This came up in a thread on previously used lots that were then packaged (if you didn't want to delete all the furniture for some reason). I thought it would be useful enough to start its own thread.

Does anyone else have any items that contain references to sims to add to the list?

- Community Lot Deeds
- First Simoleon Earned Plaque
- Best Of The Best Award
- Plaques
- Tombstones/Urns/Ashes (risky)
- Tents

Some of those are guesses. How about inventory items of the family's sims? Are they stored in the lot package?

- Paintings? Incomplete ones certainly.

No. They're stored in the neighborhood package.

Not sure why this topic was split into two separate threads, but here's the original thread:
https://www.modthesims.info/sh...ad.php?t=502662

Well, doesn't almost every object on a used lot have a reference to a Sim? Talking about that gun from Law Enforcement carrer that reveals who last used an object. (For example Bella in the Goth mansion touched a lot of objects.)

That's just my guess, though.

Wouldn't anything that a ghost can get attached to be able to hold Sim references?

Although I think this is probably a good thing to have (since these objects might not be safe to transfer to another lot in inventory) I would say the only safe way to clean a used lot is to use the old one as a model and rebuild an exact replica.

Sounds like we need a new wiki page...

Or we could just add more info to the: Game Help:Avoiding Hood Corruption: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...Hood_Corruption

I honestly don't know, but I believe that's a very good guess.

I believe that's one of the reasons why previously occupied lots are a problem. EA tried to solve this problem by deleting all of the furniture when a sim moves out. When we keep the furniture, we are re-creating a problem which EA tried to fix. Given all of the bugs that they didn't fix, they must have believed that this was a major problem.

Have we just found a new VBT? Binning lots with used objects in them? Should someone with a wiki account add it to the VBT list?

I didn't know this. I have a habit of moving around my families quite a bit with household items (most of them are poor and can't afford new stuff). I also use the stay shrub thingie by Inge, it allows one to leave everything on the lot if you move a family out. Sometimes I do this, I might upgrade/rebin etc, so this is not good to do?

How would this work for apartments? IIRC, there's two apartment... thingys, the base one that's there when the lot's empty, then a new one that contains the family's furniture and stuff, and when they move out, it reverts back to the base one. So one would think that previously occupied apartments might be cleaner than residential apartments. Maybe. I dunno.

I agree with this assessment, for the most part.

Many people use cheats to add objects to an apartment base lot while the apartment is occupied, and that seems like a risk for causing the same kinds of problems that can occur with an occupied residential lot. Changes to the base lot are going to be permanent.

I don't believe that binning these lots is the problem. I believe that the problem arises when the lots are installed into a different neighborhood; the sim references should remain valid within the same neighborhood. Please note that I do not know where the sim references are stored or how to check whether they are still valid or not.

It's difficult to say how likely these things are to break your game. We have one person who swears that the Stay-Things Shrub destroyed their neighborhood, but I haven't seen tons of problems that are obviously related to previously occupied lots. Then again, we see a lot of people whose neighborhoods are corrupted, but they swear that they haven't done any of the things on the "corrupt your hood" list. Perhaps some number of those are because of moving previously occupied lots, especially those that were not cleaned because of the Stay-Things Shrub.

Certainly, it's safer to build lots in a sim-free environment and it's safer to share lots that have never been occupied. The problem is: we just don't know how dangerous it is to share previously occupied furnished lots. If you want to be completely safe, then my recommendation is to avoid them.

Another data point: Pescado has always said that the Stay-Things Shrub will corrupt your lot. Unfortunately, he didn't explain why. We already know that it permanently under-prices the lot, but he may have been talking about sim references on the lot as well.

TLDR: We know that there is some risk. We just don't know how much risk there is.

I believe it's not, yes. Stay things shrub is awfully practical, but the more I read/see/think the more I start to doubt it. There's more than one player that has experienced a lot getting corrupted when bringing furniture with them in inventory, and I don't see why it wouldn't be able to cause the same problem when you leave furniture and remove the Sims.

I am personally convinced that my second hood went corrupt due to the extensive use of stay things shrub to bring lots with me, but I can't really prove it.

As Mootilda so wisely points out, there is probably a reason why EA sells off everything when you move. I know EA aren't exactly known for logic, but I do think there is something to it this time.

I had a related thought while playing The Sims 2 this evening. It's possible to put a lot of objects on OMSPs (One More Slot Please) items. There's even a mod now that automatically adds OMSP slots to certain items like fridges. Now, I can't remember if the standalone OMSPs are sold when the house is emptied... ...but I'm pretty sure the fridges etc still sell, even when they have OMSP slots incorporated via the mod.

These slots can contain a lot of things, but the particular thing I have in mind as an example is the date object category. I'm absolutely sure these have information about the Sims to whom the items relate (the recipient and provider). Presumably, then, if I put a date object on one of these OMSPs-embedded-in-other-objects, then I'd have to put it somewhere else before selling or otherwise emptying the house? If so, then that would be a connected VBT (and, via the sale thing, also connected to the "deleting gravestones" VBT).

I honestly don't understand your question. If an object is deleted, anything in that object's slot is also deleted. It's a good thing if objects are deleted.

Tombstones are a special case, because tombstones are basically sims, not objects. It's a bad idea to delete sims, so it's a bad idea to delete tombstones.

We want to delete everything else that contains a reference to a sim. The standard EA logic is to delete just about everything on the lot, except for architecture and landscaping. Specifically. fridges, stoves, counters, toilets, sinks, and showers are all deleted, unless you have a mod to change what's deleted. EA even deletes fireplaces.

Perhaps this will help: most objects contain references to sims, which we want to delete before sharing. Tombstones contain the sims themselves, so they mustn't be deleted (or shared).

Thank you; that helped a lot.

I've been packaging lots and reusing them without problems in other hoods. Actually, I had some buggy lots magically repaired once packaged, so I believed that packaging automatically removes all references and bad stuff. But this is alarming...

What if batbox is used to throw errors on all objects? I guess that wouldn't help.

I agree. Packaging a lot helps to clean the lot. So does editing and saving a lot after your sims move out.

Again, I don't have any firm evidence that previously occupied lots cause corruption (or that they don't cause corruption). I'm now convinced that objects in occupied lots contain references to the sims who live there, but I have no idea whether those references are ever cleaned up. Someone would have to research the internal data format, find out where the sim references reside, and then run various tests to see whether those references are removed in various situations.

Until someone does this research, all that we can say is that there is more risk to previously occupied lots than to lots which have never been occupied. We don't know how much risk there is, or how to remove that risk. I'm reluctant to add this to the "things that will break your neighborhood" FAQ until proper research has been done. I hope that no one else will add it to the wiki until we actually know the answer.

I know that gummilutt is convinced that previously occupied lots destroyed her neighborhood. However, I have yet to see any evidence for or against this theory. Certainly, people saying that something is safe doesn't make it safe: I know lots of people who insist that installing occupied lot is safe. I convinced myself it wasn't by writing the HoodChecker.

In addition, it is always reasonable for people to decide how much risk they are willing to take. If you've done something in the past and never had problems, you might be more willing to take the risk than someone who installed previously occupied lots and their neighborhood blew up immediately.

If the batbox removes sim references from an object, then it would help with any potential problems. Does it? I honestly don't know. Someone would have to research the internal structure of the object, to see whether the reference was removed.

If someone wants to do research on their own, but they don't want to try to find the sim reference field in the object, there is something else that you could do. Someone above pointed out that one of the career rewards will show the last sim who used an object. This could be used to see whether we can find any references:
- Move a family out using the Stay-Things Shrub to keep the furnishings.
- Move one sim in with free-will turned off. Give them the scanner and have them scan the lot repeatedly. If they find any references at all, then we know that the Stay-Things Shrub does not remove sim references from all objects. Note that we cannot use this method to prove that the lot is safe, only that it is corrupted. However, it's a useful test.
- If any references are found, try the same test, but with a lot which has been packaged and then installed using the Clean Installer. There's a lot of value in installing in the same neighborhood that the lot was originally installed, so that any sim references will be valid and will therefore show up rather than causing an error. If sim references are found, then we know that packaging the lot doesn't clean it.
- And so on. If you have a theory about how to make the lot safe, try to disprove that theory by looking for sim references. Again, it's best to keep testing in the same neighborhood where the lot was used. If we move the lot to another neighborhood, there's a possibility that the scanner won't show anything because the sim reference is invalid. By sticking to the same neighborhood, we can be reasonably sure that the scanner will show us if a reference was found.

If we can prove that the sim references still exist in particular situations, then we have evidence-based knowledge that we can add to the wiki.

I just want to clarify that I am no way advocating spreading the word that it is dangerous and saying it's a known fact. Like I said in my last post, I can't possibly prove that it was the cause. I think it was, but that's just a theory. I agree completely with Mootilda that more research has to be done before it's added to wiki's and all that.

I'm just sharing my experience to make people think and debate with themselves if they want to take the potential risk or not. It's possible it is safe, but on the off chance it's not, do you want to take that risk?

Thanks Mootilda for the suggestion on how to test it. Very interesting. I'll be sure to take a look if I have the energy later (I've reinstalled the game but I need to deal with SecuRom and I'm not sure how much brain power will be left once I figure all that out).

Mootilda, I'm willing to perform such a test. I very often re-use lots, both binned and packaged, and am very interested whether it can cause problems. If gummilutt wants to test it, too, that's great.

Hopefully packaging does a good job on lots. Once I had a set of incredibly bugged lots, caused by a major hood bug introduced by an incompatible global mod that dealt with lots. Eventually all lots, both residential and community, started popping errors non-stop and became unplayable. Deleting the global mod did not help. I binned those lots and put their copies in the hood and they were still bugged the same way. Then I packaged those lots, installed them into the same hood and they weren't bugged anymore. A surprising thing is that there was nothing showing up in Clean Installer, so whatever corrupt data the lots contained within was removed automatically.

gummilutt, I'm really glad that you brought the issue up. It's clear that there's a potential for corruption here. Now that we know, we can start trying to research the issue.

Excellent. It would be helpful to have some real data on this issue.

Note that the Clean Installer is not cleaning sim references off of the lot. Perhaps the act of packaging the lot cleans it?

.

Yet at the same time they allow one to move occupied lots to the bin. *facepalm*

Attempting the research test. So far, I've found that the Stay-Things Shrub does not remove Sim references.

Edit: The packaged lot still contained the references. I conclude that using the Stay-Things Shrub and putting a lot that had a family moved out in a different neighborhood is a VBT, the same as if you had deleted a family.

If you move a new family into a lot shouldn't they overwrite previous Sim references? Or if you sold and replaced anything that showed up with one shouldn't that make the lot safe?

There are so many nice lots on here and now I'm wondering how many of them might have dodgy references. DX

Not good news. However, I think that your conclusion is premature. That's just the first step. We can't conclude that those sim references are used in any way which will corrupt a neighborhood. We've just confirmed that the risk is real and that packaging a lot doesn't clean the sim references.

When you delete a family, we can see the damage. Just run the HoodChecker and you'll see broken family ties, invalid relationships, and bad memories.

The next step is to find where those references are stored and see what happens when the sim reference is invalid. Does the game do the smart thing and remove the reference? Or, does it ignore invalid references? Or, does it use those references, regardless of their validity? These references are most dangerous if the game treats them as valid even when they aren't. That's when corruption tends to spread throughout your neighborhood.

If we know where the references are stored, we may be able to solve the problem by just zeroing all references during the installation of the lot (which we happen to have control over because we have the source code to the Clean Installer).

Other things which have been discussed to try to clean a lot:
- Forcing errors on all objects.

Port_A_Build just proved that they don't. He moved someone into a lot, then found references to the previous owners.

This was the "solution" that EA implemented. When sims move out, EA deletes all of the objects on the lot, except for architecture and landscaping. Is that sufficient? We don't know for sure. However, I believe that we can conclude that empty lots are safer than lots which have furnishings from a previous owner. It's even safer to never share previously occupied lots.

Over time, we learn about what's safe. I believe that MTS rules say that the lot should not have been lived in, but some people have probably ignored that rule and [Looks like I was wrong about the rules] I'm sure that some previously occupied lots were uploaded before the rules were set.

Hmm, so I'm guessing that the lot I recently downloaded from here that has leaves already falling from the trees and a puddle somewhere has been previously lived in. Pity, it was a nice lot, although I was also getting weird bleeding of colours on the rugs, so it probably wasn't going to work anyway.

I also presume that Port_A_Build checked the lot as soon as he/she moved a family in? Correct me if I'm wrong. It might take actually using items to change over references.

I'd be interested to know if force errors works. I'd like to try it myself, but I don't have the career reward thingy.

This is going to be a useful thread, especially if we can figure out how to remove the references!