Okay, so I'm aware that a topic like this exists, but I don't want to bump an old thread. I didn't add it to the HELP forums, because this is more going to be a discussion; a short one most likely, but still.

So, I'll start from the beginning. In my custom neighbourhood, Crystal Lake, a downtownie turned playable sim, Demi Futa (Swan Teens), started a romantic relationship with paper boy, David (forgot his surname). Unfortunately, she couldn't call him over for some reason.

To remedy this, I went into the Castellano Household and went to use the Tombstone of Life and Death to add him to the household. It failed and I ended up adding a child downtownie called David Pratt (Amin Turner) instead. I didn't want him in the household. In my infinite wisdom, instead of quitting without saving, I used Rodney's Death Creator to kill him of old age, as I was curious what would happen. The child just freezes and perishes normally.

All was normal, his buggy ghost would come out at night, scare sims, and then return to his grave in the morning. It was like that for weeks until his grave went missing. I looked around the lot to find that it had moved next to the Tombstone of Life and Death, instead of the graveyard in the house entrance. I placed it back where it was before, and all was well.

That was until I was going through my sim's memories. I sometimes go through my sim's memories for fun, and I had gotten up to Fricorith, one of the sims who had witnessed the death of David Pratt. His memory of David's death had a blank thumbnail where it should have been the guy's portrait. Confused, I checked the lot's graveyard to see that his grave had disappeared again, however this time, his grave was nowhere to be found on the lot.

I had accepted that my 'hood was on borrowed time, as I had a backup before his grave vanished anyway, I think.

In May I had changed PCs and it took sometime to track the discs down to reinstall the game. I finally got round to that a month ago, and I also installed the HoodChecker and SimPE.

I checked Crystal Lake with the HoodChecker and had it fix a majority of the errors. I had also been sorting memories and genetics in SimPE, when I thought of poor David Pratt.

Curious, I loaded Crystal Lake and found him in Sim Description. His thumbnail was a Mr. PotatoHead with a blue background, which I found odd, as I recognised it as meaning unlinked (?). I relinked him and reloaded his file to see that his thumbnail background was now red. I'm aware that this is bad and I don't know what had happened here.

He was fine before...

My only guess is that the game deleted his tombstone, thus unlinking his character file and data, corrupting it. Am I right here?

I just want explaining what happened, how it happened, potential fixes, and the meaning of the thumbnail colours. Again, I didn't put this in the help forums as I wanted this to be a small discussion, because I'm curious of other simmers experiences with this stuff.

Mr. Potatohead just means that SimPE has lost the thumbnail for some reason. You can probably regenerate it.
Red means No Character Data and something got screwed. I am sorry for your loss.
The black memory is a new one on me, but corruption happens in memories sometimes. Deleting them and running Hoodchecker may help. Or it may not. Not all forms of corruption are fixable.
If you install the mods nounlinkondelete and nocorruptdeath, you will greatly decrease the risks when shenanigans happen with gravestones.
Always back up your neighborhood before a major experiment!

When SimPE says "No Character Data" sometimes it just means that you have split character files and most of the data is in the file that SimPE doesn't consider the "primary" one. However, in this case it does sound like something got messed up. You can prevent this in the future by installing nounlinkondelete, as Peni said. Also, you can use Inge's teleporter cat or I believe the Sim Blender to move townies in, you don't have to use the Tombstone of Life and Death. I would trust those mods more than the EA cheat object to prevent you from doing stuff that would corrupt your neighborhood.

Don't worry, my 'hood was backed up before I did any poking.

And I'm aware of the importance of NoUnlinkOnDelete and NoCorruptDeath; I have to remember to look into them at some point.

I knew it would be serious, but wanted to make sure. I remembered that his name still appears in memories, however, his thumbnail is blank like I mentioned in the first post. Wouldn't his memory be "$Subject" instead of his name if he was deleted completely, or doesn't that matter? Is there a difference between a character being deleted and having no character data?

And the Blue thumbnail does mean unlinked right? I unlinked him again, so his thumbnail is back to being blue, but that doesn't fix the overall issue, does it.

And who are the "Unknown" characters exactly? I know that they're from the objects.package, as they're in the Default folder. Is it like the NPC - Remote Control Car and those types of NPCs?

Blue means the sim's person data 'unlinked' has been set which is not what the game uses to determine an unlinked sim. When the game unlinks a sim it removes everything from the sim's character file except that which is needed to keep the sim linked, the sim will retain their catalogue description (so they keep their name), thumbnail and GUID, it changes the sim's object type from type 0x02 (sim) to type 0x11 (unlinked sim) which is what the game uses to determine an unlinked sim. The game will set the sim's unlinked person data so in most cases SimPE will correctly identify an unlinked sim.
Red means some required resources that make up a sim can't be found in the sim's character file, that can be because the file can't be found (is in the download folder for example) or because the sim has been unlinked or the file is corrupt.
Blue overrides Red so a properly unlinked sim will be Blue but if you unset the unlinked flag the sim will become Red.

In your case since the sim's name still appears the character file must still exist (the game will delete any sim from the neighbourhood that has no character file), if the sim was unlinked then the sim should have a thumbnail and SimPE would show the sim as Blue so perhaps the sim's file has been corrupted.

Originally, when I went into SimPE last night, the thumbnail was blue and the Unlinked section in the "Other" tab was 0x0000, which does mean that he was unlinked. I replaced the last 0 with a 1 under the impression that it would fix him, but that just switched the thumbnail to red. I then changed the 1 back to a 0 turning his thumbnail blue again.

He still has personality points and interests, so yeah, I think his file is still there... That's odd.

I've never encountered file corruption before... Could that have been caused by the game deleting the tombstone, or do you reckon the file getting corrupted caused the tombstone to disappear?

Sorry about all the questions, this subject is just interesting to me.

You should check his character file in SimPe. Note in the OBJD the Object Type, if it is still Person then the game didn't unlink him otherwise the game did. If the character file appears complete check there is still an Age Data, the game can remove the Age Data from a sim rendering the sim useless if it encounters a problem like two sims by the same GUID.

Today I started experimenting with adding a Purple thumbnail background for sims that are both marked as unlinked and have missing resources (RED + Blue) so we can see if an unlinked sim is unrecoverable without clearing the unlinked flag. Also a Black thumbnail background for dead sims that have no family and are in good condition (able to haunt and/or be resurrected).

Okay, I may sound stupid in these opening words, but I can't find what you mean by "Age Data," and "OBJ." I still tried to do what digging I could, though.

Firstly, he still has a Sim ID, that ID being 0x2A1301AA. He is also said to have an age duration of 7 days until he becomes a teenager. Pretty much surface stuff that doesn't really mean anything, especially when this last point is considered.

So, I looked in my neighbourhood files for Crystal Lake, specifically the "Characters" folder. I scrolled down until I found David Pratt's file (User0518, or something close to it), and saw that it wasn't a very large file. 1KB, to be precise, which from my understanding, means that there is a lot of data missing.

This means that my 'hood is corrupted, doesn't it? I don't even know HOW any of this happened, as I've done none of the big no-nos and played safely. Then, this happens out of the blue. I'm aware that NoUnlinkOnDelete and NoCorruptDeath would have saved me big time and I need to consider downloading them at some point.

I think there is a plus side. I looked in my backup and saw that his file was 472KB, which is good, right? Or is that also potentially problematic?

Does anybody know if there's a way to fix corrupted data?