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This time in Moonlight Falls. At least this time I only lost two game days of progress since I had just made a fresh save in case I decided I didn't like the turn the story just took and wanted to backtrack. More on that later.
I did a search and got quite a few results regarding the "unexpected error", with the most helpful result being this post on Reddit: The Most Reliable Guide to Resolving Your Error Code 12 Woes. The post gives some helpful tips regarding handling memory issues. Some things I was already doing, like always using Save As instead of Save and using the save cleaner. Other things, like resetting the town, was not being done as often as I should. Saving is also best done in Map View rather than live view. I hadn't really thought about that before but it makes sense that Map View requires less resources than life view.
Finally, I just need to save more often, even it means using a timer to make sure I don't allow hours to go by without saving.
I'll add a cut here since I can see that this might be lengthy:
Another thing I did was move most of my saves to a separate folder, and I did have a lot of saves that didn't need to be sitting there. Saves such as my "Dragon Valley Emptied" and "Moonlight Falls Victorian". These are the saves where vanilla households have been removed and/or the town has been torn down and remade with modern buildings replaced with medieval/Victorian ones. These are not saves I play and I only hold onto them so I don't have to rebuild the towns again if I ever want a fresh start. They can sit in another folder until the time comes that I want to work with them.
I was also holding onto saves from different stages of Gloria's life; "Gloria as a Toddler", "Gloria as a Teen", etc. I don't want to delete them, but they aren't played anymore since Gloria has grown up and is now a young adult. Those saves also went into a different storage folder.
So now that leaves "New Pelagiad, Spring" for Aeronwen's game, and "Gloria - Independent" for Moonlight Falls. Now the save cleaner isn't complaining about there being too many saves. I guess the trick is to periodically make new saves, but not let the folder fill up with too many of them.
And yes, I did do the town reset and I noticed that cut down the time it takes to load a save or make a new one. So neither of my games are ruined thank goodness. I just need to be a bit more careful about resetting, cleaning, and saving. When I'm sure I have a handle on this I'll resume the Pelagiad game. I'd really like to get Aeronwen and Neldor married, I just want to make sure that I have a handle on the error problem.
Now for the interesting story direction in Moonlight Falls. I had joked not long ago that Gloria needs a farm hand. It turns out that she actually does. She did some over-planting with her garden and now is waiting for the plants to finish their life cycle so she can build a greenhouse. On the days of her classes she is out from 8AM to 6PM and she just doesn't have enough time and energy to work on earning her degree and run the farm.
Here I'm including this screenie just because I think she looks pretty in her straw hat and cotton gardening dress.
Luckily she had enough money left from what she inherited from her grandparents to turn a section of the hayloft into a studio apartment. It's very similar to the apartment her parents built for her when she was still living on their lot.
So...who does she offer the job to? While debating this, I made multiple copies of "Gloria Independent", which is where the apartment is ready but no one is yet living there. This save can always be returned to later.
The first candidate was James. Unfortunately he, like Gloria, has four pets (horse, donkey, dog, cat). There's enough room on Gloria's lot for them, but it would make the household larger than I would like it to be at this time and I really didn't want all those additional animals all over the place. Another reason I was hesitant to go with James is because this would essentially be "human Aeronwen and Neldor". Nothing against those two of course, I love them, but I felt it would make the two worlds too similar.
So...she calls up Cody, asks him to come over and offers him the job, which he happily accepts. For what it's worth, Cody isn't quite as despicable as Godonir because with him I swapped out the Evil trait for Brave. I assigned bed ownership to make sure that when Cody is tired he goes up to his apartment to sleep and doesn't go into the main house. At this point I made a new save: "Gloria - Werewolf Farmhand" (so again, easy to go back to before this if I don't like the story direction).
Thus far the arrangement is actually quite respectable. Nothing scandalous is going on, although I doubt Gloria's parents approve. Gloria is still keeping an eye on James but she gets frustrated with him because he NEVER flirts with her (and nothing is preventing him from doing so). Cody mostly uses friendly interactions when speaking with his new employer, but occasionally gives her a flirty compliment which results in her getting the Flattered moodlet. Unfortunately this also makes Gloria wonder why James doesn't do that.
James: *talking about the weather, his horse, his dog, etc*
Gloria: "Has it ever entered your mind that it might be nice if you told me I look pretty?!"
James: "Huh? I guess I figured you knew. You look pretty. That better?"
Gloria: *stomps off* "Oh save your breath!"
James: ???
Uh, James, even a loner like Gloria likes to be (gently) pursued.
Now for an amusing little twist in the story. During the last full moon while Cody was out prowling around as a werewolf, he met Gloria's remaining grandmother Sarah in the park. Sarah is a bit of a hippy and very artistic. She's into sculpting, painting and photography. She was THRILLED to have the chance to socialize with a werewolf and spent a long time chatting with Cody.
I can almost imagine Sarah being somewhat like Barenziah the next time she visits with her granddaughter.
Sarah: "So you have a werewolf helping you with the farm. That's so exciting! Does he scratch up the place?"
Gloria: "No, he's been good about indulging his need to scratch off the property. He's done a great job tending to the crops and getting them to the market on the days I have to attend classes."
Sarah: "Have you sketched him nude yet? If not you really must!"
Gloria: "Uh...no I have not sketched him nude."
Sarah: *glances around before lowering her voice and moving closer* "Now, I promise I won't tell your parents. Have you slept with him?"
Gloria: *stares aghast at her grandmother*
Sarah: "You can tell me. Is he a wild beast in bed?"
Gloria: "Grandma! No! Nothing like that is happening! He helps with the garden and he's been upgrading the windmills and fixing anything that's broken. That's it!"
Sarah: *sighs* "What a pity. You will let me know if that changes, won't you?"
Gloria: "Uh, excuse me. I need to go wash my dog...And by that I do mean my DOG. Not my farmhand."
Sarah: "As I said, what a pity."
Games with stories. Gotta love them.
I did a search and got quite a few results regarding the "unexpected error", with the most helpful result being this post on Reddit: The Most Reliable Guide to Resolving Your Error Code 12 Woes. The post gives some helpful tips regarding handling memory issues. Some things I was already doing, like always using Save As instead of Save and using the save cleaner. Other things, like resetting the town, was not being done as often as I should. Saving is also best done in Map View rather than live view. I hadn't really thought about that before but it makes sense that Map View requires less resources than life view.
Finally, I just need to save more often, even it means using a timer to make sure I don't allow hours to go by without saving.
I'll add a cut here since I can see that this might be lengthy:
Another thing I did was move most of my saves to a separate folder, and I did have a lot of saves that didn't need to be sitting there. Saves such as my "Dragon Valley Emptied" and "Moonlight Falls Victorian". These are the saves where vanilla households have been removed and/or the town has been torn down and remade with modern buildings replaced with medieval/Victorian ones. These are not saves I play and I only hold onto them so I don't have to rebuild the towns again if I ever want a fresh start. They can sit in another folder until the time comes that I want to work with them.
I was also holding onto saves from different stages of Gloria's life; "Gloria as a Toddler", "Gloria as a Teen", etc. I don't want to delete them, but they aren't played anymore since Gloria has grown up and is now a young adult. Those saves also went into a different storage folder.
So now that leaves "New Pelagiad, Spring" for Aeronwen's game, and "Gloria - Independent" for Moonlight Falls. Now the save cleaner isn't complaining about there being too many saves. I guess the trick is to periodically make new saves, but not let the folder fill up with too many of them.
And yes, I did do the town reset and I noticed that cut down the time it takes to load a save or make a new one. So neither of my games are ruined thank goodness. I just need to be a bit more careful about resetting, cleaning, and saving. When I'm sure I have a handle on this I'll resume the Pelagiad game. I'd really like to get Aeronwen and Neldor married, I just want to make sure that I have a handle on the error problem.
Now for the interesting story direction in Moonlight Falls. I had joked not long ago that Gloria needs a farm hand. It turns out that she actually does. She did some over-planting with her garden and now is waiting for the plants to finish their life cycle so she can build a greenhouse. On the days of her classes she is out from 8AM to 6PM and she just doesn't have enough time and energy to work on earning her degree and run the farm.
Here I'm including this screenie just because I think she looks pretty in her straw hat and cotton gardening dress.
Luckily she had enough money left from what she inherited from her grandparents to turn a section of the hayloft into a studio apartment. It's very similar to the apartment her parents built for her when she was still living on their lot.
So...who does she offer the job to? While debating this, I made multiple copies of "Gloria Independent", which is where the apartment is ready but no one is yet living there. This save can always be returned to later.
The first candidate was James. Unfortunately he, like Gloria, has four pets (horse, donkey, dog, cat). There's enough room on Gloria's lot for them, but it would make the household larger than I would like it to be at this time and I really didn't want all those additional animals all over the place. Another reason I was hesitant to go with James is because this would essentially be "human Aeronwen and Neldor". Nothing against those two of course, I love them, but I felt it would make the two worlds too similar.
So...she calls up Cody, asks him to come over and offers him the job, which he happily accepts. For what it's worth, Cody isn't quite as despicable as Godonir because with him I swapped out the Evil trait for Brave. I assigned bed ownership to make sure that when Cody is tired he goes up to his apartment to sleep and doesn't go into the main house. At this point I made a new save: "Gloria - Werewolf Farmhand" (so again, easy to go back to before this if I don't like the story direction).
Thus far the arrangement is actually quite respectable. Nothing scandalous is going on, although I doubt Gloria's parents approve. Gloria is still keeping an eye on James but she gets frustrated with him because he NEVER flirts with her (and nothing is preventing him from doing so). Cody mostly uses friendly interactions when speaking with his new employer, but occasionally gives her a flirty compliment which results in her getting the Flattered moodlet. Unfortunately this also makes Gloria wonder why James doesn't do that.
James: *talking about the weather, his horse, his dog, etc*
Gloria: "Has it ever entered your mind that it might be nice if you told me I look pretty?!"
James: "Huh? I guess I figured you knew. You look pretty. That better?"
Gloria: *stomps off* "Oh save your breath!"
James: ???
Uh, James, even a loner like Gloria likes to be (gently) pursued.
Now for an amusing little twist in the story. During the last full moon while Cody was out prowling around as a werewolf, he met Gloria's remaining grandmother Sarah in the park. Sarah is a bit of a hippy and very artistic. She's into sculpting, painting and photography. She was THRILLED to have the chance to socialize with a werewolf and spent a long time chatting with Cody.
I can almost imagine Sarah being somewhat like Barenziah the next time she visits with her granddaughter.
Sarah: "So you have a werewolf helping you with the farm. That's so exciting! Does he scratch up the place?"
Gloria: "No, he's been good about indulging his need to scratch off the property. He's done a great job tending to the crops and getting them to the market on the days I have to attend classes."
Sarah: "Have you sketched him nude yet? If not you really must!"
Gloria: "Uh...no I have not sketched him nude."
Sarah: *glances around before lowering her voice and moving closer* "Now, I promise I won't tell your parents. Have you slept with him?"
Gloria: *stares aghast at her grandmother*
Sarah: "You can tell me. Is he a wild beast in bed?"
Gloria: "Grandma! No! Nothing like that is happening! He helps with the garden and he's been upgrading the windmills and fixing anything that's broken. That's it!"
Sarah: *sighs* "What a pity. You will let me know if that changes, won't you?"
Gloria: "Uh, excuse me. I need to go wash my dog...And by that I do mean my DOG. Not my farmhand."
Sarah: "As I said, what a pity."
Games with stories. Gotta love them.
