I added the newest version to my test neighborhood and all of the sims got added to the neighborhood. Also the ghosts with their urnstones. The incident with the disappearing sims in your previous Bigg City only happened because of a duplicate in the NeighborhoodTemplate folder, probably. Don't worry about that. It was just because of a little 'hood conflict.

If I resurrect EA's sims, they usually have no skills and their memories are like as they were freshly made in CAS and have been killed off right away.
I like how much detail and effort you put on this. Adding memories, skills and such, even if they will start deceased! I can't wait to see how Bigg City will look like in the final phase.

I've played them for some sim days and here are some notes that I took while playtesting Bigg City.

1. I've found the batbox and some other cheat objects in the Bigg's residence. Not really an issue, but I wanted to post this anyway. Just in case you overlooked it.

2. The phone is not accessable in Pearl's house.

3. No issues found in Lionel's house.

4. Lil has no memories of Max and Minnie Bigg's death but she strangely has a memory of inheriting money from Minnie.

5. There's an issue that Pearl and Lionel inherit money from the wrong person. I believe that's because the game didn't update the Neighbor ID number in the 'Inherit Money Controller'.
There's also a similar issue with the Pregancy Controller where the father ends up being somebody else. The owner sim is the right one, but the target sim is the false one.

A suggestion for this problem would be to play Pearl and Lionel for a little, so they get their memory and money. Then the game won't affect the memories, as they are already there. And the 'Inherit Money Controller' will be deleted.

6. Not really an issue but if I look into MJ Bigg's family tree, I see that his parents are disconnected (=not married anymore). But I actually like it if married ghost couples are connected in the family tree. And to me, it gets a little bit confusing if they are not connected. Especially in big families.

But of course, it's your neighborhood and you decide what you want to do with the sims. I'm not forcing you to connect Max and Minnie, but the family tree would look nicer in my opinion.

I played them some today, so that shouldn't be a problem in future iterations. I believe the disconnection of married couples in death is something the game does, for which there's a mod, so this won't be the only case of it we'll see - Lil and MJ, and Cornelia and Jem Stone, will be dying themselves in awhile. So I have some time to think about whether I want to go back and connect them, and do them all at once if I do it.

Though I have a lot of things in mind for the present-day storyline in Bigg City (so many that I'll probably have to prune them), the key concept was and always has been to have a town with a history that mattered. I know what gamers are like - if there's ghosts in the graveyard, somebody's going to want to resurrect them all. And there ought to be lots of ghosts in the graveyard, and a sense of history, and of a lot of people going about their ordinary lives (even if some of them are vampires or whatever). So each and every ghost in the Old Graveyard and in San Simeon's chapel was the hero of his own story, and has a connection to at least one other person (ghost or living), so there'll be some chain of relationships bringing him within six degrees of separation of of everybody else, through which they can potentially be resurrected.

You can see why it's taking so long, though! Ghosts need to be processed in overlapping stages, and some of them will have descendants, some of whom can be made in CAS but some of whom need to be born in the game, and one wrong move can turn the whole thing into a hopeless mess. It's easier than Polgannon, but it can't be rushed.

Yes, there's a mod that keeps the sims connected. It can be found here. It's called marriage-postmortum.zip
The mod won't connect Max and Minnie. You will need to connect manually in SimPE but any future deceased couple will stay connected.

As for the graveyard ghosts, just take the time you need for them. No need to rush. Even if it takes a lot of time, hard work always pays off! I'm sure the present Bigg City will be great and fun.
And if you're going to kill service sims - make sure to keep their service outfits and hairs, then they can be recognized as deceased service NPCs.

Just like in Olive Specter's graveyard.

Oh, it just doesn't stop!

Edith Pilaf went into aspiration failure when her mentor Pearl died, so the Therapist showed up - and I immediately got an endless Primitive Break Error on Edith. Okay, fine! I tried the same trick again, only without the extra CAS sim because aspiration failure doesn't make a memory (unless it's of meeting the therapist? I should check that.). After I forced an error on the therapist, a second therapist dropped down and tended to Edith while the first one froze. This didn't worry me because when you have multiple aspiration failures on a lot each failed aspirant gets a personal therapist, so multiple appearances shouldn't mess up the code.The second therapist did his job and left, but the first just stood there. I forced another error on him, and all that happened was he stood up straighter. Force error on All In-World with the batbox; no change. Save and close the house, get back in; no change.

I considered move_objects deleting him, or packing the nice things Edith and Pearl had bought with their combined income into her inventory and moving her out and back in; but for obvious reasons was reluctant to do anything more with him without soliciting opinions. So here I am soliciting opinions.

I'm now thinking I need to make sure all the universal NPCs manifest correctly during development from here out! I'm happy to say that Mrs. Crumplebottom has already shown up and berated Treys and Bertha for making out, Edith for nude hot-tubbing, and everybody for daring to wear swimsuits without any hassle. I think the mechanical car is the only Universal NPC left for this EP set, and that's an easy test to make. I'm not very worried about my game files because all my objects packages are locked, but if there's any possibility of this hassle getting passed on to the player, I need to head it off at the pass.

Do the sims get personal Therapists if multiple sims have aspiration failures? I didn't know that.
But I'd still go back to a recent backup where Pearl's still alive and kill her. It may be dangerous if two Therapists come for one sim. Multiple Hula Zombies can come for one sim, but they are coded to that and they don't do anything for the target sim. They just dance and fade away slowly.
If two Therapists come for one sim, it may cause issues because both of them try to interact with the target sim. And only one of them can do that. Meaning the other Therapist would be in limbo and cannot finish his work.
But maybe it's completely safe to have two Therapists for the same sim.

If you want to go back to a backup and re-do it, delete the Therapist after you reset him. Then the game won't spawn a second Therapist. And he will be able to do his work.

There are 6 universal NPCs in a TS2+Uni+NL only game.
- Therapist
- Hula Zombie
- Pollination Technician
- Grim Reaper
- Remote Control Car
- Mrs. Crumplebottom

Hula Zombie and Mrs. Crumplebottom don't need to be fixed, as it seems.
Grim Reaper and Therapist need to be reset first, before they start working in new neighborhoods.
I'm not sure whether the Remote Control Car needs to be reset as well. It would be quite easy to fix. Buy the Remote Control Car from Buy Mode, reset it, sell it and buy a new one. Then it should work properly.
Pollination Technician. Hmm... I don't think this one needs to be reset. The game only uses his genetics for babies that were produced via abduction. He's not present at alien abductions anyway.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking - the problem, whatever it is, seems to occur when the character appears on the lot, and the PT never does. Maybe I should cheat an abduction anyway, just to be sure...hmmm...that could be fun, in fact...

I ought to just be able to buy the car, see whether it can be played with, and sell it back. Better safe than sorry.

I had a double aspiration failure with the Oldies in the GS Uberhood as soon as they moved in; switching back and forth between them I could clearly see that they were each interacting with a therapist at the same time. However, I as player could only see one of them at a time - and the first, frozen one remained visible the whole time the second one was treating Edith. Neither of them were visible when I made Lionel, who was also there but not in aspiration failure, selectable. So yeah, not quite the same thing. I'll go ahead and restore the backup, see what I can do. It may be more care than is necessary, but better safe than sorry with a property made for upload.

Oh, wait, doesn't the Social Bunny come with base game? I don't even know how you get the Social Bunny - I've only even seen him once.

Yes, he does. Also the Social Worker and the Bus Driver come with the base game. You're right, these sims are also considered as objects. But the difference is that they are not universal.

They are not present in an empty neighborhood while the universal sims are. And if you adopt a child, or if someone's Social need is too low, the game will freeze for a moment. That's because it will need to generate a new unique Social Worker or Social Bunny for your neighborhood. They are considered as "Objects" but they are objects of the neighborhood, not of the game.

So you don't need to reset them. Because they aren't in your neighborhood. And even if they are in your neighborhood, they'd work just fine.


He only comes if your sim's Social need is completely red. But that's impossible in big families, the sims will talk with other sims if they notice that their Social need is low. But if your sim doesn't know anyone and lives alone, then a Social Bunny may come for him (or her).

Ah, good, I won't worry about those, then.

I forced error on the therapist as fast as I could. It set up a chain reaction of therapists - he'd walk her through an entire recovery cycle, and as he disappeared a new one would drop down. Nobody froze, though, so I finally let the earlier one go through his spiel and then vanish, waited through the second one to go through his spiel and vanish (resetting poor Edith several times per therapist as she kept throwing those Primitive Break Errors); she went through a chicken-clucking all by herself, and then straightened up and seemed to be normal. By aspiration-failure standards of normal. Lionel Trane was there and she rolled a "woohoo in bed" want, with which he obliged her, and all seems to be well now.

We'll find out for sure when I kill poor Cornelia Stone and her husband goes into aspiration failure for it...I'm not normally a ruthless person, but I'm having to be one for this project!

All right, different problem.

I've never played with the sim creation function of the tombstone before, so I didn't know what to expect. I used it to make a new baby forTreys Bigg and his wife Bertha now that they're married, and one duly appeared. He had no name, and I was afraid he might be a clone of Bertha since he has her red hair and brown eyes, and when I set him to birthday and took him to the cake he had her nose; but the personality was different, so I figured that was probably okay. I was able to give him a first name with the batbox, no problem. I needed him to be a lot more playful than he was, so I dragged the points way up. They had no "had baby" memory, but I can add those if I have to. So far, so good.

However, little Fourth has a fears panel, but no wants panel - or rather, he had a normal fears panel, and a wants panel blank except for "buy toy," which, once I bought toys, rolled over into another blank slot. Rerolling with the batbox rerolled the fears but did nothing for the wants panel. I forced an error on him; I saved, left, and came back; I had his parents interact with him - nothing. Or almost nothing. A couple of times his aspiration level went up, but there was no other indication of his wants being affected.

Unable to find any good looking options on the Tombstone or the batbox, I decided to try out Cyjon's Debugger, but approaching it with the pointer causes the active sim to throw a Stack Trace Error - I have yet to successfully click on the thing.

I can always go to the last back-up and just make her pregnant - it'll slow down development some, but I can live with that if I have to. Fourth is ultimately intended to be the Mayor and to have a few kids of his own, and I've got a few more family trees I will need to expand in game, so I was really hoping the Tombstone would work! So - ideas?

That's because the child has no parents - that's why he doesn't have any wants. The option "New Baby" on Tombstone L and D is not complete. It just clones one of your sim as a baby. No genetical connnections to the other parent. And the baby is not recognized as the child of the other sim, whom the baby was cloned from, as well. So I'd go back to the last back-up.

If you want to have a baby, then you'll have to select "Simulate genetic merger with" and then the name of the other parent. After that, choose "Speed up a pregnancy" to bypass the pregnancy and your sim should give birth to a baby who really is their child.

And the game will add memories for the parents and for the grandparents (if the baby has grandparents).

But the option "Simulate genetic merger with" won't add a "Woohoo" memory for the parents. You'll have to add them manually in SimPE. A better option would be to use the "Try for Baby" option and then the "Speed up a pregnancy".

Oh, they already did all that! I was just hoping to shortcut the baby. Back a step I go.

Use the "Simulate genetic merger with" and "Speed up a pregnancy" options then. That would make more sense.

With the simulate genetic merger option, you can also make the male pregnant, but I wouldn't do so. The Skintone Range record in the SimDNA would be set different.
It doesn't corrupt the neighborhood but the game would see the father as the mother and the mother as the father. The game actually does this when the pregnancy was created by an alien abduction.

Well, this is annoying.

A few backups ago I killed Cornelia Stone with disease and placed the urn in her daughter Bertha's inventory right before she married into the Biggs household. After finishing that day's development I backed up and ran Hoodchecker, as usual, only realizing that I hadn't removed the urn from inventory when I got the message asking me where to send it. So I went ahead and sent it to the Old Cemetery, since the Stones are poor and only Bertha's marrying up justified her going into San Simolean anyway. It seemed the safest option. When I opened the hood next I went to the Old Cemetery and placed Cornelia's stone and kept rolling.

Well! Today I realized that Bertha still has an urn in her inventory! I took it out and it says "Here Lies Cornelia Stone." Just like the one in the Old Cemetery did.

They can't both be linked to her data - can they? Which one is safe to delete? Is there a way to double-check?

These memory problems I'm having are kicking my butt, making this a lot harder than it needs to be!

I've noticed that too. If you place an urn into the inventory, the HC thinks the tombstone is in limbo and that's why it moves the tombstone to a cemetary lot. However, the reference in the sim inventory won't be deleted - so you'll have two tombstones. I believe if you delete one of the tombstones, the other tombstone and its ghost will get corrupted. But maybe this is not the case if you have nounlinkondelete mod installed.

This happened in my private neighborhood too. I restored the neighborhood from backup (before I used HC) and placed the tombstone to the cemetary lot. And then I used the HC. I had the nounlinkondelete mod installed, but I restored from backup anyway - just to be safe.

Don't use HoodChecker if one of your sims has urns in his or her inventory. You may use HoodChecker after you placed the urns somewhere.

I do have nounlinkondelete, of course, and if this were just my hood I'd trust it, but - for a shared neighborhood? I'm thinking I get to go back - oh, geez, I'm not sure how many phases this is? I wish I'd realized it before. Bertha'd had such lovely children, too...

Let's hope it's the last phase.

I know how it feels if you made such a great process but have to give it up because of a little thing that can become a large thing.
That happened to my neighborhood, too.

It happens in every neighborhood. It's annoying, but - you do what the work requires.

It isn't harder than completely re-researching and rewriting a book because of an error you discovered in Chapter 7; or editing a third of a novel away without discarding any plot; or losing entire characters - all of which are normal parts of revision. So I know I can do this. I just wish that being careful not to make the mistakes in the first place worked more efficiently and visibly! Of course, we'll never know how many more revisions I'd have to do if I weren't being careful...

We're humans and we make mistakes. Sometimes we don't notice it, sometimes we do. But we usually learn from mistakes.
If you are like "Ooh, I must be careful, I must NOT make any mistakes", then you'll most likely make mistakes. So don't hassle yourself, just go as you'd normally do.

I can imagine how frustrating it can be to rewrite a whole book because of one error... I hope that never happened to you. That would take so much time. :/

Oh, it did, though! Eleven Thousand Years Lost was at the house where it sold, being read by the editor I sold it to, and I had to e-mail her and ask her to stop considering it because I'd put honeybees in Chapter 7 and had just discovered they aren't native to the Americas, and something like three plot threads and four character arcs were pivoting on the bee-tree raiding scene. Plus there'd been a boom in American Pleistocene archeology during the years I'd been shopping it around. I had to unravel everything back to Chapter 7 and rewrite forward from there. But the book is much, much better now and think how awful it would've been if I'd found out about the honeybees as it was going to press!

And now I've had to restore from six backups ago, but it's okay because while I was straightening everything out I had a Better Idea. And you know, I may get exactly the same children for Bertha and Treys - it could happen.

ETA: Holey cheese this is now 100% better! I hadn't yet decided who was going to cheat an abduction with to make sure the PT got activated properly, and Candide Yams got abducted so now I don't have to! This alien will be an adult when the game starts. I know what to do with it if it's female; if it's male I'll think of something.

But now I need another name that goes with Yams...

I know that horses aren't native to America - they came after the first European people sailed to the coasts. But honeybees? I thought they were native. Since all plants need bees or butterflies to be able to develop, etc.
By the way, I'm glad you were able to fix that issue.


Sorry! I can't help you there. I'm bad at pun names... I'd say Violet Yams or Honey Yams. But both would be for females and you need male names...

How about something (for a name) that plays with the sound of Yam - (am).

Along the lines of Cogito I Yam (sorry can't help the education - I'm sure you can think of something better).

I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam...not getting on very fast. I hope it's a girl. Maybe if I get a boy I'll quit without saving and keep trying till I get one.

[Pleistocene geekery]
Bees are native to America, but tree-dwelling honeybees are a European import and actually contributed to the demise of the Carolina parakeet by co-opting its hollow tree nesting habitat - since honeybees take over the trees year-round, it was impossible for the parakeets to beat the bees to their seasonal nesting sites. When bee colonies split off the European colonists tended to let the surplus ones go native rather than adding new hives, with the result that honeybees preceded the wave of immigration across the continent. They were known as "white man's flies" to some native tribes. Native bumblebees and other types of non-honey-producing bees also pollinate the native flora, and are killed by the same pesticides. There are some native Central American bee species, but they store their honey in the ground and aren't native to Central Texas.

And horses actually evolved in America and didn't die out here till the big megafaunal die-off at the end of the Pleistocene. Which is a lot more interesting than the deaths of the mammoths, which are huge and slow-breeding and easy to exterminate; but the changes in the landscape at the end of the Pleistocene favored faster-breeding horses, so much so that huge herds roamed the plains within only a few decades of their reintroduction. So I could have horses in the story (and do; I had three breeds to choose from) but not honeybees. [/Pleistocene geekery]

Eye Yam?

I wound up naming him Wyatt and I've figured out what to do with him. He'll be an adult when this thing wraps up. Assuming I don't have to back up to before his birth again.

Meanwhile, does anyone have any idea why none of the bars in the neighborhood, including ones that worked fine in Land Grant University, is generating a bartender?

That's strange. Which bar did you use? If it's a BG bar, then it won't spawn a NPC.

There's a mod that upgrades the BG bars, so they also generate NPCs. I don't think that will fix your problem, but maybe it will do.