[MAC USER] Disappearing sims! Help!

[ill_masta]

After downloading a bunch of stuff, (mostly hairstyles and clothes, no hacks or anything like that) I went into my game and about half of my families had misteriously disappeared from their houses and were nowhere to be found. I searched my computer for any files with N004 (since it was the fourth neighborhood where this happened) and nothing besides what was in the Sims 2 folder came up, so I know I didn't accidentally misplace them.

So,
1) What happened?
2) Can I get my sims back?
3) Is there anyway to prevent this from happening again?

Thanks so much!

[simsample]

The only thing I can suggest to try is to use the testing cheats (boolprop testingcheatsenabled true) to attempt to summon the missing sims to a different lot, via the 'add neighbour to family' command or similar. How successful this is depends upon whether the character files are still intact; and of course if certain character files are corrupted/ deleted it could be that your entire neighbourhood is hosed. No explanations as to why this would happen; to prevent it happening again the only suggestion would be to make frequent backups.
http://www.modthesims2.com/article.php?p=1105148

[backdropJunkie]

This is happening to me as well, except I haven't downloaded any custom content in about 3 weeks. I started up Nightlife, and half the sims in my neighborhood have vanished without a trace. It's weird though, because families of mine that have children still have all the kids, and only one adult in the household. Also, a few of the pre-made families by maxis have vanished too.

I even backed up my neighborhood, and re-installed. It didn't help at all. It's really odd. I was playing last night with no problems at all. This problem is only in Pleasantview for me though ... >| Blah.

[jburkart]

I hope someone comes up with something soon. I'm about ready to take the darn game off my computer and forget it alltogether. I have had my sims disappear at least 10 different times at this point. Sometimes after installing new custom content and sometimes after simply quitting the game and going back to it the next day.

[simsample]

Could you please do me a favour and also post your details on this thread?
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=180053

[NotarySojac]

Our neighborhoods suddenly were taking much longer than usual to load - no load-screen action for over a half hour as opposed to the usual 20 minutes it takes to load since we added Nightlife - so we Force-Quit. We removed everythng that had been installed since the last successful play and launched again. We got to Strangeville after the "normal" 20 minutes of loading and found the Marie Celeste - all the homes we made were there (some even with a taxi waiting to pick up the residents) but the only Sims were the stock Maxis residents. All the families we made were gone.
We were finally able to find the "add neighbour to family" item in the testingcheatsenabled tool thanks to Calidan's guide, but the members of thefour families we were working on did not show up as available. Oddly, two of the three members of the stock Geek household appeared in the lot loading screen but did not appear as family members once the house came up.

Great - we just went to the neighborhood select screen after exiting the one we were looking at and the three stock neighborhoods just show blank terrain mesh in the previews.

[flameflash]

Been there, done that on this one.

You're going to have to reinstall, and no, there's no chance of getting your sims back.

I've been in talks with Aspyr though, and they've been able to replicate this (and a lot of other bugs I've managed to dig up). I just got this rather non-newsy message from them today:

We are currently looking into the problem with the game options resetting.
We have been able to replicate this issue here, and have passed all necessary information to our development team. If this issue can be remedied with a patch, it will be announced in our newsletter.
You can sign up for it here:
http://www.aspyr.com/news/newsletter_signup


Thanks for your interest in Aspyr Media.
Have a nice day.

While not directly related to your problems, I would assume you've all installed the NL Universal patch? That's when the problems began for Sims 2 and NL (and only got worse with OFB.) Aspyr is working on it, and they hope to patch the game soon, I'd recommend subscribing to their newsletter.

[NotarySojac]

Did NOT have the NL Universal patch on the install where we had this happen.

We finally admitted the loss of the towns' populace before I came back and read your reply and did a clean reinstall to NL - including the NL Universal Patch as had been frequently recommended even on PPC Macs. Copied our Downloads folder back into the freshly created EA Games folder.

We were taking the game slowly after the reload - playing some stock lots that came with the game. When all appeared to be going okay we tried to send a kid to college. When the school was installed and loaded all the facilities displayed names but were completely empty lots. We returned to the neighborhood chooser and their previews were all just wireframe terrains again.

We did not save, but now any University we try are now all vacant lots.

Guess we have to do yet another clean install but skip the NL Universal Patch and let the game create yet another empty EA Games folder with no content from any previous game. Should probably also do a search for any Pref or plist with "sims" or "aspyr" in the name and quarantine them too...
Then we can begin the tedious and incredibly time consuming task of adding custom content in small groups and playing long enough to see if the game starts acting flaky. Not so much of a problem when the game loads in five minutes, but when it takes over 20 minutes for each launch, there goes weeks and weeks of realtime with no guarantee that it is something we added that caused the missing Universities, Sims and neighborhoods.

[flameflash]

I would strongly also report this bug to Aspyr NotarySojac. Your situation sounds more unique than a simple custom content conflict issue. Aspyr appears to have not soundly tested NL (or OFB) and a lot of problems began occuring after these two expansions. They're currently working on a fix to some issues, but reporting this one and tyring to help them replicate the problem on their end would help save us all.

(It is a long process however, it took me four months for them to finally be able to listen to me, first, and second to duplicate my problem... they were simply crediting user error for quite some time, which is understandably frustrating).

[luws]

Actually, wireframe views of the neighborhoods and disappearing sims are both symptoms of having hit the download limit.

How many do you have?

[simsample]

Actually, wireframe views of the neighborhoods and disappearing sims are both symptoms of having hit the download limit.

How many do you have?

Luws, this would make sense as I think the similar problems Windows users are having are caused by write protection issues. So in both cases the game is attempting to write to disc but not being able to execute the process.

[flameflash]

Could somebody direct me to the 10k file bug. I'm nearing that point again and don't want problems.

[HugeLunatic]

The file limit fix? http://forums.thesimsresource.com/showthread.php?t=309256

[biscuit-the-great]

I have had this problem when some of my sims went missing from pleasantview and strangetown, however veronaville was still OK, what i did was with a tear in my eye, deleted pleasantview and strangetown and made my sims in veronaville instead. Maybe this wont work however, because if you love your simmies so much you might not want to have to delete the neighborhoods they live in.

[flameflash]

I have had this problem when some of my sims went missing from pleasantview and strangetown, however veronaville was still OK, what i did was with a tear in my eye, deleted pleasantview and strangetown and made my sims in veronaville instead. Maybe this wont work however, because if you love your simmies so much you might not want to have to delete the neighborhoods they live in.

Problem is, for me at least, if you're hitting this point you've got to delete everything and just start over.

Actually, is there a big negative to the game then for deleting the extra two neighborhoods? It's somewhat tempting to simply merge them all, would that even be doable (and probably needs it's own thread... heh.)

[biscuit-the-great]

There is no negative to deleting neighborhoods, however I would only delete the neighborhoods with the problem at hand, One negative is that if you only have one neighborhood, then of course the neighborhood left over will end up getting crowded with sims because thats the only neighborhood they can live in, unless you have made a custom one, thus slowing it down further.

[*Laure*]

I usually play with just one neighborhood at a time. I just drag the other neighborhood folders to my desktop until I wish to play with them.

BTW, If you get the wireframe view of the neighborhood indicating that you are over the file limit, exit the game immediately. Nothing is deleted unless you try to enter a neighborhood when you are over the limit --- at least that is what I've found.