S.O.S. Save our Sims

[ZephyrZodiac]

It isn't sims in the Sim Bin which cause the problem, it's sims in houses in the Lots and Houses bin.  The problem is this:

A.  the original sims in the house become unlinked, but still keep thier character files.

B. the original sims are cloned to create a new set of themselves, minus their relationships with other sims in the hood

C. the original sims carry with them all the sims they ever met as more unlinked character files. 

So, if you have a family of four, with, say, an average of ten friends/acquaintances each, that's 44 additional character files in your Characters folder.  Plus the unlinked version of themselves can continue to wander around the hood and meet even more sims........

[angelyne]

Faemidwife, JFP believes, from some older threads I read, that it's actually "cleaner" to kill those sims rather than delete them.  I can't recall the exact reason off hand, but it has to do with creating unlinked memories.  Sims that they interacted with will have memories of "unknown" and that can lead to problems.

[ZephyrZodiac]

The main problem with moving sims into the lot bin and leaving them there, I think, is that they can still come home from work with your sim, or school with your simchild/teen, but since they cannot be contacted in the bin, you get a lot of unfulfillable wants.  But if actually leaving them in the simbin caused real problems, I never heard it mentioned before.

[flowerchile]

Oh wow, I think I opened a can of worms here, judging from the reaction that came from some of you..and as for you Pescado, from your post; I think Fat Obstroperous Jerk seems to be quite fitting.  We aren't all experts and thats what the forum is for, if we all knew what there is to know it would be a pretty boring forum.  Any hoo, I didn't actually try to reinstall the packaged lots, I decided to go the long way and sift through the downloads. 

[Sagana]

The fat obstreperous jerk owns the forum... I pretty much think that's what the forum is for ;)

I have read through at least a couple of threads here that discussed the problems with sticking sims in the bin and letting them go walkabout. I understood it's ok if you put them in and then move them right back out again, but leaving them there is trouble - they create clones of themselves and wander the 'hood like very lively ghosts.

I don't remember exactly why I did such a silly thing but I really liked those sims (created based on my beautiful Indian friend and coworker and her husband) and I thought I wanted a spare or something silly. I made them in bodyshop (or maybe remade them in bodyshop) and loaded them twice, one set in play and left one set in the sim bin. They've even met each other. In any case, I'm pretty sure that's what blew up the hood (well it still limps along, but needs major fixing).

Sims in lots and houses bins is *also* a problem - I suspect they might be related kinds, as sims in the bin make clones of themselves to walk around. They can make more than one clone of themselves, I think (another for every time they leave the bin?). But I'm less awesome and haven't a clue. I dunno what deleting them from the bin after other sims have met them and have memories of them would do. Sounds dangerous. Moving them into a house and killing them off and deleting the tombstone would probably be safer? That's the in-game method of unlinking sims and the like, yes?

Ancient, I think if you cleaned the character files *and* the memories that fixes the troubles :)

[J. M. Pescado]

I have read through at least a couple of threads here that discussed the problems with sticking sims in the bin and letting them go walkabout. I understood it's ok if you put them in and then move them right back out again, but leaving them there is trouble - they create clones of themselves and wander the 'hood like very lively ghosts.

Sticking sims in the Sim Bin via eviction is harmless. You can keep as many sims as you want as long as you want.

Sticking sims on occupied lots in the LOT BIN is the same as deleting sims from the simbin or installing an occupied family: Ripping out sims in such a manner permanently damages the source neighborhood with a high probability of harming your destination neighborhood. It can result in a Big Fiery Ball Visible From Space.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I thought I was right about the Sim Bin!

[Sagana]

It must be senility. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it ;)

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, if it's your excuse, maybe I'll make it mine too when I get things wrong, which I frequently do!  ('Specia/ly late at night!)

[jack_d_spratt]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply you were or be too pushy about it.

I haven't gotten that impression.  I'm the one pushing this, and I wanted to be clear that I'm not arguing in favor of this; I'm simply trying to understand it.

So, 6 months down the line, there's suddenly stuff you notice in the game - extra sims, too many iteration errors, nanny's pop and repop, gardners show up and stay to play until there's 12 or 15 on the lot, you get the extra kidlets error and have quints, 3 times in a row.

In game what you will see is corrupt thought bubbles, thats usually just your first indication that the big fiery ball is coming. The thought bubbles have just a bunch of black lines, similar to a bar code. That is the beginning of the corruption that you will actually see.

To date, I've had none of this.  I looked through a memory last night of a Sim raised in the previous neighborhood, then packaged and moved.  Everything looked OK (as was said here that it would).  Aside from the mother memories of walking/talking/potty training, the only people referenced were townies that came home from school with them.  And oddly enough, when this neighborhood was created I got all new townies (don't know how that happened).  Maybe not having new copies of the old townies is helping.

But this has been real informative, and I appreciate the discussion. I'll give this up after one more question:  If I begin to see weird errors, will deleting (or killing) the moved Sims and bulldozing their lots fix this?  Or should I consider this neighborhood hosed and nuke the whole thing?  Or should I nuke it all and reinstall the game?

Oddly enough, none of the above options disturb me.  I mostly like building; as for the Sims, after I raise them, train them, develop a nice story behind them, I ignore them.  I derive no joy from maintaining Sims, only from developing them.

[ZephyrZodiac]

You could clone the families you like in simPE, then when you open a new hood you can use their faces and DNA to recreate that family.  Then before you play them, use SimPE to give them any additional memories you want, such as potty trained, taught to walk etc., change their interests to match the original, change their voice to match the original (you should already have changed their personality to match in CAS, but in some instances with kids you can't get an exact match, so change those to match too).  Now you have the family you like, and the challenge of starting them from scratch again!

[Sagana]

Well, if it's your excuse, maybe I'll make it mine too when I get things wrong, which I frequently do!  ('Specia/ly late at night!)

<chuckle> well, those gray hairs must be worth something, yes? The worst part is it wasn't even the sim bin I stuck that family in - it was the lot bin (I opened it and looked) - bad enough to misremember a discussion, but when I can't even remember how I blew up my own neighborhood, that's sad. I really need *some* sort of excuse.

If I begin to see weird errors, will deleting (or killing) the moved Sims and bulldozing their lots fix this?

If you don't sustain play that much (add a lot of sims, play for a long time), you might not even run into trouble. But if you want to try to save the neighborhood, other than Zephyr's wonderful suggestion, you can mitigate damage by making sure you have all the critical fixes and/or using SimPE to fix what problems you can find. I don't think killing (and I *think* deleting is bad) sims will help if you wait because they'll have spread the fatal disease by then. Bulldozing the lots won't make any difference (assuming I'm not having another senile moment ;) - it's not the lots, it's the sims in them.

[ZephyrZodiac]

If you don't sustain play that much (add a lot of sims, play for a long time), you might not even run into trouble. But if you want to try to save the neighborhood, other than Zephyr's wonderful suggestion, you can mitigate damage by making sure you have all the critical fixes and/or using SimPE to fix what problems you can find. I don't think killing (and I *think* deleting is bad) sims will help if you wait because they'll have spread the fatal disease by then. Bulldozing the lots won't make any difference (assuming I'm not having another senile moment - it's not the lots, it's the sims in them.

You're right, it's the sims who carry the baggage, not the lots themselves.  You can delete the lots and even delete the original sims (NOT RECOMMENDED!) and the newly created unlinked sims (all the sims your sims have ever met!) will still be at large in your hood, and still be taking up space in your Characters folder, and will also have loads of Met Unknown memories, plus relationships with loads of Unknowns!

By the way, cloning isn't my idea, it's what was suggested to me when one of my hoods got problems that I couldn't put right with various sims being unable to use toilets etc.  So I went on to recreate all the Pleasantview characters plus my own families in a new hood - it was a very long process!

[jack_d_spratt]

I don't quite count as computer illiterate; but the more I'm around them the less messing around I want to do.  I'll not be using SimPE.  From the responses, however, it looks like the problems will be confined at least to the neighborhood.

My plan will be to play these Sims until problems show up (or I get utterly bored with them).  Then I'll delete the neighborhood and start a new one.

All my beloved houses were built on a 2nd XP user account with no custom content, and packaged from there.  So they're safe.  Except for that one... but I've got some improvements I wanted to make to it anyway.