My Neighborhood Is a Freakin' Mess!!! Note to JMP: Unlike you, I am an emotional female. Therefore, this would not be a good time to say, "I told ya so." Even though I know you did. Three Times. You did everything past standing over me and smaking my hands away from the mouse." Note to newbies: This is an example of how things can go very, very wrong. Please learn by my mistakes. Okay, why am I whining? Well, my favorite neighborhood is shot all the H-E-double hocky sticks. This neighborhood was the one that I did the clean reinstall back in March. Many, many hours of gameplay with this one neighborhood. I had about 100 CAS made or game-born sims. All my custom houses. All this family relationships, family drama, etc. And the sad thing is, I messed it up, just like JMP said I would. 1st, I deleted the "dormies" in the family bin on my campus back when I 1st created my custom campus, oh, back in April. A couple of weeks ago, I binned two inhabited Uni lots and moved them from one campus to another. JMP says all these are big no-nos and will courpt the neighborhood. I didn't think that moving an inhabited lot from one campus to another would hurt since it was in the same neighborhood. Nope, all those Sims forgot their friends and relations. I just retextured my neighborhood. It went well, everything looks beautiful. I moved the lots around with the lot tool. So, I tried to load up my favorite family, the Jerrys. The retexturing had moved their house beside a beautiful river. Well, I never got to see how pretty it now looked, because the lot wouldn't load. The white line would go all the way across on the top of the load screen, and then it would stop. I had to alt-ctrl-delete to get out of it. So, I reloaded the neighborhood and played their nextdoor neighbor, another Jerry relation. Well, this house loaded and played fine, but he had lost all his relationships!!! I opened up SimsPE, and found out that I have 801 character files!!!! So, about 700 are townies or "Unknown". I repaired Kyle Jerry's relationships with his family, and checked for more lost relationships, found a few, but couldn't repair many of them because they were showing as "unknown sims". I made one last attempt with the Jerrys. I moved them out of their lot, (goodbye cow plant and cemetary!) and moved them into another lot. They still froze up the game. JMP says that once we get to around 800 character files in a neighborhood, it's pretty much toast. Well, since I did not make 800 sims, I can only assume that they were created when I deleted the dormies back in april, and then binned the two greek houses and moved them to the other campus. So, it's courrupted, isn't it? Is it even worth trying to repair it?
Ah geez, Kristal, I'm so sorry! Did everything work okay until you retextured the lot? I hope someone can help you fix it. I'd even let Pescado say "I told you so" if he could make your neighborhood work.
I don't think it was the retexturing the neighborhood, I don't see how that would have created all those unknown sims. But, then again, I could be wrong. Thanks for they sympathy, Zydeco. If I have to delete my sims, then it will be the 3rd time I've had to start from scratch. The thing I love so much about TS2 is building relationships and and families. Well, can't really do that when I have to keep starting over. :(
Ah Kristal. I know just how you feel. I must admit that I looked at the dialog concerning retexturing neighborhoods with a lot of skepticism. Now I know I don't want to try it.
Kristal, sorry to hear about your loss.. have you posted this over at moreawesomethanyou.com ? There's a lot of clued up people there that can assist you with repairing this. From what it seems like ... it might be a bit of hard work. My suggestions may or may not help ... but I would think that its not related to your neighbourhood change, but more to your moving of occupied lots around and the creation of duplicate files. If you are willing to wait I will have a look using SimPE on one of my neighbourhoods later and give you some suggestions (which I can't do now as I don't know if my suggestions would work without adequate testing).
Yeah, sure, they aren't going anywhere. LOL I thought about posting over at MATY, but I was afraid that over there, I'd look stupid and lipless.
Here's My Trouble (Or Maybe My Sign?) I have, like, three of each sim!!! How the heck did that happen?? I'm going to try deleting the extra sims.http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v252/kristalrose/SimsPEGoneWild.jpg
Kristal darlin' the extra sims are caused by the importaion of families from one hood (or campus) to another. Didn't you mention doing that?
Interesting ... well for me anyway. I think I will try recreating this in a test neighbourhood and see if I can offer some advice. I have the theory that you have 1 "main" file and 2 duplicates ... the 2 duplicates should not have as much data as the main file. But thats just a theory.
Yep, Mirelly, that's probably how I did it. I moved two lots. That must have made 2 duplicates of all my Sims. It's just amazing to me. I feel so stupid. Gary: All those sims read "No Character Data" in SimsPE. My real sims do not read that way. I haven't went back and tried it (had too much real life get in the way, LOL) but can't I just delete the duplicate sims? How would I go about safely doing that?
OK I'm thinking that you have a situation something like this: You have 3 "files" that read for example "Joe Sim". The first has data ... the next two have the "No Character Data" you were speaking about. So I'm guessing you have two sims, or maybe two families that you moved between neighbourhoods. You would need to go to these sims and link their memories and relationships to the CORRECT version. To help with this, rename Joe Sim's 2 blank files as Joe Sim2 and Joe Sim3 ... now you know which Joe Sim to link in the relationships and memories. This should fix those sims/families that you moved. Now you would delete Joe Sim2 and Joe Sim3 from SimPE. I assume that SimPE would delete the files from the neighbourhood directory when doing this. You can check this by seeing the file count in the relevant directory, deleting a test sim, and then checking the file count again. At this stage, this is pure conjecture so use with caution. My point of attack would be to fix those relationships first, without deleting any sims and then see if the game loads the relevant families. Also another point ... say for example one of the sims you yanked out of the neighbourhood was called Jane Doe and she was friends with Joe Sim. In Joe Sim's character file ... is his relationship pointing to Jane Doe? Is Jane Doe's relationship pointing to Joe Sim? Its possible it needs two way connections (a relationship link in both files) and this could be causing issues when loading Joe Sim's lot.
OK Kristal, you did a big whoopsie now it's time to try and fix it. How attached are you to those sims in the neighbourhood anyway? Try to think of the bonuses of a clean install...you can go through your download folder without any worry of disrupting any sim houses, all the new sims you could now create, the new story lines you can imagine, getting the genetics just right, think of how much faster your game could run without all that extra stuff that you don't really need or want, and think of also, nightlife is not far away now so you most likely would want to start afresh anyways (well, if your like me you do). Do you really want to go through every file in the hope of finding something that may be lost forever? There may be a way to fix what you have done. This is the pessimist in me talking, I'm sure all is not lost or irreparable, but really, how many people opt for the hard way of doing something? And on a last note Kristal, don't do that again....
I think that these dulicate sims are the sims that were showing up as unknown before. I updated SimsPe, so maybe now it's reading them. Because when I first started having this problem I couldn't see all these duplicate sims. So, Gary, you don't think that just by deleting out the duplicates that will fix it? I actually have to go throuh all my Sims and fix their memories and relationships as well? Sylla, I started a new neighborhood and have been playing that one, but it's just not the same. I miss my Sims. I have re-made some of my favorites, but it's starting over again, and when Napoleon Bonypart and Tina Jerry have already lived very full lifetimes in my "Simsville" neighborhood, and then have to start over in "River Valley", well, it's frustrating to me. I may have to do a complete clean install. Wonder if I can move my "River Valley Neighborhood out onto the desktop and then put it back after I do the reinstall? Will that at least save them? They are only a week old, and so far that neighborhood is working fine. Oh, and don't worry, Sylla. I think I learned my lesson.
Well after some limited testing, I reproduced the "Yank and Replace Sim Duplication" issue in a test neighbourhood, and saw the duplicated files. However deleting them in SimPE accomplished nothing, so I deleted the actual files in my neighbourhood directory (SimPE at least told me which file corresponded). However I couldn't view relationships in SimPE, so I started downloading the new est version. Also started downloading a copy of DatGen, for comparison while I'm at it. After just deleting the duplicated character files (which seemed to be a standard size of 22-23k while non-empty character files seemed to be 220k and upwards), I tested my test neighbourhood, and checked the yanked and non-yanked sims I created and everything seemed fine. Will confirm later on relationships/memories as I need to test those. One possible solution could be just to remove the files in your neighbourhood that are 22-23k as those seem to be the blank character files.
Well, I tried to delete the sims, but it was just too much. Then I tried to load several backups in the neighborhood browser, and it was so messed up it couldn't load the backups. So, I did a clean reinstall. Today, I go over to JMP's site, and here I read this: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=473.0 WAAAAAAA!!! It wasn't my fault!!!!! I didn't have to "kill" off my Simmies, just wait for the updated SimsPE to fix them!!!!
I had the same thing happen! I thought it might be SimPE causing it. I periodically get frustrated with the program and delete it. I downloaded a new version when I was trying to create all my new neighborhood characters. I used deleteAllCharacters and had not put any people in the game. I wanted to adjust something minor in SimPE and every time I touched anything I ended up with a second and then third clone. I couldn't get anything to delete. I thought it was just my inept use of SimPe and I deleted the program. I thought about asking everyone here to throw themselves across the cyber portal of amberstation if I even thought about using it again. I re-did this neighborhood for the third time. Thanks for pointing that thread out. I don't feel quite so stupid. I wish they would make a small simple version to adjust just minor character data. I end up having to download inSiminator periodically to adjust relationships. I hate using it but I find all the bells and whistles on SimPE overwhelming.
