Can I restore from the Family Bin?

[conrodme]

Hi Everyone,

My d-s-l (dumb son in law deleted several key families when he was house-sitting for us this past weekend.

He sent them to the family bin and then deleted them.  Yikes!!  I installed the insimenator hoping to restore them but either I'm not doing it right or it's not for my issue.

Does anyone have a solution for this?  I know that they still 'exist' in the family trees of other families.

Thanks,

Conrodme

[pandasan]

Their character files should still exist in the neighborhood, but you won't be able to bring them back by regular game means. You could use SimPE to extract them and re-make them, and then you could also use it to replace their memories.. probably a tedious process though >.<;

[wanda1000]

Yep, even though they exist in memories, they don't "exist" in game. Pandasan is correct in saying you can recreate them using SimPE, but they won't have the memories unless you recreate them. It is a lot of work.

Do you have a recent back up of your game? If so, replace those files in game. Don't make the mistake I made by only putting in the missing files of the deleted sims,those sims aren't with the current gameplay and I really made a mess with family memories.

The first rule of gameplay is NEVER delete sims or sim occupied houses. It can mess up the entire hood. As neighbors and everyone they have met has memories of them.

Excuse me for saying but if someone did that to my game, I'd smash each one of their fingers that touched a key and kick them out the door forever. What a terrible abuse of someone's property. Or I'd go to their home and screw up something of theirs and teach them a lesson. I am afraid that he more than likely messed up your game permanently. Putting in a back up is the easiest solution. Create a password to your user account so no one can access your user account again.

[conrodme]

Thanks Pandasan.  I probably won't attempt it then as I don't have SimPE or know how to use it.  The time consuming process wouldn't bother me but since I don't know what I'm doing - I'd be afraid to screw up the rest of the families.

And thanks Wanda too - hind sight is 20-20.  I have no idea why he would do something like that.  I had built 4 generations of different families over the past 2 years that actually mimicked our own real life families.  And the odd thing was - that one of them was actually his own daughter - idiot

Solution - put away my sims discs and make back ups when he comes to house sit or better yet - I'll ask someone else.

[MaryH]

I'd ask him why he felt he had the right to not only play on your computer, but also to play the game, when he undoubtedly knew that you had been playing it-I'd be very upset if ANYONE did that to my computer, or my game..my husband doesn't dare to even touch my computer without a reason, and he only keeps it running right.
It's your property, and he ruined it. What a jerk! (sorry, I get carried away.)

[conrodme]

Well, I decided to venture and download SimPE.  I was wondering if anyone would be able to give me a step by step tutorial on how to restore the family - if even to just the family bin to start.  SimPE knowledge base was not particularly helpful and contradictive.  And I haven't been able to contact their support team.

First I made a back up

I have found all the missing families using the sim browser.  This is what I have discovered so far.

After loading the Neighbourhood under Tools using the Neighbour Browser and then locating the individuals in the sim browser, the headshot has a small blue square that indicates it as an unlinked character.  

It has another little pink / red square beside it that indicates it has no character data.

The Household column shows "Default" (current families in the game have the actual household name such as Goth).  

The Kind column indicates "Townie" (current families are do not have anything listed)

Under the Available column is it listed as "no character file, unlinked" which would make sense which corresponds with the 2 small squares.

When you load the problem individual from the the Sim Browser, the snapshot background is blue.  Current individuals are have a grey background.

Using a family that was actually in the family bin, I brought them up under Family Information sub menu after loading the neighbourhood to look for clues and similarities on how to get my family back there.

I was also able to see under the Family Ties Menu that the family ties were intact but...
One of the the suggestions from the SimPE Knowledge Base was to simply plop them into another current family.  This shows them in the pop up screen bar when the game is loaded but not the family screen shot loading popup or actually in the game.

The next thing I discovered was that under the More button for the individual, in the Extended Browser, that the Unlinked? is set to zero for current individuals and my problem sims were set to 1 so I took my test family and set them also to zero.

When I did this, the snapshot backgrounds turned red.  At first I thought yikes!!  But I discovered that under the Sim browser that the Available column now just reads "no character file" instead of "no character file, unlinked".

So I think I am making progress.

I'll let you know if I get any further or if anyone has more suggestions.

thanks.

[conrodme]

Okay, so I get that I need to restore the character file.  Does anyone have a clue how to do that with SimPE.  As kewl as SimPE is, I still can't contact anyone there.  It sure would be nice if they had a real Help to let you know what the program could actually do.

[conrodme]

After further research, I did discover how to access 'charcter files' but they are lacking.  It appears to not have the entire character files as other current sims, even as those in the family bin.  I feel I am loosing the battle in this one.