No Unlinkage On Urnstone Delete

[J. M. Pescado]

Stops irreversible character-file shredding when tombstones are accidentally (or intentionally) deletes. May also prevent mysterious destruction of tombstones during move-to-cemetary process.


nounlinkondelete.zip

No Unlink On Urnstone Delete for TS2NL v1.0p1
Made by: Flying Fish Systems (J. M. Pescado)

Special Thanks To:
Quaxi, for writing SimPE

Congratulations to: Draklixa!

INSTRUCTIONS:
Place in your MYDOCU~1\EAGAME~1\THESIM~1\DOWNLO~1 directory.

FEATURES:
Game no longer partially destroys sim file on deletion of tombstone. May
resolve potential random tombstone losses when moving tombstones to community
lots resulting from shredded character files produced by unlinkage. May also
contribute to global warming.

COMPATIBILITY:
Compatible with all FFS hacks. Tested for TS2NL v1.0p1.

SIDE EFFECTS:
May cause computer damage, incontinence, explosion of user's head, coma, death,
and/or halitosis.

WARNING:
Do not open, crush, dispose of in fire, put in backwards, short-circuit, or mix
with non-awesome hacks - may explode, leak, or catch fire, resulting in injury
and/or death.

[Nihale]

I don't quite get it. Does this mean we can resurrect our dead even if we've deleted their tombstones?

[BlueSoup]

I take it more to mean that the dead Sims won't be dropped from the family tree, since I had this happen...

[J. M. Pescado]

I don't quite get it. Does this mean we can resurrect our dead even if we've deleted their tombstones?

This means it would be potentially possible to resurrect the dead even after tombstone destruction, yes, since the tombstone no longer vaporizes the sim's characterfile forever when deleted. This functionality was being inadvertently called whenever the tombstone got removed for any reason, including sometimes removal to a community lot, that basically meant the tombstone arrived in shredded form and disintegrated, losing your sim forever barring a complicated recovery procedure involving file-splicing from backups.

Of course, this means that the random junk sims you might kill won't be shredded either, and thus their files will be slightly more bloated, but you can always take this out before shredding those. Just avoid moving too many tombstones to another lot when this isn't in place.

[Ancient Sim]

This may just save me from an immense amount of work, in which case I will charter a plane and come and thank you personally (well, in theory anyway).  Everytime I go into a lot with gravestones, they are totally vanishing and although the ghosts who weren't out and about the last time I was in the lot are retaining their character data, the others are not.  Of course, if it works there will still be the problem of no gravestones, but maybe the assignable ones will still work.  Even Gothier Green Lawns is empty when I go into it in buy mode.  This happened once before, but I had a back-up, this time my back-up does it as well.  Only happens in Pleasantview, so it's not a hack causing it.

Well, it worked, the ghosts that formerly lost their character data are retaining it now.  Unfortunately, the tombstones still vanished, as I assumed they would.  Don't suppose there is ANYTHING you can do to get them to stay?  Ghosts without tombstones are a bit pointless really, but the thought of all that work to bring them back and kill them off again is extremely off-putting, never mind the problems it can cause with memories and the ghosts forgetting who their family is and all the rest of it.  Been there, don't that, didn't like the pattern on the T-shirt.

Anyway, thanks for at least giving me the chance to retain my deadies.  If you can provide anything to get the tombstones to stay put, it would be extremely appreciated.  I know I'm not the only one who has them disappear and the patch doesn't seem to have solved the problem - probably more like made it worse, seeing as this problem never arose in my game until I installed the patch and then re-installed it.

Well ... my gravestones are back.  I went to MTS2 and downloaded the assignable gravestones again.  They don't actually work since NL, but the gravematters hack DID.  It does the same as this one basically, but it also brought back the gravestones.  Whether they will stay if I remove it, or remove the stones, I don't know.  Could still do with something added to this hack though to stop disappearing gravestones, with the other mod not really being NL compatible - don't like having it in my game because of that and somehow I don't think it's going to be updated.  At least now I know that it's possible to stop them disappearing, which is a relief.  Still wish I knew why they vanished in the first place.

[Thraxwhirl]

This sounds truly Awesome, JMP. I've had real problems with Dead sims becoming erased from History in a disconcertingly Stalinist way. I'd swear the Maxoids have all been reading too much "1984" inbetween coding sessions.

I am most grateful for this fix.

I have a question however, and I do realise that I'm putting myself forward for a good lip-ripping here, but...

...How do we move urnstones to Community Lots(Cemetaries)?

As far as I can conjecture, the only way to do it is to make your Community Cemetary a Residential Lot(with Changelotzoning, and you'd need Carrigon's "Lost-n'-found" Mailbox and Trashcan), then you Move a sim in, summon a sim from the Deceased's Household(who has the Urnstone in His/Her INVentory), then, using a selection device like Merola's Mirror, get said-Deceased's-Household-Member to place it on this Lot, then Move Out the Resident(for which you'll need Inge Jones' Moveout Object Stayer, or else everything on the Lot will vanish, and what's more, the Stayer doesn't catch all Community-in-Res Items, like the Cellphone dispensor for instance), and then finally use the Changelotzoning cheat AGAIN to return the Lot to a Community Lot.

And you'd have to do this EVERY time a sim died and needed transplanting.

Sounds ghastly to me. I am of a mind simply to have a Residential cemetary on a Priest's/Vicar's/Rabbi's(etc.) Lot, where I send sims to die and be buried, then simply Summon mourners over to his Lot for a bit of grieving now and again.

Unless I'm missing something? How does one move Urnstones to Community Lots an easier way? You can't access their Inventories on Community Lots, afterall. I've tried that.

If anyone here knows of an easier way, I'm all ears.

[Ancient Sim]

All you do is get the Sim to click on the gravestone and send it wherever they want to (there is an option to send it to Gothier Green Lawns if you have the default Downtown).  The ghosts will then stand and wave goodbye and their gravestones will disappear in a puff of smoke.  You then need to go to the cemetery in build mode, where the gravestones will be waiting by the mailbox for you to place wherever you want them.  Should you want to return them to a lot later, the Sim who lives on the lot needs to go to the cemetery and click on them again, then choose "Send home".  There is never actually any need for them to go into the inventory unless a Sim is moving house, as far as I can see.

[Venusy]

You need to have Nightlife though.

[Diala]

Is this hack compatible with games that don't have Nightlife? I would personally like to save all details in a character file, but I don't want ghosts haunting all the time, and/or there isn't much room for a tombstone in a lot.

[PanSola]

can you add a pie-option on the tomb stone that says "Shred", which pops up a confirmation to double check the players know what they are doing, and delete the character file after the confirmation?

Or something like "bust the ghost", since I presume the ghosts are intrinsically tied to the character file.  Driving their spirit symbolizes the irreversable process of deleting character file, and prevents future resurrection.

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, it worked, the ghosts that formerly lost their character data are retaining it now.  Unfortunately, the tombstones still vanished, as I assumed they would.  Don't suppose there is ANYTHING you can do to get them to stay?  Ghosts without tombstones are a bit pointless really, but the thought of all that work to bring them back and kill them off again is extremely off-putting, never mind the problems it can cause with memories and the ghosts forgetting who their family is and all the rest of it.  Been there, don't that, didn't like the pattern on the T-shirt.

The fix cannot retroactively correct sims that have already been shredded. The tombstones in the process of disintegration will probably still combust.

It is, however, possible to regenerate them. You will need: Lot Debugger 2.0, Ingelogical Teleporter Shrub.

Pause your game and teleport the deadite to your lot: If the Ingelogical Teleporter shrub cannot find it, then his character data is destroyed. The sim should appear on your lot. SHIFT-CLICK on him and choose "Make Selectable", then select him and SHIFT-CLICK on the lot debugger to choose "Respawn Tombstone". Do this with as many missing deadites as you need to. Then unpause your game. The deadites should quickly disappear, to be replaced by newly-respawned tombstones. The Lot Debugger will treat all elders re-tombstoned in such a manner as having died of old age, with the platinum tombstone appearing if the relevant aspirational level of achieved. Otherwise you will get the plain old gray one.

Move these to the community lot. Hopefully they won't disintegrate his time. Note that if your deadites are Romance Sims, you will need the corresponding Romance Sim Urnstone Fix, or their tombstones will revert to gray ones on move.

[Emma]

Thanks again

[Ancient Sim]

Thanks for the reply about how to get the tombstones back.  I would be able to do it on a lot that wasn't theirs, but not on their own lot as the character data of the ghosts that were out a-haunting the last time I played the lot is being destroyed literally as I load the lot.  I can tell it's happening, because the lot is loading so much slower than usual.  What is odd is that on the Goth lot, for instance, it was 7.45 am, when ghosts should be back in their graves, but according to the LotDebugger there were two options to nuke the ghost emitter (4 actual character files were wiped).  On another lot it was late afternoon.  Even odder is that it is happening on Gothier Green Lawns, which is void of all tombstones when entered in build mode.

Another odd thing is that on the dorm lots where I've had dormies die, all the ghost noises start-up, but there are no actual ghosts appearing.  I can teleport them in no problem, so they're still intact.  I reckon all this is connected to whatever they did with ghosts in NL, they've probably mucked-up something vital along the way.  Wouldn't be the first time.

[Thraxwhirl]

All you do is get the Sim to click on the gravestone and send it wherever they want to (there is an option to send it to Gothier Green Lawns if you have the default Downtown).  The ghosts will then stand and wave goodbye and their gravestones will disappear in a puff of smoke.  You then need to go to the cemetery in build mode, where the gravestones will be waiting by the mailbox for you to place wherever you want them.  Should you want to return them to a lot later, the Sim who lives on the lot needs to go to the cemetery and click on them again, then choose "Send home".  There is never actually any need for them to go into the inventory unless a Sim is moving house, as far as I can see.

Wow! I never knew that!! :O Is it in the Nightlife manual? I sure as heck don't remember reading it.

Thanks.

[MokeyHokey]

Oh Awesome One...
Tonight I had a sim (un)tragically lose his first wife. The tombstone was on the lot, and his girlfriend was present; they have 100/100 relationship, but the option to "propose..engagement" was not there. He had her move in and I deleted first-wife's tombstone 'cause that used to help.  Still no propose. Cycled through the new shiny debugger options, resetting everything in sight--and out of it--to see if anything had an effect.  Finally quit the game, pulled the nounlinkage hack out, deleted the tombstone, and the propose option was back.  Quit, put hack back in, reloaded--propose missing again. So, I've removed this for the time being so I can get the idiots married. 

I've got all your updated hacks, excepting the bathroom one, the auth pers, and the encouragebleh thing. Most of Jeff's and Inge's, some of Crammy's. Game is patched with all EPs.

Is this a bug or user-error?

[JaneSims]

Is anyone else having a problem with platinum grave stones turning into plain grave stones when you move them to a community lot?

This is driving me crazy. They die in platinum, I get the nice gravestone. Click on the stone to move it. Yes, they wave goodbye. Save the lot. Open the community lot & sure enough there is a tombstone there - but - it's a plain old tombstone, not the platinum one.

Jane

Nevermind - it was a Romance sim & I see thre's a separate mod for that!

[J. M. Pescado]

Finally quit the game, pulled the nounlinkage hack out, deleted the tombstone, and the propose option was back.  Quit, put hack back in, reloaded--propose missing again. So, I've removed this for the time being so I can get the idiots married.

Hmm. This seems to be a classic Maxian bug. The way to fix this is to open up the neighborhood in SimPE and uncheck the "married/engaged" relationship bits for the sim and the deceased. The reason it appears to work without this is because without this, tombstone deletion permanently shreds the character file of the deletee and thus deletes all relationships.

[maxon]

The fix cannot retroactively correct sims that have already been shredded. The tombstones in the process of disintegration will probably still combust.

It is, however, possible to regenerate them. You will need: Lot Debugger 2.0, Ingelogical Teleporter Shrub.

Oh - thanks for this - it's just (literally this minute - well 5 minutes ago) happened to me.  I'll give it a try.

[Ancient Sim]

I just used the DeBugger option for this for the first time since installing OFB and it didn't work.  The ghost vanished as usual, but there was no tombstone left behind.  Don't know if it will still stop the character data disappearing if the tombstone is deleted, but I don't want to risk trying it out.

Bit of a pain really, because there are loads of deadies with the new characters and none of them have tombstones, or if they have I haven't seen 'em.

[J. M. Pescado]

You must not be fast enough. I'll look into it, though.

[Ancient Sim]

Well, I was as fast as I usually am, but I will give it another try just in case.  No point in you wasting your time "looking into it" if it was caused by me being slow.  It was late at night, so you could well be right.  I am wondering though if they've changed anything to do with tombstones, with people reporting the odd glitch concerning them since OFB came out. 

UPDATE:  I tried it again and it worked.  I think maybe the reason it didn't work the first time was because it was night time, or maybe I simply wasn't fast enough.  I should have tried twice really, instead of assuming it was an OFB problem.  I'm getting too lazy.