More Awesome Than You!

I've heard about a lot of problems being caused by having too many characters in the neighborhood. I've been playing with a carefully merged neighborhood that consists of Pleasantview, Strangetown, and Veronaville attached as Downtowns to a main Neighborhood. This was done by a friend who learned the way to do this without causing problems. He also did the same with the Seasons Neighborhood. I'm not as good at all that as he is.

I've spent a lot of time making up a neighborhood with plenty of people to interact with. Needless to say, I've spent a lot of time making up this neighborhood so that, with each family I play, it is a different experience. Plus the sims friends have made to add to it.

Now, I looked into my Characters folder to see what sort of numbers I'm at, and the number is well over 3000. From everything I've read, that is quite bad. So I went into SimPE, and see duplicates of some sims, some that have no connections to people (At least if the identification SimPE gave them is right). I'm afraid that something bad is going to happen to this neighborhood if I don't get it cleaned up, but I don't know how to go about that. I'm especially afraid of losing one family that I've worked a lot on. They currently have 4 grown kids, one being an alien (I couldn't believe it) and 3 graduated college. All married, with their own kids, careers, etc. If I could package them up safely for use later without losing memories, pictures (large photo album), etc. I wouldn't be so worried. But I know they'll lose their friendships, among other things. Which would in turn screw up their memories of those people and pets they have met. They are the one family I couldn't stand to lose all the work from. The others I'd do whatever it took to wipe out their memories as far as outside contact to safely move them, but this family is much more difficult to deal with should a problem arise because they have been the most active.

Getting to my point, what can I do to either clean up the character files or safely move the important families? At this rate, recreating using a safe process doesn't sound so bad, especially since I was late to finding out about the Tour Guide/Unsavory Charlatan thing. I just want to be able to keep going without worrying that the game might really screw up to the point of losing it all, and I have the time to use whatever process necessary to clean it up or recreate.

Impossible. A played family with outside contact cannot be packaged intact without transporting the carnage to a new neighborhood, and the process would still wreck their memories.

If you really feel it's worth the effort to save, you can start by carefully following the instructions in DELETED 2: Electric Boogaloo to carefully remove each and every last dud one by one, likely crosschecking in-game dozens of times to make sure you're killing the right one.

Hmm...I'll give that a try. I really feel that it is worth the effort to save because it would take just as much effort to start them over from scratch again. Getting all the default neighborhoods isn't that big of a problem, but remaking every family and putting this family back through life would probably take just as long.

I didn't think they could be safely moved as-is. At least I know how to put them back into CAS if things don't work out.

At the moment you haven't got any problems, you only fear that you will have problems in the future, is this right?

I would suggest regular backups. It is a very large number of character files, but I don't thinik that there is a limit where the game invariably blows up. Trying to solve problems before they come up does not sound like a good idea.

I think that it is a pity that it is not possible to move sims to another neighbourhood (maybe even the entire population) -  I played with the same sims (and their offspring) for about two years now and also worry that the neighbourhood will become overcrowded eventually - but I decided for myself that I carry on playing and see what happens. I make backups. I am safe.

I have to say that I made a huge mess trying to clean up my favourite hood and managed to lose 6 months of play by corrupting the neighbourhoodmanager file.  I'd have been better off not doing it at all.  The problem was that I thought I knew what I was doing... I did my research and when I thought I understood it, I went ahead and cleaned up. Result - hood went back 6 months in time.  So I learned some more and cleaned up that version, but I'd still been too impatient and deleted things I shouldn't have deleted (genetics files).  This was in the days before Pes wrote Electric Boogaloo 2 and put deletion options on the lotdebugger.  You'd be a lot safer using that than I was doing it the old fashioned way, but it's your choice.  I'd say, think about it some more and play safely from now on.  Never move occupied lots into the sim bin or delete sims in game and keep regular backups!  I'd definitely suggest you practice cleaning up another hood first!  Maybe someone will write an good cleanup plugin in SimPE so you don't have to load up the whole freaking game to clean up the files.

Unfortunately, it is no longer true to say I don't have any problems. One of my Subhoods crashes now any time I try to load it, through the neighborhood screen or by any other means. Whether or not this is related to the number of characters, I can't say. After all SimPE is completely useless with BV right now. Can't even get into it.

So I've done what I can to start a new neighborhood in which I will try to control the population better. However, I'm even limited in setting that up, since I have to resurrect Bella to get Pleasantview as I want it. The other three were easy once my friend typed up very detailed instructions on how he took care of it the first time. With the process he used, it didn't create any extra characters like are created if you package a house with outside ties. Something to do with putting all the connected sims (by relation or friendship) on the same lot, and as for those with graves at their houses: putting those in their inventories to be put back on the lot later. Using that method, his own game is garbage file free. No extra characters. Mine probably had more to do with what I didn't know early on. I made mistakes, and learned from them. However, I didn't learn fast enough it seems.

Thanks for the advice anyway. I guess this time around I'll just have to be much more cautious. I swear, I don't see how it is they released a game with so many problems and don't even acknowledge them unless they came with a recent expansion, such as the tour guide and charlatan multiplication issue.

Resurrecting the Pleasantview Bella is a VBT, since the character file is missing all kinds of important info, and will eventually lead to your hood going up in a BFBVFS. None of the dead characters in the base PV are designed to be resurrected -- the only ones that are safe to resurrect are the Tricinou family (or however it's spelled) in the NL Downtown.

I read that some changes were made with one of the expansions (OFB?), but I don't think that this is true for all the dead characters. The ones who have gravestones are safe I believe.  I resurrected Darleen Dreamer a long time ago and never had any problems. However, at that time there were two character files for Darleen (as well as for Bella or Skip Broke), which is what might have changed by now.

No -- the two character files come with the base game, and never change.  I repeat, resurrecting Pleasantview (or Veronaville or Strangetown) characters that come with the base game is a VBT. The ability to resurrect anyone didn't come along until Uni was released, so none of those characters were ever designed to be resurrected. Doing so will eventually blow up your hood, especially if you attempt to breed any of them.

just in case you haven't seen it, you can download all the original hoods linked together instead of making your own.  Thread in Peasantry.  Any other version of doing it probably isn't safe.

Don't give up on BV yet.  Yours may be one of the problems that gets fixed in patch.  If your game won't load, do check out the general area the problem is in - assuming it's your game files is overly pessimistic.  Downloads that don't work with BV are the first suspect.  Will the hood load if you take out the downloads? Will other hoods load?   Will a virgin game load and play....

I didn't know bringing Bella back (I don't say resurrecting, because she isn't dead) was a bad thing. What problems does she cause? I certainly don't try to breed her, I just like having her around so she can make friends with some of my sims. I never noticed a problem with her at all, and thanks to my friend she was around for a LONG time. I think he brought her back for me around the time Uni came out.

I took out every single download in my game, hacks first and then the rest, and the subhood still won't load. It just crashes every single time. I can play anywhere else, just not there. As a test, I loaded up Riverblossom, connected all the places (Uni, Downtown, etc), and played for a bit. Not a problem. Tried to go back in there, crash. This only started very recently, since I first posted.

Not sure what this paragraph is about.  Are you talking about moving sims from one hood to another hood?  This is also considered a VBT due to, as you noted, garbage files, dangling SWAFs, borked memories, and ultimate BFBVBS.  Generally, it is suggested that you clone your sims (admittedly the latest SimPE is not BV friendly) and recreate them from CAS for the new hood.  Naturally, it is your choice to use (or not) your friend's method, but you may want to read up on this on other threads here before attempting.

Of course, if that's not what your paragraph is about, please feel free to ignore.

The way he did it put everyone together on one lot, so that relationships weren't lost and other such problems didn't occur. He doesn't have BV and used this method quite some time back. For my own curiosity, we looked into his game with SimPE and there wasn't a single garbage file in it.

There is one thing I don't really understand: What about the number of character files causes the problems? Does it have anything to do with things like RAM?

All we can say is that you've both just been very lucky (or maybe not, since your hoods are starting to become a BFBVFS).

In any case, we're telling you what folks who know the internals of game as well as (and sometimes better than) EAxis have found to be true:
Don't resurrect dead PV characters.
Don't move sims from one hood to another.
Don't delete sims from the sim bin.
Don't move occupied lots from one hood to the other.


If you chose to to argue with us that these things aren't bad because your friend said so, then fine -- don't come here for help anymore.  Go back to the BBS where the sheep all believe those things are ok to do, and stop bothering us.

No need to be rude. I'm presenting the facts of what has been done and asking for help. I've explained what has happened, and how it is likely my mistakes causing problems now. Mistakes such as moving a household from a main hood to a subhood.

Now, while looking for something else mentioned here, I noticed information on safely reviving those PV characters, and that it required a little work. But that isn't what this is about so I'm not going into it.

I don't know what your problem is, I'm just trying to fix what I've probably broken and understand things. My friend, who works with computer programming (including a LOT of game programming) for a living, has delved into the Sims2 programming a lot, fascinated by the mistakes that were made. That probably has something to do with his processes, which I can't even begin to understand. Regardless, what he did doesn't matter here. I'm not saying he is right or wrong, or that you are right or wrong. If you can find where I stated that, please let me know because I get real pissed off when people put words in my mouth or twist what I say.

Now, perhaps we can talk of more useful things, like what can be done to save my neighborhood from mistakes I made such as moving households or deleting sims before I was aware of the issues that causes.

That's what we're trying to tell you -- you did things wrong, there is no real fix, and your hood is probably beyond redemption. And rude is the normal response to people who keep saying the same thing over and over and ignoring (or arguing about) the advice they're getting.

Hmm...I don't see myself repeating things. Expanding on them, yes. Giving more details, yes. Repeating, no. The fact is, things were done differently than are being assumed by you, and when I try to explain it, suddenly I'm being repetitive and argumentative. Then I ask questions completely different from what I've already said, and get no answer because you are too busy talking to me like I'm clueless to listen to someone who has created a version of the sims 2 on his computer that has many fixes EA and Maxis refuse to make. And the ONLY reason I don't have that version is because he is afraid of possible long term effects or, more recently, SecuROM.

You see, I took the advice of someone who can delve into programming and fix it. He knows how. And on his computer, he has fixed what he calls "idiotic and stupid mistakes" that they made.

Now, I will repeat one thing, and that is the question I stated earlier: What about the large number of character files hurts the game? I don't understand it all like my friend does, so I don't get what causes the "BFBVFS" as you have named it.

If you value your friend's opinion and skills so highly, why aren't you talking to them instead of people at MATY?

If everything that is said to you is going to be rejected with "but my friend said...", what really is the point of continuing to ask questions?

Because he has more important things to do than fix this problem of mine. Like, I don't know, his job. Besides, right now he is busy working on something that will get rid of that POS SecuROM.

The reason I mention what he said is to give you the entire situation, including the changes he made to the less than perfect method I've seen here of merging the neighborhoods. I figure that way we don't waste time with "You shouldn't have done this or that" because of knowledge you have, which isn't the same as the situation of my game. I can see how that worked like a charm, since now we are arguing over something pointless instead of working with the information I'm TRYING to give and attempting to fix my game.

Oh, so you'd rather bother people who also have, oh, I don't know, jobs, who do this out of love of the game, on their own time, rather than bother the person who really fucked up your game in the first  place with his oh-so-perfect method of merging hoods that he won't share with anyone else in the world?  Unlike the modders and others here who do share their knowledge and experience about what to do and not do and what needs fixing in the game to make it better? And then you have the nerve to say  that you're trying not to waste our time because of the knowledge we have, which isn't the same as the situation in your game? Then how the fucking hell do you expect us to help you fix something someone else fucked up when we don't even know how they fucked it up in the first place?

If your friend knows so much more than everyone here, get him to come here and explain it so we can all bask in the brilliance of his knowledge and insight.  Until then, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

But he isn't putting himself out there as you do and gets very annoyed when everyone who plays the game comes to him for help while he is working on his own jobs that PAY him. He didn't fuck up the game, I DID! If you would listen, you'd have gotten that several posts back! He won't share it because it requires a lot of work to make sure every single bit of information is correct. Most people don't want to do all that work and just ask him to do it. He doesn't have time to teach people. He took the time to check every single detail of every single character and fix it. He tried to share that method in the past, but too many people complained that it was too complicated and he got frustrated with people wanting it to be easier and gave up.

I'm trying to explain it, but you ARE NOT LISTENING and won't even answer my damn question about WHY the large number of characters is a problem!

He won't come here for one reason: He doesn't like people who only believe in the form of knowledge the possess and won't listen to it when people present a conflicting view. Dare to present a conflicting view, and I get "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."

Now, I am done arguing about this. I am going to start over here, and you can keep banging your head against the wall of a useless argument, or we can work on my game. I suppose the best thing is ASK ME ACTUAL QUESTIONS, and I will do my best to provide the information. I can call him and get information on his process, if he is willing to tell me the depths of it. He didn't give me complete instructions as I thought. He is afraid my messing with the game will mess it up at the very beginning of a new neighborhood.

So, enough of an argument that is not going to serve any purpose. Why don't we try to do something constructive. At least with his tinkering in the game, he plans to come up with a version of the game to present to EA and Maxis that doesn't have so many problems. May not help you or me right now, but it is working towards something useful.

Whine whine whine.  Too many characters... I found why this is bad by SEARCHING THE FORUMS.  Do so or sod off.  Bitch bitch bitch You come here asking for HELP.  These people try to HELP you, and you throw a hissy.  They are right, your friend is wrong.  Just because he doesn't see it doesn't mean its not there.  The people on these forums have been nothing but helpful to anyone who RESPECTFULLY states problem,  listens/reads solution, and posts INTELLIGENT questions about solutions.  If this is not your experience, look in the mirror for the problem.

I didn't expect someone to provide an example to what I was saying as to why people avoid this place. I state the problem, get some help, provide what is wrong with that in relation to my own game, and a fight starts because the answer didn't work. Your thing about who is right and wrong is exactly why he won't come here. You only believe one thing and find it impossible that someone else could be right in a different way.

You know what, forget it. Apparently I'm not going to get help here. I'm just wrong, according to you, and that is all that matters. Just forget it. I should have known better than to come here. I should have known I wouldn't actually get a solution, just have it pointed out WHY i'm wrong.

I've been managing programming projects and programmers for over 15 years.  You know what we call programmers who believe that only they have the one true way, don't share their knowledge with others, don't have time to 'teach people', and do things so complicated they can't explain them to anyone else, but believe they're 'right in a different way, and then promise to come up with wonderful new ways to do things someday and present it to those who wrote the code in the first place?  We call them unemployed. :)

It still comes down to the same issue -- you asked for help, we gave it to you, you said it doesn't apply to your game because your friend did something different, and then expect help when no one here has a clue what he did different.  You want our help?  Reinstall your game from scratch, use the hacks/mods/techniques from here, and then come here for support when they don't work.  If you use methods that are 'right in a different way', then go to the source of that rightness and get his help.  If he's to busy to help, then you're pretty much screwed.

Not that it is any of your business, but he works with the government and has for a good many years (more than the 19 I've been alive), now working exclusively on computers.

He doesn't believe his was is the "one true way". You do realize you are doing the same thing. There is no coming together to discuss methods, just he is wrong and you are right and it ends there. That is why he won't come here or try to share it. He gets told he is wrong or that it is too difficult. That or someone attempts it and kills their game, blaming him. So he sticks to his own tinkering and fixing, leaving annoyances out of the loop so he can actually get things down outside his job.

What he did differently doesn't apply to my current problem. I've tried to tell you that. The problems started when I was playing. It has nothing to do with his method of merging the neighborhoods. I don't know how we got so far off topic with that.

Yea, and so do I -- big whoop. Probably longer than he has. When it comes to programming (or life) there's no such thing as 'right in a different way.'  There's right, and there's wrong, and there's reasonable discussions so that people can come to a mutual conclusion as to what is right.  Someone who's 'right' but is unwilling to defend why they think they're right has no clue what right and wrong really is.

And with that, I'm done here -- I have real people with real problems to help in other threads.

Your blind defense of your "friend" who apparently didn't mess up your computer, according to you, but DID do things you don't understand to your neighborhoods, files, and characters, is what has people up in arms.  They need to know exactly what you've done/had done to your files before they can assist you.  You should never allow someone to do things you don't understand to your computer.  EVER.  RTFM is helpful, friends who explain are helpful, blindly having faith that a friend is absolutely right, even if he can't/won't explain is not.  If your friend had posted the info here, lots of MATYers would have run off to try it, finding whether it works.  It would then be discussed, rehashed, modified, and applauded as needed.  Your friend is full of shit if he says he has the one true way.  Your files are screwed because not even YOU know what has been going on with them.  You don't know what your friend did to them.  You don't know what you've done to them.  No, you won't get help here, because to help, we need information, which you can't provide.

You do realise that if things went wrong at the merge neighbourhoods point, it would really only become apparent as you played?  The problems that too many characters, unlinked characters, and all those other bad things cause don't show up straight away.  They slowly become more and more obvious as your game appears more and more borked with time.  The BFBVFS is not an immediate thing - the lead up to it is slow, but the end result is pretty spectacular, as you appear to be discovering.

End result: You're screwed.  Start over.

Doubtless, which is why you are here.  There are explanations on this site which tell you why moving sims between hoods is a bad thing.  You say there are no garbage files, but this is only as far as you have seen.  We understand that there are other garbage files which are not so easily seen.  I am not an expert on this, but I do read, learn, and take good advice.  As a result, my several hoods are still going, I do not have problems, have not seen an error message in about 3 weeks (and I play daily) and you, on the other hand have a hood going foom fast.


We certainly understand his perspective.  As you can see, we do not tolerate this ourselves.


We, on the other hand, do not have the time to do all this hand holding.  We provide advice, mostly in the form of discussion threads where we have discussed problems.  New people are invited to lurk and read before posting, because a search often shows up a discussion where your problem is discussed.  There are several threads with hundreds of posts on why moving families and lots between hoods is bad.  


Watch me listen - as per paragraph above, there are lots of discussions on here about "too many sims".  Mostly now it's a matter of what your computer can comfortably load (more takes longer - that's logic).  There is not a known critical number since NL.  People have hoods with over 3000 character files and they live.


Bullshit.  We listen to conflicting views.  The modders here do not listen to unsupported quasi-knowledge from outside that counters their own research and results.  The mods here work.  The solutions MATY modders and users have come up with work.  No other solution will be considered unless tested first, and it is unnecessary to use your friend's solution for a clean hood anyway, as it sounds needlessly complicated, and on the evidence, does not really result in a safe hood anyway.  

It's not that we don't like conflicting views - the place is full of them.  We don't like views that contradict good sense.  We are not here because we are loyal sheep.  We are here because stuff here works.  Your friend's stuff - jury is still out on that, and they may be having a really long lunch.  Your loyalty to his method appears ill conceived, and any method that requires a lot of his personal involvement and time is not one that sounds feasible for most players.  

It does not work well and yet you defend it.  Hence, you are a sheep.  Go away now.

I made mistakes: I deleted from sim bin, I moved sims in houses, I did all those sorts of things before I knew their negative affects. Now I'm asking what to do to save my neighborhood from those mistakes. Let's forget about my friend, what he didn't or didn't do, and deal with the situation. I'm tired of defending him to you, you calling bullshit when I say you won't listen, but then you tell me he is wrong. Period. ENOUGH! I am done talking about that unrelated subject here. Let's deal with the problem: I did a lot that I messed up! Now I'm asking if I'm wasting time trying to salvage the neighborhood from MY mistakes. That is the focus here, so stop talking about him, because I'm done talking about him. That isn't the subject here.

There is nothing you can do to save your hood at this point, that I know of.  "Abort, delete, retry" is the only solution I am aware of.  Once things go borked in a neighborhood, they stay that way.  You cannot save them through any method known to me, and I've looked.  If I am wrong, I welcome the pointy sticks of the other MATYers, as long as the poke is followed by WHY I'm wrong.

As was suggested above, based on what you describe, your hood is a big toasty ball of fire.  Don't waste anymore of your time on it, and certainly no more of ours.

Pescado did give a suggestion way back in the first reply...  deleted 2.  But, the consensus seems to be your hood = toast.  Start over.  Do we need to say this another 50 times?

Alright. Then tell me, where is this neighborhood someone mentioned uploaded online that has all the neighborhoods connected supposedly safely? That would at least give me a head start on the rebuild, though I can't use simPE to extract the sims to CAS until it is updated.

And this is what we're talking about when we tell new users to do some searches here first. <sigh>  But since you asked somewhat nicely, I suggest you go to the Peasantry forum here -- there are a couple of threads there about combining hoods, using clean hood templates, etc.

I did search, but I didn't find it uploaded anywhere as someone said. I may have overlooked it, but I only saw the tutorials. I thought someone mentioned that someone had done it and uploaded it....perhaps I misread.

Search is your friend:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4274.0.html

Somewhere in peasantry.  I would start search under "merged neighbourhoods" or "combined neighbourhoods".  Patience is a virtue.  "Clean templates" was also suggested.

@jsalemi:  you came back did you?  Morbid fascination was it?

Thanks for that. I'm not sure how I missed it.

I see now, however, that Riverblossom isn't included. I suppose I'll take a (probably much needed) break from Sims until simPE is updated and I can try my best to follow the tutorial.

I'm sorry for all the trouble that was caused here.

Took a break to resharpen my pointy stick, and things took a somewhat turn for the better by the time I got back. :)

The "everyone on one lot" merge is a relatively clean method of moving neighborhoods, but it can go horribly pear-shaped if you miss anyone, and is best not attempted on a neighborhood that is actually played. It does nothing to explain why you have *3000* character files, however, which means some irresponsible practice you've performed has caused it.

glad you said that Pes, cos the "everyone on one lot" merge sounded pretty safe to me.  That's what I did to move the Green family to another hood.

Only you can decide whether you are going to spend a huge amount of time cleaning up files in the hood you are playing now or start over.  You are talking days, cos I've been there done that and I hadn't done too much damaget o mine.  I have to tell you I did more damage cleaning up than there was in the first place the first time I did it.  Second try went better.   Deleted 2 - the electric boogaloo is the way to go.  Good luck if you do it.  Why not burn your current hood to CD/DVD and start over?  See how you feel about it after playing that for a couple of days.... Most people have a lot of fun when they start over.

Keep an eye on that thread - maybe Riverblossom Hills will get added sometime.

The everyone on one lot merge works, but you have to make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that this is an isolated branch. Also, the process is believed to irreversibly destroy the source neighborhood, so once you blast off, there's no going back short of reloading a backup. If done incorrectly, your target neighborhood is also trashed. It is a rather risky process, all told. Done RIGHT, it works. The problem is, it's very easy to do it wrong.

Is there a tutorial of some kind online about how to do that merge the correct way? I'm just going to throw that out there because, right now, I don't have time to search for it. I can search later, but I figure it doesn't hurt to ask. I'm guessing the way has some form of transporting gravestones and ghosts(still dead) as well? I figure that if it didn't, there would still be loose ends left hanging.

I just ask because if there is a tutorial, it at least lets me work to prepare the new neighborhood for when I can extract my favorite sims in SimPE and start new.

Did you click on the link that Xuriel posted? The first words in that thread are

And seriously, stop asking for stuff before you look for it yourself. You've got to understand that we get tons of posters asking the same shit over and over again because they didn't bother to search. It's rude and we get sick of it very quickly. What you are asking us to do is to put aside whatever we are doing to help you when you are too lazy to help yourself. Beyond that, telling us that you haven't even bothered to search yet is unacceptable. You don't have the time? Next time you ask for help I don't think I'll have the time to post a reply.

Did you even read my post?

I was referring to a tutorial on the method of moving everyone to the same lot. I am well aware of the other method, and just as well aware that SimPE is virtually dead until the new release is out, making that tutorial useless for BV owners. I have searched, but only had time to do a quick scan. Not to look into it, and I didn't see one using the different method, just the one. So before you bite my head off, get your facts right and make sure you are talking about the same thing.

And I said I was just going to throw that out there in case someone felt generous. "Right now, I don't have time to search for it." Not "I don't have time to search for it." The way I said it was meant to get it across that I didn't have time to search at the time I posted it, but that I wanted to ask anyway. Just a side thought for if someone wasn't busy. And if no one posted before I got the time to look myself, I would do the searching. Honestly, is it that hard to figure out what I meant?

Now, I'm going to go search before I head off to bed to see if I can find anything. If you are going to bite my head off about this, make sure we are on the same page. Saves time.

Honestly, this guy would make a Jehovah's Witness tired.

Guys, would you all quit flaming each other and get back on topic?

What sorts of things does resurrecting Bella do, exactly? Because, uh. I did that too back before I heard anything about it being a VBT. No problems so far, although I've only even played her house like once (I forgot about it because it was in Bluewater- is deleting subhoods okay? Because I don't play in Bluewater Village anyway. I've poured more time into the Sims series than I feel I should have as it is, although probably nothing compared to you guys, and I don't want to f*** it up now.)

Why would you need a tutorial to tell you how to get all of the sims that you want into the same lot? There's an ingame feature that allows you to merge families from the hood screen. If you want to add townies to a family you can use Inge's teleporter shrub or another teleporter object of your choice. If you want to merge families beyond the 8 sim limit you just need to use this cheat:

uintProp maxTotalSims 50
uintProp maxTotalHumans 35
uintProp maxTotalPets 15

First number needs to be larger than or equal to the second two. You can change the numbers to fit your needs. I would imagine that you would have to do this in the hood screen. I have that in my userstartup.cheat. That makes things a lot easier. But it would be pretty crazy to try to merge all of the sims in a hood onto one lot. If you could be more specific about what you were trying to accomplish then maybe we could help you a bit better. And yes, you ARE that difficult to understand. I am not the only person who has expressed this opinion.

And you do a lot of bitching for someone who's gotten quite a bit of help while providing hardly any useful information. My previous post was hardly mean by MATY standards. Here's the deal. MATY is mean. Get used to it or leave. If you pick the second option please be sure to tell all of your friends that MATY is a horrible place that should be avoided at all costs.

And just to set the record straight, yes you can get simPE for Bon Voyage. It's incredibly easy to join the QA team over at the simpe website. All that you have to do is ask them and wait a day or two for your membership to get approved. There's a thread where you can "apply". It is a beta version but I have it and I haven't experienced any problems. Of course you should still backup your hoods and downloads before screwing around, but that's always good advice.

When referring to how difficult I am to understand, I was referring to that one point.

And I'll admit, I can be hotheaded. Especially lately, I can't seem to control it, which I apologize for. But as far as helpful, it was mostly telling me I was wrong and not asking me specific questions, and getting angry when I said it didn't work, was wrong, etc. But that is aside, in the past, letting it go. At least I am trying to. No point in dealing with it now, as it didn't accomplish anything except to piss several people off.

Anyway, it was mentioned that it is easy to mess that up. As should be clear by my 3000 character files, messing things up apparently comes easy to me.

I'd never considered joining the beta for the same reason...I seem to have an easy habit of messing things up when it comes to Sims2. Mostly through the fact of finding out after the fact that something is bad. Especially with SecuROM in BV now. Had I been patient, I wouldn't have made the mistake of installing it and putting my PC at risk. But I guess that is how you learn. Now I just hope it doesn't do anything until I can read through the posts on what to do with it. I have a post here bookmarked to read through later.

I was wondering about the same thing and out of curiousity searched the BBS last night. I was going to find out how many people actually reported crashes or problems after a resurrection. Anyway, I came across this post which I found quite interesting with regard to the dead/disappeared sims in the original game:

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?&openItemID=&threadID=6cef6227684386de9de7f93776ed2e4a&directoryID=2&startRow=1#3c5c73450c427b18a820e8232dc772f9

It still doesn't tell you what will happen if you resurrect/bring back a bad character file, I did not follow the links. I tried different variations around the words "crash" and "resurrect" (all categories/all dates), but could not find any messages.
 

Resurrecting a sim you shouldn't doesn't cause an immediate crash, but it does start a ripple effect that will eventually cause your hood to go BFBVFS. This mainly happens (as I understand it) because the game starts looking for data that should be there, and when it doesn't find it in the incomplete character file, it starts swiping it from other sims in the game, leading eventually to messed up pointers.  This is particularly a problem with messed up SWAF info (sim wants and fears) and you suddenly start getting toddlers with life-time wants, wants to get a job, shit like that. 

Missing DNA is another problem, which even plagued some of the still-alive-and-kicking Strangetown characters (there's a thread in Peasantry on how to fix them). If a sim with missing DNA attempts to breed, the game will crash when trying to make the new baby's character file, because it won't be able to check and blend the DNA from both parents.

So the message you linked to does state the only mostly safe way to 'resurrect' one of the dead/missing original characters -- clone them in SimPe, and add them back into the game as a 'new' character.


You can't delete the only existing sub-hood of a type (shopping, downtown, uni, etc) once you add them to the game.  You'd have to add another sub-hood, even a totally empty one with just the terrain, before you delete the original.  And it doesn't help much, because any playable characters in the deleted sub-hood just get dumped into the sim bin, so you'd have to put them on a new lot or leave them cluttering up the bin anyway.

If you don't play Bluewater, just leave the characters you don't want to play living there and ignore it.  At worst case, you'll see them as occasional walk-bys or on comm lots. Or you could use something like the teleporter bush to go to the sim in questions lot and just turm him/her into a townie. That way, the lot the becomes purchasable again, and the sim just aimlessly wanders the hoods where you can ignore (or torture :) ) him or her.

Since BV it is possible to delete subhoods without first adding another of the same type.  This possibly even came in with seasons, but it was after BV that I noticed the trashcan was no longer greyed out with only one subhood of that type.  It still dumps the residents into the sim bin, though.

You're right -- I never paid attention, but I've seen others mention it as having been added with BV.  Makes sense, I guess, if you decide you don't want to have all 3 (or any) vacation areas attached to your hood.

However, I wonder what would happen to the playable YAs if you delete the last Uni hood -- there would be no sim bin left for them to be dumped into . Sounds like they'd get deleted, which I imagine would be a VBT indeed.

Hadn't thought of that...  I don't think I want to be the person to try it and find out, either!

I can't delete Bella (even with the Lot Debugger) because she still has family ties to the Goths- but I resurrected her with SimPE, it should theoretically be easy to reverse the process.

I'd need to cut her relations with everyone she met since, right? And what else?

Edit: I searched the forum, and Jordi stated in another thread that spawning the kittenkiller InTeen's biological clock fixes most problems. Would this apply to Bella? If I can't undo my resurrection of her, I'll at least be careful not to breed her.

The lot debugger only prepares the sim for deletion; if you want to complete the process, read the 'Deleted 2' thread in The War Room.

I would certainly make sure my backups were up to date beforehand - could always then test what happens, and if it's bad (i.e. if all YAs are deleted and not, say, grown up and sent to the hood as townies), the borked hood could be zorched and replaced with the backups.  Not something to do on a whim though, I agree.

That's where I read that you're not supposed to delete Sims with family ties. :) I just wonder if I can return her to her pre-resurrected state, since all I did to resurrect her (following some clearly non-awesome person's tutorial) was set her not to be dead, put her in a family, uh, I think there was some other box to uncheck too ("Unlinked", maybe)... This was with Ye Olde SimPE, though.

It really depends a lot on whether you played the resurrected Bella.  If not, unchecking whatever boxes  and removing family ties, memories of relationships, etc. might just do it.  On the other hand, since the Bella character is not a complete character file to begin with, it is, as jsalemi said earlier, not recommended for resurrection for good reason (you didn't know that at the time, I grant, but there it is).  For this reason, it is difficult to guarantee that if you switch it back, everything will be the same and nothing bad will happen.  It is perhaps less likely that bad things will happen.

If you played Bella, it is difficult to predict what type of damage may have been done.  Again, it is perhaps better to de-resurrect her and stop any further damage.  Play the hood until it does or does not go foom.

Someone recently suggested it was fun to start over anyway.

Never understood the fascination for Bella, but then, I didn't play TS1.

And the funny thing is that if you got Seasons, you got another shot at Morty and Bella, with the 'Roth' family.  I haven't checked completely, but I believe their personalities,  etc are a match for the original PV Goths.  Kinda like EAxis saying, "Fine, here's your damn Bella Goth -- now go away!" :)

Fifteen years!  Whoa!  That's a LONG TIME!

I was really unaware of the problems Bella could cause when resurrected. Since she never seemed to be the cause of any glitches I had, I never would have guessed. I think every actual problem I had before now was related to either a hack or something that came with the game.

Thanks for the info on that.

So, as long as I get everyone they are connected to, any townies included, it should work? As for graves, should I stick those in the person's inventory, like the ones in Olive Specter's lot? I feel a bit confident in doing it this way, opposed to doing a lot of work in SimPE. I just want to make sure I know what to do to keep it from becoming a BFBVFS. I can always attempt the SimPE tutorial, but I'd feel better if I can do it this way and it is safe. I know I can reload the original neighborhoods from the templates stored in the Program Files, so I can use that to make sure they are entirely unplayed.

Yeah, it must be a Seasons feature, because it *did* let me delete Bluewater (although just to be on the safe side, I moved the Sims I still wanted to play out of there and killed the ones I didn't.)

Incidentally, Malcom Landgraab's mansion is ridiculously large. What'd the Maxoids expect us to do with all that space? XP

Anyway, as for Bella- Found a tutorial to clone her appearance and move the relations etc. onto the new, complete Sim. That should work. It didn't say what to do with the old Bella, though. XD

Some of the characters they seem to like so much that they were probably reprocessed several times. Doing some more research about the dead characters I looked at them with SimEnhancer. Skip Broke 1 must have been created a long time ago, because he still has a limited set of interests ("scary things", "outside") like some of the very early ancestors of the original families. Skip Broke 2 was apparently done much later. When I loaded Strangetown afterwards I looked at the thumbnails flicking before me and suddenly noticed a student looking exactly like Skip. Same face, same thumbnail, same personality.

Unfortunately, after looking at the characters my arrogance, stupidity or a sudden attack of neatness (maybe a combination of all) compelled me to delete the last remains of the already deleted Ottomas family (without doing a back-up first). When I entered the game the next time and tried to create a family in Strangetown it crashed. Using the usual combination of logic and magical thinking when dealing with my computer (it does not sound like a valid method but works in most cases) I discovered that it does not crash when I go into CAS in Pleasantville first. I did a bit of file maintenance removing some CC, restored the Ottomas garbage, deleted it again, none of it helps. CAS (and changing appearance in the mirror) crashes Strangetown. It does not crash with the workaround through Pleasantview CAS.
I am not sure if it is related to the deletion of the Ottomas trash. I have not created a family in Strangetown since the installation of BV. I do not really believe in the "never delete a family from the bin", because - well I do that all the time. I create replacement families, use them to replace townies and other uglies and delete them afterwards. Custom content could be responsible (although I would expect all neighbourhoods to crash then) and I do not see a relation between the families and changing appearance in a mirror. But this is were magical thinking comes in: The Ottomas family are a curse, introduced by evil game programmers trying to cause problems to innocent sims players, and I feel strongly that they are the problem.
Usually when I delete the character remains of my deleted families with SimEnhancer, the next new characters use the 'holes' and take the number and place of the deleted character. Some newly created replacement tourists did take the Ottomas numbers, but half of the slots remained empty. The teen boy and the grandmother seemed particularly faulty after copying them back and forth a few times and their numbers are unclaimed. The child girl is the only one who ever came in contact with the world outside the bin and her number was also not taken.
I will try again this evening (still too many ugly sims on vacation) to see if the slots will be used this time, but does anybody have any suggestion what could be the cause for this crashing problem?

Umm, probably deleting sims from the sim bin?  It may not cause problems at first, but eventually your hood will go up in a BFBVFS.

Yeah, if you're going to be creating and deleting families for something do yourself a favor: do it in a neighborhood you have no intention of playing, but just test crap in. That's what I did for my current set of face replacements, testing object creations, and will be doing for my future project (very exciting, and furthers my need for MOAR FACES).

Umm...how long does it take to get approved for the SimPE thing? I know it says a week, but I'm still waiting, and someone even said they have been waiting for 3 weeks. Are they just real busy with finishing the testing of the version and can't get the applied people in?

And...umm...what about the merging with the one lot method and what to do with the gravestones? I asked something about that above. I've searched, but I keep finding either the well written SimPE tutorial or links back to it. Nothing about the way to SAFELY move them by putting them all on one lot.

Check back at the SimPE site periodically.  I've read here that they're getting so many requests to join the QA program that they've stopped bothering sending out emails, and are just activating your access.

I just checked, and it told me it is still pending.

In earlier expansions of the sims it was possible to move families to a new neighborhood, I always ran the game with the developer mode on (boolprop) and I never had an error.  However, after I installed Bon Voyage, I started getting issues doing that, data missing types of issues, which resulted in one huge dead neighborhood.  So it is an issue,  which is lame but well, it's maxis and just because the game allows you to do it, doesn't mean you can do it heh.

As for the sims bin..

Ever since got the Sims 2.. I've deleted all three default neighborhoods and created my own neighborhood.  I just prefer going that route, I don't like using any of the default sims or the houses for that matter.  So yeah, I delete most of the familes from the sims bin as well, no issues there.  But after reading this thread, I don't think I'll do that anymore. 

I'm still moody about the corrupted neighborhood.. but it's always nice to do a little spring cleaning.. right?

Moving families from hood to hood was always a BFBVFS waiting to happen.  Each member of the family brings along with it a character file for every sim they have ever met.  So if Fred and Joanne in your moved family had both met Sue in the old neigbhourhood, then you would have two incomplete character files for Sue in the new neighbourhood.  Multiply this by the number of sims your sims had met.  Move the real Sue over to the new hood as well, and you have 3 character files for her, as well as duplicate character files for Fred and Joanne.  You could easily run into the old character files limit of the base game (and early EPs) if you did this only a couple of times.

Just because it didn't error when you did it, it doesn't mean it wasn't going to cause your hood to have related problems further down the track.  Moving sims from one neighbourhood to another has always been a VBT to do in Sims2.

And that's exactly what happened the last time I moved familes to a new neighborhood.  In the past every time I reformatted the pc, which I used to do seasonly just to clean things up, I didn't back up my saved games.  Because I went that route I never ran into any issues because they didn't have time to pop up.  But lately since I'm using a bigger drive and it takes forever to reformat, I've been playing the same neighborhood for a few months.  So when I moved them this time, I had the issue.

So that all makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is this sims bin thing..

Now so far with this new neighborhood, the only sims I deleted were the ones that were in the bin by default.  Those sims hadn't met my newly created sims yet so there should be no memories.  However, in the old days to get rid of a sim I'd move them out and then delete them from the bin.  So this is a no no?  So the only way to get rid of a sim without dealing a possible bfbvfs is to kill them? 

Yes, deleting from the sim bin is also a no-no, since it doesn't delete everything that needs to be deleted.

If you want to safely delete sims, you can follow the instructions in this thread (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6205.0.html).

Ok, so killing them is the fastest way to go without an issue then.  The reason I went with delete was because it was less time consuming than spawning rodneys death creator and just offing them that way.  Besides, the solution suggested would mean one would have to take the sims from the sims bin and put them back on a lot in order to access that menu, so it would be less time consuming just to kill them off right away then move them to the bin then move them back and delete them and then open simpe and play with numbers.

As for deleting default neighborhoods..

That shouldn't affect newly created ones, correct?

Of course, the alternative to killing or deleting them is to just turn them into townies.   I keep a small lot in a distant corner of every hood that only contains Inge's teleporter bush. Any sims I don't want to play (or new CAS townies I make) get put on that lot and turned into townies or downtownies. Keeps the character files from getting cluttered up with unnecessarily dead sims, and with notownieregen in place keeps the game from continuing to make its own fugly replacements for townies that do die, move in, whatever.

I do this with most of my "extra" spawn as well, since I don't care about time synchronization.  That way I keep the genetics I want and can re-insert them as playables through move-in or marriage if desirable.

@ Deviancy:  deleting the default neighbourhoods should not affect your ability to create custom 'hoods, except that, depending on what you delete, you might end up with a lack of default townies in your new 'hoods.  This is a good thing, in my view.  I generally leave the clean templates of the default 'hoods in, since I occasionally steal houses and lots (unoccupied, naturally) from the default 'hoods, if I'm too lazy to build, although I never play the defaults.

See, I put my rejects downtown, usually in an aptly named home. That way if, 6 generations down, I don't remember that Randy was that cheating bastard my founder kicked out of the house and think about having a playable call him and make some moves, I see that he lives at the deadbeat house and cancel the call. I don't play downtown.

For best custom 'hood results with minimal work each time, use the clean templates and Jordi's Live.package (names, customizable using SimPE), plus default replacements to your heart's content. I've been switching out three sets of face replacements, but I'm working on a super-set with the method for adding new non-replacement defaults.