My current neighbourhood has 202 Sim character files totaling 118MB. Some of these files were over 2MBs in size and I investigated further.

In nearly every instance the cause of the large size of character file was due to the Sim having photo booth pictures in their inventory. The Sims with 3 photo booth pictures had the largest files. (Just from my observations it seems Sims don't have more than 3 photos taken autonomously in their inventory - maybe a limitation?)

I had a Sim throw several large parties, selected all Sims and deleted the photo-booth pictures in their inventories. The result was the character files reduced in size from a total of 118MB to 90MB, nearly a 25% reduction.

Just a couple of examples:-

Sim A character file 2.25MB - after deleting 3 photo-booth pictures size reduced to 268KB
Sim B character file 2.09MB - after deleting 3 photo-booth pictures size reduced to 267KB

Is there a hack available to stop this behaviour?, I Googled but failed to find anything, but I'm old and senile and fail at a lot of things.

On a separate note, are the Sim's memories stored in their character files? Using the Bat-box I deleted trash memories, and even when some Sims had over 50 memories deleted there was no noticeable reduction in size of the character files.

This happens with all Sims using this hairstyle so its not the Sim that is corrupted. I have 3-4 other one-off recolors of various hairs that this happens with as well, these show up in the custom hair bin. The NewSea hair appears to be binned correctly.

Its no big deal, as I have heaps of other hair I can use, I just wondered what caused it, whether it be a 'fubared' mesh or my game configuration not being up to it.

Edit. Found it with a better effort on my lazy-ass google skills. Seems that hair must have been made using Pets bodyshop and can be easily fixed using this tutorial here :-
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=202497

I downloaded a female Sim from somewhere which had a NewSea hair.

This hair doesn't 'stick', in that when you exit, save and renter a lot the hair changes to the standard maxis default hair...the one you get when you delete a Sims hair from your downloads directory.

This also happens if I change the clothes of the Sim in bodyshop.

The thumbnails of the hair's various recolors shows up as a neked body in bodyshop, CAS and ingame when I use a hack to change the hair.

The hair mesh and its recolors are also in the booty :- http://svs.paysites.mustbedestroyed.org:8080/booty/ts2/newsea/hair029female.jpg

Is this happening because there is something wrong with the hair, or because the hair was cloned from an expansion I don't have, or something else?

I have Sims deluxe, nightlife and OFB

Ah, OK. Ive never seen those messages before, as Ive never had the dialog on. Must have misclicked somewhere.

Thanks for that, that has fixed the reset/error.

The next sim to fall pregnant got these two messages displaying, just before and just after the pregnancy chimes.



Are these messages part of the debugger changes or are they from somewhere else?

When clicking on the Batbox, a sim will reset and throw an error if there is a pregnant sim on the lot.

The problem disappears once the pregnant sim has given birth, and baby has grown to toddler stage.

I have Sims deluxe, University and OFB. my current hood as about 200 playables on clean templates. Have about 120 hacks.

Error/reset still occurs with all downloads removed apart from Batbox.

Same error occurs in new test hood created on clean templates

Edit: Error/reset only occurs at pregnant sims residential lot. When pregnant sim is summoned to another lot there is no error/reset on any sim.

Log attached

Use clean templates with antiredundancy hack and shaklins Universal Dresser.

At a residential lot have a playable of the same sex and age as the NPC you wish to custom dress, purchase the relevent Uniform/attire using the dresser.

Summon/teleport the NPC and have the playable change the NPC's clothing with the dresser. (You can also change the NPC's first name, and give them a makeover with the dresser at the same time, if you so wish).

Save and exit

Yes, I checked SimPe and there was no 3rd SS. I took at all my hacks, visited a com lot and another SS member appeared so all is good.

Have NL, OFB and recently installed Uni.

Playable goes to Uni and meets/befriends all townies/dormies.

Two dormies identified as SS members.

One of them, "Eric Chun" appears TWICE on a lot at the same time. Two Eric Chuns on the same lot, when my playable interacts with both there is only one "Eric Chun" in the Character window. Interacting with either Eric affects the relationship in the character window.

Problem is there is no 3rd SS member to befriend. Checking SimPe reveals only one Eric Chun and only 2 SS members (Chun and another dormie).

Is this a known bug or is my game glitched and how do I get a third SS member to befriend?

re 4)

No, if a townie moves in and becomes playable they get a memory wipe by the game. If that townie had a woohoo with a playable before he/she moved in..then the extownies woohoo memory is wiped, but the playables woohoo memory with that extownie remains.

re 1)

I was wondering if a side effect of clean templates/antiredundancy or something similar might cause no burglars

I have the Deluxe Basic/Nightlife package and OFB installed. I have a custom neighbourhood made from the blank templates. All playables and townies/downtownies have been made in CAS. A bunch of over 40 MATY hacks including antiredundancy, notownieregen, crumplefix and some Non-awsome hacks such as ACR, Insimenator, Nokicktrash,No Newspaper Delivery. Total population is 202 made up of 7 NPC and about 140 playables.

I have been playing this hood for about 2 months, having played aprox 3-4 sim days on each of 60 residential lots with no obvious serious problems however a few things I have noted

1) I have yet to have a burglary. This seems unusual. Would any MATY hack for OFB prevent this?

2) I keep a close eye in simPE to see if there are any unattached SWAF's. There are 196 SWARF's with Mrs CrumpleBottom having one, is this a problem?

3) In simPE I have 51 Family Unknown (FAMH), this number has grown since I started the hood, dont recall what it was at the start. What are FAMH's?

4) I initially started the hood with mainly single's and had them move in 3Bolt townies/downtownies. The townies/downtownies have a memory wipe when they move in, however I note if any playable has woohoo'd the townie before movein that their memory of it remained. Does this cause problems?

5) Some of my single playables got matched up. I moved in one of the playables. I did experience some weirdness when moved in another playable to vacated houses.. Sims would jump in and out of the shower repeatedly etc. Moving the sims to lotbin/bulldozing/moving in sim to new house on same lot fixed the problem. I decided not to use vacated houses anymore and bulldoze the house once the original occupant vacated and replace with a new house. Is there any problems with deleting vacated houses (no tombstones) and placing a new house on the old lot?

6) Im currently reading all the old Podium threads, I see mention of a dancing  Bust-a Move. I havent seen this option for any sim yet. Is this move available to certain sims, at a certain dancing skill level or only available with a EP/SP I dont have?

7) I see that playing with the RC can corrupt an objects package. Some of the townies that moved in with a playable had RC's in their inventory. I sold them immediately. Does owning a RC corrupt this objects package or just playing with it do that?

I havent fiddled with the Taxi driver, apart from to give her a bright yellow sexy uniform...which then made it apparent that she is also the driver of all the workpool vehicles..busy girl, that one.

As far as NPC's not having WAF's until they need them, thats good to know, thankyou.

Preamble
Sims 2 Deluxe (Base and Nightlife package)
OFB

Custom hood, clean templates used
No deaths in hood as yet


Possible problem

On examining the SWAF in SimPe, I note the following:-

NPC Taxi Driver has no short term wants and fears
NPC Postman has no short term wants and fears

Of the default NPC's there is only the Therapists and one unknown potatoehead having SWAF files and the unknowns has no LTW
There are 2 'unknown' potatoeheads in the character files. The other default NPC's (Grim Reaper,Polination tech) etc have character files but have not been encountered ingame as yet, AFAIK.


One SWAF file not attached to anyone, has nothing on any of the 4 tabs


Questions

1) Are the mailman and taxi drivers lack of short term wants and fears a problem, if so, by making them selctable and rerolling the wants with the debugger fix the problem?

2) Should I just nuke the unattached SWAF in SimPe?

3) I dont have University but with the debugger I CAN upgrade my Sims to have degrees and get the 6 slots and 2 locks...is this a VBT or not?

Im pretty sure it is possible to have 2 meshes linked to a skintone...in fact I have several, a number of female sims I downloaded with the CPU bodyshape have the Male HBB shape linked, well at least thats what it says on the skin when you mouse over it in CAS or body shop...have yet to test this out in the game with births yet.

In my present stage of unawesomeness, its probably easier for me to just change the skintone factor for a baby , (once its born) in SimPe back to the mother/father, dependent on if its a boy or girl.

If, in time, I become less unawesome, then I may attempt something a little more technically challenging

Well, being relatively new to the game Im not any authority on genetics but I think this is what the position is in this situation

"Sheena" is a female using custom skintone linked to a Warlokk 34De36 body mesh. The skintone also has male skins in it, this can be viewed in either SimPe or by previewing with the clean installer.

"John" is a male using a custom skintone linked to the Slim Body Builder mesh. The skintone also has a female skin in it as well, and because the skintone used had no male junk (so CrammysBoys mod could be used) the female skin has no coloration of the nipples for females.

The problems come when a skintone is dominant in a particular birth where the 'nonprimary' gender skin is used. So if "Sheena" has a boy and her skintone is used then we end up with a skinny dude when he grows up. Or if its a girl and "johns" skintone is dominant then we have no nipple colouring.

Im assuming to rectify this, I will need to

a)somehow link a SlimBodyBuilder mesh to her skintone, but only the male portion of that skin...I think?

b) Also I either need to recolour the female part of the skin in "Johns" skintone, or somehow replace the female skins inside his skintone with one that has coloured nipples.

Im not really sure what I should be doing under a), should I be trying to link that skintone to the SBB mesh, or linking the SBB mesh to that skintone, and only the male part of the skintone contained within it?

I want it so that any male offspring of females using that skintone end up being SBB's.

And if this could be done would the male skins in her skintone need to be changed, cos they presently fit skinny dudes?

My head hurts...

Maybe it would just be easier just to change the skins/meshes linked to the baby's character, in SimPe back to the primary ones, so if its a girl it has to be mums skin and mesh, and if its a boy then it has to have dads skin and mesh....

Yes, its pretty easy to make them look different with different clothes/hair/makeup. But you would also need a teleporter and a dressor hack to get them to a lot and change them all

Surgery Instructions

1) Know the name of the NPC and the Sim you are going to copy

2) Open SimPe

3) Select your hood and open it

4) Select Tools/Neighbourhood/Sims Surgery

5) In the Sim Pool of the Surgery screen select NPC, then click "use" under Patient Sim

6) In the Sim Pool of the surgey screen select beautiful sim you want to replace horrid maxis face with, then click "use" under Archetype Sim

Do not click enable face only/makeup only/eyes only/skintone only checkboxes for 5) or 6)

7) Click Surgery button on bottom right of SimSurgery screen

8.) Sim Description screen of NPC with new face/skin/clothes will now load. Click File/save...your done!

If you have used a different gender sim to replace horrid maxis NPC, dont forget to change the gender in the Overview tab once the SimDescription screen loads in 8.) above.

Rather than spawning and deleting ugly NPC, why dont you just let the game generate the NPC's, get some nice looking sims you either made or downloaded, dress them in the appropriate attire/uniforms and then perform surgery on the NPC's.

Then put your new playable sims into alot and change their hair/clothes/makeup to what you want.

Probably is a male thing. We are not likely to have gigabytes of asthetically pleasing curtains cos we are more interested in MOAR fights and who gets a fuckbuddy on the side when they are engaged, haha.

These long loading times interest me, I have what I would call a fairly ancient rig:-

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp.080413-2111)
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2800+,  MMX,  3DNow, ~2.1GHz
Memory: 512MB RAM
Page File: 348MB used, 2180MB available

It takes me a tad over 4 mins to get to a lot from desktop with 1.2GB in downloads folder (predominantly hair, skins/mesh,clothes, characters, zilch furniture/lots). Ive read people having extreme load times of 30-40mins+. Does some types of CC make for longer loadtimes than others?

30-40 min load times..you'd have to be very keen on the game to keep playing under those conditions!

 I remember back in the day, loading games on my Commordore 64 with an external tape drive and load times were quicker than that, haha!

Talysman, I was refering to your first description using the Bulk Renaming Utility to rename all the files within the copied directory. But if the game does open other hoods at the same time, then yeah I can see how cloning the hood this way would be a VBT.

If I wanted to clone it for testing purposes, then I could probably use Fourcats idea of taking the hood you arent using out of the Sims 2 folder, but if at any time I forgot to do this then... boom, so probably not worth the risk

Preamble
I have a custom hood made using the templates/tutorials available/linked to this site. I have populated the hood with a wide variety of pretty people (other peoples sims used as is or slighty modified..because I am simply inept at making pretty people) of various skintones and meshes.

After establishing careers and relationships it is now time to commence a baby boom. I downloaded Inseminator to use as a testing tool to see the results of various mergers.

My male sims are mainly various versions of the Body Builder type, the male version skintone is without junk as I use CrammyBoys mod.
The female sims are a wide variety of shapes and sizes with skintones/meshes that are anatomically correct

Problem
If the offspring is a female and the male skintone is dominant, then the female has nipples but no colouring
If the offspring is male and the female skintone is dominant then male is a very skinny dude when his father is Slim Body Builder.

If the offspring is female and female skintone dominates then all is good. The female has the same mesh/skintone as her mother including coloured nipples.
If the offspring is male and the male skintone prevails then all is good. The male has the same mesh/build/skintone as his father

Female sims with the CPU bodyshape/skintone often have the Huge Body Builder male skintone. Most of the slimmer custom skintones/meshes seem to have just maxis default male skins attached.

I can see in generations to come that the male Slim Body Builder will become extinct, there will be a few Huge Body Builder/Bear males around but mostly the male population will be skinny maxis dudes.

Questions

1) Is there an easy method to extract a skintone used by my male sims and colourize the nipples of the females in the skintone and replace the existing males skintone in the game?

2) Is it possible to change an existing (in the game) females skintone/mesh/whatever in SimPe so that the male children grow up to be SlimBody Builders and not maxis skinny dudes?

3) Are you able to tell the sex of a baby before birth? Or is are the dice rolled by the computer when the stork comes?

4) (and I dont really want to do this) Is it best just to blow up the hood and start afresh and "stop being a lazy bastard and make your own damn sims with proper skintones..wherever they might be found"?

I realise that I should direct these queries directly to to various skin/mesh makers, but these forums seem to be swarmed by awesomeness and any assistance/guidance/direction would be appreciated.

Thats what I was afraid of (deletes cloned hood and reloads backup main hood)

Thankyou for the extremely prompt reply

I have backed up my custom made neighbourhood using SimPe

I have made a clone of the hood using the Bulk Renaming Utility.

I wish to use the new hood for testing purposes, mainly genetics.

Loading the game and going into the hood, everything appears fine...but are there some VBT's that a nonawesome person such as myself is not aware of, that can turn my main playable hood into a BFBVFS?