A new legacy, a new neighbourhood

As mentioned in my last blog post several months ago, I had decided to start afresh in a new neighbourhood. I chose Belladonna Cove as I had barely played it.

I have now blogged about the new founder, Andreas Voss, here at one of my other blog sites. I used an existing blog (one that I’d previously used for mini-challenges).

I’ll add the URL to the blogroll, or rather amend the name of it (A New Legacy).

It’s been a long time since I played, so I hope it won’t be too long before I blog the next episode.

Renaud Champignon

So at last I played the main Champignon household, thinking that Sebastien and/or Claire would die. This is one of the houses that crash a lot (another big house) so I have to save every six hours. It crashed after 24 Sim hours and I reloaded. Anyway, in that time Xavier’s son, Renaud, grew to a teenager, watched on by his mother (who has had a makeover as she gets older), and his grandmother.

Renaud is a very talented boy. He had accumulated a lot of reward points and on becoming a teen was able to fill in all the slots. The whole family is in platinum all the time. Renaud is an accomplished pianist already, playing like a concert pianist. In a family of musicians, it was likely to be so. Sebastien jammed with him even before his birthday.

Renaud is a good singer too, of course.

Sebastien, fearing the end was near, spent lots of time with his grandson.

Renaud got angry with his grandfather for beating him, the relationship plummeting to -2. The boy needs to grow up emotionally. But he apologised and the relationship got better.

He also joined his father in the gym.

His mother taught him golf.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Renaud has maxed out several skills before he gets to university (if he ever gets there).

You’ll notice a lot of the family in swimsuits. They all swum together at one point and the pool was rather crowded. Xavier was in danger of being dived on,

but all was well.

Claire, meanwhile, seems to be going a bit senile. She will spend a lot of time gazing at pictures of Sebastien’s ancestors.

She put turkey in the oven and walked away but luckily the god saw that and made her return before she burned it. Silly woman. She and Sebastien and 79 now, surviving the last two Sim days.

As for Xavier and Ilse, rapidly approaching middle-age, they are still in love.

I have started a new family at Belladonna Cove, so may blog about it, linking here. I have to remember to take pictures though, something I often forget.

Thanks for reading and following all this time!

Another tragedy for René

I’m slowly making my way around the neighbourhood. Cezanne and her husband had an uneventful round (although she’s now pregnant, as was her wish).

However, not so happy at her brother, René’s place. It all looked great. Everyone was on top of their homework, René was studying for promotion. Marielle even studied parenting (too late as it turned out). Merivienne, now a teenager, was looking forward to going to university in a few years and had planned to study business.

It was all going great. Merivienne, however, had been coughing recently, and excused herself from the dinner table to go to the toilet, but was back and chatting. Marielle left to feed baby Felice. Merivienne then said she was going to have a shower and headed upstairs. René and Laurent chatted a while longer then cleared the table.

It looks like Merivienne may have had the shower as she was fully dressed instead of in her pyjamas as before. Everyone was distracted so no-one knew, but then a thump was heard.

She’d collapsed and died just outside the bathroom. She was just 14.

Everyone was devastated (except Marielle who had gone to bed, leaving Felice on the floor!)

Marielle only seemed a little sad when she woke up. I expected more grief-strickenness.

The following day was Felice’s birthday and she grew into an attractive toddler.

Marielle’s new parenting skills had come a bit late. You’d think she would have had the desire to study parenting before having four kids. Now her LTW of having three kids graduate will not come to fruition. After Felicienne died, they had another child to fulfill that want. Little did anyone know, including their god, that they’d lose Merivienne as well. René felt guilty, as he is a medical researcher, and had told others to take their sick relatives to hospital but he hadn’t. He had been lulled into a false sense of security by what he thought was a growing immunity. There had been no other deaths recently, even though several Sims in the neighbourhood were showing the symptoms of flu. So sad.

[Sorry for pic quality. I forget to use Fraps.]

This blog may end soon

As you may have gathered, I haven’t had a lot of time lately to spend hours on playing Sims. Veronaville in particular takes a long time to play due to all the families (most of whom I don’t write about).  I’m only about a third of the way through playing Veronaville at the moment and then there’s Bluewater and Downtown to get through. It feels like more of a slog than fun.

So, after the current rotation, I plan on abandoning Veronaville for an indefinite time (if not forever) and starting afresh in another neighbourhood. If and when that happens, I will create another blog and leave the link here.

It’s a big decision that I’ve come to, considering I’ve been playing this neighbourhood for over 10 years. I think I’m rather tired of the same old families and they’ve all interbred with each other so they’re basically all related. Hence the desire to start all over again with just one Sim and build up again.

Champignon main household

I had not updated the Champignon household before going on a ‘hiatus’. Here are pics I saved for the post, but as it’s nearly a year since they were taken, I can’t remember exact circumstances. Most of them speak for themselves I guess.

Sebastien and Claire are ageing. Not long now before their end has come.

Claire worries about it.

They’re making use of the time they have left to spend with family.

As Ilse just mentioned, Xavier has just published another bestseller, which was delivered to the house.

They are still very much in love. Their son, Renaud, is increasing his creativity skill (looked on by his ancestors), an almost obligatory skill in that household.

The family jam from time to time.

I’m not sure what’s going on in the next two pics.

I can’t remember if Ilse has a job but she’s catching up with family films.

A change for the Lillards

Nearly a year since I updated! I did warn I wouldn’t for a while but then I didn’t play Sims at all for seven months. This post is not so much a story update as an explanation of what happened.

So I started again at Veronaville and reached the Lillard household where I hit frustrations, as before. Whenever I played it, the game crashed. Even saving every six Sim hours didn’t help much. It might save then crash on exiting. I had to load the game at least five times to get through two Sim days.

As a result, I have moved them out of the house. It was becoming ridiculous and I was starting to avoid playing them. I moved them into another house just down the road at Holly Ridge. It wasn’t nearly as grand but it would have to do.

After so many game crashes, baby Antony’s birthday finally came around.

Richard is thinking about his son’s future. They had moved from the grand mansion that had been home to his family for 10 generations, into a more humble abode. (The house is fine but had some routing issues. I had to delete the door to the garage for them all to actually walk from a hallway into the kitchen right next to the hallway instead of going out the garage and all the way through the front entrance. Annoying.)

It also happened to be Petronella’s birthday.

And Aisha finally got promoted to Executive chef.  Finally! It has taken an age to get this far with the family.

I ran a full day in the new house without problems so I don’t know why the old one kept crashing.  Too big?

Now I have to come up with a back story to the Lillard’s change of circumstances. Richard lost thousands through investments perhaps. Will they ever return to the family home?

(I plan on testing the house with another family but I suspect its size is the main problem.)

Hiatus

Wow, it’s been two months already since I updated. I have not been playing lately and will probably not get back to Veronaville for a while. I’m hoping to get back into my medieval hood for a bit (see link to medieval queendom), but real life, etc, is providing obstacles.

Thanks for visiting.

Veronaville Gazette

SECOND DEATH FROM FLU

Following on from the tragic death of a Downtown teenager after contracting the flu, Académie le Tour reports that a second year student, Lizzie Bear, died suddenly at the Romara dormitory just days later. Concern is mounting that this flu is a virulent new strain.

Just a month ago, a Bluewater Village resident contracted a flu but, after three days of coughing, fully recovered. Then shock as 15-year-old Nate Pederson died suddenly upon waking up, indicating to a different strain of the flu. Normally, bed rest would be enough to aid recovery, but Nate collapsed immediately, leaving his parents and siblings distressed, as he had been sick just one day. Lizzie Bear’s death was so sudden that no-one noticed until a few hours later. She, too, had been coughing the day before and collapsed seemingly after getting up from her bed when she woke. Students and staff at the university are extremely upset, as she was a popular student. Lizzie’s parents are understandably devastated and did not wish to comment. Lizzie’s twin sister, Paula, is also at Académie le Tour but was residing in a different dormitory.

“She was in my dormitory but wanted to move to a bigger one so she could meet more students.” Paula sobbed. “Students there said she was coughing really badly. I’ve heard there were a lot of cockroaches around. I can’t believe she’s gone!”

“She was a really good student” said mathematics professor Richard Carter. “She was near the top of her class, getting As, and made it to the Dean’s list. We’re still in shock here.”

Senior staff at the university refused to comment on the allegation there was an infestation of cockroaches at the dormitory. “Be assured we will be looking into it, but I have nothing to say at this point in time.” said Vice-Chancellor David Burrows.

Chief of Staff, René Champignon, urges citizens not to panic, but to take great care with waste disposal and avoid anyone who is coughing. He recommends that anyone showing symptoms should visit the hospital immediately.

A new baby

Marielle went into labour.

She gave birth to another little girl.

She called her Felice after the deceased twin, Felicienne.

René was happy, and so was Felice’s big sister.

Marielle managed to set fire to herself,

almost making her young children motherless, in what would have been a tragic duplication of René dying by fire.

Thankfully the fireman got to her in time.

Interestingly, her in-laws at the big house would not have mourned her. No-one there likes her (I checked the relationship status for each of them). They would, however, have felt sorry for the children.

Cezanne

The youngest of Sebastien and Claire’s children, Cezanne, had returned from university with her fiancé, Jerome.

They moved into a small house,

and then went clothes shopping.

They are currently unemployed and figured they may as well get married as soon as possible, as Cezanne’s parents were getting old. By the time everything was arranged, it was evening.

That’s not the hairstyle that I had planned for formal wear, but never mind. Guests were all family members including cousin, Tom Arends.

Cake.

Most guests took a piece,

but Sebastien preferred a snack.

He looked a bit worried about interractions between his daughter-in-law and his new son-in-law.

He needn’t have been.

The brothers chatted while watching sport,

and Xavier got an idea for another novel.

This is what Cezanne’s hair should have looked like.

The wedding was a roof raiser.

Jerome is into computers. A perfect career for him would be hacker.

The only member of the family that wasn’t at the wedding was Elene. Her daughter, Ellie, was now a toddler.

Elene has her attention turned to the neighbour, Cedar.