Comes linked or not, that is the question

[Simsbaby]

I wanted a fresh start when I got University so I deleted my ea games folder so that the game would make a new one. When I started up the game and tried to go to the college in the neighborhood chooser screen it was grayed out. when I loaded up the hood it asked if I wanted to add one. Are they linked in the windows version of the game when you start it up fresh?

[Jorenne]

No, you always have to add them, even with the maxis pre-made hoods.

[Simsbaby]

oh, thanks!

[ZephyrZodiac]

And to repeat JM's warning, only add one college per neighbourhood!

[syberspunk]

Just curious... but can someone refresh my memory... what's bad about adding more than one Uni per 'hood?

Aside from adding more YA sims, does it significantly increase the # of other sims (NPC sims)? From my experience, it appeared that the same YAs travelled between all 3 (yes, when I first got Uni, I added all 3 "colleges" to my original Pleasantview 'hood).

Is it just the increased # of sims that we should be concerned about? Or are there other potential problems that I am unaware of?

The game will eventually probably become unwieldly large what with further EPs possibly adding more and more "new areas" to visit anyway, so unless Maxis rewrites the game to somehow properly recycle or dispose of sim files or at least deal with dead sims (or in general, huge # of sims), this will be an inevitable and unavoidable problem. No?

Ste

[Lythdan]

Yeah, the main concern is that you get a lotta new dormies when you add a new Uni...there may be other problems, but I'm not aware of them...

[cabelle]

Just curious... but can someone refresh my memory... what's bad about adding more than one Uni per 'hood?

Aside from adding more YA sims, does it significantly increase the # of other sims (NPC sims)? From my experience, it appeared that the same YAs travelled between all 3 (yes, when I first got Uni, I added all 3 "colleges" to my original Pleasantview 'hood).

Is it just the increased # of sims that we should be concerned about? Or are there other potential problems that I am unaware of?

The game will eventually probably become unwieldly large what with further EPs possibly adding more and more "new areas" to visit anyway, so unless Maxis rewrites the game to somehow properly recycle or dispose of sim files or at least deal with dead sims (or in general, huge # of sims), this will be an inevitable and unavoidable problem. No?

Ste

I'd always thought the "one Uni per neighborhood" suggestion was to keep the character files under the explosion mark. I don't think there were any other problems noted.

Supposedly Maxis has greatly increased how many character files we can have before there could be trouble but I'm still anxious. If the ep's keep adding neighborhoods there's bound to be explosion at some point.

[Simsbaby]

If maxis keeps adding towns onto the main hood they will have to rase it sometime. Because with all the new npcs, they will end up breaking it on their own.

[ZephyrZodiac]

The real problem is if you decide your game is running slowly  and decide o get rid of the second Uni.  By that time, most of the sims living there, both your own and the Maxis Greek houses and other playable sims, will have wandered between the two hoods, as well as the dormies and SS members.  If you delete the second campus, you will be left with a host of unlinked character files wandering around your remaining campus.

[Ancient Sim]

If you delete the second campus, you will be left with a host of unlinked character files wandering around your remaining campus.

They won't be unlinked if they're attached to the same neighbourhood.  No new professors are made when a second Uni is added, the originals continue to be used.  I don't recall even getting any new dormies, but I did get the usual YA's in the houses and Lot Bin.  Nobody was unlinked, though.  They all wander from one Uni to the other quite happily and if you delete one of the Uni's (as I did, I only left the original in while I established the second, then deleted it) they just remain on whichever campus is left.  All the character files are in the one folder, they're not separated into different folders. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I did it, and I did have all the playables from La Fiesta wandering around my main sim state, plus all the dormies etc, and the playables were unlinked when I checked them, obviously, as they were neither in the Sim Bin or a house!

[syberspunk]

They won't be unlinked if they're attached to the same neighbourhood.  No new professors are made when a second Uni is added, the originals continue to be used.  I don't recall even getting any new dormies, but I did get the usual YA's in the houses and Lot Bin.  Nobody was unlinked, though.  They all wander from one Uni to the other quite happily and if you delete one of the Uni's (as I did, I only left the original in while I established the second, then deleted it) they just remain on whichever campus is left.  All the character files are in the one folder, they're not separated into different folders. 

Hrm... Pescado said in chat:

[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:31:53 AM] syberspunk|simmin: ok. so what's the problem with having more than one Uni attached to our 'hood?
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:31:56 AM] Pescado: that's custom content, and I filter that out with Pherverstool.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:32:02 AM] syberspunk|simmin: i suppose it is Also bad to have more than one DT
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:32:08 AM] Pescado: No.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:32:17 AM] syberspunk|simmin: does it auto generate dormies?
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:32:18 AM] Pescado: Generating a new Uni spawns a whole new set of professors and dormies.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:32:32 AM] Pescado: Generating a new DT does not spawn more downtown NPCs, at least not in testing.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:32:52 AM] Pescado: Thus it's perfectly safe to generate downtowns and use them as satellite neighborhoods.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:33:29 AM] syberspunk|simmin: are duplicate dormies spawned?
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:33:50 AM] Pescado: yes.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:33:52 AM] syberspunk|simmin: its it like a pre set bunch of dormies that come with each Uni?
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:33:55 AM] Pescado: No.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:34:11 AM] Pescado: Each uni spawns a whole new set of unnecessary dormies and professors.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:34:14 AM] Pescado: Dormies and professors are random.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:34:22 AM] syberspunk|simmin: ahh ok
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:34:23 AM] Pescado: Each new downtown, however, does not.

[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:49:58 AM] syberspunk|simmin: if you use nodormierespawn? and you end up depleting your supply of dormies below the capacity of your dorm, does that dorm room remain unoccupied?
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:50:11 AM] Pescado: Yes.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:50:43 AM] syberspunk|simmin: is it just the profs and dormies that are generated? do Uni NPCs also get duped? (meaning do you have 3 of each Uni NPC per satellite Uni?)
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:51:18 AM] Pescado: Yes, syberspunk.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:51:24 AM] Pescado: NPCs get duped, profs are NPCs.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:52:19 AM] syberspunk|simmin: so if you have two Unis, you will have 2 sets of cheerleaders, mascots, baristas, etc.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:52:47 AM] syberspunk|simmin: when a dormie dies, does the game try to spawn a new dormie? or use a dormie from the existing pool of dormies that are not yet housed?
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:53:01 AM] Pescado: It tries to use existing dormies who have no housing first.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:53:06 AM] Pescado: Then spawns new ones if it can't find any.
[Monday January 16, 2006 - 04:53:15 AM] Pescado: No dormie regen just says "give up and fail".

I have found that Uni sims do travel between all 3 Uni 'hoods. I have not tried deleting 'hoods to see what would happen. I could see that unassigned dormies might still be unshredded, but I can't imagine sims that were assigned to a dorm, or playable sims in a dorm wouldn't get unlinked/fubar'd.

Ste

[Issy]

I had a sim who asked for a blind date, and he got Tiffany Sampson (think that was her name) from the Greek house. Anyways, after a successful date, I tried to get him to call and the game kept saying she had no phone.  I went back to the house she was living in and there was a phone.  Also when I checked her relationship she didn't even know my sim.

After checking with the summoner I found that the game had generated 2 of them.  Can't remember how I solved the problem but I know I deleted one of the uni hoods.  I wanted them to get together cos they had 3 bolts for each other.

So yes, the game duplicates them when you create more than one uni hood.

[ZephyrZodiac]

When you've deleted La Fiesta and the shifting Paranormals are wandering around Sim State, it's fairly obvious that something is wrong!  It happened to me, so I know!

[syberspunk]

After checking with the summoner I found that the game had generated 2 of them.  Can't remember how I solved the problem but I know I deleted one of the uni hoods.  I wanted them to get together cos they had 3 bolts for each other.

So yes, the game duplicates them when you create more than one uni hood.

Hrm... that's odd... was this Tiffany Sampson a playable sim? I don't see why the game would create two of the same playable sim. Is it possible that one of them was an unplayable "clone" from the generic dormie/townie pool? The one with no phone? Also... I thought that, whenever you get the message about a sim not having a phone, it either means there are on a lot with no phone or they are in the sim bin...

Could you have accidentally packaged Tiffany to a lot and reinstalled it? Or downloaded and installed some lot that had Tiffany packaged into it?

I don't think the game creates dupes in the sense that it will create several copies of playable sims. I think each Uni has 3 sets of Maxis pre-made YAs in the sim bin. I also think that NPC and generic dormie/townie pool generation is random in the sense that, when you add a new Uni, it will generate the set # of NPCs and dormie/townie pool of sims, but theoretically they would all be different. You could still get sims that look the same or have the same name, just because of the non-randomness of the game in general... but they might have totally different clothes. I didn't do a thorough investigation, but I found that, whenever I went back and forth between different Unis, YAs that were ejected from a dorm to make room for playable sims in one Uni may show  up in another Uni to fill up the unoccupied rooms. At first, I thought they were dupes, but when I looked at their memories and relationships, they still retained the ones they made/had from living in previous Unis. I really liked this, because it was almost like you could think that the YA transferred to another Uni.

The reason why I liked having separate Unis was so I could pretend as if sims had different choices for college instead of just one local college that all the sims had to go to. Unfortunately, it seems like adding all 3 Unis bumps up the # of your character files to at least 600. And it's been suggested that 800 was the limit before approaching critical mass near BFBVFS status. And since I'm too paranoid about my game 'splodin despite the fact that I:

A) hardly play it to begin with AND
B) play far too super slowly that I didn't even make it past the first generation in my original game before I nuked 'em and started from scratch (i.e. no one ever had babies grow up into adults, and I had no elder deaths )

Plus... with the new OFB expansion around the corner, with more NPCs and sims to add to increase the character files... I guess I'll just have to suck it up and make due with a single Uni as much I really loved the idea of having separate Unis to go to.

When you've deleted La Fiesta and the shifting Paranormals are wandering around Sim State, it's fairly obvious that something is wrong!  It happened to me, so I know!

Heh... yeah that doesn't sound right. I suppose this is because, their character files were created, and despite deleting the 'hood they lived in, perhaps they get dumped into a limbo family of "Unknown" or into the generic townie pool?

Ste

[J. M. Pescado]

Attaching the same university to a neighborhood twice would duplicate all the playables.

[Issy]

After checking with the summoner I found that the game had generated 2 of them.  Can't remember how I solved the problem but I know I deleted one of the uni hoods.  I wanted them to get together cos they had 3 bolts for each other.

So yes, the game duplicates them when you create more than one uni hood.

Hrm... that's odd... was this Tiffany Sampson a playable sim? I don't see why the game would create two of the same playable sim. Is it possible that one of them was an unplayable "clone" from the generic dormie/townie pool? The one with no phone? Also... I thought that, whenever you get the message about a sim not having a phone, it either means there are on a lot with no phone or they are in the sim bin...

Could you have accidentally packaged Tiffany to a lot and reinstalled it? Or downloaded and installed some lot that had Tiffany packaged into it?

I know that I couldn't have packaged her anywhere because I have yet to play any maxis created families/sims.  I do however marry them off to some of the npc/townies depending on how strong the chemistry is (and how ugly they are :p).

If my memory serves me correctly I think I had the Sim State and La Fiesta in one neighbourhood.  I also do recall that when I deleted the one college I had duplicates of the families in the other hood.  Can't remember the names of the students but I had like 2 of each in the sim bins.  I just deleted the extras.

Thats about all I can remember.

[ZephyrZodiac]

As I see it, the problem is that the playable sims do wander between campuses, and if they happen to be on campus A but live on Campus B when you delete Campus B, then they will still be on Campus A, but obviously now they are unlinked.  They will be shown in SimPE as living in "Unknown".  However, deleting them without first deleting all memory of them from the sims living on Campus A is not a good idea, it's probably easier to move them into a house by some method or other and have them become part of that campus.  Then all you have to edit are their memories of all the unknowns they met while living on Campus B, plus those relationships.