Tested on Windows 10 1903 (x64) with the latest monthly update, this might work on Windows 7 but probably not on XP/Vista.To run The Sims 3 under Vulkan you need three things:
- a modern gpu with the latest drivers
- 7-zip (or any other program with .tar support)
- change windows’s environment variables
Before doing anything BACKUP YOUR GAME specially your ‘options.ini’ because doing this will cause a change in the ‘lastdevice =’ line and that automatically resets ALL YOUR SETTINGS. By making a backup you can copy the new ‘lastdevice=’ into your original options.ini and then swap it to have all your settings back. Obviously if you want to revert things you will have to backup the file again in advance.
Still here?
Go to the D9VK project page and download the latest release which will give you a .tar.gz file, if you uncompress it twice you will eventually find two folders: ‘x32’ and ‘x64’, for this game go inside ‘x32’ and extract ‘d3d9.dll’ inside your ‘Bin’ folder (the location of your ‘TS3W.exe’ file). If you want to uninstall it just delete the file (backup option.ini first).
That’s it, start your game and after a couple of seconds it should start, you will see D9VK’s HUD:
If you receive an error disable any ‘compatibility mode’ you might added to TS3W.exe ,if keeps happening disable any game overlay or just stop because finding the yeti looks easier than finding help (maybe on steam’s forums).
To disable the HUD add this environment variable to Windows:
DXVK_HUD 0
Also add:
DXVK_LOG_LEVEL none
On my PC (Ryzen 1400@3.6Ghz / GeForce 1050 2Gb / 8Gb DDR4@2999Mhz / Basic SSD) the game took 30 seconds less to load (3min 32s), nothing to be excited I know. Once inside the game I found moving the camera felt snappier, then I started to jump between lots which normally generates stutter before returning to full speed, under Vulkan I got fewer. I know stutters can be caused by reading assets from a slow / fragmented disk, a low-end CPU, bad CC, a stuck sim, etc. But I can testify that, compared to the original and ancient DirectX 9 API, Vulkan was indeed making stuff “faster”, how much improvement will you see? I cannot tell, your hardware and game might be completely different (for example, I don’t use “heavy” mods like OKW that change the game entirely).
On a sidenote, Rivatuner and Borderless Gaming still worked and so taking screenshots within the game, taking video did not but there are dozens of better alternatives (the windows gamebar works on borderless, on full screen the HUD didn’t show but it recorded). Could this work on The Sims 4? Maybe(?) I removed Origin sometime ago, another brave soul will have to test it (probably you'll need to use the 'd3d9.dll' file contained in the 'x64' folder instead)
In general using Vulkan on different games can indeed improve framerate but not always, also D9VK is still in early development so bugs and crashes might occur and of course it wasn’t supposed to be used by Windows users, but here we are
Thanks for reading I stopped making blog posts but because this worked (again, on my particular case) and because info is very scarce I wanted to share.UPDATE 1:
One caveat of using d9vk is that all the extra settings you can apply using Nvidia’s Control Panel just won’t work, that means you have to use the game’s antialiasing solution which isn’t that bad but Sims 3 lacks anisotropic filtering.
You can fix that by creating a file named ‘dxvk.conf’ in the same directory your ‘TS3W.exe’ resides (also the same were you install d9vk), inside that file include the next line of text:
d3d9.samplerAnisotropy = 16
16 is the number of samples, historically anisotropic is the least demanding of graphical options so it shouldn’t affect your fps.
There’re more options available but finding information for d9vk is a royal PITA, hence why I decided to document my experience so far, the good news is that besides forcing anisotropic Sims 3 works pretty good or at least I haven’t found a trouble in all this time using it.
This was tested with 441.20 drivers, using d9vk 0.30 on Windows 1909.
UPDATE 2:
With the latest drivers (441.41) Nvidia enabled ‘Image Sharpening’ for Vulkan, in short it works with D9VK. Does it makes a big difference? For normal simming I’ll say no, terrain textures like grass and dirt look better, skin textures and makeup also look nicer but you have to zoom-in or stand still to notice. Everything else: furniture and clothes didn’t show a big enough improvement, thankfully image sharpening doesn’t tax your GPU, according to review sites the impact is about 6%, personally I didn’t noticed any.
This probably might work better mixed with a HD mod, BUT, at least the one made by Simsl3gacies eats more than 2GB of VRAM on my computer creating a massive slowdown. This doesn’t happen when going back to DirectX 9.
Finally the latest update to Reshade has experimental support for Vulkan, have yet to test it but for DX9 it offers more options and customization beyond just sharpening
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If you want to recreate your ME1 character from scratch in ME2 by converting slider values into a ME2 face code, here's how to do it. It's very simple, but you need to know what the slider values were for your ME1 character.
CONVERSION TABLE:
SpoilerSlider Value: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
Face Code Value: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Y ZExample:
Spoiler
Below are the slider values and the corresponding face code values according to the conversion table given above. Note that * is the value for the scar slider which isn't supported in ME2.
Spoiler7 5 3 11 || 31 12 16 16 1 12 12 || 1 10 15 16 16 1 1 || 20 1 1 10 || 10 1 1 16 16 || 6 5 11 || 4 9 16 4 || 6 1 6
7 5 3 * || W C G G 1 C C || 1 A F G G 1 1 || K 1 1 A || A 1 1 G G || 6 5 B || 4 9 G 4 || 6 1 6
Now let's put all these values into groups of three and add a dot between each group in order to form the face code, ignoring the value for the scar slider (*)...
ME2 Face Code: 753.WCG.G1C.C1A.FGG.11K.11A.A11.GG6.5B4.9G4.616
Here's how it looks like in ME2:
Spoiler
PS. If you want to get ME1 slider values from a ME2 face code (i.e. the opposite of the method described here) you can use this tool here.
Spoiler
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Vault Bimbos in Peril, Issue #2!
Finally got some time to start on issue #2. Wendy is trapped in the Fallout world and as confused as ever. With the help and advice from lots of folks here and in the community I've upped my production values for this issue. Modded my environment and I have to say the outdoor shots look much better.
In any case here's a sneak peek at page one before inserting dialogue and other graphics.
Enjoy!
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[Vault 21, Entry #05] Exposition and World Building
Continued from [Vault 21, Entry #04]... Right click on an image and select 'open in a new window' to see them full-sized. Enjoy.
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Androgyne Raider Sluts and Slaves uploaded!
The first clothing and armor mod for the Androgyne body is now available! Check out Raider Sluts and Slaves for Androgyne Type3!
I'm going to take a short break from modding but when I return the next project will be more Androgyne race specific clothing (merc outfits, gamblers, prostitutes, etc.).
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