Deleting Memories

[Darkstormyeve]

Ok, I was playing around with SimPE last night, looking at my sims memories. There were lots of invisible memories. Which ones can I delete and which ones shouldn't I?

Cheers
Stormy

[nectere]

If they belong to someone, as in if they have an owner leave them alone. "Owned by"

[Ancient Sim]

There's no harm in deleting memories owned by other Sims, they're just random snippets passed on during conversations, gossip and so on, and they'll pass them on again soon enough if you get rid of them.  Best not to delete any unless you know what you're doing though, especially the ones that pertain to the actual Sim in question.  Tokens that determine various conditions in the game, such as pregnancy, illness, lateness for work, whether the Sim has been invited downtown or not, etc., are all depicted by invisible tokens.

[cwykes]

Each sim has 3 kinds of memories: 
1. invisible token memories
2. visible memories owned by that sim
3. invisible memories owned by another sim

Don't touch invisible token memories - there aren't many anyway.
You can safely delete the type 3 invisible ones.
To safely delete one of  Sim A's visible memories, you must first track down and delete Sim B-ZZZ's  invisible memories of that event because the invisible memories refer back to the visible memory.  Undesirable things happen when programs try to refer to things that aren't there.


How a memory spreads
You have a lot with 4 sims on it  Sims A-D
Sim A burns pancakes
Sim A has a memory of burning pancakes
Sim B was there and I think Sim B has an immediate invisible memoy of it
Sim B talks or gossips to Sim C and Sim A talks to Sim D.  Memories are exchanged. 
At the end of the interaction all the family now know that Sim A burned pancakes.
The family goes on an outing to a community lot and all 4 sims talk to sims E-N who happen by
There's a good chance that sims E-N will now also know that Sim A burned pancakes

That's a lot of sims to check!  So unless the memory is brand new - forget it!