Missing members ... I mean REALLY misisng members .... SOLVED

[gazania]

It seems that every time my computer has a major hardware or software update, my game runs the risk of going vanilla, losing an entire neighborhood (which is what happened the last time I had a new video card installed) or doing something similarly freaky. I've learned to back up my game on the desktop at least once every month (frequently more than that), and back up on a DVD at least every two months. Better to lose a few weeks than one or more YEARS of gameplay!

This one is a new level of freaky. Back in June, because my 9600GT was having blackout issues (I'm sure a couple of you helpful people are shuddering ... yes ... I was THAT poster), I got an ATI 4850.

When I first loaded the game, it crashed, but didn't crash again, so I didn't worry about it. I played a bunch of families in different neighborhoods, everything seemed hunky-dory, and I have continued to play when I can since then.

I entered a house I rarely played about a month ago, and was surprised to see that one of the kids was missing. I mean, REALLY missing. She wasn't anywhere .... not even in Sim PE. She was now a "[simoleon sign]Subject" in other Sims' memories. Summoning her didn't help. While she was in the family portrait right before you enter the house, she was NOT in the family portrait when you entered the neighborhood. I thought that perhaps I was a little too silly with the Insimenator's selecting/de-selecting feature. I know that if you aren't careful, you CAN de-select a Sim ... permanently!  Since it wasn't a household I played often, I paid little mind to it. Nothing else strange happened in that household since then.

Last night, I went into another household I rarely played, and discovered that 3/4 of the family members disappeared the same way. One family member in two other families disappeared as well. Once again, REALLY disappeared. One family actually crashed because apparently, the disappearing wife of one of the Sims must have been sleeping in a custom bed, and when she disappeared, the bed did also, but glitched the house in the process. Yes, i did the whole Download thing ... isolated folders, tried groups at a time, etc. I use this bed in most of my houses, and it has not glitched those. I think it was specifically related to the occupant of the bed.

I moved the family out into another house, put a new custom bed in it, and everything worked fine ... just missing that Sim.

I've been playing these missing-Sim families a little more often now, and everything seems normal, other than the missing members. I've checked all my other families in other neighborhoods, and it was just the one member in Pleasantview, and five members in the one Pleasantview neighborhood that were affected. Everyone else is fine.

My plan is to probably use aging-on with these Sims and have them die happily in their twilight years. If their stupidity causes them to meet Grimmie faster, so be it. As I wrote, these Sims were not among my favorites.

As far as anyone knows, will playing Sims with missing family members hurt my game in the long run? I know I've had to delete glitched Sims in the past, including those who created memories, and things turned out fine.

Also, these missing Sims WERE in my backup CD which I made right before I changed video cards. Why they didn't show up in the game is a good question, but then again, this IS my game we're talking about, and this game DOES work strangely whenever I do a major update. (If I know I have to do one, I actually now make a backup automatically on my desktop.) It has worked strangely on and off since 2006, when I first played it.

Is there any way to put these missing Sims in the new game? I'm thinking not because I saved the game since then, have created Sims, etc. Even if I could, is it worth the effort? Perhaps I should just move the remaining female Sim in that one family into the same house as one of the now-single dads and free up a house! (I wouldn't have them get married, since I'm not sure how the game perceives their status.)  Both families got glitched, anyway!

Thanks for any useful advice you folks can offer. As for reinstalling, I have to admit ... it concerns me if I am trying to keep all my Sims. It just seems to me that it takes a very long time (right now, time is not an ally), and too much can go glitchy. And when my husband tried to "help" me once, he downloaded a program that messed up the Seasons installer, so that's another reason why I don't want to re-install unless I REALLY have to. If need be in the future, I'll back up my game just in case, do a clean reinstall and start my neighborhoods from scratch, tidy up my Downloads folder, and hope for the best.

P.S. I've learned now to check EVERY family after completing a major update!

[Chaavik]

Why are you using Inseminator? That tells you something is broken with Inseminator, and that there are risks involved in using an unsupported mod that has not been updated for FT and AL/MG.

[gazania]

You might very well be right. Even though I have only up to Seasons, newer mods might be wreaking havoc with it.

The last time I checked, there was no select/deselect feature, which is why I didn't download it. But now, I see there is one. AND there is also a temperature control mod ... I can get rid of the one I have. I see he has a move-in-all-type mod, too. Actually, he added a LOT more than last time. (I checked it out when I was first looking for my new card, which was about six months ago.)

I suppose there would be no harm in checking it out and testing it ... just don't save for now. This is further convincing me after I had to re-download Insim because it glitched when I re-inserted it,  I went into a lot and my baby became a shadow. Fortunately, the move_objects cheat fixed that, but it did give me a fright.

(And no, no. NO! I'm not asking for Inism support! Don't bring out the Iron Maiden ... and I DON'T mean the group!)

[ancienthighway]

Better to lose a few weeks than one or more YEARS of gameplay!

How many years are you talking about?  It may be that your neighborhood has grown so large it's becoming unstable and sims are coming up missing due to limited internal constraints.

[gazania]

Three years, and I don't believe that I've been too greedy with the new Sims. In Pleasantview, I have custom Sims in only two Uni dorms (no large dorms), two Downtown houses, five houses in a second Downtown neighborhood, and five houses in the shopping district. I still have many spaces for lots in Pleasantview ... I don't cram them.  I've asked on different forums in the past about how many Sims a town can take, and the best figure I could get is, for a good system, was 1000 or fewer ... and that includes all townies and NPCs. I have way below that ... in the 600's, INCLUDING all townies and NPCs.

Just as an experiment, my daughter and I noted the base neighborhood total, then added just the Uni dorm, and found out that a good chunk of your total Sims ARE townies and NPCs you barely see. (Little wonder why some people have mods to thin them out.)

This type of problem has been around for a long time, back when Pleasantview was the only neighborhood I played, but it usually involves vanilla or partial vanilla games, not missing Sims. I just have to remember to back up my game WHENEVER I have a major update, and thoroughly check the game afterward. I did the first one, but didn't do the second.


Note ... I did check my SimPE files, and there were 945 character files. Only about 15% of them were mine. EA's population explosions are pretty ridiculous! Ancienthighway was probably right.

I backed up my old neighborhood in case I got nostalgic and wanted it back, or something messed up, packaged seven favorite lots (of which one disappeared, and one refused to load ... oh, well), downloaded Pescado's anti-redundancy mods (NPCs, Townies, Dormies, SS members AND Strays), and reset the neighborhood. I'm now working with four new Sims in a back-to-base-game-Pleasantview. (I decided to leave the game-generated townies, etc. in there.) Resetting is easy, and not as nearly upsetting as I thought. 3 1/2 years with one neighborhood has been a good run. Time for something new. I do have to admit to being more excited about playing Pleasantview again. I made a lot of mistakes with Pleasantview. A LOT of them, like liberally deleting from the Sim Bin. It felt good to erase my errors in just a few clicks. I wish I could erase more of life's errors that way!

So I suppose this is solved, one way or another. Time to mark it so.