Another Staff Note This is now apparently non-functional and also unsupported. See http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=545615 for a recent and supported mod that incorporates the same functionality.

Staff Note Update 2014-11-25: As of version 1.2.24.20 this should be obsolete, see patch notes: http://help.ea.com/en/article/the-sims-4-updates/. Please post feedback on whether or not this is working properly now (without this mod), so we can remove the obsolete file and close this thread. The creator has not logged in here for a almost a month so we cannot expect them to take care of it themselves. Thank you!

Hi folks,
After researching the widely reported issues of playable Sims vanishing from the neighborhood, I have found a Story Progression action which seems to be the culprit.

The action, which does not appear to be critical to game stability, arbitrarily removes Sims from the neighborhood on Thurs morning in-game, if they have distant relatives or large families, regardless of whether the sim is marked playable. This is a huge problem for rotational play or large Legacy style challenges.

Before uploading the mod to the community at large, I would appreciate anyone who can install and play with it for a few in-game weeks. If you have found during the time that your sims are still being deleted, or if you encounter any new issues or instability, please let me know.

To install the mod, place the package file in your Mods folder.
You also need an empty folder "unpackedmod" in your Mods folder.
Finally, you must have the following line added to the end of your resource.cfg:
DirectoryFiles unpackedmod autoupdate

Thanks!

Thank you - I am sure this will be a useful mod.

THanks.

I shall try it out tomorrow.

Posted in the other thread, but just to say here: I have tested this and so far it appears it does work. No sims have been deleted after playing on a save game where deletions *always* occurred in all my tests and workaround attempts.

So what did you do there, you removed the tuning for the genealogy thing? That is not going to change much .. if it's indeed a game mechanism related to those parameters that are the culprit, it's just going to use the default values instead (Sunday instead of Thursday). It's not going to stop doing its thing.

I have a save game (actually 2) from just before the deletion event that I have used for testing workarounds for this bug for the last week or more. So far this has successfully prevented the deletion event from removing any played sims from my world.

When did the deletion occur for you withut this mod, on Thursday? Did you now play until Sunday?

(Actually I never know what people mean when they say "Thursday night", does that mean in the night between Wednesday and Thursday or in the night between Thursday and Friday? Since you're able to repoduce this reliably, can you tell an exact time?)

E: oh, and another question: are the deleted sims ones that you have made yourself in CAS and then imported, or are they pre-existing sims from the default game? Asking because EA are a bit vague about "game-generated" sims in their descriptions .. I can't tell whether this means preexisting ones or only autogenerated at runtime.

In the EA Answers forum thread I've seen various dates and times mentioned, though for me it was a Thursday morning between midnight and midday, about 4-5 sim weeks into a game (or maybe a bit more).

I'm going to bed now and will update more tomorrow, I just wanted to make it clear to anyone who - like me - was desperate for a fix, that it does look promising so far. For now, over and out.

Thanks for the info! The timespan for the genealogy thing in EA tuning is Thursday 2-6 (on a 24-hour clock) so that would fit into the picture.

Also see these threads for those who don't know them yet:

http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=534717 ("Disappearing sims" in Game Help)
http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=535110 (removed "Reduced townie generation" mod (relies on the same file), discussion in comments)

I think there are some in Modding Discussion too, but less recent.

I'll try to do some targeted testing around this, but I don't think it is a problem. I understand what you are saying, but it simply doesn't apply here. If I Genealogy Pruner is instantiated without a schedule being specified, it will use the Sunday default as you say. But the change should prevent the Pruner from ever being instantiated in the first place.

The Story Progression object is not "hard-coded" to look for certain actions. It should only load the action that are specified in the XML.

Oh ok, the latter I didn't know -- thanks for elaborating! (The first post made it sound like you had only looked at the tuning)

What exactly do you mean by "whether the sim is marked playable" in your first post -- what does "playable" mean in that context? Is that the played/unplayed distinction (that doesn't quite work), or could it have something to do with EAxian vs. player-made sims too?

(I wish I could test this, but I haven't had any disappearances so far. Which also fits into the picture since I've only just had a few kids, no large interrelated families)

Households can be marked playable or non-playable. There is clearly a distinction as they are categorized separately in the household management. The genealogy pruning doesn't care - it will go after any sim that is distantly related to one of the sims that is actively being played on Thursday morning.

Ah yeah that's what I meant by "played/unplayed" -- those two categories in household management. Not sure if it's worded differently in my game or I remember it differently.

Now I have two files:
resource.cfg
resource.cfg DirectoryFiles unpackedmod autoupdate
I don't know what I did wrong.

Right click resource.cfg and edit in notepad or other editor of choice

I've right clicked. I don't have an edit option.

Do we just rename the file, or do we have to actually edit the contents of the file?
I'm getting pretty desperate, EA seems to have no idea what to tell me and it's now Wednesday morning in game, so I'm afraid to play the game now. If I played an in-game family with no relation to any of my other families all day Thursday, would that stop the deletion from occurring?

You should be editing the contents of the file. What happens if you try to open the file by double-clicking? It should either come up in notepad or similar editor, or it should ask you which program you want to use to open the file.

Wow, you are my hero. I haven't played an entire week yet but so far it seems to work just fine. The saves I have where I know the exact time things seemed to go wrong is fine, I'll keep playing just to be sure. Thanks so much

Okay, I just installed it.
Fingers crossed! :D

I had my game saved a few hours before the mass deletion (at 2:00 AM Sim-Thursday), and so far this has prevented it from happening again. Thank you so much! It's now Sim-Saturday and all is well. I will keep testing and report back if I have any issues.

Woken up and resuming testing. All positive so far.

Holy [email protected]#$ is it hard to create an account on this site.

I spent 10 minutes trying to "word" the answer to the "human verification" test properly.

Thankfully I can now finally login and download this mod as my Sims 4 game is completely ruined by disappearing family members.


EDIT: It works for me, I stopped playing this game a week after it came out because of this bug. Now it's finally fixed! (No thanks to EA) I can actually continue playing now.

I second it being annoyingly difficult to make an account lol.

Anyway, haven't been able to play for about a week because of the disappearing sims. Trying this out and will report if there are any issues. Thank you so much!

Edit: Didn't work for me. I'm not sure why. I even went through and deleted a bunch of the generated townies. Sigh.

Edit #2: Okay, I think I may have found the problem. Didn't realize it needed to be unzipped as my computer has gone all wonky since a few weeks ago and there was no prompt and/or option to actually unzip. (Don't even get me started on all the hoops I had to jump through to actually unzip it, HA!) Well now it's unzipped and I am going to guess based on all the other feedback that it should work this time. Fingers crossed. No more deleting pregnant ladies EA!!!

It's now Thursday 5: 36. Usually all my beloved families were stripped of their children/spouse. Not this time.

Thanks so much.

I'll try playing through an entire week to see if it works.