Dangling SWAF deletion tutorial?

[laylei]

I'm absolutely clueless when it comes to SimPE, so I was wondering- is there a tutorial anywhere that shows exactly how to delete those so-called "dangling SWAFs"? I know that they're left behind when you use DAC, and I wanted to make a custom neighborhood with me-made townies, so I'd like to know how to fix the mess DAC leaves behind.

Thanks in advance.

[J. M. Pescado]

If you've just done a DAC, it's very simple.

Open up your neighborhood in SimPE. Select the "SDSC" or "Sim Description" file type. Delete them all.
Now do the same thing for SWAFs, or "Sim Wants and Fears". Wipe them out. All of them.

Save. Exit. Mission complete.

[JadeEliott]

I made a using a custom hood. I DAC'd and then deleted all SDSC (Sim Description). There were Five NPCs and two unknowns. These are safe to delete?

Also, I read to delete all SDNA (Sim DNA) and Sim Relations, is this true?

Lastly, in my custom hood, there was no section for SWAFs. Is this normal?

Thanks in advance.

[J. M. Pescado]

I made a using a custom hood. I DAC'd and then deleted all SDSC (Sim Description). There were Five NPCs and two unknowns. These are safe to delete?

That was your plan, right? Kill 'em all. And their character files, too.

Also, I read to delete all SDNA (Sim DNA) and Sim Relations, is this true?

Deleting all SDNAs is fine. It will corrupt the ones that remain, but there shouldn't be any that remain anyway. Kill them all!

Lastly, in my custom hood, there was no section for SWAFs. Is this normal?

If there aren't any, they're all dead. If there are, kill them all.

[JadeEliott]

Great. One last question. Killed all the SDSC, opened the hood, closed it, went back to SimPe. They were back. Five NPCs and two unkowns. So seems no point in deleting them, n'cest pas? (Or however you spell that danged french.)

[J. M. Pescado]

Those would probably grow back, yes, but the first time you purge, you may as well kill everything just to kill all the dangling entries. The important ones, like those, grow back.

[cwykes]

If you are not deleting all the sims, you don't delete all the SWAFs.  You find the ones that match by checking incidence numbers between the SWAF and SDSC screens.  You can delete them all and they will regenerate, but you'll lose all the wants and fears history that makes a Sim want to paint  a 10th masterpieces, earn an 9th logic point or flirt with his/her partner rather than any sim in view.

Your game will need a grim reaper and the unknowns.  If you delete them it will make new ones.  If you are deleting everything - nuke them too otherwise don't bother.  And don't touch the DNA files!  This is the thread where I kept asking questions about cleaning hoods until I got answers that made sense to me -- maybe it will help you.   it gets to the unknowns at the end -there are 3 with OFB - the first is the remote control car and the OFB one is a robot base. There are others around if you search on SWAF.  It's not a tutorial, but some of it is quite detailed.  You can always write one and ask for feedback!
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4580.0.html

Oh and don't touch the DNA files

[JadeEliott]

Cwykes, that is a very long thread, a lot of it pertaining to hoods that have been played. So are you telling me that it is NOT safe to delete DNA, despite what Pes said, on a new, totally unplayed, just DAC'd hood?

If so, why? What Bad Thing would happen?

ETA: I am being so precise about this because I *AM* writing a tutorial on creating a custom hood.

[J. M. Pescado]

Deleting the SimDNA will garble the data on any SDNAs that remain. If you delete ALL of them, there won't be any left to take damage. If you don't delete them, this is harmless also, they'll get overwritten when the slots are reclaimed. Ultimately it doesn't matter what you do if you intend to nuke your neighborhood anyway.

[cwykes]

ETA: I am being so precise about this because I *AM* writing a tutorial on creating a custom hood.

Excellent.  hope something in my long thread was useful, if only info on the "unknowns".  Don't listen to me when Pescado is talking!  I spend a lot of time quoting him. 

More people I try and help need to clean up played hoods - on those "don't touch DNA" is now the mantra - I didn't know that so I've messed with mine.  Don't think many of my sims had recessive genes thank goodness and I think that's what gets hit. I've not made it into generation 3 with any of my sims yet! I think we need a tutorial on cleaning up existing hoods.

[J. M. Pescado]

If you've damaged an existing hood AND you have a recent backup from BEFORE you borked it by deleting an SDNA, it's possible to laboriously restore things. First, you need to compile a "clean" DNA extract by extracting all the old SDNAs from the "undamaged" backup, then adding any new or changed SDNAs to the pot.

Then you get to play with the Lot Debugger "Instantiation Slideshow" button, hiting "pause" after every hiccup and typing "simdna <name>" for the sim that appears frozen. After every single one of your neighborhood sims has been "slideshowed", you then once again delete all the SDNAs and reload the batch of "good" SDNA. Fun process. Not easy at all. Very strange system.

[JadeEliott]

Alright, new problem. Deleted everything. Made one sim, slapped sim onto blank lot. Spawned Townie Creator Tree, started creating townies. Got this error. Tried this several times, even made ANOTHER new hood, DAC'd, SimPe'd, CAS'd a sim, slapped on lot, got same error.

It was a community lot populator error. Also, this is in a clean game, no DLs.

Attached is a log.

[Fish Dude]

Apparently the townie tree is broken, dont use it.

[laylei]

Apparently the townie tree is broken, dont use it.

Yes, from what I understand, the Townie Creator tree is borked. I guess the "good" way to remake townies is to make them in CAS, move them onto an empty lot, and use the shrub to "set as townie" or "set as downtownie".

Does anyone know if NPCs can be created using the townie tree, or do we have to wait for the game to load them as needed each time?

[dizzy]

Creating Townies one at a time with the tree works fine. What gave you the error was when you tried to "Create All Townies" (which is broken).

[jrd]

Multi-reply!

-Sims after DAC:
All 'hoods have the default NPCs plus one or two (OFB and up) Unknowns. These are regenerated on 'hood load. The two unknowns are the RC car and the OFB robots.

-Further DAC cleanup:
Delete ALL remaning Sim descriptions (including the above default NPCs), ALL SimDNA strings, and ALL Sim Relationships. Best to do this from the neighbourhood "root" to avoid some SimPE bugs (ie do not click any item in the left).
DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE. Deleting memories, family relationships, or family unknown will prevent the 'hood from loading. These are cleaned by the game automatically so leave them alone.

-Townie/NPC spawning:
The townie BATCH generator is broken. You can still use the tree to generate one townie at a time (and with this use your desired settings for gender, age, and skintone).
You can also generate one TS2 or Uni NPC at a time, again allowing for gender, age, and skintone (for NPCs I recommend using ‘smart age’).

Downtownies and SP2 NPCs can be created with the tree after switching it to create downtownies, again allowing for gender, age, and skintone settings. Use the tree also to spawn the Special Townies Slob, Diva, Grand Vampire, as these are often not autogenerated.

Caveat: unless you like near-twins, do not create downtownies using the tree. Instead, turn some playables or townies into downtownies using my version of the Ingelogical shrub. Reason is that all downtownies come from a template set with VERY limited options.

Caveat2: if you are not anal about controlling gender, skintone, and age for your NPCs just let the game generate them as needed. NPC spawning on demand works just fine.

Caveat3: the tree will allow you to set invalid settings for NPCs, such as male teen nannies. If you are stupid enough to do this, all settings will be ignored (including skintone which otherwise is valid). For NPCs I highly recommend using 'smart age', and keep the gender in mind.

Must be female NPCs:
-nanny
-social worker

Must be male NPCs:
-repo man
-headmaster

All the rest can be either.
In the case of "Mascot good" a female results in a cheerleader, a male in a llama.
In the case of Mr. Big a female becomes the Diva, a male Mr Big.

[eamethyst]

Downtownies and SP2 NPCs can be created with the tree after switching it to create downtownies, again allowing for gender, age, and skintone settings. Use the tree also to spawn the Special Townies Slob, Diva, Grand Vampire, as these are often not autogenerated.

This makes me ask.  Is it then possible to create a new neighborhood, with an attached Downtown, without having any Vampires?  'Cause for me that would be a good thing.

[jsalemi]

This makes me ask.  Is it then possible to create a new neighborhood, with an attached Downtown, without having any Vampires?  'Cause for me that would be a good thing.

Probably not -- as soon as you designate a sub-hood a downtown, it generates the downtown NPCs when you first go to a lot there (if not sooner). Only way I can think to avoid that is to not add a downtown, but instead add what you want as your downtown as a shopping district (if you have OFB). You won't get any of the downtown NPCs that way, and your sims could still visit clubs, restaurants and the like.

[eamethyst]

Ah well.  I expected it was too much to hope for.  What I actually do is just ignore the Grand Vampires, so vampirism never spreads in my neighborhoods. 

[Jelenedra]

So, what is the best way to delete all character? In a tutorial somewhere else on this site, you are told just to delete through select all from the game folders.

Then someone else mentioned deleting through SimPe...

What is there to delete in SimPe if you deleted all the character files through the game folders?

[JadeEliott]

Now do the same thing for SWAFs, or "Sim Wants and Fears". Wipe them out. All of them.

DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE. Deleting wants/fears,

Conflicting advice. Which one is true? Help?

[JadeEliott]

Ah well.  I expected it was too much to hope for.  What I actually do is just ignore the Grand Vampires, so vampirism never spreads in my neighborhoods. 

I have never seen Grand Vampire in my downtown, so this is not hard to do. What I would do is if one ever showed up, just delete him from the lot, with insem, or inge's bush...or perhaps TJs visitor controller?

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,2271.0.html

[Jelenedra]

Vampirism never spreads if you never let your simmies become friends with the Grand Vamp (or boolprop them).

[jrd]

Now do the same thing for SWAFs, or "Sim Wants and Fears". Wipe them out. All of them.

DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE. Deleting wants/fears,

Conflicting advice. Which one is true? Help?

The Pesc. I don't know what I was thinking off. Consider it a typo =p

Wants/fears can be deleted if you're deleting Sims anyway. (I should know, do so frequently.)

[gjam]

Must be male NPCs:
-repo man
-headmaster

I could have sworn I had a female headmaster once.  If I did, it was a long time ago, either pre-Uni or just after, and I don't have that neihborhood anymore to check.