Quick Update & What I've Been Up To
My work has been on pause since late June, and the reason is that my main development PC has been acting up.
It all started when I was working on a small mod to handle some rather "enthusiastic" neighbors at Clear River Cottage. Thanks to the combination of Orotheim Reborn and OBIS (Organized Bandits In Skyrim) spawning extra enemies, the bandits were basically throwing me a "Hello, neighbor! Come join our housewarming party!" kind of welcome (loose translation?in reality, it was a total bloodbath).
I was stuck in a loop of adjusting in the Creation Kit, playtesting, adjusting again, and playtesting?about seven times in a row?when suddenly the screen went black and the system crashed. It threw a UNEXPECTED_STORE_EXCEPTION (0x154) error and told me to restart. Since this was beyond what I could fix myself, I took it to a repair shop to at least get the system running again.
For now, it boots up safely, which is a relief. However, there is a chance it might error out again, so it’s going to need a more thorough, in-depth repair.
If a hardware defect is the culprit, it won't be a same-day fix. So, I spent some time migrating all my data to a second PC dedicated to Mod development, which I had purchased at the end of last year. Moving the necessary files to the second machine ensures that even if the original PC needs to be wiped/factory reset during repairs, I can restore everything later. That said, the second PC only uses SSD storage, so compared to my first PC's SSD+HDD setup, I can't help but feel a bit anxious. I know I just need to be diligent about backups, but the thought of all my data suddenly vanishing into thin air is still scary.
My main personal machine is a Mac, so there wasn't a massive amount of data to move over, but picking out the necessary files and backing them up has been a time-consuming process. If this were a Mac-to-Mac transfer, I could just hook up a LAN cable and use Migration Assistant to make it easy. Unfortunately, Windows doesn't have that kind of software built-in, which is a shame.
Now that the development environment on the second PC is mostly set up, I am finally resuming my paused projects:
- Working on a brand-new mod
- Fine-tuning my currently published works
- Addressing the "neighborly" bandit issue at Clear River Cottage (nearly complete!)
- Implementing merchant patrols for Falkreath Secret Cottage
- Preparing Solstheim Villa for its release on Nexus Mods
- Planning the Nexus release for Dawnstar Estate (I need to figure out a compatibility fix for a mod that alters Dremora appearances. Right now, I'm weighing two options: Plan A [keep it as originally designed] or Plan B [find a workaround].)
