Maximum number of sim/character files?

[Kralore]

I did do some searching to see if I could find an answer to this but couldn't find a definite answer. I'm working on a very large neighborhood at the moment and i'm wondering what the safe maximum limit is now for the number of sim/character files you can have in one neighborhood.  Right now there are 487 sims. About 40 playable sims still need to be added and no townie,downtownie or university npcs have been generated yet. I know the limit was 500 at one time and one of the expansions raised this limit.  The other thing I will have to take into account is the number of sims that will get added with bon voyage and future expansions.

Thanks.

[ZiggyDoodle]

I don't think there is a definitive answer.  The EPs raised the limit and I don't think anyone has blown up their hood because of excessive character files. 

I just checked and I see 863 in my main hood (have all EPs).  No burps, toots, or fires, other than those caused by lightning strikes.

If you're worried, just be sure to backup the hood before you add those extra 40.

[Kralore]

I don't think there is a definitive answer.  The EPs raised the limit and I don't think anyone has blown up their hood because of excessive character files. 

I just checked and I see 863 in my main hood (have all EPs).  No burps, toots, or fires, other than those caused by lightning strikes.

If you're worried, just be sure to backup the hood before you add those extra 40.

It's not really the extra 40 i'm concerned about.  It's more long term i'm concerned with. I haven't even started playing the hood yet which is why there are no townie/downtownies/service npc's in it yet.

It's a "super" merged hood i'm working on.  It has a main custom hood (currently empty of houses and sims), and 11 subhoods attached.

The 487 sims that are there now are pretty much the bulk of the sims. Those are the sims for the merged Riverblossom Hills, Strangetown, Veronaville and also Bluewater village.

There will also be about 10-15 sims in each of the other sub hoods I have already added.  The 2 Lifestories hoods, the 3 Petstories hoods and the Sims 1 recreation i've done (its probably going to be closer to 70 or 80 more playables added LOL). Then there will be all the townies and university npcs that will get generated and last there will be sims that get added with bon voyage.  So I could very well get to 600 or more sims before I even start to play my own families LOL.   

You say you have close to 900 sims, and i've seen one or two others mention having 1000 or more sims so it should be ok in the end.

[SaraMK]

It's not really the number of characters, but the number of crap associated with them, such as dangling wants and fears, which tends to accumulate. Obviously such crap is more likely when you have more characters. Added: And also doing stupid things that are known for messing things up, such as moving in social workers. But you knew that.

From personal experience, neighborhoods can work fine with several thousand characters. But glitches seem inevitable once those numbers are reached. Sooner or later some character will become corrupted, and then you start getting toddlers who want to woohoo, etc. Some of these glitches can be fixed, but eventually you just reach a point where it's more trouble than you're willing to put up with.

Having a full arsenal of "noregen" and "anti-" hacks can help keep down the number of characters, and hacks such as the one preventing shredding of character data when a tombstone is deleted can also help to prevent glitches that can mess things up.

[Kralore]

It's not really the number of characters, but the number of crap associated with them, such as dangling wants and fears, which tends to accumulate. Obviously such crap is more likely when you have more characters. Added: And also doing stupid things that are known for messing things up, such as moving in social workers. But you knew that.

From personal experience, neighborhoods can work fine with several thousand characters. But glitches seem inevitable once those numbers are reached. Sooner or later some character will become corrupted, and then you start getting toddlers who want to woohoo, etc. Some of these glitches can be fixed, but eventually you just reach a point where it's more trouble than you're willing to put up with.

Having a full arsenal of "noregen" and "anti-" hacks can help keep down the number of characters, and hacks such as the one preventing shredding of character data when a tombstone is deleted can also help to prevent glitches that can mess things up.

"Keeping it clean"  was the main intent right from the beginning when I started the whole thing.  The main hood and all sub-hoods were created with your clean templates installed, and all "noregen" and "anti-" hacks have been in place from the start.  I even took the long road when doing the Sims Lifestories/Petstories hoods.   They weren't pulled directly from those games.  I used simpe to import/export only the nhtg/nhtr/tatt/ukn resources from the "stories". All the Sims Stories sims are going to be recreated from scratch.   

If cleanliness is a bigger issue then max number of sims, I should have nothing to worry about.  Thanks for all the replies so far.

[J. M. Pescado]

Before NL, number-of-characters was a serious problem that could be reached around 800-1000 entries. Furthermore, critical fixes which resolved the inefficiencies of the code could extend this out more. Post-NL, the iteration-max was increased to about 10x its former size, so it's reasonable to expect that iteration limits which were formerly hit at 800-1000 entries will expand by the same order of magnitude. It is unlikely that sheer "number of characters" alone will blow anything up, but it remains desirable to avoid the accumulation of cruft created by unnecessary spawning of useless characters and garbage tailings created by moving occupied lots, as these leave behind undesirable debris which can still jam your neighborhood's functioning.

[Alexx]

Something else to all above.Than bigger characters number theme bigger hood memory size = slower game(especially for non hi-end PC)and longer loading time for hood and comm lots.

[jsalemi]

Something else to all above.Than bigger characters number theme bigger hood memory size = slower game(especially for non hi-end PC)and longer loading time for hood and comm lots.

Fortunately, the Lot Debugger has tools to cut that down.  Just getting rid of all the gossip memories alone made my neighborhood.package shrink by more than half the first time I ran it on my in-the-3rd-generation Pleasantview.  And the Trash Memory deleter in the latest version cuts that down even more.

[Ellatrue]

Are there any possible negative side-effects of using those functions of the lot debugger?

[jsalemi]

Not that I've experienced.  I've used the gossip-killer for a while -- the first time, it cleans out a ton of crap, and in later sessions it kills a few here and there.  Getting rid of them also guards against the corrupt gossip memory problem that causes the jagged lines in the sim dialogs.

The trash memory is stuff like 'met x' and 'moved out/in' that tends to clutter a sims memory after a while.  I've had over 100 of them cleared out from an older sim who was born in game and has a couple of businesses.  Again, no problems with it.

[Alexx]

Are there any possible negative side-effects of using those functions of the lot debugger?

No gosslip memories=no autonomous gosslip interactions.After using it in dorm ,one of my YA stopped auto gosslip interactions with dorm friends.
And I'm really don't sure about some important memories loss.Only Pescado can know.