I'm trying to improve the cleanup of unplayed and dead sims by doing some script modding, but I'm running into problems trying to compile. One of my modules imports from sims.sim and it all works fine until it gets up to sims4.log, where it throws an error on line 1 because it cannot find module _trace.
What is this? I couldn't find any module by this name in the Python library or the sims 4 scripts. Am I doing something wrong?
I'm a totally Python newbie in way over his head.

EA has just put out a patch that addresses this issue. You should double check your files. I'm going to assume it's not working anymore and will conflict.

Will take a look at the patch tonight to see what they've done. Thanks for the notice!

Where can I find the patch notes?

http://help.ea.com/en/article/the-sims-4-updates/

The patch notes keep vanishing and reappearing but they should be there.

Good luck with the patch, MasterDinadan

Well, it's Thursday 8 am in my game now. Took out the mod and my families area all still intact. I hope the mod is not active anymore since I didn't delete any cache files. This would mean it's fixed.

Still have the disappearing townies thought. Need to look into those more thoroughly

So here is EA's "fix".
in Households.pyo, they added one additional condition to check before considering a sim for pruning:
sim_info.household.home_zone_id == 0

This basically means that genealogy pruning will now only kill sims that are in the homeless bin. It still doesn't check if they are marked as "played" which means that moving your offspring into the homeless bin just to get them out of the house (but you still wish to interact with them) still will not protect them from the pruner.

I optimistically expected them to add a check to see if the Sim was dead (because it's something that actually needs to be addressed) but instead they decided to just limit it to the homeless bin. I don't know what they are thinking.

As far as I can tell, my mod will continue to function without any updates. It does exactly what it did before, shuts down the pruner. This is still valuable if you don't want it killing sims in your unplayed bin. However, it is far less critical than it was before.

Now that is just ..

Thanks for checking, though! I didn't want to patch without being somewhat convinced you mod would still work. But it looks like one can just skip this update anyway .

Well the updated did say 'some' heh! Thanks for letting us know I'll put this one back in. I'd taken it out 'just in case'. It wouldn't have affected my current save anyway as I haven't moved anybody out of the household yet.

How do I put in: DirectoryFiles unpackedmod autoupdate

Should it be

Priority 500 PackedFile *.package PackedFile *\*.package DirectoryFiles unpackedmod autoupdate

Or

Priority 500 PackedFile *.package PackedFile *\*.package
DirectoryFiles unpackedmod autoupdate

All on one line or two separate lines? I am not sure and would like to use this Mod. Thanks.

Two seperate lines.
If you aren't sure whether it's working, I recommend installing another XML tunable mod that you can easily verify (such as my pregnancy duration mods or my work in everyday mod)

Can you play if you don't update ?

It does address two other major bugs.

Thank you so much for your mod, MasterDinadan, and for explaining what the new patch did. My experience would bear that out. I had not experienced any disappearing Sims but have been following this with interest, as I imagined it might happen to me at some point because of my play style. I'm giving you this info in case it is useful.

I didn't start tracking until last week, about 4 Sim-weeks into the game. Since the point in time I started daily tracking of my played and unplayed Sims, there had been no variation: no Sims disappeared and none were added. During that time I played only one family and took them off-lot only to places I'd visited before. I did not use the mod.

This morning the new patch installed. I switched to another household at Monday 6 a.m. Sim-time, as is my rotational habit. I had never played this household before. I checked the Sims; all was as it had been. I took this Sim off-lot to somewhere I'd never been before with any family: the library. After returning from the library, I checked the Sims: 9 new single-Sim households (homeless) had been generated. I continued to play and saved at 11 p.m. Sim Monday. Checked Sims; everyone there, including the 9 new ones. After 2 a.m. (now Sim-Tuesday) I checked the Sims. 6 unplayed households (all homeless Townies) had been culled, including one that had two adults and two children, for a total of 9 Sims culled.

I exited without saving and closed the game. Installed your mod. Started the game and went back to the Monday 11 p.m. save, checked Sims, everyone there including 9 new ones, as before. After 2 a.m. Sim-Tuesday, checked Sims again. Everyone still there.

You are AWESOME. EA's patch is so weak .....

My experience thus far is that your mod is working alongside the patch just fine. I was skeptical at how thorough the patch would be, and when you confirmed it would still cull the homeless Sims, I plopped your mod right back in. Another Thursday has gone by and no one has disappeared. Just thought I'd put this up here to offer testimony that my game seems fine *so far* while being fully patched and with this mod installed.

Wonder why for me homeless are culled with or without mod ...

Because you're over the 180 sim limit, crinrict. You don't have genealogicide culling, you have max_population culling.

I'm working on tweaks to the max population, but I've been delayed by other obligations, and that darn patch which is causing some unrelated issues for me ( or it's probably my fault for screwing something up when poking around in the files! )

Does the population include dead sims? I just checked my population is 330 (i'm on 5/6th generation) ... but I don't have 330 live sims! And like crinrict I am getting culling even with the mod installed. The only safe sims are the ones I have moved into the neighbourhood.

I don't know what's included since I don't believe I have 230 (current number) even with the dead ones. My suspension is that the culled ones are also counted by the mod (I assume 330 is what the other mod tells you ??)

I might need to start a new game to see what happens with homeless now but I'm kinda attached

Yes I was using the getpopulation mod to check how many sims there were. I am attached to mine as well

It's surprising to me that people consistenly have pops over 180. I'm pretty sure the pop count that script returns is the same value considered by the max population action, but then it shouldn't go that high unless every sim in the hood is playable.

I counted my living SIms and that that includes the one living somewhere but unplayed and I had 68 at the time (maybe more now)

Just wondering, can I use this mod at the same time I use this mod? http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=535110

Yes! There should be no conflict, and in fact I recommend it.

Thank you for doing and sharing this fix for disappearing sims. I for one would really appreciate a tweak that reduce the max population.