Specter tombstones vanishing again

[fwiffo]

There's something messed up with this lot and/or the ghosts that inhaibt it.  Once before, when I moved Ophelia to college, all but a couple of the tombstones on the lot vanished for no reason.  Later on I reset all of strangetown.  Today, the same thing happened again, though nobody moved out of the lot this time.  All but three tombstones are gone (Olive, Jessica and Alan remain).  I tried copying a backup of the lot, and that didn't fix it.  I looked at some of the missing characters in SimPE, and they don't appear to be unlinked or anything weird, as far as I can tell, and the character files are there.  I tried recreating the tombstones with the assignable gravestones, but the characters in question are not among the choices, so I have to assume there's something wrong with them.

Anyone have any idea what the deal is with this lot?

[J. M. Pescado]

That's a normal "papershredder" behavior that destroys tombstone data. What you need is "nounlinkondelete", which should hopefully reduce or halt the destruction of tombstones.

Also, why do you have a picture of a Yehat as an avatar when using "Fwiffo", a Spathi name?

[fwiffo]

I actually have nounlinkondelete installed.  I think there's some particularly screwy behavior either with that lot, or with the affected characters that's causing the tombstones to disappear when the lot is loaded.  I have backups of my neighborhoods, so I think with some work I could probably restore the lot back to the way it was with some work, but I'd like to prevent it from happening again in the future.

And I think we've had a discussion about the avatar before.

[J. M. Pescado]

Does this specifically happen only with Maxis premade dead? Maxis premade dead are screwy.

And I think we've had a discussion about the avatar before.

Maybe, but I'm old! I'm old and I have a long beard! So I wouldn't recall. What did you say about it?

[fwiffo]

Yes, as far as I can tell, in fact, I only have this problem with the Specter lot.  I've played the Goth lot for quite a while, for instance, and all its tombstones remain intact.  Likewise, I have a couple other houses that have accumulated a number of tombstones and none of those have ever disappeared.  I've seen other people post about this particular lot suddenly losing all but two or three tombstones, but I've never seen a solution anywhere.

As far as the avatar - I'm using a Yehat because a Spathi doesn't fit very well in a square format.  Why, if you're a Fat Obstreperous Jerk, is your avatar a Burninator and not a Thraddash?

[Maria]

That's been happening with my gravestones for at least a year.  A ghost dives at its own or another's gravestone and it disappears.  I don't have a solution, but what I've been doing is putting all the real gravestones on a huge empty lot that I never play except to place a gravestone.  Then I use Christianlov's buyable tombs to put fake gravestones where I would have liked the real ones (homes or the cemetary).  It's a pain in the neck, but at least my sim families can have their ghosts. 

I don't think EA will ever fix the disappearing gravestone bug, just look back at the archives here to see how long it's been going on.  We're very luck to have Pescado's nounlink hack.

[fwiffo]

This is a different problem.  The tombstones aren't disappearing one-by-one when haunted (there's actually a fix for that floating around here somewhere that makes tombstones unhauntable).  A whole bunch are disappearing all at once when the lot is loaded (or possibly when it's being saved).

(This thread mentions a couple other people with the same problem).

[fwiffo]

OK, after a little more investigating, it appears that all the missing tombstones did get unlinked somehow.  So this is my plan:
1) Back up the current neighborhood
2) Copy all the unlinked character files out of a backup.
3) Go into SimPE and clear the unlinked flag
4) Go back to the lot, and if the tombstones aren't there, use the assignable gravestones to replace them

Sound like it might work?

[J. M. Pescado]

Assuming you have not saved the lots where the tombstones exploded, it should work.

[cwykes]

Gravestones tend to disappear if the ghosts were out and about when the hood gets resets.  A simmer friend lost a lot of Specter ghosts when she installed Pets for just that reason.  Just thought I'd throw that in since you did mention reset somewhere.

[J. M. Pescado]

Lost gravestones themselves are not a major problem IF nounlinkondelete prevents the destruction of the character file, so you can just respawn the stone.

[fwiffo]

OK, I finally got around to fixing this today.  My plan worked fine without having to even replace the tombstones.  For future reference for anyone who has this happen, the following 20 characters got unlinked during the "event".  This occured in spite of the fact that I have nounlinkondelete installed, so there's something weird going on that's bypassing that fix.

005 Willow Nigmos
006 Creon Nigmos
011 Lyla Grunt
015 Mary Melons
026 Glabe Curious
035 Vicki Sims
036 Patrick Jones
041 Melissa Sims
046 Luc Smith
064 Seth Zaidi
065 Ichabod Specter
066 Hugh Thanasia (groan)
068 Riggor Mortis
069 Earl E Demise
070 Tim Lee Demise
083 Peponi Muenda
084 Lerato Muenda
089 Bejamin Cho
091 Knut Futa
134 Brenda Zaidi

There were also 40(!) other character unlinked character files that had the same timestamp, but they were already unlinked even in an unplayed copy of the neighborhood.  Don't know why the game felt it needed to touch them.  There were three or four other character files that were not unlinked that also had the same timestamp.  Mary Melons, Glabe Curious and Knut Futa were unlinked at the time of the "event" even though they don't appear to ever had a tombstone in the Specter lot.  There were three graves in the lot which were left untouched - Olive (which makes sense, since she actually died and wasn't a pre-created messed up Maxis hacked piece of crap, or at least, not a pre-dead one), Danelle Greaves and Jessica Ebadi.

Here's hoping it doesn't happen again.

[Process Denied]

I had a  situation with vanishing tombstones but it is a little more widespread-- like all the tombstones in the entire neighborhood.  Every tombstone in Pleasantview is gone.  I had a missing tombstone on one lot so I investigated all the lots in neighborhood view and they were all there but it was deceptive cause it was only the last picture taken.  Nothing happened to cause this but to install Seasons.  Thank God for unlinkable tombstones and for Macrotastics--I was able to respawn all the tombstones--the annoying thing is that is like all the Sims just died so I have a lot of children and toddlers in the red.  They will live.  I was wondering if it is because my neighbor hood is so big??  I am starting to have those unexpainable little glitches that are sporatic like before my neighborhood started to implode last time.  I don't know how many characters I have but Pleasantview is over 1.7 gigs.  I always back up my neighborhood every night but unfortunately I have been playing Uni ever since installing Pets--(you know it could of happened installing Pets--I never played the main hoods and I don't have any tombstones in Uni.),so I deleted the back up a long time ago.

[Yaakovashoshana]

I had a  situation with vanishing tombstones but it is a little more widespread-- like all the tombstones in the entire neighborhood.

For what it's worth, my problem was exactly the opposite. I had started playing Strangetown for the first time, and I was playing the Specter family. Olive had gone on to her just (?!) reward. Johnny Smith moved in and married Ophelia, and they were starting a family.

I got the bright idea to turn the Specter Cemetery into a mausoleum . . . thinking it would take up less space, and hoping it would keep the legion of dead from scaring the bejabbers out of the living every night.

Oh! It was lovely! The rows of urns on the OFB shelves . . . Olive in the center surrounded by her husbands . . . her parents and Ophelia's parents together nearby with all the other denizens of Olive's garden. I used the glass shop windows for one wall so the urns were visible from outside.

So far so good until . . . I exited the lot and re-entered later. Surprise! All the urns were still on their shelves, but the yard was littered with tombstones. All the tombstones were duplicates of the urns in the mausoleum . . . including Olive's special platinum aspiration marker. The stones appeared in their same spots, and Olive's urn regenerated inside the house. Where the original graves were hidden by the mausoleum, the stones were on the curb by the mailbox.

I was afraid to delete the stones, thinking perhaps that deleting one would inadvertently delete both, so I remodeled the mausoleum to make room for everyone's twin. When I exited and re-entered the lot again . . . Surprise! Surprise!! Triplets! Now there were three of every marker . . . two in the mausoleum and one in the yard or out by the mailbox or in the house. At this rate, the dead were going to crowd the living right off the lot, so I started deleting. Deleting two copies didn't delete the original marker . . . until I got to Olive's. When I deleted her marker, both her urns went with it!

I've since reset the neighborhood to default and started over . . . leaving the tombstones in the yard . . . and trying to figure out some other way for the living to cope with the dead