Help w/ missing children in Best Family in Starlight Shores

Stdlr9

Well, this is a pickle. If you are familiar with the Best family in Starlight Shores or how to add children that vanished, I would appreciate help. When my new game started, the premade Best family had seven members -- patriarch Paul, married Mom & Dad, four children, and Mom is pregnant. That's seven people plus the pregnancy. The next time I clicked on their house (hadn't played the family yet), they'd had twin girls which upped the family to nine members. Don't know how that happened since I don't use the cheat to make households hold more than eight people. Still, I moved Paul out to his own retirement place.

Time passed, and when I finally played the family, I discovered that they must have had quadruplets (???) in actuality because there were four little girls in the family tree, not two, in addition to the four kids that the family starts with. But two of the girls are nowhere to be found except in the family tree. They aren't in anyone's relationship panel so I can call them, or anywhere else that I can find.

I'd like to somehow rescue them from the limbo they seem to be in. Ideas? I use Twallan's MC, Mover, Traveler, Overwatch. Thanks!

igazor

I'm going to guess that two of the girls don't really exist and the Family Tree is slightly corrupt, displaying duplicate data for the two that do. Do the possible duplicates display exactly the same traits and are they identical looking?

One thing you can try, on City Hall bring up NRaas > MC > Sims > Advanced > Total Annihilation (TA) > either X to dismiss the filter or filter to the expected age of the alleged quads (baby, toddler, etc.). Don't really annihilate anyone, this is just to see if two kids show up on the list of sims with enough data to exist show up or if all four do. How many do you get from that household?

I would also suggest adding NRaas ErrorTrap. If it produces any interesting script logs, especially associated with this household, you could upload them to our site and open a support thread for help in interpreting them.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/How+To+Upload
(free registration required to upload and post)

Stdlr9

The two missing girls have different traits and are not identical-looking, either with each other or with the twin/quad (?) girls in the family. They may share a trait with their other sisters; can't remember offhand but I know they're not exactly the same. I'll try your other suggestions, thanks a lot. You're the best!

igazor

You're welcome, but this is still kind of a mystery isn't it.

Guess they aren't duplicates then, but clearly something or other went wrong during the birthing process and the mother must have gotten stuck in the birthing loop bug long enough to produce more children than the household can by definition handle. Still not convinced these "extra" two sims really exist anywhere other than small amounts of data in the Family Tree. Assuming they are still younger than Children, they probably can't be reached by MC > Invite Over yet. Then again, they could actually show up later in the game as homeless NPCs if you should be so lucky (newspaper deliverers, babysitters when teens, etc.).

Maybe a MC Reset of the entire household (on a copy of a save in case this makes things worse), but now I'm just guessing at things to try without some error/script logs to go on.

Stdlr9

Thanks again. If I can't get them back, it's not a big deal, as the family is certainly big enough already. Just a mystery I like to poke and prod, though.

igazor

Ah, you could also try this while you are poking and prodding.

On City Hall, NRaas > MC > Settings > Allow More than Eight > True
(this will unblock the limit of 8 on MC's Add Sim command, it won't cause other households to exceed their limits on their own)

On the household's residential lot someplace or its map tag, NRaas > MC > Add Sim > (filter to...?) Now this gets tricky. You could try X to dismiss the filter. Or maybe filter to age stage like above, or Type of Sim > Homeless, etc. to see if any of them at all bring the two "missing" girls onto the list so they can be added to the target household.

Stdlr9

igazor wrote: »

On the household's residential lot someplace or its map tag, NRaas > MC > Add Sim > (filter to...?) Now this gets tricky. You could try X to dismiss the filter. Or maybe filter to age stage like above, or Type of Sim > Homeless, etc. to see if any of them at all bring the two "missing" girls onto the list so they can be added to the target household.

This worked, thank you! Although the only place I could find the girls was under Add Sim and then pick Homeworld. Odd. I really need to learn how to actually use the mods that I have.

igazor

That means the game itself, EA's story progression, or something was attempting to remove the two girls from your world because the household was out of compliance with the limit of 8. Sometimes when sims get emigrated or "culled" like that, they do get stuck in between homeworlds. I guess if their parents had ever met them properly, they also would have shown up on their relationship panels but greyed out as if they were foreign sims.

Regardless, good job. Glad you got them back.

Stdlr9

Thanks to you! Very Twilight Zone. Which in a Sims game, is a fun thing.