Creating Custom Neighborhoods: My Learnings

[Lion]

I was hoping "destroyallhumans" wipes the game clean. In fact, I re-started this way several times now on the same Riverview hood that I madeover over time with new lots.  As I opened the last save with s3pe to get sim thumbnails of my current hood, by exporting all SNAP, I found that the save still retains EVERY SINGLE sim that ever existed, at least in the form of thumbnails.

Therefore, I can't help but wonder if "destroyallhumans" really cleans out all sims in a hood. Also, can I clean out all those outdated thumbnails in the save by right-click -> Deleted?  Will that destroy my game?

In addition, what's a good way to get rid of the dead from the graveyard? I want a completely empty hood, with no "humans", nor ghosts.

[J. M. Pescado]

I was hoping "destroyallhumans" wipes the game clean.

It does.

As I opened the last save with s3pe to get sim thumbnails of my current hood, by exporting all SNAP, I found that the save still retains EVERY SINGLE sim that ever existed, at least in the form of thumbnails.

Thumbnail Detritus is a seperate problem unrelated to destroyallhumans, though. Thumbnail Detritus occurs even if you merely change a sim's uniforms.

Therefore, I can't help but wonder if "destroyallhumans" really cleans out all sims in a hood. Also, can I clean out all those outdated thumbnails in the save by right-click -> Deleted?  Will that destroy my game?

s3rc includes an option to cleanse save files of thumbnail detritus.

In addition, what's a good way to get rid of the dead from the graveyard? I want a completely empty hood, with no "humans", nor ghosts.

Destroy their tombstones.

[Lion]

I went ahead and deleted all those SNAPs last night on a test save. WTH, I thought. The save file size was reduced from 42 MB to 30 MB, and after I ran s3rc, and size was further reduced to 27 MB  . And the SNAPs were re-generated as I played along, i.e., after I played one family, all the family members and the people they know have their thumbnails generated.

No noticeable reduction in saving time though. Mine has ballooned from just under 1 min to 10 min now.

s3rc includes an option to cleanse save files of thumbnail detritus.

I don't know how to turn on that option, but subjecting the save file merely to s3rc does not eliminate those SNAPs.

In addition, what's a good way to get rid of the dead from the graveyard? I want a completely empty hood, with no "humans", nor ghosts.

Destroy their tombstones.

I asked because, one the one hand, when I simply destroyed those tombstones already in the Riverview graveyard (nuke or eliminate from the world), they still showed up as dead in the NRaas SuperComputer, so I resurrected them all and used "destroyallnpcs" which got rid of them. On the other hand, I experimented with the SuperComputer's "force kill" on some aged up paper boys, and then had one playable to "manage the dead" and threw their tombstones to the trash can, the paper boys were gone as far as I can tell (i.e., not showing up as dead or anywhere else).

[J. M. Pescado]

So I guess what I'm wondering is, what's going on inside the game that makes it decide when and when not to immigrate new Sims?  And can I force it to stop deciding not to immigrate new Sims?

EA storymode appears to want to purge all sims in your neighborhood, and will do so by attempting to evict them all. This is apparent when you have story notification on, and watch as the game repeatedly tries to "Move out" sim famblies. Of course, AwesomeMod will not permit this, so they instead get bounced to another house. The game will not be satisfied with this and will then proceed to continue to throw the same event over and over, in sufficient quantity to empty your entire neighborhood many times over. Basically, EA storymode is hopeless and will not generate actions that have any coherence or logic. A story written by EA storymode would be as if a book had all of its pages torn out and then reassembled in random order, then merged with a similar but unrelated book that had been subjected to the same treatment, with half the resulting pages then deleted at random. The resulting story thus lacks any coherent plot or narrative and makes absolutely no sense beyond a single page.

[Lion]

running s3rc from the console

And how do I do that? I tried "Run..." in the Start. It isn't it, is it?

[J. M. Pescado]

Start -> Run -> "cmd". Behold, Ye Olde DOSSE mode.

[tizerist]

Start -> Run -> "cmd". Behold, Ye Olde DOSSE mode.

What happens after that? This is all I got...


I have been dragging my save files onto s3rc, often trimming about 5mb. Does that do the same job?

[Mootilda]

You have an outdated version.  Download the latest version and try again.

[tizerist]

You have an outdated version.  Download the latest version and try again.

Right, got the (slightly) newer version. Same scenario. Is the command I am putting in correct?

[Lion]

I got it to work. Put both s3rc.exe and your save file (e.g., Riverview.sims3) inside C:\Users\tizerist, for example, and enter "s3rc" in the command, it will show all options. And if you enter "s3rc -s Riverview.sims3", it will compress it.

[jwaas]

EA storymode appears to want to purge all sims in your neighborhood, and will do so by attempting to evict them all. This is apparent when you have story notification on, and watch as the game repeatedly tries to "Move out" sim famblies. Of course, AwesomeMod will not permit this, so they instead get bounced to another house. The game will not be satisfied with this and will then proceed to continue to throw the same event over and over, in sufficient quantity to empty your entire neighborhood many times over.

I think I understand now.  This is fully consistent with what I saw happen in my hood, twice, if I hadn't intervened and pumped in a bunch of Sims.  It would almost seem that, failing to emigrate Sims (now that the latest patch brings along its own version of No One Gets Out Alive), the game digs in its heels and prevents marriage and spawning outside of The One Fambly, by way of continuing in its quest to rid your hood of all Sim life.

This time, I made over 50 new Sims in about a dozen display-grade famblies in CAS, including some single Young Adults of both genders, and moved them all into cheap display-grade houses.  Within two Sim days, I saw the first marriage, immigration, and fambly-move notices in the paper in about three Sim weeks.  (Oddly, the marriage was between newly-generated townies, not between any of the eight available young and mature adults that I had made.)  My older teenager became a young adult and I kicked him out, though I expect he will never marry or father children, and will die alone if I persist in not using the AwesomeMod, even though there are three eligible young adult women available.  I have yet to see a birth notice in the paper that doesn't involve my One Fambly since long before the mature adult father was born.

I've been (stubbornly, I know) running an unmodded Story Mode for most of the time I've had TS3, as kind of a control experiment.  I wanted to see whether it was really as bad as I heard from several sources, including this website.  Now, about five generations later, I'm coming to the conclusion that it is worse than I ever expected, and if anything worse than I'd heard.  In fact, I believe it gets worse and worse the longer you play out a given hood.  It may very well be that this hood is now so screwed up that even using the AwesomeMod will never bring it back into balance.

The one new toy I have is Buzzler's Birth Control Mirror, which if I understand it correctly, will at least allow me to control the begetting of future generations outside my One Fambly.  Time will tell whether I eventually tire of micromanaging my hood that closely.