How many sims?

[eevilcat]

I'm curious as to what a 'typical' number of sims for a large, played over a long period of time neighbourhood is. I've played both Strangetown and a custom neighbourhood a lot and (with all EPs installed) they're both about the 620 sim count and still rising.

[I'd like to know as I'm seriously considering writing a standalone family tree display tool as I've got so hacked off with trying to keep up with who's who in relation to everyone else. The potential maximum number of sims will have an impact on my design. I spent several hours Photoshopping family trees at the weekend and they're out of date already, so I plan to write a utility that will scan the neighbourhood of your choice then display the family tree(s) in a sensible fashion. That's a starting point, I can already think of additional features I would like to add, but not having touched a compiler in 3+ years I'll try remembering how to walk before I run.]

[Brynne]

Very cool. My Pleasantview is just under 500, and that's been played since the game came out.

[aqualectrix]

That would be an awesome tool.  My Pleasantville has been played since I got the game; Sims2DB tells me I have around 250 playable Sims (dead and alive); my character folder has about 450 files, but that's quite low since I've purged almost all townies, etc.

[vilia]

Installing Pets adds a couple of hundred extra files but they wouldn't be needed for a family tree display. I think this idea is great and would be very useful.

EDIT: I'm at 520 for Pleasantville but if you knock out the pets it would be about 300. I restarted at the beginning of the year.

[LFox]

I got all expansions (minus their little 15 dollar garbage packs) and a count of 643 character files.  It's quite large because i originally duped the veronaville neighbourhood so i had it populated and all the scenery fixed.

By the way that idea of yours for a family tree tool would be awesome.  I got a family 9 generations long and i can only imagine how impossible it would be to map...oh wait i did that on paper already but it's out of date.  A tool to do it for you would be awesome though.

[Bangelnuts]

Before My most current reinstall My Pleasant view had 735 total but half were Maxis. townies etc

[sanmonroe]

My first NH blew up ina  big 800+ ball of doom.

I recreated all the player made sims in a townie free NH. Turned all the prostitutes, homeless people, drug addicts, rapists, murderers, etc into townies and went on from there.

As of Sunday 336 sims there in my file.

I do have about 30 townie YAs though. They keep dying off with the no dormie invuln hack.

[OpiumGirl]

Such a tool would be amazing....Especially since my neighborhood has gotten out of control and I can barely remember who is related to whom...
It especially sucks when I do things like have a lady sim date the father and son (or daughter) of another sim. oops 

I've got all expansions and have 518 sims in total....

[Moa]

I've got all the expansion packs. In my main neighborhood (which I've played since the base game came out), I've got 902 files in the character folder. I keep an Excel spreadsheet on the basic stats of all my playable characters. According to that, as of this moment, I have 329 active characters (not counting babies and pets). I'm just getting to the third generation, and use the elixer of life generously, so most of my original sims are still about. Also have a surplus of baristas. Got the hack now to prevent any more of that, but that still leaves me with 23 baristas.

I've had almost no problems with the neighborhood, despite having a lot of trash character files that got generated about a year and a half ago, when I was naively experimenting with moving characters from neighborhood to neighborhood. I still hold my breath every time a new baby is born, but what the hell. Much of the fun of the game is seeing the new generations take root. I'll play the neighborhood until it breaks.

I kept track of the details of each household in MS Word, and more recently in the Sims2DB (still waiting for that to get updated for Pets, otherwise I love the program).

I would love a family tree generating program. You can go back and look at your notes for each sim, but there's nothing like a visual diagram for bringing it all to life.

[maxon]

Installing Pets adds a couple of hundred extra files but they wouldn't be needed for a family tree display. I think this idea is great and would be very useful.

EDIT: I'm at 520 for Pleasantville but if you knock out the pets it would be about 300. I restarted at the beginning of the year.

Umm - according to my numbers test, Pets adds 70 files to a custom neighbourhood, including Roseland and the damned Critturs, plus the NPC pet trainers and pet police.  I don't play the Maxian neighbourhoods so it might be different for them but in my two test and store hoods - which are mostly empty of sims (though not entirely) both had under 100 sim files after I loaded Pets.

Moa - you might find the Sims2 Database to be a help.

And I could really use a family tree programme.  I've tried Brother's Keeper - suggested by someone possibly on here (though it might have been the public newsgroups) - but I can't find a way for it to give me an overview of all the sims in my neighbourhood.

[Karen]

My Pleasantview has been in continuous play since the game came out.  I have about 170 playables at the moment, plus about 20-25 pets.  I have over 1000 character files, 300+ of them NPC's, and have never had any serious problems with this neighborhood.  I've never even had to do a reinstall.

I keep a spreadsheet of my playables as well; it's the only way I can possibly manage to keep track of everything.

[cwykes]

I have 379 in my best loved hood, but then I only have base + OFB.  All the extra Uni characters are one more reason not to get Uni!  I know who is connected to whom in that still, but then my sims tend to stick with 1 partner and live a long time without breeding much.  I've never much used Sims2DB which won't import from the newest versions of SimPE anyway unless I've missed an update.

[Swiftgold]

I have almost 200 playables in a hood starting from the base game, with all townies and dormies removed. I'd love to see a graphical family tree thing as well! I'm having some Sims falling for their great-nieces and are having to make sure to edit the longer-lived ones to recognize great-grandchildren as relatives so they won't ACR I can still remember most of them but it would definitely help to have a graphic (the family tree software I found didn't work too well with the constant intermarrying of families in such a small "town").

[JadeEliott]

Thyme has 45 character files, i've been playing for about six months.