Cleaning up Characters?

[doren]

Guys, would you all quit flaming each other and get back on topic?

What sorts of things does resurrecting Bella do, exactly? Because, uh. I did that too back before I heard anything about it being a VBT. No problems so far, although I've only even played her house like once (I forgot about it because it was in Bluewater- is deleting subhoods okay? Because I don't play in Bluewater Village anyway. I've poured more time into the Sims series than I feel I should have as it is, although probably nothing compared to you guys, and I don't want to f*** it up now.)

I was wondering about the same thing and out of curiousity searched the BBS last night. I was going to find out how many people actually reported crashes or problems after a resurrection. Anyway, I came across this post which I found quite interesting with regard to the dead/disappeared sims in the original game:

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?&openItemID=&threadID=6cef6227684386de9de7f93776ed2e4a&directoryID=2&startRow=1#3c5c73450c427b18a820e8232dc772f9

It still doesn't tell you what will happen if you resurrect/bring back a bad character file, I did not follow the links. I tried different variations around the words "crash" and "resurrect" (all categories/all dates), but could not find any messages.
 

[jsalemi]

It still doesn't tell you what will happen if you resurrect/bring back a bad character file, I did not follow the links. 

Resurrecting a sim you shouldn't doesn't cause an immediate crash, but it does start a ripple effect that will eventually cause your hood to go BFBVFS. This mainly happens (as I understand it) because the game starts looking for data that should be there, and when it doesn't find it in the incomplete character file, it starts swiping it from other sims in the game, leading eventually to messed up pointers.  This is particularly a problem with messed up SWAF info (sim wants and fears) and you suddenly start getting toddlers with life-time wants, wants to get a job, shit like that. 

Missing DNA is another problem, which even plagued some of the still-alive-and-kicking Strangetown characters (there's a thread in Peasantry on how to fix them). If a sim with missing DNA attempts to breed, the game will crash when trying to make the new baby's character file, because it won't be able to check and blend the DNA from both parents.

So the message you linked to does state the only mostly safe way to 'resurrect' one of the dead/missing original characters -- clone them in SimPe, and add them back into the game as a 'new' character.

...although I've only even played her house like once (I forgot about it because it was in Bluewater- is deleting subhoods okay? Because I don't play in Bluewater Village anyway.

You can't delete the only existing sub-hood of a type (shopping, downtown, uni, etc) once you add them to the game.  You'd have to add another sub-hood, even a totally empty one with just the terrain, before you delete the original.  And it doesn't help much, because any playable characters in the deleted sub-hood just get dumped into the sim bin, so you'd have to put them on a new lot or leave them cluttering up the bin anyway.

If you don't play Bluewater, just leave the characters you don't want to play living there and ignore it.  At worst case, you'll see them as occasional walk-bys or on comm lots. Or you could use something like the teleporter bush to go to the sim in questions lot and just turm him/her into a townie. That way, the lot the becomes purchasable again, and the sim just aimlessly wanders the hoods where you can ignore (or torture ) him or her.

[Ness]

Since BV it is possible to delete subhoods without first adding another of the same type.  This possibly even came in with seasons, but it was after BV that I noticed the trashcan was no longer greyed out with only one subhood of that type.  It still dumps the residents into the sim bin, though.

[jsalemi]

You're right -- I never paid attention, but I've seen others mention it as having been added with BV.  Makes sense, I guess, if you decide you don't want to have all 3 (or any) vacation areas attached to your hood.

However, I wonder what would happen to the playable YAs if you delete the last Uni hood -- there would be no sim bin left for them to be dumped into . Sounds like they'd get deleted, which I imagine would be a VBT indeed.

[Ness]

Hadn't thought of that...  I don't think I want to be the person to try it and find out, either!

[Insanity Prelude]

I can't delete Bella (even with the Lot Debugger) because she still has family ties to the Goths- but I resurrected her with SimPE, it should theoretically be easy to reverse the process.

I'd need to cut her relations with everyone she met since, right? And what else?

Edit: I searched the forum, and Jordi stated in another thread that spawning the kittenkiller InTeen's biological clock fixes most problems. Would this apply to Bella? If I can't undo my resurrection of her, I'll at least be careful not to breed her.

[jsalemi]

The lot debugger only prepares the sim for deletion; if you want to complete the process, read the 'Deleted 2' thread in The War Room.

[jolrei]

However, I wonder what would happen to the playable YAs if you delete the last Uni hood -- there would be no sim bin left for them to be dumped into . Sounds like they'd get deleted, which I imagine would be a VBT indeed.

Hadn't thought of that...  I don't think I want to be the person to try it and find out, either!

I would certainly make sure my backups were up to date beforehand - could always then test what happens, and if it's bad (i.e. if all YAs are deleted and not, say, grown up and sent to the hood as townies), the borked hood could be zorched and replaced with the backups.  Not something to do on a whim though, I agree.

[Insanity Prelude]

The lot debugger only prepares the sim for deletion; if you want to complete the process, read the 'Deleted 2' thread in The War Room.

That's where I read that you're not supposed to delete Sims with family ties. I just wonder if I can return her to her pre-resurrected state, since all I did to resurrect her (following some clearly non-awesome person's tutorial) was set her not to be dead, put her in a family, uh, I think there was some other box to uncheck too ("Unlinked", maybe)... This was with Ye Olde SimPE, though.

[jolrei]

That's where I read that you're not supposed to delete Sims with family ties. I just wonder if I can return her to her pre-resurrected state, since all I did to resurrect her (following some clearly non-awesome person's tutorial) was set her not to be dead, put her in a family, uh, I think there was some other box to uncheck too ("Unlinked", maybe)... This was with Ye Olde SimPE, though.

It really depends a lot on whether you played the resurrected Bella.  If not, unchecking whatever boxes  and removing family ties, memories of relationships, etc. might just do it.  On the other hand, since the Bella character is not a complete character file to begin with, it is, as jsalemi said earlier, not recommended for resurrection for good reason (you didn't know that at the time, I grant, but there it is).  For this reason, it is difficult to guarantee that if you switch it back, everything will be the same and nothing bad will happen.  It is perhaps less likely that bad things will happen.

If you played Bella, it is difficult to predict what type of damage may have been done.  Again, it is perhaps better to de-resurrect her and stop any further damage.  Play the hood until it does or does not go foom.

Someone recently suggested it was fun to start over anyway.

Never understood the fascination for Bella, but then, I didn't play TS1.

[jsalemi]

And the funny thing is that if you got Seasons, you got another shot at Morty and Bella, with the 'Roth' family.  I haven't checked completely, but I believe their personalities,  etc are a match for the original PV Goths.  Kinda like EAxis saying, "Fine, here's your damn Bella Goth -- now go away!"

[Doc Doofus]

Fifteen years!  Whoa!  That's a LONG TIME!

[Kigan]

I was really unaware of the problems Bella could cause when resurrected. Since she never seemed to be the cause of any glitches I had, I never would have guessed. I think every actual problem I had before now was related to either a hack or something that came with the game.

Thanks for the info on that.

[Kigan]

glad you said that Pes, cos the "everyone on one lot" merge sounded pretty safe to me.  That's what I did to move the Green family to another hood.

The everyone on one lot merge works, but you have to make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that this is an isolated branch. Also, the process is believed to irreversibly destroy the source neighborhood, so once you blast off, there's no going back short of reloading a backup. If done incorrectly, your target neighborhood is also trashed. It is a rather risky process, all told. Done RIGHT, it works. The problem is, it's very easy to do it wrong.

So, as long as I get everyone they are connected to, any townies included, it should work? As for graves, should I stick those in the person's inventory, like the ones in Olive Specter's lot? I feel a bit confident in doing it this way, opposed to doing a lot of work in SimPE. I just want to make sure I know what to do to keep it from becoming a BFBVFS. I can always attempt the SimPE tutorial, but I'd feel better if I can do it this way and it is safe. I know I can reload the original neighborhoods from the templates stored in the Program Files, so I can use that to make sure they are entirely unplayed.

[Insanity Prelude]

Since BV it is possible to delete subhoods without first adding another of the same type.  This possibly even came in with seasons, but it was after BV that I noticed the trashcan was no longer greyed out with only one subhood of that type.  It still dumps the residents into the sim bin, though.

Yeah, it must be a Seasons feature, because it *did* let me delete Bluewater (although just to be on the safe side, I moved the Sims I still wanted to play out of there and killed the ones I didn't.)

Incidentally, Malcom Landgraab's mansion is ridiculously large. What'd the Maxoids expect us to do with all that space? XP

Anyway, as for Bella- Found a tutorial to clone her appearance and move the relations etc. onto the new, complete Sim. That should work. It didn't say what to do with the old Bella, though. XD

[doren]

And the funny thing is that if you got Seasons, you got another shot at Morty and Bella, with the 'Roth' family.  I haven't checked completely, but I believe their personalities,  etc are a match for the original PV Goths.  Kinda like EAxis saying, "Fine, here's your damn Bella Goth -- now go away!"

Some of the characters they seem to like so much that they were probably reprocessed several times. Doing some more research about the dead characters I looked at them with SimEnhancer. Skip Broke 1 must have been created a long time ago, because he still has a limited set of interests ("scary things", "outside") like some of the very early ancestors of the original families. Skip Broke 2 was apparently done much later. When I loaded Strangetown afterwards I looked at the thumbnails flicking before me and suddenly noticed a student looking exactly like Skip. Same face, same thumbnail, same personality.

Unfortunately, after looking at the characters my arrogance, stupidity or a sudden attack of neatness (maybe a combination of all) compelled me to delete the last remains of the already deleted Ottomas family (without doing a back-up first). When I entered the game the next time and tried to create a family in Strangetown it crashed. Using the usual combination of logic and magical thinking when dealing with my computer (it does not sound like a valid method but works in most cases) I discovered that it does not crash when I go into CAS in Pleasantville first. I did a bit of file maintenance removing some CC, restored the Ottomas garbage, deleted it again, none of it helps. CAS (and changing appearance in the mirror) crashes Strangetown. It does not crash with the workaround through Pleasantview CAS.
I am not sure if it is related to the deletion of the Ottomas trash. I have not created a family in Strangetown since the installation of BV. I do not really believe in the "never delete a family from the bin", because - well I do that all the time. I create replacement families, use them to replace townies and other uglies and delete them afterwards. Custom content could be responsible (although I would expect all neighbourhoods to crash then) and I do not see a relation between the families and changing appearance in a mirror. But this is were magical thinking comes in: The Ottomas family are a curse, introduced by evil game programmers trying to cause problems to innocent sims players, and I feel strongly that they are the problem.
Usually when I delete the character remains of my deleted families with SimEnhancer, the next new characters use the 'holes' and take the number and place of the deleted character. Some newly created replacement tourists did take the Ottomas numbers, but half of the slots remained empty. The teen boy and the grandmother seemed particularly faulty after copying them back and forth a few times and their numbers are unclaimed. The child girl is the only one who ever came in contact with the world outside the bin and her number was also not taken.
I will try again this evening (still too many ugly sims on vacation) to see if the slots will be used this time, but does anybody have any suggestion what could be the cause for this crashing problem?

[jsalemi]

Umm, probably deleting sims from the sim bin?  It may not cause problems at first, but eventually your hood will go up in a BFBVFS.

[Zazazu]

Yeah, if you're going to be creating and deleting families for something do yourself a favor: do it in a neighborhood you have no intention of playing, but just test crap in. That's what I did for my current set of face replacements, testing object creations, and will be doing for my future project (very exciting, and furthers my need for MOAR FACES).

[Kigan]

Umm...how long does it take to get approved for the SimPE thing? I know it says a week, but I'm still waiting, and someone even said they have been waiting for 3 weeks. Are they just real busy with finishing the testing of the version and can't get the applied people in?

And...umm...what about the merging with the one lot method and what to do with the gravestones? I asked something about that above. I've searched, but I keep finding either the well written SimPE tutorial or links back to it. Nothing about the way to SAFELY move them by putting them all on one lot.

[jsalemi]

Check back at the SimPE site periodically.  I've read here that they're getting so many requests to join the QA program that they've stopped bothering sending out emails, and are just activating your access.

[Kigan]

I just checked, and it told me it is still pending.

[Deviancy]

In earlier expansions of the sims it was possible to move families to a new neighborhood, I always ran the game with the developer mode on (boolprop) and I never had an error.  However, after I installed Bon Voyage, I started getting issues doing that, data missing types of issues, which resulted in one huge dead neighborhood.  So it is an issue,  which is lame but well, it's maxis and just because the game allows you to do it, doesn't mean you can do it heh.

As for the sims bin..

Ever since got the Sims 2.. I've deleted all three default neighborhoods and created my own neighborhood.  I just prefer going that route, I don't like using any of the default sims or the houses for that matter.  So yeah, I delete most of the familes from the sims bin as well, no issues there.  But after reading this thread, I don't think I'll do that anymore. 

I'm still moody about the corrupted neighborhood.. but it's always nice to do a little spring cleaning.. right?

[Kyna]

In earlier expansions of the sims it was possible to move families to a new neighborhood, I always ran the game with the developer mode on (boolprop) and I never had an error.

Moving families from hood to hood was always a BFBVFS waiting to happen.  Each member of the family brings along with it a character file for every sim they have ever met.  So if Fred and Joanne in your moved family had both met Sue in the old neigbhourhood, then you would have two incomplete character files for Sue in the new neighbourhood.  Multiply this by the number of sims your sims had met.  Move the real Sue over to the new hood as well, and you have 3 character files for her, as well as duplicate character files for Fred and Joanne.  You could easily run into the old character files limit of the base game (and early EPs) if you did this only a couple of times.

Just because it didn't error when you did it, it doesn't mean it wasn't going to cause your hood to have related problems further down the track.  Moving sims from one neighbourhood to another has always been a VBT to do in Sims2.

[Deviancy]

And that's exactly what happened the last time I moved familes to a new neighborhood.  In the past every time I reformatted the pc, which I used to do seasonly just to clean things up, I didn't back up my saved games.  Because I went that route I never ran into any issues because they didn't have time to pop up.  But lately since I'm using a bigger drive and it takes forever to reformat, I've been playing the same neighborhood for a few months.  So when I moved them this time, I had the issue.

So that all makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is this sims bin thing..

Now so far with this new neighborhood, the only sims I deleted were the ones that were in the bin by default.  Those sims hadn't met my newly created sims yet so there should be no memories.  However, in the old days to get rid of a sim I'd move them out and then delete them from the bin.  So this is a no no?  So the only way to get rid of a sim without dealing a possible bfbvfs is to kill them? 

[Kyna]

Yes, deleting from the sim bin is also a no-no, since it doesn't delete everything that needs to be deleted.

If you want to safely delete sims, you can follow the instructions in this thread.