Gary Lucero Writer

Category: Windows

  • Getting The Sims 3 to Work on a Modern Gaming PC

    Getting The Sims 3 to Work on a Modern Gaming PC

    EA’s The Sims 3 dates back to 2009. At that time, a typical gaming PC had an Intel Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad CPU, or an AMD Phenom II X4. The GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 275 were hot GPUs, as well as the AMD Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870. Most computers had 2 to 4GB RAM, and video cards had 512MG to 1GB RAM. Mechanical hard drives were all the rage.

    Today, those specs have been completely oblierated by even the cheapest modern gaming PC. And while EA has given The Sims 3 a few updates over the years, the game still can’t handle the CPUs, GPUs, or the available memory of current PCs. Gamers have had to rely on community modders and hackers to trick the game into believing it’s running on old PC hardware.

    Recently I spent a day and a half scouring the Internet with the help of Gemini, trying to get The Sims 3 working on my daughter’s PC, to no avail. I tried all the mods, all the hacks, but nothing worked. Later, she had some success by going through a ritual of uninstalling and reinstalling the game, and rebooting her PC. Sometimes she would have to do this for hours until she got it working.

    Enter Cursor.

    I gave it all the info I could find about how to get the game working, plus it performed online searches, and it created a patcher utility that it claimed would allow the game to run. But every time my daughter would patch the game, it wouldn’t work. In the end, I installed Cursor, Git, and GitHub CLI on my daughter’s PC, cloned the code, and worked with Cursor to investigate the issue.

    Cursor scoured the game’s installation folder, examined her saved games, and made fixes. I would test those fixes, provide feedback, and it made more changes. Finally, after a couple of hours of me inputting requirements then testing, the game started running reliably. Further testing, where I shut her PC down, powered it on again, and launched the game, proved it worked. Then I completely uninstalled and reinstalled The Sims 3, patched it, and tried the game.

    It worked.

    Now she can consistently run the game every day, and it works.

    If you’d like to try the patcher, you can install it from my GitHub repository.

    The Sims 3 Patcher Tool

    Please let me or the various Sims communities know if it helps you run the game reliably.

  • Video Game Violence Isn’t Violence

    Video Game Violence Isn’t Violence

    Just as I know that holding a conversation with AI isn’t the same as holding one with another human being, I know that killing virtual beings in a virtual universe isn’t the same as killing in the real world.

    When I started playing computer games in the early 1980s, graphics were primitive. Firing missiles and dropping bombs in the original F-15 Strike Eagle on the Commodore 64 required the suspension of disbelief because everything in the game, including the plane and the world, weren’t realistic looking.

    F-15 Strike Eagle

    It wasn’t long before programmers learned how to make computers like the C64 depict more realistic images. Then came along better hardware, such as the Atari ST and the Amiga. Now killing began to look like killing. Then PCs upped the ante by increasing the number of on-screen colors all the way up to 256, then to millions. This, along with the addition of more pixels and more powerful graphics cards, gave developers unbelievable power.

    By the early 1990s we had cringe-worthy video game violence. Games like Castle Wolfenstein, Mortal Combat, Doom, and more, showed gore that disgusted right-wing Christians and had moms asking for such games to be banned.

    Mortal Kombat

    Today there’s no question of whether violence is depicted with sufficient detail in modern video games. The hardware and software are more than capable, and it no longer requires you to imagine it. You only have to open your eyes to see.

    I’ll admit, I play a lot of violent games. And I’m not a big fan of little indie titles where farming, dating, or running a bookstore is the main focus. I prefer big, Triple-A RPGs, shooters, and similar where making progress involves killing bad guys.

    Castle Wolfenstein

    Sometimes they aren’t even bad guys.

    For example, I’m currently replaying the original WatchDogs, a game I’ve completed several times before. Here, you’re billed as The Vigilante, but the game lets you steal from common folk, shoot and run them over, assassinate people who are supposed to be bad, and otherwise wreak havoc on a simulated version of Chicago.

    Do I cringe as I kill and steal in a game like WatchDogs? I do. And I always have.

    But since I know what I’m doing has nothing to do with reality, and I’m not preparing myself to go out and kill in the real world, these feelings I feel as I kill virtual beings just serve to remind me that, yes, I am human, and yes, life is precious.

    That’s what we need to remember with whatever sort of entertainment we rely on.

    When we read, watch TV, play games, chat with AI, surf the Internet, etc., and what we’re experiencing makes us feel uneasy, and we wonder if maybe it’s reinforcing the worst in us, we are human, we value life, and we make a decision every day to preserve it.

  • Torment: Tides of Numenara

    Torment: Tides of Numenara

    If you are new to Torment: Tides of Numenera, the combat system might surprise you. While it eventually becomes manageable as you master cyphers and esoteries, it represents a departure from more traditional, action-oriented RPGs. 

    Combat Against The First

    Combat is framed around distinct, narrative-driven “Crises” where environmental interactions, stealth, and dialogue often take precedence over standard hack-and-slash fighting. It can feel clunky compared to other turn-based RPGs because characters move and attack slowly, actions lack physical punch, and the mechanics force players to constantly micro-manage three distinct stat pools just to boost hit percentages. 

    One of the Many Machines Created by The Changing God

    When you first start the game, you’re exposed to systems that seem unusual, especially when weighed against Dungeons and Dragons or other RPGs. The terminology and the whole world is alien. But it’s a consistent universe, one that is unflinching in its detail and story. 

    And then there’s the fact that it’s a fantastic game. It’s a game of immense choice, sprawling dialogue, and a vast array of science-fiction tropes.

    A Maw in the The Bloom

    Torment: Tides of Numenera explores advanced science-fiction tropes ranging from transhumanism, sentient artificial intelligence, and dimensional travel to biomechanical engineering and ancient cosmic phenomena. It centers on the concept of immortality achieved through synthetic body-hopping, investigating the psychological fallout of leaving behind a trail of abandoned, sentient clones. 

    An Encounter with The Sorrow in a Mere

    And it’s almost purely text-based. There is very little spoken dialogue, so prepare yourself to read from beginning to end. Fortunately, it’s exceptionally well written. You may not always understand it, but your mind and heart will be titillated the entire time.

    Torment: Tides of Numenera released in 2017 on Windows, Xbox One, PS4, Mac, and Linux. It has a 81 Metacritic score and a Mostly Positive user rating of 71% on Steam. And while it has similar mechanics to something like Disco Elysium, its developers, InXile Entertainment, created it as the spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment.

    Conversing with The Sorrow

    It definitely has a similar vibe and mechanics to both of those games, and while it’s vastly different in many ways, if you’re a fan of text-heavy games that payoff with choice and consequence, it’s a must-play RPG.

  • The MacBook Neo is a Gift to Windows

    The MacBook Neo is a Gift to Windows

    I’m not the target market for high-end laptops. I don’t care if my laptop is made from plastic or aluminum, has a screen with 500 nits of brightness or 200, and has audiophile quality speakers or sounds kind of terrible.

    I mostly want a laptop that can get the job done.

    Having said that, I realize many of you do care, which is why the MacBook Neo is important. It’s the MacBook for people who can’t afford a MacBook.

    The thing is, this is the wakeup call that the Windows platform has needed, and while it may have taken them years to catch up to the MacBook Air, it’s taking just a couple of months for them to catch up the Neo.

    It won’t be long before there are multiple colorful laptops from every manufacturer that match the Neo in not only price, but in features. They’ll have better build quality then we usually see at this price point, as well as top-notch screens, trackpads, and speakers. They’ll soon match or exceed those of the Neo, and Apple and the rest will be locked in a battle of who can build the best sub-$1000 laptop.

    In other words, Apple has gifted Windows with the best present it could ever have thought of. Not only did it wake up Asus, Dell, and many others, but Microsoft is now actively improving Windows, desperately trying to prove to the world that it’s still the operating system to beat.

    It won’t be long before we see these improvements make a huge difference in how Windows works, how reliable it is, and how easy and pleasant it is to use. We’ll all have access to our own low-cost Windows laptops that provide quality multitasking that I expect will beat anything Apple can do.

    This should signal to Apple that they need to up their game, provide a new Neo that beats not only the original, but also all of the quality Windows laptops that came in its wake.

    Now we just need to wait.