I was wondering if there is a guide somewhere for new simmers and old simmers coming back to the Sims 2 that reminds them of all of the game breaking things NOT to do that are allowed in the game, including such things as not deleting Sims in the sim bin. You know-- all of those things that will results in corrupted neighbourhoods and eventual neighbourhood restart.

I apologize if this has been asked before, but I could not find a thread that had the singular concern of documenting the DON'Ts of the Sims 2 world.

Deleting sims in the sim bin.
Moving an inhabited lot to the lot bin, and then into any neighborhood (even the same one) without doing some specific stuff to fix it first.
Removing custom careers/majors that are currently in-use (sim is off at work or class) - not as big a deal, but you can screw up the sim/family at least.

Okay, stupid question: why exactly can't we delete the families in the Sim Bin?

Simply put: It's because sims deleted in the Sim Bin because implode, leaving many little glitchy remnants everywhere which take forever to clean up. If enough of these accumulate, you end up with a BFBVFS ("Big Fiery Ball Visible From Space", a Pescadese term referring to a state of a neighborhood in which it is completely unplayable).

The best way to delete sims is using J. M. Pescado's FFS Lot Debugger and then SimPE to clean up what the Lot Debugger can't. More info here.

Also, don't rename neighborhood folders to different numbers and then attempt to load them. It doesn't work, and you end up with cross-talk between two different folders. (Although, to be honest, I don't know who'd attempt that in the first place.)

Sigh. I got my hopes up, thinking that link was a Pescado-to-English dictionary.

Nah, for that you have to look through the MATY "Wikka" (directions for finding it left as an exercise to you). Be careful, though, because that's definitely Not Safe For Work.

In English: because the sims in your neighborhood have memories of them. When you delete sims, their character files become unlinked, meaning the game doesn't reference them anymore. But your existent sims will still keep trying to reference these files by rolling wants about deleted sims, or spreading gossip about their now non-existent memories (gossip is not controllable - even if your sims don't gossip, townies will). This is when you start seeing memories and dialogue/thought balloons with squiggly lines - the game is trying to reference a file and telling itself the file doesn't exist anymore at the same time.

Even if you never place the sims in the hood, memories of bin families spread too. In example, those maxis bin families that come with expansion packs, like the Travellers, Picasos, etc. If you go on SimPE and start looking around at the memories of random Townies, or even your playables - even if you never placed these families on the neighborhood and in theory no one knows them, you'll start finding gossip about Tina Traveller's potty training, Roseland's kiss first with Mystery Sim, etc. You never did anything with them, yet they're already linked to your sims/random townies - so deleting them from the bin is already a risk. If you're not gonna use sims in the bin, shove them all into a lot, kill them all and move the tombstones to the local cemetery. (deleting urns/tombstones is also not a good idea as it also unlinks character files) A few extra dead sims in your hood is better than slowly corrupting the whole neighborhood memory.

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Another basic thing that occurs me, to OP, is the old don't mess with the special object NPCs. Crumplebottom, Charlatan, Grim Reaper, Therapist, Father Time, etc. Any NPCs you can't have normal interactions with, leave them alone. Never add them to a household, don't make them pregnant, don't turn them into vampires/zombies/etc, don't try to kill them. In general, don't treat them like sims, because they're not. Go by the rule of thumb that if "Talk" doesn't come up when you click on them, they're off limits.

Ooookay. I get it. Ugh. Guess my custom 'hood's going the way of the big fireball.

If you download skintones or eyes that are geneticised or townified non default skintone/eye color (meaning there is a chance your Sim babies can inherit them even if neither parent has that skintone, and that townies can use them) don't delete them. This can cause problems in your game as well. Some have reported eyeless Sims or skintones that are all white with numbers instead of the Sims simply reverting to the default skin or eyes . Try and use defaults whenever possible not only does this cut down on the amount of CC in game- it gets rid of the ugly EA clothes, skins, and eyes.

Always back up your downloads folder- and your neighborhood - preferably on a flash drive or external hard drive so that you don't lose your family and end up spending months recovering CC after your game or computer get hit by a BFBVS

Oh yes! I forgot about the possibility of deleting custom content and screwing up genetics. I don't think I've done this, but having just downloaded a multipart pollination technician hack, I better hang on to all of those skins.
So far, so good.
I'm trying to probe my memory, but wasn't there certain wrong ways of interacting with NPCs, such as marrying them? And aren't there simply some NPCs that Aren't Real People, and you shouldn't interact with them outside of their designated role(s)?

Don't let any vampire bite Mrs. Crumplebottom-and don't marry her, or even make her playable. She's an "embedded" NPC which is is short for "code you don't want to mess around with."
Just avoid the old bat, and her lethal purse.

There's a thread named "NPC that are safe to marry", or something like that, you can check it out. If I'm not mistaken, it also has a list of NPC that are better not to be married.

DeleteallCharactes cheat is NOT safe to use.

Yeesh.... having just had to discard and re-download my longtime hood due to major glitches (mostly caused by my own stupidity) I'm distressed that I could have already screwed up the new hood. Of course I deleted Sims from the Sim Bin, didn't know I shouldn't. Makes perfect sense why you shouldn't but then why give you the option in the first place? I only discarded the one big extended family that I think came with Seasons, not sure on that.

Can I just clean up any corrupted memories I find with MATY's FSS lot debugger? The thought of having to start over yet again is just too daunting.

In my search to figure out just how badly I screwed up in the first place and on possible fixes I discovered a lot of stuff you aren't supposed to ever do. I did not see anything on deleting Sims from the bin though.

One of the other things I found is that you should never save the game when a Sim is using the phone. This includes having a different Sim leave the lot, which of course saves the game, while someone else is on the phone. Mostly this occurred for me in University when playing a dorm with many Sims.

Wish I could list the technical reasons for this but that is not my forte. I will tell you that it lead to Sims being unable to use the phone at all. Sims "popping" out of actions when someone would walk by and then they would become frozen until you sent them to an action, after completing the action they would once again become frozen.

I found the majority of this in the MATY archives if you want more detailed info.

On the subject of non-playable NPCs, I would like to reiterate ... having a baby with The Grim Reaper is a crap shoot. I did, and things were fine. My daughter did (this was back when neither of us knew any better), and seriously glitched a bunch of her Sims. There are mods that let you do easily enable your Sims to make babies with Grimmie, and yes, it's tempting, but you use these at your own risk.

Another potential problem ... flooding your neighborhood with your user-made Sims, especially in a default neighborhood, and particularly Pleasantview ... and not using an anti-redundancy hack. The game generates hundreds of Sims even before you place your own Sims, and keeps generating them without your even being aware of it. I would seriously advise that you consider using at least one anti-redundancy hack (They're on MATY ... More Awesome than You), be careful when adding multiple sub-neighborhoods to your main neighborhood, PARTICULARLY default ones (each new addition generates new townies, dormies, etc.), don't add a bunch of careers or majors and save unless you really do want them etc. (In the case of majors, for instance, I found out that if you add a large number of new majors, under ordinary circumstances, it also generates a couple of new professors with each addition.)

I've yet to find the "proper" number at which you should put your Sims on birth control or reset your neighborhood, and I gather it might depend on how many expansions you have. Maybe. Sim PE is far more accurate a census taker than simply looking at your character files, since Sim PE includes repo men, Grimmie, deceased/deleted Sims, etc. (and please ... do heed the advice regarding deleting Sims), though you can use census mods as a quick reference, as long as you realize that the numbers you see are actually higher.

Once again, over-population is a crap shoot. You may be OK. Or you may have nasty problems. I had 946 Sims in my Pleasantview neighborhood (I have up to Seasons only), according to Sim PE ... and more than 85% weren't even my creations. I had no problems for months. Then one day, I added a few new Sim babies and ... poof! Random user-made Sims started disappearing from my neighborhood. No rhyme, no reason. They weren't the newest Sims or the oldest ones. They weren't even part of a family that disappeared. Disappearing Sims of course, triggered some "subject" memories ("had woo-hoo with [subject]", or something like that) with my existing Sims. It caused houses to crash if a missing Sim had been sleeping in a bed when he or she disappeared. Ghost told me it was probably over-population. I said it couldn't be ... I didn't see anything recent about this on any sites! After more research, I found out that Ghost was right. I had to reset.

I read that a few people actually automatically reset neighborhoods after a period of time. Now I see one reason why.

Your Sims can be fruitful and multiply ... just be careful!

I keep them. Potential family friends. (Though it would be better if they had a residence, so you can give them a phone so your Sims can call them.)

Another problem I found. I deleted the premade neighborhoods. Never wanted to play them after the first try. Made my own neighborhoods. Backed everything up before moving to a new 'puter. Couldn't figure out why I lost everything and couldn't restore until I realized that my custom 'hood was N001. Just changing that filename to N004 won't cut it. Before I realized this was the problem, I again deleted the premade neighborhoods before creating my own. So if I ever have to reinstall, I'll lose this one, too.

I can move all the families and lots into bins, but it won't be the same.

You can keep your neighborhoods if you have to reinstall.

- backup your hoods normally, reinstall. Do not put your hoods back yet at this point.
- Go into the game, load all the premade hoods available so they'll be created. After you loaded all of them, exit the game.
- Delete all the neighborhoods in the Docs folder. Put your hoods back in.
- Load the game, enter your hoods so the game will recognize them.

Voila, Maxis hoods out, your custom hoods back in.

Curses! Mine will too. Is there a way to stop those families generating every time a new 'hood is made, then? Given there are now a heap of families generated with every new 'hood, that's a lot of people to kill with each new city I build...

Is my neighbourhood really going to explode because I deleted the Travellers, etc.? *sob* I think I'm still a bit in denial.

Just curious, but how dangerous is it to delete the Sim Bin families in a brand-new neighborhood that hasn`t been played at all?

scarletwings: to stop the bin families from generating in every hood, get the clean templates for the stealth hoods that come with expansion packs (look for them at MATY, the site is down right now so I can't find you the link). It should Pets, Bon Voyage, Open for Business and Free Time that come with the pesky stealth bin families, IINM.

GenOps: if you've just created the hood and never played it at all, the bin families' memories shouldn't have time to replicate through townies before you delete them. But don't quote me on this, it's just a random guess. It's still safer to use clean templates so they're not generated at all.

Thank you.

Whats an anti-redundancy hack?

It is a mod that prevents the game from spawning *new* NPCs when existing NPCs are available. For example, you create a new community lot with four cash registers, so the game creates four *new* cashiers, even though you have seventeen unemployed cashiers hanging around from when you deleted extra cash registers on other lots. At least that`s how I understand it works. The hacks in question are often reported to be at MATY, and I don`t remember seeing them reported to be anywhere else.

Same here. Hey, is there a way to "finally" delete the characters after deleting them in-game? Or no way? If so, that sucks. Because I used to delete characters if I put them in a neighborhood and they were made in the wrong one.