Sim Census It's been a topic now and then -- at what population level does a neighborhood implode? In other words, for those new to the forum, the game has a limited capacity, within each neighborhood, in managing all the files that are created by playing the game. The maxiumum population level, including townies and NPCs, is not infinite. J.M. Pescado explained it somewhere around here and has said the limit is about 800 sims. I did a quick census of my neighborhoods, looking at the number of files in the characters folder for each one of them. I've been playing with some of them for a long time. From the least to the most populous: High Desert: 177 (Where Errol and Harcourt found Alka, and had a magic carpet ride) Veronaville: 259 (Which I've never played, except to experiment with new EPs) The Valley: 356 (the Andromeda Rose story neighborhood, mostly populated with monsters) Pleasantview: 454 (where Dagmar has moved in with the Oldies, and where Errol traveled back in time to see his mother. His teenage self is still walking around there. Very funny to see.) Baltimore: 541 (original home of Duke Sidewalker, my detective, and the Dear Emmy story crowd--pictures deleted now.) Strangetown: 554 (Original home to Errol and Kate Waring, and the robot, Ironsides) :bomb: Ivensland: 693 (new home to Errol and Kate, Joe and Ania Harcourt, and many others, from the Ironsides story.) Adding Downtown, Bluewater suburbs, and University to these neighborhoods adds significantly to the population. High Desert, for example, has none of those. The other big no-no I committed with Ivensland was to import Errol's family (packaged the household from Strangetown and then installed it in Ivensland) and thereby duplicated all sorts of creatures, like the social bunny. When I started the Andromeda Rose story I first downloaded JMPs 'no townie regeneration hack,' thank goodness. Wish I'd done it before starting Ironsides. Now I wonder what the Pets EP has done to the population. I think Ivensland is toast. :ghost: Too bad. Hmmmm. Wonder if I could package all the key families...create an entirely new neighborhood...use the delete all sims cheat (to remove any townies there) and then install the key families, like Errol's household, Joe's household, Etienne, a couple of others. Would it work? The neighborhood's gonna crash and burn anyway.
Bringing up this slightly older thread for a moment to offer pictures of some Ivensland residents: (Posted to the gallery) Iven Harcourt II: http://forums.worldsims.org/gallery/showimage.php?i=1787&c=33 His current love interest, Claire: http://forums.worldsims.org/gallery/showimage.php?i=1788&c=33 His older sister, Simone: http://forums.worldsims.org/gallery/showimage.php?i=1786&c=33 And his Aunt Roanna, younger sister to his mother Ania. Roanna is the third child of Errol and Kate Waring. Roanna is in the same college dorm. http://forums.worldsims.org/gallery/showimage.php?i=1789&c=33 Just thought some people might be curious about Joe and Ania's crop of children. I'll have to go look for a picture of their youngest. He's not so handsome as his older brother Iven. In fact, he's quite goofy looking.
Here he is, Errol Harcourt. It's the eyes from Granddad. Maybe he'll look better grown up. http://forums.worldsims.org/gallery/showimage.php?i=1790&c=33
Tropico, home of Bender, has 455 people, not including a Bluewater, and only one University. Knox Patch, home of Franz, surprisingly had 420 people, including a Bluewater, but it was only on generation 2 and not generation 6. I wonder if I ought to play Knox Patch again to see if it works on this computer. I have it backed up on my brother's.
Uh oh! I just checked my neighbourhood folder 4 where I created Bliss Beach and it has 862 character files. Guess I need to start filling up the other 2 nhoods I created. I don't use the Maxis ones. I didn't know about the limit for each nhood. Thanks for raising the issue Lynet. Edit: My Blue Springs nhood has 453 characters already, and I thought that was my 'empty' nhood LOL. My other custom nhood is truly empty of custom characters so I guess that's gonna have to be my next nhood to play.
862 !!! :shocked: . Must be that JMPs comment about 800 sims being the max was an estimate. I seem to recall that Mirelly supported his opinion. I'm going to see if I can find it. I thought they said that the 800 even included dead sims, because they remain as files. Perhaps EA and Maxis have tweaked the software to give it more leeway, what with Pets and all.
Well, I have looked and looked (via search function) and cannot find the discussion about sim neighborhood limits anywhere. If someone else can point it out or correct my memory of it, I'd appreciate it. I'm just a little worried about Ivensland and how much more I can play in that neighborhood (a neighborhood which I originally did not intend to maintain for very long. Funny how we get attached.) Edited to add: I just found some discussion by Mirelly. It's a short thread. http://forums.worldsims.org/showthread.php?p=108989
Thanks for the link Lynet. Well I'm guessing that Maxis has increased the 'limit' as I have definitely have 862 character files in that neighbourhood - none are dead characters (I don't let my sims die). So far I haven't had any problems with the game. I do have packaged lots with families in there from another nhood though (I know, I'm bad). Well I have deicded to do a complete backup of the game for when I get withdrawal, and now have uninstalled everything with the intention of doing a clean re-installation. So far I have reinstalled Sims 2 and University. I am going to finish reinstalling NL, OFB and Pets, then will start again with a brand new nhood. I am going to gradually reintroduce some packaged lots (without families) and my 2 Gig downloads folder will be massively culled. Gonna be ruthless. I haven't played Sims 2 on a regular basis since May last year (strangely coinciding with becoming a Maplestory addict ). I'm liking the idea of restarting Sims 2.
I'm thinking they must have done some reprogramming of this particular bug. I used to only play with one neighborhood total. That's where all my Sims lived, played, worked, etc. It imploded once it hit 811 characters. The neighborhood I'm playing now has 777 (ooh, lucky number!), and doesn't seem to be affected much. I sure hope they've changed things, because I would seriously cry if I had to start completely over again. I even lost some houses because I hadn't packaged them, and once the neighborhood went down, I couldn't do ANYTHING in it. *runs off to package all lots in neighborhood*
This is all so completely fascinating. To summarize the problem we are all facing: 1) 800 (an approximation, apparently) is an upper bound for character files. 2) We can't delete sims without causing serious problems. 3) Ghosts are part of the count, so we can't kill them. 4) Sims multiply. (have babies ) 5) Expansion packs arrive more and more frequently, and add even more townies and NPCs. :banghead: :hissyfit: :boxedin: :gnasher: I don't really see a solution, other then abandoning your favorite sims and starting new neighborhoods until there are sim neighborhoods covering your entire harddrive. Have I left anything out? So when's Sims3 due? 2008? I can't wait.
Ok - following some PMs, I followed Lynet's advice and did a lil experiment. I checked the number of character files in a new neighbourhood and it came to 160. Some of those 160 files had one date of creation, others had a different date (I assume related to different EPs or the different days the EPs were added to the game). So, in a new nhood, I placed a house from the lots bin that had a brand new sim with it - I had created a sim from CAS and placed that sim in the house but never actually played the game, ie never met any townies. The character files folder for that nhood simply added ONE file. I then added a lot from the lots bin that had a family in from a previous nhood. This time, it added over 60 character files. So - with that in mind, I now know that the sims I had created previously with CAS (and placed in a lot and saved/ packaged immediately before playing) do NOT generate the extra character files even though they were made in a different nhood. The problem is, I only have a handful of brand new sims from CAS in my lots bin. So, I accepted that I should start again and create new sims. Guess what? Somehow somewhere some Maxis default things are missing - for example, the 3 eyebrow settings in the modifier tab? now I only have one (the tapered one). I have no idea where the other 2 went, but I'm guessing that the custom ones may have overwritten/removed some Maxis data? Not only that but the sim's faces in CAS have a weird shadow across the nose that makes it look like a chunk of their nose is missing in the middle. The sim I made also had this effect in the game when I placed her on a lot. *sigh* I should really start all over again. BTW, also I have known for a while that my sims could no longer have 'Pork Chops' as an option from the refrigerator (I heard that a custom lipstick somewhere had code in to cause that). I want my pork chops and eyebrows back! It's gonna be tedious to go through my downloads folder and pick out the files I really want, and then test them in the game to see which have caused these changes. I have a few thousand files in there.... EDIT: Ok, I found out something weird - I replaced my old game with the brand new clean installation folder for Uni, NL, HH, OFB and Pets. Seems that even with no custom content (other than the Happy Holiday stuff), the issues are there. Moreso, I took some weird screenshots in CAS. Found the 2 missing eyebrow files - they were there all the time but with a * in the pic, and the names that showed when the mouse hovered over them was: uuface_browcombed, and uuface_browbushy. Also had cacti sprouting on the hills amongst regular trees in a new lush background nhood. Weird. More details and screenies later. Gonna do a clean reinstall again but this time will check the game after each EP is added.
Thanks, Hugz, for doing that experiment. Wow, 60 files added. I can easily imagine the damage I did moving Errol and Kate. Here's a thought that just occurred to me--Hugz' experiment was with a brand new neighborhood and a packaged sim+house from another neighborhood. What happens to the neighborhood count if you remove a sim family to the bin and just leave them there? I'm not talking about packaging from one neighborhood to another. I'm just thinking about trying to reduced the neighborhood count. I have quite a few boring families I never play and wouldn't mind moving to the bin.
So the answer to my own question is nothing. Moving sims from the neighborhood to the bin doesn't help solve the population explosion problem. It was a faint hope, but I needed to prove it to myself. By the way, when I opened Veronaville it went through the clickety-clack of installing Pets. That action added 67 new character files to the census without my doing anything else.
Porta de Luca has 722. Veronaville has 448. So far I can still play both just fine, though PDL takes a long time to load even with my new chip.
