Relinking Sims without character file or restoring a character file

[Sandman]

Does anyone know how to relink sims that have been unlinked due to either being deleted or who have died and don't have a tombstone in order to resurrect them. I have some sims I want to restore to the game and have figured out how to get their pictures onto the lot that I want them to be at but they are still not showing up in the lot. I have read threads at SimPE where they need to be relinked but no one says how to relink them. I have found an area in SimPE that has a link that says relink character but it is greyed out. Evidentally I need to do something else before I can use that link.

After doing some searching I found a few post that tell you how to restore a sims that can be restore if they were deleted or that has a tomb stone but they all say you can't restore them if they don't have a character file. They all have the little pink box in the corner of their picture.  If there a whay to restore a charcter file so I can restore them. Some of these were deleted before I knew how to play the game...  I am guilt ridden and want to restore them...

My gut is telling me to forget it...but I seldom pay attention to my gut.

[Avalikia]

While there are some parts of a character file that are that can easily be replaced with data copied from other character files, there is some data contained within a character file that's unique to that Sim.  For example, I believe the data used to construct their face is in there.  I suppose in theory it could be possible to create a file that would work, but your Sim would definately not be the same and you're more likely to create a borked character.  It's definately better just to forget about it.

[Inge]

What does unlinked actually *mean*?  It is supposed to be one way of finding out if they are dead, but living sims are sometimes marked unlinked in simpe.

[Theo]

Looking into the code, it means that the SDESC's SimId field differs from the GUID field of the character's OBJD. SimPe's relink dialog offers a way to synchronize those values.

[Inge]

I thought they were always meant to differ.  Nannies are all the same GUID, aren't they, for instance?  But different NIDs.

[Theo]

Maybe it's meant to be used on playables only, but I'm not sure. Anyway, "relinking" in SimPe will give them the same value.

[Inge]

What is interesting is that there is no completely infallible way to tell if a sim is dead, programmatically.

[Theo]

My previous statements were not entirely correct. Relinking is done by the stated method, but the 'Unlinked' setting is actually read from a field in the SDESC.

That field is declared as:

/// True if this Sim is only available for Memory Reasons
public ushort Unlinked

The code that fetches that value can be found further down:

reader.BaseStream.Seek(startpos + 0x156, System.IO.SeekOrigin.Begin);
unlinked = reader.ReadUInt16();

In SimPe, the sim's icon will have a blue background if 'Unlinked' is not zero.

What is interesting is that there is no completely infallible way to tell if a sim is dead, programmatically.

I think the game only needs the 'Ghost flag' set, without any consideration for the 'I am dead' memory token.

[Inge]

Is the ghost flag actually set though, if they have no grave to haunt from?