ATTENTION There is an error in the video. Looks like gossip about missing Sims *(with no character file)* CAN spread. Mind you, the experiment from 35:24 was not the only one I performed - I did a whole series of mischief trying to get the Sims to gossip about missing characters, in so many different configurations, modded & vanilla game, RPC launcher or no launcher - and I just couldn't do it. I don't know why it didn't work during my tests, guess my Sims just didn't feel like gossiping🤷♀ But yeah, Sims CAN spread $Subject memories via gossip, I managed to trigger this yesterday whilst testing something else. So apologies for including inaccurate information! Don't worry too much about them though - HoodChecker is good at detecting them (they will be marked as [Invisible] in the log) and you can use the Batbox to easily clear gossip. I do recommend running HoodChecker before you backup your game, just as a general health check. Also, *DELTEING SIMS FROM THE BIN IS STILL FINE*, regardless :) But maybe don't delete character files lol. On the upside, I have some VERY interesting discovery about the squiggly lines, looks like I finally cracked this mystery :) It will be the topic of my next little video, so stay tuned. Thank you so much for leaving this many lovely comments! You asked a lot of questions as well (which makes me very happy, please keep asking!). Some of them popped up multiple times, so... FAQ Q: How to detect deleted Sim Descriptions (i.e. the adult male placeholders) other than in game? A: HoodChecker - the memories section! You will see the "Incorrect Subject Instance" errors for memories about that Sim, even if they never moved neighborhoods, since their Sim ID will stay the same (because the character file is unchanged), but they get a new Sim Description, and therefore new NID. This is the ONLY instance of "Incorrect Subject Instance" errors that is actually a cause for concern. I don't know why I didn't mention it in the video, it's pretty important 🤦♀ Q: If the Sim moves to college, are they switching neighborhoods? (i.e. does the game generate stub character files)? A: No. All subhoods (including college campuses) are still part of the main neighborhood. They all use the same Neighborhood.package and the same Characters folder. Q: If you have to backup the game so often, what's the point of even playing the game? That means corruption is still a cause for concern, right? A: You don't have to make backups as often as me, but I would argue that you SHOULD regularly backup everything that you are emotionally attached to :) That includes The Sims 2 saves, but also stuff like pictures, documents and save files from other games that you spent hours on. Yes, the game is prone to crashing on modern machines (hello pink soup), and a crash can corrupt your save file. But you can also lose save files to OneDrive, overzealous antiviruses or a simple power outage, or even your hard drive can die due to shock damage if you play on a laptop, and that's nothing to do with the game. It's just good practice, that doesn't mean you should be afraid of playing The Sims 2 :) Q: Will rolling the pacifier/testing stuff in CAS affect the Sim Creation Index? A: No. You need to save a family in order for a new Sim Creation Index value to be commited. You get blanks when you create a family, cancel one or two Sims, but then decide to save the family anyway. Q: If you manually clear out family ties and memories, will the game still generate the stubs after moving Sims between neighborhoods? A: Looks like... no! I performed some tests a few days ago and it seems like you can move Sims between neighborhoods without dragging half the hood with them if you clean up memories & family ties. Q: What about NPCs? How do they affect corruption? A: I had to limit the scope of this video, so that is my next big focus. Right now I can tell you that these two actions on UNIVERSAL NPCs do modify your objects.package: adding them to your playable household & having kids with them. I am still not sure what is the extent of the changes and what that means to your game. Also, I still can't see how adding NPCs that *do* have a character file is supposed to corrupt your neighborhood, it seems like they function just like playable Sims and the game generates their replacements, but again, it's still under investigation, so maybe don't mess around with NPCs for now :) Q: Is it okay to use deleteAllCharacters, then? A: It certaintly won't blow up your game, I have used it, the cheat is not as messy as I previously thought (the good thing about it is that it does clear out memories, so no $Subject). You can remove all dangling SWAFs with HoodChecker. However, I still don't recommend it for neighborhoods that you want to play for a long time - it shouldn't cause a BFBVFS, but it's just much better & cleaner to create a neighborhoods with no Sims to begin with. Sims Wiki has a good guide on that. Q: What are your plans for this channel? A: I do want to make more videos, but I won't commit to a regular upload schedule, since having a full time job makes it a bit more difficult :) Also, I came back to potentially writing a new version of HoodChecker. I won't make any promises just yet, but I have started refactoring the code and it's looking good so far. When it's in an acceptable state, I will make my GitHub repository public and I will probably need testers at some point. Stay tuned! I might add more questions here, so feel free to check back on this comment :)
That squiggly line thing has to be related to some missing texture on the computer. I swear my sims have gotten that squiggly line thing on the computer on a completely clean neighborhood. Plus, all the pictures online involve computers.
SO TRUE. I remember reading it and it being like; "Under _NO_ circumstances should you do this in your game. Doing this can cause serious, irreversible corruption, and will plague your neighborhood with horrible results." Like, tell me that doesn't sound like some weird ass creepypasta. And the funny part is that it was probably talking about trying to have a conversation with Mrs. Crumplebottom or something lmao.
@@ihavenodesiretocreateahandle "NEVER talk to this sim. They will destroy and crush your game like a ruthless shredder." and then the sims name is something like "sneeble glorbendorp"
NEVER i repeat NEVER Place a teddy bear from this mod on the second floor and have a child interact with it and then place a piece of pie next to it and have someone eat the pie and then delete the teddy bear then the person.
This is implied several times during the video but I wanna make it clear: the fact that you can see *signs of corruption does not mean the game is badly coded, but quite the opposite*. It is very VERY easy for invalid data to completely crash an application; and the fact that the game not only does not crash, but keeps trying to make sense of whatever data is left and to show placeholders means that they went above and beyond to create robust code. It is impressive how well it works, given that, as we learned, Sim info is spread throughout several linked data tables AND given that there's arbitrary code running in the game (mods) that can mess up those tables. That's a programmers nightmare.
Both Sims 2 and Sims 3 are just straight up spaghetti coding hell, and that’s saying something considering how easy it actually is to run Sims 4 and maybe even Sims 1 without running into any bugs or issues.
@@aprilblacksims Ditto, those “arbitrary” numbers are basically random files that “sometimes” fill up so much, it actually ruins your game (case in point, tiny screenshots in the save files)! This happens to Sims 3, no doubt about that one. Sims 2 have landmines you gotta avoid…atleast you don’t have to slice off megabytes of bloated data like it’s a necromorph from Dead Space like in Sims 3
I mean it's one thing to create a crash prone application, which Sims 2 according to your comment is, and an application that handles data well and correctly, which Sims 2 evidently does not. I would rather the game crash gracefully than try to handle broken data in a haphazard way and just make things worse.
lmao, coincidentally, Bella Goth is my favourite premade Sim and I was always giving her the best life in The Sims 1 :D Also, whenever I was creating myself in the first game, I'd always pick Bella Goth's face, just lightest skin tone, as it was the closest, so I'd create a storyline that I'm her long lost sister or something xD
I just think it's incredible that after 18 years this game is not only still being played by a large audience, but that new discoveries are still being made to this day. Not to mention all the amazing modders and custom content creators keeping the game fresh.
I hadnt played it since 2009 when ts3 came out, I spent 10000s hours in ts3, and forgot about the greatness of ts2. now im searching my old hard drives trying to find my pleasantview from 2004
the language around corruption is so scary. i feel like ppl forget how robust the game actually is, and how well-coded it is. there was a point in time where i was a bit scared to do normal gameplay because i was anxious about corruption. whenever a bug or a glitch happened i'd be like *ah well it was fun playing*. it was a crazy time shjfsk
I also always wondered why people became scared of even playing. In the absolute worst scenario, you will need to reinstall the game. And the cases when it would be necessary are relatively rare (and mainly connected to people messing with files, while they have no idea what they are doing). I played on the vanilla version for so many years, without any mods to fix things. I have never encountered most of these "signs of corruption". Now I use fixes, as those can get rid of some small annoying bugs and generally make the game run more smoothly. But the game was completely playable either way.
as much as sims 2 probably has it's fair share of spaghetti code, people tend to forget that the developers *knew* what they were doing, at least for the most part. i think a lot of this corruption misinformation nonsense comes from the use of large buzzwords and lack of knowledge on the subject itself. any random person on the internet can say this "X isn't safe" or "it's fine if you do X", no matter how reputable they are, and still be completely wrong. i dont think it helps that the game came out during the wild west period of the internet, where you wouldn't expect somebody to lie or spread misinformation whether by accident or on purpose. you just kinda took what people said as legitimate.
@@najpotenicewolf934 I mean there ARE cases of software bricking a computer, but those are VERY SUPER RARE and are the mark exceptionally incompetent developers. I think Larry Bundy references a case where the devs stupidly told their uninstall program to eat the entire drive you installed the game was on... But again yeah worst case reinstall game, Especially nowadays software OSs are quite stable.
It's not about lying, rather misinformation, and not enough knowledge about the topic. The previous informations about the corruption & the things to avoid were largely approved by Mootilda, who created the Hoodchecker.
I think it's more of a "game of telephone" situation than genuine vile misinformation. Less tech-savvy people picking scraps of information from seemingly reliable sources, repeating them as a warning to others and (accidentally or not) misinterpreting them, which has been going on for nearly two decades.
@@BKNTD especially because the colloquial language around it is often confused with more technical concepts. ie corruption of a sims family through means mentioned in the video =\= file system corruption from something like hard drive errors. that’s probably why there’s so much fear mongering bc the two are confused
@@thea.0413 Also with the concept of spiritual(not computer) corruption, which can be really creepy, by less tech savvy people Which would also explain the creepypasta-esque fear about it
Yeah, when I thought about it logically, deleting the character file seemed a lot more dangerous than using the bin in the game, because I noticed a lot of that Sim still stays and it just felt safer for references. Thank you for the work!!!
It's very interesting how the myth that deleting sims using the bin would corrupt your neighborhoods became widespread and accepted as truth across the community. it's like a classic example of "if something is told repeatedly enough times and for long enough, it becomes the truth"
Just as a heads up to people: Don't completely trust Sims the Wiki. It's editors are a bunch teenagers(now young adults) who takes advantage of the Sims online traffic and spreads misinformation about all the games. They mean well, but the harm they've done has been community shaping. Example is they kept coming up with the constant "timeline inconsistencies" as "Everyone is on the Elixir of Life/Dyed their hair because of model differences". Edit: Forgot to mention, they have a bad habit of ignoring corrections or debunking of their own incorrect information. This is not meant to slander them, just a warning that a lot of the Wiki's information will be incorrect.
the best and worst thing about wikis like that is how anyone can edit it. so either you get someone with great info that makes the wiki much better, or you get a troll that vandalizes everything
@@jljljl1820 This is a huge problem on Wikipedia as well, which is very troubling. The communities become insular and the only people who can change things are the regulars.
@@volkadee6151 vocaloid wiki (and the community) is just adults on soap boxes screaming about legality and blowing things out of proportion. echo chamber of stupidity tbh
Absolutely flabbergasted to learn that deleting Sims in the bin/deleting gravestones, the *"number one DO NOT DO THIS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES"* rule I've heard for years is actually safe. This video is SO good and informative, and it definitely eased some worries I have as a barely-tech-literate person with major glitch/file corruption anxiety who shudders at the mere THOUGHT of having to open SimPE (Genuinely the tech anxiety once got so bad that for like a solid year the mere action of turning on my laptop made me literally sick with dread. Unrelatedly, I apparently have a panic disorder- )
I played for 6 years in my neighbourhoods which were created from scratch, always deleted Maxis-created families in the family bin and never, EVER had a glitch which can be considered as a sign of corruption. So this whole thing about corruption made me skeptical, but later I joined this hysteria and installed all the anticorruption mods. Didn't see any difference, to be honest.
@@kotrena tbf i downloaded all the anti corruption mods even tho i know its hard to do on purpose but its just to make sure i dont feel like all my sims r about to explode bc they looked at a social worker
All this fear-mongering about how badly programmed The Sims 2 is and how easy it is to "corrupt" your game, but it turns out it's possibly the safest and most well-thought-out entry in the series. It always confused me how such an outstanding game with lots of heart and dedication clearly poured into it, can be considered a ticking bomb. Turns out it was just people playing a game of telephone and misinterpreting harmless little bugs as signs of impending doom. Like yeah, it's not flawless and there are hiccups and issues, but nothing out of the ordinary for something as complex as a life simulation game.
Absolutely. I personally see a difference with how “safe” the Sims 2 is compared to TS4 given how often my Sims 4 save files will get borked for no reason. It happens to me at least twice a year that my save file becomes completely unusable and I have to revert to a previous backup. The sims 2 I haven’t had any issues yet
The Sims wiki also has a horrible policy of documenting sims as having the unused power aspiration when sims actually have no aspiration due to corrupted data. The numerical codes for having the 'nothing' aspiration and power are completely different in SimPE.
I love how the Sims 2(and 3) players have been so dedicated to helping the game run to it's possibly-most-solid state. Most games run on a proverbial combination of wd-40, duct tape and a dream, and while modding is so common in a lot of games, even game fixes and QoL improvements, there's just something special about sims 2 mods.
To be honest, I was really hoping the Sims community gets the help they need from modders everywhere else from gaming, especially in realms where expertise of a game like Skyrim should’ve just offset itself with it’s own modding community into the Sims games to set things right…but alas, we live in a gaming world where people do not even realize the Sims people exist nor it’s games. Man, if only people realize just how special Sims games can actually be if we let imaginations roam free like Minecraft would.
The whole "deleting sims from the bin will corrupt your game!" thing was always so weird to me - I ALWAYS delete sims from the bin. I don't want the Ottomas family hanging about, or random other sims interacting with mine when I never played with those households - and it just made me feel better to see an empty sim bin. I never once had an issue, and thought it was so strange that people claimed it caused problems. Been playing since 2004, still haven't had a single problem related to sims bin deleting. It's so nice to see this being cleared up!
I woke up from a nightmare about corruption, and I naturally searched for videos to calm myself down and oh boy, this was exactly what I needed. This video is a solid masterpiece, and I’m thankful for all the time and effort you put into this.
I'm so happy that this misinformation is finally being cleared up after so long and that the Sims Wiki FINALLY removed the misinfo. Thanks for the video! ❤❤
I'm a bit confused why anyone would look at a fanon wiki anyway - it's the most biased information you can take and generally it is well known to never aknowledge fan wikis, as most of them can be easily vandalized and edited for someone's personal agenda or belief. It's a good rule of thumb in the internet: Preferably, rule out wikis if anything is citation-needed and doesn't show actual evidence.
I absolutely “adore” that narrative on forums that if you did something someone told you not to do, then you are the one to blame for bugs. I remember playing for hours in my childhood and even playing with simpe & cheats and nothing actually happens I also want to know about ‘dangerous’ interactions with npcs and what it can cause
I dare to say that it's the most important video for the sims 2 community that was ever created. Finally we have a reliable source debunking this enormous myth of corruption that scaries everyone and keeps possible new players away. It's amazing how many wrong concepts existed through the years that occurred to be just wrongly interpreted/misunderstood pieces of information scattered around the internet forums. I'm in complete awe for the amount of work you put into making it and thank you very much for it, it was really informative and fascinating video
"What if I told you everything you think you know about the Sims 2 neighbourhood corruption is Wrong?" me, watching this video over again for the uhhh at least the 13th time: damn i sure hope not because i was taught from this video
It's insane so many people thought the Sims 2 was the most unstable game in the whole franchise, considering all the failsafe the programmers coded. Sims 3 couldn't run more than a few expansion packs at once, and Sims 4 still has countless micro bugs in normal gameplay that constantly get fixed and broken (presumably because it was never meant to be the game it is today, it was supposed to be always online). Sims 2 looks like if you don't do anything stupid your save will play for years
The fact the sims 3 couldn't run more than one or a few expansion packs is just false. From the experience of several people that can be the case to not bloat the game's overall size and possible bugs. I, on the contrary, can, for example, for example run the game with 10 expansion packs while not having too many problems (yes I have nraas overwatch and errortrap, fps limiter, smooth patch and GPU set to found). What I get from this is that some of you are really fast to jump on that wagon (which is understandable since the game has a bad reputation for the right reasons), and, I can assure, it's not always the case, at all.
@inytule_4688 But it was the case in the hay day lol. The Sims 3 was not optimized at ALL. The Sims 2 fundamentally ran better then sims 3 before the later fixes were made by the community for sims 3.
I've been watching and reading a lot about TS2 corruption lately and have been following some of your posts about it, so I was very happy to see this video pop up. It's funny, I remember having so many problems with presumed corruption as a kid, enough to the point that I ran to the forums begging for help-but when I try to remember what issues I actually had (besides crashing), I just... can't. I definitely messed around in ways I probably shouldn't have, though: moving occupied lots between neighborhoods, fiddling with testing cheats in ways I didn't understand... When I confessed to deleting Sims from the bin, I remember being so horrified as other forum users told me my game was corrupted and would destroy itself in a BFBVFS. Like, I was maybe 10. Shit was scary. (In retrospect, a lot of my problems were probably thanks to MacOS absolutely hating Sims games lol.) I find it really interesting to think about how TS2 is so prone to these kinds of problems specifically because it has the most detailed and interconnected systems of any of the games, and therefore, the most potential points of failure. As you mention, so many pieces of data are spread across so many separate files-want trees being so complex that they need to be stored separately; lots containing data about Sims that have occupied or visited them, what they did while they were there, which items they used and how often... Any failure in syncronization or communication between these files, and things start to go wrong. Of course, this is also why so many people consider this game to be the best in the series. Sure, it may be lacking in open worlds or fancy build tools or certain quality of life features, but none of the other games ever took the risk again of making the Sims themselves so fleshed-out, multifaceted, and enjoyable to play with-and I'm certain no future game ever will. The Sims 2's greatest strength is also its greatest downfall, but in my opinion the tradeoff is worth it any day.
Exactly! The Sims 2 save file structure is a bit unusual and the sheer amout of files IS a downside (poor Mac users), but also I love how the game tracks literally everything the player does (memories!
first of all: congratulations on finishing this incredible video!! this has truly been the most anticipated video of the year for me, and it certainly did not disappoint! all your hard work investigating and experimenting shows ❤️ my opinion on corruption has changed a lot since i began researching for my corruption series, and i truly regret being so hyperbolic and contributing to the spreading of misinformation initially. so now i try to do my best to rectify these mistakes and i hope one day i can make a video as brilliant as yours! this video is exactly what we need! i’m working on the bluewater village video at the moment and i still have a few sections to record and edit, with one addressing whether sims were improperly deleted or not, and i wanted to use examples like what hoodchecker may pick up - like swafs not belonging to any sim, or relationships with sims who seemingly don’t exist - but present forward the theories that a) unassigned swaf records seem to just... generate, for whatever reason and b) hoodchecker may be incorrectly interpreting object ids as sim nids, thus flags normal relationships like the ones between sims and beds as being between a nonexistent sim and a valid sim. however, i was unsure how to go about backing up these claims. but now, thanks to your research, i feel more confident in sharing this information! it feels so nice that i won’t have to just be like ‘so there’s a possibility hoodchecker could be mistaking object ids for nids, but idk for sure’ you know haha apologies for talking about myself here, but i just really wanted to tell you how i have been waiting patiently (and very excitedly, lol) for this video! excellent job! and thank you SO much for recommending my videos! i feel a little starstruck haha now go enjoy playing this game without needing to spawn a hundred toddlers in the hopes that one would inherit an improperly deleted sim’s nid 🤣
Thank you for your kind words :) And don't worry, I have also contributed my fair share to spreading those myths in the past haha! When I first read the Sims Wiki guide, I was still a teenager and nowhere near as tech savvy as I am now, so I just took every word at face value. It wasn't until I started experimenting myself when I realised how deleting actually works, and that Sims Wiki might not necessarily be 100% accurate! As for spontaneously generating SWAFs, I was kinda suspecting that this could be a common bug amongst players (a more likely explanation of want-related bugs than resetting the SCID, since the latter is super rare!), but I didn't have the evidence to back it up, and when I asked about it on MTS, they were scratching their heads, although they did attempt to help me. I wasn't surprised, because in order to spot this kind of thing in your save, you would need to a) be lucky enough to scan your neighborhood with HoodChecker at the right time b) understand what actually happened and know how to use SimPe to investigate this further I imagine most Sims 2 players would just write it off as "corruption", even if it was a common occurence, so I was kinda gutted that I might never know the answer. I am so glad that people are leaving comments, saying that this also happened to them, because that could potentially be another piece of the corruption puzzle! The only problem is finding out why this happens though 🤣 PS I was actually SO excited when I experienced this bug lol, I guess I was the only Sims 2 player ever who was like "YES I"VE GOT TODDLERS WITH LIFETIME WANTS IN MY HOOD, FINALLY" 🤣🤣
I always thought corruption sounded like some kind of magical eldritch horror. Nice to know that that's because it's mostly the product of magical thinking! Thanks for your hard work. You've made me feel much better about the game and about how these things work.
How is this not on the NEWS 😱 I’ve been playing sims 2 since I was a kid, and I’ve always deleted sims with the family bin and have NEVER had an issue, I thought I was just lucky 😅 thank you so much for all your hard work and efforts with this. It is greatly appreciated. I may have to watch a few more times to understand it but for me, knowing that you can delete sims in the bin is a weight off the shoulders
Finally, i can breath through. As an older Sims 2 player i remember how many hours and days, months and years i've invested to trying solve the problems myself, finding solutions. And this is it. I'm so thankful to our community for people like you April, who has answers for us. Honestly, i feel so free now, because i don't have to stress out anymore because of some problems because of this game. It helps me immense, although i'm not a techy person myself and i don't understand programming like at all, is not my table. I have a better view now on everything and i'm so endlessly happy, so many things you are talking about is so much understandable. Finally someone who explains it in a better way. A thousand thank you, you've just made my day.
i'm so glad you took the time to dispel these myths, AND did enough research to come up with a plausible account of how "deleting sims from the bin will corrupt your game" could have started in the first place! thank you for sharing with us, this was so so cool to hear about all the technical details and the ways that superstitions spread.
also why do i think it's so sweet that the sims have relationships to their objects too 😭 that's weirdly realistic & wholesome. i know that feature serves a purpose but also probably did not NEED to be there, but they put it in anyway, and i just appreciate how much the Sims 2 devs thought of. W&Fs, interest levels, hobbies, memories, daydreams, gossip, and how all these things link in to each other. it's all so interesting and impressive.
As someone who has a phobia connected to glitches (especially visual ones in realistic games, like The Sims franchise) I've always been terrified of corruption in The Sims 2. It also made watching some parts of the video frightening (especially missing aspirations part and sims being pets, the latter will for sure give me nightmares), but it was all so worth it! What you, Lazy Duchess, Pescado and others have done is an absolute blessing for the whole TS2 community and I want to thank you for that, because understanding how everything works makes playing the game so much more bearable and enjoyable! I hope this video will get more recognition, because the amount of important info on corruption is insane and it's a must-watch for any The Sims 2 lover!
i get SUPER disturbed by audio glitches (like when it gets stuck on a small half-second segment, suddenly cut out, is suddenly replaced, etc). visual ones are typically fine, even funny sometimes, but the audio ones always gets me :') playing ddlc was... a series of heart attacks PFF
Okay, is safe to delete sims from the bin. But like, is more fun to kill a Sim off if you need to get rid of them! WHY THE HECK would you want to DELETE the Sim in first place LOL Jokes aside - This video is AMAZING! You did such a great job in it April, congratulations and thank you so much for making this!
Cannot put into words how gobsmacked I was to see this is the only video on your channel. This is a SUPER high level of quality, I super appreciate your thoroughness into a topic I honestly wasn't interested in until now. Good stuff o7
That place always looked so elitist and "only the veterans can hang here, no newbies allowed!". I never posted there but that's the vibe I always got from lurking in there looking for mods xD
Keep in mind, a lot of Sims 2 information was created during it’s release and expansions. The player-base was more diverse than the original title, which drew in more casuals, mostly younger children. You would often see on the top of many google searches of posts about the Sims 2 made by children as young as 11, based on their message board signature. It would make sense why there’s so many contradictory statements concerning the game’s mechanics and under the hood events (when does Ghost appearances occur, calculations at the start of a new day or right before the start of the haunting; for example). It feels like school yard misinformation passed around for nearly 2 decades. Good on you to provide facts and evidence, rather than just blindly accept what’s written on a wiki.
Wow this video is so well researched and helpful. I was never really that worried about corruption or paying close attention to it (though I was vaguely aware of it,) until I reinstalled the game in 2020 and my hood got badly messed up lol. But I have to say after I started making videos experimenting with things that are supposed to cause corruption (even game corruption,) I've realised just how hard it is to properly break the game. I killed off about 100 sims and deleted their graves at one point lol, and nothing has happened since, so I'm not surprised to hear that doesn't actually cause corruption. I also often use the Sims Wiki as a source (which I probably shouldn't rely on so much as anyone can edit it and they don't always provide sources/proof etc.) A lot of the info there is accurate but there's also a bunch of stuff that I've found isn't while testing (or at least wasn't replicable in the version of The Sims 2/3 I tried it in.) Also thanks for the shoutout. :)
Your research lifted a HUGE weight off of my shoulders. I've been playing the same neighborhood since the beginning of the pandemic, and, early on, I accidentally bulldozed an entire graveyard instead of a vacant lot like I meant to, and I've been paranoid about corruption setting in ever since, to the point that I stopped playing The Sims 2 entirely for almost 2 years! Not only that, but I've been even more paranoid recently because, a few days ago, I accidentally moved out of a house without taking a sim's urn with me, and, when I went back for it, it had disappeared along with the furniture, and then the game proceeded to crash! Over the past few days, I ran the corruption checker several times and made backups after every Sims session. What a relief! Thank you so much!!!
This video made me finally download the Sims 2, and be blown away by the detail that the game has. Sidenote: Sims 4 seems to actually do the full deletion including the references, as a sim with a dead parent and a step-parent saved to the library will lose all connections, including the original parent, upon re-adding them to the game in a new save.
Thank you for making this video! I feel like the Internet, especially the early 2000s Internet, has a habit of uncritically spreading what are essentially modern day superstitions without question. I've literally had people tell me they refuse to play the game because they are utterly convinced it's running on life support and will implode and die and probably break your whole computer if one thing goes slightly wrong. I'm a complete fool when it comes to technology and I've never had any problems with my game corrupting the hysteria is way overblown. Edit: ngl in retrospect all the "don't delete tombstones/mess with ghosts or your game will be CURSED" was definitely more the product of the video game creepypasta golden era than anything based in the programming.
Interesting observation. I mean I wouldn't say that this thought in itself was a product of creepypasta culture. When I heard this misconception that "deleting tombstone" means that you "unsafely" delete a sim because tombstone is actually a sim in a different form so it was kind of "scientifically explained". But because of treating corruption like great creepypasta material this theory spread like fire and evolved.
Omg finally a voice of reason! I appreciate all of the HARD work it must have taken you to put this together, not only to complete the study itself but to produce this incredibly detailed and easy to digest video. I'm one of those who have been a complete sceptic of corruption as a whole, because I've never heard or read any convincing arguments - just anecdotal evidence and speculation about some sort of lurking corruption bogeyman. But you explained it so thoroughly and so logically that I feel like I understand it finally, I can't thank you enough for that. There are two mysteries that's been boggling my mind for a while now, and I feel like after this video, I am at least one step closer to understanding what could be happening. First one is: sometimes, sims randomly get romantic relationships with each other. Like: all of a sudden, they show up with wedding rings on their fingers, being married (or engaged to, or in love with) someone they have never met. After discussing this with others, it appeared that it might be connected to whatever the Hood Checker does to broken relationships. After watching your video though, it seems that maybe that's not the case after all, but rather the game filling in missing data in the background if needed... That's very interesting. Second one is that I've noticed that character files are generating in my character folder sometimes, looking like a copy of an already existing one. As for example, I have both a "N001_User00447" and a "N001_User00447.1" character file. I suppose that is a sign that at some point, the game tried to save on the "N001_User00447" file, but it was reserved by something else, so it created a "N001_User00447.1" file? Just speculating here, but as I said, I feel like I might be one step closer to an answer after your video. Thank you so much, you blew me away with this one 🤯, and I can't believe this was your first video ever? It's so well done! Huge kudos! ⭐
The character files with .1 at the end usually happen if you have a mod that alters NPC behavior. All my matchmakers generate with a split character file because I have a mod that fixes a bug with no interactions other than dismiss available on them when they're on a community lot. Those are nothing to worry about I never had the glitch with random relationship flags appearing, but I've seen it happen to others. I had the opposite happen a few times, where the relationship gets completely erased on one side. I wonder if the cause for this is the same and why it happens.
@@existenz_1 Oooh thank you so much for letting me know, that makes sense! I've noticed that it appears to happen with NPCs for me as well so that must be why ❤ Hmm yeah that's so odd 🤔
@@aprilblacksims Haha that sounds funny though, sort of like the shenanigans of the Drama Professor 😂 Hmm I guess it's possible that it's a mix then: the Hood Checker could be removing incorrect flags, and then the game could be randomly filling in the blanks 🤔Sounds possible
I know absolutely 0 about coding but as a long-time Sims 2 enjoyer who certainly has had "don't delete sims it'll break your game!!1" into their head (despite actually never experiencing any noticable corruption in my game) this was SO interesting to watch through! Props on the efforts taken to break all these concepts down to something easy to digest even for a layman like me lol
The first time I played Pleasantview, way back when I was eleven or so and playing on an absolute brick of a desktop, I deleted Daniel Pleasant from the bin. He still showed up in the family tree and I never noticed any corruption-related errors. Honestly, I'm surprised my game never actually exploded back then, because I did some things that were *objectively* VBTs in the "total game corruption" sense, like trying to add universal NPCs to households. Thanks for this video, April! It was informative and did a lot to relieve my anxieties.
My brother once had a toddler straight up disappear mid game when he was in a family of two parents, and 2 other kids. He put it in the high chair, paid attention to some other things, tried to find it, and there was no evidence of it. It was gone from the family panel as well. We didn't think to check the memories or any sorts of files because we were relatively young and naive to that sort of stuff. There was no chime that a social worker came, the kid was just straight up gone. It's been so long since that happen, so there may have been a save and exit at some point, but from my memory it just evaporated mid-game.
Awesome video. Thank you for really diving into the code. I get really annoyed when people disparage the Sims devs and their hard work. People don't know just how incredibly ambitious the game and its systems were for 2005.
Back in early days, like the first few years of the game being out, it wasn't a common thing to advise against deleting sims from the bin. In fact, I remember being confused when I first encountered it. As you say, why would a developer include an option to do something that would ruin the code? But it was absolutely advised that you shouldn't delete character files from your game folder, which clearly still holds unless you wanna fiddle in simpe.
I feel so changed, my whole life was reset by this video, I am currently studying dentistry but MY GOD WHEN I FINISH no one can stop me from getting an degree in computers. YOU ARE MY ROLE MODEL
Glad to see this. I was also skeptical because I've deleted Sims from the sim bin for years with no issues. And I very much appreciate the complete explanations. I love learning this stuff but my brain is broken and struggles to gather and organize information in my head. I appreciate your work on it!
38:09 I find this so funny for some reason. Imagine being a game dev and making a mistake with one of the Sims, so you kill them off, delete their gravestone, and make another version of them to fix it. You assume no one will notice. Then you find out that people DID notice, gave your supposed-to-be-gone original Sim a whole Wiki page, and have made theories about them for two decades.
i got recommended this by a sibling because i love watching long videos about things i've never heard of before- this was a really neat deep dive into the sims 2, and makes me want to boot it up on my old pc again! thank you for the entertaining video, i learned lots on a subject i never thought i'd care about and it was super interesting coming from knowing nothing. i hope you make more content in the future, i'll definitely be here to watch!
I've been playing sims 2 since 2006 and have done almost every single "corruption no no" listed on the sims wiki. I never experienced widespread corruption, aside from occasional glitches, UNTIL playing on a mac within the past 2 years. My game recently corrupted over a few months - started with a disappearing sim, then lots, and now it won't even launch. Before this video, I thought I must have just gotten lucky all these years and that doing something like deleting a sim from the family bin had finally caught up to me. Now I'm thinking these issues are rooted in playing on a mac!
I'm so glad that a video like this exists. Corruption in The Sims 2 has always been something that's been so fascinating to me, having a two hour discussion and research video related to it is a dream come true.
I... I don't even play the Sims, nor do I do any coding or anything, but this still has been so fascinating all the way through. I cannot explain why, but the presentation and audio balancing is definitely very solid, along with the scripting and explanations making mostly sense even with me having zero Sims 2 experience and extremely little coding experience.
Okay, stop everyone. First of all I have to thank you for this video, my mind has blown but now I feel that all my stress about corruption has suddenly flown away and I have to write a very long comment. I've always been a very skeptical and paranoid person and when I saw that suddenly The Sims Wiki changed the guide about corruption saying that deleting sims doesn't cause corruption, after years of that information, I admit I was very angry. In my head I thought "how?! how it's possible that something that has been like this for years has now been debunked? We have proof that the game gets corrupted by deleting sims!" I'm stupid but curious, so I started researching various forums, looking for why people said that many things didn't really corrupt the neighborhood, but the answers never convinced me. "Because I think it's not a danger", "because I saw that X's save is still intact after years" and "because all the information the game needs is present" weren't answers for me. Finally thanks to this video I understood what all this meant. I'm part of a small Italian community of The Sims 2 players and I've been pestering everyone with these corruption rules to keep their neighborhoods from becoming corrupted. Eventually we all became paranoid and ended up having nightmares at night where we dreamed our neighborhoods were corrupted…and now…everything is clear. I don't think, coward and paranoid as I am, I'll ever delete any sims or tombstomes, but at least now I'll play much more relaxed.
As long as you backup your neighborhood, and don’t mess around with your game files and with cheats that ruins the game, it’s completely okay. In fact, backing up is the most relevant decision here, it is THE WAY to ensure your safety of your game, regardless of the surrounding scenario.
April coming outta nowhere with an absolute BANGER of a video, goddamn. Really fun watch, was really surprised to go to the channel after watching and see it is the only video!
This is a fantastic video. Like you, I've been playing TS2 since the beginning, and am now a software engineer. But I've never really dug into the inner workings of the game beyond some fairly basic SimPE stuff. I'm only halfway through the video, and I've learned more about the technical side of Sims 2 in the past hour than I have in the past 20 years. Also: I actually know* the origin of BFBVFS, and it wasn't Pescado! He was referencing Strong Bad Email # 108 "pom pom", released about 2 months before TS2: "But I'm pretty sure I didn't get the everloving snot beat out of me and that Pom Pom exploded in a big fiery ball that was visible from space." *I mean, unless that sbemail was itself referencing something else, but if so it's not mentioned on the wiki
Bella wasn't soft deleted, they just added the "I'm Dead" token to her, without she actually have died, this makes her being alive in the family tree while not appearing anywhere "physically" because the game considers her to be deceased. Bella has a complete character file and you can bring her back by removing the token in SimPe.
Just fyi, the hexadecimal system doesn't reference the 0x00 at the beginning of the sims neighbor ID number, it's only referencing the last two numbers in the ID. I'm sure you (April) probably already know that, but just in case anyone else needs to know that information. Also, great video!! Idk if you ever play The Sims Medieval, April, but if you could do a deep dive on the modding process and community for that game (similar to this video), that would be so amazing! I feel like that game often slips through the cracks in regards to sims youtubers, and it still has an active modding community.
Great video. Probably the most fascinating part of this story is this myth itself. It's easy to forget as a programmer just how mysterious and almost mystical computers are to most people.
I don't play The Sims at all anymore, yet somehow this popped up in my recommended. This video single handedly got me interested in studying databases and SQL! Given how empty your channel is, if this really is your first foray into TH-cam content production… wow, I'm impressed, and I'll be sticking around in the chance you ever put out as deep a dive as this into whatever interests you.
Thank you so much for this very very very thorough explanation of all the little fiddly things that happen to the game and if they are corruption or not, what is happening in the back end, and the research of the history of perpetuating the thought that deleting sims from the bin was considered a bad thing for years. I have shared this multiple times and hope it reaches every corner of the community so people can enjoy their games again and gain more understanding. I really appreciate all the work you've done to look into this and it was well woth the wait! I'm also happy to say Lord Crumps was kind enough to REDO my entire neighborhood from scratch so Kashmire 2.0 no longer has all that NID and index resetting weirdness experienced over the last 16 years. It also gave me the opportunity to make my own townies, dormies, etc and put in the pescado mods BEFORE all the extra sims generated. And I make regular back ups :D
You've made so many research that it could make a whole PhD thesis 😍personally I never knew that everybody thought deleting a family from the family bin is going to harm your game, I've heard about the tombstone thing, but deleted them anyway and nothing ever corrupted 😅thank you for the research, it was amazingy interesting to listen to you as I've always loved the sims 2 related technical topics!
I find this so interesting! I played a lot of Sims 2 as a tween but I was not involved with the community at all, so I had no idea about this myth. I deleted plenty of sims and messed around plenty, and never had any issues other than the occasional superficial bug.
I have long thought The Sims 2 to be the best installment in the series, and it is the game I have by and far played the LEAST of, purely out of fear of corruption. This video has been a game-changer for me (somewhat literally). I'm really excited to get back into TS2. Thank you
This video is an absolute game changer. Thank you so much for disproving the false information and letting us sims fanatics know that the Sims 2 is pretty safe to play. My girlfriend has been scared of trying out the Sims 2 because of corruption, so I sent this video to her and now she actually wants to try it out! Thank you sososososo much! :)
As a fellow person in compsci: Thank you so much for posting this. This is so informative and well made, not only did I enjoy it a lot on a technical level but also learned a bunch of new things. Plus because I am intrigued now, I have to test the game on a Mac lol. Please keep doing these!
This needed to be made years ago, but I’m so glad it finally has been! Thank you for being willing to apply your expertise to this wildly elusive subject!! One thing I will say is we definitely (as you said) need to give the original development team a lot more credit than we have, but you can see how well they built the base TS2 game compared to later features in the series (like how buggy later titles like Sims 3 can be or even things like apartments that were built later in The Sims 2 series itself). You can tell by how complex this game is that The Sims 1 & 2 really were born from the same era of the franchise and how we unfortunately more than likely won’t get that back. Not even necessarily because of EA but just how so many games aren’t made this robust at launch anymore, at least in the eyes of a consumer like me who grew up with The Sims 1 & 2. It seems everything is about appearance over function, and that’s disappointing, but I’m glad we have people like you and many of the other people you mentioned like Lazy Duchess and more who keep this game relevant still today. It’s earned its status as one of the best games ever made for a reason.
I love how you say we're coming up to the most technically heavy part of the video, and your cat chooses right then to completely destroy my concentration like a BFBVFS. Excellent video, amazing effort to finally explain the myths and near creepypasta legend of the Sims 2 game system.
From one developer to another, thank you for your hard work on uncovering everything! I also want to say that your explanations were very clear and I wish some of my professors had been more like you, because pedagogy is a skill not everybody has and you definitely do have it. 😊
This is probably the first time I've recognized all the youtubers referred within a video like this, haha. Fascinating stuff, I haven't been able to play TS2 since 2009 (lost my disc and didn't think to buy it when it was available online) but the inner workings of it has always interested me. Thank you for your contributions to the community's understanding of corruption!
The first time I watched this I was sick and feverish, and the section at 1:30:00 scared the hell out of me because I wasn't fully awake. The idea of all the sims losing their whole entire selves was pretty scary! What actually freaked me out was the music between this section and the next. For some reason my brain interpreted the sudden loud, singing male voices as the fact that the corrupted sims were taking over. (Taking over what? Who knows.) It did wake me up enough to figure out nothing was wrong in the real world, but I still get a jolt of adrenaline every time I hit that section transition now. Great video essay!
I literally put this and your newest video on at work all the time just to hear you talk. It's so satisfying to my brain listening to you explain Sims 2 corruption. You do such a wonderful job explaining everything!! ❤
I am sooooo glad that I watched this as a newbie to playing sims 2 on a newer PC. There is sooooooooo much out there that makes corruption seem inevitable.
Commenting to boost the engagement You deserve way more recognition This video is super engaging, well paced and super informative How is it possible that you don't have 1k subs yet?
I've been procrastinating on backing up my pleasantview..... this is the video that finally convinced me to do it. This video definitely also helps me worry less about my game getting corrupted. Thanks!
It took me two watches to fully understand all the technical stuff because I’m not program savvy, but I’m so glad I did because you’ve really explained everything SO well. Can’t believe it took this long to combat the misinformation! If I could award you sims 2 lifetime achievement award for this video I would.
Neither am I, and I’m starting to learn some coding developers just really are reckless just like update developers are. They really do not give an effin crap what happens to other people’s own computers, and that’s a dangerous power they wield.
1:47:17 haha bardzo polski smaczek :P Ale wspaniały film, bardzo dużo się dowiedziałam i dzięki tym nowym dla mnie faktom zachciało mi się odpalić znowu grę (po miesiącach stresowania się korupcją i czucia, że dygam nad tą grą jak nad jajkiem xD) Po prostu ilość wysiłku i researchu jaki włożyłaś w ten film jest niesamowity i naprawdę jestem pod ogromnym wrażeniem!!
me watching this with 1000+ character files in my Belladonna Cove, 900+ in Pleasantview, and 800+ in Veronaville :D *internally crying* I have over 20,000 files of CC in my game and even with all this my game works fine minus lag and some CC related errors. My advice to the regular player is to just play the game and not to worry about corruption unless you're intentionally doing something blatant to corrupt it. this deep dive was super enjoyable and im really impressed with the amount of time and effort you put into this to dispel some popular rumors, thank you!
im from video translator Chess Knock, April Black. thank u so much for this biggest information about corruption! now i can dont worry about every error in the game and im know more about corruption in sims 2 ❤
extremely fascinating stuff! the deleting from bin misconception always made me disgruntled -- i've been playing sims 2 since the mid 2000s and i've never once experienced corruption via deleting from the bin. thanks for all your hard work!
You are a gem and I always was skeptical about how deleting sims in the bin will cause corruption. I have always done it and never had any issues. You are so entertaining to listen to hence your knowledge being an software developer! You are awesome!! ❤
Pescado just telling people not do a far reaching thing (and not explaining why) because he assumes they're idiots who are going to ultimately come whine to him about his mode just kinda tracks to me.
![ГЛУБОКИЙ РАЗБОР КОРРУПЦИИ | The Sims 2 Hood Corruption - Technical Deep Dive by April Black [RUS VO]](/img/n.gif)
ATTENTION
There is an error in the video. Looks like gossip about missing Sims *(with no character file)* CAN spread. Mind you, the experiment from 35:24 was not the only one I performed - I did a whole series of mischief trying to get the Sims to gossip about missing characters, in so many different configurations, modded & vanilla game, RPC launcher or no launcher - and I just couldn't do it. I don't know why it didn't work during my tests, guess my Sims just didn't feel like gossiping🤷♀ But yeah, Sims CAN spread $Subject memories via gossip, I managed to trigger this yesterday whilst testing something else. So apologies for including inaccurate information! Don't worry too much about them though - HoodChecker is good at detecting them (they will be marked as [Invisible] in the log) and you can use the Batbox to easily clear gossip. I do recommend running HoodChecker before you backup your game, just as a general health check.
Also, *DELTEING SIMS FROM THE BIN IS STILL FINE*, regardless :) But maybe don't delete character files lol.
On the upside, I have some VERY interesting discovery about the squiggly lines, looks like I finally cracked this mystery :) It will be the topic of my next little video, so stay tuned.
Thank you so much for leaving this many lovely comments! You asked a lot of questions as well (which makes me very happy, please keep asking!). Some of them popped up multiple times, so...
FAQ
Q: How to detect deleted Sim Descriptions (i.e. the adult male placeholders) other than in game?
A: HoodChecker - the memories section! You will see the "Incorrect Subject Instance" errors for memories about that Sim, even if they never moved neighborhoods, since their Sim ID will stay the same (because the character file is unchanged), but they get a new Sim Description, and therefore new NID. This is the ONLY instance of "Incorrect Subject Instance" errors that is actually a cause for concern. I don't know why I didn't mention it in the video, it's pretty important 🤦♀
Q: If the Sim moves to college, are they switching neighborhoods? (i.e. does the game generate stub character files)?
A: No. All subhoods (including college campuses) are still part of the main neighborhood. They all use the same Neighborhood.package and the same Characters folder.
Q: If you have to backup the game so often, what's the point of even playing the game? That means corruption is still a cause for concern, right?
A: You don't have to make backups as often as me, but I would argue that you SHOULD regularly backup everything that you are emotionally attached to :) That includes The Sims 2 saves, but also stuff like pictures, documents and save files from other games that you spent hours on. Yes, the game is prone to crashing on modern machines (hello pink soup), and a crash can corrupt your save file. But you can also lose save files to OneDrive, overzealous antiviruses or a simple power outage, or even your hard drive can die due to shock damage if you play on a laptop, and that's nothing to do with the game. It's just good practice, that doesn't mean you should be afraid of playing The Sims 2 :)
Q: Will rolling the pacifier/testing stuff in CAS affect the Sim Creation Index?
A: No. You need to save a family in order for a new Sim Creation Index value to be commited. You get blanks when you create a family, cancel one or two Sims, but then decide to save the family anyway.
Q: If you manually clear out family ties and memories, will the game still generate the stubs after moving Sims between neighborhoods?
A: Looks like... no! I performed some tests a few days ago and it seems like you can move Sims between neighborhoods without dragging half the hood with them if you clean up memories & family ties.
Q: What about NPCs? How do they affect corruption?
A: I had to limit the scope of this video, so that is my next big focus. Right now I can tell you that these two actions on UNIVERSAL NPCs do modify your objects.package: adding them to your playable household & having kids with them. I am still not sure what is the extent of the changes and what that means to your game. Also, I still can't see how adding NPCs that *do* have a character file is supposed to corrupt your neighborhood, it seems like they function just like playable Sims and the game generates their replacements, but again, it's still under investigation, so maybe don't mess around with NPCs for now :)
Q: Is it okay to use deleteAllCharacters, then?
A: It certaintly won't blow up your game, I have used it, the cheat is not as messy as I previously thought (the good thing about it is that it does clear out memories, so no $Subject). You can remove all dangling SWAFs with HoodChecker. However, I still don't recommend it for neighborhoods that you want to play for a long time - it shouldn't cause a BFBVFS, but it's just much better & cleaner to create a neighborhoods with no Sims to begin with. Sims Wiki has a good guide on that.
Q: What are your plans for this channel?
A: I do want to make more videos, but I won't commit to a regular upload schedule, since having a full time job makes it a bit more difficult :) Also, I came back to potentially writing a new version of HoodChecker. I won't make any promises just yet, but I have started refactoring the code and it's looking good so far. When it's in an acceptable state, I will make my GitHub repository public and I will probably need testers at some point. Stay tuned!
I might add more questions here, so feel free to check back on this comment :)
i didn't know how much i needed an explanation for squiggly lines until now
The sims 2 for the console was originally supposed to be the *The Urbz 2* for the console. And I regret never being born in *The Urbz 2* timeline.
Is this Marticore? She sounds and looks exactly alike
@@gdust6579 They... look and sound different to me. They are both Polish I think, but their accents are not the same either lmao
That squiggly line thing has to be related to some missing texture on the computer. I swear my sims have gotten that squiggly line thing on the computer on a completely clean neighborhood. Plus, all the pictures online involve computers.
The hood corruption guide on the wiki always felt more like a creepypasta than something trustworthy xD
SO TRUE. I remember reading it and it being like;
"Under _NO_ circumstances should you do this in your game. Doing this can cause serious, irreversible corruption, and will plague your neighborhood with horrible results."
Like, tell me that doesn't sound like some weird ass creepypasta. And the funny part is that it was probably talking about trying to have a conversation with Mrs. Crumplebottom or something lmao.
I half expected my sims to load in with hyperrealistic bloody eyes and giant toothy grins if the game corrupted.
@@ihavenodesiretocreateahandle "NEVER talk to this sim. They will destroy and crush your game like a ruthless shredder." and then the sims name is something like "sneeble glorbendorp"
NEVER i repeat NEVER Place a teddy bear from this mod on the second floor and have a child interact with it and then place a piece of pie next to it and have someone eat the pie and then delete the teddy bear then the person.
How do I make a channel That "then the person" made me exhale air from my nose slightly harder than the usual funny comment.
This is implied several times during the video but I wanna make it clear: the fact that you can see *signs of corruption does not mean the game is badly coded, but quite the opposite*. It is very VERY easy for invalid data to completely crash an application; and the fact that the game not only does not crash, but keeps trying to make sense of whatever data is left and to show placeholders means that they went above and beyond to create robust code. It is impressive how well it works, given that, as we learned, Sim info is spread throughout several linked data tables AND given that there's arbitrary code running in the game (mods) that can mess up those tables. That's a programmers nightmare.
YES!!! 100% agree
Both Sims 2 and Sims 3 are just straight up spaghetti coding hell, and that’s saying something considering how easy it actually is to run Sims 4 and maybe even Sims 1 without running into any bugs or issues.
@@aprilblacksims Ditto, those “arbitrary” numbers are basically random files that “sometimes” fill up so much, it actually ruins your game (case in point, tiny screenshots in the save files)! This happens to Sims 3, no doubt about that one. Sims 2 have landmines you gotta avoid…atleast you don’t have to slice off megabytes of bloated data like it’s a necromorph from Dead Space like in Sims 3
I mean it's one thing to create a crash prone application, which Sims 2 according to your comment is, and an application that handles data well and correctly, which Sims 2 evidently does not. I would rather the game crash gracefully than try to handle broken data in a haphazard way and just make things worse.
The Sims 2 code is good. The Sims 3 code is held with chewing gum and a pray.
Didn't think I'd be watching Bella Goth talk about corruption for two hours this week but it's a welcome surprise nonetheless
lmao, coincidentally, Bella Goth is my favourite premade Sim and I was always giving her the best life in The Sims 1 :D Also, whenever I was creating myself in the first game, I'd always pick Bella Goth's face, just lightest skin tone, as it was the closest, so I'd create a storyline that I'm her long lost sister or something xD
@@aprilblacksims bestie I do this too to this day lmaoooo 😭
Did you also save the Bella in megahood Strangetown and reunite her with Mortimer in Pleasantview? 😃
She also looks like the downtownie in the black dress with black hair and dark lipstick who is similar looking to Bella.
@@aprilblacksims agree
and she deserves a good life in sims 2 as well 🥰
but I have to let her heart break once for that to happen 🥲
'Some people have all the anti corruption mods and use hood checker regularly and never make back ups'
It's me, I'm the baddie
Me
You like to live dangerously with the lack of backups xD
I start making back ups but then forget
It's me as well I'm afraid. You won't catch me making a single back up lmao
Something about how a good chunk of reasons for glitches is "and/or playing on a mac" is just so funny to me
I just think it's incredible that after 18 years this game is not only still being played by a large audience, but that new discoveries are still being made to this day. Not to mention all the amazing modders and custom content creators keeping the game fresh.
Just hearing the music makes me want to play. One of my favorite things is to reviving all of the dead sims i can, play them and change their fates!
I’m constantly going back to it, probably at least once a month. Haven’t played the sims 4 in like a year lol
I hadnt played it since 2009 when ts3 came out, I spent 10000s hours in ts3, and forgot about the greatness of ts2. now im searching my old hard drives trying to find my pleasantview from 2004
The Sims 2 is probably my most favorite Sims game to date. Sims 3 is close though.
It’s the best one!!
the language around corruption is so scary. i feel like ppl forget how robust the game actually is, and how well-coded it is. there was a point in time where i was a bit scared to do normal gameplay because i was anxious about corruption. whenever a bug or a glitch happened i'd be like *ah well it was fun playing*. it was a crazy time shjfsk
I also always wondered why people became scared of even playing. In the absolute worst scenario, you will need to reinstall the game. And the cases when it would be necessary are relatively rare (and mainly connected to people messing with files, while they have no idea what they are doing). I played on the vanilla version for so many years, without any mods to fix things. I have never encountered most of these "signs of corruption". Now I use fixes, as those can get rid of some small annoying bugs and generally make the game run more smoothly. But the game was completely playable either way.
as much as sims 2 probably has it's fair share of spaghetti code, people tend to forget that the developers *knew* what they were doing, at least for the most part. i think a lot of this corruption misinformation nonsense comes from the use of large buzzwords and lack of knowledge on the subject itself. any random person on the internet can say this "X isn't safe" or "it's fine if you do X", no matter how reputable they are, and still be completely wrong. i dont think it helps that the game came out during the wild west period of the internet, where you wouldn't expect somebody to lie or spread misinformation whether by accident or on purpose. you just kinda took what people said as legitimate.
Robust? Yes, I agree. "Well-coded"? I'm not sure. I don't think so
@@najpotenicewolf934 I mean there ARE cases of software bricking a computer, but those are VERY SUPER RARE and are the mark exceptionally incompetent developers. I think Larry Bundy references a case where the devs stupidly told their uninstall program to eat the entire drive you installed the game was on...
But again yeah worst case reinstall game, Especially nowadays software OSs are quite stable.
Well, I don’t know about ‘well-coded’. 💀
this entire situation really feels like the epitome of "you think people would go on the internet just to lie?"
It's not about lying, rather misinformation, and not enough knowledge about the topic. The previous informations about the corruption & the things to avoid were largely approved by Mootilda, who created the Hoodchecker.
I think it's more of a "game of telephone" situation than genuine vile misinformation. Less tech-savvy people picking scraps of information from seemingly reliable sources, repeating them as a warning to others and (accidentally or not) misinterpreting them, which has been going on for nearly two decades.
@@BKNTD especially because the colloquial language around it is often confused with more technical concepts. ie corruption of a sims family through means mentioned in the video =\= file system corruption from something like hard drive errors. that’s probably why there’s so much fear mongering bc the two are confused
@@BKNTD yeah, we have a "how dare you say we piss on the poor" situation
@@thea.0413 Also with the concept of spiritual(not computer) corruption, which can be really creepy, by less tech savvy people
Which would also explain the creepypasta-esque fear about it
Yeah, when I thought about it logically, deleting the character file seemed a lot more dangerous than using the bin in the game, because I noticed a lot of that Sim still stays and it just felt safer for references.
Thank you for the work!!!
Wow! Marticore my one of my fave sims content creator has entered the chat.
Dziękuję za polecenie tego filmu.
Hey!!! First time seeing you here :)
no memories, no skills, no career history, no personality? finally people like me represented in video games
i fell seen now😁
Slay
It's very interesting how the myth that deleting sims using the bin would corrupt your neighborhoods became widespread and accepted as truth across the community. it's like a classic example of "if something is told repeatedly enough times and for long enough, it becomes the truth"
Sort of like that baby mod, oh god…
OMGGGGG i forgot being so scared to do this 😭😭😭
Just as a heads up to people: Don't completely trust Sims the Wiki. It's editors are a bunch teenagers(now young adults) who takes advantage of the Sims online traffic and spreads misinformation about all the games. They mean well, but the harm they've done has been community shaping. Example is they kept coming up with the constant "timeline inconsistencies" as "Everyone is on the Elixir of Life/Dyed their hair because of model differences".
Edit: Forgot to mention, they have a bad habit of ignoring corrections or debunking of their own incorrect information. This is not meant to slander them, just a warning that a lot of the Wiki's information will be incorrect.
ive tried correcting wrong information there before only for it to be restore with no explanation
the best and worst thing about wikis like that is how anyone can edit it. so either you get someone with great info that makes the wiki much better, or you get a troll that vandalizes everything
@@jljljl1820 This is a huge problem on Wikipedia as well, which is very troubling. The communities become insular and the only people who can change things are the regulars.
Lmao vocaloid wiki is like this too
@@volkadee6151 vocaloid wiki (and the community) is just adults on soap boxes screaming about legality and blowing things out of proportion. echo chamber of stupidity tbh
Absolutely flabbergasted to learn that deleting Sims in the bin/deleting gravestones, the *"number one DO NOT DO THIS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES"* rule I've heard for years is actually safe. This video is SO good and informative, and it definitely eased some worries I have as a barely-tech-literate person with major glitch/file corruption anxiety who shudders at the mere THOUGHT of having to open SimPE (Genuinely the tech anxiety once got so bad that for like a solid year the mere action of turning on my laptop made me literally sick with dread. Unrelatedly, I apparently have a panic disorder- )
It makes me feel good because I always delete sims from the bin (the starting family) but i always felt bad lol.
I played for 6 years in my neighbourhoods which were created from scratch, always deleted Maxis-created families in the family bin and never, EVER had a glitch which can be considered as a sign of corruption. So this whole thing about corruption made me skeptical, but later I joined this hysteria and installed all the anticorruption mods. Didn't see any difference, to be honest.
The only difference was my paranoia because I thought every single day that my neighbourhood are about to die because I deleted a family or two
@@kotrena tbf i downloaded all the anti corruption mods even tho i know its hard to do on purpose but its just to make sure i dont feel like all my sims r about to explode bc they looked at a social worker
Average sims player
"Deleting sims from the family bin causes corruption" is the simmer's "it's illegal to drive with your interior lights on"
True!!
real
real
I really hope Plumbella watches this. It will 100% help her understand the lore she loves from a technical perspective!
All this fear-mongering about how badly programmed The Sims 2 is and how easy it is to "corrupt" your game, but it turns out it's possibly the safest and most well-thought-out entry in the series. It always confused me how such an outstanding game with lots of heart and dedication clearly poured into it, can be considered a ticking bomb. Turns out it was just people playing a game of telephone and misinterpreting harmless little bugs as signs of impending doom. Like yeah, it's not flawless and there are hiccups and issues, but nothing out of the ordinary for something as complex as a life simulation game.
Exactly!!!
Absolutely. I personally see a difference with how “safe” the Sims 2 is compared to TS4 given how often my Sims 4 save files will get borked for no reason. It happens to me at least twice a year that my save file becomes completely unusable and I have to revert to a previous backup. The sims 2 I haven’t had any issues yet
The Sims wiki also has a horrible policy of documenting sims as having the unused power aspiration when sims actually have no aspiration due to corrupted data. The numerical codes for having the 'nothing' aspiration and power are completely different in SimPE.
Finally somebody mentioned this, thank you
Maybe you should change the wiki then. That’s what wikis are for.
@@BlueberryDragon13 I did, after a lot of fighting with wiki editors.
I love how the Sims 2(and 3) players have been so dedicated to helping the game run to it's possibly-most-solid state. Most games run on a proverbial combination of wd-40, duct tape and a dream, and while modding is so common in a lot of games, even game fixes and QoL improvements, there's just something special about sims 2 mods.
To be honest, I was really hoping the Sims community gets the help they need from modders everywhere else from gaming, especially in realms where expertise of a game like Skyrim should’ve just offset itself with it’s own modding community into the Sims games to set things right…but alas, we live in a gaming world where people do not even realize the Sims people exist nor it’s games.
Man, if only people realize just how special Sims games can actually be if we let imaginations roam free like Minecraft would.
The whole "deleting sims from the bin will corrupt your game!" thing was always so weird to me - I ALWAYS delete sims from the bin. I don't want the Ottomas family hanging about, or random other sims interacting with mine when I never played with those households - and it just made me feel better to see an empty sim bin. I never once had an issue, and thought it was so strange that people claimed it caused problems. Been playing since 2004, still haven't had a single problem related to sims bin deleting. It's so nice to see this being cleared up!
I woke up from a nightmare about corruption, and I naturally searched for videos to calm myself down and oh boy, this was exactly what I needed. This video is a solid masterpiece, and I’m thankful for all the time and effort you put into this.
I'm so happy that this misinformation is finally being cleared up after so long and that the Sims Wiki FINALLY removed the misinfo. Thanks for the video! ❤❤
pog
@houseofmous
I haven't heard pog in like two years
(not an insult)
@@houseofmouspog
I'm a bit confused why anyone would look at a fanon wiki anyway - it's the most biased information you can take and generally it is well known to never aknowledge fan wikis, as most of them can be easily vandalized and edited for someone's personal agenda or belief. It's a good rule of thumb in the internet: Preferably, rule out wikis if anything is citation-needed and doesn't show actual evidence.
I absolutely “adore” that narrative on forums that if you did something someone told you not to do, then you are the one to blame for bugs. I remember playing for hours in my childhood and even playing with simpe & cheats and nothing actually happens
I also want to know about ‘dangerous’ interactions with npcs and what it can cause
The NPCs are my next one on the list to investigate!
I dare to say that it's the most important video for the sims 2 community that was ever created. Finally we have a reliable source debunking this enormous myth of corruption that scaries everyone and keeps possible new players away. It's amazing how many wrong concepts existed through the years that occurred to be just wrongly interpreted/misunderstood pieces of information scattered around the internet forums.
I'm in complete awe for the amount of work you put into making it and thank you very much for it, it was really informative and fascinating video
"What if I told you everything you think you know about the Sims 2 neighbourhood corruption is Wrong?"
me, watching this video over again for the uhhh at least the 13th time: damn i sure hope not because i was taught from this video
It's insane so many people thought the Sims 2 was the most unstable game in the whole franchise, considering all the failsafe the programmers coded. Sims 3 couldn't run more than a few expansion packs at once, and Sims 4 still has countless micro bugs in normal gameplay that constantly get fixed and broken (presumably because it was never meant to be the game it is today, it was supposed to be always online). Sims 2 looks like if you don't do anything stupid your save will play for years
The fact the sims 3 couldn't run more than one or a few expansion packs is just false. From the experience of several people that can be the case to not bloat the game's overall size and possible bugs. I, on the contrary, can, for example, for example run the game with 10 expansion packs while not having too many problems (yes I have nraas overwatch and errortrap, fps limiter, smooth patch and GPU set to found).
What I get from this is that some of you are really fast to jump on that wagon (which is understandable since the game has a bad reputation for the right reasons), and, I can assure, it's not always the case, at all.
@inytule_4688 But it was the case in the hay day lol. The Sims 3 was not optimized at ALL. The Sims 2 fundamentally ran better then sims 3 before the later fixes were made by the community for sims 3.
"this sim has a relationship with her bed" ok me too tf
That explains why ghosts get angry when you sell their bed. They consider that a personal attack xD
using the sims 2 to teach good programming practices is amazing and i kind of love this specific niche
Girl you already KNOW you're gonna have to do the sims 3 next
God knows that game is broken as hell lol
I got a 3DS version of the sims 3 but i can't have kids it made me so sad
The Sims 3 is such a mess. A fun mess, but a mess nonetheless.
Into the Future was broken as heck lol, still very fun though.
@@chocobear4078 No effing sheet! The bloated saves alone drives me crazy, let alone the errors that comes with it!
I've been watching and reading a lot about TS2 corruption lately and have been following some of your posts about it, so I was very happy to see this video pop up.
It's funny, I remember having so many problems with presumed corruption as a kid, enough to the point that I ran to the forums begging for help-but when I try to remember what issues I actually had (besides crashing), I just... can't. I definitely messed around in ways I probably shouldn't have, though: moving occupied lots between neighborhoods, fiddling with testing cheats in ways I didn't understand... When I confessed to deleting Sims from the bin, I remember being so horrified as other forum users told me my game was corrupted and would destroy itself in a BFBVFS. Like, I was maybe 10. Shit was scary. (In retrospect, a lot of my problems were probably thanks to MacOS absolutely hating Sims games lol.)
I find it really interesting to think about how TS2 is so prone to these kinds of problems specifically because it has the most detailed and interconnected systems of any of the games, and therefore, the most potential points of failure. As you mention, so many pieces of data are spread across so many separate files-want trees being so complex that they need to be stored separately; lots containing data about Sims that have occupied or visited them, what they did while they were there, which items they used and how often... Any failure in syncronization or communication between these files, and things start to go wrong.
Of course, this is also why so many people consider this game to be the best in the series. Sure, it may be lacking in open worlds or fancy build tools or certain quality of life features, but none of the other games ever took the risk again of making the Sims themselves so fleshed-out, multifaceted, and enjoyable to play with-and I'm certain no future game ever will. The Sims 2's greatest strength is also its greatest downfall, but in my opinion the tradeoff is worth it any day.
Exactly! The Sims 2 save file structure is a bit unusual and the sheer amout of files IS a downside (poor Mac users), but also I love how the game tracks literally everything the player does (memories!
first of all: congratulations on finishing this incredible video!! this has truly been the most anticipated video of the year for me, and it certainly did not disappoint! all your hard work investigating and experimenting shows ❤️
my opinion on corruption has changed a lot since i began researching for my corruption series, and i truly regret being so hyperbolic and contributing to the spreading of misinformation initially. so now i try to do my best to rectify these mistakes and i hope one day i can make a video as brilliant as yours! this video is exactly what we need!
i’m working on the bluewater village video at the moment and i still have a few sections to record and edit, with one addressing whether sims were improperly deleted or not, and i wanted to use examples like what hoodchecker may pick up - like swafs not belonging to any sim, or relationships with sims who seemingly don’t exist - but present forward the theories that a) unassigned swaf records seem to just... generate, for whatever reason and b) hoodchecker may be incorrectly interpreting object ids as sim nids, thus flags normal relationships like the ones between sims and beds as being between a nonexistent sim and a valid sim. however, i was unsure how to go about backing up these claims. but now, thanks to your research, i feel more confident in sharing this information! it feels so nice that i won’t have to just be like ‘so there’s a possibility hoodchecker could be mistaking object ids for nids, but idk for sure’ you know haha
apologies for talking about myself here, but i just really wanted to tell you how i have been waiting patiently (and very excitedly, lol) for this video!
excellent job! and thank you SO much for recommending my videos! i feel a little starstruck haha
now go enjoy playing this game without needing to spawn a hundred toddlers in the hopes that one would inherit an improperly deleted sim’s nid 🤣
Thank you for your kind words :) And don't worry, I have also contributed my fair share to spreading those myths in the past haha! When I first read the Sims Wiki guide, I was still a teenager and nowhere near as tech savvy as I am now, so I just took every word at face value. It wasn't until I started experimenting myself when I realised how deleting actually works, and that Sims Wiki might not necessarily be 100% accurate!
As for spontaneously generating SWAFs, I was kinda suspecting that this could be a common bug amongst players (a more likely explanation of want-related bugs than resetting the SCID, since the latter is super rare!), but I didn't have the evidence to back it up, and when I asked about it on MTS, they were scratching their heads, although they did attempt to help me. I wasn't surprised, because in order to spot this kind of thing in your save, you would need to
a) be lucky enough to scan your neighborhood with HoodChecker at the right time
b) understand what actually happened and know how to use SimPe to investigate this further
I imagine most Sims 2 players would just write it off as "corruption", even if it was a common occurence, so I was kinda gutted that I might never know the answer.
I am so glad that people are leaving comments, saying that this also happened to them, because that could potentially be another piece of the corruption puzzle! The only problem is finding out why this happens though 🤣
PS I was actually SO excited when I experienced this bug lol, I guess I was the only Sims 2 player ever who was like "YES I"VE GOT TODDLERS WITH LIFETIME WANTS IN MY HOOD, FINALLY" 🤣🤣
I always thought corruption sounded like some kind of magical eldritch horror. Nice to know that that's because it's mostly the product of magical thinking!
Thanks for your hard work. You've made me feel much better about the game and about how these things work.
the way i link this video to every "HALP!!!! CORRUPTION????" post
How is this not on the NEWS 😱 I’ve been playing sims 2 since I was a kid, and I’ve always deleted sims with the family bin and have NEVER had an issue, I thought I was just lucky 😅 thank you so much for all your hard work and efforts with this. It is greatly appreciated. I may have to watch a few more times to understand it but for me, knowing that you can delete sims in the bin is a weight off the shoulders
Finally, i can breath through. As an older Sims 2 player i remember how many hours and days, months and years i've invested to trying solve the problems myself, finding solutions. And this is it. I'm so thankful to our community for people like you April, who has answers for us. Honestly, i feel so free now, because i don't have to stress out anymore because of some problems because of this game. It helps me immense, although i'm not a techy person myself and i don't understand programming like at all, is not my table. I have a better view now on everything and i'm so endlessly happy, so many things you are talking about is so much understandable. Finally someone who explains it in a better way. A thousand thank you, you've just made my day.
i'm so glad you took the time to dispel these myths, AND did enough research to come up with a plausible account of how "deleting sims from the bin will corrupt your game" could have started in the first place! thank you for sharing with us, this was so so cool to hear about all the technical details and the ways that superstitions spread.
also why do i think it's so sweet that the sims have relationships to their objects too 😭 that's weirdly realistic & wholesome. i know that feature serves a purpose but also probably did not NEED to be there, but they put it in anyway, and i just appreciate how much the Sims 2 devs thought of. W&Fs, interest levels, hobbies, memories, daydreams, gossip, and how all these things link in to each other. it's all so interesting and impressive.
@@feykingjulianI miss this level of detail in the Sims 4, even if it made the game more prone to corruption 💔
As someone who has a phobia connected to glitches (especially visual ones in realistic games, like The Sims franchise) I've always been terrified of corruption in The Sims 2. It also made watching some parts of the video frightening (especially missing aspirations part and sims being pets, the latter will for sure give me nightmares), but it was all so worth it!
What you, Lazy Duchess, Pescado and others have done is an absolute blessing for the whole TS2 community and I want to thank you for that, because understanding how everything works makes playing the game so much more bearable and enjoyable! I hope this video will get more recognition, because the amount of important info on corruption is insane and it's a must-watch for any The Sims 2 lover!
😂😂😂
What did I just read🤣
is that what it's called! i'm so glad i'm not the only one who experiences that kind of thing, all of this corruption talk always scared me lol
@@midnight_daydream I too get a little disturbed by glitches like that and I think it has to do something with an uncanny valley effect
i get SUPER disturbed by audio glitches (like when it gets stuck on a small half-second segment, suddenly cut out, is suddenly replaced, etc). visual ones are typically fine, even funny sometimes, but the audio ones always gets me :') playing ddlc was... a series of heart attacks PFF
Okay, is safe to delete sims from the bin. But like, is more fun to kill a Sim off if you need to get rid of them! WHY THE HECK would you want to DELETE the Sim in first place LOL
Jokes aside - This video is AMAZING! You did such a great job in it April, congratulations and thank you so much for making this!
Drowning Daniel Pleasant in a pool to make more room in the hood 🥰
@@CommanderWiggins I use my CIA's Satellite of Doom...;-)
@@gracesavage2885 CIA LMAOO
Cannot put into words how gobsmacked I was to see this is the only video on your channel. This is a SUPER high level of quality, I super appreciate your thoroughness into a topic I honestly wasn't interested in until now. Good stuff o7
I can't be the only one that keeps coming back to rewatch this every now and then, right? lmao
As a former MATY member, it's "good" to see that place hasn't changed in 15+ years, glad this got recommended!
That place always looked so elitist and "only the veterans can hang here, no newbies allowed!". I never posted there but that's the vibe I always got from lurking in there looking for mods xD
Keep in mind, a lot of Sims 2 information was created during it’s release and expansions. The player-base was more diverse than the original title, which drew in more casuals, mostly younger children. You would often see on the top of many google searches of posts about the Sims 2 made by children as young as 11, based on their message board signature.
It would make sense why there’s so many contradictory statements concerning the game’s mechanics and under the hood events (when does Ghost appearances occur, calculations at the start of a new day or right before the start of the haunting; for example). It feels like school yard misinformation passed around for nearly 2 decades.
Good on you to provide facts and evidence, rather than just blindly accept what’s written on a wiki.
Wow this video is so well researched and helpful.
I was never really that worried about corruption or paying close attention to it (though I was vaguely aware of it,) until I reinstalled the game in 2020 and my hood got badly messed up lol. But I have to say after I started making videos experimenting with things that are supposed to cause corruption (even game corruption,) I've realised just how hard it is to properly break the game. I killed off about 100 sims and deleted their graves at one point lol, and nothing has happened since, so I'm not surprised to hear that doesn't actually cause corruption.
I also often use the Sims Wiki as a source (which I probably shouldn't rely on so much as anyone can edit it and they don't always provide sources/proof etc.) A lot of the info there is accurate but there's also a bunch of stuff that I've found isn't while testing (or at least wasn't replicable in the version of The Sims 2/3 I tried it in.)
Also thanks for the shoutout. :)
This is one of the best examples of explaining a deeply technical topic to a non-programming audience I have ever seen.
Your research lifted a HUGE weight off of my shoulders. I've been playing the same neighborhood since the beginning of the pandemic, and, early on, I accidentally bulldozed an entire graveyard instead of a vacant lot like I meant to, and I've been paranoid about corruption setting in ever since, to the point that I stopped playing The Sims 2 entirely for almost 2 years! Not only that, but I've been even more paranoid recently because, a few days ago, I accidentally moved out of a house without taking a sim's urn with me, and, when I went back for it, it had disappeared along with the furniture, and then the game proceeded to crash! Over the past few days, I ran the corruption checker several times and made backups after every Sims session. What a relief! Thank you so much!!!
This video made me finally download the Sims 2, and be blown away by the detail that the game has.
Sidenote: Sims 4 seems to actually do the full deletion including the references, as a sim with a dead parent and a step-parent saved to the library will lose all connections, including the original parent, upon re-adding them to the game in a new save.
Ugh of course they do🤣 what a mess
Thank you for making this video! I feel like the Internet, especially the early 2000s Internet, has a habit of uncritically spreading what are essentially modern day superstitions without question. I've literally had people tell me they refuse to play the game because they are utterly convinced it's running on life support and will implode and die and probably break your whole computer if one thing goes slightly wrong. I'm a complete fool when it comes to technology and I've never had any problems with my game corrupting the hysteria is way overblown.
Edit: ngl in retrospect all the "don't delete tombstones/mess with ghosts or your game will be CURSED" was definitely more the product of the video game creepypasta golden era than anything based in the programming.
Interesting observation. I mean I wouldn't say that this thought in itself was a product of creepypasta culture. When I heard this misconception that "deleting tombstone" means that you "unsafely" delete a sim because tombstone is actually a sim in a different form so it was kind of "scientifically explained". But because of treating corruption like great creepypasta material this theory spread like fire and evolved.
Omg finally a voice of reason! I appreciate all of the HARD work it must have taken you to put this together, not only to complete the study itself but to produce this incredibly detailed and easy to digest video. I'm one of those who have been a complete sceptic of corruption as a whole, because I've never heard or read any convincing arguments - just anecdotal evidence and speculation about some sort of lurking corruption bogeyman. But you explained it so thoroughly and so logically that I feel like I understand it finally, I can't thank you enough for that.
There are two mysteries that's been boggling my mind for a while now, and I feel like after this video, I am at least one step closer to understanding what could be happening. First one is: sometimes, sims randomly get romantic relationships with each other. Like: all of a sudden, they show up with wedding rings on their fingers, being married (or engaged to, or in love with) someone they have never met. After discussing this with others, it appeared that it might be connected to whatever the Hood Checker does to broken relationships. After watching your video though, it seems that maybe that's not the case after all, but rather the game filling in missing data in the background if needed... That's very interesting.
Second one is that I've noticed that character files are generating in my character folder sometimes, looking like a copy of an already existing one. As for example, I have both a "N001_User00447" and a "N001_User00447.1" character file. I suppose that is a sign that at some point, the game tried to save on the "N001_User00447" file, but it was reserved by something else, so it created a "N001_User00447.1" file? Just speculating here, but as I said, I feel like I might be one step closer to an answer after your video.
Thank you so much, you blew me away with this one 🤯, and I can't believe this was your first video ever? It's so well done! Huge kudos! ⭐
The character files with .1 at the end usually happen if you have a mod that alters NPC behavior. All my matchmakers generate with a split character file because I have a mod that fixes a bug with no interactions other than dismiss available on them when they're on a community lot. Those are nothing to worry about
I never had the glitch with random relationship flags appearing, but I've seen it happen to others. I had the opposite happen a few times, where the relationship gets completely erased on one side. I wonder if the cause for this is the same and why it happens.
@@existenz_1 Oooh thank you so much for letting me know, that makes sense! I've noticed that it appears to happen with NPCs for me as well so that must be why ❤
Hmm yeah that's so odd 🤔
@@AniBats No problem! Yeah, I hope the issue with randomly appearing/disappearing relationships gets figured out someday
Oh, the randomly assigned relationship flags
@@aprilblacksims Haha that sounds funny though, sort of like the shenanigans of the Drama Professor 😂 Hmm I guess it's possible that it's a mix then: the Hood Checker could be removing incorrect flags, and then the game could be randomly filling in the blanks 🤔Sounds possible
I know absolutely 0 about coding but as a long-time Sims 2 enjoyer who certainly has had "don't delete sims it'll break your game!!1" into their head (despite actually never experiencing any noticable corruption in my game) this was SO interesting to watch through! Props on the efforts taken to break all these concepts down to something easy to digest even for a layman like me lol
13:30 love the kevin callout
The first time I played Pleasantview, way back when I was eleven or so and playing on an absolute brick of a desktop, I deleted Daniel Pleasant from the bin. He still showed up in the family tree and I never noticed any corruption-related errors. Honestly, I'm surprised my game never actually exploded back then, because I did some things that were *objectively* VBTs in the "total game corruption" sense, like trying to add universal NPCs to households.
Thanks for this video, April! It was informative and did a lot to relieve my anxieties.
My brother once had a toddler straight up disappear mid game when he was in a family of two parents, and 2 other kids. He put it in the high chair, paid attention to some other things, tried to find it, and there was no evidence of it. It was gone from the family panel as well. We didn't think to check the memories or any sorts of files because we were relatively young and naive to that sort of stuff. There was no chime that a social worker came, the kid was just straight up gone. It's been so long since that happen, so there may have been a save and exit at some point, but from my memory it just evaporated mid-game.
Awesome video. Thank you for really diving into the code.
I get really annoyed when people disparage the Sims devs and their hard work. People don't know just how incredibly ambitious the game and its systems were for 2005.
Back in early days, like the first few years of the game being out, it wasn't a common thing to advise against deleting sims from the bin. In fact, I remember being confused when I first encountered it. As you say, why would a developer include an option to do something that would ruin the code? But it was absolutely advised that you shouldn't delete character files from your game folder, which clearly still holds unless you wanna fiddle in simpe.
I feel so changed, my whole life was reset by this video, I am currently studying dentistry but MY GOD WHEN I FINISH no one can stop me from getting an degree in computers. YOU ARE MY ROLE MODEL
Glad to see this. I was also skeptical because I've deleted Sims from the sim bin for years with no issues. And I very much appreciate the complete explanations. I love learning this stuff but my brain is broken and struggles to gather and organize information in my head. I appreciate your work on it!
After watching this for two hours and struggling to understand, I can only say one word about this video and the creator... Masterpiece!
38:09 I find this so funny for some reason. Imagine being a game dev and making a mistake with one of the Sims, so you kill them off, delete their gravestone, and make another version of them to fix it. You assume no one will notice. Then you find out that people DID notice, gave your supposed-to-be-gone original Sim a whole Wiki page, and have made theories about them for two decades.
i got recommended this by a sibling because i love watching long videos about things i've never heard of before- this was a really neat deep dive into the sims 2, and makes me want to boot it up on my old pc again! thank you for the entertaining video, i learned lots on a subject i never thought i'd care about and it was super interesting coming from knowing nothing. i hope you make more content in the future, i'll definitely be here to watch!
I've been playing sims 2 since 2006 and have done almost every single "corruption no no" listed on the sims wiki. I never experienced widespread corruption, aside from occasional glitches, UNTIL playing on a mac within the past 2 years. My game recently corrupted over a few months - started with a disappearing sim, then lots, and now it won't even launch. Before this video, I thought I must have just gotten lucky all these years and that doing something like deleting a sim from the family bin had finally caught up to me. Now I'm thinking these issues are rooted in playing on a mac!
I'm so glad that a video like this exists. Corruption in The Sims 2 has always been something that's been so fascinating to me, having a two hour discussion and research video related to it is a dream come true.
Swear I've watched this video from start to finish at least 5 times now. I would LOVE a deep dive on the wants tree and how it works! ❤
Seconded, want trees seem really fascinating!
I... I don't even play the Sims, nor do I do any coding or anything, but this still has been so fascinating all the way through. I cannot explain why, but the presentation and audio balancing is definitely very solid, along with the scripting and explanations making mostly sense even with me having zero Sims 2 experience and extremely little coding experience.
Okay, stop everyone. First of all I have to thank you for this video, my mind has blown but now I feel that all my stress about corruption has suddenly flown away and I have to write a very long comment.
I've always been a very skeptical and paranoid person and when I saw that suddenly The Sims Wiki changed the guide about corruption saying that deleting sims doesn't cause corruption, after years of that information, I admit I was very angry.
In my head I thought "how?! how it's possible that something that has been like this for years has now been debunked? We have proof that the game gets corrupted by deleting sims!"
I'm stupid but curious, so I started researching various forums, looking for why people said that many things didn't really corrupt the neighborhood, but the answers never convinced me.
"Because I think it's not a danger", "because I saw that X's save is still intact after years" and "because all the information the game needs is present" weren't answers for me.
Finally thanks to this video I understood what all this meant.
I'm part of a small Italian community of The Sims 2 players and I've been pestering everyone with these corruption rules to keep their neighborhoods from becoming corrupted. Eventually we all became paranoid and ended up having nightmares at night where we dreamed our neighborhoods were corrupted…and now…everything is clear.
I don't think, coward and paranoid as I am, I'll ever delete any sims or tombstomes, but at least now I'll play much more relaxed.
As long as you backup your neighborhood, and don’t mess around with your game files and with cheats that ruins the game, it’s completely okay.
In fact, backing up is the most relevant decision here, it is THE WAY to ensure your safety of your game, regardless of the surrounding scenario.
I'm obsessed with this video (and about squiggly lines one). I keep rewatching it on the background over and over. Help
April coming outta nowhere with an absolute BANGER of a video, goddamn. Really fun watch, was really surprised to go to the channel after watching and see it is the only video!
This is a fantastic video. Like you, I've been playing TS2 since the beginning, and am now a software engineer. But I've never really dug into the inner workings of the game beyond some fairly basic SimPE stuff. I'm only halfway through the video, and I've learned more about the technical side of Sims 2 in the past hour than I have in the past 20 years.
Also: I actually know* the origin of BFBVFS, and it wasn't Pescado! He was referencing Strong Bad Email # 108 "pom pom", released about 2 months before TS2: "But I'm pretty sure I didn't get the everloving snot beat out of me and that Pom Pom exploded in a big fiery ball that was visible from space."
*I mean, unless that sbemail was itself referencing something else, but if so it's not mentioned on the wiki
It does make sense now that they “soft deleted” or his Bella Goth. The point is that she wasn’t dead, but was gone and couldn’t be brought back.
Bella wasn't soft deleted, they just added the "I'm Dead" token to her, without she actually have died, this makes her being alive in the family tree while not appearing anywhere "physically" because the game considers her to be deceased. Bella has a complete character file and you can bring her back by removing the token in SimPe.
Just fyi, the hexadecimal system doesn't reference the 0x00 at the beginning of the sims neighbor ID number, it's only referencing the last two numbers in the ID. I'm sure you (April) probably already know that, but just in case anyone else needs to know that information.
Also, great video!! Idk if you ever play The Sims Medieval, April, but if you could do a deep dive on the modding process and community for that game (similar to this video), that would be so amazing! I feel like that game often slips through the cracks in regards to sims youtubers, and it still has an active modding community.
Great video. Probably the most fascinating part of this story is this myth itself. It's easy to forget as a programmer just how mysterious and almost mystical computers are to most people.
A video that's 2 hours long, incredibly well researched, and super interesting, AND your first video posted?? This is fucking rad!!!
I don't play The Sims at all anymore, yet somehow this popped up in my recommended. This video single handedly got me interested in studying databases and SQL! Given how empty your channel is, if this really is your first foray into TH-cam content production… wow, I'm impressed, and I'll be sticking around in the chance you ever put out as deep a dive as this into whatever interests you.
Thank you so much for this very very very thorough explanation of all the little fiddly things that happen to the game and if they are corruption or not, what is happening in the back end, and the research of the history of perpetuating the thought that deleting sims from the bin was considered a bad thing for years. I have shared this multiple times and hope it reaches every corner of the community so people can enjoy their games again and gain more understanding. I really appreciate all the work you've done to look into this and it was well woth the wait!
I'm also happy to say Lord Crumps was kind enough to REDO my entire neighborhood from scratch so Kashmire 2.0 no longer has all that NID and index resetting weirdness experienced over the last 16 years. It also gave me the opportunity to make my own townies, dormies, etc and put in the pescado mods BEFORE all the extra sims generated. And I make regular back ups :D
Loved the cat after toddlers with lifetime wants!!! cute
His name is Dante and he's very soft and cuddly :3 I have 2 more cats, but they were sleeping at the time
You've made so many research that it could make a whole PhD thesis 😍personally I never knew that everybody thought deleting a family from the family bin is going to harm your game, I've heard about the tombstone thing, but deleted them anyway and nothing ever corrupted 😅thank you for the research, it was amazingy interesting to listen to you as I've always loved the sims 2 related technical topics!
I find this so interesting! I played a lot of Sims 2 as a tween but I was not involved with the community at all, so I had no idea about this myth. I deleted plenty of sims and messed around plenty, and never had any issues other than the occasional superficial bug.
Thankfully, as long as you don’t mess around with cheats and game files, you’ll be completely fine. Hopefully…
@@aquilliusranger2137(most) cheats are safe
I have long thought The Sims 2 to be the best installment in the series, and it is the game I have by and far played the LEAST of, purely out of fear of corruption. This video has been a game-changer for me (somewhat literally). I'm really excited to get back into TS2. Thank you
This video is an absolute game changer. Thank you so much for disproving the false information and letting us sims fanatics know that the Sims 2 is pretty safe to play. My girlfriend has been scared of trying out the Sims 2 because of corruption, so I sent this video to her and now she actually wants to try it out! Thank you sososososo much! :)
As a fellow person in compsci: Thank you so much for posting this. This is so informative and well made, not only did I enjoy it a lot on a technical level but also learned a bunch of new things. Plus because I am intrigued now, I have to test the game on a Mac lol. Please keep doing these!
This is no joke one of the best videos I've seen on youtube in a very long time.
This needed to be made years ago, but I’m so glad it finally has been! Thank you for being willing to apply your expertise to this wildly elusive subject!!
One thing I will say is we definitely (as you said) need to give the original development team a lot more credit than we have, but you can see how well they built the base TS2 game compared to later features in the series (like how buggy later titles like Sims 3 can be or even things like apartments that were built later in The Sims 2 series itself). You can tell by how complex this game is that The Sims 1 & 2 really were born from the same era of the franchise and how we unfortunately more than likely won’t get that back. Not even necessarily because of EA but just how so many games aren’t made this robust at launch anymore, at least in the eyes of a consumer like me who grew up with The Sims 1 & 2. It seems everything is about appearance over function, and that’s disappointing, but I’m glad we have people like you and many of the other people you mentioned like Lazy Duchess and more who keep this game relevant still today. It’s earned its status as one of the best games ever made for a reason.
The art easel and guitar are the perfect props for a Sims video.
I love how you say we're coming up to the most technically heavy part of the video, and your cat chooses right then to completely destroy my concentration like a BFBVFS.
Excellent video, amazing effort to finally explain the myths and near creepypasta legend of the Sims 2 game system.
Pescado! There’s a name I haven’t heard for AGES!!! I always remember him as being super arrogant but making the best stuff
From one developer to another, thank you for your hard work on uncovering everything! I also want to say that your explanations were very clear and I wish some of my professors had been more like you, because pedagogy is a skill not everybody has and you definitely do have it. 😊
This is probably the first time I've recognized all the youtubers referred within a video like this, haha. Fascinating stuff, I haven't been able to play TS2 since 2009 (lost my disc and didn't think to buy it when it was available online) but the inner workings of it has always interested me. Thank you for your contributions to the community's understanding of corruption!
Oh, it's so sorry to hear that you lost your disk( Are you sure you can't at least pirate it?
The first time I watched this I was sick and feverish, and the section at 1:30:00 scared the hell out of me because I wasn't fully awake. The idea of all the sims losing their whole entire selves was pretty scary!
What actually freaked me out was the music between this section and the next. For some reason my brain interpreted the sudden loud, singing male voices as the fact that the corrupted sims were taking over.
(Taking over what? Who knows.)
It did wake me up enough to figure out nothing was wrong in the real world, but I still get a jolt of adrenaline every time I hit that section transition now.
Great video essay!
I literally put this and your newest video on at work all the time just to hear you talk. It's so satisfying to my brain listening to you explain Sims 2 corruption. You do such a wonderful job explaining everything!! ❤
I am sooooo glad that I watched this as a newbie to playing sims 2 on a newer PC. There is sooooooooo much out there that makes corruption seem inevitable.
This is now my favorite documentary
Commenting to boost the engagement
You deserve way more recognition
This video is super engaging, well paced and super informative
How is it possible that you don't have 1k subs yet?
I've been procrastinating on backing up my pleasantview..... this is the video that finally convinced me to do it. This video definitely also helps me worry less about my game getting corrupted. Thanks!
This video is so in depth, but so well explained. It never made sense to me how they showed the corruptions, thx for making it so much clear
It took me two watches to fully understand all the technical stuff because I’m not program savvy, but I’m so glad I did because you’ve really explained everything SO well. Can’t believe it took this long to combat the misinformation! If I could award you sims 2 lifetime achievement award for this video I would.
Neither am I, and I’m starting to learn some coding developers just really are reckless just like update developers are. They really do not give an effin crap what happens to other people’s own computers, and that’s a dangerous power they wield.
1:47:17 haha bardzo polski smaczek :P Ale wspaniały film, bardzo dużo się dowiedziałam i dzięki tym nowym dla mnie faktom zachciało mi się odpalić znowu grę (po miesiącach stresowania się korupcją i czucia, że dygam nad tą grą jak nad jajkiem xD) Po prostu ilość wysiłku i researchu jaki włożyłaś w ten film jest niesamowity i naprawdę jestem pod ogromnym wrażeniem!!
Właśnie szukałem jakiegoś komentarza o tym i jakimś cudem nie tylko ja to zauważyłem XDDDD
me watching this with 1000+ character files in my Belladonna Cove, 900+ in Pleasantview, and 800+ in Veronaville :D *internally crying* I have over 20,000 files of CC in my game and even with all this my game works fine minus lag and some CC related errors. My advice to the regular player is to just play the game and not to worry about corruption unless you're intentionally doing something blatant to corrupt it.
this deep dive was super enjoyable and im really impressed with the amount of time and effort you put into this to dispel some popular rumors, thank you!
im from video translator Chess Knock, April Black. thank u so much for this biggest information about corruption! now i can dont worry about every error in the game and im know more about corruption in sims 2 ❤
extremely fascinating stuff! the deleting from bin misconception always made me disgruntled -- i've been playing sims 2 since the mid 2000s and i've never once experienced corruption via deleting from the bin. thanks for all your hard work!
You are a gem and I always was skeptical about how deleting sims in the bin will cause corruption. I have always done it and never had any issues. You are so entertaining to listen to hence your knowledge being an software developer! You are awesome!! ❤
Pescado just telling people not do a far reaching thing (and not explaining why) because he assumes they're idiots who are going to ultimately come whine to him about his mode just kinda tracks to me.