So what is an overpopulated neighborhood anyway?

[hedgekat]

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.

HO WO!!  Is this a fix for the slowdown bug?    Where is it located?  MTS2?

[ZephyrZodiac]

Yes, it's at MTS2.  I don't have the link handy, but if you search for Crammyboy you should find it, or scroll through the hack downloads.

I don't know about the slowdown bug.  It just said portals had been deleted, although the last ime I'd played the house before that I didn't have any problems.

[hedgekat]

Found  it!  And it does fix the slowdown bug.  Apparently the npc vehicle gets stuck because the portal disappears.  Or perhaps the stuck vehicle causes the portal to disappear.  Anyway, crammyboy's fix prevents it and erzengal's fix will replace the portal.   MY GOSH!  NO  MORE  SLOWDOWN  BUG. 

This has been the worst problem I have had with my game and now it is no more.  Wooo   hoooo.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Great!  I think you'll probably find it was a darn nannymobile that got stuck!  The lot it happened on in my game had no nanny spam problems, because my sim fired the nanny when she waterbombed her as soon as she got home from work, and then took the next few days off with no pay in order to be there at 3.0.pm! But the nannymobile could still have got stuck, I guess.

[RainbowTigress]

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!

Carrigon has this also.  It may be the same one.  I think she says her friend made it.

[hedgekat]

Great!  I think you'll probably find it was a darn nannymobile that got stuck!  The lot it happened on in my game had no nanny spam problems, because my sim fired the nanny when she waterbombed her as soon as she got home from work, and then took the next few days off with no pay in order to be there at 3.0.pm! But the nannymobile could still have got stuck, I guess.

It could have been the nanny in a couple of my houses but not all.  I have been having the problem since last september in various lots in different neighborhoods.   Quite often it seemed to be the grocery van that got stuck first.  Several times it was the firetruck.  And the repairmen.  I don't remember it ever starting with the maid but once it started maids quit coming. Also gardeners, exterminators and repo men.  I've had them all by the dozens.  I had totally quit using any service people in order to avoid it.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I do remember when it was early days with Sims1 before the patch, that grocery vans were forever getting stuck, but usually if you saved and quit they would be gone next time you loaded the lot.  I've never had the problem with other vehicles getting stuck, but I have experienced Nanny Spam!  Ugh!!!!

[linolino]

Ok, so no packing the house with sims living in it...

What about this: you evict a family so they will be in the family bin, but not packed, so there are no other sim-files packed along. then you go to the game's folder and copy the file of the family in the family bin into the new neighborhood.
I suppose this way it will not take with it those dreafull clogging files, right?

[Renatus]

Probably not good. If you want to re-create a family in another neighborhood you're much better off extracting each member with SimPE so that they'll be in the sim bin, making each sim in CAS in the new neighborhood, pulling them from the sim bin, and then recreating necessary ties and memories with SimPE. Pain in the ass, but it's a clean way to do it.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Renatus, how exactly do you do that?  I have problems with SimPE over and above the basics, and I still use version 0.36.  Can you do it with that, or do I need to get the new update?

[RainbowTigress]

Ok, so no packing the house with sims living in it...

What about this: you evict a family so they will be in the family bin, but not packed, so there are no other sim-files packed along. then you go to the game's folder and copy the file of the family in the family bin into the new neighborhood.
I suppose this way it will not take with it those dreafull clogging files, right?

I don't think this would work because the game would not have a way of recognizing those sims files.  When you open up a neighborhood file in SimPE, all the sims are listed even if they aren't in a house.  I'm not sure how they are categorized, but they are flagged somehow so the game knows they are in the bin, just as it does with sim babies and kids who have been taken from their parents and are in the adoption pool as well as dead sims and townies.  Besides, you'd still be stuck with all the sims' descriptions, family entries, memories, etc. in the original neighborhood.  You are better off recreating your sims like Renatus described. 

[hedgekat]

I have never tried moving a family that way. I have never seen a family file anywhre in the neighborhood folders.    But I have tried moving a single sim that way.  Well, it worked,  Sort of.  I copied the individual character file into the new neighborhood, making sure it had a different number.  Then I went into the game to the family lot where I wanted her to be.  I used a teleport object to get her onto the lot.  Everything was fine up to that point. But she was unplayable.  She appeared in the same manner that any teleported sim does, but then she collapsed on the ground and just kind of moved around like a baby.  No responses to any stimuli.  Used InSimenator to make her selectable.  She had no wants or fears, no memories, no relatives.  Don't remember what her needs were like,but thinking they were pretty red.   but couldn't get her to do anything.  Like a person who has had a stroke.  Or a newborn.  It only now occurred to me that perhaps the game regarded her as a newborn. I didn't keep her around long enough to see how long she continued like that. 

ON the other hand,  I have transferred at least one townie by just moving his character file with no problems at all.   

But definitely in future if I want any sims in a different neighborhood,  I will be cloning them with sim surgery,  then recreating them in CAS. 

Here is what the sim I tried to move looked like after the move.



[attachment deleted by admin]

[RainbowTigress]

Eww...that is creepy.  You're right, the game probably didn't know what to do with her and regarded her as an infant.  She is moving her hands and legs just like one.

[ZephyrZodiac]

If you change them to babies in sim PE it's exactly like that!  I did it to Angela Pleasant once, just for the fun of it, but eventually changed her back and gave her a mohican haircut!

Townies' memories are possibly part of the original file, since any neighbourhood you create they will be generated in it, so it's maybe because of that the memories move with them.  Also, it might be that the townies you move only retain the original memories etc., not any they have added since you started to play their neighbourhood.

So, if you move the file across, then open SimPEm would you be able (a) to allocate them to a family without any teleporters?  and(b) change them from babies to adults and would they then be ok?

[hedgekat]

It was way back in December that I moved the townie so don't remember anymore exactly how I did it.  But it was Jonathan Ternynck from Strangetown so he is never put in a new hood by the game. It was a really strange situation.   I had been playing only Pleasantview and had moved many of the townies into families.   Then I created a new hood for a legacy challenge.   But the new hood had only those original Pleasantview townies and NPCs that I had NOT moved into families in Pleasantview.  And it had none of the NEW townies that had been generated in Pleasantview.   I have created several other hoods since and this has never happened again.   Anyway, the game did not seem to be regenerating new townies and npcs in the new hood so I thought I would try moving unused ones from Strangetown. I had never played that hood so they had no memories other than what Maxis had given him.  The first attempt was successful but I didn't do any more because by then I saw that new ones were then being generated in the legacy hood. 

As for the attempted moving of the born in game sim in my pic,  I think I did use simpe to allocate her to the townie group.  Didn't try aging her up to adult again as I just thought of the baby possibility yesterday.  ZephyrZodiac, would you like to try experimenting with it?

[Renatus]

ZZ, I think you can do it with 0.36, I remember extracting sims with a version around that number... I think. If you open up sim surgery (under plugins, after you open up a neighborhood) and choose a patient sim, you should have an option to extract the sim, it's a little text link above the portrait of the sim you choose as 'patient'. It extracts the sim and all of their currently set clothing. When I want to recreate a sim exactly I also go in and write down all of their personal data like personality and interests, and I write down important memories if I want to re-create families and such.

When I extract them, I make sure to re-name the file to their original name so I know exactly which one it is, and I usually save it to a different folder than the default of SavedSims. When I want to recreate them I move them temporarily to my downloads folder, then back out to my backup folder when I am done.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Sounds complicated, but I'll try it when I go into simPE again.  Thanks for the explanation, I've saved it in a notepad doc in my docs folder so I'll have it handy!

Hedgekat, I think growing them up again is fairly simple, at least it was for Angela, I just changed her back to a teen again and it worked with no problems.  Since I deleted all her interests, skills (apart from cooking and cleaning), relationships and changed her from Aquarius to Capricorn she's had to start again from scratch, and Lilith actually likes her!  I wouldn't want to try the experiment again, though, although I've got a lot of townies and NPCs who I've changed to babies.  I never get burglars as they're all of them babies and the game doesn't seem to generate new ones, at least not very often.(Unlike nannies!  But I've stopped using them, so maybe now they'll stay in their cots and won't call out their friends!)  I did find, though, when I tried this in Uni, that they were lying around community lots and the SS house, so I don't think it's such a good idea with Uni NPCs.  Dunno why!

[Zeljka]

Or everytime a sibling or relative got an A+ (before JM's fix)

Want to see something really fun? Next time you're in the memory section of PE, check out a Bus Driver. They remember every A+, every promotion, every Sim meeting, every kid who was potty trained while they were outside....

It's so tedious to delete memories (what I wouldn't give for Ctrl click to select multiples or even sort by type in PE) I usually pick one family at a time and delete everything I don't see as significant. Everything invisible, and anything not directly related to them.

To check NPC relationships before deleting, I usually leave the 'relations' tab open as I scroll through Sim Descriptions and only delete them empty ones. (though it's easy enough to delete the relationship, but I'd rather keep it simple)

If you run Clean Installer on your character folder while PE is open at that neighbourhood, it will give you names (first only) though you will have to close PE before you delete them...

[ZephyrZodiac]

How do you safely get rid of bus driver spawn?  (Are they the ones in the brown shirts?)

[Zeljka]

How do you safely get rid of bus driver spawn? (Are they the ones in the brown shirts?)

I delete all their memories - one at a time if you're excessively bored, or teleport them to a lot and use Carrigon's bottle (voodoo bottle I think) to make them 'forget' everything they know. They're just bus drivers and character spam as far as I'm concerned. 
Don't usually pay attention to it, but the last lot I played had the same 'driver' for every carpool including the helicopter, she also drove the taxi and bus. I give her amnesia every couple weeks but I've also deleted the drivers with no memories when I felt so inclined with no apparent effects.

[radiophonic]

Interesting thread. I can't say that I've had any of the problems collected here and my neighborhood has hit 1,030 packages (more dead than alive). I can only assume that Pescado's fixes are just that: fixes. 

[hedgekat]

How do you safely get rid of bus driver spawn?  (Are they the ones in the brown shirts?)

I get rid of them by deleting their character files.  Check with sim browser to see which numbers are the extra ones.  Then exit simpe and just delete the files.  I do the same thing with all the excess nannies, grocerymen, exterminatiors, whatever got generated by the slowdown bug.  No one ever meets those npcs so don't have to worry about memories.  And now thanks to crammyboy and erzengel  I will never have to do that again.

[cwhitney]

Just wondering if this problem is a symptom of an overpopulated neighborhood.  My copy of Veronaville has 742 character files.

I was playing a graduation party at a Greek House (and I had the amnesia fixes in place until I installed Nightlife a couple days ago, I don't believe that I've added any sims since then and even if I had, the sim affected was not the one added since then), which involved inviting a woman who was the graduate's mother, but also the grandmother of two other sims on the lot.  One of her grandchildren, who had had a friendship with her, seems to have lost that relationship, and has even had his family ties to her severed.  To him, his grandmother is now just like any other nonfamily sim, and he can flirt with her and kiss her romantically and so on.

I can restore the relationship with SimPE, but I'm wondering if this is one of the problems that an overpopulated neighborhood causes, and if it is, what critical fix fixes this issue?

[cwykes]

I guess if you don't let your sims gossip you don't spread burnt dinner memories around the 'hood.  I used to use gossip a lot in making friends, but have quit - back to chess.

I have under 500 characters, but I've been playing most of them for a very long time.  Are there memory problems associated with a smaller number of very long lived sims?  Different dimension to bloated 'hood. EDIT looks like the answer to this is "No" from other threads.

PS-Thanks for explaining what those .bak files were in character files. found them when I counted characters!

[ZephyrZodiac]

There is a hack which stops the generating of numerous bus drivers and baristas etc., it's JM's Nonpcspam which you can get from the Armory.  I've explained in the other thread on this issue how you can safely delete duplicate unlinked sims, which are caused by doing something which JM does NOT recommend, which is moving occupied houses into the houses bin.  Unfortunately this is something that Maxis does not appear to have fixed yet!  (Despite knowing about it since before Uni!)