#1
14th Feb 2019 at 12:02 AM
My Sim became a Townie : An odd little incident
I wasn't sure where to post this. It doesn't belong in Help because I'm pretty sure I've fixed it. It didn't seem to quite belong in any of the long-running "Common Threads" either. So I thought I'd just give it a thread of its own in the Discussion Forum, and anyone who's interested can comment.
Let me set the scene first. A few years ago numbers of teenage townies in and around Veronaville were becoming playable, so the downtown Teen Townie Hostel was established in a big town house in King Street, to provide basic, but adequate accommodation for them. An adult warden is in charge. To make it easier for new teens (who may have no connection with anybody already in the hostel) to move in, there is a Simlogical teleporter painting on the dining room wall. Well, a couple of weeks ago, Downtownie Charlie Benson became Mercutio Monty's boyfriend, and it made sense for him to become playable. Under normal circumstances he might have moved into the Hostel, but I am currently building some Italianate style houses for the Monty side of Veronaville, so I decided to move him into the first of the new houses to test it. The actual mechanics of this were to use the teleporter to temporarily move him into the Teen Townie Hostel, and then for him to immediately use the computer there to find his own place and move out. (I have a mod that lets teens move out.)
Well, as Charlie was moving out of the Hostel, I noticed that hostel resident Amar Larrea, originally a Veronaville townie, was not on the list of Sims available to move out. Amar has been living in the Hostel, as a playable literally for years now, so this was a bit surprising. I really couldn't understand how Amar, who has been a playable for years, could have half-reverted to being a townie. Later I checked in
SimPE and saw that Amar was still in the Townies "Family" (instance 0x7FFE). All the other ex townie/Downtownie teens living in the hostel were (correctly) in the Royce Family (instance 0x0011). (Craig Royce, originally the Slob, is the warden of the hostel, and thus the first member of his "Family".) Now it so happened that the Hostel was next in order to be played in my, admittedly very loose, rotations. So, when I* had played Charlie for a week in his new house, and tested everything I could think of, I went back to downtown and opened up the hostel. And, to my dismay, Amar wasn't there!
I quit without saving and opened the neighbourhood in
SimPE again. Having seen
Sunrader's recent post in a Help thread, resolved to they to fix it in SimPE. I opened the Family Information (FAMI)record for the Royce "family": Amar wasn't in it so I added him. I committed and saved. I checked Amar's own Sim Description (SDSC) record. If I recall correctly, it correctly showed his Family Instance as 0x0011 (Royce). So I opened the Hostel in game again. till only 4 Sims in it -- Amar was still missing. I used the teleporter to summon Royce (which I a contradiction as I was already in the Royce household). I summoned Amar - he appeared, but he wasn't selectable. I clicked Move On -- Amar on the teleporter: still not selectable.
I made him selectable with Dolphin's "Control this Sim". But the Move In option was still available on the teleporter. I* clicked it again, but it was still available. I looked at his relationships -- he appeared to have lost then all.
Was this the dreaded corruption I had so often read about? I quit without saving again.
Again I loaded the 'hood in SimPE. I checked the FAMI records for both the Royce and the Townies families. Amar was in BOTH! If I highlighted his name in either family, an option to "Delete Sim" became available.
Delete Sim??!! I don't like the sound of that! Does it really mean "Delete"? Or merely "Remove from Family"? I decided discretion was the better part of valour, quit SimPE, and backed up the neighbourhood. I then went back into SimPE, opened the Townies family, and I did click on "Delete Sim". It didn't delete him; it merely removed him from the Townies family. I committed and saved. I then went and checked the Family Instance in Amar's SDSC record. It was showing 0x7FFE (Townies) I manually changed it to 0x0011 (Royce), committed and saved.
I quit
SimPE and restarted the game. I loaded the Teen Townie Hostel. It still showed only 4 Sims on the lot loading screen. But when the lot finally opened there were five Sim icons down the left hand side, with Amar's at the bottom. I right clicked on it, and there he was, just where he had been when Charlie moved out -- desperate to get into the toilet. I unpaused the game and he sat on the toilet and started to go. I paused it again and checked his relationships -- they were all back. I saved the game and quit back to the neighbourhood, after the shortest play session in my Simming history -- less than a Sim minute -- it was still showing 7:33 a.m., the same as when I opened the lot! Once back in neighbourhood view I clicked on the lot to check the family picture. All five Sims -- including Amar -- were there, smiling at me.
Amar is back!! Safe and sound where he belongs!!! :lovestruc
Amar may not be my absolute favourite Sim but he's been in my game from the beginning, meeting Julian Moltke in the very first visit to a Maxis community lot in my game. And he's got quite a few good friends who will be glad to see him safe. "Welcome back, kid! Don't get lost again!!"
If there's any moral to this little tale I think it's this: "Don't give up on your 'hood if something odd happens. It's probably more likely to be fixable than you think."
I now think that the most likely reason for what happened is that I accidentally clicked on "Make me a townie" on the teleporter when I was trying to summon Charlie.
All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
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The Veronaville kids are alright.