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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 10th Apr 2018 at 6:48 PM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage
Default Safe to delete lot from neighbourhood?
I've been reading about Hood Corruption and I'm a bit confused.

If I have been playing a family in a house in the neighbourhood, then I move the family to the Sim Bin and move them into a new house -

Is it safe to delete (using the bulldoze tool) the now empty house that the Sims used to live in? Or do I need to do something to prepare the lot before it's safe to delete?

Thanks!
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 10th Apr 2018 at 7:25 PM Last edited by Rosebine : 10th Apr 2018 at 7:37 PM.
Hi!
Since we are never too prudent, I would suggest you to go get The Lot Inspector from Cyjon.
Once in your Downloads folder, go back into that lot you wish to delete that is now empty, and get Prof. von Ball (looks like a volley ball with a UNI hat...)from your Miscellaneous/miscellaneous Buy mode.
Just grabbing it works, you won't have to actually put it down anywhere.
You'll get a message right away, to let you know that this lot is safe to delete, or not.
lol, never mind the Disagree Troll. What I suggested is one of the safe ways. There are other ways as well.

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
Mad Poster
#3 Old 10th Apr 2018 at 7:54 PM
However, if you're just bulldozing a formerly lived-in lot, rather than moving it to the lot bin, all you'll do is destroy a few stray sim references. What people are afraid of is that the sim references that accumulate in a lot, when moved to the lot bin, will corrupt other neighborhoods that the house is played in.

Moving an occupied house to the lot bin is the big VBT that should never be done, because it corrupts the neighborhood it was moved from (and this corruption is not fixed by putting it back) and will then corrupt the neighborhood it's moved to. This is true whether the sim is alive or dead, since graves contain all the data for the dead sim.

The thing to remember is that the major, preventable form of corruption in this game is the destruction of character data. If a sim is deleted from a neighborhood (and the lot bin is a kind of limbo outside of all neighborhoods), it leaves important bits of data behind. If a sim is subsequently moved to a new neighborhood from lot bin limbo, it only has some of its data to bring in, so moving characters between hoods only allows bringing a portion of a character. This means that both neighborhoods have loose data rattling around looking for someone new to hook up to. All of this data is linked by the sim's ID number; and in the original hood, now that this number has been deleted, the game has no reason not to reuse it, and may give it to a new sim, whereupon all the loose bits of data will gladly grab onto the new sim as if it were the old one.

Think of it as if you had a column in a spreadsheet, and instead of deleting the entire column, you reused it, overwriting the old data with new data; but the old data filled cells for which you have no data yet. So now anyone referring to the spreadsheet will be reading the old, now wrong, data in those cells. This is how you get toddlers wanting to flirt, cats that think they're humans, humans who think they're dogs, etc.

Meanwhile, the sim moved to the new hood may have its ID number mixed up with another sim's, has a number of important gaps in its data, and chaos ensues.

The sim references left in a house when a sim moves out are of a minor kind, and can be deleted freely. So when you bulldoze the house, you're just erasing some extraneous information - to continue the spreadsheet analogy, it's data that doesn't interact significantly with other data in the spreadsheet, say a difference in font size, or a footnote explaining where the data came from. But if moved into a new neighborhood, we aren't sure that the data will be harmless, or what it might confuse or overwrite. So cleaning sim references out of a lot is a precaution many of us have started taking before moving one to the lot bin, and before adding downloaded lots to our neighborhoods.

Don't let worrying about corruption ruin your fun. The longer you play, the better you'll understand how the program works, and the easier it will be to judge whether an action is dangerous or not.

My disagree wasn't trolling. I just think your suggestion is a lot of extra work for no appreciable benefit. Paranoia about game corruption arises when people don't understand the causes, but try to memorize long lists of safe/unsafe procedures, characters, etc.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Mad Poster
#4 Old 10th Apr 2018 at 9:15 PM
While it is true that we can be extra careful and take unnecessary precautions (I do agree with Peni here, bulldozing and empty lot should not cause any harm); what Rosebine suggested is a very easy thing - that lot inspector is really no trouble at all and takes perhaps 2 seconds to make sure. So if you are worried, use it - and if you don't feel it is needed, don't. Personally I don't believe it is necessary but I use it anyway because I do not want to lose another hood to corruption.
Mad Poster
#5 Old 10th Apr 2018 at 9:40 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Peni Griffin
My disagree wasn't trolling. I just think your suggestion is a lot of extra work for no appreciable benefit. Paranoia about game corruption arises when people don't understand the causes, but try to memorize long lists of safe/unsafe procedures, characters, etc.

And your explanation is long considering that OP just wanted to delete the lot, and not move it to the bin. There are times for pushing the button, and there are times where it is useless.

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#6 Old 11th Apr 2018 at 10:18 AM
yes, you can delete the lot with the bulldozer, providing there are no graves on it.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Theorist
#7 Old 14th Apr 2018 at 6:55 PM
Checking empty lots by Rosebine's suggestion is good because you will be sure there are no forgotten tombstones for one thing. I also checked any lots before binning or bulldozing using Cyjon's objects. If I remember correctly, it also mentions if there are any sims off lot (?), so they can be cleared off also. These are good precautions, although, as she does mentions, there are other ways too. When I get back to playing I plan on using several different methods just to be safe. Can't hurt to be cautious since corruption isn't understood 100%, with the help from many here and other sites we can be more confident to not blow up a neighborhood quite so easily. (:

When you forgive, you heal. When you let go, you grow.
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