I run The Sims 2 Super Collection from my Mac OS High Sierra (10.13.6). I had left my game on overnight by accident, and when I clicked on the game from the dock it took forever to load so I went ahead and hit Force Quit. Didn't think much of it. I went to reboot the game a few times but it seemed to be taking a very long time to load, again I hit Force Quit. I thought the issue might be some CC i downloaded yesterday, so I went and removed those files from my downloads folder. Made no difference.

After rebooting my computer I opened the game up again and it started up as normal (granted, it is always a bit slow but) once I got into my hood, it looks like every single sim has disappeared, except for Townies or children of Townies. The only Non-townie sim left is one of the first CAS sims I made when I started this hood(I think she is the first sim I made actually.)

Many families are gone except for their pets, or completely disappeared (nothing left but vacant lots. Objects and things have been left behind, but they are sim-less and are up for sale.) All the missing sims are missing from relationships of the leftover sims. The only trace I can find are in memories where a sim will have a memory such as "$Subject graduated from college!" etc. All missing sims names have been replaced with $Subject.

Looking at my folders, in The Sims 2 > Neighborhoods > N002 > Characters, I do see 411 User .package files, which I assume would include my non-townie sims, but correct me if I'm wrong. I would say I had about 150+ non-Townie sims.

My question is:

1) Is there any way to recover my lost sims? I.E. why did they disappear?
2) I have plenty of community lots and things I would like to save even if I can't save my sims. Would it be safe to copy my old lots into a new neighborhood, or would these lots now be possibly corrupted?
3) Is there any way I can check for corruption given that I am using a Mac? I can't seem to find much information on this.

I know this probably all happened because I'm a dingus and got too cocky with the Force Quit. :/ But I would really be overjoyed if this isn't the end. I've been playing these families for 2 years now, gen 3 was about to head off to college so it's kinda sad to lose all my hard work. (I haven't backed up my files in a bit. again, dingus. I know.) Thanks!

Sims disappearing is normally one of the later stages of corruption.

Did you:
Move sims between hoods?
Delete sims or graves?
Install occupied lots?
Install NPC based CC and pull it out (which is also deleting sims)

Since you are on a Mac it can't be an anti-virus as they have been known to do that $Subject thing. Does Mac have any program that can access sims 2 files?

Do you have a backup?

I would say run Hood Checker but you can't run that either. Although corruption at the disappearing sim level would be too late even for that. There is not a whole lot you can do on a Mac but constant backups would be essential. I assume you had the needed anti-corruption mods? No Unlink on delete, No corrupt death and batbox?

Sims disappearing is one of the Symtoms of Neighborhood Corruption, but it is Also one of the Symtoms of having Too Many Different items in your Downloads folder. Mac's have a Maximum Open File Limit and when one exceeds the Maximum Open File Limit by adding too many items to the Downloads folder, you have a variety of different glitches and errors occurring, including Missing Sims.

The Force Quit is not the cause of the problem, rather having to do it is one of the symtoms of having too many files in your Downloads folder.

If you want to look at the symtoms of having too many files, check my post here: http://www.insimenator.org/index.ph...c,115344.0.html

On the same InSimenator.org site in the same section are several posts designed to work around the Mac's Maximum Open File Limit issue. See my signature for a link to one of them. Also browse the section on InSimenator where I am directing you and you will find the posts. Let me know on InSimenator.org if you need help or let me know here and I will help on this issue.

There is no solution that will recover your missing Sims on a Mac if they are due to the Maximum Open File Limit that I know of.

As always the best thing to do is Regularly backup your The Sims 2 folder, backup the entire folder, my advice is to do it everytime you finish playing and to also keep the previous backup at the same time, this is what I do.

You can copy the Lots and put them into a new game, but you need to clean them up first, look for cleaning Sim References on lots and you should find some help on this. It is not something I know a lot about.

Take Care and Try to Stay Healthy.