My Strangetown is corrupted. While my daughter and I have been trying to avoid the situation, the time has come to reset the neighborhood. We have extracted a few favorite Sims for CAS later. I've followed the MTS2 Wiki to the letter (not that this is hard!), and exported my Sims via Sim PE per the instructions. So far, so good.

I have a rather stupid question, however. My Strangetown had more than 900 Sims. I later installed a few no-regen hacks to cut down on the number of extraneous college students, townies, etc., but did not do so for the first two years.

With the new neighborhood, of course, all our user-made Sims will be gone (except for their template copies, which I HOPE are safely ensconced in the Saved Sims folder). I notice that the files have names like "N002_User 700". But if I have, let's say 500 character files in the new game, including ALL characters such as Grimmie, etc., will that be a problem? Is the game going to get confused if suddenly, there are 200 missing Sims? Or is this simply a file name, and for all the game cares, I could call it "Abraham_Lincoln", and nothing will go awry?

Sorry for the question, but the last time I reset a neighborhood, I didn't particularly care about re-creating my old Sims, and simply nuked 'em all.

This is something I've always been a bit shy to ask, even after five years of playing Sims 2, but ...

Let's say you visit a Korean site, and like what you see. You go to download it, only, since the uploader speaks Korean as a native language, there are Korean characters in the download. They come out as plus signs, etc. in your zip file.

My game doesn't recognize all the characters, and of course, the download doesn't come out. It doesn't crash the game or anything ... I just don't get anything.

Is there any way to work around this, or should I simply be content with all the non-special-charactered downloads out there? Just wondering. Thanks for not smirking ... TOO much.

P. S. I should add that quite a few of my files have special characters, but they pose no problem. With some attempts, however, I get the notation concerning the characters and the file won't show up in the game. Those downloads are what puzzle me.

P.P.S. (Since bumping this thread to post this might be considered a no-no) .... Theraven, your advice worked perfectly! Thank you!

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!

I downloaded a great neighborhood map. I really like it ... except that the creator is new to uploading and didn't include a PNG to use on the neighborhood screen, so I have a green grid picture instead of a neighborhood picture.

I remember having a similar situation before and generating a neighborhood picture. It wasn't hard, as I remember. I just can't remember how I did this, or where I went to learn to do this. Could someone point me in the right direction? Thanks!