A sad day for Alred, or, Nothelm Keep is %&@ing GONE

*String of Matilda-like cursing*

That's fucking crazy. What an unnecessary inconvenience. God damn, what the...?

Oh well... I remember you mentioning something about wanting to move Nothelm into a separate downtown? I guess this is a decent enough place to start with that... but still. Crazeh.

Finn! But why is he shirtless! Is he having naughty dreams? About certain naughty girls? 'Twould explain his confused look...

The sad thing is, I already did move it to a new downtown. This was already Nothelm version 2. Now I have to build version 3. *cries*

Finn is shirtless because he doesn't sleep in a nightshirt.

Poor little guy looks so pensive and Egelric-y in that last picture. But I guess he has a lot to think about.

PHWOAR! Dear God, that pixel is hot! If Gwynn doesn't want him can I have him?

In other news... .

Awww.... I think Finn just got his first PHWOAR!

And he is completely deserving of it. Oh my...with Gwynn's Matilda good looks and Finn's PHWOARiness, their children have no choice but to win all the pageants in Lothere.

*fans self*

Noooooooooo *done in a very Darth Vader (well adolescent horrible Hayden Christensen DV) style hands upraised looking to heavens*. Well, at least that is how it looked in my head but I am at work and I think it would be slightly dismaying to my officemate if I all of a sudden did that. I guess he would just assume that I had got back more comments from my co-authors *stamps feet and curses like a sailor*. No more comments dammit!! I want to submit. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. That royally sucks. Poor Nothelm. Poor you! I think I would cry if that happened. I hate rebuilding. At least you have stacks of pics so you can rebuild it pretty much as it was. But still, what a pain.

Awww... little Finnie gets a phwoar. It sounds like a kids book

Verity, it was almost worth losing Nothelm to read your reaction to the same.

*does LOL-at-Verity-in-her-office dance*

HAHAHAHAHA! "Little Finnie Gets A Phwoar"

Sounds like a good idea for a Gwynn and shirtless Finn chapter in the future.

If only the word PHWOAR existed in Old English! Gwynn would be the one to use it too. "Don't you know what phwoar means, Connie? It means handsome. It's Greek."

She could be carrying a load of books and when she happens upon Finn, she collides with the wall and screams "PHWOAR!" as she hits the floor.

How long did it take you to build that castle? That looks like the kind of lot I'd be scared to build once, let alone three times

OMG I FORGOT! I got Nothelm back. I removed my downloads folder and it actually worked. I'd had problems with CC before but never something that allowed the game to even start. So I assumed it was the lot that was broken... some OMSP saved in the wrong spot or something. I think that one tray from OFB will do that if you leave a Sim on it.

Anyway, it turned out to be some medieval cupboards I had recently downloaded. It must have conflicted with something in build mode, because it crashed the lot even after all the belongings had been sold out of it.

So I got the lot back, BUT none of the furnishings of course, since I foolishly moved out the family while trying to make it work. So I still have many hours of redecorating to do. Lesson learned. I'm just glad it wasn't on Sigefrith's castle because that one is way more complicated both in architecture and decorating.

I don't even want to think about how many hours I've spent on the castle-building part of Nothelm version 2. Probably at least a dozen. Thank heavens I got it back... that's 12 hours of storywriting time recovered right there.

YAAAAAAY!!

Shame about the decorating, though. Oh well, at least with decorating, you can just furnish rooms as you need them. Good thing you got the castle back

What are those salt piles in the doorway?

Those are SNOW piles. (buyable that is) In build mode the terrain turns back to grass. They look a lot more reasonable in live mode. In "Gwynn gets an advice", our romantic heroine demonstrates to what use they may be put.

In case you didn’t ever work out the details…I went though this pain too. Let me share what I learned to save others the pain. I think this is the same or very similar to Northelm Keep’s problem.

There is a medieval counter (edtna, I think, more on that) that conflicts with one of the stained glass windows that comes with the game in a weird way. The first time you use it, no problem. Try to go back into the lot and that lot, and lots with that stained glass window, and it causes a game crash. I think this is what happened. Another possibility is that a lot called mts2entry, or if at mod the sims, Neanderthal Cave. But I think that is where my counter was. To make it worse, removing it from the game was not enough. (It was enough to get the stained glass lots working.) The lot with the counter on it was still a problem…or there was something else conflicting on the lot. Maybe because the counter was still in it in some way? Maybe the redecoration of Northelm was painfully necesary.

How to identify the problem so it doesn’t happen to you. I’m at a computer where I can’t look up the link, due to a block I can’t control, so bear with me a little. Go to mod the sims, type in Grywch in the search for sims 2. There is a great big post that says, 43 lots or some big number like that. (Great for anyone making a medieval sims story!) In her first post under known problems she gives the specific counter which is a problem. Then if you go to the end of the comments, she and I are going back and forth trying to figure out my crashing problem. Let me emphasize that Stephsim’s Grywch lots are not the problem.

Help! To resolve this I ended up doing something horrible. If you have a similar problem and can’t figure out what happened you may have to do this too. I removed the cc download folder. My Grwych castle (with in game window that conflicted with some other CC, likely the edtna counter) now worked and it was crashing before. I used this as my test lot. Then I put in a blank download folder and started putting subfolders in and testing. Painful because this involves opening and closing the game again and again. I determined this was something that was not in a subfolder. For me it was highly likely to be something that I click to install rather than drag to my download folder, such as a lot or sim. This was too huge. I scrapped the loose stuff in my old cc folder. Then as I came across lots and people that looked horribly demented without their CC, I redownloaded. This works as long as you don’t save the lot that now looks weird. (Maxi replaces cc that has been removed with random stuff. Sometimes it works, like a different counter. Sometimes…well one lot had been replaced with a ton of $ trees…it was tempting, but I redownloaded the lot.

If you love that counter, edtna has redone it at mod the sims, one that the grid doesn’t conflict with the maxi window.

My kingdom? It was saved. Except…there is one skintone I can’t find anywhere. If anyone has the faintest idea where to get this please share, I can’t remember! Here is the description: this skintone most noticeably effects the face. It makes a sim look more evil than any skintone or makeup I’ve ever seen. it effects the teeth (pointy I think) and face. The face is wrinkly, but not in an old man way, in an evil way. It may be called goblin. If not, it looks a bit like one. It only effects males, not female. There is also a tattoo on one shoulder, right I think. It’s a tattoo with natural coloring so it doesn’t look all bright and modern. Like something that could have been done forever long ago. It’s also small and not noticeable.

I do have a picture of this on my story at grun​wald​king​dom​.blogspot​.com. However, it’s several chapters in. I’m on a computer that blocks blogs so I will have to report back later. I think if someone has seen it they may know what I’m talking about.

That explains it! It was the counter plus something in build mode (the stained glass window) since moving the people out didn’t fix the problem.

I did eventually find the guilty party using the very method you suggest. I haven’t bothered to redownload the counter because I think I am permanently scarred by this experience. Of all the lots that this could happen to, WHY NOTHELM??? To this day I haven’t yet found the courage to redecorate the dining hall. Alred will never have another dinner party again.  

Have you seen this skintone? http://​grun​wald​king​dom​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​0​/​0​9​/​c​h​a​p​t​e​r​-​2​5​-​d​a​r​k​-​e​l​f​.html The best picture is the 4^th. Note the creepy teeth and wrinkles that make him look like an all around bad guy. The second picture shows the tattoo. I want this skintone, if I can only find out where it was downloaded from.

For comparison, this is what he looks like after I lost the skintone: http://​grun​wald​king​dom​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​0​/​1​0​/​c​h​a​p​t​e​r​-​3​5​-​h​o​w​-​s​y​l​v​i​a​s​-​h​e​a​r​t​-​w​a​s​-​h​e​a​l​e​d​.html and a close up: http://​grun​wald​king​dom​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​0​/​1​0​/​c​h​a​p​t​e​r​-​5​1​-​g​o​b​l​i​n​-​m​a​k​e​-​l​a​d​y​-​f​e​e​l​-​b​e​t​t​e​r​.html

See the huge difference? Despite the nose he looks almost normal.