More Awesome Than You!

HOW TO DELETE SIMS COMPLETELY

First, start your game, open up a family, select your lot debugger, SHIFT-CLICK and pick out the sim(s) you wish to kill. Debug mode must be on!
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/deleted/psfd0.jpg)
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/deleted/psfd1.jpg)
Note down the circled number.
Repeat the above for each sim you wish to delete. Now do the following:
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/deleted/psfd2.jpg)

Now convert the red circled DEC numbers above into HEX:
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/deleted/simpe0.jpg)

Back to Craptastic SimPE.
Open up the instance values of the sims you have chosen to delete and note down their character file numbers, circled in red:
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/deleted/simpe1.jpg)
Repeat for all sims you prepped for delete earlier.

Close and return to Ye Olde SimPE, or try to do this in Newfangled Craptastic, if you can figure that out. I have no idea where that went.
Now kill their files, as circled in blue. DO NOT KILL THE SimDNA (SDNA), as marked in red!
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/deleted/simpe2.jpg)
Repeat for all sims you prepped for delete earlier.

And then save and exit:
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/deleted/simpe3.jpg)

Back to Craptastic. Open up and reset the Sim Creation Index, like so:
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/deleted/simpe4.jpg)
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/deleted/simpe5.jpg)

And save and exit:
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/deleted/simpe6.jpg)

Finally, close all SimPEs and select the character file(s) you previously noted above:
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/deleted/deleted0.jpg)
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/deleted/deleted1.png)

Under what circumstances would you need to delete individual sims like this?

Anytime you want to get rid of sims, such as ugly townies, extra NPCs the game forces on you, or whatever, you must completely purge them from the game so you don't have loose ends and random junk throwing up errors all over the place, ultimately leading to a BFBVFS.

You'd want to delete, say, unwanted townies, extra NPCs, stuff foisted on you by expansion packs, dummy sims that SimPE's crappy Simsurgery foists on you if you were dumb enough to follow the public tutorials, etc.

resetting the sim creation index is a new one on me what is that all about?  I've been igorning those unknowns.  Does it regenerate if you just delete it - like after using deleteallcharacters on a clean hood?

I usually delete the sim description by opening up the list of SDSCs and picking the right number.  That's the same thing by a different route I hope.  mashes nonexistant thanks button several million times  ;D

Don't delete that. Resetting the index is what causes the game to recycle the old NIDs. Without recycling the NIDs, the game will continue to spiral towards its inevitable doom anyway, even if the files are deleted. Resetting the index causes it to reuse the nearest vacant NID instead of continuing to obliviously count towards certain 16bit-doom.

OK got it. - so I should reset the counter in all the hoods where I have deleted sims at some point in the past including my default shopping subhood Sedona?

Subhoods do not use creation index. And yes, resetting the pointer can be done at any time, which will cause the holes to be reclaimed by new sims.

The subhood starts life as a hood, so I'd feel happier fixing the orignial hood and creatiing a new template from it.  I guess the hood loses its counter sometime during the install process though.  I'll compare the OFB template and mine again looking at it.

Please do tell me if anything in that subhood is unsafe!  As it's the first one, I want it right or I'll be to blame for messes in other peoples games both from my hood and from anyone who makes a template using mine as a model!

Never used it. Wouldn't know. I do know that subhoods don't use the counter at all, though. Is your subhood an unpopulated template, or did you stock your own Cwykeslanders?

It's got home-made alien tourists aka townies to sell your expensive junk to and a few alien immigrants stuck in the middle of the desert.  ;D  I did deletallcharacters first and cleaned up the remains of them in SimPE.  I got rid of grimmy etc after as well. Jordi said it looked OK.  It's the bits I didn't know to do that scare me.


Edit - OK I've got simPE open on my test hood.  You have to open the hex editor to get to change bit of code - That's not on my standard screen and hex got cut off the LHS of your screenshot, so it took a few moments headscratching - you might want to add that instruction for dummies.  I changed the values to 0x01 and 0x0001 and saved.  You've got two square boxes highlighted on your screen.  I guess the squares mean blank boxes and there shouldn't be anything there.  I've got a symbol in the 0c place not a blank.    Does that matter?

The 0c is the offset. It's not really part of the file, and it's circled to tell you where to edit. So yes, that's correct.

OK done - fyi the Bluewater default has c3 and 0 set in these fields.  The install must just drop this field as useless I guess.

I've let Quaxi know about this 'Sim Creation Index'. Nice discovery.
It just needs to be edited in tgi.xml for it to be labelled.

It'd be nice if he could get delete a sim working in SimPE and bring that back again.

Oh and I'm with Pescado on the current UI, it's craptacular. I really, really, REALLY loathe the docking. I've heard lots of people complain about it but he insists on keeping it for some reason. It's supposed to be more flexible but really it's just more of a pain in the ass imo. I liked the old UI much better. If it ain't broke...

Yes, you may notice I try to avoid that thing like the plague, to the point where I'll flip between Ye Olde SimPE and back just to avoid using that accursed thing. When *I* do this, I won't even try to use the newfangled SimPE Editor. *I* do it by extracting the file and using Ye Olde DOSse Hexe Editore, but I figured I wouldn't make you chumps download a new program just for that. That is how much I hate New SimPE. DOOM TO THIS ACCURSED THING!

Could you fix SimPE, Pescado?

Not without spending way too much time studying it and trying to revert it back to Ye Oldeness.

So we hope the Net 2 version is better and you guys should give Quaxi plenty of feedback to push it in the right direction...

It's not, and Quaxi pretty much ignores our feedback.

"Do not use on any sims with relatives [...]"

That means the lot debugger won't change the family ties? But we can sever those ties after deleting the sim, can't we?

Sims with family ties are messy at present and not supported. Deleting someone's father is bad, since it will confuse the game.

Then the path to inexorable doom is already set, because I deleted all the Goth, Burb and Caliente ancestors! (Kids, don't try this at home ;D)

Is any of this necessary if your method of getting rid of unwanted sims is to drop satellites on their heads?

I had a number of copies of sims that I wanted to get rid of so I could use their houses and so I put them in the game and killed them off first thing. Most of these sims did not have any relatives and certainly did not have any relatives in that particular neighborhood. But then I started running into problems in that neighborhood. With a census of only 430 (and only 65 of them playable characters and 60 of them dead) I cannot try for a baby anywhere with anyone. Even the pregnant dog has not given birth and she has been due for a sim week.

I have been leaving this neighborhood alone since I noticed the problem. I decided to just wait until the next SimPE comes out to see if there is anything I can see to fix from there.

Family aside, moving an occupied house into the lot bin is fairly well-known as a VBT.  There are ways around this (read:  severing every connection the incoming sim has to everyone else in SimPE; package a lot to a file and then reinstall it with clean pack installer to see just how many sim files have to come along), or else you can just find ways to make sure the furniture doesn't leave as the outgoing sim does.

If your method of getting rid of sims involves killing them but no mucking about in files outside of the game, you should be in a better position.  Dead sims are generally processed in much the same way as the living, even shredded files after gravestone deletion are designed to be parsed by the game.  It's just that the game is prone to confusion and population bloat as the number of sim files grows.  Pes' solution is for when you have a lot of sim files floating around the neighborhood unproductively and you want to cull some of the unnecessary files floating around.

Dropping satellites on sims does nothing to eliminate them. They're still around, albeit dead. Perform the above procedure to completely remove them.

Where would I happen to get my hands on Ye Olde SimPE?

Beats me. All of the functions can probably be performed in newfangled SimPE, but I wouldn't really know how.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=133134&package_id=146286

Pescado, which version are you using by the way?

50b.

I tried Sourceforge shortly before my first post, but the site is down and/or won't load

It works for me I just downloaded it.

Working now. I'm not quite sure what was wrong

To clarify, as SimPE can't read Sim files properly since Pets came out: is this the 'Sim Description (SDSC)' tab?

Yar. If you are trying this under Pets, you'll need to read the SDSC either manually, by hex, like I do, or use That Accursed Thing in its most recent, possibly yet-unreleased incarnation.

Bollocks. Should've seen that one coming.

Thanks for the confirmation.

JM, I am too stupid to use your instruction. What do you do when you are too stupid to figure it out?

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/rippy.gif)

Is it possible that this resource in some way contains also the index of neighborhood's number (N001, N002, etc.)? Following your tutorials - this one and that on terrain surgery - I noticed that the fifth pair of hex (after 34 6a 2a cc, which is the resource "name" in reverse order) is always be in all premade neighborhoods, and different in all those created later.

Now, if I merely create and later delete neighborhoods, deleting their folder also, when I create a new neighborhood it takes always the next serial number; but if I change that resource from <whatever> to "be", the next neighborhood I create, will take the next "free" number, not the higher one as usual.

Not sure if I explained clearly: I create N004, N005 and N006. Deleted N005 and N006. Creating another neighborhood, it will be N007. But, if I change that resource in my N004, the new neighborhood will be N005 instead.

Is all this possible or I've made my usual mess?

Unrelated. The neighborhood creation index for new neighborhoods always start at 1 everytime you restart your game. If you create 3 neighborhoods (004 005 006), then delete one (005), your next one is 007. If you restart your game, the next one you make will instead take up 005. No manipulation required.

Gosh! Of course, now it makes sense: I had to quit the game, to fire up SimPE, so that's why I've seen all that...
Thanks, good to know :).

intresting tut..
but i've about 50 sims to delete this will be tooo looooooong  :-\

Good luck! I deleted 100+ sims with this method... I fully understand your worry  :D

Maybe someone should make an assistant "deleter tool" that will handle the SimPE angle.

Good idea; maybe through a LUA script?

I'm assuming that you chose to retain SDSC from deletion because of the need to identify N00x_Character file from that. If my assumption is correct, then should be possible to pass that data somehow with some script, maybe dumped on a file, like error outputs?

No, I didn't CHOOSE to retain the SDSC from deletion, it simply cannot be deleted from inside the game. It has to be destroyed from inside SimPE.

Lua isn't a magic wand. Even if it had file editing capability (which it doesn't by default) you'd still need a full-fledged package parser outside the normal C++ routines.

Ok, wrong idea, then. Character deletion seems definitely a task much more complex than I might imagine.

Is it safe to delete the SCOR resources from the neighborhood package? These resources seem to be linked to sims that own a business by their instance id.

And pet skills.  I deleted the ones for the strays and nothing bad happened.

If I deleted character files of the Sims that have "no character data" and "unlinked character" squares next to their name in the sim browser in SimPe, what would happen?

Would the big fiery ball thing still be likely to occur if they aren't linked to any other sims in any way?

That would be bad, JenL.

Sims are never really "not linked" to other sims. Someone in the neighborhood probably has memories of those sims, or has received gossip about those sims. If you delete them, those memories and gossip tokens will become corrupt and your neighborhood will explode. Sims can keep passing gossip for many generations after a sim has died.

Also, unless you also track down and delete the Wants and Fears entries associated with those sims, you will get nasty glitches like toddlers with LTWs and wants to Woohoo. Not good.

Presumably I would get an asplosion if I left the SDSCs in?

That's the idea behind the "delete gossip" and "prepare sim for deletion" tools: It cleans up this garbage so you can then clean out the dangling SDSC/SWAFs/etc.

In a neighborhood package there are also the BusinessInfo (BNFO) resources, which seem to store the loyalty stars of each customer of a business lot:
(http://theos.chewbakkas.net/maty/bnfo.png)
Figure 1: The BNFO resource as seen in That Accursed Thing™

So when you delete a sim, should its customer entry be deleted as well, or the Lot Debugger takes care of that automatically?

I believe the pzorching of loyalty data is performed in-game with the Lot Debugger, which invokes the same clear routines as when a sim dies.

Not to sound like a huge dunce here, but why exactly do you guys not seem to like Insim. or SimPe? I have always had both installed/updated but I'd like to know what pob's anyone has had. ???

I don't think anyone has a real problem with Insim, but Inteen, but I don't know exactly what. I never used it.

With SimPE, it has become a huge, lanky program, which I heard loads the game along with the rest of it. Personally, I wish there was a less resource-hog program that can be used.

Apparently the strays in my neighborhood are not to be prepared for deletion by the Lot Debugger. Anyway, is it safe to remove them from the neighborhood by simple deleting their related SWAFs, relationships, descriptions, and file?

Can this method be used for 4th/5th gen ancestors, assuming that the family ties are severed first, and the ghosts have not scared anyone for a couple of generations?
I really don't like how clogged up and messy the family tree looks with 5 or 6 generations  :-\

In theory, yes.

This was the only part I didn't understand. How do you get to that screen? Do you open the character file or find it through the neighbourhood file? I couldn't find anything that looked like that in old or new simpe. Forgive me if I'm being stupid and over looked something, I'd really like to know how to get there exactly so I can do this properly.

Just type it into the instance filter after opening your neighborhood. Note that these instructions are only for Ye Olde SimPE, not your funny new SimPE.

Yesterday I had an odd experience, and was quite close to blow up the hood.

I sent some lonely teen, without any relations, to the college, through the main hood. After I befriended him to some of my playable sims, he pissed me off, so I moved him to the students bin, and then threw him to the trash.

When I enterred to play my sims, none of them could go to use the toilet, and after they were orderred to use the toilet, the jumped back. One of the sims showed a toilet picture above his head, and it was Maxis original toilet. The toilet was fine - not damaged.
All the family couldn't use the toilets in no circumstances.

As I had a backupped file before I made the deletion - I restored the hood, left the "unwanted" sim in the students bin, but reduced his relations with my playable sims.
When I enterred the same lot again - the sims used the toilets without any problem.

The simulator "told" me, that I "flushed" something, and corrupted the performance of the sims. I really agree that you shoudn't delete a sim with relationships - family ties or friendship. You have to kill them - that's the safe way.

The jump-reset would have said why in the error log. I don't think this is directly related, but deleting from the Sim-bin like that is BAD. Follow this tutorial, do not delete from the simbin.

I'm having some trouble reseting the creation index. The option involved (UNK: 0xCC2A6A34) is not coming up when I open the neighborhood in new SimPe. I'm playing Seasons and the new SimPe is only up to Pets. If this is the problem is there another way to reset this or is it possible to play without it? I'm only deleting 9 sims.

Current SimPE labels it as Sims Creation Index (SCID). Still need to hex edit the value though.

I feel like I should have seen that coming. Thanks.

I assume it works for animals, too? Specially strays?
Also, does it work on long lost sims? ie, dead sims with no tombstone, no data file, unlinked etc aka royally borked?
In the the beginning of my sim days i used to delete sims via packaging the lot and deleting the lot from the lot bin. Yeah. Very unsafe, but we are talking about 2004 here. I still play this same neighborhood, and I really don't fancy the option "burninate the whole crap" a lot.  :( , though the 1.400 inhabitants is getting to my nervers - and game play.


translation: halp.

With the advent of Bon Voyage, I'm assuming this method can be used to eliminate unneeded tour guides. Would anyone happen to have some advice on how exactly I can know which tour guides I can safely delete without destroying my game?

Wipe them out. All of them.

As long as you follow the directions above, it is actually easier and faster to simply wipe them all out rather than trying to pick and choose which ones will live. The game will give you a new one anyway when you really need one.

Excellent. *steeples fingers evilly*

I don't see the need for 60 tour guides and 14 Unsavory Charlatans anyways.

Simpe is throwing massive errors for me - according to their boards it's not just my issue - they're saying wait for an update.
http://simpeforum.ambertation.de/sims2/HoodBV

So, I'm not quite sure what to do.  I've only half-ass burninated my tour guides - not even that.  I've prepped them for nukage, but can't get to them in SimPe.  Did I just completely farkle my game?  If it matters - I don't have that many - 11, and 4 charlatans, and 3 duplicate locals I was going to smite.

You could sign up for the QA forum in the SimPE forum - if you're granted access there you'll be able to download the latest BV-compatible SimPE version. I successfully deleted 2 more than 200 sims (most of them redundant vacation locals and unlinked dead sims) with that QA version, so in my opinion it's safe to use! ;)

Thanks - I'll do that :-)

Either i am very bad in english, or my computer or game work different. I do not get these options showned in the picture.
I type boolprop testingcheatsenabled true, SHIFT-CLICK ON A SIM, and all i get is a lot of other options. Like spawn or kill and all that.

I do not own pets, and never will. I just wonder, what am i doing wrong here since i do not get the same options as described here?

I do not understand "select your lot debugger" ?? And how do i get the debugged mode on? I have used it in CAS, but not in neighbourhoods.

Shift-CLICK on the box, not on a sim.

^ Kiddie apparently doesn't have the lot debugger and doesn't understand what it is.

Amazone, look in the Firing Range. It's a hacked object, and it will be your very favorite new toy.

Just a *bump* to ask El Presidente whether the Lot Debugger is any closer to having a way to delete pe(s)ts yet? I installed Pets last night and failed to get the empty templates, and as a result have Critturs cluttering up all 5 of my Neighbourhoods *hangs head in shame*. To give me some credit, if I'd realised the wretched EP put bonus sims in the SimBin, I'd have got the empty template first. (Knew about the LotBin, but thought that was relatively benign due to occupado houses vanishing from bin once placed.) Ah well! I'll know to do that before getting Seasons.

I've already tried following the instructions to wipe out all the characters created by Bon Voyage, but failed miserably so my back up has been restored.  I'm assuming first of all that it is safe for me to get rid of them all?

The part that I didn't follow was the resetting of the sim creation index.  I found the UNK file and used the hex editor, but was completely unsure as it didn't look right.  A little late I know, but I tehn read all of the posts and realised that the sim creation index has it's own descriptor in later versions of SimPE.  I had made some changes already, but none of these had been comitted or saved as far as I knew so I just exited.  I restarted and made what I thought were the right changes.  On starting my game it just hung forever on the neighbourhood loading screen.  I'm assuming that either I changed the sim creation index wrong, or some value was changed that shouldn't have been on my first attempt.  Is it okay to just completely ignore this step?  Unless that is someone can explain it in the simplest possible way.

Hey, new here, looks cool, anyways I got linked to this thread for help with fixing my Bon Voyage.

I've never used any cheats or debuggers, never used simPE (let alone two different versions?), never used hex editors.

My game is running slow, I figured out I have about 37 extra vacation NPC's running around.

I don't trust myself to fix my game however, the outline here intimidates me because I'm new to all of it.

Are there any other solutions to this? I'd like to be able to play my neighborhood again.  :'(

Thanks.

You can do a total uninstall and reinstall.  Be sure to delete the neighborhood data and all the saved information.

Starting from scratch isn't what I meant by "able to play my neighborhood again". I meant the neighborhood I put a lot of work into before Bon Voyage came and fuckt it up.

Here are your options; either figure out how to use Deleted 2, restore to a pre-BV backup copy of the neighborhood (before the unwanted characters were added), or delete your neighborhood and start over.

Ok. I'm left with no choice. Damn you Bon Voyage. >:(

So I'm assuming this is a little different (hopefully simpler) when getting rid of tour guides rather than my sims' ugly grandpa. They don't actually have any sort of relationship with my sims do they? Also I can't just go click on them all to prep for delete and get little numbers and stuff right?

Can anyone outline the steps I need to do just to get rid of tour guides/unsavory charletons?

I appreciate it.

Edit>>
So I went and looked for this SimPE business and ended up at the site for it and it appears that a new one was released yesterday...
http://sims.ambertation.de/

How does this change things?

It says there is a sim deleter tool plugin!

You can find complete instructions on how to delete sims here: Super Secret Place You Have Never Heard of Where You Too Can Learn to Delete Sims (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6205.0.html). Now don't tell anybody that I told you. I don't want to get into trouble for helping someone who is clearly lost and unable to solve her own problems.

Also you can find answers to your SimPE questions here: Super Secret Place That Has Answers to Nearly Every Question You Can Think Of (http://www.google.com). Again, please don't let anybody know that I told you.

Woo, clever.

If we were all as smart as you, natural selection would work in the human race, but no, people in wheelchairs get a little dog and blind people got braille.

I'm new to everything described in this thread, and yes, figuring it out on my own is an option, but it would be more efficient to receive help from someone more knowledgeable on the subject. Hopefully not everyone here is a twat, one who makes gender assumptions no less.
________________________
An update for any not-assholes who might be interested in generously helping me solve my problems:

With the new simPE I loaded my neighborhood, selected tour guides and charlatans, and deleted them. I don't know if this is ok but the game still worked. However it was still pretty slow, though slightly less so.

I may have a new problem. I just realized that making all 3 vacation destinations available to my neighborhood created a ton of people. Is there a safe way to reverse this? If I delete all of the people from one destination, assuming i can figure out who's from where, and never go back there, will they stay gone and not be replaced?

Thank you very much to anyone who's considerate.

Oh goody, a New Year present.

Most obstreperous Sky, V did you a real favour by providing you with the links. We expect most posters to read our forum FAQs and stickies and so on, oddly enough. Considering these FAQs etc were made with the express purpose of answering N00B questions, so that we did not have to do so repeatedly.

The only twat in this thread sir, is you.

Well, considering we have given you an illustrated tutorial with step-by-step instructions of exactly how to execute every step of the process, I do not understand what more you expect. Any other method is either shortcut to be attempted only by those more advanced (I.E., apparently not you), or a critical omission of key steps (which is bad).

So I have to find every tour guide in the game, all 37, and click on them to prep for delete?

And I have to do a bunch of crap in two different, apparently crappy, versions of simPE when there is a new version with something called a sim deleter tool?

My point is that, there is a new version out, which sounds like it makes things simpler, and it seems logical to me to try and use that if it could potentially be easier, rather than continue to struggle to understand the stuff on the first page here. It seems like a group of people here who are pretty into doing stuff with simPE so I is my hope that one of you will figure it out and help me.

And witch, you honestly think V's post was a real favour?
I mean, this forum isn't exactly going apeshit with activity, causing an inability for anyone to actually answer someone else's question personally. 

You were already told that this is not a support forum for SimPE. You were given a tutorial, complete with pictures and circles to illustrate the important bits, a link to a helpful site that can often lead a person to the answers to most questions and you were given very helpful advice from kuronue and from Invisigoth. All of your information thus far was confirmed by the President of the site Himself. He even gave you reasons why you should do as you have been told.

The only thing left for us to do is to come over to your house and do it for you. What's your address? One of us will come over right away and take care of this for you.

By the way, I assumed you were a little girl because you were whining and insisting that someone big and strong come and do your work for you. Now you are complaining that the job is too hard and too involved and why don't we make it easier for you. You still sound like a little girl. A little girl whose doll house is broken and who doesn't want to have to find the nails and the glue to put it back together again.

And anyway, Sky, since your profile does not list your gender, one simply has to assume something.  Since most players here are female, it is a common practice to assume that new unindicated posters are female.  We also assume you are 12, since your attitude and desire to be hand-held suggests this strongly.

If you don't want to do the Deleted 2 steps, that's fine.  Try anything else you want.  If your game goes splodie, you were warned.

Anyhow, it is likely that 37 additional vacation townies are not what is slowing down your game.  BV causes all sorts of slowdowns for various reasons, it seems.  Try playing with your modem switched off or unplugged, reduce graphic levels and/or sound quality.  Look through the "getting rid of securom" threads, or search on "BV lag".  My thought is that you will find that you can delete 37 characters and not solve your lag problems.

Nice enough for you?  Now stop whining.

O.M.G. I, like, totally missed that we attend each individual whiner en masse. Why didn't someone tell me?

Um, yes, or I wouldn't have said so?

What the hell are you thinking MATYans? Xmas & New Year with family and friends? Dereliction of duty I calls it! Get back here and answer the N00b's repetitive quest for an easier, softer way.

Ok.

Asking for help and whining are different things.

You all just love to sit on your high horses and laugh at people who aren't as good with computers as you are. I have just been asking questions, and been perfectly polite, and not whining at all. And I am met with sarcasm and jeering and almost no help at all (which sparked some deserved impoliteness from me). 

Usually if someone is having trouble with somethings, even with some instructions, there are nice people willing to help. Here I can see it's mostly people who just get kicks out of seeing people struggle. It's extremely immature from women in their 40's.

Jolrei, even though you did a bit of the unnecessary above, I appreciate the info you gave me. Thanks.

Sorry to end all your fun but, to both mine and probably your happiness, I think I'll look elsewhere for help.

Good luck with that!

Nice people?  Hell, you wandered into the wrong place. 

You've been given the answers you asked for, but you don't like them.  Tough shit.  Life's not far.  This is not the site for moronic excuses like 'not being good with computers.' If you're not good with computers, you shouldn't be asking how to do advanced things with them.  If you want to do advanced things with them, learn how, or hire someone to do it for you.  I'd be happy to, for $100 a hour plus traveling expenses.

Oh, and I guess I'm really immature then, being in my 50's and all.

I have realized that.

Not all of my questions have been answered, like how to find all the tour guides so I can prep them for delete like the tutorial tells me to do.

I think I may have figure out the real problem though. I sent one of my sims on a vacation to Twikki Island and got him flirting with the Witch Doctor ( you can do 'feed a bite' and once they fancy each other you can do everything else) and eventually marry the guy/have him move in. So I did this... it asked me if I wanted to move in Mrs. Crumplebottom or the Grim Reaper or the Hula Zombie or any of my dead sims or Bella Goth with the Witch Doctor, but I declined. I think having the witch doctor in one of my families is something making my game run bad, because that's about the time I remember it starting to run bad. Also, after backing up my Sims 2 folder I moved the family with the witch doctor in it to another 'hood via the move occupied house thing figuring I'll start anew in this neighborhood, since the other one was looking grim, and play my favorite family in the new 'hood and go from there. Well the new 'hood ran slow...

So I think my real problem is the Witch Doctor since you aren't supposed to have him playable in your families. It makes sense too because I didn't spend $3500 building this computer so a small band of tour guides could slow it down. Witch Doctors do voodoo shit though so you never know.  >:(

Anyways, I don't know what the lot debugger is, or if it's even different from debug mode. I've tried to search high and low on this site to figure it out so I wouldn't have to burden you people with a question, and while it is mentioned a lot on the site, I cannot find out what it is and/or how to use it.

Because of this I'm stuck on the first line of the tutorial, in my quest to delete the Witch Doctor.

And age and maturity are not directly proportional, however I don't have any reason to think you are immature, you seem very logical to me and your post wasn't full of personal attacks and insults you expect to hear on the 5th grade playground.

And witch your luck did not help me :(

Well, seeing as it's New Year and all...

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/)

Have a look through the bv folder for all bv hacks. The Director's cut has all hacks. Each zip has an rtfm in it, explaining what it does. Most hacks also have a thread on this forum. Search by name.

No wonder your hood is exploding, as you've already done 2 Very Bad Things to your hood.


If you can't do the flirting with NPCs in 'normal' way (not the one that was introduced by later EP), you are not supposed to move in/marry them. EA test new EPs only with Base Game, so some EP-specific features are often glitched. (Like OFB perk "Head for Numbers", which made the game crash when you try to call vacation NPCs.) AFAIR, Feed a Bite was introduced in NL, so it's not surprising that the interaction is glitched with BV NPCs.


This is a well-known VBT. NEVER move occupied lots into lot bin. NEVER move occupied lots between the hoods. You'll irrevocably corrupt your new hood. DO NOT delete family in the Sim bin.

Search the forum for more information, and read around the forum MOAR, especially this War Room and various stickies. If you don't even know such basic things, you're not supposed to try this tutorial in the first place.

I just play the game, you know. I never thought it was necessary to go online and search for what you can and can't do in a game, because in most of the games I've played (and there have been a damn lot) they are made well enough where it's not necessary, and anything you can do is ok.

Thanks for letting me know these things. I never would have thought moving an occupied lot would damage things. Seems very irresponsible of EA to not warn you about that while you're doing it.


I have figured this out, that I am far from capable of doing this tutorial, however, I need to do it... hence why a lot of people here seem to hate me.

Thanks for the link, witch.

You would be better off starting a new neighborhood. Like Lord Darcy said, your new neighborhood is FUBARed and just removing the Witch Doctor will not fix it. If there are existing Sims that you must have in your new neighborhood, you can clone them and recreate them. There are a number of tutorials on how to do this; a quick Google search will get you started.

Well I got the lot debugger, figured it out after a while, and got the Witch Doctor deleted out of my neighborhood properly.

Game runs great now.

Yeah there probably is some level of corruption but if it's not affecting my game play, I can ignore it.

Thanks those of you who offered useful info.

And Mr. Pescado, that Lot Debugger is a damn fine device. Good work there. Just putting it in my lot made it run a bit better.

Yeah, that's a great idea. Get really involved in that hood, play it for another generation or two, make sure that you care deeply about the sims so that it will be all the more crushing when the corruption starts to show. But when it eventually blows up don't come crying to us asking for a fix. The fact that it's still (apparently) functioning doesn't mean that it isn't already dead.

Invisigoth's post showed up as I was tying my reply, but I want to second what she said. In my experience, TS2 bugs often don't affect gameplay immediately. For example, problems I had in the past included one Sim having a corrupted memory, which spread through the neighborhood as gossip, and I did not realize it was a problem until numerous Sims were "infected" with the bad memory. If you are concerned that there is corruption in your neighborhood, you are better off taking the time to fix it NOW when your neighborhood is smaller rather than later when it is larger. If your neighborhood is relatively small, it might not be a bad idea to take the time to clone the Sims you are attached to and start a new neighborhood. You can use SimPE to re-establish the family ties of the Sims you cloned. I believe there are tutorials in Peasantry on how to do this.

My advice is to look at the hacks available on this site and install all the critical and (very) important fixes. If you have not done so already, do take the time to delete the extra tour guides. You can also use the lot debugger to perform periodic game maintenance, such as deleting neighborhood gossip and clearing memories from dead Sims.


Yes, that is quite an understatement. I would go a step farther and say that it is moronic of EA to include a feature that is so obviously broken.

Well I'm glad you replied in addition to invisigoth because I don't speak asshole.

I'll definitely heed your advices, and I really appreciate the thorough warning and suggestions. Thanks.

You came in here whining and complaining because you don't like the information that we're providing you with either because it's too difficult or not what you want to hear. Lord Darcy already mentioned that you've ruined your hood and you totally ignored that useful warning. Excuse me for pointing it out in a way that I thought you would be capable of understanding. This website is full of useful TS2 information that you chose to ignore. You want us to do everything for you, and we don't coddle the lazy or stupid here. You said that you've already realized that MATY is not a nice, cuddly place, so start acting like it. If you get butthurt this easily you'll never survive here.

Furthermore, I speak bitch, not asshole.

Your life would be less stressful if you were capable of ignoring people.

Obviously I'm a pain in the ass to you, yet you don't have to continue coming to this thread to eagerly see how the conversation is developing and come spread your negativity. Are you that bored with your life?

There are several people, like Ethendrelle, who seem interested in helping people to a degree, so clearly not everyone here is a prick. There is a lot of useful information and resources here so I'd like to stick around. That will be more pleasant if I ignore people like you, since I can already see that you aren't helpful. I would suggest that you consider doing the inverse.

Lord Darcy was helpful. What makes you think I ignored him? Don't act like you know everything.

In fact the same could be said of you.

Actually Invisigoth is very helpful, and is completely correct in saying don't come running to us once your hood a'splodes you have been warned. As to the next post, again Invisigoth is correct again the information is all here it is up to you to understand what it means.

I used some (not even terribly harsh) sarcasm in response to your statement that you thought that it would be okay to just ignore possible problems with your game. It was far from the meanest thing that I've seen on this site. In response you called me an asshole. It seems to me that you overreacted and got unnecessarily mean pretty quickly. My second response to you was calm and I didn't get personal or swear at you except in direct reference to the term you used on me. I at no time called you a bitch or asshole. You respond by insulting me and calling me useless. That doesn't really make a lot of sense to me, in fact, it seems as if you have been the one who's behavior is out of line.

Also, do you remember when I helped you earlier in this thread?

Frankly, invisigoth, I thought your post was quite reasonable and considerate, and provided helpful information to someone who asks for help and then bites the hand that gives it to them.

@Sky:  We don't hate you because you don't know everything.  We do provide help to people who honestly try to help themselves, respect the culture of the forum, and treat the MATY members with respect.  Your brand of lashing out at people who may express some irritation that you are not listening to good advice is frankly not making you any friends here, and will be counterproductive if you are really looking for help in either saving your sims or your hood.  We are beginning to hate you because you are demonstrably an idiot.

I'm sure it's evident but I'll say it; I am/was utterly clueless about this stuff.

I went to some forum and told them of my woes with BV and they gave me a link to this thread.

After a few days of trying to understand the tutorial here I decided I had to ask some questions. When I mean utterly clueless I mean it. I have only played the sims 2. When I go looking thru this forum and see an area called FFS hacks, I didn't think that was even related to the sims 2. I thought this was a forum for a myriad of games and FFS may as well have meant Fairy Fuck Safari, I didn't know what a hack was in the context of TS2. I thought the war room was the "Sims 2 section".

I look at the tutorial and I don't know what a lot debugger is, or what debug mode is. I don't know what "Ye Olde simPE" or "newfangled craptastic" are, whether they are part of the game or what, much less how to get to each shown window. I don't know where to find character files.

I ask for a bit of help, I never whined or complained, and all I hear is "HAY DUMY IT DUN SAY RITE THARE WUT 2 DUE!" Am I dumb because I have never explored TS2 outside of the playable game? Maybe. I don't know, but coming to that realization didn't help me.

So I figure it out and delete my problem sim, with almost zero help from anyone (a few people gave a vague link like "look around in there"). And my game ran fine. Again, clueless, I thought this meant the threat was gone, because I was not aware of how a little corruption can get worse, because I know nothing about stuff like that. You simply tell me how stupid I am. A nice person comes a long and subtly lets me know that I am stupid, while telling me how to improve my situation.

That's why I don't like you(@invisigoth). Your interest involves telling people they are wrong, whereas I would tell them they are wrong and help them, to my ability, to understand why they are wrong and help them become right. That seems like the right thing to do if you know something someone else doesn't. If people didn't share their knowledge we would be building the wheel.

Yes, we have cleverly hidden all of our TS2 knowledge by publishing it publicly on the internet for anyone to search, access, and learn from freely. It is wrong of me to expect people to read that information. I have contributed to this knowledge base and helped other players whenever I had the pertinent information or technical ability. When I arrived at this forum I had never used a hack, I had never heard of FFS or Pescado, and I knew nothing about the information available here. I had only played the game. What you are expected to do at MATY, and what most of us have done, is to use the search button, to look through the forums, and most importantly to read the FAQ (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7437.0.html) before expecting others to hand you everything that you want. I didn't just magically know all about hacks so I read everything I could find. I took the time and energy to learn.

Actually, by explaining a little bit about MATY culture and linking you to our site guide I am helping you once again. One of the two unofficial MATY mottos is "lurk moar". That means spend some time and take some initiative to try to figure things out on your own. Looking around the site would be a good first step. Familiarize yourself with your surroundings. If you think that I'm horrible just wait until you see Retardo Land; the second MATY motto is "Moar Fight".

I did read the FAQ. I learned a lot of acronyms and some stuff about the site, it was helpful. The main problem was finding it.

The search is useless. I typed in lot debugger most of the results were anything with the word clothes. I typed FAQ into the search and the actual FAQ was not even on the first page of search results.

I think it would be easier if I had stumbled upon the site and been like "hey, lots of sims 2 info, I'll start reading" when I didn't have a goal in mind.But I came here need to find something in particular, and then have to look around for the info I needed, because that was very frustrating having a goal of what to find, largely because the names of the forum sections didn't make any sense to me. I did find a lot of good stuff in my searching, but finding what I was looking for was hard.

Anyone can learn/find/discover anything given enough time, but you know, I'm on my break from school, looking forward to some time to relax and play some games, so I wanted them to work so I thought I'd ask for help and try to speed up the time I spend fixing my game so I can spend more time playing it.  :-\

Hi sky - think of these guys as high-priced expert consultants - if you call them in for what they think of as 101 questions it costs in emotional wear and tear.  ;D   Some of us hang out on other boards as well and do some explaining there.  I don't mind explaining stuff, in as much as I understand it on the Sims2 bit of the sims1 BBS.  A small group of Sims2 regulars hang out there - we don't know as much as these guys, but we like to help.  :)
http://thesims.ea.com/us/index.html?menu=community&content=/us/chat/
MTS2 is another board where you can get help  www. modthesims2.com
Enjoy your simming!

On searching here, I think the results you get depend on where you are when you hit search as well as what you put in the search field.  You'll get used to it and to the layout and terminology - it does make sense I promise.

You kinda always have to use the Advanced search to set your search options. The default configuration for SMF isn't so great.

Ah, thanks, I should have tried that.

And thanks for the invitations cwykes.

Not sure if this is in the FAQ, but another good way to search would be using Google. Start out with something like this:

site:moreawesomethanyou.com +"hack thingy"

I don't think it matters whether you get rid of people before or after installing. You will get a bunch more people when/if you add a shopping district to your 'hood so it might be easier to navigate before you install OFB.

I would get the newest version of SimPE, it made the procedure a little easier on me and I knew nothing of how to do this stuff. And I'd get the newest lot debugger... not sure why you wouldn't.

There's a thread in Peasantry (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.0.html) containing empty templates, so that you won't get all the excess townies when you add a Bluewater to your 'hood.  If you create a custom shopping area, instead of using Bluewater, you won't get extra townies.

Note that the thread I linked to has two types of templates - you can choose either the empty template (with no playables or townies at all), or the cleaned up template (with the playables, but no townies).

Deletion of townie and NPCs serves no real purpose unless you just really hate a specific sim if you don't have noregens for the relevant categories, yes. Noregen doesn't lock up your game, but yanking it out will freeze your game as the game tries to fill up what it then perceives as a gaping vacancy once the noregen is disabled or removed.

So im playing the new hood that came with FreeTime. and ive got a hand on the QA version of SimPE
And im wanting to remove some of the not so pretty and dumb sims from that hood, to save time building my own.
Ive noticed that SimPE has a plug-in called "The Sim Deleter Tool" which is integrated into it, made at Theo's Shack.

I did some playing around with a backed up hood last night, and using this tool, I deleted the Sim, and went to another
sim and checked memories and it had removed the "Met: John Doe" from there.

Question time:
If I delete a sim using this from the n/hood package will this in turn be like using this tutorial? or is this still as bad?
Will this remove these tokens relating to customer loyalty etc?

I know that this is the MATY fourm, but alot of mods use the SimPE for things, so any help would be great.
Cheers.

The only person who can answer that is Theo, since he's the one who wrote it. *I* wouldn't trust it, and would do the Lot Debugger sweep first, as there's no telling how thorough of a job it may have done.

I thought that Theo had indicated that the Sim Deleter Tool was to be used after the lot debugger "prep for deletion" step anyway.  I might be mistaken, I suppose.  Supports the "check with Theo" advice.

ok cheers, ill see what i can find out. thanks for the help.

Never hurts to just Debugger first anyway. There is no overkill. Only "open fire" and "I need to reload".

The deleter tool from SimPe uses a different method that may be out of date, as new expansions add more junkdata to sims.

The Lot Debugger method uses the game's functions, so in theory it may erase additional undocumented junkdata. However, SimPe will still be needed to delete the remaining resource, for which there is no game function to do it.

The only situation that makes LD cumbersome to use is when you need to delete many sims at once, and those sims reside in different lots. But I think this will happen just upon installing a new expansion, not on normal usage.

I suppose I could implement some manner of array-based "Exterminate Many", but honestly, how often does that happen? All you have to do is pick the out one by one. Families that are being deleted don't tend to live on many different lots. Or any lots. You could just merge them into a single Deletees family for faster hunting.

So... what I gather from reading all these pages is that I am, in fact, quite screwed.  After installing BV, I wiped out everything that I had (yay, bugs!) and started over.  I was set.  I had a plan.  I'd saved the physical images of my peoples in BodyShop so I could place them back in the game without all the horrors inflicted on them by my noobish use of SimPE.  I was happy.

And instead of having 2-300 townies/NPCs/filthySTRAYS in my neighborhoods, I ended up with 900. 

When I realised that the game was making multiples of everything, I'd already restarted rebuilding my neighborhood.  <whine> I don't WANNA remake everyone again, grow them up, send them through college... </whine>

Ahem.  Any suggestions on how to speed up the process?  Or should I torch the game and start once more, armed with your lovely antiredundancy hack?

Or maybe just torch the game.

Thank you, in advance, from a thoroughly non-awesome ferret,
Tika

(Edited to make a stupid question slightly less stupid. Ish.)

Multiples of everything? Like redundant NPCs? Well, if it's gotten that out of hand, the only solution is to slash and burn.

Aye, redundant NPCs, townies, pets.  Often with the same name and outfit, though a different face.  It's incredibly irritating and slows the load time to a crawl.  I was hoping (before I came here and discovered how off-base I was) that if I found out their file name (N003_847 or something) and deleted them straight from the folder, it would make them be gone and stay gone.  Silly ferret, you broke your game again.

Slash and burn, eh?  Le sigh.  I was afraid of that.  Well, in that case...

*SMASHES WITH HAMMER*

Muahahahahahaha-ack-choke-gah!

Hrm.  Methinks I've lost me mind.  Again.

Thanks for the quick response!  Tis much appreciated.

Tootle pip and all that rot,
Tika

If I sever the family ties for a sim with relationships (that is, unwanted babies who are related to their parents and siblings) using InSIM, can I then safely nuke the babies using this method?  Says not safe for sims related to others, but if I make 'em unrelated, would that work?

Yes.

That's great, now I can safely delete premade EAxis families like Travellers with the combination of InSim and Deleted 2. I was worried for the same reason as HystericalParoxysm.

I'll probably eventually roll the tie-splitter into the Deleter itself.

I'm not computer savvy enough for this....

I prepped all the sims I wanted gone for deletion with Lot Debugger then quit the game and downloaded SimPE.  This is where I get confused.

I'm doing this with the newest edition of SimPE because I downloaded the 5.0 and it wouldn't work.  It would "stop working" and I'd get the options to close it, or search online for a solution and close it.

So, I started searching SimPE.
In the neighborhood brower I found where it has each family with who is in it, amount of money, number of family friends, etc. and on all the ones not containing a sim of mine I selected the delete key from the top menu (yellow card-looking thing) including a few sims and pets I hadn't 'prepped for deletion'.

Will this work?  And if not can someone dumb this down for me please?

I created a Sim in CAS, only to find that his surname was duplicated by a Townie and I therefore have no need of him - by my challenge rules, Townies are preferable since they don't reset the gene pool.

Said Sim has therefore never been out of the Sim Bin: no relations, job, business etc. Only memories should be Mystery Sim, if the game's even generated those yet. Am I safe to just use Crappy Delete on him, or will he still have a SWAF file hidden away somewhere?

Also, on a similar note: moving families between subhoods via the Lot Bin, yea or nay? I'm guessing nay,but it'd make my life much easier if i was possible, so I'll check :P

I believe via the lot bin is a no-no; you can move them out to the sim bin, and then back in to another sub-hood (or the main hood), but moving the whole lot has problems, if memory serves.

So it's the act of putting the occupied lot into the Lot Bin that causes the problem, not placing it in a different neighbourhood per se?

Fair enough; I'll separate them first. Baaa!

I just followed SaraMK's tutorial on how to combine the neighborhoods into a single neighborhood with multiple downtown additions which are in fact the other neighborhoods.  Now I have a single neighborhood with a slew of unwanted occupants (over 1500 sims) and want to rid the thing of everyone and start with all new sims.  What is the best method for doing this?

Putting an occupied lot into the Lot Bin is guaranteed to shit on your source neighborhood, regardless of what you do. Taking an occupied lot FROM the Lot Bin will then shit on your destination neighborhood if the lot wasn't "clean" and devoid of dangling connections. If you don't care that the game just shit on your neighborhood (neighborhood is doomed and being evacuated, is a test hood, playing the Scorched Earth Challenge, etc.), then you can go ahead and perform one or both of these steps.

The hack will be in the directors cut - read the FAQ for a link to the directors cut for your highest EP.  FAQ is a sticky thread in the podium called something bizarre - 'Spore Torrents' last time I looked.  Download the directors cut zip file, extract the hack and put it in a hack folder in Downloads.  It isn't an object that you'll see in game; it works behind the scenes.

NB we're not including Theo's plugins with SimPE any more as we weren't doing a very good job of working out which version was the latest - leading to all sorts of support issues.  We feel it would be more helpful to users to download direct from Theo which would at least ensure they were aware of where to go for the best support.

Ahh - hadn't noticed that.  Totally understandable on your part, but it's a shame.  I couldn't find the plugin on a quick search at MTS2 and Theo's shack (yes I probably phail at google), but thinking about it, I can't be bothered adding another thing to my list of "sims stuff I must keep updated", so I'll just have to live without the ability to delete a single memory from a sim and cascade delete it from all the other sims! 

edited for spelling

Well we only implemented that decision for the first time in 0.67.11 so you may not even have that one yet.

Just wondering, why exactly is it bad to delete the DNA of a deleted sim? Does this count even if you haven't played the neighbourhood first? I'm in the process of making my own clean EAxis hoods and so far I haven't dared to delete any of the DNA files, but there are an awful lot of them... far more than there were sims in the first place. Funny thing, really, it looks like EAxis made a bunch of sims, then decided to delete them and/or replace them, and they just left all the old garbage there when they released the game/EPs. In Every. Single. Hood. Stealthhoods, templates, main hoods. Gah.

Yes there's a real mess in most Maxis created 'hoods.  Most of us use the clean templates in the War room instead of the originals.

Deleting unused genetics files will corrupt the other genetics files - you'll probably lose the recessive genetics data for all the other sims.  I think Ancient Sim might have been the one to find this out the hard way.  I'm surprised you didn't find something about it when you searched the board.   

I'm hoping someone's going to clean up the Free Time template sometime soon.  I had a go myself to get rid of the simbin families and the files were too big a mess for me to be confident I'd fixed it all.

I used the one IAmTheRad uploaded in the Empty Templates thread in Peasantry: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.msg317272.html#msg317272

It seemed to work just fine in my game!

Thanks. I did do a board search but could only find multiple posts saying that deleting the DNA was bad, nothing saying why exactly it was bad/what sort of badness it might cause. I have been using the clean templates up until now, but then, because I hate myself, I decided to try making my own. I found that the extra DNA seems to have been deleted in the clean templates I downloaded from here, too.

I'll just leave the DNA well alone then.

I have always read "bad" at MATY to mean "will contribute to your lots/sims/hoods corrupting and becoming a big fiery ball visible from space".

As you see, "bad" has a certain efficiency of expression going for it.

Yeah. I was just sort of curious as to why deleting the DNA files would cause this, while it's okay to delete SWAFs and relationships, etc.

No one knows. We just know that it is extremely bad. There is no logical reason why this should happen at all, and it is clearly a hardcoded response, as it cannot happen on ACCIDENT, so it is clearly some manner of EAxis sadism.

I suspect it happens to Eaxis sims as well as ours.  They'd have to be supremely incompetent to have messed up the family trees and genetics for pre-made families as much as they have otherwise.  I was looking at Desiderata valley genetics this morning because someone asked me where Pauline Aspir's brown hair came from.  Mum is blonde & dad has black hair.  Answer should be that Dad has a recessive gene for brown hair, but expressed=recessive for all 3.  Dad's parents have black and brown hair - again - expressed=recessive for both parents.  ! don't think I've screwed up Desiderata Valley....

Figures. Silly EAxis. Well, thanks for the responses. I have kept all the crap DNA around so it should be all right.


I had a fun time cleaning up Desiderata Valley. At first I thought that it didn't look too bad, and that they'd actually managed to do an okay job this time... Then I realised that a whole bunch of the spammy useless dead grandparents were missing the family tree relationships to their kids, and NONE of the dead characters had a relationship to their spouse. And the memories of the premade characters - complete mess. Most of them had a memory of growing up from baby to toddler, and one of them had a memory of two sims of a different family being abducted by aliens - which they had no memory of themselves, of course. And so on. I wonder how exactly they do put together these hoods.

Has your aspir family got messed up genetics too?  no recessive genes in sight to account for Pauline's brown hair?

I fixed so many recessive genetics that I completely lost track, but yes, I do think so. The dad has brown hair recessive now, anyway, so I must've fixed it. About 99% of the characters did not have any recessive traits.

Surprisingly, both Tank and Ripp Grunt in Strangetown actually had correct recessive genetics. Buck would've, too, except he wasn't supposed to have blond hair, then, but brown. I think I gave Buzz recessive red or something.

I'm such a terrible nitpick. I wonder if I'll even play much with any of this. I just like fiddling and fixing.

Another question:
I read somewhere that resurrecting Pleasantview Bella is bad (even though she's not properly "dead"), because she has no DNA file. Sure enough, she doesn't. So what happens if I do resurrect and play her? Will the game swipe DNA from some other sim? I've bred her before in previous reincarnations of Pleasantview and the kids got the correct genetics from her (black hair, brown eyes, type 3 skin), provided I set her to not "unlinked". Will this badness happen only if I breed her, or if I bring her around at all? Can I make a new DNA for her? Am I better off making a new Bella, redirecting all memories and relationships to her, and delete the old one?

Are you shift-clicking while in debug mode?

Debug mode = boolprop testingcheatsenabled true

try "boolProp dormSpecificToolsDisabled false".

Pescado, in my last round of townie aging I killed off about 16 townies. On seven of them, when I prepped for delete, I received no message confirming or showing their number. Now, I can still find them in SimPE and complete the rest of the procedure, but I'm hesitant to do so. Safe? Unsafe?

You did it wrong. Redo those numbers.

I've retried prepping those sims three times. I get no confirmation message showing the number. I had done nothing other than kill them beforehand. This is my first batch of townies to kick it. So....there's really nothing for me to have done wrong with these seven sims. And it's not like I'm unfamiliar with the procedure; I Deleted 2'ed at least 90 sims in Queen's Cove. It also worked for the other nine.

Now, I know what the actual numbers are because I can see them in SimPE. This is no issue. I can delete the SimDescription files for them and the character files. But I don't want to do it without LotDebugger doing its thing correctly. I'd rather have all the dead sim bits in my files rather than floating memories and relationships with no references clogging the works. Would attaching an affected character file help?

Ok, I did this before, but this time I screwed up.

I prepped 9 sims (custom townies) for deletion. 3 of them have family ties that I stupidly forgot to sever. One of those 3 is father and grandfather to my playable sims. I haven't deleted SDCSs yet of those 3 yet, or reseted Sim Creation Index or deleted their character files. Now what should I do? Is it possible to restore those sims somehow? My last back-up is not very fresh, ofcourse. I suck.

Also, is it safe to delete SCOR instances (not for those 3 screwed up sims of mine, but in general)?

Sorry, but changes made to my previous post just wouldn't stick, so here I am, double-posting  ::)

"ETA - Just thought of something. If I sever the family ties of all the sims that are related to the screwed up sims, will that solve the problem? Or I'll just make a bigger mess? Or all is lost already?
Say, my playable kid's grandad is prepped for deletion. I sever the kid's family ties with InSim. Will that ruin kid's memories of 'Learned to...' and stuff? Will I be able to properly restore the kid's ties with mommy and daddy?"

Is it safe to delete related Sims if you delete the entire family?  For example, I don't want the families that came with some of the expansion packs.  I've not placed them in a lot yet.  I'm assuming it's not safe to delete them from the Sim bin from what I've read, but could I delete them (using Deleted 2) if I make sure to get them all, because then there wouldn't be any relatives left to be mucked up by their absence?  Or will it still cause problems in some mystifying and sadistic EA way?

Why not just use inSim to sever their family ties with each other, then delete them? It might be an extra step to take, but at least it will help make sure you don't break anything.

New version should correctly handle the family tie nonsense.

Okay, thanks - I'll make sure I've got the latest version and give it a try after a backup.  I've had to clear out about 150 excess gardeners from the missing portal bug waaaay back around base game time, so I'm almost deleting in my sleep at this point.  At least the family ones shouldn't require searching through that huge list of NPC names that was starting to make my eyes cross.

Deleted 2 will search-and-destroy all such memories and nuke them. You may also wish to torch attraction tokens at the same time.

I just tried this for the first time on a nanny that had generated before installing the nanny lobotomy thing, but I think I did something wrong, as when I looked at the file in SimPE she still had a relationship level to another sim that I used "Make me know everyone" on a while back. I thought the prepare for delete torched those?  I did have an error during the preparing for deletion, but I assumed at first that it was supposed to happen - only now when I'm looking at the instructions again (for the SimPE part), I'm not so sure. Did I do something terribly wrong?

Edit: It seems that someone else has had the same problem, in a post in the Lot Debugger's own thread, so I guess it wasn't my own stupidity, unless we're both equally stupid. I actually replied there hours ago but only just now thought of modifying this post.

So... I'm obviously still not very good at this. I deleted 2'd a bunch more random Strangetown sims, including Circe Beaker's grandparents (Andros+Eurydice Salamis, Moira+Gwrtheyrn McGork). All the others were easily zorched, except for the dead grandparents. I figure it's because they are unlinked, but I really want them and all the other unnecessary dead family-tree-clutterers gone, once and for all. So... since I'm all new at this and such, I'm just going to accept my non-awesomeness and ask for help. So, um - help?

I'm uncertain what exactly is happening that is wrong.

They aren't being - as I call it - "zorched". Nothing is being destroyed - SWAF and such is still there, and indeed some stupid crap that probably *shouldn't* be there in the first place is there, suggesting that, since I haven't touched them at all, EAXIS really corrupted them badly. They simply aren't deleted down to SDSC and SDNA.

Okay, this is probably a really stupid question, but...how do I convert DEC to HEX?  ??? I can't seem to find the option anywhere in SimPE.

Sometimes the SWAF sticks around anyway when nuking unlinked sims. If it's still there, just delete it manually, and check that all memories pertaining to the sim were purged. The debugger should definitely find those.

Window - Number Converter (Ctrl + H)

In my SimPE version (0.66), the lines aren't labelled, but the formats are as follows:

Line 1: Hexadecimal
Line 2: Decimal
Line 3: Binary
Line 4: Exponential

You could also use the Windows Calculator (View - Scientific (?)), type in the number and switch to HEX.  Or convert it manually.

Scary necromancy guy is scary.

I have a problem mentioned over here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,13460.0.html) which has forced me to conclude that the only hope for my neighbourhood lies in deleting at least one wayward sim, if not her entire family. Unfortunately, when entering the home lot (yes, in debug) shift-clicking on the (most recent version of the) Batbox, and selecting 'Prep Sim For Deletion', the family's name doesn't even appear as an option. Any ideas? I'm starting to think this 'hood may be a lost cause.

ETA: I accessed the sim in question through the Batbox on another lot and did my best to boogaloo, but between the trouble this sim/family has given me and my inelegant efforts in SimPE, there is no question in my mind that the pooch has been royally screwed here. Always happy to receive an unlikely ray of hope if one happens to be flung my way, but I think I'm gonna have to say my goodbyes to this neighbourhood.

If the sim's family name doesn't appear as an option, try checking in the "Default" fambly.

I actually did check Default, as well as each and every other family listed, to see if they'd been 'misplaced' somehow, but until I hit the Batbox at a neighbour's, they just weren't there.

I see that this topic hasn't been posted in for a while, but i hope that somebody can clarify the tutorial. I'm quite new to SimPE, can only edit sims' characteristics so far and know a little about sim surgery.

Where am I supposed to search for the instance values and after I note down their file numbers, what should be done with them, nothing? I guess nothing.

Is this about different versions of SimPE? Which one is old and which one newfangled? :( I have a few, but when I try opening an older one, it says a warning that it can mess up the game.

Where am I supposed to find their files?

Is it possible to skip this step safely if the character file number is already known?

If you truly already know the character file, yes. Actually, if you have the Theo Plugin, this step is performed automatically for you by the Theo Plugin.

Thanks for the info, I might check out Theo's tool.

Theo's tool does the same thing that SimPe's original deleter tool does, except that it asks before deleting the associated SDNA's (deleting DNA can be a VBT, if you care about the surviving sim's genetics).

The remaining code is essentially the same, and there's the possibility of it being incomplete, as it knows nothing about the resources created by newer expansions. Since there's no guarantee that the game can remove these un-referenced resources on its own, I actually prefer using the batbox method instead.

Ok well, I might just play it safe and not skip any steps.

You probably should just set it never to ask that, because under no circumstances should you ever say yes.

The Batbox Method is not something that is SEPERATE from the Theotool: You use the Batbox FIRST, then use Theotool to mop up the remains that cannot be exterminated in-game. They are two steps of one process. If you Theotool without the Batbox, you leave dangling references to that sim in-game. If you Batbox without the Theotool, or the manual equivalent, then you don't actually remove the sim. Period.

Just remember in the middle of the word "separate" is "a rat".  Then, you'll always know how to spell separate.  :)

I just want to clarify before I attempt this.
Once I use the batbox to prep a sim for deletion, the only files that should be left is the Sim Description (SDSC) and the SimDNA (SDNA).
And the SDNA is to be left alone, while the SDSC (and possibly the SWAF if it hasn't been purged with the batbox) is to be deleted manually through SimPE.
I've backed up my hood just in case I screw something up, just to be on the safe side.

You will see the SDSC (always), SDNA (often), and SCOR (occasionally). Delete the SDSC and SCOR on sight. Never touch the SDNA unless you are deleting EVERYONE, ala DAC.

The last two bytes are a short-integer, and you replace them as described, yes.

Hail to the Awesomeness,

What does DAC stand for? Does it mean it is safe to delete DNA for those who have not reproduced?

I wish I had seen the posts about empty university template and issues with population explosion earlier before I stupidly add three university campuses to the Mega Hood. Arrhhh... now the drill begins to take those damn excess dormies out.

new peasant in town,

Lepifera

DAC = "deleteallcharacters", which was the original cheat that could be used to delete Sims.

*inscribes circles on the ground in blood*

Hokay, now that the necromancy is out of the way, I have a question.  I feel really silly for asking this, because I feel like the answer is in here, but I'm just paranoid enough to be hesitant.  Or hesitant enough to be paranoid.  Or both.

So, I'm up to the part where I'm supposed to load Old!SimPE and delete the SDSC.  Old!SimPE isn't cooperating, but I can find the SDSC resource for said sim in QA!SimPE, which I can delete, extract, etc.  Basically it has the same drop-down menu options as in the picture for this step, plus some others.  Is there a functional difference between the two?  If so, is the difference relevant in context, or would deleting that serve the same purpose?

I guess the meta question is: Are resources just files within the package, or is there a layer of abstraction here?

You can delete the SDSC shown in the resource list just fine. It's the same thing, only presented in a different way. Personally, I prefer the way the sim description is shown in the newer SimPE versions, because (unless you're really blind and/or fatfingered) there's just no way to accidentally delete the sim DNA as well.
Plus, you don't have to write down the decimal values of the character files while "preparing for deletion" in-game, because SimPE shows both dec and hex values (okay, it does in my version).


It depends. The resources of a custom object, for example, are really just that (files within a package), so if you mess with them and your game blows up, you can usually repair the damage by removing the flawed package(s). Original objects, on the other hand, have a different structure. There aren't seperate files for the objects, but for the resources (one for all GMDCs, one for all SHPEs etc.) with a shitload of cross-references. If that's what you mean by "layer of abstraction", then yes.

I have about a bazillion (very imprecise number, I know, but they appear to outnumber all the other sims) of 'unknown' sims, none classed as playables, shown in SimPe in HP's uber-megahood.   I don't have these in anyother neighborhood.  Can I just delete the 'unknown' sims in SimPe or is this a VBT?  If it is a VBT, how do I find out what they'd be called on the LotDebugger to do the Boogaloo?
I haven't really played this hood yet: I've been moving tombstones to the community graveyard from various houses, wiping corrupt memories, and evicting sims to the simbin, so I've done stuff but no more than a few sim-moments have passed in any family except the Goths--who got custody of the graveyard.  Also my 6s and 0s have LTWs except for Alexander Goth and the Broke kids, however, I haven't debinned any of the sims, either, so those 6s and 0s may also be okay.  These are all Maxis-made sims, so I know to expect random screwedupedness, but this is the sort of screwupedness that I have learned here is a VBT.  I think I understand what to do to get rid of the random LTWs in 6s and 0s thanks to Mixreality, so it's just the 'unknowns' that I'm still concerned about.
I have the newest expansion packs and the newest SimPe, but I don't have NL, Pets, or BV.

If you are trying to purge out the entire neighborhood, then, yes, it is acceptable to purge all the unknowns: They are things like the Grim Reaper, Crumplebottom, Therapist, Santa, etc. Purging them will just cause them to regenerate in new NIDs, though. Otherwise, best to leave alone.

I've found Unknowns in the pre-made hoods that aren't any of the object characters. There should be 5-6 of them in the Default family, but no more. Check which family instance your Unknowns belong to - if it's not the 0 family (Default), I think it's safe to assume you could probably delete these. Seems like they're leftover garbage from whatever HP did when she made her megahood. Also odd that your kids have LTWs, the only ones that come with these through the fault of EAxis are the two from Desiderata Valley. Looks like something else that went wrong in the merging process.

I had a few Sims I deleted by kicking out of the house and deleting from the family bin. While doing something else in SimPE I discovered that their files are still there and Sims in game still remember them. So can I delete them via SimPE without having the char to delete in game anymore? Or if I just go into the Sims who remember them and uncheck the 'known' box will that work (I already deleted all the memories of them)? Except I'm not sure if townies etc met them so could that cause problems if they still remember them?

If the char files aren't taking up that much room on my comp and I can just delete them from ppls memories etc. then I won't bother totally deleting them, but I don't know how much space left over files could be taking up?

I also deleted all the Maxis neighbourhoods in my new installation, but found out recently that all their snapshots etc. are still there. Is there likely to be any other left over information from those neighbourhoods slowing down my game and if so can I get rid of it?

Thanks.

Deleting sims from the sim bin ultimately will create problems that lead to the implosion of your neighbourhood.  This is why one uses Deleted 2 to totally get rid of them.  You should likely go through the full delete process and expunge them from your game totally, if this is possible at this point.  Leaving the residual char files is just asking for trouble.  Mind you, if you have been playing a while with all these dangling half-deleted sims kicking around, you may already be well on your way to a BFBVFS.

The only thing I've done so far is delete people out of the sim bin and remove a few memories from other Sims. But unless I can somehow bring them back into the sim bin then I can't delete them in game. :s

Maybe there's a way - see this thread (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,17432.0.html).

Ok, I'm trying to delete my unwanted Sims. I used the unlinked link to delete them from in game (thanks!). I get this far, then I'm not sure where to find the files to delete in the newest version of SimPE. Can anyone help please?

Also, I deleted all the Maxis neighbourhoods by deleting them from the neighbourhood selection screen in game. Are they going to have bits hanging around somewhere or will that have deleted them completely? The neighbourhoods no longer show up in the neighbourhood screen in Sim PE.

Agh, ok scratch that. From further reading I think I'm already on my way to the big fiery ball (unless the big fiery ball was a tree in my Sims' backyard that wouldn't stop burning, in which case I'm already there :P). XD

I think I'll do a reinstall with the clean templates thing.

To ensure I don't create a new fiery ball, I just have a couple of questions I couldn't find the answers to.

Can I move my downloads folder with hacks etc. before uninstalling and then move it back in after reinstalling without any problems? Redownloading all my CC would be a real pain in the ass.

If I move out all families first and export a lot using the 'package lot' thingy, will that lot be safe to move back into a new installation or will I have to remake them from scratch?

Thanks.

Yes, as long as you still have the same EPs installed.  However, you don't need to reinstall the game just to create a new neighborhood using the clean templates.


No, it is not safe.  You need to clean the sims properly before packaging.

Not the Sims. I moved the Sims out. Just the furnished lot left behind (I have that hacked shrub that lets furniture stay when Sims leave). So is just the lot safe?

Thanks.

Sorry, I didn't read your previous post quite right.  Yes, packaging an unoccupied lot should be safe.

Great. Thanks a lot!

Ok I need to delete a family I had to make as a template for Sim Surgery. If anyone could tell me where in new SimPE I find the above files to delete then I would be eternally grateful!

IIRC, there's a plugin by Theo that should be able to handle the SimPE-side-for-idiots for you, although you still should start the Deleted 2 process in-game to cleanup all in-game references.

I never used Theo's plugin, but deleting sims with the new(er) SimPE is really easy, you don't even have to open the character files.

- Prepare sims for deletion and write down the instance number, as described by Pescado. No need to convert it to hex, though.
- Open neighborhood in SimPE

1: In the resource tree, click on Sim Description (SDSC)
2: Find the sim you want to delete in the "Instance" column. The instance number you wrote down earlier is the one in brackets. Do NOT delete the SDSC yet.
3: In plugin view, click on the "More" tab. In the drop-down menu, you can see the character file name. Write it down.

(http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/5995/deleted2.jpg)

Delete the SDSC, save. Now open the Sim Creation Index (as you can see in the picture, it's right above the Sim Description in the resource tree), switch from plugin view to hex view and proceed like in Pescado's description (it still looks the same in the newer SimPE). Commit. Save. Exit SimPE. Don't forget to delete the character file(s) from your neighborhood folder afterwards.

Ok thanks a lot. Resetting the Sim Creation Index; I just change the last two numbers to 01, 00? Even if my numbers aren't the same as Pescado's screenshot?

Right. Your numbers are unlikely to match up, as the current value depends on what you've done so far, but resetting it always works the same.

Great. Thanks for all the help. I'm think I'm done with stupid questions now (yeah right). Shut up brain. Noone asked you. XD

After deleting the sim families in the sim bin via the lot debugger and then deleting the character stubs in SDSC and SCOR, I saw that the family names remained listed in Family Information. I deleted them there too, and everything seems ok, but I don't recall that happening before. Did I do something wrong?

I've registered to this forum now because I got a really serious, annoying problem. I haven't had that much experience with SimPE up to now, so I hope you can help me.

I deleted more than 300 townies and sims, I never have seen or created by myself. I put the notownieregen.package into the downloads folder, to not let them respawn... but they have respawned =_= and 3 afternoons of work where without success... After I recognized that the neighborhood loaded very long, I noticed there were more new character files than I've deleted in the character's folder.

So, questions1: Can I delete that character files without the lot debugger and SimPE? (I haven't started anything in the game, so I can be sure the respawned sims didn't interfere with anyone)

question2: Why is the background of the Sims in SimPE blue, after I killed them with the lot debugger?

questions3: What does that mean in general, when the background of the Sims in SimPE are blue, red or gray?

questions4: Why did the notownie respawn thingy not work? p_p

I put the antiredundancy hack + the notownie respawn thingy into the downloadsfolder together, may that have caused the problem?

And sry for bad English...

I destroyed a CAS-created sim from the sim bin a long time ago.
He was created, joined a "family" of another CAS-created sim on a lot, lived there maybe a couple of sim hours, returned to the bin and was deleted.

Going through the characters file using Clean Installer, I just found his package, so to speak. He is, or was, N003_User00971.package.

I opened it using SimPe, but he's not one the 950 sims under Sim Description. He doesn't appear to be one of the five Unknows. I also gathered various other informations (such as GUID 0x96FAB3A7, Instance 0x00000080, Type 0x4F424A44), but I wouldn't know what to do of them.

I plan to simply delete that package from the characters file, even if I am unable to prepare the late sim with the batbox the way He intended, as the deleted sim doesn't appear anywhere in the pie menu.

Does someone know of other things I could delete or clean in SimPe or in game before I do that?
Should I even delete the mutilated package from the characters file?

You're saying you have NO simdescription entry corresponding to that character file? Strange.

Is it? Then I probably deleted it when I knew what I was doing even less than I do now. Again, that sim and using the sim bin's trash can were but a erreur juvénile, I thought he was lost, leaving nothing than random and mysterious corrupted data.

Then while looking for potential mass-murder victims through the Characters file, I clicked next to see the second picture of this "N003_user00971.package Jean", thinking he was a YA that passed by a dorm the other day (since there are often two pictures for each package in the S2P Clean Installer preview, the first being just a black background, and the real portrait showing only on the second picture).
And it actually was that deleted sim. Jean was indeed his name, and the picture leaves no room for doubt. I guess I never saw him there before because I didn't happen to click to see the next picture before.

I believe he is not among the Sim Description merry bunch, because I can't find him there by his name, and the ID I got by opening the package in SimPe differs from those of the five Unknowns. But maybe I am wrong about that and he is one of them, since my use and knowledge of Simpe are quite basic. Or maybe I deleted it and can't remember now.

That is why I don't know what to do about him now, I don't think his remains belong in the Characters file any more, yet I am afraid of messing things up even more if I simply delete the package.

If you're absolutely certain you cannot find ANY reference in the SDSC to the character file you're trying to delete, go ahead and try deleting it, but I would backup first.

I will do so. My neighbourhoods were created before my vile self knew of His Awesomeness and of His enlightened work anyway, so whatever happens, if anything, is fine by me.
May thou rest in peace, Jean Queutard.

Hi Pescado. Thanks for the post, I've been wanting to delete the PC-created townies in my hood for a long time, and finally learnt how reading this thread.

But I ran into a little trouble here: After I deleted a whole lot of townies in my game following your method, I couldn't read into my hood anymore. The game just continue reading without ever taking me to the hood, but other hoods are okay.

I wonder why it doesn't work. When I "prepare for delete" someone in the game using the Lot Debugger though, there are strings of information telling "fixed or removed X items". Sometimes (I think when the string is too long) the game returns an error message "too many iterations..." and I had to "reset" it. The sim's action is terminated after resetting, but when checking the names generated by the Debugger, the sim I tried to delete does disappear from the list. I wonder if this is the problem. And if so, is there a way to fix it?

I hope you can see this. Thanks a lot~~

I think if it's that bad, your neighborhood is gunked up in ways that are indescribably horrific.

oops, does that mean I have to abandon the neighborhood anyway? I've been playing it for years (in fact, since I got the Sims2), and I guess there are too many junks in it. I once moved an extremely polupar sim who knows everyone in the neighborhood to another hood without clearing her. I read from other sources that's what causes the crash, and SimPE does show multiple profiles of the same person. I thought of delecting all those who have duplicates. If you happen to know this, could this possibly save my neighborhood? Thanks Pescado~~

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/bfbvfs.jpg)
Your neighborhood is in God's hands now.

Thanks for the information. Since it's probably gonna explode sooner or later, I guess I'll just pack up the characters and houses & move~~

This isn't Sims 3. You can't just "move" Sims like that.

Thanks for the reminder, but I heard that if I clear their memory and relationship properly, then I can move them with no bad consequences? Is that true?
I guess it will be a lot of work, but I've been playing this neighborhood for so long. If there's a way to retain some characters I'd feel much better...

Given how old your neighborhood is, I do not think what you propose is terribly practical.

An easier and cleaner (but still tedious) way is to write down all the stats and relationships of your favourites, clone them in SimPE, and then recreate them in CAS in a new neighbourhood, and set any relationships you couldn't set in CAS in SimPE.

Thanks Pescado and Tarlia.

My neighborhood had generations of sims, but most of them are dead. I'll just let the dead be gone. I'm moving the youngest generation only, there are like 30 sims. I hope that's managable. Pescado, I noticed that your Lot Debugger can eliminate most of the irrelevent "gossip" memories and "meeting someone" things, and that greatly reduces my work. Thanks!

I'm not sure how to rebuild the relationships using SimPE, but I guess if I don't care about preserving the family lineage then it's probably just some marriage relationships. Thanks for the idea Tarlia~~

You can also use TJ's Sim Blender to set familial relationships in-game.

If you go the SimPE-clone-CAS route, you do not need to worry about memories. Only the sim's appearance will be cloned.

Setting relationships in SimPE is really very easy, there's a nice graphical interface with slider bars and checkboxes.

Thanks Tarlia. I figured out how to do this.

At first I thought of moving the character instead of recreating them. But then I realized once I removed all their memories and relations they are just "like new" anyway. Indeed it is much easier to just clone them~~

I hate to resurrect an old thread, but I'm having issues.

I have the batbox, I went into Belladonna Cove and prepped several Sims for deletion. 

I tried to exit the game (with saving), and the dumb thing hung up...as in I had to start Task Manager to end the program.

I tried it again...tried saving before exiting.  After five minutes the thing was STILL "saving lot."  Again, task manager.

BTW I'm running the game, all EPs and SPs, on Windows 7, if that's of any help.

I even tried running in windowed mode and opening up SimPE...but as I figured, I can't access the hood in SimPE while it's running.

Never seen that before and have no idea how it could happen.

I just said "screw it," extracted the Sims I wanted from the various 'hoods via SimPE, took note of their personalities, installed the empty templates...and went from there.

don't you have TS2 Enhancer v.2.0 ?

1. Who are you talking to?

2. I've never heard of this TS2 Enhancer before, but from the looks of it, it's just a SimPE for Dummies, AND it's pay. Why would anyone want that, let alone pay for it?

There are also hacked versions of TS2 Enhancer available. It wasn't a bad program and there were a couple of things I used it for which were quicker and easier to manage in that program, than in SimPE.

Not saying it's a bad program (I wouldn't know, but the screenshots look nice enough), but almost none of the features listed are particularly difficult to do in SimPE, except maybe setting a 'retired from' job. There's also something especially off-putting about them wanting $15 for polishing features that already exist in SimPE for free.

Yeah, I'm not touting for the program, don't get me wrong. I paid for it in the early days before I discovered SimPE - or before it existed, I don't remember - but the bastard that made it, made you get a new key every time it was installed. So when I did a reformat twice in succession at one point, I was refused a second new key. I was royally pissed. That's when I sourced the hacked version and never looked back.

with TS2E i've backuped about 50 sims with name and datas, and in few seconds i can replace one sim with another without any risks :P
btw it was just a sugestion

(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-b6iiU9xltOY/Tg-PKH0jDhI/AAAAAAAADeU/VTYLX5fKZS0/Cattura.JPG)
doint that taken 5 seconds, can you do better with bloody simpe ? :p

I actually got it to work, somehow...just used the batbox, followed by Theo's deleter tool.  It was Strangetown and Belladonna Cove that had the issues, for whatever reason.

Again, I hate to necromance, but I am stumped.  ???

I followed the instructions to the T to delete some (okay, A LOT) of townies et al. in my 2-year-old Pleasantview. I got through the deletion process all right with the first batch (with roughly 850 files to delete, I wasn't doing them all at once), but when I tried to go back in-game to prep a second batch, it hangs up on the loading screen to the neighbourhood (both going into the main or a subhood), and I have to use Task Manager to shut it down.

I don't understand why this is happening. I don't THINK it's devolving into a BFBVFS, because the neighbourhood was running just fine prior to this. I still have backups of the neighbourhood files, so I can reinstall and redo if I need to. Does anybody have an idea of what's wrong?

ETA:  Bash me all you want. This is what I get for not reading three or four pages past the step-by-step instructions. I went into the UNK and not the SCID.

ETA2: Never mind. It still hangs up on the loading screen even when the SCID is used.

ETA3: Hangs up even when I don't bother with index reset.

I don't know what you did exactly, so I can't say what went wrong. I've never come across those problems, and I Deleted 2 a lot.
Have you really deleted the character files from the My Documents folder after killing the respective Sim Description? That's something easily overlooked.
Whatever you have done with the UNK, have you *undone* it?
And how many files have you deleted in your first batch?
It's possible, that your loading screen doesn't hang up actually, but that it just takes a long time (and I mean a long time) to load the neighborhood. So, how long have you waited until killing it via the task manager? Have you tried loading it, do some other stuff, come back later (say, after 15-30 minutes) and check?
Oh - and have you by any chance tried to delete character files which should not be touched, like the Reaper or PolliTech?

I would recommend to take a backup and start all over again, maybe with smaller batches (although I have deleted ~250 files in one go without problems before), at least at first. You *do* have a backup, right?

Sloppyhousewife:

1. I deleted the associated character files from the My Documents after killing the SDSC, definitely.
2. I started from scratch about three or four times - you bet your sweet ass I have a backup of the neighbourhood. Pleasantview is my baby, I always have a backup. So I did undo the last step for Sim Creation Index reset.
3. The first go around, I deleted roughly 250 files. I waited about 15-20 minutes before killing it.
4. I did not touch any character files that were in the "Default" submenu: dead sims, PolliTech, Reaper et al, as well as any sims who had fathered playables. All I killed were service NPCs, strays, townies, downtownies, dormies, locals and a crapload of professors (really? 100 professors for a single university subhood?!).
5. See #2.

Then maybe your game hangs due to massive NPC, townie etc. respawning (just a wild guess). Do you have all the anti-respawn hacks?

Yep. I have the latest Directors Cut (which includes: norespawn, nostrayrespawn, notownieregen, nodormieregen and antiredundancy).

Update: I think I'm either just way too impatient or way too impatient :D . Deleting in smaller batches (of 20-50 at a time) appears to have resolved the issue. I've also stopped deleting the superfluous, totally empty EA Games->The Sims 2 folder that generates every time I start the game. I don't know if that has anything to do with it...

Strangetown is no longer an issue for me, but Belladonna Cove...*sigh* might as well hang it up.

I also have issues with deleting the playables I don't want from Bluewater Village, no matter what 'hood I associate it with.

Oh well.  I just delete when I can, and if I can't...pretend they're townies who happen to live in the 'hood!

I'm still getting a crapload of professors, but the rest of the townie population is under control.

Do you have a lot of custom careers? They all need their own professors.

**steps into the circle, draws wand**

Ok, I apologize for the necromancy, but I wanted to ask a question regarding the "prep for delete"--
I have one sim that won't stay in the queue to be prepped for delete.  Is there any particular reason why this would happen?  I read the entire thread, and if I missed the answer, just point me in the right direction and I'll go dutifully there.

Also, I am trying to clean up a hood that appears to have some duplicate unlinked character files.  I know that it is not safe to delete SDNA when clearing out unwanted characters, like townies, etc:  does it also apply to junk clones?

**bowing into the shadows**

Sometimes debug commands drop from queue when you queue them. It just happens.

Many thanks, Pescado.

And I'll take the silence on the second question to mean "No Touchy."   ::)
I shall leave the SDNA alone, as recommended.