So what is an overpopulated neighborhood anyway?

[ZephyrZodiac]

Thanks.  I'll make sure I do that.

[Brynne]

It would be so much easier to delete memories if we could select several at once and hit delete, like Windows lets you do, but it doesn't work that way.  So we are stuck with click one, click delete, scroll, click the next, click delete, etc, ad nauseam.

Yes! I have a callous on my index finger from all that clicking.

[gethane]

I just became aware of how much nicer hacks can make your game run, so I haven't been following forums here, or other hack places before just a few weeks ago.

I understand from first hand knowledge why not to download houses with people in them. I uploaded a house of my own once, then downloaded it again after I had to reinstall, and when I went to install it with Clean Installer, I saw what must have been every Townie in the neighborhood trying to hitch a ride. Not sure what's up with that.

But what is lot binning and why is it dangerous? Is it just when you move a populated house to the lot bin? Or any house? Sorry if this is a stupid question.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Populated houses cause problems because your sims can go to work or school, and what you get are a lot of clones causing extra files in the game.  It's then dodgy to delete them because other sims have memories of the clone, not the original sim.

[gethane]

Thanks for answering . I'm wondering at this point with none of my families very far along since my new harddrive (and new install), if I should just start fresh, with the knowledge I have now from this place.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, my current version of Pleasantview which I've been playing a while has a lot of my mistakes in it, but so far it hasn't disintegrated, so I'll carry on until it does!  (And keep backups, of course!)

[linolino]

OK, so since i've read up to post 56 and then i read some others like the post 70, the 91, etc.. so i guess i'm cathing up.

Now, since there is this problem and it is eventually inevitable, what can we do to prevent or fix it?

What about packaging our lots, deleting all character files and installing those packages again? will this work? is this a good solution?

[ZephyrZodiac]

Have you seen what happens when you try to reinstall a package file with sims living in it?

[RainbowTigress]

Double trouble, sometimes triple and quadruple.  NOT good.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Unfortunately, ain't that the truth!

[witch]

Thanks for answering . I'm wondering at this point with none of my families very far along since my new harddrive (and new install), if I should just start fresh, with the knowledge I have now from this place.

I started afresh after reading all the guff here. In fact I started afresh twice, the first time I embarked on a campaign of mass slaughter of townies, then discovered I could 'delete AllCharacters'. Starting again worked out well for me, all my own characters, JM's critical fixes in place, haven't had any bad bugs so far, touch wood.

[linolino]

No i don't know!! i hate having to fix files that the game designers should have fixed.

What happens when you install a package of a house with sims living in it? what what

[witch]

My experience of installing packaged sims in a house is that it will fubar your game with all the additional memories and artefacts that are part of the package. If you've ever opened a house package file containing sims in the Clean Pack Installer, you will see it includes every sim they have ever met or been related to. If some of those packaged sims are townies, then the sims meet the same townies in the new n'hood, then a mess results. If you untick all the extras in the package file in clean pack installer, the lot is most likely to become unstable and uninstallable.

When my original n'hood first started to become unstable, I packaged every family I wanted to keep and carefully installed them all to a new n'hood. What a mess. Completely unstable from the start, that's when I started really seeking information from sites like this.

[linolino]

eew... god no! we don't want that, do we?

so basicaly everyone that is in their family tree and on their memories and on their relationship pannel will be packed as well?

I think theres a quick way to erase all that, if you are interested. i think i found it out once when i was messing with testingcheatsenabled. theres an option there (i don't know if it is in the tombstone or somewhere else) that will reset the lot, and it will erase everything, memories, relationships, family trees...

[Zukn]

 I think there's a quick way to solve it too. Apparently society frowns on my idea of eliminating everyone.

[witch]

so basicaly everyone that is in their family tree and on their memories and on their relationship pannel will be packed as well?

That's my understanding so far. Just all the memories and data though, not all the actual sims that are being remembered.

I think theres a quick way to erase all that, if you are interested. i think i found it out once when i was messing with testingcheatsenabled. theres an option there (i don't know if it is in the tombstone or somewhere else) that will reset the lot, and it will erase everything, memories, relationships, family trees...

I've not seen that, sounds interesting but mostly I want to keep memories & relationships.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I actually thought that the idea of packaging, like moving an occupied house to the lot bin, was that all memories apart from those of the other sims in the house would be erased.  It seems that like so much other stuff, the idea is better than the execution!

[hedgekat]

I  have had one instance of an actual character, not just a memory being carried along with a house. 

I had a legacy household in Strangetown which included an elder female who was having an affair with Joel Jeffress.  I wanted to move the household to a fresh neighborhood.  After I had done so I discovered that Joel was also in the new neighborhood along with the Pleasantview townies.   

The family had no memories of any of the other people they had known in Strangetown but character files for those people were transferred also.  I just went into the character folder and deleted them all.   There have been no bad side effects of the deletion that I have noticed.  It's easy to identify the files to delete as they are much smaller. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I've deleted loads of files, especially those with the red or blue blobs in the pic (but not ghosts!) and had no serious problems.  I can only think that the file you got carried over with the house was because that sim was either just about to enter the lot, and thus was in a portal, or just leaving, and also in a portal.

I've also done what JM said would finish my game off, and where I've deleted files, I've renumbered new CAS sims to fill those spaces, so any townie spam goes at the end, and again so far it's not caused any problem, and weeks later I'm still playing the same neighbourhood!  No bfbvfos yet anyway!

[buddha pest]

Every time the slowdown bug occurs it generates multiples of whatever NPC triggered the slowdown.  And they will keep multiplying until the vehicle is gotten rid of.   Any other NPC vehicle that later attempts to enter the lot will trigger it again.   I  have gotten hundreds of extra character files that way  before I figured out what was happening and stopped it.  But I went into the character folder and deleted them all.  Have had no problems that I know of since as a result of it.   Have done this in several neighborhoods.  No one had ever interacted with these characters so there were no memories involved. 

mmm. i just deleted 300 character files worth of social workers and repo men from strangetown today.

they happened from a lot that had a missing service npc car portal. i'm guessing because the repo men and social workers are of the stubborn, persistent persuasion is the reason they were the only npc types to try to multiply into the zillions when their vehicle couldn't arrive. the maids and gardeners and such didn't do that.

glad i finally got around to cleaning that up. i was pretty baffled at first as to how i had already gotten strangetown up to over 650 characters.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I got Crammyboy's portal fix, and just today I went into a lot, and got a notice saying that car portals had been deleted and to exit without saving.   I entered again, got the same message, so I exited, moved the family out, bulldozed the house and then built them a new one.  So far no problems.  Seems like the portal fix is worth putting into your game.

[buddha pest]

oh yeah, i got that shortly after the incident.

VERY useful item that.

now one of my lots has a missing trash can. um, dunno how that one disappeared. i'm gonna try replacing it with the one in carrigon's weird buyable objects collection. not having a trash can hasn't proven a big deal so far except that whenever a sim tries to empty the garbage, they just put it on the floor, and sometimes i don't notice it for awhile, and then here comes the plague.

[RainbowTigress]

You don't have to evict and bulldoze your lot if you follow the link in Crammyboy's post to another post by Erzengel that has portals to replace missing ones.  It tells you exactly how to do it and everything. 

[buddha pest]

oh yeah that's the one i have actually. good stuff.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I did look at it, but it seemed too complicated for my poor little brain!  I will try it if it should happen again, though.

SimaLittleDreamaLot also has trash can/mail box replacements, which come with a free pizza!  Useful for poor uni students!