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Locked thread | Replies: 64 (Who?), Viewed: 9745 times. | Locked by: AngelFrouk Reason: Solved by patching the game.
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crinrict
Inventor
#26 Old 18th Sep 2014 at 11:13 AM
It looks like EA is working on this :D

Hopefully it gets fixed soonish
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ximenia
Test Subject
#27 Old 19th Sep 2014 at 12:54 AM
Quote: Originally posted by plasticbox
@cinrict - see the XML files (and the .tdesc) .. as I understand it, there's two things that relate to culling:



(default start / end hour are 2 and 6, says the tdesc -- not sure whether you'd call that "thursday night" or "wednesday night"?)


I gave all of the info you found to the sims 4 tech support crew (I gave you credit of course) And they seemed to be very thankful for it and sent it over to the devs right away, they are working on a fix now. I think you really saved us on this one because they were completely lost without that info. Thanks dude.
plasticbox
Pettifogging Legalist!
retired moderator
#28 Old 19th Sep 2014 at 1:43 AM
Quote: Originally posted by ximenia
I think you really saved us on this one because they were completely lost without that info.


Ummmmmmm you mean to imply that the EA tech support had no idea what it says there in THEIR OWN CODE?
Stuff for TS2 · TS3 · TS4 | Please do not PM me with technical questions – we have Create forums for that.

In the kingdom of the blind, do as the Romans do.
ximenia
Test Subject
#29 Old 19th Sep 2014 at 5:00 AM
Quote: Originally posted by plasticbox
Ummmmmmm you mean to imply that the EA tech support had no idea what it says there in THEIR OWN CODE?
Yup, they were in the forums asking everyone for info on the bug. 5 minutes after I posted your find they announced the devs were now looking into it lol.
AngelFrouk
Stupid people are stupid
Original Poster
#30 Old 19th Sep 2014 at 12:18 PM
Quote: Originally posted by CTNutmegger
I had it happened to an entire family, they were related to the one I was playing at the time. They had been played previously but they disappeared some time after I switched to their relatives.
I saved between family switching, I used Save, not Save AS.
Not sure what day it was, I wasn't paying attention, but I'll be sure to watch it now!
There were no deaths or births, I'm playing with aging off until I finish populating the hoods.

Save vs Save as doesn't seem to make much difference. I only used save as and still have those problems.
Quote: Originally posted by samd440
I didn't see anything mentioned about it, but has anybody with the disappearing Sims problem attempted to back up their files and uninstall/reinstall the game and see if that brings the Sims back/stops them disappearing?

I haven't, no.
Quote: Originally posted by crinrict
It looks like EA is working on this :D

Hopefully it gets fixed soonish

Finally...
Quote: Originally posted by plasticbox
Ummmmmmm you mean to imply that the EA tech support had no idea what it says there in THEIR OWN CODE?

Are you really surprised or is my sarcasm meter broken?
Quote: Originally posted by ximenia
Yup, they were in the forums asking everyone for info on the bug. 5 minutes after I posted your find they announced the devs were now looking into it lol.

This seems so odd. From what I have seen Crinrict has tried mutliple times to give info to EA?Maxis about this. From what I can tell they haven't replied. Why on earth are they listening to you then. No offence, but I'm just amazed by this.
(please don't think I'm implying I think less of you, it's not that at all).
ximenia
Test Subject
#31 Old 19th Sep 2014 at 3:24 PM
Quote: Originally posted by AngelFrouk
Save vs Save as doesn't seem to make much difference. I only used save as and still have those problems.

I haven't, no.

Finally...

Are you really surprised or is my sarcasm meter broken?

This seems so odd. From what I have seen Crinrict has tried mutliple times to give info to EA?Maxis about this. From what I can tell they haven't replied. Why on earth are they listening to you then. No offence, but I'm just amazed by this.
(please don't think I'm implying I think less of you, it's not that at all).


I have no idea, maybe just because I was the first person to post the actual snippet that shows it culls the population.. lol I used to be QA before I became a developer myself so I know exactly how to word things and what info to give so devs will listen lol.
AngelFrouk
Stupid people are stupid
Original Poster
#32 Old 19th Sep 2014 at 5:28 PM
Quote: Originally posted by ximenia
I have no idea, maybe just because I was the first person to post the actual snippet that shows it culls the population.. lol I used to be QA before I became a developer myself so I know exactly how to word things and what info to give so devs will listen lol.

Well, it doesn't matter how we get them to listen. I'm glad it looks like they are working on it! So thanks!
ximenia
Test Subject
#33 Old 19th Sep 2014 at 5:49 PM
Quote: Originally posted by AngelFrouk
Well, it doesn't matter how we get them to listen. I'm glad it looks like they are working on it! So thanks!
Yeah no problem. I just hope it doesn't take long to patch it, or maybe one of our modders will fix it first lol.
applefeather2
Alchemist
#34 Old 19th Sep 2014 at 9:05 PM
Quote: Originally posted by ximenia
Yup, they were in the forums asking everyone for info on the bug. 5 minutes after I posted your find they announced the devs were now looking into it lol.

@ximenia Can you give a link to your post so we can follow that?
Shimrod101
Mad Poster
#35 Old 19th Sep 2014 at 9:25 PM
It is the "genealogy pruning" which plasticbox has quoted from which is doing this. It's entire function is like "Kill Sim" in the Sims 3 vanilla Story Progression system. It is to keep the population down below a certain limit, so a player's save game will not grow and grow in total population because we, the players, refuse to limit this population growth ourselves. In the end, with everyone overstuffing there households with 16 sims and 24 sims per household (when that becomes available through modding), there are 70 sims in the first shoebox hood, around 40 in that hood with the 2 large houses, etc., how many in total? Around 500 or 600 maybe? And the Homeless Townie households are added onto this figure, so 100-150 extra sims in total population added onto those 500-600 residents in the houses.

I guarantee everyone reading this that every single save game in the history of this game will be corrupted and unplayable and destroyed long before said game reaches that number of total population. The game simply won't tackle it, I say.

--Therefore!!!! *thinks some smart sims 4 game dev* we will build into the game, as usual, a failsafe protocol to prevent this save game destruction from happening, because if this actually starts happening in all of the save games that everyone has played in the History Of Time and All Times To Come, all of the players will be screeching and bitching at us to beat the band. "You people can't code shit! My save game was destroyed!" "The game has sloppy coding! My game is corrupted! Oooo... Ooo!" and yada yada.--

So this is why IMO they have this kill sim or culling function in the game on purpose, to keep the population down by force, to prevent this situation I describe above.

I will ask anyone here who has seen this culling occur in their own game, what is the total population in this save game when the culling on Thursday has happened? This is total population I'm asking about, every single sim in all the houses and the homeless extra people all included. Count them up one by one in that Household Management screen, it makes no difference if you have 'played' them or not! Total Population, nothing else.

The key number here is 180 sims total population (plasticbox has posted before about this number also). Is the population in total number of sims below this number, or is it always higher than this number before you see the culling happening? My speculation being to simply increase this 180 number in the game to some much larger number, 900 for example, just to pick a number, and test it out and see what happens. I don't know for sure that this number does what I think it may be doing, it might be doing something completely different! It's simply a guess.
MedievalMods and Sims3mods: Dive Cave Reset Fix, Resort Revamp, Industrial Oven Revamp, Will O' Wisp fix, UI Sounds Disabled, No Cars, Gnome Family Planner, Townies Out on the Town, No Martial Arts Clothes, Fast Skilling, etc. http://simsasylum.com/tfm/
himawara106
Inventor
#36 Old 19th Sep 2014 at 9:40 PM
I had 180 sims in the "not in world" pool to try this and the game generated its own sims nonetheless.

For me it's okay when the system deletes townies but today it killed Bob Newbie and one of his sons. They were gone. I used save as but I didn't want to go back so many saves.
You never know what’s comin’ for ya.
plasticbox
Pettifogging Legalist!
retired moderator
#37 Old 19th Sep 2014 at 10:01 PM
I hope what me might be able to acheive, modding-wise, is somehow make it so that the game ACTUALLY takes the "game-generated AND unplayed sims only" thing into account when nuking sims. Because that would make most parties happy, no? The game would be happy for a nice manageable number of sims, users would be happy for unexploded games (with all their important sims intact and only irrelevant towniespam culled), EA would be happy because no shitstorm.

@Shimrod101 , can you actually see for certain (where? how?) that it's the genealogy thing doing the culling? Not that other one, further down? Asking because I can not tell which is the crucial one .. genealogy could also be the thing that makes sims "forget" their family relationships at a certain distance (say with the grand-uncle's cousin's sister's daughter or whatever -- at some point they don't count as family anymore -> less stuff for the game to keep track of). I don't have the code in front of me right now though so I can't take a second (or rather, 379th) look myself =)
Stuff for TS2 · TS3 · TS4 | Please do not PM me with technical questions – we have Create forums for that.

In the kingdom of the blind, do as the Romans do.
Shimrod101
Mad Poster
#38 Old 19th Sep 2014 at 11:51 PM
Quote: Originally posted by plasticbox
@Shimrod101 , can you actually see for certain (where? how?) that it's the genealogy thing doing the culling? Not that other one, further down? Asking because I can not tell which is the crucial one .. genealogy could also be the thing that makes sims "forget" their family relationships at a certain distance (say with the grand-uncle's cousin's sister's daughter or whatever -- at some point they don't count as family anymore -> less stuff for the game to keep track of). I don't have the code in front of me right now though so I can't take a second (or rather, 379th) look myself =)


Yes, you're right, it is the "Max Population" function which is doing the culling of sims, of course. I got hung up on the Thursday reports from players, and it is the "Genealogy Pruning" which is running on Thursdays. I think what this is supposed to be doing is fixing up the family tree info, the genealogy info; other than that I can't tell what it might be doing. I have this from the .py file, because I don't see any description whatsoever in the Tdesc about what this ACTION is doing. If everything is going to hell on Thursdays, perhaps this updating of the family tree info has run rampant? "... Okay, I'll check the info on this sim here, to see whether he has died or not, and then update his non-existent family tree so the relatives will know about it, and oops! I am checking him, so I'll just delete him while I'm here looking at the dude. This will save that other AI function a little bit of time later on..." Would such a scenario even be possible? Lol!

The Python has this on the Max Population, I edited stuff out to attempt to make it readable:

{'max_population': (description='Max number of game generated sims.\n tunable_type=int, default=180,minimum=0), 'relationship_depth_weight': (description=' Multiplier used to modify relationship depth to determine how important depth is in culling score. The higher the multiplier the more relationship depth is added to culling score. The lower the culling score the more likely sim has a chance of being deleted.

tunable_type=float, default=0.5), 'relationship_tracks_multiplier': Tunable(description='Multiply the number of tracks by this multiplier to provide an additional score to determine if sim should be culled. The higher the multiplier the more the number of tracks bonus is added to culling score. The lower the culling score the more likely sim has a chance of being deleted.

And there are a couple more criteria after these on this culling nonsense.
MedievalMods and Sims3mods: Dive Cave Reset Fix, Resort Revamp, Industrial Oven Revamp, Will O' Wisp fix, UI Sounds Disabled, No Cars, Gnome Family Planner, Townies Out on the Town, No Martial Arts Clothes, Fast Skilling, etc. http://simsasylum.com/tfm/
ximenia
Test Subject
#39 Old 20th Sep 2014 at 12:59 AM
Quote: Originally posted by applefeather2
@ximenia Can you give a link to your post so we can follow that?

Sure thing, it's over here. http://answers.ea.com/t5/The-Sims-4...3459543/page/17
CTNutmegger
Field Researcher
#40 Old 20th Sep 2014 at 2:40 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Shimrod101

I will ask anyone here who has seen this culling occur in their own game, what is the total population in this save game when the culling on Thursday has happened? This is total population I'm asking about, every single sim in all the houses and the homeless extra people all included. Count them up one by one in that Household Management screen, it makes no difference if you have 'played' them or not! Total Population, nothing else.

The key number here is 180 sims total population (plasticbox has posted before about this number also). Is the population in total number of sims below this number, or is it always higher than this number before you see the culling happening? My speculation being to simply increase this 180 number in the game to some much larger number, 900 for example, just to pick a number, and test it out and see what happens. I don't know for sure that this number does what I think it may be doing, it might be doing something completely different! It's simply a guess.


I have aging turned off, and the game set not to fill empty houses. I had deleted all premade families from all lots in both hoods and then from the Gallery where it moved them. I had created only 26 Sims of my own at the time of the disappearance, 3 families of 8, and 2 single Sim families, one family I split into 2 lots, I was playing each while fixing their lots to suit their styles.

As I said before I created the Goths and Crumplebottoms, move the Crumplebottoms to their own lot and got them settled in. Went back to the Goths to finish their lot, went into live mode and happened to notice in the panel that the Crumplebottoms were not there. Checked their lot and they were gone!

Now I'm a little timid of placing anyone else in the hood, all that work only to have them leave town!
MasterDinadan
Lab Assistant
#41 Old 20th Sep 2014 at 8:18 PM
Genealogy Pruner targets all distant relatives of your active Sims when Thursday rolls around. If your active Sim has a second cousin or something like that, they are toast. Basically, anyone who can be connected to active Sim but is 5 or more links away is a target.

Hypothetical scenario, I create a simple family - Mother Mims, Father Mims, Boy Mims, and Girl Mims.
Boy Mims meets Cassandra Goth and they fall in love. When they are adults, they have a baby.
Girl Mims meets Zest Johnny, marries him and has a kid.

This highly plausible turn of events has made Zest Johnny and Mortimer Goth into distant relatives. Zest is Mortimer's child's child's parent's sibling's child's father. 6 links. It's only 5 if spouse links count (I'm not sure if they do) but either way, they are both at risk. If I play the Goth family, Zest is in danger of being pruned as a distant relative. If I play Zest, then Mortimer and Bella are both in danger of being pruned.

Play a family for long enough or marry off enough different sims in the neighborhood, and it's conceivable that nearly every Sim in the neighborhood could be the target of genealogy pruning. I have little doubt that this is the issue that is causing widespread disappearances.

The only other story action that can remove sims (the max population action) appears to ignore households that the player created, and will always prioritize sims that have few relations to others and haven't appeared in the world for a while. It also won't kill anyone unless there are more than 180 sims in the world. So, I don't think it's the culprit.

The problems with the genealogy pruner are actually very easy to reproduce quickly with a CAS-made family:

I created a family of 7 sims:
Mr Gene
His Father, Father Gene
His Father's Father, Grand Gene
His Father's Father's Father, Great Gene
Great Gene's Daughter, Aunt Gene (she is actually Mr Gene's Great Aunt)
Aunt Gene's Daughter, Cousin Gene (she is actually Mr Gene's Cousin Once Removed)
Cousin Gene'ss Daughter, SecondCuz Gene

Drop the family into the neighborhood, then use manage households to move out all of the extended family to a different household (Leaving only Mr Gene and Father Gene). Move the other 5 into another household and load it up to mark it as playable. Go back to the first household of 2, and play the game through Thursday. At the end of Thursday, the genealogy pruner will have killed SecondCuz Gene and spared the rest of the family. Mr Gene was spared because he was currently being played.

Little caveat - Sims that are visiting the lot when Thursday rolls around will be spared from pruning. This is probably the reason that Mortimer got killed and not Bella - if Bella was loaded into the world at the time without Mortimer.
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
MasterDinadan
Lab Assistant
#42 Old 20th Sep 2014 at 8:44 PM
I just posted a mod that should resolve the issue.
It's not very well tested and could be potentially unstable, but please give it a try if you are willing. If people play a few weeks in game without any issues, I'll feel comfortable posting it to the Downloads on the site.

http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...772#post4538772
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
samd440
Lab Assistant
#43 Old 21st Sep 2014 at 3:58 AM
Well, I thought maybe it was over. The past 2 days, none of my sims have disappeared out of the new save game I created. But just now, 5 sims vanished out of 1 family, leaving only the baby. Sigh.

I guess at least they all vanished out of just one house this time? But that's how it started the first time. I've now lost 19 Sims. This is so frustrating.
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Alexarw12
Test Subject
#44 Old 21st Sep 2014 at 10:55 AM
Hei guys,

i played this game for lets say 8 hours and made about 6 children without any problems, all grown up to young adults with making a cake and aging up, moved them out of the house, then after the last child aging up, in a other household 1 sim disappears.(and so on)
It looks like there is a maximum for sims in 1 world, each time you make a baby 1 sim disappears. f annoying the same as in the sims 3! (the reason i stopped playing sims 3)
I also saved before 1 sim disappeared, reloaded and on a specific time that sim disappeares into exile. she was married but the dude is still there and says he doesnt have a wife.
(i think) Also adding custom content is a issue in a game you've already started.

sorry for my bad english.
crinrict
Inventor
#45 Old 21st Sep 2014 at 8:53 PM
Your mod works well @MasterDinadan but there's still the problem that townies seem to be thrown out once you reach that limit and the relationship isn't taken into account anymore.

For me (at 192 now), every Sims that doesn't live anywhere will get purged every night. This is a bit of a problem when looking for new partners since you need to move them into a house right away if you want to keep them.

Is there a way to get rid of the dead Sims ? I don't see a reasons why they need to be kept around, especially when they don't have a tombstone.
MasterDinadan
Lab Assistant
#46 Old 21st Sep 2014 at 9:00 PM
Quote: Originally posted by crinrict
Your mod works well @MasterDinadan but there's still the problem that townies seem to be thrown out once you reach that limit and the relationship isn't taken into account anymore.

For me (at 192 now), every Sims that doesn't live anywhere will get purged every night. This is a bit of a problem when looking for new partners since you need to move them into a house right away if you want to keep them.

Is there a way to get rid of the dead Sims ? I don't see a reasons why they need to be kept around, especially when they don't have a tombstone.


I figured that releasing the spirit of a dead Sim from the tombstone would purge them from the world, but I haven't verified this.

I agree that you are going to run into problems like this if you have more than 180 sims. The mod I released so far does not address this problem, but I think most people don't have it (that really seems like more Sims than most people will play or interact with it).

That limit can easily be increased through XML tuning. With script modding, I can probably make the whole system smarter (deleting dead sims automatically, or not counting playable sims against the 180 limit). I will certainly look into it.
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
crinrict
Inventor
#47 Old 21st Sep 2014 at 10:38 PM
The problem is that everyone that plays a save game for longer will run into this since the dead count too. where do all the tombstones go of people I don't see dying ?
TheNest
Instructor
#48 Old 21st Sep 2014 at 10:57 PM
Quote: Originally posted by crinrict
The problem is that everyone that plays a save game for longer will run into this since the dead count too. where do all the tombstones go of people I don't see dying ?


So this 180 number of sims isn't a hard number like in TS2 where a neighborhood can only have ~32,767(?) characters before the game starts over at 0, thus imploding the neighborhood? Yet, going over the 180 could result in possible corruption, so it's basically a soft number then?
plasticbox
Pettifogging Legalist!
retired moderator
#49 Old 21st Sep 2014 at 11:54 PM
180 is the default for max_population. From the EA documentation:

Stuff for TS2 · TS3 · TS4 | Please do not PM me with technical questions – we have Create forums for that.

In the kingdom of the blind, do as the Romans do.
crinrict
Inventor
#50 Old 22nd Sep 2014 at 7:24 AM
I think after 180, the game purges the population of Sims that don't live anywhere every night. You can still have more if they live somewhere but for me, the ask move in interaction didn't come up for a SIm that had no home. I had to move him in via manage world. That worked.
Locked thread | Locked by: AngelFrouk Reason: Solved by patching the game.
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