I had two hoods that I run, my regular hood, quite large (just over a 1000 characters--most of the Maxis townies). and a small 'test' hood, a version of Strangetown.
I really hate townies. I want to delete all the townies form my main hood. Only I don't want a BOFVFS. So I am 'learning' how to get rid of the townies on the test hood first.
So far, I have used SimPE, trying to get rid of them thru sim description which is the only place to see all the sims--the dups AND what I found to be 'lost' sims. But deleting a sim description doesn't work.
So I have two questions:
Is there a way in SimPE to generate some kind of listing of sims and character file numbers which will enable a fast 'go find the damn character file and delete it' which WILL work (and yes, I realize there's gonna be other cleanup work to do on the remaining sims to make the hood work--like cleaning up memories etc).
Is it possible to assign a lot to a 'lost' sim? If I can only see them in the sims decription, which doesn't have the functions of the sim browser (where I could just add them to a family), is it possible to pull them out? And if so how?
EDIT: For anyone interested:
I found a way to ID and delete them: make a copy of the character folder on the desktop, open the sim browser, which gives character file name of the visible sims. With the sim browser window open next to a window of the copy of the char folder you can find and delete whatever you want. it also will let you find those files that don't show in the sim browser (if you sort on the char file name in the browser window, and compare the list to the char folder you'll find files that aren't listed in the browser.)
So I went ahead and deleted all but one of each townie type (I left one repo man, a bunny, a SS, a clerk, etc) left all neccessary NPCs, of course, and then could pull out those files that didn't show in the browser.
I had 51 files that didn't show.
I started with 311 char files in all and ended up with 55 I wanted to keep.
I replaced the char folder in the game folder with the copy I had worked with on the desktop. Of course, I have a backup in case the hood started vburning.
Then I fired up the game. It loaded so much faster. Then into the hood in question and it loaded faster too. I haven't played the hood, only looked into the houses to make sure they all open and my wanted sims ar ethere. So far: Houses that had Maxis sims in them simply appear empty. All other sim houses open fine and play fine.
I found one sim that I had deleted by mistake. His house opened and the family played fine, but I wanted my deleted sim. In the end what I had to do was: stick in my backup hood folder in the game folder, found the sim file number with the sim browser in SimPE, made a copy of it in my much smaller char folder which was now back on the desk, then put the much smaller char folder into the hood folder (actually the backup copy.)
And so far all is fine. I'm sure there are some bad memory files, but I can edit those easy enough. A day of palying the hood will tell the final tale, but I think I got it!
Now, if I can find a way to assign a lot to those lost sims.....
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