Archived from groups: alt.games.the-sims (
More info?)
There are a number of bugs and 'features' associated with character
generation in the game.
There are some NPCs who will spawn over and over and you will see a new sim
every time you encounter that type of NPC. It's mostly NPCs on community
lots and these include: shop workers, baristas and secret society members
(though you have to alter a specific game parameter to get the extra secret
society members, I think - that is the maximum number of visiting sims. I
don't mean using the cheat, I mean altering it in a game file which I did
for University though I haven't got round to doing it again for Nightlife (I
will, even though it causes problems)). I regularly purge all these people
using SimPE (except that pretty blond one that one of my teenage boys seems
to have taken such a shine to). Some people have reported similar problems
with home-visiting NPCs (gardeners, firemen, maids etc.) but I think this is
usually related to a corrupted or lost portal on a lot. You should have
three of those sort of NPC. Be warned, however, purging NPC sims can cause
problems (I read) if the NPC in question knows one of your playable sims and
has a memory assigned to them. I've never encountered a problem, even so,
but I'm not recommending the course of action without stating the proviso.
Another problem area is importing families packaged into lots (another
problem is importing lots, full stop, in my opinion but whatever). When you
import a family: downloaded off the exchange or sent by a friend, you get
all sorts of files packaged up in the Sims2Pack file they come in. You
probably know about all the problems with custom content and how this can
lead to massive numbers of duplicates in your Downloads folder and also
things you may not want (like some of the nude skins available). BUT the
file will also contain a character file for EVERY SINGLE SIM the family you
have downloaded HAS EVER KNOWN. It's not usually a problem if the family
were just made in CAS, packed up and sent out to be downloaded (i.e. they
don't get a chance to meet anyone) but if the family have been played at
all - got a job, visited community lots/Downtown, just greeted passing
neighbours or invited in the welcoming committee - they will have memories
of sims they have met and those sims get packed up in the lot package. The
packaging system will also pack up any random sims who just happen to be on
your lot when its packed. This also happens if you transfer families from
one neighbourhood to another (which is why this is a Bad Idea). And so do
any custom skins they were wearing. You will never see these sims in the
game, except in the memories of your sims. To get rid of them, you probably
should delete the memories of them first (from the memories of your playable
sims) and then the character files. The problem is, if the sims in question
are townies, you can't easily tell which Goopy is the impostor and which one
is the one in your game. I usually change the names to find out but that
takes time and patience and a good memory - you need to spot the new names
appearing on the sims (those are the ones you keep), remember which ones
appeared and use SimPE at a later date to get rid of the others but you need
to leave enough time in between to make sure the game has a chance of
generating an appearance of all the sims who's names you changed. (Are you
still awake?) Some people spend time sorting through sim memories to find
out which sims are redundant and which are legitimate. But with 980 sims,
do you want to do that?
There are a number of other problems too but you can find full discussions
of this (and various strategies to fix it) at both Various Simmers and More
Awesome Than You. There are also some hacks (in the Critical Fixes section)
that will help prevent some of the problems that result from a bloated
neighbourhood (the inheritance system and non-generation of tombstones is
apparently one of the first symptoms). You can apparently keep a
neighbourhood going, if you're determined, with up to 2000 sims in it.
I read quite a bit in the run up to the release of Nightlife about a new
packaging system that is supposed to counter this dog's dinner but I haven't
seen it in action yet or heard anything about it since the release. But
then again, I haven't tried packaging anything up either.
Best wishes
maxon
"Homer J. Simpson" <root@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:wcmdnbEuY8GdKa_eRVn-iw@magma.ca...
> So I've been reading that TS2 starts to show odd behavior when the number
of
> sims in a neighbourhood reaches around 800. I never paid attention to
this
> figure (not even being aware of the problem in the first place), and after
> installing Nightlife, found out the Characters folder for the one
> neighbourhood I've been playing since the game came out contains over 980
> files (!)
>
> What are the "safe" ways to get rid of some of them? If the game has the
> smarts to "clean up" broken things if I go on a rampage and just start
> deleting files, then great, but OTOH how do I determine that a given sim's
> data is stored in a particular file? I have sims I spent a lot of time
> working on and wouldn't want to go away, but OTOH I have dead characters
who
> can be deleted without me giving it any second thought.
>
>
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