Please Help!!!! All non main hood sims are missing!

Misscow1P

Hi

I have the most bizarre glitch that I can not find recorded anywhere else online.
I have an Uberhood with the main hood Bella Donna cove. Anyways, I've been playing it for a few months with minimal glitches. I do have mods, but they do not conflict with each other. Anyways, suddenly out of no where, I open my game and all the sims are gone, except for sims in the main hood. Every other district and downtown appears as if all houses are empty. I opened up one of the lots and checked if I could access one of the missing sims as an npc, but they are not in the relationship panel. All the bin families are gone, too.

I made no remarkable changes to my game to cause this. I tried removing all mods and cc, which did nothing, and I tried reinstalling the game, which also made no effect (my objects.package file was read only too, so nothing happened there anyways).

Another odd effect that began to occur is that pedasco's debugger and the sim manipulator only work now if I place them in my bins folder in program files. Also cyjon's vampire fang fix stopped working.

I did get an update to my windows 10 before I discovered this, so it is possible that something happened there, though I honestly don't understand how that would have effected my game so massively. I also had been recently playing the game in windowed mode, but it did not fix itself once I returned to full screen.

Please, if you could think of anything I could do to recover my game or even explain what the plum happened, that would be wonderful.

Thanks

That_Fat_Cat

It was possibly caused by there being too many Sims to the save. If they are all gone, I don't thing there's a way to recover.

Misscow1P

I know that's not it because when you create too many sims it only deletes the newest sim created.

I just checked simpe and actually its more complicated than I thought. The only sims that still exist are the original sims that were in the main hood, and no progress has been made since I first played the game. When I opened up the game and played a lot it also acts as if it's the first time I played the neighborhood. The character files exist for all other sims, the sims simply have no memories or relations. These character files also mark all 'deleted' sims as adult human males with 0 remaining days and no aspiration. They also appear in the default family bin, as the only family bins are the original ones in Belladonna Cove. I remember the error report on hoodchecker being super weird. I'm gonna guess it's a lost cause and hope my backup isn't from too far back.... and that it doesn't happen again.

Oldeseadogge

This happened to me a couple of months ago in one neighborhood, but have essentially recovered. Since you have Simpe you should be able to get your sims back and do basic repairs. Make sure the sims you found are not flagged 'no char'. If they are playable OK use the family manager to start moving them into 'host' families. Once back in game you can then fix them except for memories. Relations are can be fixed via the relations tab. I did my moving by family units, so the basics were done for me by the game itself. It will take time and a bit of work, but it's do-able.

Scribal_Goddess

Sorry to bear bad news, but that's corruption. You may be able to extract sims via SimPE by making safe clones and recording their data (personality, zodiac, skills, etc.) but that neighborhood is going to become a nasty mess.

This sounds like something that happens when you mess with a sim that has an incomplete character file. (Crumplebottom, the Ideal Plantsim, a carpool driver, the Leader of The Wolves, i think also living statues?) So your backup may be safe if it's from before that occurred. Good luck!

Misscow1P

Scribal_Goddess wrote: »

Sorry to bear bad news, but that's corruption. You may be able to extract sims via SimPE by making safe clones and recording their data (personality, zodiac, skills, etc.) but that neighborhood is going to become a nasty mess.

This sounds like something that happens when you mess with a sim that has an incomplete character file. (Crumplebottom, the Ideal Plantsim, a carpool driver, the Leader of The Wolves, i think also living statues?) So your backup may be safe if it's from before that occurred. Good luck!

I'm guessing the backup I have is fine since it's from about a simweek before the glitch happened. I'm not sure where the corruption happened, as I have carefully read about what can corrupt neighborhoods several times before starting my uberhood, and I also used clean templates. Two of my mods are multi pollination tech and multi ideal plantsim replacements, but I was sure to set them up like default replacements and not actually modify the maxis character files themselves. Otherwise I have not interacted with any maxis sims outside of their purpose.

I think one of my vampire sims died while he was at work though, since I walked away from the game and then found out he was dead and couldn't find his urn or gravestone (I have a no unlink on delete mod, though it's possible that is one of my mods that randomly stopped working. The other mods that stopped working [batbox and sim manipulator] started working again once I moved them to the bin in program files though so I may need to do that). My save is from before he was turned to a vampire, so if he was the cause I'll just keep him vampireless.

I know Crumplebottom can be changed if she's bit by a vampire (mine hasn't), but is there any way to accidentally modify the rest that you mentioned? The only thing I can think of is actually going into the files with simpe to mess with them, but if there's a way to ruin them in game I'd like to know just in case.

simsample

You mention two problems- characters missing and certain CC files not being read. Both of these issues point to a problem with your userdata- specifically that the game is unable to read some of the files. Two causes I can think of for this:
1) If you are on a Mac you can hit the file limit
2) An antivirus program is preventing the game from having access to the userdata files on loading.

1 seems unlikely as you mention that you have Win 10, so I would go with the second one. Add your userdata location to the exclusions on your antivirus program to prevent them being scanned whilst you are playing. Check that files have not been quarantined from your userdata and restore them if they have. And restore your backup- don't try to repair your broken neighbourhood.

Misscow1P

I have avast and checked my virus chest. The files there that are under my user are:
CSM477A.tmp C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Local\Temp
Win32:Relevant-AD [PUP]

gentlemjmp_ieeuu.exe C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Local\Temp\is-3AUP1.tmp
Win32:Adware-gen [Adw]

gentlemjmp_ieeuu.exe C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Local\Temp\is-BMLB4.tmp
Win32:Adware-gen [Adw]

gentlemjmp_ieeuu.exe C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Local\Temp\is-OVR89.tmp
Win32:Adware-gen [Adw]

gentlemjmp_ieeuu.exe C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Local\Temp\is-SG5V2.tmp
Win32:Adware-gen [Adw]

gentlemjmp_ieeuu.exe C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Local\Temp\is-U4CHT.tmp
Win32:Adware-gen [Adw]

nsk3EFD.tmp C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Local\Temp
Win32:Adware-gen [Adw]

rkinstaller.exe C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Local\Temp
Win32:Relevant-X [PUP]

All these files have a transfer time in January, which is around 2 months before this issue occurred.

If you're referring to the NTUSER.DAT files in c:\documents and settings\<name>\ they do not appear to be taken by my antivirus. There is a folder in that location called AppData which might be my computers term for User Data. I just want to be sure before I unblock something.

Misscow1P

@simsample I just found C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Fun with Pets\SP9\TSData\Res\UserData
Even though none of its files appear to be quarantined, I'll try putting it on the exclusions list.

EDIT: Unfortunately that did not fix the problem.

simsample

I was rather meaning your userdata files- specifically Documents/ EA Games/ The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection. If your AV is trying to scan those files as the game accesses them, then it may essentially lock the files so preventing the game from reading them. Hence, your neighbourhoods will be broken and some CC not loaded.