Hypothetical questions

[fff]

Right, let's just say that out of interest, I decide to take a Sim from, say, Strangetown - Nervous Subject, perhaps - and ship him across to Pleasantview to throw in with the Pleasants.

I know that this is a Bad Idea, because JMP said so, which is why this is strictly a hypothetical question. But what I'd like to know is, WHY? Why is it bad? What will happen, exactly? What levels of buggered-up-ness are we talking about here? Will it screw up one 'hood? Two? Trash my entire game? Destroy my hard-drive?

I need to know these things!

Also - another question, this time, not so hypothetical  .... if I move a house (empty, uninhabited, never even played before) from one 'hood to another, will this screw things up too?

[SJActress]

To answer your second question...I asked a similar question within the forum.  If you search my posts you should find it.  As for the first one, I'm too dumb to figure it out.

Oh, here's the link to the post I was talking about:  http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=124.msg2518#msg2518

[Liss]

When you move characters from one 'hood to another, the character keeps memories of everyone he's ever met.  So for example, if you moved Nervous to another neighborhood, he would carry all the character files with him of anyone he's ever had contact with into the other hood.  So the result is that when you go to your neighborhood file, there will be a buttload of unlinked character files in the second neighborhood.

[fff]

So the result is that when you go to your neighborhood file, there will be a buttload of unlinked character files in the second neighborhood.

Thanks Liss - okay, so it's the unlinked character files that are bad, right?

Great-big-flaming-ball-visible-from-space bad, or just a bit inconvenient? I'm just a very inquisitive sort, that's all, and while I can accept JMP telling us NOT to do this (being how he is More Awesome etc.) I just would like to know WHY and WHAT IF?!! 

[gali]

My opinion is, that as long as you  *don't*  have "same-doubled" characters in the same neighbourhood (Kayliyin, Remington), nothing will happen.

I moved many times the Grunt family to a new neighbourhood, because I wanted to play only them, and they didn't have any friends in Strangetown - only enemies. I added to them lately  the Beakers. The game runned smoothly.

I moved Olive, Nervous, and Ophelia (which married him) to Pleasantview - and the game runned smoothly.

These are "unique" characters, and you can move them freely - nothing will happen.

But if you move NPCs, like the maids, gardeners, etc - you are going to be in trouble, because they are "doubled"....

[witch]

double trouble! 

[SimsHost]

...Great-big-flaming-ball-visible-from-space bad, or just a bit inconvenient? ...

In my case, it meant starting up the game one morning and finding that two entire neighborhoods were wiped out, with only two survivors left to repopulate the world.  (Ref: The Bomb That Wiped Out Happy Valley.) 

As best I can tell, the bomb was triggered by a combination of duplicated sims and the existence of pre-patch households in the neighborhood.  To this day, I do not know exactly what caused the bomb or why one couple survived. 

My strong recommendation is that if you want to clone sims in a new neighborhood, take the time to make notes about their personalities, skills, relationships, and even memories if that's important to you.  Then make clones in SimPE and use SimPE and cheats to rebuild them in a different neighborhood.

[Oddysey]

It's not just duplicate sims that are a problem. It's phantom sims that don't actually exist in the neighborhood but still have character files because the sim you moved had to have someone to refer to in his family tree. It's much easier, especially with a sim like Nervous who is related to a fairly substantial number of people and has some pre-existing relationships, to just remake him in SimPE rather than actually moving him.

And, I think that the game usually botches the process of moving and imports a bunch of character files that have nothing but random junk in them.

The more character files = the more sims there are to search through using the crappy Maxis made sim-search routines = the more likely your neighborhood will explode and do other weird things when you do something that activates these routines, like using the phone.

[SimsHost]

Right.  Each of the playable duplicated sims created a host of blank or corrupted sims--both relatives and people they knew.

We really need a utility that will clean out that mess from a neighborhood.  It's possible to do it manually, but if you want to remove a corrupted sim you have to go through all the memories of every sim in the neighborhood and delete all memories of the corrupted sim; and then go through the relationships tables and do the same thing.

[Liss]

Before I started coming here, I had no idea that this caused problems.  But then I thought back to before Uni came out, when I had a monster "alpha" neighborhood with 6 or 7 generations, plus all the characters I had played in Strangetown moved in.  I had the jump bug etc. in that neighborhood and got rid of it.  However, I was very attached to those particular sims.  I have since duplicated sims from those neighborhoods (which I didn't know was BAD) and started new neighborhoods with them.  I haven't had any problems so far (probably because of all of JMP's mods) but if I try to go through them in Sim PE, there is a horrible amount of duplicate and unlinked sims.  One of these neighborhods has over 3000 character files, and I haven't actually played the neighborhood.

From what I understand, this is how the "too many sims" problems start. 

Since I found all this out, I have started new neighborhoods and immediately used deleteAllCharacters before I start, and generate townies as I want them.  OR, recently, I have started playing Veronaville, and created absolutely NO CAS sims.  It was more playable than I expected.