So what is an overpopulated neighborhood anyway?

[diamonde]

Also, Maxis is based in California and pale-skinned people, like the Irish, tend to combust and burn to death when exposed to the sun.

Pfft.  I exposed my English/Irish skin to it and the Californian sun is pissweak.  Not only do they have a protective smog layer, they still have an ozone layer!  I sat out there for an hour and still couldn't feel that mutagenic radiation scorching through my skin, in an Australian summer I can get burned taking out the garbage.

California's got nothing.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Nothing but never ending traffic and Macdonalds!

[Snowy]

Well, since I have only been able to create two families... I didn't think I could have much population, but what I have read here scares me! I am just about to reinstall everything from scratch! My granddaughter thought it would be wise to have a University with each neighborhood, so she did. There are only 5 neighborhoods and we only played three so far, but that sounds like it could be an issue which I don't need on top of the other ones I have. I had been wondering how many families I could put into a neighborhood. The way things were going, it seemed like two was my tops... LOL... Obviously I have some other things happening..... *sigh*

[simmiecal]

Well, since I have only been able to create two families... I didn't think I could have much population, but what I have read here scares me! I am just about to reinstall everything from scratch! My granddaughter thought it would be wise to have a University with each neighborhood, so she did. There are only 5 neighborhoods and we only played three so far, but that sounds like it could be an issue which I don't need on top of the other ones I have. I had been wondering how many families I could put into a neighborhood. The way things were going, it seemed like two was my tops... LOL... Obviously I have some other things happening..... *sigh*

I'm not as awesome as some of the others on this thread, but I believe -and someone please correct me if I'm wrong - that for the most part, each neighborhood stands alone. Meaning, if you have an overpopulated Pleasantville and it goes *splat* that won't effect your Veronaville. Even if you have La Fiesta Tech as the college for Pleasantville and Veronaville - in reality - they are two different universities and not connected to each other. The sims may have the same names because the game generates the same names over and over, but the Max Flexor that your sim meets in Pleasantville will not be the same Max Flexor that your sim in Veronaville has met. So, I don't think it's a problem to have a university for each neighborhood - in fact, each neighborhood has to have its own university as the universities are not shared across neighborhoods.  Having said that, I don't think you want to add more than one university to each neighborhood as all the extra NPCs generated for the second university will add to your population bloat.

[Renatus]

As far as I can tell, Simmiecal, you're completely correct.

[RainbowTigress]

You are absolutely correct, simmiecal.  Each neighborhood is self-contained.  Each neighborhood has its own folder with its own Neighborhood file and character files.  They also have their own storytelling folder as of Uni, I think it was.  Like simmiecal says, it is not a good idea to have more than one Uni or Downtown per neighborhood.  Anything you can do to minimize the number of characters in your neighborhood helps, especially unplayable characters.  There really isn't any benefit to having more than one per neighborhood.  I even wish we could use the same Uni and Downtown for all our neighborhoods instead of having to set new ones up every time.  It would save hard drive space, but I guess it's not feasible.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Your sims would all meet up with sims from other hoods, though, which would, I think be a bit problematical!

[RainbowTigress]

Well, that's one reason I was thinking it wouldn't be feasible.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Maybe when they get up to sims3 Holographic?  and then, how long before sims are sentient?

[jsalemi]

I added all three universities to Pleasantview before I heard about 'population bloat' (before I found this site, actually ). So, the question is, does deleting the extra universities also delete the new dormies and npcs added by that university, or are they part of the neighborhood for good?

[Dark Trepie]

I did the same thing way back in the early days of Uni, before I knew of overpopulation or even hacks.  I had all three premade unis attached to Pleasantview.  And it wasn't long before I started getting the bad omens. 

One of my Uni graduates lost all of the extra want slots she got from graduating.  And when I added them back with TJ's hacked money tree they were blank.  And the ones that weren't blank wouldn't spin.  That was followed by a corrupted death for Dina Caliente.  I think she managed to give out an inherantence, but her picture never went away from the family portrait.  The Dina's daughter got the message "Its high time you went back to the real world" and got ejected from uni while she was still a freshman.  And finally I started getting those "too many interations" errors.

And I barely made it past the second generation too...

Live and learn so they say.  But that was my favorite version of Pleasantview ever.  I still have the pictures I saved from the storytelling folder.

[ZephyrZodiac]

It's a lot of hard work in SimPE, but you can clean up the extra files - just takes time, patience and a lot of care to make sure you get rid of all the memories!  Some sims will be duplicated or triplicated, for example the ones actually living in houses, but the extra files are (or they were when I tried this out) unlinked, and should be safe to delete, though again you need to check all memories of them having been interracted with as they wandered around the other campuses.

[jsalemi]

Thanks, I was afraid it was going to be a bit more complicated than I hoped.   At least I have the enhanced memory manager for SimPE from here, so that should make cleaning up the memories easier, in any case.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, it's not so much complicated (if I can do it, it's not complicated!) as a long and boring chore!  Remember, though, once you've deleted all the memories, etc., you need to remove the files from your characters folder, in my experience it's the only way to be sure they're gone!  I just write down all the file numbers as I go, then after I've closed SimPE I get rid of them.

And then, get all the anti-spam mods that you need!

[jsalemi]

Ok, here's an interesting situation -- I fired up the game, and got rid of one of the three universities (La Fiesta Tech -- I still have students in the other two, and like them both so I may keep both).  I then quit, and went into SimPE, and the only unlinked and 'no character data/unlinked' sims I could find were dead folks, like Skip Broke, Bella Goth, etc. All told, there's maybe 30 of them or so.  A fix memory run didn't find any bad memories (it found a bit over 400 on the first run a couple of days ago), so I guess it's ok to get rid of these unlinked/ncd dead folks to clean things up a bit.

Or should I leave well enough alone?

[ZephyrZodiac]

Be very careful with dead sims!

[jsalemi]

So I guess I'll leave well enough alone, since all the unlinked characters are dead ancestors.  None of the townies/dormies/npcs got unlinked when I deleted the university from Pleasantview.  But I've only got around 400 characters total right now, so I'm still in the safe zone.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Worth checking, though, that you haven't got more than you need of each NPC.

[jsalemi]

If you don't see an NPC in the game, how can you tell in SimPE that a particular character is an NPC (besides the obvious ones, like the GR and social workers, of course)?  I know the nannies now, but I'm not sure I can tell who all the gardeners and repair folks are. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

They have different work clothes!  Aslo, the original ones are usually in close number order, so any extras would be generated and either fill gaps or be tagged on at the end.

[jsalemi]

Ah, so you gotta keep an eye on the work clothes.  Thanks -- now I know what I'm looking for next time I go poking  around in SimPE.

[Sagana]

I added all 3 universities and then ransacked them to make a custom one (took out all housing and dorms and people and everything) thinking it wouldn't make a difference if there was no place for dormies to go and all (and I'm dumb and didn't know better) when I first got Uni, right after it came out. Then I never played it much. Recently when I attached a single uni just as I should have to a new neighborhood and looked for the first time at an uncorrupt campus directory - I've realized I must have had 4 times as many students in there as I should have. The campus directory was something like 6 pages long, with many similar ones or doubles. That's also probably why my students met way too many professors. Now it's just 1.5 or so... so the game must have generated all those files even tho it didn't have any place to put them. And linked them. Silly game, silly me. I'd check for doubles - doubles with different names but the same features or... well just how many dormies you have.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Yes, unfortunately the game doesn't see NPCs as having a job, so they all have the Unemployed box checked.  But the work clothes should help find any extras.

There should be 23 professors, if that's any help - one has the Secret society token.

[geekily]

I see no one's posted on this in a while... I was just wondering if there has been any progress in combatting this problem? I never even thought about it before, just stumbled upon this thread by accident. I have 550 characters in my Pleasantville folder, but there is no way I have that many Sims.  I'd say I probably have at most 50 active Sims that I play, and if you figure in ones that have died, that's probably another 15.  I haven't seen any problems yet, but I'd like to be able to stop any before they start. Any new methods or anything out there?

[BlueSoup]

If you have a downtown, Uni, shopping district and then the regular townies and NPC's, you could very well have that many.  In my recent Strangetown/Pleasantview neighbourhood, I've only added one playable Sim on top of the Sims I already had (and only 5 townies/NPC's from the original neighbourhoods made it in before I did a DAC) and I have something like 500 files.  For those two towns alone there is 38 graves before any of my own Sims will die.