There-But-Not-There Sims

[DrNerd]

My Riverblossom Hills was getting uncomfortably glitchy, so I restored a backup.  The problem is that my backup seems wonky too.

I have all EPs through Seasons, fully patched, and H&M.  Problem occurs even after pulling Downloads/Hacks.

I have two households with Sims who are there, but not really there.  Their thumbnails show up in the side panel, but they're invisible in the house, the plumbbobs flicker in and out, and they can't interact with anything or be interacted with.  I've tried adding someone to the household and using the Lot Debugger to Force Error, and nothing changes.  I've tried moving them in and out of lots, and nothing changes.  If I save the lot, exit, and re-enter, they disappear completely, no side panel thumbnails, no nothing, like they were never even there.  I haven't found a way to kill them, so I can't rez them to see if that makes them normal again.  I assume this is occuring because the character files were corrupt when I made the backup.

Is there anything else I can do to try to get them back or fix the character files?  All my characters are extracted and safely ensconced in another neighborhood for ease of cloning, but I'd rather salvage them if I can, so I don't have to try and repair the family trees and relationships in SimPE.  And if I do have to remake them, will it re-kill my 'hood if I name the doppelgangers the same thing as the originals (the clones latching on to whatever bits of character files from the originals are floating around in the ether, like)?

[ZephyrZodiac]

Have you checked in SimPE to see if they have, by some mischance, become unlinked?

[Sivany]

And if I do have to remake them, will it re-kill my 'hood if I name the doppelgangers the same thing as the originals (the clones latching on to whatever bits of character files from the originals are floating around in the ether, like)?

This shouldn't be a problem since the game goes by the numbers of the character files in order to link them together. New sims would be given a new number and therefore the game would never know they were in any way linked to the old sims of that name.

[DrNerd]

Have you checked in SimPE to see if they have, by some mischance, become unlinked?

They don't show up in SimPE.

It's been suggested that I nuke the 'hood and rebuild from scratch.  Probably safest.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I've cleaned up hoods with just these kind of problems and they play fine.  Did you move your back-up in, or copy it over?  If you copied it over, try removing all the files for that neighbourhood and copying the complete folder in again, and then defrag and reboot.  If the characters are still not showing in SimPE, try uninstalling, reinstalling SimPE to force it to look harder. 

If, as I understand it, you have two copies of the same sim, then when you check in the Sim Browser you will probably find that only one is a normal size, the other being only about 35 kb, the same as unlinked ghosts, and will also be flagged with no character data.  However, it will probably be the larger file which shows as unlinked, so you need to relink the larger file - which will have lost all it's relationships etc.  However, that information is probably contained in the smaller ncd file, so you can open that file, make a note of all the missing information and then open the "person" sim's file and restore all those details, memories and relationships.  After you have done that, there are safe ways of deleting the "game object" file, which is covered by JM in the Deleted 2:Electric Boogaloo! instructions. 

[witch]

If the characters are still not showing in SimPE, try uninstalling, reinstalling SimPE to force it to look harder.

Bad software! Bad!

Seriously ZZ, uninstalling and reinstalling SimPE won't make it work harder. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

Joke, Joyce!  I meant that sometimes if you reinstall it, then sims it didn't recognise before will be recognised by the new install - I've had it happen.

[DrNerd]

Well, I've cleaned up hoods with just these kind of problems and they play fine.  Did you move your back-up in, or copy it over?  If you copied it over, try removing all the files for that neighbourhood and copying the complete folder in again, and then defrag and reboot.  If the characters are still not showing in SimPE, try uninstalling, reinstalling SimPE to force it to look harder. 

If, as I understand it, you have two copies of the same sim, then when you check in the Sim Browser you will probably find that only one is a normal size, the other being only about 35 kb, the same as unlinked ghosts, and will also be flagged with no character data.  However, it will probably be the larger file which shows as unlinked, so you need to relink the larger file - which will have lost all it's relationships etc.  However, that information is probably contained in the smaller ncd file, so you can open that file, make a note of all the missing information and then open the "person" sim's file and restore all those details, memories and relationships.  After you have done that, there are safe ways of deleting the "game object" file, which is covered by JM in the Deleted 2:Electric Boogaloo! instructions. 

I'm not super computer-savvy when it comes to messing around in programming like that, let alone with SimPE.

I did install the version of SimPE for BV, and the Sims in question still don't show up.  Definitely a frustrating situation.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Have you tried running Clean Installer through that Character Files folder?

Also, maybe if you delete the NeighborhoodManager.package file and then load up your game, the missing characters will generate so that SimPE can read them.