Sims Are Disappearing Without A Trace

mw1525 · August 2019

Hi, Simmers!

Got a question.

Is there anyway to locate deceased Sims who are hardwired into the game once they pass on? In Sunset Valley, (EAs SP) has begun killing off base game Sims who have family trees with living relatives and disappearing their tombstones and urns. Their images still show up in the thought bubbles of those whom they have left behind; but I can't find their remains. The mausoleum is empty and NRaas can't seem to detect their ghosts no matter which search I use.

I don't think they are completely gone because their survivors are able to retain their likenesses to mourn over. Still, I can't find them. Where could they have gone to and is there any way to recover (or discover them)?

igazor · August 2019

If things have resulted in the deceased having no remains in the world being played, I'm afraid there are no longer any sims to reconstruct. There will be small amounts of data left behind to fill in family trees and surviving sims may retain memories of the deceased, but that's I'm afraid not nearly enough data out of which to reconstruct a sim who is no longer in the game.

As another example, not related to death and remains, I have caused some sims to emigrate from the world I am currently playing as it was getting overpopulated with households I knew I would never really engage with. For those who knew these sims in passing, they still occupy a foreign world slot on the relationship panel, I can get to see the departed sims' family trees and some small bits of information about them like traits and former careers, but that's about it. They are really no longer in the game and they cannot be summoned back to it.

Or at least these have been my experiences.

mw1525 · August 2019

@igazor - Thanks for answering. There seems to be a bit of visual confusion going on with the surviving Sims which is most likely data residue. The deceased is showing up as alive (non-ghost form) in their family trees; but the relationship panel has them as 'not remembered', meaning they show up as neither dead nor alive, but they are not erased from the minds of the survivor. Another strange thing is the newspaper didn't report their demise. It's as if the game swallowed them, there is no cause of death to be found and no remains to show they ever existed.

I have not experienced a death which didn't make its way into the newspaper. Nor, have I ever had main characters who are hardwired into every game just disappear without becoming a mourn-able tombstone or ghost. Randomly generated Sims will disappear in this manner once they die, but never, until now, a main character with story ties (Landgraab & Langerak Sims have died).

I didn't wish to resurrect theses Sims, just give them a proper final resting place.

igazor · August 2019

Are you certain that these sims actually died (I presume of old age, but for any reason) and it was not EA's story progression culling/emigrating them from their homeworld as the tame will do when it "thinks" a world is overpopulated?

mw1525 · August 2019

Yep, they're dead! I switched to the mourners (Nraas' make active) and they both said 'from witnessing death'. Geoffrey Landgraab was the same life stage that he begins the game with (adult) and Parker Langerak was a teen. I've only been in Sunset Valley 4 weeks and thanks to (you-know-which-mod) new babies have been switched off, so over-populating can't be why the game has killed them.

igazor · August 2019

Yes, I'm afraid it can. EA's SP mechanism can falsely decide that a town is over-populated or out of balance demographically, go into emergency sim culling mode, get stuck there, and keep getting rid of sims when there is no need for it to. Possibly there was an over-abundance of resort workers (even if you have no resorts at all) behind the scenes or one of the service pools like that one became overrun due to a programming glitch.

This kind of thing is one of the huge reasons that modded forms of story progression exist. They do not let these things happen for no real reason.

I understand what you are doing here and why you are not using NRaas SP (or AwesomeMod's), but by relying on EA's version of progression the sad thing is these things do just happen. Not saying it's with 100% certainty, but the evidence of the sims having disappeared, some of their data remaining behind but not their bodies/remains, and there being no death notices posted does point in that direction. The witnessing death status I admit seems to contradict that, but I'm not really sure what form sim culling takes from the purview of an inactive resident. So yes, it could have been something else entirely up to and including actual deaths from known causes. But otherwise this isn't too different from players returning to a household they had been playing in rotations to find that their toddlers are suddenly gone or that the entire family just isn't in their game anymore.

I admittedly have limited experience with these things happening in my own game because I stopped using EA's version of progression pretty early on. Am instead relying on the many players we have helped or tried to help with theirs over the years when describing what we believe can happen here.

mw1525 · August 2019

@igazor - Thanks again, something has definitely gone out-of-whack in this world. In all my years of playing, I have never had Sims culled from my worlds. I'm thinking I'd better move my Sim out of this world and into a new game before anymore madness happens.

Turjan · August 2019

I think I noticed something similar in my game that ran a long time with EA's story progression. There are some sims listed in the demographics panel that are nowhere to be found. I tried resetting one of them (not a ghost), but the game didn't take that well.

LadyGreenEyes · August 2019

mw1525 wrote: »

Hi, Simmers!

Got a question.

Is there anyway to locate deceased Sims who are hardwired into the game once they pass on? In Sunset Valley, (EAs SP) has begun killing off base game Sims who have family trees with living relatives and disappearing their tombstones and urns. Their images still show up in the thought bubbles of those whom they have left behind; but I can't find their remains. The mausoleum is empty and NRaas can't seem to detect their ghosts no matter which search I use.

I don't think they are completely gone because their survivors are able to retain their likenesses to mourn over. Still, I can't find them. Where could they have gone to and is there any way to recover (or discover them)?

I had a sim vanish once, in what could be a similar fashion. The Bayless teen just "poofed" from the game. No mourning, however, no tombstone, no nothing. Just gone. Happened very early in, too, so no idea why.

Karritz · August 2019

I had a sim removed right before my eyes the other day. It was one of the toddlers from my boarding school. I found him hovering in the sky out to sea. His portrait was still on the left of the screen but I suspect if I'd have left him hovering for too long he would have been gone. I reset him and he came back.

igazor · August 2019

Karritz wrote: »

I had a sim removed right before my eyes the other day. It was one of the toddlers from my boarding school. I found him hovering in the sky out to sea. His portrait was still on the left of the screen but I suspect if I'd have left him hovering for too long he would have been gone. I reset him and he came back.

Assuming the toddler didn't have undocumented magical powers or an ITF hoverboard, that usually means the game has sent the sim to an undefined location/ set of map coordinates. Guess that doesn't really help because it doesn't explain why that happened or what was going to happen next if not tended to. One known cause is a total break in the world map, although broken and malformed lot design can also trigger this. Another is a misbehaving mod (NRaas GoHere used to do this to sims using boats while boat routing was disallowed but thankfully that was fixed long ago). We've also seen sims gather together for a rebellious protest demonstration of some kind that should probably have taken place in front of City Hall, but the sims appeared to be under the ocean instead.

But if this is not a regular occurrence, it's not usually all that concerning as long as we catch it and reset the sim in time.

mw1525 · August 2019

@igazor - " One known cause is a total break in the world map,..."
If you can, please elaborate. How does one know when the map is broken and it's not a faulty lot? Are there tell-tale signs which point exclusively to a broken world?

igazor · August 2019

@mw1525 - Nothing definitive I can point to. But if while playing or testing out a custom world every time a sim navigates down a particular street or attempts to enter a certain lot (where there might be a serious break in the sidewalk/road and lot connection) if instead of or in addition to experiencing routing failures and foot stomping tantrums they end up hovering in the sky, I would have to say that the world lot was not designed very well or its routing became broken somehow. One would have to catch sims doing this to better suspect whether it's a world design issue, a specific lot/building failure, or something seemingly more random than that.

We can sometimes get more clues from script error logs. If NRaas ErrorTrap or Overwatch claims a sim is at map coordinates (0,0,0) or something like that when they aren't supposed to be in hibernation off the map and an error is generated, that is not really a valid place for them to be. But we would have to be fortunate enough for such a log to be generated at the right time and to be reading it in order to get that kind of clue.

That can't be the same thing as sims being culled from the game entirely, though. If a sim is stuck in an impossible location, Overwatch and/or the game itself is supposed to catch that eventually and reset them or at least report on it.

Turjan · August 2019

LadyGreenEyes wrote:

The Bayless teen just "poofed" from the game. No mourning, however, no tombstone, no nothing. Just gone. Happened very early in, too, so no idea why.

I assume the game knew what would become of him when he grows up and just had mercy. Assuming you speak of Tay for a moment.

mw1525 · August 2019

@igazor - Thanks for the explanation. Yeah, my Sims were removed (culled) from the world by the game with all traces of their existence removed. Now, I'm wondering what happens to a Sim who is in such a location that they can't be reset. I wonder does the game eventually kill them or are they forever stuck in limbo?? Hope to never find out.

One thing is for certain, I already keep a close eye on my townies, now I'm going to keep a closer eye on them

!

Turjan · August 2019

I would like my game would kill those sims in limbo. Some still send my active family letters, others can only be seen in the demographics panel.

mw1525 · August 2019

@Turjan - Are you saying Sims stuck in limbo in your game are still interacting with your active Sims?! That's so weird.

igazor · August 2019

Turjan wrote: »

LadyGreenEyes wrote:

The Bayless teen just "poofed" from the game. No mourning, however, no tombstone, no nothing. Just gone. Happened very early in, too, so no idea why.

I assume the game knew what would become of him when he grows up and just had mercy. Assuming you speak of Tay for a moment.

What happens to Tay when he grows up is that he marries one of my sims who has absolutely no problems with the way he looks and lives happily ever after. One of their kids did admittedly need some slight adjustments in CAS, but the other three turned out just fine. Leave the poor guy alone, he can't help having been born with distinctive genetics.

Turjan · August 2019

@igazor It was just a cheap joke. I actually love playing in Twinbrook, and Tay is one of those whose life I actually follow closely. The traits he ended up with may make every talk he has with my founder sim go south, but it's always hilarious. When I still used the money mod (I had to remove it because it used too many resources), I was also dutifully informed about the constant child support checks he had to sign from his nearly non-existent income, which means his legacy will live on, even though his wife dumped him.

@mw1525 Yeah, one of them is still sending letters, to which he supposedly attached certain unmentionable pics, which are about as invisible as he is when I try to get hold of him to settle matters of his existence once and for all.

That game is weird anyway. One of the twins my founder had with Julienne Knack is listed as homeless sim in China. I have to see whether I can materialize that one one day.

Edit: All this talk makes me think I should hook Tay up with Julienne. Eh, sorry, just got carried away.

Karritz · August 2019

igazor wrote: »

Karritz wrote: »

I had a sim removed right before my eyes the other day. It was one of the toddlers from my boarding school. I found him hovering in the sky out to sea. His portrait was still on the left of the screen but I suspect if I'd have left him hovering for too long he would have been gone. I reset him and he came back.

Assuming the toddler didn't have undocumented magical powers or an ITF hoverboard, that usually means the game has sent the sim to an undefined location/ set of map coordinates. Guess that doesn't really help because it doesn't explain why that happened or what was going to happen next if not tended to. One known cause is a total break in the world map, although broken and malformed lot design can also trigger this. Another is a misbehaving mod (NRaas GoHere used to do this to sims using boats while boat routing was disallowed but thankfully that was fixed long ago). We've also seen sims gather together for a rebellious protest demonstration of some kind that should probably have taken place in front of City Hall, but the sims appeared to be under the ocean instead.

But if this is not a regular occurrence, it's not usually all that concerning as long as we catch it and reset the sim in time.

He was in a playpen and I'd just change the speed of Story Progression to Slow.

laurie1001 · August 2019

Hiya! I also have a question.. I'm playing the 100 baby challenge with the MCC mod. I set the household maximum to 12 and everything seemed to be working well, until my household consisted of 9 people. I played for like 2 sim days until one person just disappeared without a trace? He's not even in the family tree anymore. If someone knows how to fix this please let me know :))

igazor · August 2019

laurie1001 wrote: »

Hiya! I also have a question.. I'm playing the 100 baby challenge with the MCC mod. I set the household maximum to 12 and everything seemed to be working well, until my household consisted of 9 people. I played for like 2 sim days until one person just disappeared without a trace? He's not even in the family tree anymore. If someone knows how to fix this please let me know )

Hi there. Is this actually an MC Command Center (MCCC) question? That's a TS4 mod and not from NRaas. Not that this thread has to be about NRaas mods exclusively, but this is the TS3 section of the forum in case you were playing TS4. The two games and mod sets are very different from each other.

mw1525 · August 2019

@igazor - @karritz raises an interesting question. I always make changes to my game right before saving while my Sims are asleep and inactive. Could there be adverse effects to changing mod settings while the Sims are active during their day. I'm sure if it is it probably depends on the mod being altered.

igazor · August 2019

mw1525 wrote: »

Could there be adverse effects to changing mod settings while the Sims are active during their day. I'm sure if it is it probably depends on the mod being altered.

I cannot think of any examples of mod settings that are unwise to change while sims are awake and active. In the case of some mods like Retuner, the changes probably won't take effect until the next startup of the game and some settings will take a while within the same session to take hold, but no real danger in either case.

yoashmo · August 2019

I might be wrong but if it's resident Sims your aren't actively playing when they die aren't the urns available at the mausoleum through the manage the dead option?

mw1525 · August 2019

Normally, I'd say yes. But, I don't know exactly how the mausoleum handles the dead. If ghosts aren't counted as a part of the population (correct me @igazor, I may have gotten that wrong), I don't see how a sincere limit could be reached where it would start erasing them.

In my case, all signs point to a death of some sort actually taking place in front of other Sims. But, instead of the Grim Reaper moving them toward their next stage, the game erases them leaving living representations of them on the family tree, but nowhere in the Sims recollection.

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Sims Are Disappearing Without A Trace

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