In recent weeks I have posted several times (mainly in the Stupid / Random Questions thread) about my Sims losing Wants and Fears, and about different steps I have taken to try to fix the problem. Unfortunately the problem seems to have been creeping up on me for some time, and I find that I have Sims with missing Wants and Fears even in comparatively old backups. So, very reluctantly, I have now given up trying to keep the old 'hood going, and am starting the long process of rebuilding.

gummilutt has offered to help me, and it seems a good idea to share everything in a dedicated thread (and get everyone else's contributions) rather than use PMs or emails. So I think this is liable to become a long-running thread; I anticipate that it will be several months before I have anything like my old Veronaville 'hood to continue playing. (To give me some fun from the game in the meantime, I intend to also have a look at Pleasantview and Strangetown.)

So far, I have extracted all my playable Sims (except the McBain babies) in SimPE and cloned them in body shop. I am using Tarlia's version of Veronaville (which doesn't have the townies) for the new 'hood, so I'll have to extract all my Veronaville townies as well -- they have always been very important in my game. I think the old 'hood is still in good enough condition to play the McBains for a couple of days to let the babies grow up to toddlers before extracting them. If I can't do that in the latest version of the 'hood, I'll do it using an old backup from soon after they were born.

As I have tried several different approaches to try to keep the old 'hood going, I have several different recent parallel versions of Veronaville that I have played, or tried to play, in the last weeks. I have been looking through these trying to decide which one(s) to use as the basis to get information for the new 'hood. For most purposes I think I'll use it as it was at the end of November when Keith Cormier had just had a dream date with Mallory Mace. (I actually sent them on the date to try to get Keith's Wants rolling properly again -- he was the first Sim in whom I noticed the problem.) But for storytelling purposes, I'll try to also include the welcoming party that came to greet my new Moore family, although actually I played that in a version restored from a slightly earlier back up. (I suppose they'll all get new welcoming parties in the new 'hood anyway!) Another task for the near future is to take detailed pictures of my residential lots so I can re-create them in the new 'hood. Fortunately most of my Sims live in Maxis houses with slight changes. As I don't (yet) have OFB, all my community lots are unowned, so I should be able to import/export them via the lots bin. Then I have a mass of character data and the like to record for each Sim and family. I would like, if possible, to create my new Sims with the same character, interests, chemistry, LTWs, relations, clothes, money, careers, grades, etc., etc. as they had in the old 'hood! There's so much to think about, and I'm not sure how much of it is doable!

You can set your sims up with everything but (as far as I can tell) special coding although that's probably just because I don't know how. I think some people even set memories but I didn't bother with those. Recording each sims data is what takes the longest. By special coding I mean NPC sims that come with something special such as the uni streaker can decide to go naked and the burglar can wear his burglar clothes and sneak. I never got those back.

The NPCs will be a bit of a problem because Tarlia hasn't included them in her Veronaville. Only a few of them are really involved in my game, but I'll have a problem with those that are. I can import clones of them, but they won't be NPCs. In some cases I may do what Sunbee suggested and let an NPC of the same kind appear in the game, and then change their name, character and (as far as possible) appearance to match the character in my old 'hood. Colin Copur, the burglar is a special problem. I don't really want any burglaries, so I won't be trying to deliberately spawn a burglar in the 'hood, but I would like Colin, if only because Jack and Ravi both (quite understandably) hate him. I suppose I can extract, clone, and import him, but he won't really be a burglar any more. I might make him playable and put him in a house to live in. Then I can put him in the criminal career. I wonder if he'll still have his burglar clothes...

I have a form I use to record all the information I need about my Sims. It's a simple Word document, and I'd be happy to share, if you want.

I just finished a rebuild myself, and I would say that the three essential tools are the SimBlender, the Sim Manipulator, and the Batbox. You will also want some tool to summon others to your lot (I used Christianlov's Gussy Up rack, because I already had it), and if you want your old townies as new townies, you will want Inge's hack (is it the Townie Tree?) that will do that.

The Batbox will let you upgrade Sims to Uni graduates and give them their LTWs back quickly and easily. (The other two tools do allow manipulation of LTWs, but the Batbox is easier.) The Sim Blender will let you put sims in the correct level of their old careers and restore family ties quickly and easily. (The Sim Manipulator also does that, but the SimBlender is easier.) The Sim Manipulator lets you restore personality points, skills, badges, relationships with other sims (one-sided or mutual), relationship flags (love, BFFs, etc), age, and a host of other things. If you restore all those things accurately, your sims will act like themselves even without their old memories.

If you've redecorated, take a picture of the house in-game and print it out before rebuilding. It's much easier than relying on memory!

Good luck!

I'll write out more lengthy replies when I have time, for now just a quick reply to what you said in your first one.



Unowned community lots should be safer than owned ones, but I think it is worth remembering that we can't be sure they are. There is proof that sometimes things happen when we build community lots (spawning of npcs or something, I believe it was. I know Mootilda keeps an eye on her neighbourhood folder while building to quit without saving if something spawns). By logic they should not have been altered, but we all know that logic is not EA's strong side.

Why do I bring this up? Because I brought lots with me in my first two rebuilds, and I found corruption very quickly (even in the second that only had unowned community lots). With all the work it takes to rebuild, be sure to consider if the time spent to rebuild them would be more tiresome than the potential risk of them being bad. It's quite possible that my corruption was from some other source, but we can't know for sure.

If I were you (or anyone else pondering a rebuild), I would weigh the complicity of the lot towards the potential benefit of rebuilding. I chose to rebuild all of mine, except for one that is very large and full of things.



I know this will sound weird, but all of that is piece of cake. All it takes is careful documentation, and modded objects. The time consuming part is if you want memories as well, and to some extent, creating the Sims in CAS.

There's the "obvious" ones like sim blender, or insim, and sim manipulator. You'll also need something to teleport Sims to your lot with, so that you don't have to go looking for Sims in order to work on relationships.

But one I want to mention that I find extremely useful (since I care about memories), is the Book of Talent.
https://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=293562
It allows you to teach your Sims any skill/badge/hidden skills/EP-related skill with a few clicks, and give them the memory of learning it. You won't have that many since you don't have many EPs, but I wanted to mention it as others who rebuild might.

No, that was what I was saying, that NPC's that you have moved in come with special coding such as the burglar sneak walk. Once you clone them they become a regular sim with no special coding.

Also you can do most of the setting up of skills, life states, careers etc with simPE. I used a combination of both as I was more comfortable at the time using the in game tools, but I think now I would do most of it in SimPE while I had it open.

I forgot I was also going to say that since most of your Sims are from CAS, or pre-made playables, you'll have an easy job with the genetics. Most of it should sort itself out, only in-game born Sims need editing.

Esme, I'd like to see your document if you don't mind

Also, I highly recommend Fraps. Very useful program for all the picture-documenting. Any other photo-program would work, I just prefer Fraps because it's the one I've always used.

I *think* you can use the townie and NPC spawner to spawn the NPC's you need--set the gender you want first on it before you spawn. I've made Grand Vampires that way before.

Simblender has a teleport function. So does Inge's Teleporter cat or shrub, depending on which EPs you have determines which one you need, and that's the tool that can make sims into townies. When you make your own townies, if you make them in batches of eight, you can use the batbox to change their names in game. You will have to do some extra SimPE work on the child and teen townies since the game requires them to have parents when they're made. Or make them as adults and use Simblender to age them down. Pescado suggests somewhere that the best bet is to de-age a sim to the age lower than the one you want them to be then have them grow up. (the simblender can do all that) I don't know what the reason was. The batbox has a fix broken grades option on it if you find that necessary.

Unfortunately I can't use the Simblender because it needs Pets or higher, but I can and do use SimPE, the Sim Manipulator, the batbox and Inge's Teleporter Painting Plus. (For some reason her simple teleporter shrub seemed to cause serious glitches (lots that I could neither enter nor bulldoze) so I removed it.

In the old 'hood I had a 1 X 1 lot that I called the changing hut, which I used to turn CAS "families" into townies. This was needed because I made so many townies playable, and they never did regenerate in my game. I renamed them (with the Sim Manipulator), but didn't break all the family ties as I liked the idea of some of my townies being related to each other (like the Tricou kids). However, in re-creating the Veronaville townies, I think I'll leave the Maxis ones unrelated. Obviously I'll need to re-create that hut in the new hood. It contains the Sim Manipulator, the batbox, Inge's Teleporter Painting Plus and Christianlov's Clothes Rail, as well as enough essentials to keep the Sims comfortable during the few hours they have to stay there. There's no bed as nobody should stay there overnight.

[EDIT]

Yes, Please! That would be very useful.

Because I tend to have to rebuild regularly, I have a 'hood that is a clone of the one I play in. I do all my building in that nice clean 'hood with no Sims, and I package the never-owned lots up and move them to my playing 'hood. That's probably a little excessive for Veronaville, though.

I am attaching my Word document for people to look at. I don't know if that's allowed or not (I couldn't see anything either way in the rules), but if it's not allowed, please let me know! I will take it down at once and put it up on my LJ. On my form, there are options to circle and lines to fill in numbers or brief info. I usually fill the form out by hand, since that's faster for me. Also attached is a (very bad) photo of a (much-used) sheet from my rebuild that I just finished so you can see how it works.

Something else to consider with the toddlers is that cloning removes all recessive genetics. I wrote a little tutorial on how to restore recessives without SimPE here if you need it.

I knew I'd seen that tutorial somewhere. I love to use that technique to get recessives in my challenge founders, and now I know who I got it from!

I have to admit that I really don't understand DNA at all, either Sims or Real Life. So I couldn't use esmeiolanthe's method because I wouldn't have a clue what the recessive genes ought to be. To try to understand better, I opened up (in SimPE) the Sim DNA for one of my Sims, Gerry McBain, who was created in CAS as the genetic child of his parents. This is what I got:

I really haven't a clue what those big numbers mean. I'm sure I could copy and paste them into his new Sim in SimPE, but I would not understand what I was doing at all. Could anyone point me at a tutorial that explains this DNA / genetics stuff. I believe genetics is taught in school today, but I never got biology at school at all! No doubt if you have some idea how it works in us humans, it helps to understand how it works for Sims. (I believe their genetics are a simplified version of our own.)
esmeiolanthe, where do you get the information to fill in the Skin, Eyes and Hair in your info sheet? Is that just by looking at the Sim, or is it recorded somewhere?

The big numbers are the codes that represent the different skin, hair and eye colours that sims can have. I'll go and find a list of them and post a link for you in a few minutes :-)

Here are the codes for eye colours:

32dee745-b6ce-419f-9e86-ae93802d2682 = Brown eyes
51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7 = Green eyes
e43f3360-3a08-4755-8b83-a0b37a6c424b = Light Blue eyes
2d6839c5-0b7c-48a1-9c55-4bd9cc873b0f = Dark Blue eyes
12d4f3e1-fdbe-4fe7-ace3-46dd9ff52b51 = Alien eyes
0758508c-7111-40f9-b33b-706464626ac9 = Grey eyes

Hair colours:

1 = black
2 = brown
3 = blond
4 = red

Skin colours:

The number (1, 2, 3 or 4) corresponds with the Maxis skintone. S1 (1) is the lightest, S4 (4) is the darkest.

By comparing these lists with the SimPE data for your sim, I can see that he has dark blue eyes, and carries a recessive gene for light blue eyes. He has brown hair, with a recessive gene for blond hair. He has Maxis S2 skin, i.e. the second lightest skintone. The attached picture shows where I found that information - I used Paint to make some notes on the SimPE screenshot you posted :-)

Heres the list I keep in Word. I don't know if it's the same as what you have seen.



When you open up the DNA tab in SimPE you will see hair on the left, run your eyes across to the right and the string of numbers tells you what colour it is. Laura gave a very good picture of that. Dominant means like it sounds. These colours are dominant over everything else. That is the colour (skin colour, hair colour and eye colour)you see on your sim. So if you can see the sim Tom Smith has in game brown hair and dark blue eyes those are his dominent colours and you will see that in the DNA tab under dominant.. But under recessive you might see some other colours like pale blue eyes and blond hair. Those were colours he inherited from one of his parents or grandparents. You don't have to understand how DNA works to copy and paste the number codes in. Once you extract and clone Tom and open the clone in SimPE you will see he only has under the DNA tab, brown hair and dark blue eyes and his receive code numbers will have gone. This is the point where you copy and paste those receive numbers back in if you want to keep them. This gives him a chance of having a child or grandchild with blond hair and pale blue eyes. The main thing is to jot down what recessives colour each sim shows before you extract them.

Edit because I apparently can't tell left from right.

AndrewGloria, I get the information from looking at the Sim, knowing the family a little bit, and knowing how Maxis genetics work. I'm going to explain using Phoebe as an example, since you can see her information in the picture I posted, but let's start with Maxis genetics.

With Maxis genetics, some genes are dominant and some are recessive. If a sim has one dominant gene and one recessive gene, the one you will see is the dominant one. The one you will not see is the recessive one. (If it helps, you can think of the dominant genes as professional basketball players, while recessive genes are middle school kids playing H-O-R-S-E at recess. In a one-on-one game, the professional player (the dominant gene) will always win.)
Dominant hair colors are black and brown. Recessive hair colors are blonde and red.
Dominant eye colors are dark blue and brown. Recessive eye colors are green, gray, and light blue. I think alien eyes are dominant, but I could be wrong.
Skintone genetics are very confusing, and I don't worry about them very much.


Phoebe's mother Myrna had brown hair, green eyes, and S2 (skintone 2, the second lightest).
Phoebe's father Old Adam had blonde hair, dark blue eyes, and S3.
You get one gene from each parent, and you can't get a gene that your parents don't have.
Looking at Phoebe, she has S3 (skintone 3, the second darkest), brown hair, and dark blue eyes. These are her dominant genes, because they are the ones I can see.
That means that I can fill in Phoebe's skintone genetics as S3 dominant/S2 recessive. I know she has S3, because I can see it. I know that she must have S2, because that is what her mother Myrna gave her. (The real skintone genetics system is a lot more complicated, but this works perfectly well and keeps your rebuild easier.)
I can fill in Phoebe's eye color genetics as dark blue dominant/green recessive. I know she has dark blue eyes, because I can see them. I know that she has to have green eyes as a recessive, because Myrna had green eyes, so she couldn't have passed on genes for anything else.
Now, when you look at Phoebe's hair color, you can see that I've written down that she has brown hair dominant. This is easy to fill in, because I can see it. You can also see that I don't know if her recessive is blonde or red. The simple answer would be to say that it's blonde, because her father had blonde hair. However, I know from family history that her father Old Adam must have a red hair gene as well as a blonde hair gene, and I don't know which it is. When rebuilding, I just picked one because it doesn't actually matter which gene Phoebe had in the 'hood that died. (Phoebe married a man with two genes for black hair, so all their children will have black hair no matter what.)

If you're interested in how I knew Old Adam had to have a red hair gene as well as a blonde hair gene, I've put that under a spoiler.


If sim-genetics still aren't making sense to you, there's a nice tutorial here that might help. It even has pictures!

I know it's a bit late, but another option for recording info about your sims - which you might want to use as well as esme's form, or perhaps by pasting the extra parts of esme's form into the notes section - is the Sim Tracker. It's basically a sim database, and it has fields for all sorts of really detailed stuff that I never use - hobbies, interests, secret lot access, hidden skills, relationships with other sims, genetic and current hair colour... it's a really neat program.

I'm actually finding this thread extremely helpful! Bookmarking it now.

I have one thing to add - once you change your Sim's eye colour, the next time you load them they may not reflect the changes. In that case, have them go to a mirror, select "Change Appearance", and just hit "OK" (you don't need to do anything). Their eye colour should change.

CC skins and eyes will have other values. Skin ones look like the ones for eyes, with a bunch of random letters and numbers. You can find what that value is in the CC-package of that skin/eye color. If there is interest I could add the tutorial I recently wrote for someone over PM, related to finding genetic codes off CC items.

Yes please! I have done it before, but I vaguely recall it taking ages to figure out how to do it, so it'd be useful to have a tutorial to refer to as I want to write down the codes for all of the new skintones and eye colours I now use in my game, for future reference :-)

Here it is. I've edited it a little to make more sense, if it's impossible to follow let me know and I'll fix it when I have time.

Before we start

Make sure your SimPE has the right layout (the one it has when you install it). You want it to look like this -> http://i740.photobucket.com/albums/...zps6ac49b55.png

If it doesn't, you can reset it. In the menu at the top, click Extra and select Preferences. In the menu to the right, click "SimPE Settings", and there will be a button called "reset Layout".
http://i740.photobucket.com/albums/...zpscee69852.png

Now, for the genetic codes of things.

How to find the code within the package file

Skins and eyes get their own code, which is a long sequence of letters and numbers. There is probably a logic to it, but to me it's jibberish. You can find it by looking in the package file if it's a custom skintone/eye, or below if it's maxis skins/eyes.

Eyes -> Open the package file, and in the list in the resource list window, there will be ”uuface_eye_dkbrown”. Click it, and a list will appear in pluginview. The genetic code is ”family (dtString)”. Click it, and you can copy the value from the window "Value".
http://i740.photobucket.com/albums/...zps48ded483.png

Skintones -> Open the package file, and under resource tree, click Skin Tone XML, then the thing that appears in the Resource List (should only be one thing) and you will get the same kind of list as you got on eyes, in plugin view. Once again the value you want is ”family (dtString)”. Click it, and you can copy the value from the window "Value".
http://i740.photobucket.com/albums/...zps4e6b413b.png

Maxis eye colors and their codes
32dee745-b6ce-419f-9e86-ae93802d2682 = Brown
2d6839c5-0b7c-48a1-9c55-4bd9cc873b0f = Dark Blue
e43f3360-3a08-4755-8b83-a0d37a6c424b = Light Blue
0758508c-7111-40f9-b33b-706464626ac9 = Grey Blue
51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7 = Green

Maxis Skintones
00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Light
00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Medium Light
00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Medium Dark
00000004-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Dark

I attached a copy of all images to the post, in case someone finds this in five years and my photobucket is no longer available.

I recently had Pleasantview go corrupted, so I'm pretending it got hit by a massive plague and then I'll put a clean template in and rebuild as a BACC. That's sort of relevant.

My game recently pulled an ultimate "f-you" move and spawned three townie zombies as well as a zombie delivery driver. Guess who has a corrupted game!!! -_-

This will be extremely helpful as I attempt yet another rebuild of a BACC that has yet to make it to gen 3. Thank you guys! (That's all I wanted to say, really.)

Sanypsia, actual zombies?

There's a hack that lets the game spawn townies using creature skins and the alien eyes. (Half my game-spawned sims, I swear, get the alien eyes.) Anyway, I have a perfectly normal cafeteria chef with the zombie skin who is most definitely not a zombie. (Though it would explain why they don't need bathroom and meal breaks and only take a few hours off a night, if they're actually undead, right?)
Could you have gotten that hack by any chance?

Yes, actual zombies. To my knowledge (and after a quick search in my CC folders) I have no hacks that enable creature skins for spawned sims. The reason I know that the zombies mark corruption in my game is because they are almost always accompanied by squiggly-line thought bubbles, actions happening that shouldn't be (Unless a husband lecturing his wife for clogging the toilet is possible on TS2 or "viewing many") and other glitches that are marked as possible signs. The most present are squiggly line thought bubbles though, and they're happening in every household over just about anything. Motive distress, something being in the way, thought or speech bubbles, everything. The neighborhood is still playable, which is good because I have some infants to get into toddlerhood so that (if) I extract my sims at least I'll be able to get the entire family, but it's on a steady decline.

Last time I restarted this BACC, one of my sim kids aged into teen and turned into a zombie after she did that little spin-jump thing. Her skintone had been S1 and she had never died or been revived. When everyone in the orphanage gathered around her to approve, disapprove or be shocked by her new appearance, almost every thought bubble that had her picture was a squiggly line. Which is why I just take it as the ultimate fuck-you move now and proceed into a minor stage of depression. ;|

Lecturing adults and viewing many are both perfectly normal interactions. Squiggly thought bubbles, though, not a good sign.