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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 4th Apr 2019 at 5:11 PM Last edited by Bubbel97 : 2nd Mar 2020 at 5:59 PM.

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage, Free Time, Apartment Life
Default Properly deleting premade unlinked/dead sims - effect on neighbourhood corruption?
I play in Maxis Veronaville since 6 years back with my own sims. I now know this 'hood is corrupted from the start and I made it worse when I started playing it back in the day, I deleted tombs, premade sims, etc because I didn’t know any better. Today my 'hood seems to be running fine bc I’ve done everything you can do to limit the corruption with mods and programs. I’m far too attached to my current families so starting over isn’t an option.

So there are a lot of dead or improperly deleted premade Maxis sims in my 'hood, the Capps, Montys and all their ancestors. They appear in pie menus from various mods, and clog up the character file folder. I’ve never interacted with them since deleting them the bad way and I want them gone. I’ve deleted memories of them from all Townies who had them. None of my now living sims have ever interacted with the dead/deleted premades, nor are they related. It bothers me that they are floating around in my 'hood and I want to tidy up.

My questions are:
  • If I use SimPE and the tutorial to wipe out all the deleted premades in the safest way we know, could this speed up or slow down the corruption of the hood?
  • If new sims are born will they get the character file numbers from the deleted sims, possibly damaging them?
  • Could this cause more shredded character data to be spread around?

Today I have only a few visible signs of corruption in my game and I can fix most of the stuff I see. Maybe I shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken, as my 'hood still runs fine, but I know for a fact it is broken and I don’t know what’s going on in the background. Does anyone have some experience with this?

UPDATE: If anyone else is in the same situation: Deleting them properly won't make your hood blow up instantly but backup before! And check for damage thoroughly with the HoodChecker after purging any character files. There is a big risk of accidentally nuking a file you didn't want to nuke. But now the hood is all clear from those old sims and I have peace of mind. Now my runaway teen won't come home pregnant with a Capp who should have been deleted six real years ago (which was the last straw for me.)

It's been 6 months now since I purged the premades and my 'hood is still going strong, 7 years after corruption started! So don't fret, corruption is not always the big "dangerous" scary thing everyone makes it out to be. Sometimes it can be handled (without HoodChecker I don't know what I would do...)
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Alchemist
#2 Old 4th Apr 2019 at 7:17 PM
I'll be watching this to see what comes of it, but I was just wondering, have you already used HoodChecker on it, because that might take care of some of it safely? And I assume you have a backup, right?
Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 4th Apr 2019 at 8:49 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Sunrader
I'll be watching this to see what comes of it, but I was just wondering, have you already used HoodChecker on it, because that might take care of some of it safely? And I assume you have a backup, right?


Yes, I use HoodChecker regularly (I think it saved my hood!) but a lot of the issues it reports has to do with the deleted premades ("subject does not exist"). It can't fix all of that and I haven't dared to mess with it myself. I'm backing up religiously but the corruption happened so many years ago.
Alchemist
#4 Old 4th Apr 2019 at 10:19 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Bubbel97
Yes, I use HoodChecker regularly (I think it saved my hood!) but a lot of the issues it reports has to do with the deleted premades ("subject does not exist"). It can't fix all of that and I haven't dared to mess with it myself. I'm backing up religiously but the corruption happened so many years ago.


I understand. I look forward to hearing what others think and best of luck with it!
Scholar
#5 Old 5th Apr 2019 at 1:20 PM
In my opinion a lot of what's written about neighbourhood corruption is a bit exaggerated. Your 'hood is still running well six years after you did do everything you shouldn't have done, that isn't bad at all.
New sims can not possibly get the character numbers (NIDs) of removed sims, each neighbourhood has a Sim Creation Index (SCID) to define the next available NID, it is incremented to the next value each time a value gets used. That means the game will never re-use a NID value for a neighbourhood even when the sim no longer exists.
The concept that 'shredded sim data' floats around looking for somewhere to stick is a bit weird, the ones and zeros on your hard drive remain where they were written they don't float around.

If you add a character into your character folder or download folder your game will add a Sim Description (SDSC) and NID for that sim next time the neighbourhood loads, conversely if you delete one the game will delete the Sim Description and NID. Deleting sims that way is extremely bad as all relationships, memories, want & fears, family ties etc. pertaining to that sim become incorrect, damaged family ties can even cause the game to freeze or crash.

Unlinking sims however does not cause corruption the sim's NID remains valid so all relationships, memories, want & fears, family ties etc. pertaining to that sim also remain valid. Having a bunch of unlinked sims is just messy but not game breaking. Deleting Tombstones is not a big deal. Maxis set them up to unlink the dead sim if you manually delete them, quite correctly assuming that if you kill the sim and delete the only reminder of the deceased then you don't want that sim anymore. Maxis actually set the whole game up so that there is no way you can delete a sim ingame but just unlink them, they clearly knew deleting sims is a problem.

I'd agree that since you 'hood is still running well then 'if it ain't broke don't fix it', and do remember to make a regular backup (a bad save with SimPE can corrupt a 'hood).
Test Subject
Original Poster
#6 Old 5th Apr 2019 at 5:38 PM Last edited by Bubbel97 : 6th Apr 2019 at 9:05 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by Chris Hatch
In my opinion a lot of what's written about neighbourhood corruption is a bit exaggerated. Your 'hood is still running well six years after you did do everything you shouldn't have done, that isn't bad at all.
New sims can not possibly get the character numbers (NIDs) of removed sims, each neighbourhood has a Sim Creation Index (SCID) to define the next available NID, it is incremented to the next value each time a value gets used. That means the game will never re-use a NID value for a neighbourhood even when the sim no longer exists.
The concept that 'shredded sim data' floats around looking for somewhere to stick is a bit weird, the ones and zeros on your hard drive remain where they were written they don't float around....


Thanks! This is very helpful, especially about the unlinking since I have some of those playables, who were sadly lost due to broken urns before I had the nounlinkondelete installed. Maybe I can still save some of them by re-linking them. Indeed a lot of the things written about corruption is really dramatic so it's easy to worry that the hood is literally going to implode one of these days, but I don't think so.

So essentially, having these sims remain in the hood has no effect on the corruption as long as they remain untouched? I guess removing them won't make any difference either then, except for getting a cleaner character folder.

(By the way, I love your mods!!)
Alchemist
#7 Old 5th Apr 2019 at 6:00 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Chris Hatch

I'd agree that since you 'hood is still running well then 'if it ain't broke don't fix it', and do remember to make a regular backup (a bad save with SimPE can corrupt a 'hood).


@Chris Hatch, would you mind explaining this a bit more. I've used SimPE hood backups for years and only recently realized people warned against it.
Mad Poster
#8 Old 5th Apr 2019 at 8:08 PM
I don't see why anyone would even use SimPE to create backups, when you can simply copy and paste your whole The Sims 2 folder onto anything for later.

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Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
Alchemist
#9 Old 5th Apr 2019 at 8:55 PM Last edited by Sunrader : 5th Apr 2019 at 9:10 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by Rosebine
I don't see why anyone would even use SimPE to create backups, when you can simply copy and paste your whole The Sims 2 folder onto anything for later.


Because I'm in SimPE all the time and, much of the time, about to do something slightly risky, so it reminds me to back up that particular hood before I do, then it automatically puts it somewhere else with a date and will easily restore it when I mess up. It's very convenient. I don't have to go out and copy it somewhere or retrieve it or decide where to put it or anything... so I want to know why people say it's not trustworthy. I know, obviously, that some changes i could make would affect files outside the hood file, so I do occasionally back up the whole Sims 2 folder, but certainly not every time I mess with a single hood. So, I still want to know why I shouldn't keep using SimPE for the individual hoods themselves.
Mad Poster
#10 Old 5th Apr 2019 at 10:06 PM
That makes much sense.

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Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
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retired moderator
#11 Old 5th Apr 2019 at 10:42 PM
I don't think Chris meant that there is a problem with using SimPE to make a backup, just that you should make regular backups. If SimPE is interrupted when saving changes you've made to a neighbourhood, it could potentially corrupt the files and render the hood unplayable. Once I had a neighbourhood open in SimPE but when I saved we had a power cut, and after that the neighbourhood was not recognised by the game.
Scholar
#12 Old 6th Apr 2019 at 1:38 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Sunrader
@Chris Hatch, would you mind explaining this a bit more. I've used SimPE hood backups for years and only recently realized people warned against it.


I'd never warn against using SimPe, I spend most of my days in SimPe, we couldn't reasonably mod the game without it. If SimPE throws an out of memory error and allows a continue option and you use that option then it's likely to severely corrupt the file when you save it. I have lost several files to that including a neighbourhood file (of which I did have a backup).

I back my neighbourhood up by copying the whole neighbourhood folder to a second hard drive to ensure the lots and characters are also backed up. I've never used Simpe's backup option, I just haven't had the need to.
Field Researcher
#13 Old 20th May 2019 at 9:07 AM
If you deleted graves without nounlinkondelete, you might be able to restore those Sims by replacing missing resources from the character file with ones extracted from a clone. I can’t find the tutorial for it, but it’s usually used for deceased Maxis Sims. Just note that they will no longer have any relationships they had before dying.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#14 Old 9th Jun 2019 at 12:42 PM
Quote: Originally posted by mate54
If you deleted graves without nounlinkondelete, you might be able to restore those Sims by replacing missing resources from the character file with ones extracted from a clone. I can’t find the tutorial for it, but it’s usually used for deceased Maxis Sims. Just note that they will no longer have any relationships they had before dying.


I would really love some kind of tutorial or help on how to replace the resources, because I have some sims that I really regret losing in this hood (by accident), they were important to the legacy. I can add their relationships later with SimPe.
Field Researcher
#15 Old 9th Jun 2019 at 3:23 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Bubbel97
I would really love some kind of tutorial or help on how to replace the resources, because I have some sims that I really regret losing in this hood (by accident), they were important to the legacy. I can add their relationships later with SimPe.

I found the guide for this method of resurrection, using clones. You should make clones in a separate throwaway hood, and you don't have to worry about their personalities, aspirations, or chemistry, because the original Sims retained those.
You may be able to use this method for any Sims deleted from Family bin as well, and your own deleted gravestones (but you'll also have to fix their relationships).
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