Just curious...even though I know what curiosity did to the cat....

Before my game was blessed with empty or cleaned 'hoods and my townie creations (Luvin' it !), my former version of B.C. had at one time 800 character files. Yes, that's 800 sims, dead or alive.
B.C. ran just fine with that amount of sims. Not sure what the game limit is ; but before we upgraded the pc's graphics card , I think the limit was 200 char. files.

Now, since I create my own townies, I am filling up my B.C. and other 'hoods with about 3-4 hundred only.
One of the things I like best about this game are going shopping or whatever and seeing only the sims that were created for that certain hood. -- No more ugly faces/clothes/etc. !!!

Out of all the pc games I've played; sims2 has the most re-playability of any of them.

Well, since Townie Place is based on the lives of Townies and NPCs, I had to allow the game to generate townies. The last time I checked the neighborhood's population, which was yesterday, in SimPE, it said 892. I know I know, its a lot, but I'm not sure whether dead sims do count or not.

I like having a neighborhood filled with lots of sims. I just can't stand playing only 6 families just like in the premade neighborhoods.

I had a hood which spawned 600 witches. I had the "Store Edition", then added Seasons and Free Time but not Apartment Life. It was really odd. That hood reached about 1200 charfiles and increased borkiness before I retired it.

Now it may not have been the witches' fault. I could have done other things as it was the first hood I played and didn't know what should not have been done.

I think my current hood has about 600 all told. Still ok.

I think 'notownie regen' and 'nossrespawn' are great, because your game will spawn just 1or 2 grand high witches as needed , no townies -other than the ones you create- , and also the 'nostrayrespawn' ...gets rid of all those dogs/cats running around and digging holes in your lawns.
Not sure if dead sims take up much space; as you're not playing them. Esp. in the clean version of B.C., you start out with 61 dead sims, but they don't affect gameplay.

I have just under 700 Sims in my two-month-old neighbourhood fileset. I've known my neighbourhoods exceed 1000 before, and have yet to have a meltdown attributable to excessive character files. I think the limit is a problem if you have no or only very early expansion packs, but less so with the later ones.

I have 326 character files right now with Pescado's mod to control any more. I like to have full neighborhoods too. No townies is so boring! I keep everything under control with the hood checker and fixing anything in Sim PE.

I have read that the number of character files is not terribly significant. However, I still like to keep my number under 900. (My Pleasantview started going really wonky at 900. The deletion of Sims from the Family Bin probably didn't help matters any, though!) Yes, I do have the Pescado mods in there. Even with those, Pleasantview can easily reach 600 or so! If the number gets too high, I'll reset, even if it's before my "resetting invterval". Too many character files still give me the chills.

I think my computer is good enough that I don't really need to worry too much about character files, but I do like to keep them down, simply because I don't like clutter. (Not that you'd know that, looking at my rl house! But anywho...)

Dead sims are in the count, though, so for whole-neighborhood players who'd like to keep the 'hood around for several generations, it really is a good idea to be as lean as possible. I've never had a highly-populated, long-term 'hood myself, but I've set my game up with empty templates anyway.

The only 'hood I'm playing right now is Peni Griffin's Widespot. I've allowed some townies to spawn, and the 'hood currently has a population of 144. One is dead, 23 are playable, and 120 are NPCs including vacation destination sims and (I think) strays.

I didn't think the amount of character files was that important after they patched the issue. I thought I'd seen pescado somewhere mention 3,000 might be pushing it? I could be wrong on that though.

That's the figure I recall seeing him put forward as well, Jo, but I think computer specs are still a factor, and that those with low specs would do well to be a bit conservative with how many they allow. eta: But as you say, it's supposedly not nearly as big a deal as it was early on, before they did whatever they did to make the game more able to handle enormous numbers of character files.

That makes sense, along with less cc and maybe lower setting as well. I'm just wondering if people are still thinking that 800-1000 characters are the general limit as it used to be years ago and if they realize the issue was patched or fixed. Not sure if it was a later ep, a patch or both. Of course for people with just an ep or two this might still be a problem.

I just checked my integrated hood and was surprised to find only 720. Of course I do now have antredundancy and notownieRegen and no SSRegen but not the other noregen mods. Am I the only one that likes strays and adopts them in frequently? I've had some interesting cats generate from doing that.

Outside of the Apocalypse Challenge, I don't have my sims adopt strays often, but sometimes yes. I certainly like having them around, whether my sims adopt them or not. I've had some really interesting custom dogs and cats generate, too.

I've only been playing the Sims since December, but a quick look at the Characters folder my Vernoaville neighbourhood (using Windows Explorer) shows 283 character files. Only 13 of these are Sims in families I've created myself. Most of them (I'm sure) are the townies and NPCs that come with Veronaville and Downtown. I see that 106 of them have a file date in 2005, suggesting they've never shown up in my game; I suppose some of them are the Capps and Montys that are still in the families bin, and I've never seen a nanny or (fortunately) a social worker.

I'm using a fairly basic netbook computer with 2 GB of RAM running Windows 7. Do you think I have a problem for the future? Veronaville still looks like a ghost town with most of the houses unoccupied!

From all I've read on the subject, the number of character files is now (after the release of the patch that supposedly cured it) not a problem. I checked one of my older hoods and it has 596 character files. Of course it was developed before I learned of clean/empty templates, so I'm stuck with the number.

A variety of factors lead to hood corruption, but they are easily avoidable. I mean, doesn't everyone know by now not to delete sims out of the bin, or put occupied houses in the bin, or move sims from one neighborhood to another?

I didn't really think it was a matter of "allowing," but I guess with Pescado's mods and strict limits on Sim reproduction, a player could really keep down the character file count if s/he chose. But I agree with gazania and jo that most players with the Uni EP or later who are playing a fully patched game (Bon Voyage had spawning issues fixed in a patch) won't reach a character count that could cause problems. I say "most" because people play differently. Kill a Sim per day in your neighborhood and the character count will rise. Use the debug functions to batch spawn hundreds of townies, and...sure, your character count will be inflated.

I don't use notownieregen in Prosperity, and my game is on its 4th/5th generation after nearly 5 years of play. I have 945 files in my characters folder: 941 valid characters, and 4 oddly named files that I'm going to crack open in SimPE later to figure out how they spawned. Out of the 941 characters, about 480 would be playable Sims and pets, living and dead. (Sadly, I didn't begin keeping a database for Prosperity until the founding generation passed.)

A netbook? I'm taking that it has an integrated graphics card. If so, running Sims 2 on it can be really tricky and potentially dangerous to your machine. You're braver than I am .... I, too, have a basic netbook and the most daring I get is Sims 1 up to Unleashed. You would have to check with those more adroit than I am in this matter (I am absolutely NO expert in Sims 2), but running Sims 2 on a basic netbook with an integrated card may cause trouble in the future. Not just for your game .... for your machine. I believe the Castaways or Life Stories series may work for a netbook (I know they're stripped-down, though, and custom content will be extremely limited), but you would have to carefully check the specs. I do not have them on my netbook, so I can't tell you that for sure.

Getting back on topic:

The best way to check the actual number of character files would be to use Sim PE. I thought I had a "safe" number of characters in my first Pleasantview. Windows showed about 740 or so. The actual number, though, was more than 950. I know that when I started another EA neighborhood without respawn mods (these help curb the number of townies, pets, etc. in a game), the Sim PE file showed about 500 files already in there .... and only a few of them were my user-made townies! It truly amazes me how many characters EA sticks in there even before you've moved in your first user-made. Probably one reason why many players opt for empty templates.

And Fran H ... if some people don't know to do that, many will find out ... the hard way. Many don't check Sim forums at all, and some don't check them until they have been playing a while and already did their damage. So many still think, whether we're talking about Sims 1, 2 or 3, that if EA lets you do it, it must be OK. Also, as we've recently found out, there are many "sneaky" Sims, such as those in a multi-PT mod or conversions based on the remote control car, that someone may have not realized will count as a Sim. If you decide you don't want that item and delete it from your folder, you've just, in essence, deleted a Sim from the Family Bin.

Yes, I agree with gazania. A netbook is likely underpowered for the Sims 2. Here are some FAQs which explain the problem.
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...nboard_Graphics
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...r_is_Like_a_Car

Once the damage starts to show, your computer probably won't be able to be fixed. If you want to post your Game_Help:System_Specs^wiki in the Hardware forum, someone there can probably tell you whether your computer is up to the task.

Are you saying that you have 200 sims with no character data? That's difficult to imagine. Do you know where they all came from?

I have no idea, but I had a HUGE discrepancy in all my original neighborhoods. Imagine my surprise!

HOWEVER ... the neighborhoods involved in that huge discrepancy have all been reset (some twice) since then. The one with that hugest discrepancy (the 200 files) was a corrupted neighborhood that was OK for more than four years (2006 - 2010), then deteriorated so rapidly that I had to get rid of it almost immediately once things started happening. Disappearing Sims all over the place.. I haven't really compared the numbers that closely since my original neighborhoods, and the last holdout before I reset it was a year or so ago. (I instituted my three-year-reset rule after that corrupt neighborhood, which was around 2009 or so.). I've deleted/reset all my older neighborhoods since then. All of them. Let me check now.

(Scurries off to check Sim PE and Windows.)

Just checked a couple, and the discrepancy isn't nearly as bad now. Windows shows 589 in my Riverblossom; Sim PE shows 609. I think someone once wrote that most games have around 16 or so Unknown files. Mine has 20. Remember, I put stuff like the Multi-PT's in there, so that accounts for at least some of the difference. Bad, but not horrible.

Another example: Strangetown. Windows: 484. Sim PE: 504. Pretty much the same proportion. So that's better.

So I do apologize to AndrewGloria, though the person might want to check the two sources as well. The fact I had 200 missing files would indicate to me that my original Pleasantview was probably going down the tubes and dropping Sims long before I even realized it! (Also, I deleted a LOT of sims from the Family Bin.; at least 30 - 40. Probably many more. Oh, and tried and deleted at least three sets of multi-PTs. No. No exaggeration. Oh, and I forgot about all the NPC car-like things I downloaded and got rid of without a thought. As I wrote in another post, back when I first started, I was such a silly noob back then that I thought that if I didn't like a skintone, I should just delete the Sim! This was long before I was aware of Sim PE ... or the constructive uses of the cowplant.

It was amazing the neighborhood lasted four years before the "Great Implosion". It shouldn't have lasted nearly that long. However, those considering engaging in foolish activities like I did should be aware that if you follow my example your neighborhood, may not wait until four years to go "poof". My daughter did the same thing with her original Strangetown, and the town imploded in two weeks.

(EDIT to correct dates. For some reason, I thought I got the game a little earlier than I actually did. Gotta love CRS syndrome.)

Wow. This is some interesting stuff, haha. It's kind of amusing how I updated my computer with a fancy updated graphics card to play a game several years old. I would assume my game can handle a lot of character files because my PC is mostly for the Sims. No deleting anyone on this game. Corruption issues are so complicated :P

Thanks gazania and Mootilda for your concern. I think (hope!) my computer probably does just reach the minimum requirements for the Sims 2, but I'll put a post on the Hardware forum with my system specs and see what people there say. I only have the Double Deluxe edition (Base Game [2004], Nightlife [2005] plus the Celebration stuff pack) and my netbook was bought new in 2011, so, being much newer than the software should help - its processor and RAM are more than adequate, but I admit I have little idea about graphics chipsets. My computer has an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150, which isn't mentioned in the minimum requirements for TS2, but evidently can run TS3, albeit sometimes slowly, so I would hope it's probably ok for TS2 too. I do hope so because buying a high end PC just to run the Sims really isn't an option for me and I have really enjoyed playing the Sims over the last 3 months. It's the only computer game I've ever got really interested in!
I don't mind that I have to run it with most of the options at low settings, but I really can't risk physical damage to the computer, which is primarily a business tool - I use it as a desktop replacement with external keyboard, mouse and monitor. Thanks again for warning me of the risk.
Sorry for being slow in replying, but I hadn't checked this thread for a few days.

I've always been concerned about my character file count being to high. I'm currently at 338 sims. I don't have all the expansion packs because of all the NPC's they add to the game.
I've created every single sim my self, even townies, apart from the 62 Npc's I have. I've got all the hacks that keep the numbers down. But I was still under the impression that the limit was still around 800-1000 before corruption kicks in which I'd is why I've been pretty careful not to over populate.

When was the 800-1000 limit corrected? And do I have the appropriate expansions to exceed that limit?
(Base, Uni, OFB, Nightlife, Pets and Seasons)

Yes, you do. I think (not sure) it was fixed in OFB, but I'm certain it was fixed before Seasons.

I think it was either Nightlife or an EP after Nightlife.

I currently have 42 character files in my hood but it's relatively new (moved 1st sim in about a month ago and I play a few times a week). The reason it's so low is because I use Pescado's notownieregen, antiredundancy and Tarlia's empty templates to prevent Pleasantview townies from entering my custom hood. Sorry, Goopy. I also have empty templates to keep dormies and strays from generating all at once.

So far I only have 1 stray dog that generated on its own and 10 townies that I made myself (i.e. created in CAS and turned into townies using TJ's SimBlender). I also don't have any sub-hoods attached at the moment.

Thank you, well I'm not going to go crazy over populating now (I'm not even close to the old limit) but now I can relax a little about having too many sims and stop stressing when the game creates an extra repairman (Even with antiredundancy).

My story 'hood has close to 1000 inhabitants. I actually went and made an extra neighborhood for the sake of some scenes I couldn't quite fit into the original neighborhood, because I had to make extra characters. Probably not a bad idea, that...

I don't think much about it, but considering the possibility for hood corruption I've become a little more careful recently. Don't want to lose anything.

I'm strongly considering to start over (extracting all the needed elements and such). My downloads need a serious cleanup, and my neighborhood could need one, too. I've even looked into how to make a clean neighborhood. But then I consider how much time and energy it will take, and just don't do it. But I've had the same neighborhood since 2008-something, I think.