Tidying up my Critter and Group files, but...

[Ultimo]

So, I've been trying to tidy up my files.  My old pc crashed, but I was able to save much of what was on the old system, and transferred it to this one.  That meant there were a ton of duplicate and/or old characters in my Critters folder, and duplicate/inaccurate groups.  I thought, I'll just go into the folders and delete the stuff I don't need, rename everything so it's consistent and that should be good!  However, now the game kept creating duplicates from nowhere.  The list of AE characters had duplicates of many characters... but there was NO files for them in the critters folder.

 

I thought perhaps it was duplicating them from an arc I'd made, my WW2 arc.  If I deleted all my characters and groups, then started up that arc, it would CREATE the necessary characters and groups.  However, since I'd renamed some of them for consistency, it made duplicates of those characters, using the OLD names.  For example, I had a character named "The Incendiary Man.critter" which I renamed "Incendiary Man WW2.critter".  However, when I go to edit the arc, it creates a new copy of the character using the old "The Incendiary Man.critter" name.

 

The question now is, HOW do I get it to stop making new copies of the character, every time I try to edit the arc?

[lemming]

I kinda forget how I finally got that to stop, but I think I wound up redoing my arcs and making sure I was using the same char as the file version since the characters are in files, but also in the mission files themselves.

[ZamuelNow]

Change every usage of the character and the group it's in and change it to a non custom. Save.  Then change the group and custom, then re-add the customs as needed.  I believe arcs save a duplicate of all custom info so you need to change the arc first.

[Ultimo]

7 hours ago, ZamuelNow said:

Change every usage of the character and the group it's in and change it to a non custom. Save.  Then change the group and custom, then re-add the customs as needed.  I believe arcs save a duplicate of all custom info so you need to change the arc first.

Ya, that's what I ended up having to do.  Tedious, I'd hoped there was another way.  At least I didn't have to rewrite all the dialog and everything.