More Awesome Than You!

Me again with probably another much talked about topic...  I want to reinstall my game and E.P.s but my kids have close ties with their families, how do I go about (in English) saving them to file so I can reload them later.. :-[

Well if the families are not corrupt and not the reason you are reinstalling you could take the entire neighborhood folder to your desktop or some other safe place while you reinstall. To me this is the simpliest and safest method. Once you have the game reinstalled just place the neighborhood folder back where it belongs.

There are other options that require extensive use of Simpe. You can extract them but they loose all their personal data (relationships skills memories etc). You can also package the houses with the families in them while in game mode - click on house and package to file. This will require more simpe work however because of all the memories and dups they will bring with them.

Thanks Nectere, I think this is the 2nd time today that you have helped me out. 8)

  ;D;DYou are a champ nectere, I just tried to package a lot to file and it worked a treat.  ;D ;D

Uh, I don't think you entirely listened to Nectere.

DO NOT PUT THOSE FILES BACK INTO THE GAME! Just don't. If you thought your neighborhood was FUBAR now, just wait until you put those back....oh, yes. Just...don't do that.

If you're JUST reinstalling the game, just rename your "EAGAME~1\THESIM~1" folder to something else, or move it elsewhere.

Then reinstall, and change it back. DO NOT INSTALL PACKAGED OCCUPIED LOTS! NEVER DO THIS!

As nectere said, that's the easy part, flowerchile!  You will need to edit the characters file in simPE later as there will be a lot of extraneous files brought with them.

By the way, nectere, I noticed something today with this old hood, where I'd (long ago, before I knew about MATY, moved the Brokes (lot and all) into the bin before replacing them, so Dustin would lose his connexion to Angela and the burglar.  Well, what I got back when I replaced the house was not the original family at all, it was a set of clones, the originals were the unlinked ones.  It's also completely screwed up all the relationships with Brandi's parents etc., and I've now got the mammoth task of editing every darned duplicated ghost to make sure I have the same things in all their memories!  

So beware, flowerchile, I hope packaging to a file works differently and you do get the original families and not clones!  But I wouldn't bank on it!

I think Nectere actually just meant to move your Neighbourhoods folder to your desktop- found in EAGames-Sims 2-Neighbourhoods (i think), then replace the new ones with the old after you reinstall, not to package the lots and replace those.

In the second paragraph of the post, nectere did mention the packaging option, but with warnings!

I don't think Nectere put enough emphasis on the warnings. Frankly, somebody who asks the kind of question above  is not in a position to understand anything deeper than "THIS IS BAD! DO NOT DO THIS!".

True, but if we all heeded that warning, we'd never learn anything!  Personally, I'd say it's easier to clone all the sims you want to keep, note down all their personalities etc. and then recreate them in CAS, after which edit the files in SimpE so they have all the correct data, than it is to clean up the mistakes caused by packaging!

However, flowerchile, if you also want to save your houses then that is entirely problem-free if you use CleanInstaller to reinstall them, but just the lot segment, nothing else, and have never used any terrain paints other than the Maxis ones in your game and haven't even got any custom ones in the folder.

egads, I didn't realize that I wasn't being graphic enough...

please note:

UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO SPEND SEVERAL HOURS IN SIMPE EDITING FILES AND ARE WILLING TO RISK BLOWING UP YOUR GAME AND HAVING TO DELETE YOUR NEIGHBORHOODS OF BELOVED SIMS THAT YOU ARE TRYING TO SAVE - PLEASE DO NOT USE OPTION C WHICH IS TO PACKAGE THE LOTS WITH SIMS IN THEM FOR REINTERGRATION AT A LATER DATE...

With that said in explicit detail, I do realize you will never learn anything without risk, trial and error. The simplest method once again, is to simply move your neighborhood folders with the sims you want to keep to a safe place and then put those folders back after reinstallation is complete, overwriting any neighborhoods that are a duplicate to the ones you moved, i.e pleasantview etc.

Again, if you are not comfortable with SIMPE and or are ready to get comfy with it because you will spend lots of time editing, then DO NOT PACKAGE THE SIMS IN LOTS....


There. Is that clear enough?

I think JM will get the message! ;D

First, I do not intend to counter the advice of people that no doubt push gameplay past where I'll ever go.  I ask this merely for my information.
I've done this moving families from one neighborhood to another.  My game was in no way hosed at the time. The only problem I noticed was I lost those wonderful recurring "Paint a masterpiece" wants (talk about an easy way to keep that aspiration meter filled).

What was supposed to go wrong?

You basically set off a time bomb in your neighborhood. Those sims will bring copies of the files of EVERY SIM THEY EVER MET in the old neighborhood who wasn't on the lot with them. This is so they have something to reference in their memories (I guess) but it's a very bad thing, because there are serious errors associated with having massive numbers of sims in your neighborhood, due to asinine coding, and you really don't want to be filling up your neighborhood with junk files. Plus, those junk files can cause problems just on their own.

And not only that, but from what I found, you don't actually get the original copy of your sims as playable characters, you get clones, while the originals also become "unlinked" - and can also wander around your hood!

Come to think of it, I noticed that when installing the packages.  I use CleanInstaller and I deleted those unused characters before I installed them.  Along with any custom content that would have duplicated.  Possibly I have dodged a bullet here without realizing it was ever fired.

Haven't seen this, but the old characters are in another hood.

Update: Of course, since they'd be the same Sim this could be hard to notice.

Anyway, thanks for the replies.

It would help to delete them in cleaninstaller, but you'll still likely have problems - the packaged sims now have memories that are no longer referenced properly and it does weird things when they gossip about those "others" or remember who potty trained them, etc. Funky question marks and unknown reference errors.

Sims on lots (whether packaged yourself and moved or reinstalled OR downloaded from somewhere) is (imnsho) probably the #1 cause of BFBVFS in your game. And it's top as so many people do it and Maxis set it up like it could and should be done :p

#2 (imo) is moving sims into the lot bin for more than about 5 seconds.

You're better off just not doing either of those.

I'm sticking with this only for learning possibilites (mine and others).  I'm not trying to argue that this is a good thing to do.

First, everyone lost their friends on the move.  Made sense to me, move to a new neighborhood, don't know anyone.  So they aren't gossiping about anyone from the previous neighborhood.  Second, I've been playing the new neighborhood for about 3 months now with no errors I've seen (although I am learning of a few here to look for). 

The Sims moved were about half CAS created and about half born and raised in the old neighborhood.

I will have to actually look at somebody's memories though (I never do that during gameplay).

you might not see the memory problems in game, its behind the scenes where the problems are in the memories. If you looked at their memories in Simpe you would see a lot of "unknowns" - these are bad memories and cause corruption

Ah, a philisophical question  :) If an error does not occur during gameplay, is there an error?

What I mean is looking at the memories in game, you wont see it. In game what you will see is corrupt thought bubbles, thats usually just your first indication that the big fiery ball is coming. The thought bubbles have just a bunch of black lines, similar to a bar code. That is the beginning of the corruption that you will actually see.

In simpe however you will have dup, and unlinked character files, and when you look at sim memories they will have "taught to walk by unknown" and things of that nature. The other problem that is inherent is that too many character files is a bad thing, especially character files that are corrupt.

> I'm not trying to argue that this is a good thing to do.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply you were or be too pushy about it.

> Ah, a philisophical question  Smiley If an error does not occur during gameplay, is there an error?

Still... the thing about this particular "bug" or poor coding or whatever Maxis would call it is that it's insidious. It's not like you do it and your neighborhood explodes (problems with conflicting hacks or a poorly made one, otoh are usually pretty easy to recognize. You install something and everything breaks so you realize *something* caused that just about now.)

Let's say I moved *one* sim by packaging him to a lot - say he came from a neighborhood that had... oh 5 CAS created sims in it and maybe he'd met 3 NPCs and 2 townies. So he brings with him 10 sims and maybe I make 5 more CAS sims for him to play with in the new neighborhood (and leave all the townies and NPCs and the like). 10 extra sims isn't that big a deal. A neighborhood like this might last for months, or even years, depending on how fast it grows.

So, 6 months down the line, there's suddenly stuff you notice in the game - extra sims, too many iteration errors, nanny's pop and repop, gardners show up and stay to play until there's 12 or 15 on the lot, you get the extra kidlets error and have quints, 3 times in a row. Very few people connect the blown up game with something so innocuous-seeming as importing a sim from another neighborhood 6 months back (or leaving one hanging in the sim bin, which is what actually caused mine) - when initially the errors were only visible on debug or to someone that can read the code or use SimPE to do it for them. It compounds until your game explodes in a ball... visible from space.

I brought four families from a custom neighbourhood into my new Pleasantview and they're perfectly OK.  I stripped everything in Clean Installer apart from their character files, the family file and the actual lot and deleted all their irrelevant memories before placing the lot in the neighbourhood.  As far as I know, that's all that's needed.  There are no extraneous character files in the game and none of these sims ever talk about anyone from the old neighbourhood (well they do, because everyone from the old neighbourhood is with them apart from the townies, but they talk about the new versions, not the old ones).

Well, the lot I'm playing at present is a very old one, pre Uni, that I revived.  Now, when I first opened this game, I moved the Brokes, house and all, into the bin and then straight out again.  I'm still, after playing and editing for about 3-4 days, still cleaning up the mess i made way back then when I didn't know the dangers.  And none of the Brokes are the original, the originals were unlinked and the ones that moved back in with the house were the clones!  (Whixh was obvious as soon as I realised the file numbers were much too far down the line to be the originals, who are among the first 10 in the hood.  the only "uncorrupted" Broke, is Keanu, since he wasn't born then!

and can you just delete them from the bin or does that cause a BFBVFS?

C

It isn't sims in the Sim Bin which cause the problem, it's sims in houses in the Lots and Houses bin.  The problem is this:

A.  the original sims in the house become unlinked, but still keep thier character files.

B. the original sims are cloned to create a new set of themselves, minus their relationships with other sims in the hood

C. the original sims carry with them all the sims they ever met as more unlinked character files. 

So, if you have a family of four, with, say, an average of ten friends/acquaintances each, that's 44 additional character files in your Characters folder.  Plus the unlinked version of themselves can continue to wander around the hood and meet even more sims........

Faemidwife, JFP believes, from some older threads I read, that it's actually "cleaner" to kill those sims rather than delete them.  I can't recall the exact reason off hand, but it has to do with creating unlinked memories.  Sims that they interacted with will have memories of "unknown" and that can lead to problems.

The main problem with moving sims into the lot bin and leaving them there, I think, is that they can still come home from work with your sim, or school with your simchild/teen, but since they cannot be contacted in the bin, you get a lot of unfulfillable wants.  But if actually leaving them in the simbin caused real problems, I never heard it mentioned before.

Oh wow, I think I opened a can of worms here, judging from the reaction that came from some of you..and as for you Pescado, from your post; I think Fat Obstroperous Jerk seems to be quite fitting.  We aren't all experts and thats what the forum is for, if we all knew what there is to know it would be a pretty boring forum.  Any hoo, I didn't actually try to reinstall the packaged lots, I decided to go the long way and sift through the downloads. 

The fat obstreperous jerk owns the forum... I pretty much think that's what the forum is for ;)

I have read through at least a couple of threads here that discussed the problems with sticking sims in the bin and letting them go walkabout. I understood it's ok if you put them in and then move them right back out again, but leaving them there is trouble - they create clones of themselves and wander the 'hood like very lively ghosts.

I don't remember exactly why I did such a silly thing but I really liked those sims (created based on my beautiful Indian friend and coworker and her husband) and I thought I wanted a spare or something silly. I made them in bodyshop (or maybe remade them in bodyshop) and loaded them twice, one set in play and left one set in the sim bin. They've even met each other. In any case, I'm pretty sure that's what blew up the hood (well it still limps along, but needs major fixing).

Sims in lots and houses bins is *also* a problem - I suspect they might be related kinds, as sims in the bin make clones of themselves to walk around. They can make more than one clone of themselves, I think (another for every time they leave the bin?). But I'm less awesome and haven't a clue. I dunno what deleting them from the bin after other sims have met them and have memories of them would do. Sounds dangerous. Moving them into a house and killing them off and deleting the tombstone would probably be safer? That's the in-game method of unlinking sims and the like, yes?

Ancient, I think if you cleaned the character files *and* the memories that fixes the troubles :)

Sticking sims in the Sim Bin via eviction is harmless. You can keep as many sims as you want as long as you want.

Sticking sims on occupied lots in the LOT BIN is the same as deleting sims from the simbin or installing an occupied family: Ripping out sims in such a manner permanently damages the source neighborhood with a high probability of harming your destination neighborhood. It can result in a Big Fiery Ball Visible From Space.

I thought I was right about the Sim Bin!

It must be senility. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it ;)

Well, if it's your excuse, maybe I'll make it mine too when I get things wrong, which I frequently do!  ('Specia/ly late at night!)

I haven't gotten that impression.  I'm the one pushing this, and I wanted to be clear that I'm not arguing in favor of this; I'm simply trying to understand it.

To date, I've had none of this.  I looked through a memory last night of a Sim raised in the previous neighborhood, then packaged and moved.  Everything looked OK (as was said here that it would).  Aside from the mother memories of walking/talking/potty training, the only people referenced were townies that came home from school with them.  And oddly enough, when this neighborhood was created I got all new townies (don't know how that happened).  Maybe not having new copies of the old townies is helping.

But this has been real informative, and I appreciate the discussion. I'll give this up after one more question:  If I begin to see weird errors, will deleting (or killing) the moved Sims and bulldozing their lots fix this?  Or should I consider this neighborhood hosed and nuke the whole thing?  Or should I nuke it all and reinstall the game?

Oddly enough, none of the above options disturb me.  I mostly like building; as for the Sims, after I raise them, train them, develop a nice story behind them, I ignore them.  I derive no joy from maintaining Sims, only from developing them.

You could clone the families you like in simPE, then when you open a new hood you can use their faces and DNA to recreate that family.  Then before you play them, use SimPE to give them any additional memories you want, such as potty trained, taught to walk etc., change their interests to match the original, change their voice to match the original (you should already have changed their personality to match in CAS, but in some instances with kids you can't get an exact match, so change those to match too).  Now you have the family you like, and the challenge of starting them from scratch again!

<chuckle> well, those gray hairs must be worth something, yes? The worst part is it wasn't even the sim bin I stuck that family in - it was the lot bin (I opened it and looked) - bad enough to misremember a discussion, but when I can't even remember how I blew up my own neighborhood, that's sad. I really need *some* sort of excuse.


If you don't sustain play that much (add a lot of sims, play for a long time), you might not even run into trouble. But if you want to try to save the neighborhood, other than Zephyr's wonderful suggestion, you can mitigate damage by making sure you have all the critical fixes and/or using SimPE to fix what problems you can find. I don't think killing (and I *think* deleting is bad) sims will help if you wait because they'll have spread the fatal disease by then. Bulldozing the lots won't make any difference (assuming I'm not having another senile moment ;) - it's not the lots, it's the sims in them.

You're right, it's the sims who carry the baggage, not the lots themselves.  You can delete the lots and even delete the original sims (NOT RECOMMENDED!) and the newly created unlinked sims (all the sims your sims have ever met!) will still be at large in your hood, and still be taking up space in your Characters folder, and will also have loads of Met Unknown memories, plus relationships with loads of Unknowns!

By the way, cloning isn't my idea, it's what was suggested to me when one of my hoods got problems that I couldn't put right with various sims being unable to use toilets etc.  So I went on to recreate all the Pleasantview characters plus my own families in a new hood - it was a very long process!

I don't quite count as computer illiterate; but the more I'm around them the less messing around I want to do.  I'll not be using SimPE.  From the responses, however, it looks like the problems will be confined at least to the neighborhood.

My plan will be to play these Sims until problems show up (or I get utterly bored with them).  Then I'll delete the neighborhood and start a new one.

All my beloved houses were built on a 2nd XP user account with no custom content, and packaged from there.  So they're safe.  Except for that one... but I've got some improvements I wanted to make to it anyway.