For the most part, I love to design my own neighborhoods.  I am very saddened that we cannot design our own particular neighborhoods in terms of terraforming and mapping out streets, as in SC4.  EA took out the best aspect of the Sims franchise and forced us to work with the scraps they threw us.  In a way, I am sort of disgusted that the developers trampled on the "sandbox" aspect of play and ruined the "creative freedom" that Sims players used to have.

With that being said, my play style is dictated by how I think the neighborhood is going to go.  If there is going to be one core family and their generations dominating a particular neighborhood, then I will play that one family.  Otherwise, I will place my "sacred" families on lots and build the neighborhood around them despite the limited controls we are allowed to have.  Knowing that we have such limitations, I would certainly hope that the crib issue is optional despite the obstinacy being exhibited.

For my part, I will continue to read the further developments on this issue.  And if there is a time to speak about it, I will be sure to put my two cents in.  I would rather the decision for having kids to be left to the family and not be forced through Story mode.  Story mode, as far as I am concerned, has done enough damage not only to the neighborhood but to the game itself.

Unfortunately, I'm a Mac user.  So, I can't use Neighborhood Workshop.  I wish I could.  


Unfortunately, "listhomeless" was the first command I tried when it came to seeking the dead sims.  The hope I'm hanging on is the fact that the dead sims aren't completely gone from the system.  Maybe someone can use that little bit of information in order to create a solution to this issue.  After all, the dead sims are still mentioned in the family tree.  However, when I went into "set config enabledebuginteractions" and clicked on geneaology, the game did not recognize the dead sim's ties to the rest of the family. So, I'm clueless where to turn next in order to at least restore their headstones.


I know I must.  I have a copy of each of the dead sims and their spouses in the library (or sim bin).  I thought about putting the "live versions" of the sims who had accidents on a lot and then merge them with their respective families.  I've read the pro's and cons of such an action, but I am seriously thinking about it.



Most of my houses in this neighborhood are furnished already due to the fact that I've kept some of the EAxis houses.  So, I don't really have to worry about the cribs issue.  But, when I want to build a house of my own in a given neighborhood for a specific family, I really don't want be forced to build a nursery each time.  I would really like to design the houses for my families on a case-by-case basis.  That's why I hope that there is a workaround.

I'll keep my fingers crossed on that aspect.

But with the Indie Stone mod, I had disabled all Household settings.  But you have a point in terms of stasis.  I didn't enable it, so therein lies the first part of my problem.  I did not know that the Indie Stone mod superceded the Awesomemod features.  I was pretty secure in thinking that my families were safe with only "sacred" status alone.  Now, I know.




If that is the case, I probably will remove it because it had caused me nothing but grief.  But, I was concerned about the crib issue when it came to the Awesomemod Story driver.  I will read the comments there to see if the matter was settled.

The only thing now is to find out whether the sims who died "by accident" can be retrieved.  Or, that there is a fix that will enable the sims who "die by accident" to spawn an actual headstone.  That would be very nice.

Kyna and Motoki, I appreciate your helpful advice.  It made me view this issue in a different light.

You are correct in the fact that the random death pop-ups don't mention rock-climbing, per se.  Unfortunately, I should have read the pop-up more closely.

However, the pop-ups do mention random accidents such as drowning or falling and hitting one's head. These occurrences happen without any warning to any sim in the neighborhood.  

 I used Awesomemod to make the specific households sacred. Indie Stone was also implemented to switch off the random death portion of story mode.  And the characters involved were not elderly, because I am playing a relatively new neighborhood in which I "raptured" all the townie families that the game spawned.

(On another note, no one has immigrated from their households or merged with another family.  That part still works.)

I do remember that the founder's wife had an accident while hiking--as the pop-up said while I was playing another family.  When that happened (via pop-up), I immediately switched (through editTown) to that family to find a headstone of some sort.  Unfortunately, none was found in the husband's inventory (being direct next of kin) nor the family inventory.  The wife was gone.  However, her picture in the family tree was still in color and not greyed out.  There is no trace of her anywhere in the neighborhood.  It is as if the game decided just to ramdomly make her "disappear".  The kids aren't even saddened that she is gone.  The three children were "best friends" with their mother.  Only the husband has a "moodlet" of her death.

On that note, the only third party system(s) I've used is the Awesomemod and the Indie Stone mod.  However, this pop-up was not in pink (a la Indie Stone); it was in yellow like the reports that a sim would read in the newspaper.  

To make a long story short, this happened with "sacred" status, "random deaths" turned off as well as NoBusKills being denoted as true.

I appreciate you considering this problem. And I hope that something can be worked out to find a fix for this distressing issue.


  I do have "random deaths" turned off both in Indie Stone as well as sacred status in Awesomemod.  Thank you for your suggestion and interest in this problem.

Sims of any age.  These sims are ones that I have marked for sacred.  In my understanding, when a sim is marked by "sacred" status, that means that they are protected from all aspects of story progression, right?

By random deaths, I mean that out of the blue there is a popup message saying that a particular character has had an accident and has died.  In that instance, one would naturally expect a tombstone to spawn. Furthermore, the headstone would either be in the family inventory or the mausoleum in order for his/her loved ones to "manage the dead".

But, in my game, this has not happened.  In fact, the game still lists the deceased as alive, but the character has disappeared from the family.


In the previous versions (meaning 1.2.7 as well as 1.3), I haven't had this happen.  My "sacred" families remained safe, including elders until I decided to play their households.  So, yes, I have updated to 1.4. I also have the latest version of the awesomemod.  I always make sure to check the awesome mod section of this forum to see if it is updated.

But in this instance, this isn't just happening to elders; this is happening to Young Adults and Adults in the 1.4 version.

For example, one of the sims that experienced a "random death" (and marked for sacred status) was just newly created.  I switched to play another family household when I get this popup stating that a "local woman, [the name of my particular sim] had died while rock-climbing.  She had fallen to her death."
I am all right with the fact of random deaths if one could at least find the headstone so I could make a ghost out of the particular character, or that I have a chance to ressurrect her if I so choose.  But, after her "random death", I can't find her tombstone.  I tried searching all over the neighborhood.  I've even tried using debugging commands to see if the game could respawn the character or at least locate where she had died.


In another instance the same thing happened to my "founder's family" in which the wife died in a similar fashion.  After trying the same things to ressurrect her, I clicked on the family tree of one of her children to see if his mother was greyed out.  Instead of having her picture greyed out, her picture was still in its original color form.  Therefore, I thought I would have the chance of trying to find her and ressurrecting her if I could "respawn her" somehow.  But to no avail, I could not.  She, as well as the first woman, is lost into the ether.

That's why I asked if there was a particular fix for this problem.  Or, if there was, by chance a headstone locator so I can at least bury them.  


I poured over this thread, hoping that there might be a solution.  I didn't want to add on to that one because of necromancy rules.  The thread posed the problem while discussing certain commonalities that I have experienced.  However, it did not pose a solution.  And that is why after looking throughout this forum as well as on google I decided to break my silence and hoped that someone might have found something to advance my understanding of this known issue.

Thank you for your insight, though.

That's a good question.  I will go and check.  Thanks for suggesting this.

Update: I went and checked the "showconfig" and found that the "NoBusKills" is listed as true.  So these "random deaths" happening to sacred families are operating independently from that command.

I'm a longtime lurker who much prefers to research the answer, but after exhausting all the given resources on this topic I am stumped.  I need your help.

I've done the research on this topic in this forum and this is what I understand:

1)There are random deaths that occur in the game in which the gravestones have turned up missing.  If the 'manage the dead' option has been clicked on the mausoleum, then the inventory does not list their names. So far, I have not found a simple solution to this issue.

2)For loved ones of the deceased, the gravestone turns up in their inventories for placement in the cemetery.  If this happens, one can use "setconfig debuginteractons true" in order to spawn a ghost, or to ressurrect a given character within the neighborhood.

These are my questions as follows:

1)Where are the files located for random deaths in the game?  

2)Is there a chance to re-spawn characters who have died randomly in the game? I have tried, "resetSim <FirstName><LastName>" as well as "testingcheatsenabled true" to find a solution, but to no avail.  I have even used "spawn" in the debugcommands to try and see if the deceased sims would come back (even though I discovered later that this would enabled the game to spawn a certain number of sims  and not a specific one).

3)Is there a way to at least spawn the tombstone of the sims who have randomly died? I thought that with a headstone, I would have a fighting chance to at least ressurrect a ghost or a sim.  I had even "killed" a character off to see if I could get her living survivor to "manage the dead" and retrieve the "randomly deceased" sims from the inventory in the mausoleum.  This ended up futile as well.

If anything, is it at all possible to create a fix for this persistent and often annoying problem? I don't like it when Story Progression chooses some of my most favorite and beloved characters and all of a sudden hauls them off a cliff. To add insult to injury, there is no marker to at least denote the deaths.  It has happened three times to each of my "sacred" families.  In these cases, the people selected by the game were "chosen".  On the Indie mod side, the households had "random deaths" off.

I shall await your answers.  Your help is much appreciated.

After seeing the shots of TS3 and One Tree Hill on the Infinite Sims site, I pray that there is CC for this game (free preferably).  If those are the Sims that we have to stare at in the next incarnation of the game, we're in definite trouble.

Although EAxis tossed out a kernel to the consumers by relaxing the tentacles of Securom on TS3, what they need to do next is fire the artists who created the next generation of Sims.  Artistically and aesthetically, the new sims are horrible.

Custom content cannot be left out of the picture. And there can be no way that TSR has to be the only game in town in terms of CC. 

After reading this wonderful thread, I've decided to throw in my wish list for TS2.  Poke and laugh at me if you must, but I have to get this off of my chest:

My Wish List:

1) That the entire EA Management would be thrown out.  And, that people who respect not only PC gamers, but Mac gamers be put in their place.

(Okay, that's a pipe dream because hardly *anyone* in the gaming world who makes games thinks about Mac people, but that's beside the point. )

On to the game:

2) That the sims would have more types of interactions with each other so that the randomness would mean something and it becomes less predictable.  For example, it is a given that the welcome wagon comes out to meet new neighbors in the 'hood.  But, wouldn't you expect each reaction to be different (from: "Get the heck off of my property!" to "How about some tea? Come inside)?  If that could be done, the longstanding feelings between neighbors could amount in more interesting relationships other than the predictable. And if there are different types of reactions between neighbors, it might put some really interesting twists in the neighborhood story-line.

3)More Aspirations.  I know that some of these aspirations function on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  But, we need to have something else other than the "Eat Grilled Cheese" aspiration, et al.  There's got to be other types of things that Sims aspire to.  I do like aspirations in the long run, though.  And, I hope that TS3 does not entirely throw them out.

4)More variety of channels.  Along with that line, an easier way to put in custom television and radio stations in the game without the files overwriting themselves every time.

5) A work-around to help Mac folks shoot films in their games.  Right now, it is hard to shoot pictures in TS2 for some of us Mac folks because the video turns out choppy with little or no sound.  And that comes with good specs!!!  Along with that, an easier way to edit .avi video for Mac folks to put custom shows and movies in their games.  Why should Aspyr (or EAxis) sell such an great aspect in the game if it only works properly for some of their customers?

6)Better patches and more reliable updates for Mac players.  It seems that Aspyr has dropped the ball on FT and AL for us.  I wish that they could put aside some of their enthusiasm for Spore and get on with FT and AL.

7) I wish that the entire game could run like the hacks here and elsewhere by talented modders.  Your outstanding work has stopped the repetition in the game.

8)More variety in building styles.  Being primarily a builder in the game, I wish that there was more stuff to there to make interesting architecture.

9) Working dormers and other roofing mods in the game.  (like adding Gambrel roofs without a hack, for instance)

10) A way to control the wolves and the strays from coming on to the lot.  I love animals, but the wolves and the dogs constantly digging in the yard is such a drag.

That's all! I look forward to reading other folks' replies.  Have a nice night.

Edit:  I wish someone would update or continue to work on Woohoo for Macintosh.  It does a fraction of what SimPe can do for PC's.  If somebody who truly likes Macs and the TS2 out there who does "awesomeware" for the game could do something in that vein, I'd be a truly happy lady.  Mac folks need something similar to SimPE.  There simply needs to be something in which Mac Players can do "surgery" and other things to their Sims and game. 

Pretty Please? 

Thank you for telling us this!  This only shows that EA is in it for the bucks and nothing else.  If they actually listened to the customers, this would have stopped awhile ago.  If this is any indication of what is to come for The Sims 3, count me out. 

Thank you very much for these. I have despaired over the ugly Maxian face templates for a long time.  I appreciate these from the bottom of my heart.

CM