Too many files/sims explanation for dummies needed

[cwykes]

yup -did that after the first 5 times I messed up and had to reload the backup - 4am by then! - thanks for the warning though - it might save someone else.  In that spirit here's more info on veronaville.  By my count Veronaville has 67 dead sims who came with the game (could be 1 or 2 out here).  Some of them have normal sized files and others are under 50k.  Their user numbers are all over the place - I'm guessing the number gets allocated when you play the lot, so next time I start a pre-made hood I might make things tidy by visiting all the pre-made families briefly and saving..

[ZephyrZodiac]

The file numbers are allocated in order of the sim being generated.  So if you have number 00053 missing, and you create a sim in CAS, they will get that number.  If you don't do that, the next townie or NPC that the game generates will get that number.  Unless one of your sims gives birth before another NPC gets generated.

[Kristalrose]

Wow, how have I missed this thread??

cwkeys:  I had the same problem once upon a time.  Yes, I packaged occupied, played lots and moved them from one UNI to another.  My count went from a managable 400+ files to 1,000 or so, and the game just kindof quit.  It started loosing family trees and relationships.  Then it stoped loading lots.  Finally it would just crash when I tried to open a lot, like the computer was saying, "What, are you kidding me?"  I opened up SimsPE and saw the duplicate files.  It looked like this:

 

I am not a modder.  I have very little computer knowledge past the basics.  So, I wound up doing a clean install.  (WAAAAAAAA!)  Since then I have not deleted sims, I have not packaged any occupied played lots, and I have my simmies on birth control.  LOL

Now, a few questions for those more awesome than me. 

1)  Since NL came out, I had taken out all the No____ regeneration hacks.  I'm assuming those are now safe?  Because the completely pristine neighborhood I started with this time is again overrun with Downtownies and dormies.

2)  If I am understanding right, Maxis is saying that we can now have over 10,000 sims in a neighborhood?  How about all those out there who's opinions I really trust (the modders)?  Do YOU say it's safe.  Can I allow my family sims finally throw away their diaphrams?   

3)  Are the critical fixes still necessary now that NL and the patch is out?  I thought that NL made them redundant or obsolete.

[Andygal]

The final exam bug has been nixed with the recent patch so if you have the lastest patch you don't need it (it may have been fixed with the base NL expansion but I don't know, you are probably better to install the patch if you haven't already) so you don't need the fix for that. Some of the others haven't been fixed though.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Notownieregeneration and nodormieregeneration work fine.  However, before you go on a mad wipeout of all existing townies and downtownies, can I just say, try the downtownies before you decide to write them off!  They are far better thought out than the original uglybugs!

As to other hacks, there is a list posted by Dr. Boris of those of Pescado's which should still work in NL etc.  Still, I'd recommend adding them slowly, just to be sure they still work the way you want them to.

[Kristalrose]

Thanks ZZ.  No, I do not plan on a mad wipe-out of sims.  My plan was just to download the no____regen hacks and then, as they die off of (kindof) natrual causes, more won't be born to take their place. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

I've moved almost all the downtownies into the game, and they are really quite interesting to play.  And the uglier ones can be altered with the plastic surgery table!

[Dark Trepie]

I agree.  The downtownies are far more superior to the regular old townies.  And my sims have married quite a few of them so far.

I'm planning on making Mr. Big and the Diva playable in Pleasentview so I can start a family with them and make them more filthy stinking rich than the Goths.  Just got to figure out a quick way to make them playable and send them to the family bin.  Not sure how I'm gonna do that yet, but it'll most likely involve Inge's teleporter shrub. 

[veilchen]

Lucy Burb makes a very good looking adult, so does the Wilsonoff girl. The males have disappointed me so far. Val is my only hope, her males are simply smashing

[PKTrekGirl]

I have been keeping track of this thread for some time because one of my hoods (before I reinstalled for NL) was getting buggy.  I installed all the fixes as they came out, but I think that the one hood was just too far gone before the fixes came out.

That hood is gone now in my new install.  However, I did package some of the families before I reinstalled, and now have them off in a folder on my desktop. Originally, I was planning on installing them into a new hood.

However, soon after I packaged those houses and families, I thought I read somewhere around here that it was a bad thing to transfer played sims out of one hood into another, because they would carry with them a bunch of memories and friends that would create garbage in the new hood.

I also thought I read somewhere that it was a really bad idea to move Bella Goth out of Strangetown and in with the Goth family in Pleasantview.

Is this all still true?

Thanks for any assistance.

[cwykes]

I'm still a learner on this, but not quite a novice any more.  Here goes:

Sims you package take with them dummy files for all the people they knew or are related to alive AND dead and all the custom content in their house and a whole load of other hack and custom content tiles. Their memories are connected to the dummy sims. 

What I'm doing is using clean installer to delete all the crap and then using SimPE to clean up the memories
Stage 1 (optional), open the package with clean installer, choose lot and family only to unselect all the custom content. Then save with a new file name.  This content is already in my game in sub folders  and I don't want it dumped in the downloads folder in one big mess).  File will now be a sensible size.
Stage 2a,  go through the sims included in the lot and uncheck all the friends of the family except anyone critical like former lover who dumped someone at the altar... (Better to delete the lot),
Stage 2b work out which relations and dead sims you still want around as ghosts or named memories  Delete the rest and SAVE with a new file name
Stage 3 put them in the hood or even better a completely empty hood so you don't get confused
Stage 4.  Open the 'hood in simPE (make a backup first)  Edit the memories.  Delete every memory owned by "unknown"  Weed some of the others too.  I don't think you have to delete every "met unknown".  I haven't anyway.  I think the game copes with that

Greatful for further education if this isn't enough....

In addition to some of the above Bella doesn't have any memories of her family and if they do remember Bella - the memories are linked to some other bella so if you move her you have to do a big job on her memory and her families...

[PKTrekGirl]

^  Thanks alot!  That is about what I thought, but I wanted to reverify it.

I remembered reading here that moving sims between hoods is not a good plan if you can avoid it - sounds like this is still true...although you *can* make it work without messing up your game if you are willing to do all the work to get rid of all the dummy sims and memories that get dragged over.

Now, just to clarify: do these dummy sims end up as character files themselves?  Or are they just components of your original sims character file?

Thanks!

[ZephyrZodiac]

I had a similar problem with a fairly new neighbourhood where some of my sims got a jump bug which I just couldn't sort out.  What I did in the end was create a new neighbourhood and clone the families I wanted, copy all the data from their family ties, character, interests etc., and then basically start them all again with a clean slate.  It seems to be working, and interestingly, if a couple only had one lightning bolt for each other before, they still have only the one!  Took me ages, which is why I've been offline for a while, but it seems to be worth it. 

[cwykes]

Now, just to clarify: do these dummy sims end up as character files themselves?  Or are they just components of your original sims character file?

As I understand it they end up as unlinked character files which is why the hood increases massively in size..

Just cos you and I agree on how we think it works, doesn't mean we are right....
No one contradicted me which is a good sign.

Could the info from this thread go into the war room? - it's a keeper....

[ZephyrZodiac]

Now, just to clarify: do these dummy sims end up as character files themselves?  Or are they just components of your original sims character file?

As I understand it they end up as unlinked character files which is why the hood increases massively in size..

Just cos you and I agree on how we think it works, doesn't mean we are right....
No one contradicted me which is a good sign.

Could the info from this thread go into the war room? - it's a keeper....

Basically, if you move an occupied house to the bin, all the sims known to that family turn into unlinked clones which you can find in SimPE (so although the family lose the memory of these relationships, the sims themselves are duplicated!)  therefore, if you try moving a sim from one neighbourhood to another, the same thing will happen.  You can get rid of all the unwanted files with simPE, make a list of all the filenumbers and then delete them from the Characters Folder, but it's risky!  Cloning is safer, but takes longer, and is more work.

[PKTrekGirl]

Okay...all of that makes sense and is quite informative.

Now, I see here in this thread that errors are likely to set in at around 800 sims in a hood, +/- a few.  My experience with the hood that started getting glitchy bears that out.  Actually, that hood started getting glitchy at about 500 sims (including townies and UNI-generated sims).  I started having nannies who would never leave, a billion handymen or gardeners showing up on the lot all at once, social workers who would never show up with adopted-over-the-phone children, portal problems (I installed crammyboy's hack and almost half my lots had portal problems show up), house slowdowns to the point I had to move the families in and out of houses, occasional crashes, and game freezes.  In short, it wasn't pretty.

It was a hood I had worked very hard on (a Bottom-up hood), and so on this install, I am trying very hard to avoid losing a hood that way.

I have all the critical fixes installed, but I still want to be really careful.  So if the 800 mark is kind of a benchmark for the beginning of overcrowding, how many sims can I myself add to a hood (whether new sims or sims born in this hood), assuming they are all 'clean' (ie, free of memories of sims from other hoods, etc)? If I create a hood from scratch and attach a university and a downtown area, how many game-generated sims does that give me, before I even add my first playable sim?

Thanks!

And thanks everyone for this thread.  It is one of the more informative ones I've read in the last year.
 

[angelyne]

  What I did in the end was create a new neighbourhood and clone the families I wanted, copy all the data from their family ties, character, interests etc., and then basically start them all again with a clean slate.

I've done the same,  but this time I've packaged all my families after creating them.  I've done it right away before they started interacting with anyone outside the family, so I won't get any dummy files.  I checked the packages with clean installer, and there was nothing there that didn't belong, so I am pretty confident there will be no explosion visible from space or anywhere else.

Recently I had a fresh neighbourhood, with all the townies deleted, but with all the university and downtown characters included. I remember seeing around 350 files in my folder, including the 20 odd ones I created.

Remember that at any point before actually creating your families you can do the deleteallcharacters to wipe out ALL the sims in the game.  This will force you to create your own townies and dormies, but I consider that a plus.

[PKTrekGirl]

^  Wow!  So if you don't delete the townies, you probably end up with about 400 game-generated sims before you even start?

So that gives you about 400 +/- sims to play with, including dead sims, etc.

Further, if you kill off some townies/dormies in-game (rather than deleting them before you start), they auto regenerate unless you have the hack to not regenerate them, right?  And these auto-regenerated townies/dormies do not replace the killed off townies/dormies files - they create *new* character files which count toward the total of about 800.

Correct?

[Twain]

Maxis CLAIMS that with the patch for Uni/Nightlife that they have upped the limit of sims for neighborhoods to remain stable.  I do not know if it is true...and what the new limit is suppose to be now.  According to MaxisHunter they are now unable to recreate the Final Exam bug...and the Dead/Elder bug...since the patch.  Again I do not know how true this is.  Does anyone know?

[cwykes]

^  Wow!  So if you don't delete the townies, you probably end up with about 400 game-generated sims before you even start?

So that gives you about 400 +/- sims to play with, including dead sims, etc.

Further, if you kill off some townies/dormies in-game (rather than deleting them before you start), they auto regenerate unless you have the hack to not regenerate them, right?  And these auto-regenerated townies/dormies do not replace the killed off townies/dormies files - they create *new* character files which count toward the total of about 800.

Correct?

I agree with that - I put the no townie regen hack in as soon as I found it.  Another reason not to get Uni and NL for me.  There is an NPC and townie creator on MTS2 that lets you generate NPCs to suit your taste - all young men - all elderly black ladies an or whatever and turn your own sims into townies.  It recommends starting with an empty hood, so I haven't done much with it

[PKTrekGirl]

^  Yeah...although I have UNI and NL, I have the 'no townie regeneration' hack in my game, and I believe I have one for dormies too, unless that was one of the ones that conflicted with NL (can't remember and I'm not at home).  I thought I had one related to the secret society members too, so that they wouldn't regenerate - can't remember.

What I'm *really* glad I never did was attach two universities to the same 'hood.  That would in all probability be a disaster waiting to happen.

[ZephyrZodiac]

The main problem with two universities is the resident students, whether waiting in the bin or living in a dorm, house or Greek House, will wander between the two universities and interact with the sims there, which makes it difficult if you decide you don't want that uni any more.  I think it's safe enough if you create the unis and then deleteallcharacters, then the sims wandering between lots will be mostly your own sims who may well already know each other anyway, but obviously you can only do this before you start creating any sims at all.  If you want, you can use SimPE to delete any characters you don't want, again best done before you start to play so you don't have to search out all the memories of other sims having met them.

[rma]

Further, if you kill off some townies/dormies in-game (rather than deleting them before you start), they auto regenerate unless you have the hack to not regenerate them, right?  And these auto-regenerated townies/dormies do not replace the killed off townies/dormies files - they create *new* character files which count toward the total of about 800.

Correct?

That is exactly as I understand it. No Sim is deleted by the game. Ever. Their character files stay and count towards the total. Nuking any and all characters before any Sim has any memories of them seems like a great idea. I know this may seem kind of stupid, but I have to ask: If I delete all characters where will my service NPC's come from? I.E Maids, nannies, ect. Will delete all characters delete NPC like Grimmy.

Couldn't I just put in the no regen hack and manualy delete all townies, downtownies, and dormies? Who needs them? I'm talking about a spanking new never played 'hood with only NPCs in it.

[cwykes]

The game does regenerate Service NPCs as needed, you can feel the pause sometimes when it does it - it's only the townies that don't regenerate with the hack. 

I did get rid of all my townies by moving them in and playing them. There's a thread here somewhere about" how many townies do you have".  I think my 1 was an all time low!  I intended to kill them off for ghosts and couldn't do it. They were actually quite fun as their personalities were different from the sims I make.  Most of them were Butt ugly of course, but new clothes and hair did wonders for most.  But I only have the base game, no Uni or downtown. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

You need to be aware that everytime a new NPC is generated, the game will lag as though there's something wrong with it, and you just have to wait until the new character has been generated.  However, you may get some unacceptable NPCs (in my present hood I've one maid who keeps walking onto lots where she works at midnight and kicking over the trashcan!  And when I check in SimPE, she's not furious with anyone on that lot!  wierd!