So what is an overpopulated neighborhood anyway?

[ZephyrZodiac]

I guess you're right again!  But how come in that case the alien babies always seem to have really wierd distributions of personality points?  And if I try to create a Virgo sim with as low a level of neatness points as Dirk Dreamer, they turn into some other sign!  I think it's one rule for the Maxis creators and Maxis generated points, and another for us mere simmers!

[J. M. Pescado]

I guess you're right again!  But how come in that case the alien babies always seem to have really wierd distributions of personality points?

Because babies do not obey the same limitations as created sims spawned normally. Alien babies don't actually have "really weird" distributions of personality points at all, in truth. Pascal's two aliens clearly resemble Pascal, while Vidcund's alien clearly is Vidcundish.

And if I try to create a Virgo sim with as low a level of neatness points as Dirk Dreamer, they turn into some other sign!  I think it's one rule for the Maxis creators and Maxis generated points, and another for us mere simmers!

That's because the Maxian premades have personality traits that are uncorrelated with their astrological sign, whereas if you create it in CAS, personality determines sign, and dragging the personality bars in debug mode changes the sign as well.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I said it was one rule fo the guys at Maxis and another for the rest of us!  Oh well, if I want a Virgo who isn't forever cleaning up and taking showers I'll have to change them in SimPE!

[HRH Posie]

However, that method (with a huge neighborhood) takes a long time. You have to manually go through everyone's memories to make sure they have none for the to-be-deleted characters. I attempted it once, but then I decided my neighborhood is in no real danger right now with slightly over 300 characters. However, I would love some sort of program that deletes these empty character files and any memories pertaining to them.

I've just noticed this thread here if you are interested.  It mentions something about CHARrED - DatGen's Advanced Character Editor.  I don't know if this will clean up files with no character data.  Has anybody here had any experience with this programme?

[J. M. Pescado]

There's varying levels of character files with no data. "Orphaned" files that are referred to by no actual memory or ancestry of any intact sim can be wiped through the laborious process of erasing all "invisible memory tokens" and then erased entirely from the game cleanly. Ancestral files, even if their actual character resources are stripped, should be kept in the game for historical value.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Thanks for the link Posie!

[Oddysey]

What are the chances of the bugs associated with overpopulation being fixed? I think JMPescado has some hacks that fix various aspects of it, but I don't know how deep the problems are. Are we basically dependent on Maxis for this one? Or is the cause something fixable by outside hackers?

[Trubble]

*was also wondering Oddysey's question*

[ZephyrZodiac]

Is it mainly related to Memory and therefore fixable by adding RAM? 

I think I'd better change neighborhoods fairly soon, as I'm nearing 700 in the present Pleasantview!  Don't want it to be damaged before someone sorts out the way to fix it!

[J. M. Pescado]

The problems with overpopulation can be staved off to a much more indefinite period using the "Critical Fixes" available from FFS and Twojeffs. Although having recently been banned from rentech.com, it's now much more difficult to keep up with his work. We've been able to stabilize neighborhoods of over 2000 (garbage) sims. Although if you have THAT many, it points at a deeper root to your trouble.

However, Maxis is slow to learn from its mistakes, and there could be literally tons of lurking 0x85 time bombs in every expansion pack, which won't be clearly known until somebody actually runs into them with a huge bloated neighborhood.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I suppose if they got inundated with millions of emails from simmers all saying they wouldn't be buying the next EP unless some of the existing problems, such as this one, were fixed first, they just MIGHT be induced to "learn from their mistakes"!

[veilchen]

Posted by: ZephyrZodiac
I suppose if they got inundated with millions of emails from simmers all saying they wouldn't be buying the next EP unless some of the existing problems, such as this one, were fixed first, they just MIGHT be induced to "learn from their mistakes"!

Oh I see. You are an optimist after all ;)

G.

[Oddysey]

That's actually good news. If the problem is known, and apparently fixable, then that is a good thing. Even if Maxis does keep throwing new crap at us.

What is an 0x85 error? How does one recognize it in-game? Just so I can keep an eye out for problems, and help with the bug hunting in future EPs.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Oh I see. You are an optimist after all

I thought I was being ironical, but maybe it was just sarcasm after all - and I remember being told at school (many years ago) that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, so I really should try to avoid it!

[veilchen]

Well, teachers are not always right, as a matter of fact, they are often wrong. I remember when my best friend was told that being a left-hander was a bad, evil thing and was forced to use her right hand (also many years ago). Sarcasm, when done right, is a fine art. It does however, require for the audience to think and follow along. Maybe that teacher was a little wanting in the humor department.

G.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I think she was, a bit!  Mainly she was stupid, because she failed to add the rest of the quote - "and also the highest form of intelligence"!  (I think she thought I wouldn't know the quote, but I did, just don't remember where I read it!)

[veilchen]

I think she was, a bit!  Mainly she was stupid, because she failed to add the rest of the quote - "and also the highest form of intelligence"!  (I think she thought I wouldn't know the quote, but I did, just don't remember where I read it!)

Ah, the politicians favorite ploy. Take things out of context, use the part of the quotation that suits you best, or cut and splice information until it suits your purpose are all strategies used by those who aim to deceive.

You just keep on using your humor, I like it; and since I know that I'm neither stupid nor witless, that alone blows the teacher's opinion to high heaven (or, to use JM's favorite: burninates it )

G.

[knitro]

So as your neighborhoods keep growing, does the # of sims increase or do some of them go away, basically, is it inevitible to ahve a million sim files and be overpopultaed, the more you play the game, or does it slowly fix itself?

[Oddysey]

The problem is caused by the fact that the game never deletes character files by itself. Every sim that has ever been in the neighborhood will continue to be in the character files until you delete them.

[J. M. Pescado]

The problem is caused by the fact that the game never deletes character files by itself. Every sim that has ever been in the neighborhood will continue to be in the character files until you delete them.

However, natural "sane" growth is generally not the problem. Real problems only occur when you balloon the neighborhood population unnaturally, with tons of junk entries, or an endlessly respawning horde of townies because you mass-murder them for entertainment.

[sara_dippity]

Somewhat related question, guess I'll put it here rather than a new thread.
I've been wondering why I had so many characters really. I don't actually play that much, and reinstalled a few months ago when I reformatted. So, I figured out why I have so many sims to begin with. My lovely toddler (nearing three) now knows how to click icons with the mouse. He made a new University town in Pleasantview, and since I only wanted one, I deleted it. All of the sims that came in that sim bin are now in the Sim State sim bin. All the dessert Uni town ones that is. So apparently the game makes it so that rather than behaving like a deleted neighborhood, any sims in your bin will be transferred to the existing neighborhood bin. Or something like that, maybe they were in the bin before the Uni town was deleted, I didn't check.
Anyway, were all the created dormies and students also transferred? I don't mind the new sim students, more genetics and whatnot, but the thought of extra professors cluttering up stuff and never being used gives me chills. My house is a mess, but I keep my computer clean. How do I check? I'm an idiot with SimPe, and never even figured out how to find un met baristas to delete.

[veilchen]

Don't I wish there was a way to clean-start a Uni after the town/village has been made. I have made a beautiful village with the deleteAllCharacters, but I somehow neglected to attach an University and do the same there. So now my village will most likely never have a University attached because I can't use the deleteAll maxis cheat without wiping out my village as well.

Sometimes, when I'm not at work or studying, my brain clicks itself off every once in a while, self-preservation I guess :D

On the upside, my village teens and their relations have no uni-wants whatsoever. I don't really play the university all that much anyway, and when I do, I rush mine through with mods. University bores me to tears.

G.

[jrd]

Uni Sims are simply added to your normal neighbourhood characters (there is just one 'hood as far as the game is concerned), so you now have a few dozen unnecessary Sims in there.
I don't think anyone has found a quick and painless way to delete unnecessary Sims yet.

[Kristalrose]

Okay, so I am still confused.  Please feel free to point and laugh at me.

For example:  I have 498 sims in my little neighborhood of Simsville.  78 of these are my currently active, Body-shop or born in game, sims.  The rest are all townies???  I have the "No townie" and "No Dormie" regnen. hacks.  So, it will still do me no good to feed them all to the cowplant?  Or, what about packaging and moving ALL my sims, creating a new neighborhood, using the "delete all charectors" before I move in my sims?  Then, will I just have my 78?  Or will I just have a FUBAR game? 

I thought the object of this game was to create family trees and allow your sims to "be fruitful and multiply".     Now you're telling me that if I do that, then I will screw up my game?  This sucks!!   

[J. M. Pescado]

For example:  I have 498 sims in my little neighborhood of Simsville.  78 of these are my currently active, Body-shop or born in game, sims.  The rest are all townies???  I have the "No townie" and "No Dormie" regnen. hacks.  So, it will still do me no good to feed them all to the cowplant?  Or, what about packaging and moving ALL my sims, creating a new neighborhood, using the "delete all charectors" before I move in my sims?  Then, will I just have my 78?  Or will I just have a FUBAR game?

How old of a neighborhood are we talking about? Can you actually account for 478 sims, including about 50 dormies for a starting university, and about 100 assorted NPCs? 150 is a baseline figure for a population of an empty neighborhood. This is the population you basically are stuck with. Then you have maybe 30 townies, unless you nuked your neighborhood at start, and your 80 sims. This totals out to about 250 sims. Can you account for the remaining 200-odd as ancestors? If this estimate isn't off off by more than about 50 sims or so, then you're fine. If these figures are completely out of line, you may have some oddities in your neighborhood, and may want to check the Sim Browser in SimPE to see if you've got duplicate entries. You HAVE avoided all known problem behaviors, like downloading inhabited lots or lotbinning anything, right?

I thought the object of this game was to create family trees and allow your sims to "be fruitful and multiply".     Now you're telling me that if I do that, then I will screw up my game?  This sucks!!   

Family trees, yes. Be fruitful....I'd avoid that. Although the damage to your sanity will probably set in long before the damage to your neighborhood will. I'll run the math for you the fast way: Let's say you actually *DO* let your sims have their 10 children. In 3 generations, you'll have a population of over 1000 sims. This is clearly madness, which is why you need a sustainable growth policy.