Hi all,
Well my question is (as the title says) what is the best way to delete a sim? I have read a lot of conflicting information on this. Many say deleting from the family/sim bin is deadly to a neighborhood. Others say it will stub it and no real problems occur from it. I did come across this method: How to delete a sim correctly

Is that the best method or is their a easier one?

And if you deleted from the family/sim bin, will neighborhood checker fix it? Or is that something from which you can't recover (or at least not without a lot of work in SimPE)?

Also I noticed that some mods such as Sim Manipulator have a "Delete" sim option. Although I am not sure if that will actually delete them or if it only removes them from the lot for that moment.

*edit*
Also about house etc bins. As I understand it, they are safe to delete as long as no one is living in them correct?

OUCH. Yes that is what I am trying to avoid. Though I am using hoodchecker and backing up. From what I understand the reason deleting a sim is so bad is most methods don't get ALL the data about a sim when you delete (and even the best method known may not be enough). Bits and pieces still float around in the database and start to clog things up. Sims talking about sims that no longer exist etc etc. The squiggly lines I hear a lot is a good indicator of problems, although it isn't 100% as other issues can cause that as well. But often it is a sign your hood is about to go boom.

What surprises me is EA/Maxis never fixed some of these problems or at least released a tool like hoodchecker. They had the code, they knew where all the data was and what incomplete data could do (at least later on). Why not release a tool? But of course now I hear they did something similar with Sims 3. Corruption happens in that as well by the sounds (but I haven't looked into it much myself, just heard another Sims 2 player mention it on the side. Guess they never learn at all.

I would never delete a sim.

I would
A. kill them or,
B. Make them over and turn them into a townie or,
C. Place in a lot hidden somewhere with a prison token or,
D. Just ban them on the Visitor Controller if its just one or two.

If you go do all of the steps its probably okay, but I would also think about, do you really need to delete or would one of the other methods work just as well?

It's since been discovered that deleting sims from the sim bin does not actually cause corruption. It just turns their file into a stub file and things continue as normal. If you accumulate too many files, it could eventually cause problems but deleting sims does not add extra files, it just doesn't remove any. Problems only happen if you actually remove the file. You can use Pescado's method if you really really want to remove the file for whatever reason, but it's a lot of fiddly stuff that could potentially go wrong, so honestly if you just want to delete a sim I would just delete them from the sim bin.

For people who are disagreeing with @kestrellyn , this is true. It is by design, the creators made it so that sims could be deleted without causing major problems. Many of the best modders agree with this- kestrellyn above, also Inge Jones here:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...21392#msg321392
And Chris Hatch here:
https://modthesims.info/showthread....908#post5485908
And here:
https://modthesims.info/showthread....388#post5516388
Pescado's Deleted II method is designed to free up the NID and remove the stubs completely. But this is not necessary to do.

Wow, thank you for those links. Very very interesting. As I had mentioned, I had read elsewhere (forget where) once that deleting from the family bin stubbed them and the game didn't self destruct from it. But the general consensus is the opposite. And good to have confirmation it won't shred your game (and what really happens), but of course it doesn't free up resources either.

And especially thanks for the Pescados Deleted II method, while his method is extreme, it is encouraging that it is possible to eradicate a sim if you had to. And I would suppose at some point for a long-lived hood you would have to, considering there are only a certain number of character files but considering the top number is 32767 (if I remmeber right) I doubt anyone would hit that unless they had the same hood for 20+ years and tons and tons of generations/deaths/strays/respawns/etc.

Now if I can just get this figured out how to safely remove a Mod with a NPC in it without causing a hood meltodwn. Not that I need to right now, but I can see one if Mods conflict and you have to remove one that has a NPC in it for example.

NPC character files can't really conflict with anything.

Not the NPC character itself no, but the rest of the mod might. And if it did and you have to remove the mod then there is a problem. If the character file is separate sure no problem. But if it is all together in the package, then what?

I've never heard of someone making a character file that also contained overrides, but if for some reason that happened you could just delete the overrides from the file.

To tell the truth I'm rather glad that the informed consensus seems to have moved to saying that deleting a family in game is probably safe. Because it's the only one of the so-called VBTs that I know I actually did. (Though the fact that I did over nine and a half years ago, and I'm still playing the 'hood, might suggest that it maybe wasn't all that bad?) And I'm a bit ashamed to admit that, even when I did it, I knew it was supposed to be a Very Bad Thing.

How did it happen? Well, back in February 2013, when I had been playing for less than three months, I decided to add two elderly spinster sisters to my game to try to bring peace to Veronaville. One would have high Nice points, and the other one would have high Neat points, and then, using Squinge's Encourage Anyone mod, they would do their utmost to spread the virtues of neatness and niceness through the neighbourhood, concentrating especially on the Capp and Monty families. So I went into Body Shop and made two elderly ladies. Then I started up the game, and imported the Sims I had just made into CAS. With them already made in Body Shop, there wasn't much to do in CAS. So I just added their Formal, Underwear, Nightwear, Swimwear and Athletic Wear, set their aspirations (one Virgo for neatness, the other Pisces for Niceness). Then I clicked the button to import them into the game, and, as I did so, I realised that I hadn't used the Family Relations button to make them sisters.

If something like that were to happen today, I'd just make them siblings in SimPE, but back then as a Sims newbie, I didn't know how to, and lacked to confidence to even attempt something so complex. having read that deleting Sims was supposed to be a Very Bad Thing, I really should have restored from backup. But I hadn't backed up for a couple of days and I didn't want to lose gameplay. Having only created them minutes earlier, and never having entered Live Mode since making them, I knew they couldn't have any relationships with any Sims in the 'hood. So I decided to take the risk of deleting them in-game. With them selected in the Family Bin, I clicked on the Delete button. Then I went back into CAS and made them again. And this time I did make them sisters! It didn't really feel like deleting Sims -- it just felt like aborting the last step and doing it again.

However I really had deleted them, as I saw when I spotted their 12K stub files (or "shredded" files, as people used to rather alarmingly call them). There was a time when I toyed with the idea of deleting those files, but I'm very glad now that I didn't. When I thought about it there were fifty plus Sims made unlinked by Maxis. And two more made unlinked by me. I really hadn't made things much worse.

Nine and a half years later they're still there with me.

Will I use the button to delete Sims in future? I don't think I will. Much like I don't walk under ladders even though I really don't believe it would bring me seven years bad luck. It may be superstition, but I think I'll still play safe. Years of being told it was a Very Bad Thing have eroded my confidence in that button. If there ever is a Sim that I really feel the need to ban from my neighbourhood, I think I'll use the Electronic Prisoner Tag from simlogical (about halfway down the page).

[P.S.] Did the Smythe sisters really bring peace to Veronaville? Not really. It took them weeks to even make peace with each other. It was more that, over the years the Capps and the Montys simply lost interest in fighting each other. And, with the possible exception of Tybalt, the younger ones were never all that committed to the feud. Once I persuaded Tybalt to make friends with Romeo, the feud was really on its way into history. And, to tell the truth, the town is really a much better place without it.

There is a lot of controversy over the delete button in the family bin. Reading that thread simsample posted, confirmed what I had heard elsewhere. It makes them unplayable and hidden but their data is still there if the game needs it for other sims rather than a big hole.

Later on in that thread someone mentions trying the delete button to confirm what Chris said and instead had corruption shortly after. However, I think something else happened here. The game has bugs, one of them is if a crash or problem happens while a save is in progress (save before exiting is the best avoidance here), your hood will likely be corrupted. My feeling is another one of these bugs is when you delete from the family bin, SOMETIMES it won't be stubbed properly and corruption will follow. Might be due to a crash, glitch, or something else. Could even have been a particular mod that no one knows will cause this problem since most people avoid that button like the plague.

Chris himself said he has used the button a lot on many many test hoods without issue BUT still created and uses a mod to hide the button in his own personal hoods. I don't think I will bother using the delete button. It doesn't do much other than 'disable' the sim so you don't see it. Doesn't save you space or any character files. Not really worth it. From what I have been reading, using the full delete method with sim PE such as Pescado's Deleted II, does work. It is risky because it is easy to screw up. But it does work and some people have done it for 100's of sims and didn't have issues. Still not sure it is worth it unless you had 33,000 sims or were getting near that number. And if you are, it would take a lifetime to clean all that out properly lol.

@AndrewGloria
Something I was wondering, how many sims are in your 9 year old hood? I know how they can build up especially if you don't have mods like notownierespawn nostrayrespawn etc.

You are correct, the game deletes relationships so Sims don't show up in the panel anymore. Basically, it's like a Sim moved far away, you still remember them, but can't access them anymore.

Don't be angry, this game is more robust than you think!
A lot of the panic and worry about corruption comes from long ago, before the game was completed. Before Nightlife was released, there was a low character limit of around 800-1000 characters. If you added all of the Unis and Downtown, made some families, deleted some families and played for a while you had a very real chance of hitting that limit, and bad things would happen to the game (data would be lost and sims would glitch). Stub files added to that character limit and so there was a real need to not have any excess character files. Hence, modders began figuring out ways to remove unwanted characters. Back then, deleting sims or moving them between neighbourhoods really could cause game corruption (as could adding characters or adding subhoods), and so lots of myths and warnings ensued (and remain in the lore of the sims community even now).
Also, modders figured out that the character stubs, whilst perfectly functional, were messy and not a very desirable way of doing things. For example, if Fred has a best friend called Alice, and you move Fred from his neighbourhood to another, Fred will also take a stub file of Alice to that new neighbourhood with him, so that she will show up in his memories and relationship panel. So you actually used two character files instead of one. Imagine if Fred had known 100 sims! But he won't be able to call Alice nor invite her over, as only the stub file exists. So, pretty useless, but perfectly functional for your average player who just casually plays a neighbourhood for a few days before deleting it and starting a new one. I don't think anyone ever expected that, 20 years later, some people would still be playing the hoods they began back then! But we are, so we take good care of our hoods and don't really want stub files there.
But if you accidentally delete a sim or install a lot with sims in it, your game won't be corrupted- it will survive, no data is lost. Because Maxis were very clever and patched their first version of the game to make it much more robust and long lasting, to the game version we have now.
There are still a few bugs in the game that didn't get patched, but by and large, the game is perfectly playable without mods and your neighbourhoods will last a good long time. As long as you don't have any antivirus programs that quarantine the files, or cloud storage that messes up your savegame! Those are the things that are really troublesome for players these days. That and graphics drivers.

Just asking because I really like to know:

Aren't the want trees of deleted Sims transferred to newborn ones?

I don't think that's possible if you delete in-game from the bin using the delete button. However, if you manually remove a character file from the game files, it might.
https://modthesims.info/showthread....388#post5516388

I hope that perhaps @kestrellyn or anyone else who knows more about this might add some info here!

You know, I was just thinking today, how many situations of corruption were due to antivirus doing a scan when they were saving or deleting or doing something in Sims 2? I bet a LOT. Active scanners will often lock (or at least slow down) what they are scanning, especially back then. Even now they can cause problems even if not actually locking the file. The lag they can create even on a good system can be huge.

I can imagine someone deleting a family and corruption happened right after, not due to the action itself but rather the antivirus scanning or doing something in the background that either locked files or slowed the system down just enough to screw things up. Either that or the family bin has a 'not always happens' bug. Or perhaps some other mod tends to make it happen more often. Either way backup to be safe and in general it shouldn't explode. But run hood checker also (again to be safe).

While I agree we shouldn't have to think about all this, from what I have been reading Sims 2 is more stable than the later versions. And more is known what is going on 'under the hood'. But backing up is always a good idea as bad things happen no matter the program from game, to word processor, to image editor.

Yes, I think that only happens if the NID gets reused for a new sim. If you delete from the bin, the NID stays in use with the stub file. I don't exactly what happens to the NID if you delete the file, but that will also cause other problems, so don't do that. If you use Deleted 2 to delete the file, that will result in the NID being reused, but that process should also remove all of the old sim's data if done correctly, so it won't be around to attach to new sims.

You asked me that in the PM you sent me, and I'm afraid that I missed that in my reply. You actually asked about Pleasantview, but, as I've mentioned, my Pleasantview is meetmetotheriver's (Tarlia's) cleaned version, and (so far) has only been played for one rotation. Pleasantview has 154 Sims made up as follows:
It is basically just as Tarlia made it plus two CAS families (7 Sims) and 7 NPCs generated by the game as required.

But I think it's really Veronaville you're interested in, the neighbourhood I've been regularly playing since I first started up the game on 30th November 2012, and made teen Andrew and his mum Gloria in CAS. Since I've been playing it since the very beginning of my game, it is of course the original Maxis Veronaville with all its townies, NPCs and dead ancestors. Also attached to it is an original Maxis Downtown (which I call downtown Veronaville). The neighbourhood (also including 2 shopping districts) has at present 511 Sims made up as follows:
The increase in population is certainly not the result of procreation. Only two children (the McBain twins Peregrine and Peni Jo) have been born in game. Both are now at primary (elementary) school. Also one woman (Fay Briggs) in the suburb of Monopolis is currently pregnant.

It's not due to the game generating Sims either. I started making townies playable as soon as I found a way to do so. (Initially I did it with Inge's simplogical teleporters.) It was over a year before I put in Notownieregen (I wanted it in another 'hood, New Desconia, because I wanted all the townies there to be teens), but in that time only one townie (a special Downtownie actually) was generated by the game. When I made the male Slob (Craig Royce in my game) playable, because I wanted him to be warden of a hostel for teenage townies becoming playable. The game immediately generated a new slob, Avri Lawson -- fat and ugly. He is the only townie it generated, which rather makes me wonder why anyone thought Notownieregen was needed.

No! Most of the new Sims in my game, townies as well as playables, were made by me in CAS. I keep making them because I like Sims, and I like lot of them. Many of them start out when I've got CAS open for the purpose of "rolling the pacifier" so that any Sims generated or born during the play session will be truly randomized. I have lots of CC hair and skimpy clothes (for bot sexes), so it often comes up with Sims that I like. I'll look at a Sim in CAS and say, "He (or she) is gorgeous! I must have them in my game!

Of course all Sims made in CAS must become playable first. I have a number of small lots called "Changing Huts" around the neighbourhood, where such Sims can stay in a modicum of comfort while they are being prepared for their future life as townies. These "Changing Huts", also include a number of hacked objects that help them make the necessary changes -- the batbox, the Sim Manipulator, Christianlov's Boutique Clothes Rail, and Inge's teleporter. These help me to remove or change unwanted relationships and memories, change their ages to what I really want, and eventually make them into townies. Most stay in the changing hut for a few hours, long enough to meet some of the fellow Sims. Some stay for a night or two. The longer they stay there the greater the chance that I'll change my mind, and find, or build a house for them so they can stay playable.

I really don't understand the wish to delete or otherwise get rid of Sims. I think they're wonderful beings -- almost our equals. I love being close to them, learning their idiosyncrasies and foibles. They are such good company to hang out with. My best friend is a Sim.

The 32,000 plus limit is something you'll never even get near in any sort of normal gameplay. The only people who will ever approach it are those who are actually trying to reach it. Stop worrying and enjoy your Sims. The best way of ensuring a neighbourhood's future is to make, and keep, plenty of backups.

I want to post something for Aspersim, but I won't keep you waiting any longer. I'll try to reply to Aspersim soon.

According to Pescado over on his thread about the Deleted II process, mentions this "Resetting the sim creation index is what causes the game to recycle the old NIDs. Without recycling the NIDs, the game will continue to spiral towards its inevitable doom anyway, even if the files are deleted. Resetting the index causes it to reuse the nearest vacant NID instead of continuing to obliviously count towards certain 16bit-doom." Resetting this index is one of the steps in his Deleted II process. But if you don't reset that while doing everything else the NID's don't get reused. Since this was 2006, I assume the concern of "inevitable doom" was the 1000 character limit at the time which you could hit. Now with the 32,000 limit that is not a real worry.


Well I was interested in any 9 year old hood count. Very interesting indeed. 639 here and I haven't done much with it yet lol. A couple of families and a few weeks of play. And I have already outnumbered you? Granted I didn't have the limiting regen mods in place when I started but wow lol. But from what I have been seeing 600-800 is about 'normal' unless you have been really careful and used clean templates/noregen mods. But normal usually isn't 9 years hence my wondering what yours was. Quite impressive actually.

And I don't intend on deleting sims unless I have to. I just like having the option if I have to for one reason or another to get the hood back into shape from a problem for example.

And I like your idea of 'changing huts', for townies etc. I might do that myself. And I think a lot of mine happened because of adding "Downtown" and didn't have any limiting mods in place at the time. I also added another location, shopping district if I remember right. I suspect these two are why I have a higher count. That and for some reason I had a ton of strays pass by at one point lol.

I had *just* came across those and been watching. The videos are good but the center of it is the hoods that ship where never meant to have dead sims resurrected. But with the first expansion pack you could. And a lot of people did causing hood meltdown.

Also Veronaville she talks about NID reuse. In general the game won't unless the Sim Creation Index counter is reset . Perhaps a few sims might get handed old NID's when one of the default community areas are first added such as Downtown. But other than that, you shouldn't see NID reuse from deleting sims (unless you reset the Sim Creation Index in that process).

I also disagree with her 'we don't know where all the data is'. I think now we do. Many people have deleted tons of sims with proper method and SimPE without meltdown. It is very touchy with a lot of things you have to get right, but after all I read with the people that have done it without issue, I think it can be done. If we didn't know where all the data is, then this would not be possible and you would ALWAYS have corruption. Not sometimes when deleting a sim (again with the full out proper detailed, time consuming method). Personally, I don't think it is worth it as there are easier ways to hide a sim from view than bother with this. BUT very good we have the option if needed.

I think if you run hood checker and don't bring back dead sims that came with the hood you are fine. Oh and use some of the hood corruption preventing Mods as well to be one the safe side. And it goes without saying to backup as well.