Clean and fixed Uber-Megahood! OUTDATED!

[Tarlia]

Ha, got you! Now I feel like the creepiest of stalkers.

No worries. The LJ community isn't THAT big and I sometimes watch people outside my friends' list too.

Now, this is where it becomes a bit of a stretch - I'm starting to suspect the very same thing happens. I suppose you fixed, say, the Bluewater template (by adding your own memories that are not corrupt) and the Riverblossom. Separately. At that point you made a backup of both templates. You did all that prior to loading Riverblossom (which also adds a bunch of your fixed stealth hoods) and adding Bluewater to it.

Yep, all of this is exactly what I did.

Did you make a backup at that point too? Then, you wiped the corrupt memories with the LB. Then, you opened the backup in SimPE, and saw that all the GUIDs of the wiped memories were actually correct. Now, the main question is, which backup did you check?

Actually, what I did was load the separate lots, wipe memories with the lot debugger, but then exit the lot without saving, so that the memories remained intact. When I checked in SimPE, the wiped memories were pointing at the right GUIDs.

And here's a little test you can do to see if I'm definitely on the wrong track with all this nonsense. After the wiping of corrupt memories, go and remake a set of such memories all over again. I'd go with Tommy's (or whoever) memories of Sharla, in an already loaded Riverblossom with the Bluewater added (cause I came up with this crazy theory that the corruption takes place as soon as you load the hood). Then wipe Tommy's memories again. If his memories of Sharla stick, then I'm right and that's a horrible, horrible thing. I hope that I'm just wrong and simply drawn a wrong conclusion from your post. OR it could be that such memories are actually just fine, they were never supposed to be wiped, and it's the Lot Debugger's fault it just wipes stuff ruthlessly.

I'll still try this out, see what happens. Will double-check that everyone in Riverblossom Hills really is fine, too.

Oh, I wish someone would tell me what does all this mean already. Like you said, they do work (and look) just fine. The only thing that bothered me (enough to spend weeks working on it) is that, unless made from scratch in an already loaded hood, that damn debugger thing would just wipe them all. And I only want the broken dead wiped, and that's what I get from having undivided faith in Pescado's stuff. I'll stop now, before I cause this thread's death by LOLcats.

I'm kinda hoping the lot debugger is just overly paranoid, too, but I suppose one should not question Pescado. Either way, it would be immensely useful to know what does trigger the memory wipe, because I suspect it's a number of different things, and that what I'm running into is a separate problem.

[Mixreality]

Actually, what I did was load the separate lots, wipe memories with the lot debugger, but then exit the lot without saving, so that the memories remained intact. When I checked in SimPE, the wiped memories were pointing at the right GUIDs.

I kind of suspected I'm totally wrong. So the wiped memory has correct numbers, looks fine and behaves fine. I guess it could only mean one thing - it shouldn't have been wiped at all, and it was all Lot Debugger's fault. Can we say that out loud here?

I'll still try this out, see what happens. Will double-check that everyone in Riverblossom Hills really is fine, too.

Actually, I suspect that the remade memories would stick, but that wouldn't prove anything, because we had separate problems which may not be problems at all. You will probably get the wrong memory subjects after merging, but that might be just fine too.

it would be immensely useful to know what does trigger the memory wipe

Please? Anyone?

Aaanyway, now I'm under the impression that there never was a memory problem. When you finish your hood (and I got my TS2 games installed), I'll take yours. I love that you left some of the original townies and especially that you want Belladonna as the main hood. And that you made memories that never where there in the first place (Bluewaterers). It all sounds awesome!

[Tarlia]

Yeah, if no one can tell us what might be wrong and how to fix it, I suppose I'll just recommend that people simply... don't wipe the memories. I do think broken gossip tokens are what generally causes trouble, rather than the regular memories, so I think it'll be fine. I got rid of all the garbage like that anyway.

Aw, I feel all flattered now. I'm doing this with the mindset that I'm going to make it as perfect as I possibly can, and then never touch it again. My first uberhood had some problems with it and things I just didn't bother to/know how to fix (but now I know more things thanks to you!), and I've done some mini-projects after that with just some of the hoods, so this time I just want to do it proper and be done with it and have an uberhood template I can use again in the future if I feel like starting over. (Last time I think I forgot to/lost the backup of the unplayed, finished one, and also Belladonna Cove was added in after I'd been playing it after a while, since I made it before AL came out.)

I'm taking very special care with the memories. That really is the hardest part, keeping track of them all and matching the events correctly with their family members' memories, etc. So it was kinda annoying when half my hard work just vanished with the wipe option.

[Mixreality]

It's a deal! Oh, and please keep the separate templates, I'd like those too. All of them! The ones available here don't have important townies, and the important townies are important!

[Tarlia]

Oh yeah, I am keeping the separate templates. Thought I'd offer those all up for download too, I'm just holding off now until I know I'm totally done with them.

I hope I won't delete anyone's favourite townie. I'm keeping all the townies/NPCs that have some sort of relationship with a playable, of course. Also the garden club from Seasons stealth hood, the strays and adoptables from Pets stealth hood, the townies in Bluewater Village that are either employed in or a customer of the existing businesses (according to Pescado it's a VBT to delete these), fake Strangetown Bella Goth (in addition to the "real" one in PV), and all the original Pleasantview townies and NPCs (except the ones you can't interact with, like Repo Man, drivers etc). Anything you miss?

[haifen]

I might be alone in this but the first sim I created picked to move in was the service NPC Remington (Harris?) he was the male maid with blue (I think) eyes and the brown pompadour so if you could include him I'd err... pray for your karma and award +10 internetz.

[J. M. Pescado]

There is more to identifying a corrupt memory than just an apparently correct GUID. In order to be a correct memory, IIRC, there is also a subject NID reference, as well as the GUID. If the value does not point to a valid target/subject NID, then the memory is deemed to be corrupt. Any legally formed memory in an actual neighborhood will have a valid Sim Object GUID, AND a corresponding NID. If these values aren't consistent, or point to invalid things, your neighborhood has been fatally damaged by botched deletions or your forgery was performed improperly, and the data contained on these memory tokens is incorrect.

[Tarlia]

haifen: Remington Harris is one of the original Pleasantview NPCs, so he'll be included.

Pescado: Hm, that would explain things. I don't think it was anything I did, really, but rather a result of the merging (I don't think it matters whether this is the automatic merging of stealthhoods into the main hood, or the merging of adding any subhood), since it was not only my forged memories that were wiped, but also ones left there by EAxis. Specifically the Ottomas family lost all memories of Sharla. I'll make sure to check the NID in my testhood. Thank you.

[Mixreality]

So, does that NiD thing occurs every time a subhood gets added to the main hood, and every time a stealth hood attaches itself to the main hood (or in other words, as soon as the hood is loaded for the first time)? If so, does that happen with the default templates installed or is the problem within the clean templates?

[J. M. Pescado]

It is a known behavior that the EAxian add-on famblies are frequently corrupt in many ways.

[Mixreality]

But these are supposed to be the fixed families. I gave all of this a lot of thought but I just don't know what to say anymore. Having TS2 and SimPe installed could have helped me maybe. I'll try to install SimPe in order to properly follow this conversation.

[Tarlia]

I am back with new learnings after doing some testing:

- Memory subject NIDs do get screwed during the merging process (when you first load a base hood and stealth hoods get added, or when you add a subhood). As far as I can tell it will happen no matter what, default template, cleaned template, doesn't matter. They remain the same as they were in the hood that they're merged from. In stealthhood, Sharla had NID 1A, and in the memories regarding her in my test RBH, it was still 1A, although her new NID is FF.
- ALL memories from merged hoods get screwed in this same way, including the ones about the sim themselves (owner and subject is the same), but...
- ...the FFS debugger only picks up on some of them, for some reason. And it seems more or less random which ones get wiped and which don't.
- It is, however, very easy to fix. Don't wipe the memories, but go through each memory in SimPE and just click on the name in the subject list, which makes SimPE set the subject anew and thus the correct NID. I tested this, fixing some which I knew were previously wiped and leaving others as they were, and the fixed ones did not get wiped.

So, in conclusion, while I'm not sure what the FFS debugger does, it seems I can very easily (although somewhat tediously, but no more than fixing all those goddamn family relations) fix it in the finished merged hood.

[Mixreality]

I was afraid of that, it all sounds very scary. This means that every hood out there, that didn't use completely empty templates, suffers from this NID problem, 'cause EAxis did a terrible job with the merging. That's just... too much.

[Tarlia]

'cause EAxis did a terrible job with the merging.

Unsurprising, really.

I don't think it's really a very big deal, I mean, people have played these hoods without them blowing up in their faces. But I'll fix it anyway. (For any non-EAxian hoods I always use completely clean templates.)

[J. M. Pescado]

- ...the FFS debugger only picks up on some of them, for some reason. And it seems more or less random which ones get wiped and which don't.

I know the pattern, yes. The ones that get wiped are ones that now point to NIDs that don't exist at all. If they point to a valid, but incorrect, NID, they won't be wiped outright, because I didn't make it cross-check the GUID with the NID. I probably will in the next version, though, now that it is known exactly what the data is (this wasn't clear at the time it was made, so only NID validity was checked, GUID wasn't looked at).

[Tarlia]

Cool. That makes sense. I added in Bluewater Village after testing the stealthhood families, so while some of the Ottomi's former NIDs didn't exist before that, they must now belong to someone in BV and didn't get wiped. Thanks, Pescado.

[Mixreality]

Thank you very much for the info!

I have a bit of a question/request/suggestion for (you) Tarlia. What kind of downtown template will you make? Could you make such a downtown where the Tricous and Rainelle are dead, but can be properly resurrected if one choses so. Or in other words, can the corrupted dead tokens be fixed? Some cool extra memories would be a great bonus. And John Smith's children. I foresee a whole new bucket of problems with this one, so it's totally fine if you choose not to bother with this.

Are you gonna share your hood with the Downtown and the Unis attached? What about vacation destinations (though I suppose these will be completely empty)? If not, will adding a downtown and/or unis to the hood cause this NID problem only for sims in those subhoods or the entire megahood? It doesn't really matter, 'cause it can be easily fixed (thank you for figuring out the easy way  ), but I'm just curious.

[Tarlia]

Ah, I already mostly cleaned the downtown template, actually. But I don't actually know how to fix the dead tokens or what's wrong with them, I was hoping I might find some information. Maybe you know or can point me towards some info? I wasn't planning on resurrecting any of the other dead or giving them any sort of memories, they're just there for the family tree, but the Tricous are interesting and I'd love to make them resurrectable.

I did add memories to the Tricous, with a bit of my own spin on them, as well as tying in Rainelle with them all...

I deleted all downtownies, though, including the six teens that are linked to John Smith. As far as I could tell from the data, they weren't really meant to be his children, it looks more like they were made in CAS or something and they used him as the adult? I dunno. All had the last name "Teens" in the template and they're all generated from the downtownie templates, so it's fully possible to get lookalikes by making new downtownies with the townie creator. They're linked to each other and to John Smith Tricou, but he's not linked to them, and it's only in the family tree and not in the relationships. So. I got rid of them. The goth kid has one of those broken face templates that changes into something else when he grows up, anyway.

Initially I thought I'd offer downtown and unis separately, but since adding them will screw up the memories, I will at least do a version with them added in and the memories fixed. Maybe I'll just offer both, it's no big deal. I'm not gonna add the vacation hoods, though, since as you said there's no sims in them worth keeping and no playables - I'll point towards some empty templates instead.

Oh, and adding a new subhood only messes up that subhood, not any of the existing stuff.

Edit:

Hrm, well, I did a great deal of searching around, both on MATY and elsewhere, and while I found mention of the Tricous' dead tokens being corrupt and needing to be removed and the Tricous needing to be resurrected to avoid bugs (specifically inheritances from random sims) in threads about SaraMK's megahood, I found no real explanation of what really is wrong with them or how, if possible, it can be fixed. So I did some testing. Initially, all the Tricous had two sets of memories of their relatives dying - one that looked normal, and one that was set invisible and had no owner. There was also a few inheritance memories from Jon Smith. I deleted the inheritance memories and the invisible death memories, but did nothing to the proper death memories or the 'I am dead' tokens.

Then I loaded up a fresh neighbourhood, added my edited downtown, had Julien Cooke resurrect one of them with the help of the sim blender and the Paranormal career reward, and then had that one resurrect the rest of them, including Rainelle Neengia. They all seemed to work fine, all my edited memories were in place (though with wrong NIDs of course, but that's besides the point), there was no inheritances from a dog (or any at all) or anything like that. Looking at them in SimPE afterwards, all seemed well too, the 'I am dead' tokens were gone.

So... Did I fix it, or is there something else hidden I should be looking out for? I suspect those invisible death memories might've been the cause of the trouble. I don't see how the 'I am dead' token relates to inheritances of others, since it only relates to the sim itself.

[Mixreality]

That's totally fine. I don't know anything about death tokens, and can't help with anything (as if I did so far ). The only thing I did to them, ever, is deleting. To me, it sounds like you fixed them.

The new memories are what I wanted the most! Can't wait to see what you came up with.

Oh, and adding a new subhood only messes up that subhood, not any of the existing stuff.

That's great to hear. So, to fix it, we only need to re-pick the subject's name from the dropdown list, if I understood correctly?

[Tarlia]

That's great to hear. So, to fix it, we only need to re-pick the subject's name from the dropdown list, if I understood correctly?

Yep, it's quite easy, though I'm not looking forward to doing it on every single memory for hundreds of sims.

I'm working on Veronaville now... it's such a MESS.

[nickyb]

So I've been reading all of the posts and replies on here and most of this stuff is WAYYY over my head lol I downloaded this hood and I absolutely LOVE it I was going to dl HPs version but when I was reading about the memory fixes and all I felt as tho this would be my best option. The only problem I'm running into is.. when i add new lots my game crashes.. when I take them out.. my game is fine. I have one community lot and one apartment lot installed now and my game is running fine.. so I'm just confused Now I have some packaged lots that I made a long time ago and I have mixed them in with other creators lots that I really liked to add to my hood.. So I'm just wondering.. is it something with my hood? Like do I have something corrupted or is this an issue? The only other thing I can think of is that one of the lots I'm importing seems to be ok but its truly the culprit in this situation..

I was just wondering if anyone else had any other problems with this and if so, if someone could please give me some suggestions

Thank youuuu

[Tarlia]

If anyone's interested, I finished my merged neighbourhood, and it can be found here.

[Nova]

Very well done.

One question, is there anyway for me to import the townies and npcs of Strangetown and Veronaville into this hood?  I'm ocd and really feel the need to have every maxis created character in my game.  Insane? Ya, that's me.

[Mootilda]

You could try SleepyCat's cleaned and packaged Maxis-made families:
http://www.the-isz.com/theisz/index.php?showtopic=1472&pid=15872&st=0&#entry15872

[nickyb]

If anyone's interested, I finished my merged neighbourhood, and it can be found here.

I'm downloading your version right now I just had a quick question.. in your uberhood can you use other skins? for example, using christianlovs skin changer? and have the skins stay once you exit the game and return (with saving of course) I know that this hood that I downloaded from this post wouldnt for some reason let you keep the skins that you change.