Hiya!
Well, here's the story,
I was just scrolling though the Sims wiki like any normal day, and since I was playing through the Castaway Stories, I was curious about the natives and whatnot. So I thought to check to see what they're like. And after looking at random pages I stumbled upon the hidden villagers from Felicity Island. I found it intriguing as to why they got replaced, as I found that some looked better than what we got in the release. Since I'm no genius when it comes to SimPe, this has been on my mind for a while.
It is possible to extract the looks of Sims with deleted character files?
I don't mean JUST from Castaway, but in general.
Now, I'm assuming it isn't, but hopefully someone could prove me wrong. My thoughts on why it's not possible is cause the character files that are deleted contain the code or whatever for the Sim's appearence and stuff, the genetics might be there still (eyes, hair, skintone) but then, compared to other Sims with actual character files, there's almost nothing there.
I'm guessing the only alternative to having them in game is to manually recreate them, but when I say I tried, I really did. I was sitting here for about an hour choking on my food at how bad they looked. (I specifically mean the males as I'm positive the females use just face templates with almost minimal editing)

-is this even the right thread? I've been away from forum sites for far too long-

You must first fix them then extract them with SimPE.
"Resurrecting Sims with no character data" https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Game_g...ms_back_to_life

Ah, so I did overlook that...
This is a dumb question but; do I have to fix them within the Castaway game? As it's behaving a bit funky for me.

EDIT: Never mind, I'm just really stupid. Please ignore my question.

EDIT2: Ah, I'm afraid this hasn't worked the way I wanted it to. Since I don't have an exact copy/clone of the sim, if I were to extract that sim, I'll just be extracting the mock-up that doesn't look like them. (I've just done this with the hidden Akolo Mamanu, and the sim I ended up extracting was just a male sim with the 2nd face template.)

There looks will remain the same because you not changing that you are only adding in the missing data that allows them to live.
If you do it right you can then extract there looks and make them new again.

If I understand this correctly, then from the tutorial, I add all the files EXCEPT the files from the folder called "Facial Structure"?
That... actually makes a lot of sense now that I think about it.
(I'm very sorry for the stupid questions and pointless comments, it's past 3AM I don't even know what my name is)

If there is no Facial Structure resource in their character file, they will default to 2nd face template. I actually tested that with Mortimer Goth by deleting that resource from his character file, and after using the mirror he had the 2nd face template, but the one you get from broken templates.

So then, I suppose it isn't possible, as the hidden villagers lack all other files except:
-Object Functions
-Jpg/tga/png Image
-Version Information
-Catalog Description and
-Directory of Compressed Files

Right. Things that you would usually extract are the things that got deleted for those Sims, and the lack of those labels them as 'no character file'. The resources that remain in the character file allow those Sims to remain in memories and family trees, if they had any, but the game won't be able to display the actual Sims in-game as they are missing resources related to their appearance.

Your best bet would be to try and create their clones (in Castaway) to look as close as possible to the originals (based on genetics and face portraits) and extract the missing resources from those clones.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah that's exactly what I wanted to avoid. So I was right in the beginning of my post when I guessed that the files that contained the actual face shape and structure were gone and the only things left were the genetics and the portrait of the sim. Man, this sucks. lol
But thank you for this clear-up. Helped a lot understanding this.

And it's going to suck even more when you get to the hidden chief, his wife and the shaman who, I believe, don't even have faces in their portraits.

That's right. Luckily I wasn't even planning on touching them haha
I'm just kind of upset at the fact how the male faces are heavily modified compared to the females that straight up use a regular face template.

UPDATE:
Here I am again, after 4 hours of pain and suffering, with the hidden Akolo Mamanu.
Now; he's not identical (my version has a double chin somehow) but I'm pretty fricking happy with the way he turned out.
Let me tell you, this was a real pain to make. I accidentally left SimPE on while working on him during the first hour, realized nothing saved, got really demotivated and then took a nap. Came back an hour later and after another 2 hours, got results I was satisfied with.

Looks good to me. It's almost impossible to spot the differences.

Thank you. I noticed the hidden one has some graphical glitches in his portrait, (left eye is longer, random square on the side of his nose, front tooth looks chipped) but I didn't pay much attention to that.
So yeah, wouldn't recommend doing this. lol