So what is an overpopulated neighborhood anyway?

[sara_dippity]

My Pleasantview has 380 charecters, I know there are a few extra baristas in there before I removed all coffee bars from community lots. Other than that, it's just the premade sims, and their children. My custom neighborhood (currently empty, where I build lots) has 197, I see some Uni snapshots there so maybe I did give the 'hood a school... Man, I might have more baristas than I thought, I only have a few kids born since I don't have a lot of time to play the game and I had a reformat a couple of months ago.
Anyway, what's the critical point where I should be seeing if my preventive hacks are working?

[J. M. Pescado]

Trouble reportedly sets in sometime past the 800 mark. I'm currently running at somewhere under 500 in my neighborhood.

[vecki]

DUMB QUESTION ALERT

How exactly does one see how many sims they have in a neighbourhood?

[J. M. Pescado]

Go into your neighborhoods directory and count the character files. Windoze will give a count of how many files you have in that directory. That's how many characters you have.

[Oddysey]

Does this number include dead sims? And if so, could the problem be avoided by deleting sim-centuries old character files?

[J. M. Pescado]

Yes, and no, you should not go deleting files like that.

[ZephyrZodiac]

If you sell the gravestone, does the dead sim disappear from the list?

[MistMeUK]

Does them character directory for each individual nieghborhood include the University sims too, I am presuming so only becuase i cant find any other directory related.

and also the initial poster makes out that bar staff and other comunity lot staff are stored here is that true or are they just ramdomly created each time.

Only realy want to know to figure out if this 550+ number i have is either just my sims or just sims and townies or all caracters including all the npc's.

[J. M. Pescado]

All characters, including townies, NPCs, and everything else, are included in this count. 550 is starting to get kind of large, but not unhealthy. Yet.

[MistMeUK]

So hwne you say 550+ is gettin abit big is that for what a decent PC would be,
what i mean is If i have a high end PC it will be able to handle more
Or is it a game thing and doesnt matter how good a PC i had.

and what bad things could i expect happening.

O yeh, would getting rid off the tills and cofee bar things in my community lots automatically delete the caracters associated with them. I tend to have quite a few tills and stuff to make them look more realsitic.

[KatanaFoxx]

My favorite custom hood has 887 character files. I know that's a lot. What can I do to cut down? It there anything I can do?

[Ancient Sim]

I currently have around 450 in Pleasantview and this is only with 2 expansions and also with not playing it for a while (because it's so full).  Bearing in mind all the extra characters each expansion is going to create, surely the game will allow for that?  If not, Maxis can't have intended anyone to use the same neighbourhood for the entire duration of the expansions because it sounds as if it just won't be possible.  I assumed that if I reduced the size of the character files by deleting some tombstones, this would help, but presumably it won't, as it appears it's the number of files, not the size.

I have started a new Pleasantview ready for the expansion, but am very reluctant to give the old one up as I'm approaching 4th generation on the original families now.  For a while I've been trying to reduce the size by only allowing one child per family, but obviously that doesn't alter the number of files, only the number of playable Sims, so maybe it's a pointless exercise.

[Torkle]

For an example on the other end of the spectrum, I've got a neighborhood with 55 character files.  22 of those were created by me (10 in CAS and 12 in-game kids so far), while the others are NPCs (maids, gardeners, etc.).  I haven't yet sent anyone to university, but I expect the number to jump again when I do.  I deleted all the Maxis-generated townies and dormies before creating any of my own sims and I've got the no-townies and no-dormies hacks.  Aside from the occaisional slow-down when the game had to generate an NPC on the fly, it has worked out quite well.

[themaltesebippy]

^ Yeah I did the same thing.  I have about 318 characters.  I was wondering if selling the tombstone does any damage.  I killed a hideous lunch lady and I really don't want her ghost around the dorm.  I already have a dead sim for that job anyway

[J. M. Pescado]

Selling tombstones is harmless, if irreversible, as selling the tombstone destroys the sim's character data and makes him irreversibly gone forever, visible only as a fambly tree entry or memory.

[ZephyrZodiac]

So does that mean his character file disappears from the list and leaves a gap?  I mean, I killed off Sophie  in one of my neighbourhoods, but she just regenerated as a professor in the Academie!

[J. M. Pescado]

No, the character file is still there, albeit in a reduced format. As for "Sophie", that's mostly just due to name repetition. Often the same name will repeat itself multiple times in your neighborhood. I have 5 or 6 Marylena Hamiltons. I'm going to have to start feeding them to the cow plant.

[J. M. Pescado]

Yes, they still count. Unfortunately, moving things to the bin and deleting them has zero useful effect. It is purposeless to delete sims, since they will simply be hidden from view, not actually truly wiped. And if your Pleasantview had *1400* sims, you are well into the danger zone and probably have irreparable damage to your neighborhood files.

[Brynne]

I had been in a panic about my character file count nearing 500. I guess I'm doing all right, then. Is there a safe way to remove extra files? I hardly play the University part of the game and I don't need all those professors. My sims have never had contact with most of them, so memories wouldn't be an issue. I don't think. Hell, that's it. I don't think. . Could someone please think for me and point me in the right direction with this? Or just take my lips, JM. Take 'em.

[HRH Posie]

I have manually removed a few characters.  After making sure they are not mentioned in any memories, remove their sim descriptions (Sim Description under Filetypes in SimPE) and the corresponding character file from the \My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\N00X\Characters folder.  Note X is the number of the neighbourhood 

[Diala]

However, that method (with a huge neighborhood) takes a long time. You have to manually go through everyone's memories to make sure they have none for the to-be-deleted characters. I attempted it once, but then I decided my neighborhood is in no real danger right now with slightly over 300 characters. However, I would love some sort of program that deletes these empty character files and any memories pertaining to them.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Wouldn't we all!  It's just a pity you can't delete stuff in SimPE and have to close the programme down before you can go into Windows to do it.  (Plus you have to make copious notes of all the numbers you need to delete!)  And a word of warning, you need to have a hack installed that will prevent any respawning, or the game will just simply refill all the vacancies!

As for "Sophie", that's mostly just due to name repetition. Often the same name will repeat itself multiple times in your neighborhood. I have 5 or 6 Marylena Hamiltons. I'm going to have to start feeding them to the cow plant.

I know, I've got loads of them too, but in this game where I made all the Townies in Pleasantvies babies it hasn't happened - they're still there, of course, but if you bring all their interests, personality points etc. down to zero I think it reduces the size of the file, and when you are changing something in any of your families you can just make them disappear from their list of friends and acquaintances.  The only sim townie I've had in this neighbourhood who's reappeared is Chloe Gonzaga, and I think that's because I made her into a toddler, not a baby, and she's reappeared as a replacement nanny - and it's the same Chloe, you can tell by her face!

I'm up to 693 character files now, so I guess this game won't last much longer before I have to abandon it and either start a new one or move in an old one and carry on with it!

[J. M. Pescado]

The reason they have the same face is because townies are generated from the "Archetype" faces you see in CAS. This means that if a townie rolls the same face, the same hair color, the same skin tone, and the same name, it'll look like the same person.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I understand that, but she had the same personality as well - I know because in another game I had Chloe move into a house with a family and grow up and go to University!  So maybe the old Chloe is just a clone of the original, but it's still pretty wierd!

I just wish when they'd created the original faces they hadn't included quite so many really ugly ones! 

[J. M. Pescado]

Same personality is very common, due to the fact that the game can only generate 12 different personalities (all townies have archetype personalities for their sign), and the often-mentioned "Firstborn" effect which makes sim personalities nonrandom.