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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 5th Jan 2007 at 6:26 AM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Pets
Default permanently deleting a sim
I don't know how to delete sims permanently. I want to delete a baby (not toddler) and when I delete her, save, exit, re-enter, she's back and restore. When I delete her without save, and then exit, and re-enter, she's still back and restore again. I'd search the forums here and elsewhere for an hour and the tips for deleting a sim is just to delete and it will be permanently gone but it doesn't work for me. I guess this isn't a common problem. If it is, I apologize. Thanks so much.
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retired moderator
#2 Old 5th Jan 2007 at 6:42 AM
The easiest ways to permanently delete a sim are 1) if they are old enough, move them out of a lot into the SimBin and delete from there or 2) kill them off. But I think that babies wuld be difficult to delete as you'd have to move an adult out with them and last I checked, babies can't be killed.

Please do not PM me with Game or Site Help questions. Post them in the appropriate section after going through the FAQs.

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." ~ Verbal Kint, The Usual Suspects
Scholar
#3 Old 5th Jan 2007 at 12:28 PM
NEVER delete a sim from the sim bin!
You'll end up with a dangeling character file and massive potential for corruption.
There's no good and easy way to get rid of a sim, but Pescado has a complicated way that works and won't blow up your game.
If you're not comfortable with SimPE, I suggest using debug mode to make the baby selectable and use the tombstone of life and death to kill it.
Either that, or leave the lot and let the social worker take the baby.

"Even the computer industry failed to see the importance of the Internet, but that's not saying much. Let's face it, the computer industry failed to see that the century would end." - Douglas Adams
Field Researcher
#4 Old 5th Jan 2007 at 12:39 PM
Quote: Originally posted by gwillewyn
NEVER delete a sim from the sim bin!
You'll end up with a dangeling character file and massive potential for corruption.
There's no good and easy way to get rid of a sim, but Pescado has a complicated way that works and won't blow up your game.
If you're not comfortable with SimPE, I suggest using debug mode to make the baby selectable and use the tombstone of life and death to kill it.
Either that, or leave the lot and let the social worker take the baby.


This is very dangerous I read on the sims recourse that deleting characters from the sim bin can lead to what is called the "deadhead bug" I don't know much about it but if you search for it at the Sims resource you can find a lot about it, i think. It seems that too many empty character files can cause corruption yes and in the end your game will end up soooo buggy and you might have to reinstall everything!

Ah a Biscuit! It all makes sense
Moderator of Please Read the Help FAQs
retired moderator
#5 Old 5th Jan 2007 at 5:28 PM
I've never heard about problems with deleting sims from the simbin. I guess you really do learn something new everyday.

Please do not PM me with Game or Site Help questions. Post them in the appropriate section after going through the FAQs.

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." ~ Verbal Kint, The Usual Suspects
Field Researcher
#6 Old 5th Jan 2007 at 5:39 PM
Yeah I didn't know that could be a prob... But this bug can be problematic so i wouldn't risk it I would just keep the Sims in the sim bin even if they aren't needed!

Ah a Biscuit! It all makes sense
Test Subject
Original Poster
#7 Old 5th Jan 2007 at 7:30 PM
wow, I didn't know that either. I haven't tried anything else yet. Would speeding up the age to where the baby becomes an adult or elder and killing it be a problem? I thought that may be a way to permanently deleting it.
Field Researcher
#8 Old 6th Jan 2007 at 12:08 PM Last edited by lechapeau : 6th Jan 2007 at 12:20 PM.
For the original poster if it's not too late, I'd grow the baby and get the Teleporter Bush from ingelogical, The Laden Swallow or dinnerbell (all sites with Inge Jones things on them).
I'd then put them in the adoption pool with the bush or even make them a townie and forget them.
Killing is so much safer if they truly must go though. Any sims I didn't like I'd kill and move to a cemetary (if you can) so I hadn't even got the ghosts on the lot to deal with.

When you delete sims from the game or the sim bin or even ghosts files when you delete a tombstone their character files get shredded. Meaning other sims with an association to those sims then have their relationships and memories get messed up and that can cause problems with incomplete data in their own files. When a sim tries to talk or gossip about that sim their speech bubble has the jagged lines where the game can't give a picture icon for that sim which starts to indicate trouble...
It's the thing about this problem you *can see* actually happening, if you look in SimPE then it's more obvious because there the sim browser will show with the pink and blue (I think) squares under their picture who the unlinked/no character data characters are. It will also say beside them which they are as well, the square icons are quite small and double checking their descriptions is often easier. Also in the memory area you should see the now missing memories, in the game their memories often have '$ Subject' as a description for the now unknown sim.
It depends who and how many you deleted as to how well you can clear everything up in there but that also can be done to try and hold trouble off for a while if you're willing to take on the task.

Some people don't seem to see the results of this for a longer time, or they don't realise any problems they are having are due to this so they dismiss them and say they are not affected, and some are amazingly lucky and truly don't seem to get affected, but it's not a risk I'd like to take again.
The time I had unkowingly caused this myself by moving sims between hoods and deleting any I didn't like playing it didn't take long to show up and my neighborhood crawled to a halt and became unplayable.
The next time was a mistake, we'd made a neighborhood with a group of people and some characters sent were 'unclean' and had met other sims before being sent to us and some gravestones had been deleted.
This led for me to the jagged lines which I knew were a bad sign and eventually again it was like playing the game stuck in syrup, everything was really crawling again like I was playing in slow motion.
Further on the main problems are when a sim dies it's portrait won't disappear from the family group hence the name the Dead Head Bug, because these dead heads stop other sims moving in and out and being born due to sims not leaving the family as they should so the game thinks they are still there.
Someone recently at TSR had dorm problems with deleted college students clogging things up and the students then became stuck.

It depends on your feelings towards your game really, I like doing what *I* want when I want to and not having unexplained things suddenly go wrong. As we all know a neighborhood can glitch anyway, especially if it has been going for a while so prevention helps, knowing a risk and trying to avoid it makes it better.
I keep J.M.Pescado's nounlinkondelete hack in my game as well so any gravestones that mysteriously disappear don't glitch my game...hopefully...and wander around trying to spread the word where I see this being discussed.
It's been a big problem for me and I didn't like the results. I lost sims I loved and neighborhoods I'd worked hard in and it's completely avoidable.
But they're your games...it's up to everyone to decide their own risks.

You'll get a few threads at TSR with info, but the best and most technical as to why you *don't do it* is at MATY.
I think the best thread there was called 'So what exactly is an overpopulated neighborhood anyway' and it was started by sarah dippity but there are others.
I just searched and that specific one is currently on page 28.

You shouldn't need to reinstall in any affected neighborhood though, it only affects the neighborhoods you've deleted sims in or moved them to or from and deleting that/those neighborhood/s will delete the bug.

UPDATE Nov '11: Beacon Falls & Maple Valley are custom TS2 neighborhoods with storylines, add-on families & lots. The Beacon Falls Blog has separate business & vacation subhoods & Maple Valley's Blog has a separate university subhood. All have been fixed using Mootilda's HoodChecker.
Field Researcher
#9 Old 6th Jan 2007 at 1:44 PM Last edited by biscuit-the-great : 6th Jan 2007 at 2:20 PM.
Thanks Lechapeau for this snippet of info! I have deleted quite a few sims before but that was a while since and i havent seen the weird jagged lines in the speech bubbles and any other weird things. My sim can still remember meeting the sim i deleted though. But i will not delete any more!!!

So in the memory panel it has a pic of the deleted sim.... he looks just as he was when i left him and it says "nice to meet you stranger" So is this OK? It doesn't say $ subject for, me but i am not risking it ever again! I have tons of backups and i have even packaged my very special sims to a file (.sims2pack) Including Boy (my avatar sim named rather unimaginatively Boy)

come to think of it, I can remember last time (before i did a clean re-install) I deleted TONS of sims from the sim bin and from there things got really buggy... These bugs that started up after caused me to re-install. But now I have backed up everything five times ( I am a bit funny that way, I am just so cautious of my game and I am always sat there looking at exactly what button i am pressing seconds before i actually press it ) and packaged special sims so that I will NEVER EVER lose them.

Ah a Biscuit! It all makes sense
Field Researcher
#10 Old 6th Jan 2007 at 2:46 PM
Well from the last time I had this it just said $ Subject for any now unknown sim. That was a couple of versions of SimPE ago though and the game itself might have changed a bit as well since then to make it say "nice to meet you stranger" instead...so I'm not sure.
When it goes bad you'll definately know it, play it until then and see.
The hood that I had jagged lines in I played for about a year. The characters had been deleted before I even got it. It was a community made neighborhood and mistakes were made that we'd not known about at the time of putting it all together...
Things happen that way and I was sad to lose it but many other people had downloaded that neighborhood and even continue to play it now with no trouble, it was just my luck it went that way for me. I never deleted any sims there myself or did anything to cause this, looking in SimPE I could see back to the point where it all happened, it just took that long to surface in my game.
You can't be too careful either, back ups have saved many a game!

UPDATE Nov '11: Beacon Falls & Maple Valley are custom TS2 neighborhoods with storylines, add-on families & lots. The Beacon Falls Blog has separate business & vacation subhoods & Maple Valley's Blog has a separate university subhood. All have been fixed using Mootilda's HoodChecker.
Field Researcher
#11 Old 7th Jan 2007 at 2:42 PM
Thanks Lechapeau, I understand the importance of this issue and I really admire you for spreading the word.. This is so important and it can ruin a lot of work that you have put blood, sweat and tears into. Thanks to the info you gave I am very careful and I can save my game in the long run!

Ah a Biscuit! It all makes sense
Field Researcher
#12 Old 12th Jan 2007 at 12:42 PM
I am frightened.. you see looking back I have deleted millions of sims from the sim bin However... one of my sims was talking on the phone and I noticed that she was talking about a deleted sim.. their portrait showed up in the bubble just fine, When sims gossip they never gossip about a deleted sim they seem to only gossip about neighboring sims, My sims has around 6 memories of meeting now deleted sims, and they all show a perfect portrait and a description,

Now can you remember that people were complaining to aspyr about not being able to delete recolours in game once they installed OFB? Maxis said something like this:http://www.modthesims2.com/article.php?t=147983
Do you think that this problem they fixed was this one maybe, since I have OFB and i can't see anything. BUT Like you said it can take a while for this to surface in game, so maybe I am affected. I might start again, this time being extra careful!

Thanks Lechapeau! I think that this is very dangerous. Keep up the good work!

Ah a Biscuit! It all makes sense
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