family gone after save&quit

[sin]

whenever i create a new family (or an existing family has a baby) and subsequently save and quit, the next time i go back into the game, the family has been deleted and their house is up for sale.  in the case of the existing family with a new baby, the baby will show on the loading screen but not be in the actual game.  any idea what this could be?  thanks.

[gali]

It seems to be some corrupted object or uncompatible hack with EPU. Did you scan your downloads folder with the Clean Installer?

[sin]

of course, scanned with clean installer and pack scanner.

the only things ive downloaded recently have been clothing and hair recolors and meshes.  i guess one of them could be the culprit, but it doesnt seem to add up.

[veilchen]

Hm... the only answer I have is not at all a good one. If you go to the "Firing Range" forum here, click on the "No secret society respawn" thread, and then scroll down to sandilou's post you can read why this might be happening to you. She puts it much better than I could, I have a tendency to get entangled in my own sentences when I try to explain something that is not entirely clear to me either.

JM has some critical fixes available that deal with the "too many sims" maxis bug. It might be a good idea to install those for any future implosion preventions.

G.

[sin]

Hm... the only answer I have is not at all a good one. If you go to the "Firing Range" forum here, click on the "No secret society respawn" thread, and then scroll down to sandilou's post you can read why this might be happening to you. She puts it much better than I could, I have a tendency to get entangled in my own sentences when I try to explain something that is not entirely clear to me either.

JM has some critical fixes available that deal with the "too many sims" maxis bug. It might be a good idea to install those for any future implosion preventions.

G.

i was hoping that it indeed was the too many sims problem - i was up to 700+ in that particular neighborhood.  so i tried it in a new one, same problem.  from what sandilou's post was saying is that it doesnt matter which hood you're in, and my whole game is fucked?  excellent!

[veilchen]

Yeah, been there, done that. That's one of the reasons people don't realize how buggy the game is at first. Your population has to reach critical mass first and it takes a while. After my neighborhood self-digested itself into oblivion, I made sure I had all of JM and TJ's (at Varioussimmers) critical fixes. Now I have a new one and aside from never ever lotbinning any sims anymore, or importing occupied houses, every sim-couple is allowed only one child. So far I've managed to keep the new neighborhood down to under 100 characters, including NPC's and home-made townies.

Hopefully that's not what is happening with your neighborhood, but JM says that a neighborhood with 500+ sims is approaching critical mass.

G.

[sin]

ugh, youve got to be kidding me!  one kid each?  how can you stand to play?  ive got their critical fixes too, but it seems like i always miss the important ones.  argh.  how frustrating!  christ. 

[veilchen]

Sounds boring, I know, but it's not really that bad. The thing is that even dead sims retain characterfiles, so no one ever disappears. No subtractions at all, only additions. I start out with a completely clean neighborhood (and Uni) with the deleteAllcharacters maxis cheat, and make my own townies. Thank goodness for Inge's teleporter shrub. So the intermingling is pretty heavy.

Besides, some couples could get lucky and have twins, no?

G.

[J. M. Pescado]

I actually don't think these are related problems. It sounds more like a file locking issue.

[sin]

file locking issue?  i did a search to figure out what this is, to no avail.  can you help me out a bit more?  sorry.

[J. M. Pescado]

If parts of your neighborhood files are write-protected, perhaps because you have a dead SimPE hogging things, or a halfway-dead TS2, or simply don't have write-permission to the files, your neighborhood will be buggered whenever TS2 tries to save anything to it.

[J. M. Pescado]

ugh, youve got to be kidding me!  one kid each?  how can you stand to play?

Sustainably, I hope. If your sims are reproducing at the rate of more than 1 kid per sim (a baby is worth half a sim to each parent) on average, you're going to run into playability issues, not because of sim count in your neighborhood, but simply because EXPONENTIAL GROWTH IS BAD.

[veilchen]

Posted by: J. M. Pescado
Sustainably, I hope. If your sims are reproducing at the rate of more than 1 kid per sim (a baby is worth half a sim to each parent) on average, you're going to run into playability issues, not because of sim count in your neighborhood, but simply because EXPONENTIAL GROWTH IS BAD.

Oh my. JM, please don't tell me that I misunderstood everything you said about overpopulation and subsequent neighborhood collapses. You are not by any chance now saying that having too many files is not a problem after all? Be merciful (try it, it's not all too hard ), my brain blocks off assorted and random neuron pathways anyways when I try to learn computer stuff. If I now have problems understanding things correctly from the outset, I am doomed.

G.

[sin]

If parts of your neighborhood files are write-protected, perhaps because you have a dead SimPE hogging things, or a halfway-dead TS2, or simply don't have write-permission to the files, your neighborhood will be buggered whenever TS2 tries to save anything to it.

well i just uninstalled simpe (i never used it), problem is still happening.  any suggestions?  a full reinstall?  i did it last month and the month before when i got other bugs, so i guess its going to be a monthly thing now.

[J. M. Pescado]

Sounds like it's worth a shot. I don't have any LOGICAL explanation for this. Sim-count shouldn't be an issue since this aspect would be hardcoded.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I had this problem, but once I did a complete uninstall/reinstall of both Sims2 and Uni, I put the corrupted hoods back and they were fine, so it wasn't the hoods that were corrupted after all.  I then put my downloads back in a bit at a time, so if it happened again it would be possible to isolate anything that might have been causing it.  (I'd already removed some hacks that must have downloaded with a house, and which I think caused the initial problem, but I wanted to be sure.)

[gali]

Just yesterday I reinstalled Uni again. I had in Strangetown  11 families: General Grunt with 4 kids (one with revived Lyla), Pascal - 2, Lazlo - 2, Vidcund - 2, Beaker - 2,  Polination - 0, Johnny, Tank Ripp and Buck (graduated) - first pregnancy.
I have a saved neighbourhood, which worked fine (just was bored, and decided to play only the college characters). If anybody of the professionals wants the file to examine it, I am ready to send it.

What Sandilou described, moving NPCs to other neighbourhood, can lead to the thought that if X married Lucy, and was moved with Lucy to another neighbourhood, which also has Lucy (the maid) - the simulator is puzzled which one is which, and begins to show wrong data, which causes a lot of troubles.

...Just a thought....  *hands on lips*...